The men who were still seated all seemed to pop up at once and mill around the room talking to the others. Between two of them Jane could see Eckersly sitting in his chair with a smile just barely lifting the corners of his lips. He suddenly seemed to be aware of her, and his eyes turned to settle on her and the smile broadened. The effect was like looking into an open coffin and seeing the corpse open its eyes and the face powder at its mouth wrinkle and crack as it smiled.
Jane knew terrible things about Eckersly. Rhonda had been twenty-five when Jane had taken her away, and Eckersly had been in his late forties. Now he was in his mid-sixties, but he looked ancient. The people in this room probably all thought that he was an astute speculator who would make a profit by forcing her to betray the people Beard and Barraclough and the others wanted, and then kill her for simple revenge. Jane knew him better than that. After all these years he wanted Rhonda back. He wanted to drag her to the same room and renew her torment where he had been interrupted, and then he wanted to do the same to Jane. He was a sadist, and simple murder would not be enough after fifteen years of waiting. He would prefer to keep them both alive for months, maybe years.
Jane saw a few of the bidders begin to leave. Some seemed angry at particular men who had not seen fit to join an alliance. Others looked merely tired and frustrated. She saw Wylie and Gorman make their way through the group to talk to Eckersly. She hoped there would be a delay, a problem of some kind with the cash. He had a large hard-sided case that sat between his feet. Was it big enough to hold eight million dollars
Wylie and Gorman were obviously thinking the same thing. Jane looked around her for Maloney, and she found him near the front door, watching the bidders filing out. As she watched, she saw Ronald Hanlon stop at the door, give her a smirk, and then blow her a kiss.
She looked away as he stepped outside, and she had to keep herself from shuddering. She hadn't thought about him in years. When she had crossed his path, he had been a trafficker in women from eastern Europe. His business was buying groups of them from a fake employment agency based in Kiev, and promising them jobs in the United States. In order to get into the country they had to sign loan papers for his high fees, and then swear to false answers on what they thought were immigration papers, but were just requests for tourist visas. When they arrived he kept them in isolation and forced them to work as prostitutes for two or three years until they paid off his fees. One of them who had served her indenture had come to Jane to ask for help to get her sister away. Jane had managed to get a dozen other girls out with the sister and into new lives. Hanlon had apparently been waiting for a chance for revenge.
As the rest of the bidders left, Jane looked at each one and remembered. It occurred to her that in this small house tonight there had been only a few whom she didn't know to be killers. The few faces Jane had never seen before had simply been speculators in misery, professional hunters who had heard of Jane's existence and shown up to see if she could be had for a reasonable price.
Now the bidders were all outside, and Maloney stood beside the front door looking out the small window set into it, with the shotgun in his hands. He was watching to be sure the disappointed men really were getting into cars and driving off. She looked at Wylie and Gorman, who were still occupied with Eckersly and his suitcase. Jane did her best to look weak and in pain. Finally she stepped down from the low table and then sat on it. Wylie noticed, but it didn't seem to worry him. It didn't matter if she couldn't stand up on the table anymore, because the sale had been made. He looked down at Eckersly and listened to something he was saying.
"You can't seriously expect me to sit here all night watching you count my money."
Wylie said, "What we're going to do is count out a hundred thousand in hundreds and weigh it. Then we're going to weigh the rest of it, a bunch at a time. And we're going to look at it while we do that. So if there's something wrong, tell me now."
"There's nothing wrong with it," Eckersly said. "This is four million. The other four million is in Jack Killigan's car. He's sitting up the road waiting for my call, and he'll bring in the rest of the money anytime you want."
"I'm just giving you fair warning. If we find a one-dollar bill, you'd better be able to make it a hundred. If we find blank paper cut to dollar size, we'll kill you. Got it"
"You have no reason to talk to me like that. I came here and bid in good faith."
"If you pay in good faith, too, you've got nothing to worry about."
Jane felt the tension building in her chest. She had been waiting for a chance, an opening, an opportunity, for two days, but Wylie and his friends had never seemed to lose their interest in watching her. She had always been in their sight, tethered and hobbled by ropes. But now she sensed that her chance was coming. The men weren't watching her now. They were watching each other.
Jane's eyes moved to Gorman, who was at the front window with his hand on his pistol. She saw the watchful look on his face, then looked at Maloney, who was still standing at the front door. He had the same stern look, almost squinting to be sure he missed nothing that was going on outside. They were on guard, but not guarding Jane anymore. Then she realized that they were right to be anxious.
The house had just been visited by fifteen or twenty men who had killed people and were engaged in trying to find other victims who had eluded them. All of them knew that each of the others was carrying a lot of money-enough to bid in a million-dollar auction. Somebody was going to be attacked for that money, and it had to happen in the next few minutes, before the bidders dispersed. Jane retrieved the razor blade from the waistband of her pants and sawed through the rope that held her hands. She kept the hands together behind her.
Jane focused her eyes on Sarah Shelby, and Sarah understood that it was a summons. She edged close to Jane with her hobbled legs. Jane whispered, "In a minute there will be gunfire. When it happens, I'll be running. You'll have to stick close to me."
"How can-"
"Sit."
Jane put the razor blade behind her on the table, where only Sarah could see it. Sarah sat on the table beside her, picked up the blade, held it behind her back while she adjusted her grip on it, then bent to tie her shoe while she sliced through the rope that held her ankles close together to prevent her from running. In one motion she sat up and set the blade behind her near Jane.
Jane picked it up, keeping both hands out of sight behind her back.
Suddenly all thought was obliterated as the world seemed to explode into deafening noise and flashes of light. Glass from the dining room window blasted into the house and peppered the hardwood floor. There was thumping as someone ran up the hallway near the back of the house. There was firing outside, but it was impossible to tell who was shooting at whom.
Eckersly half-rose from his chair and then collapsed to the floor, bleeding. There was random fire from the direction of the dining room as someone emptied a magazine in the general direction of the men standing near Eckersly's suitcase. Wylie and Gorman drew their pistols and fired a half dozen shots each at the opening in the window.
Maloney raised his shotgun to his shoulder and flung open the front door, then fired into the night. He pumped the shotgun and stepped back as Jane hurled herself toward him. Instead of letting go of the gun and fighting his much smaller attacker, he tried to swing the barrel around to shoot her. She was less than a foot away from him when she slashed the razor blade down the side of his neck, just below his jawbone. He dropped the shotgun and grasped his throat with both hands as though he could hold it together and save himself, but the blood spurted out between his fingers while Jane moved past him to the front door. He collapsed to the floor as she ran out into the night with Sarah beside her.