I regained consciousness only to find myself in a drugged stupor-the result, I suspected, of having animal tranquilizers injected into my right arm, which was sore. I was imprisoned in what looked to be an old-fashioned circus cage, mounted on a flatbed truck. The bars of the cage were covered on all sides by wooden shutters, but faint illumination was provided by a naked light bulb dangling on the end of a frayed cord suspended from the ceiling and presumably running on current off the truck battery. I slept most of the time, managed to occasionally awaken with just enough energy to relieve myself in a galvanized steel pail set up in a corner near a locked trapdoor. I knew that we were traveling, for through my drug-induced dreams I could feel the cage swaying and bumping over potholes, could hear the muffled roar of the truck engine. It seemed we were on our way to the next stop, wherever that might be.
I wondered what they had done to Harper.
I wondered where we were going and what was going to happen when we got there.
I wondered where Garth was.
Finally, I awoke with my head relatively clear, but with a splitting headache and a taste in my mouth like rotten blubber. My cage and my body had been hosed down, and I was lying naked on the rough, splintered wood floor in a corner of the cage, covered with a towel. On the floor over by the trapdoor, neatly folded, were my charcoal suit, blue T-shirt, shorts, socks, and shoes. I found the discovery ominous.
Clean clothes could mean that execution day had arrived.
As if in response to my foreboding, the wooden shutters at the front of the cage suddenly flew open, banging against the sides of the enclosure. Wherever we were, it wasn't with the rest of the circus; with the truck engine turned off, it was completely still. It was night, the darkness pierced by what I presumed were car or truck headlights shining into my prison.
"Get dressed, dwarf," a voice with a heavy East European accent said.
I stepped back a pace, shielded my eyes from the headlights with my hands, and squinted. Now I could see that the voice belonged to the potbellied roustabout with the bulbous, Technicolor nose. With him was another man, gaunt and unshaven, who was dressed in ill-fitting coveralls and a stained Greek seaman's cap. Both men were holding guns.
"Where's the woman?"
The potbellied man raised his pistol and aimed it at my chest. "I told you to get dressed."
I got dressed. The gaunt man in the coveralls and seaman's cap said something to the potbellied gunman in a language I thought might be Polish or Hungarian, then produced a key which he used to open the padlock on the wooden trapdoor at the side of the cage. The potbellied man motioned with his gun, indicating that I should get out. I ducked through the opening, descended to the ground by means of a short wooden ladder, then turned toward the two men. Now, without the headlights shining in my eyes, I could see that the potbellied man had a huge shiner; his right eye was swollen shut, and the whole right side of his face was a dark rainbow of black, purple, violet, and muddy yellow. He motioned with his gun toward the car off to his left, and I started walking.
"I like the looks of your eye," I mumbled to the potbellied man as I passed him. "Too bad whoever did that to you didn't take your head off."
"Shut up, dwarf," the man said, his thick accent making his words just barely intelligible. "That fucking big brother of yours is going to get his guts spilled just a little while after you lose yours. Next stop."
I stopped and stiffened, started to turn, then froze when I felt the bore of a pistol suddenly press hard against the base of my skull. It was the gaunt man in the coveralls; he was good with the gun-and watchful. It wasn't going to do anybody any good for me to get my brains blown out; I knew I was going to have to be patient and pick exactly the right time to make a move on these two men. "You have Garth?"
It was the potbellied man who answered. "Whatever the big fucker's name is, we've got him."
"How do you know he's my brother?"
"Because Mr. Zelezian told me."
"What happened to the woman who was with me?"
"Shut up and get in the fucking car, dwarf, or Janek will put a bullet in your brain."
I continued walking toward the car, at the same time looking around me. Not only had we left the circus, but we appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. As far as I could see in all directions, there was nothing but flatland, with no lights to indicate any houses or a town. Arlen Zelezian's men had chosen a completely isolated spot to let me out of the cage, and I was pretty certain I knew why. I wondered how many miles it was to the nearest tree.
I opened the back door of the car. The interior light came on, and I could see Harper sitting in the back seat, hands folded in her lap. She was wearing the same outfit-jeans, silk blouse, and sneakers-as when I had last seen her. Her face was ashen, the hollows under her eyes dark from sleeplessness, but she looked otherwise unharmed. She saw me, and her maroon eyes went wide.
"Robby! I was so afraid you were. ."
I got into the car, slid across the seat, and wrapped my arms around her. I held her tight, buried my face in her hair. "God, I'm glad to see you," I murmured. "Did they hurt you?"
She shook her head. "They just kept me tied and gagged in the back of somebody's trailer. What are they going to do with us?"
"I don't know," I lied. In fact, I was virtually certain I knew exactly what they planned to do with us.
"They have your brother."
"So I hear. Our friend with the black eye just told me."
"They trapped him. I heard it from the trailer. He confronted them. He seemed to know they had you."
"Yeah. Garth has quite a nose for evil."
"No talking!" the potbellied man snapped as he got into the back seat next to me, pressing me hard against Harper. I felt the bore of his gun dig into my ribs, on a direct line with my heart. The position didn't leave me a lot of room for maneuvering.
The gaunt man called Janek got into the front seat, behind the wheel. He started up the car, an ancient Plymouth, put it into gear, and started forward; apparently, even the area we were in wasn't considered sufficiently isolated. The car's engine sputtered and coughed, and there was a strong smell of exhaust seeping up through the floorboards.
"Are you going to kill us?" Harper asked the potbellied man sitting next to me.
"Shut up, lady. We're just going for a little moonlight drive."
"It would be a terrible waste to kill somebody like me, wouldn't it?" Harper's voice had suddenly grown even huskier than usual, pitched at its most alluring. As she spoke she leaned forward slightly in order to look across me at the potbellied man-in the process giving him a good glimpse of bra and breasts. I could see now that her blouse was unbuttoned, and I felt a shudder of disgust as she reached across me with her right hand and placed her palm on the inside of the man's thigh, just above his knee. "Can't you think of something better to do with me?"
"Don't bother, Harper," I said, trying to keep my disgust and disappointment out of my voice, and failing. "That's not going to do either of us any good. He'll just use you, and you could get hurt."
"Mind your own business, Robby," Harper said curtly. She didn't look at me, although her face was only inches from mine as she leaned across me. "I know what I'm doing; I'm doing what I want to."
Now Harper took the man's hand, brought it across me to her chest, pressed it down inside her bra. The potbellied man began to breathe heavily as he kneaded her breast.
I loathed the sight of what was taking place almost literally under my nose, and if it was a ploy to allow me to make a move on the man, it wasn't working; the potbellied man had transferred the gun to his left hand and was pressing the bore up hard under my chin, right over the carotid artery, forcing my head back. I certainly hoped the weapon didn't have a hair trigger, for I could feel his whole body beginning to tremble with passion. Having my head accidentally blown off by a cretin whose mind was elsewhere seemed a particularly bad joke considering some of the scrapes I'd survived, and I closed my eyes so that I couldn't see the man savoring the same flesh I had been savoring not long before.