The good news was that Kidd had always paid him promptly, and in full. Sometimes, he even got a bonus, when the targets he set up were fat enough. Whatever else Kidd and his buccaneers might be, Morgan could never fault them on their generosity.
It was bizarre, in fact, the way Kidd and the handful of his men whom Morgan had been "privileged" to meet behaved themselves. He knew that they were thieves and killers-more than likely rapists, too, if not a great deal worse-but there was still a kind of Old World pride and honesty about them. On the rare occasions when he spoke to Kidd these days, Morgan couldn't help feeling that he had to have stumbled through a time warp and been dropped into the middle of another century. The way Kidd talked, the way his mind worked, it was like a glimpse back into history, when sea wolves plied the blue Caribbean at will, and free men rarely worried much about the long arm of the law.
Morgan dialed the contact number he had memorized. He wasn't meant to know who picked up on the other end, but he had done a little homework on his own and come up with the name, regardless. It was always the same voice that answered, with its Yankee twang.
"Hello?" Somehow it always came out sounding like a question, as if Morgan's contact never quite believed the telephone had summoned him away from whatever he did to pass the time.
"It's me," the travel agent said. No names were ever given on the phone. It was a simple matter of security. "I've got another customer, if you have anyone available."
"How soon?" his contact asked. "This afternoon, if possible."
"I'll see what I can do."
The line went dead, and Morgan cradled the receiver, letting out a sigh. Already he could feel himself beginning to unwind. He told himself that it was out of his hands now; there was nothing he could do to change the fate of Mr. Remo Rubble and his pretty little wife.
And for a moment, Howard Morgan almost managed to believe it.
THE WORST PART, MEGAN Richards told herself, was that you really could get used to anything. It made her vaguely ill to think that way, but there was simply no denying it.
A mere four days had passed-or was it five?-since she had been aboard the Salome with Barry and the others, lost at sea, and they had seen another boat on the horizon. Four days, maybe five, since Tommy Gilpin told them that the captain of the "rescue boat" had raised a Jolly Roger flag, and men with guns had stormed aboard the yacht, to send her whole life spinning on a crazy detour into Hell.
When she thought about it, even sitting in the filthy hut, with nothing but an oversize man's shirt to cover her, it still seemed like some kind of crazy dream. A bad trip, maybe, from the crummy acid you could pick up on the streets of Cambridge, guaranteed to turn your head around, but all bets off when it came down to quality.
I wish I had a couple tabs of that right now, she thought, but even as the whim took shape in Megan's mind, she knew that she would need her wits about her in the hours and days ahead, if she intended to survive.
Survive. The word itself was a joke to her now. She didn't have a clue where they were being held, except that they were obviously on an island where their captors had no fear of being taken by surprise or running into the police. It was the kind of place where anything could happen-had happened-and no one in the outside world would ever know.
At first, Meg had supposed her kidnappers-she still had trouble thinking of the men as pirates-had some plan to hold her and the other girls for ransom, but the days kept passing, and no one had yet seen fit to ask their names. That was her first clue that the nightmare could go on indefinitely, while the three of them survived.
And that had been her short life's first true moment of despair.
Meg's knowledge-that she had been snatched from privileged youth into a life of slavery, pain, humiliation-might have driven her insane, but she surprised herself by calling on a deep reserve of inner strength she had not known she possessed. The others were reacting in their own strange ways, Felicia slipping into something like a catatonic state, while Robin wept and muttered to herself. Four days, five at the most, and Meg could not have sworn that either one of them was still completely sane.
Whatever they were feeling, though, she guessed that precious little of it had to do with grieving for their dead boyfriends. Megan hadn't seen Barry die, but knew that he was gone. She had been shocked and hurt, of course, made no attempt to hold back bitter tears, but that part of her grieving had been relatively brief. Before the Salome had left his riddled corpse a hundred yards behind, Meg was already looking out for number one.
So much for love. She had suspected that the way she felt for Barry Ward was mostly about sex, mixed up with some kind of infatuation, and the past few days had proved her right. If Meg had truly loved him, surely she would think about him more than once or twice a day, in passing. Even then, she found the image of his smiling face had started to recede, grow vague and hazy in her mind. He was a fading memory, their summer fling no more important now than Meg's first day at school, her senior prom, the first time she went "all the way."
For ten or fifteen seconds, she was moved to wonder what that said about her as a person. How could she have shared her bed with Barry, done so many things with him and let him do so many things to her, and still dismiss him from her mind so quickly when his life was snuffed out by a gang of thugs? The answer was self-evident, so simple that it nearly made her laugh out loud. Disaster had a way of making you grow up. It took you to the deep end of the pool and tossed you in, sometimes with cinder blocks chained to your feet, and you could either fight your way back to the surface or relax and drown.
Meg had discovered that she was a fighter, and the knowledge startled her as much as anything that she had ever learned.
Of course, she had to choose her battles carefully if she was going to survive. The first two times that men had come for her, she lashed out at them furiously-kicking, scratching, spitting, cursing them with words she had not even realized she knew but it was all in vain. They beat her down and took her anyway. It was a futile effort, and she quickly learned to stand apart from what was happening, detach herself and get it over with. Immediate survival took priority, ahead of anger, self-respect, fear of disease. Her mind was focused on the next few hours, the next few days. Whatever happened after that was so far in the future that it felt like science fiction.
"What time is it?" Felicia asked. It was the first time she had spoken in a day or more, and Megan took it as a hopeful sign.
"They took our watches, stupid!" Robin hissed. "You know that. They took everything!"
"It's morning," Megan said, resisting an impulse to snap at Robin, tell her to shut up if she couldn't control herself. If they couldn't help one another in the present crisis, there was truly no hope left.
"What time?" Felicia said again.
"For God's sake-"
"Quiet, Robin!" Meg was both surprised and pleased when Robin shut her mouth and turned away. To poor Felicia she replied, "It's getting on toward ten o'clock, I'd guess. They haven't started setting up for lunch yet."
When Felicia nodded, it was like a puppet, or like one of those spring-loaded toys you sometimes saw in the rear windows of old people's cars, heads bobbing up and down. Except the plastic heads were always grinning, and Felicia still looked numb, a blank expression on her face.