"Mickey, for God's sake, tell me this is some kind of joke."
"No joke, baby. This is where the guys and me get what life has denied us."
"You said you liked me. You said youlovedme."
"Idolove you, Holly, don't doubt it. I've loved you ever since I first saw you standing at that barbecue with those two hot dogs, one in each hand, wondering what the hell to do with them. I always flirted with you, didn't I? I always took care of you, didn't I? Fetched and carried? But what did I ever get in return? A peck on the cheek and a plateful of pork and peppers."
"Mickey, don't. Please, Mickey. This isn't you."
Mickey gave her a slanting, Harrison Ford-playing-a-psychopath smile. "Sorry, Holly. I've never really been the sympathetic sort.Patient,maybe, when patience is called for. Sometimes you can get what you want by knocking somebody's teeth out. But other times you have to play it more subtle. Like fly-fishing, you know? Casting, waiting, and reeling them in. And that's what I've been doing to you: casting, waiting, and reeling you in. And here you are, landed."
"You're not going to ," Holly began, but everything was rapidly beginning to make sense.Thiswas why she had been feeling that the world around her had altered so much, and that bad luck was sniffing so close to her heels. She hadn't been able to understand what was wrong, but of course it had been much too close to her, so close that she couldn't focus on it. It had been Mickey all the time. His lips had said that he loved her but his eyes had been watching her with nothing but dispassion. A raven's eyes. A predator's. In a way, it was worse than discovering that he had been killed.
"God, you're evil," she said.
"No," said Mickey. "Just tired of you treating me like some kind of second cousin." Before she could stop him, he ducked his head down and kissed her forehead. "You're mine now. You'reours."
She swallowed. The men all shuffled in closer now, still smiling. When she spoke, her throat was so constricted that she couldn't stop herself from coughing. "If I"-cough-"if I let you do this will you swear to me that nothing will happen to Daisy?"
Judge Boynton beamed and lifted his glass. "Now, that's one of the things that I really like in a woman: maternal instinct."
Raven's Revenge
"This is the arena," announced Judge Boynton proudly, leading the way into the bedroom. In the center of the room stood a four-poster bed with carved pine pillars and headboard, hung with heavy orange-and-gold brocade curtains and covered with a matching throw. The floor was carpeted in cream shag pile, and on the walls hung a series of erotic oil paintings that might have been titledNudes of All Nations.It looked as if it had been designed for aPlayboyspread, circa1973.
Mickey ushered Holly into the room. Close beside her, Martin A. Brimmer said, "Forget about your inhibitions, Holly. This is a special place. Private. Nobody else will ever find out what happened here."
"This is nothing to do with inhibitions," Holly retorted. "This is nothing but gang rape by a group of losers who are too old and too ugly to find a woman who wants to go to bed with them."
"Holly," warned Mickey. "We're thinking of Daisy now, aren't we?"
"Oh, sorry, Uncle Mickey. And to think I let you sit on her bed and tell her a bedtime story "
"That was a story about somebody who did somebody else a favor-and got rewarded for it."
"That was a story about men who get what they want by deception, and if they can't get it by deception, they get it by force."
"Come on, now, Holly," put in Randolph Bruckman. "We're all friends here, aren't we?"
"How can you call yourself a friend?"
Randolph gave her a private little smile. "To tell you the truth, I've always wanted to ask you out to dinner. Never had the nerve, I guess."
"Well, this will save you the price of a meal, won't it?"
It was then, however, that Judge Boynton said, "Okay, gentlemen. Let's do it."
Mickey and Martin seized Holly's arms while another man came up behind her and tried to gag her with a silk scarf. She kicked and struggled and thrashed her head from side to side, but two other men grabbed her legs and they were far too strong for her. Mickey seized her chin and held it in a clamplike grip while the scarf was pulled tight between her teeth and fiercely knotted at the back of her head. She stared at Mickey with bulging eyes, trying to appeal to him to stop these men from hurting her and to let her go."Unnnffffff!"she grunted at him, but all he did was grin and turn away. The next thing she knew, a dark woolen scarf was tied over her eyes so that she was blinded as well as deaf.
She was suddenly swamped in total helplessness and absolute terror. She felt as if she had been swept away from the shore by an icy wave, in darkness, and that she was drowning, with nobody to see her and nobody to hear her. She had always been able to cope with her deafness, because she could still see, but her blindness made her deafness even more overwhelming than ever.
She was going to die. Her whole world was cold and black and chaotic but utterly soundless. She couldn't even manage a muffled scream, and if she had, she couldn't have heard it. It had been frightening enough when she was a child, seeing Margaret fall from her bedroom balcony in flames, but now death was afterher,and she had never realized how heart-clenchingly terrifying it was going to be, to know that the end of her life had almost arrived.
Her arms were forcibly lifted and her sweater was pulled over her head. Her bra catch was unfastened by fumbling fingers. She violently twisted her hips, but two men unbuttoned her jeans and dragged them down to her ankles, and at last her panties were pulled down too.
She had no idea of what the men were saying- whether they were silent or whether they were laughing or whether they were whooping with excitement. She was so panicky now that she found it difficult to breathe, but there was no way of begging them to stop.
She was heaved across the bed. Four or five men turned her over onto her back, raising her arms over her head and opening her legs. They held her pinned down until she felt narrow nylon cords being tied around her wrists and ankles, leaving her spread-eagled and helpless.
She thought:Now, now they're going to do it,and braced herself, biting hard on her gag.
But then there was a long pause. Thirty seconds went by almost a minute.
What are they doing? Maybe they've changed their minds. No, they haven't changed their minds. They're going to rape me and then they're going to kill me. They'llhaveto kill me, won't they, because I know who they are. Oh God, I hope they don't do the same thing to Daisy. Please don't let them hurt Daisy.
She tried to calm herself by breathing deeply and steadily, the way her yoga instructor had shown her, but it was almost impossible with her mouth so tightly gagged. She kept swallowing saliva, almost choking.
Still nothing happened; none of the men touched her. She lay completely still, trying to feel them, trying to sense what they were doing. Were they still in the room? Maybe theyhadchanged their minds. Maybe they would let her go if she promised not to tell anybody what had happened here tonight.