The Lioness(33)

“It’s deserted,” Margie murmured.

He nodded. The group had either moved elsewhere or been evicted by their kidnappers. He was still holding a wad of toilet paper against his nose, but he thought the bleeding had stopped and so he gently pulled it away. It was sore, the pain coming in waves. He decided it wasn’t broken, but he really had no idea.

The driver reached under his seat and pulled out his pistol. Then he hopped from the vehicle, lifted the hinged timber that served as the gate to the kraal, and went inside. The fellow in the last row of seats, who Billy had begun to suspect was a mercenary of some sort—a hired gun who had seen all manner of carnage over the years—told them to stay where they were.

“Do you think the others are going to be brought here too?” David asked softly.

Billy wasn’t sure whether his friend expected an answer or was just thinking out loud, but he answered him: “No. I think we’re in at least two groups. Maybe three. They’ve definitely separated us.”

“I agree,” said Terrance.

They watched the driver wander into each and every hut, spending no more than a few seconds in each, before emerging. Apparently, he was making absolutely certain that each was empty. When he was done, he yelled that the place was clear, and the fellow in the back told them to get out too. Then their driver ordered them to walk fifteen feet from the Rover. It was a strangely precise order. He was pointing with his pistol.

“Fifteen feet?” David whispered.

Billy shrugged and climbed out first, helping Margie from the vehicle next. He saw the blood on the front of her shirt and the back of her shorts and experienced a small shudder of anxiety. God. Out here, untreated, a cut like that could kill you. Holding hands, they walked roughly five yards from the Land Rover. Katie and David and Terrance were right behind them. Once they were lined up, the driver took Katie by the arm, but David jumped in.

“Please,” he said, “let us stay together,” but the fellow paid him no heed.

“What are you going to do to her?” Billy asked, as Margie leaned into him, trembling. The driver ignored him, too.

Katie didn’t resist as he pulled her into the farthest of the huts. She looked as if she might finally be about to break down. And then she was gone. The fellow who’d ridden in the back had holstered his pistol and was now aiming a rifle at the rest of them. Billy checked his watch over and over, and while it felt like the driver and his sister were gone forever, only four minutes elapsed until the driver returned. Then he tried to take Margie, but Billy wrapped his arms around her, her small face sniveling against his shoulder.

“I’m going with her,” he said.

The one with the rifle said, “You’re not. Don’t make this worse for her or for you.” His tone had a glimmer of understanding to it, and so Billy pressed his case.

“She’s pregnant. She’s cut. I’m not leaving her alone,” Billy insisted.

The kidnapper sighed deeply, epically. Almost ruefully. “Fine,” he said, and for a brief second, Billy thought he had relented. But then he sidled up to him, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and pulled out his pistol. With his left hand he squeezed Billy’s nose where the driver had hit him, and with his right slammed the grip of his pistol into Billy’s kidney. It was an excruciating combination, and he collapsed to his knees, as Margie was led, sobbing, into another of the huts.

He looked up at David. “What the fuck is with you?” Billy asked his friend, and his voice sounded to him like he was trying hard not to cry. Because he was. “You just let her be taken. Katie. My sister. Your wife. You didn’t even try—”

“Yours was pretty token resistance, Billy. We can’t do a damn thing but what they tell us. They have guns. You might have noticed.”

And then David was taken away too, and so Billy and Terrance were left alone for a few minutes with the one with the rifle.

“Why?” Terrance asked him, his voice absolutely even, as if he were inquiring of a conductor why a train was running late. “Can you at least tell us why you’re doing this? I assume there’s a payday in it for you.”

Their captor seemed to brood on the question as if he were deeply contemplating his response. “Why do we do what we do? Sounds like you want from me the meaning of life,” he said, and with that accent of his, the last word sounded lyrical. “Do any two people have the same motive for—your question—why we do what we do?” He raised his eyebrows and dipped his chin, answering his question himself by suggesting it was unanswerable. But it wasn’t. He just wasn’t going to reveal anything.

“You’re speaking generally.”

He smiled at Terrance. “Now, let me ask you something, Mr. Movie Star. Ever had a broken rib? Open your mouth again and I will have to break one or two with the butt of this rifle. And that will hurt like hell. So, what say we drop the questions? Shall we?”

And then it was Billy’s and Terrance’s turns, each of the captors escorting one of them.

Billy was not surprised to see that the place was windowless. There was only a vent—sealed at the moment with what looked like a car seat cushion—and a spot where someone or some family had once built their fires. He could stand up in the middle, but they weren’t going to let him stay there. The driver walked him to a section with what he supposed was a sleeping pallet. There he was told to sit down, and his feet were tied together with a twine that Billy knew was going to rub raw his ankles through his socks far worse than his father’s old neckties, the cord then wrapped around a pallet stanchion that had been dug deep into the ground. He could sit or lie down, but he couldn’t walk. Then the guy tied his hands.