Part Three

Another in a series of seemingly endless storms screeched and howled  through the grass and trees around the cabin.  Fanni hadn’t seen it so  bad in years.  And this was only early fall.  The few deciduous trees  dotting the expanse of conifers were fast losing their leaves to the  wind.

Fanni turned from the window back to the center of the cabin’s main  room.  The pain from her three stripes made for cautious movements, but  Suni had carefully bathed and disinfected them and there was no  infection.  She cautiously fingered the end of one as she surveyed the  collection of people jammed into the house.

Suni and the MI-6 type were huddled near the fire in animated, to put  it mildly, conversation; Fanni gathered that their interest in one  another was more than purely business inspired.  A second man stood,  dripping still, at the side of the room with his hands in his pockets,  eyes half closed but flicking now and then to the last remaining person  in the assemblage, Dawnelle.

She knelt on the floor with her wrists and her ankles mated by  handcuffs.  A sturdy padlock joined the restraints.  Her elbows, too,  were snapped together with cuffs.  Her expression of surprise and  irritation when first the Englishman had barged in the door had lost its  surprise; only the irritation remained.  She twisted slightly in the  cuffs, shifted her shoulders and grimacing.  The guard glanced at her  with a kind of professional detachment.  Suni and the other one didn’t  seem to notice.  She saw Fanni gingerly examining the stripes and smiled  a small smile to herself.  Fanni saw it and silently swore to herself  that the bitch would have plenty of reason to rue that goddamned smirk.

The two at the fire stood, the man walking to his second and Suni coming to Fanni.

“They’ve been watching us the last several days,” she said, laying a  hand on Fanni’s shoulder.  “Ian has been out thrashing about the  countryside following the movements of Mr. Bertram’s helicopters, but it  was John there who actually found us.  Ian only arrived yesterday.”

“But how did they know where to come to?  Was Fanni's slightly incredulous reply.

Suni smiled, glancing over at Ian.  “Such a smart lad, that one.  He  had the idea of securing small transponders, rather special ones, I  might add, on all the B.B.  Bertram, Esq., helicopters he could find  purely as a ‘general information’ kind of ploy when first he came over  here.  Then, when you and the other women got shanghaied off from that  shootout in the woods, the bugs became rather more a necessity than a  gimmick if he were to keep you in view.”

“The only real cock-up, and that was a good one, was that the IFF on  the bugs didn’t work, so all he had was a screen lit up with little  moving lights, but no way to tell which one was which.  The whole thing  was a scrub as far as Ian was concerned, but then when you were lifted  out by helicopter, it became the only thing he had, he’s been on the run  for days.”

“Why didn’t they come right in, then?”

Suni lifted her hands out from her sides, palms up, and cocked her  head to the side.  “Professional caution?  Ian’s been at this rather a  long time; he doesn’t like to just go sticking his head into the other  man’s game, if you know what I mean.”

“Did he know you were in here?”

“John told him, I imagine.” She grimaced with her lips.  “it was the  only reason he came in; when he saw our little Miss James, there,” she  gestured to Dawnelle, “he knew something had gone off a bit badly for us  and came trotting along to the rescue.  Not very professional, and all  that, but,” and here she glanced pointedly at Fanni, “it’s probably a  good thing in the long run.  Ian’s known about her for a long time,  she’s really not a very nice type.  As you may have guessed.”

The man had come up behind them and stood looking down over Suni’s  shoulder, a faint smile on his face.  Fanni remembered their last  meeting when she’d been fitted, sitting, around the shiny metal member  on the crossbeam of Madame’s novel “chair.” And then later, when he’d  added his little embellishments.

“How’d you like a manicure?” she asked, all sweetness and light.

Suni gasped at the jibe, but the man nodded his head and the grin  became an outright laugh.  Suni looked from Fanni up at Ian, and then  back at Fanni sulking.  She knew precisely the horrors that Ian had gone  through and was hurt that Fanni would say something that venomous to  him, but Ian, rather than clouting her smartly across the room, was  roaring with laughter.

“Ina, what…?”

“it’s all right, luv.  Miss Hall and I have met before.  Just a  little private joke.” Suni was getting suspicious.  Ian’s continued  mirth didn’t do anything to dispel it.  She glanced again at Fanni, but  the latter had moved away toward the fire.  Ian gave her a sly wink and  walked back over to Dawnelle.

“Well, well, well, Miss James, we meet at last.  Heard a lot about you.  Most of it bad to rotten.”

“My, my, my,” mimicked Dawnelle, smiling sweetly, “we are a glib English cocksucker, aren’t we?”

“I say, John, old bean,” Ian began, affecting an upper-crust accent  strong enough to cut with a knife, “these American girls have developed a  penchant for most amazingly foul language, what?” john mournfully shook  his head and cast his eyes downward.

“Assholes,” was Dawnelle’s last contribution to the conversation for  the next several hours.  She spent them lying flat on her back chained  to one of the beds.  In her mouth was a very large, very tight gag of  good stout English wool.  It might correct some of her diction in the  future.  The two women and two men set about waiting in the other room.   Dawnelle breathed through her nose and watched the rain smearing across  the glass.  Her curses were many and varied, but silent.

***

Alissa cursed the rain for her own reasons, wrestling the  recalcitrant rental car over the rut that passed for a road down here.   She’d been stuck once, but had been able to extricate herself with  judiciously applied backs-and-forths.  About par for the course, she  decided.

Her flight for the wee small hours of the morning had come to bits  and pieces one stage at a time with first one delay and then another and  then, finally, almost mercifully, a cancellation.  She’d come in on  another flight with another airline and had holed up at the airport  hotel.  And now this wretched morning of slipping and slithering on the  paved streets and the bog-hopping, mud-slinging gyration on the dirt  roads!  She mentally jacked up the price of the job.

She finally found the Grey place, quite simply because the road ended  in front of it.  Charming place, she thought.  Probably houses the  healthiest cockroaches in the world.  She slammed the door and skirted  most of the puddles.

The whole place was as gray as the drooping trees and looked s  mushy-soaked as the mud itself.  A few dead leaves had gotten tangled in  the roof shingles and one was plastered square against what little  remained of the screen on the stoop.  At least there was a light on  inside.

An old man the same color as the building turned his head toward her  as she came in, eyes rheumy and dull, but beginning to glint  fractionally when he saw her.  He continued silent and seated behind a  counter.

The sign outside had said simply Grey’s General store.  Judging from  appearances, business wasn’t too good.  The merchandise wasn’t exactly  overwhelming; a couple of Coleman stoves sat next to three lanterns and  some cans of fuel; canned vegetables and some fruit hid up on unfinished  pine shelves; a motley assortment of tools and small farm implements  littered the floor, and even the gun rack, usually a repository of a  fair handful of iron out her in the sticks, showed only an old, old  Mossberg .22 and the obligatory 94 Winchester which, if truth be known,  looked more like a personal weapon than an item of merchandise.

Her inventory of the contents of the store had taken only the blink  of an eye.  She turned back to the old man, still staring at her from  behind the counter.  His mouth had dropped slightly.  Probably didn’t  get many black chicks up here in them thar hills.

“I’m supposed to meet somebody here,” she said.  “My name’s Black.”  There was a long, uncomfortable pause.  Was the old bastard deaf?  “A  girl named Fanni Hall was supposed to meet me.  Here.  Today.”  Unconsciously, her voice had raised and she’d taken a step or two closer  to the man.  Still the silence.  She opened her mouth to try again, her  temper failing her by degrees.  What the hell was going on!

“Yup.” He turned back to his magazine as if he’d made up his mind  about something and then dismissed it.  Yep what?  What the hell was  that supposed to mean?

“Y’ just missed her.  In yestiddy and most of t’day.  Said she  couldn’t stay ‘round no longer and headed on back to the cabin.  Said  she’d be back in the morning.”

Jesus Christ, Alissa muttered to herself.  Jesus H.  Christ, that’s  all she fucking needed; a drive back over twenty of the worst goddamned  miles she’d ever seen in her life, and the light was going and the rain  was getting even heavier.  Shit.  Fuck.

She slumped into one of the old leather chairs near a potbellied  stove that had seen decidedly better days.  It was getting damned cold  at night to be sleeping in the car.  Shit!  It was already cold in the  store.

“Y’ can stay the night out in one of the guest houses.” She remembered the lean-tos she’d seen as she drove in.

“Fifty bucks.”

“Fifty dollars!” the old man’s grin was tiny, but there just the  same.  He knew he had her by the nice round ass.  Hell, even a coon  wouldn’t drive on a night like this.  She flung the money down onto the  counter and kicked her way out through the screen.  Grey’s eyes never  left her all the way to the car.  Goddamn, what an ass, he thought,  licking his lips.  What a nice round, black ass.  His erection was huge  and thoroughly gratifying.

The guest house was almost as abysmal on the inside as it was on the  outside; a bare bulb and an army cot and one blanket at the foot of the  bed.  No water, no toilet.  Ah, the wonders of the woods!  Alissa ground  her teeth and thought that howling like a dog would be appropriate but  then decided that would probably just turn on that filthy old degenerate  in the store.  She felt dirtied by his scrutiny.

She turned and closed the door, looking with stupefaction at the door  lock, a hook and an eye bolt.  Right straight back to the stone ages in  one big step.  With exaggerated care, she inserted the hook into the  eye and sat on the edge of the bed, wrapping herself in the blanket,  shaking her head at the infinite perversity of the universe.  And at the  scumbag in the store in particular.  She finally leaned back and fell  asleep.

The old man in the store hadn’t bothered to tell her about the two  “hunters” in the next lean-to, and so Alissa didn’t know about them,  obviously.  They did, however, know about her.  They’d been waiting for  the last day-and-a-half and had even observed Fanni walking up and down  the decrepit steps at the front of the store.  Fortunately, they were  locals and had been told only to expect a black woman.  Burnside was  waiting at the airport and had followed Alissa in the rental car, so  aside from some lecherous commentary when she showed up, Fanni went  unrecognized and unmolested.

The three of them silently surrounded the shanty, Burnside taking the  front door.  All of them scanned the store, now black and silent  several hours, and then all sides of the clearing.  Burnside nodded with  his head and his two men went in through the door in one quick lunge.   The sound of the torn hinges and the whump as it hit the back wall were  totally drowned out in the wind’s yowling.

The sound effects were not lost on Alissa, though.  Her reflexes were  those of a cat and her sleep was congenitally so light that a joke  among her friends was to the effect that she was the only person they  knew who could sleep with both eyes open.

The men lunged for her and she lunged for her purse.  The blanket  foiled her, snaring her legs and pinning one arm partially to her side.   She bumped out onto the floor as the first of the three men tackled the  spot on the bed where she’d just been.

She got the bag by one strap as the second man came around the end of  the bed and went for her.  He aimed a kick for her belly and  instinctively she rolled her knees up to protect herself.  His blow  banked into her shins, the grit and mud on the soles of his shoes  jamming into her skin.  She swung the bag up in a short arc and caught  him square on the side of the head, surprising him more than damaging  him, but it was enough to back him up a couple of steps.  The first man  was scrambling over the top of the bed toward her and the third one  stood by the door watching.

The second man bore back in, head low and arms outstretched.  The  first man was on the floor now and grabbing for her legs.  She hurled  herself against the wall and threw the entangling blanket on the one’s  face while jamming a heel into the other’s eye.  And still the third man  just watched.

And Alissa finally had the skeleton-knife from out of the purse.   She’d had it bench-made in California and it was simply a single piece  of 440C stainless, five inched long, contoured for her small hand along  the first three inches of its length and formed into a hollow-ground  drop-point edge along the remaining two.  Three large lightning holes  gave it its distinctive appearance and name.  Alissa had found that  muggers did not like getting stuck in the eye with it, particularly when  it was a better blade than their own.  The only time it had ever failed  her was when the mugger had a gun, and that time she’d got herself  raped.  That time the knife stayed in the purse.  Until the fool got a  little careless and a lot stupid as he prepared to say his goodbyes.   He’d also leaked his life away in the alley as Alissa beat it for a cab.

The man with the blanket still partially over his head kept bungling  toward her, one hand still clawing for her waist.  She flicked the knife  across his wrist and then across his face, aiming for the eyes, with on  blurred movement of her arm, the blade gleaming like an eye.  The man  gasped and then squealed like a pig, straightening explosively.  As he  did, Alissa aimed a short punching slash into the inside of the man’s  right thigh, searching for the femoral artery.  The man jerked  frantically away.  She flicked a blow at the first man’s head as he  scrambled back, but missed.

The four of them stood frozen for some seconds, Alissa balanced  lightly on her feet, left hand partially in front of her and the knife  held out slightly forward roughly at the level of her waist.  The man  she’d hit was slumped up on the other side of the room.  The right hand  hung from his arm limp and useless and dripping.  She’d missed his eyes,  but she’d opened him up like a can in a line running up from just below  his right cheekbone, over the bridge of his nose and out onto his  forehead.  Blood poured down his face and onto his shirt.  She had very  high hopes for the leg wound, the man clutched it in a frenzy, but she  didn’t think she’d found the artery; the goddamned blanket had fouled  the stroke.  One down, at least.

The first man had recovered from his fright and was now well and  truly pissed.  One of Sam Colt’s very own Combat Commanders sprang  suddenly into the picture.

“No guns,” said the third man.  “She is to be alive and unharmed.”

“Jesus Christ, Burnside,” the man frothed, “did you see what that cunt  did to Charlie?  You goddamned black bitch…” He turned back to Alissa,  pulling the slide back and letting it go with a clank.

“Peters!  You knew the job when you came in.  You know it now.  We’ll  get Charlie all nice and stitched up.  The woman stays alive!  Put the  gun away.” Peters didn’t seem able to quite make up his mind on whether  or not to pull the trigger.  “you can deal with her later, when we’ve  done with her.”

A sudden gleam came into Peters’ eyes and his mouth twitched up at  the corners.  He nodded his head once and the pistol disappeared.  He  shrugged out of his leather coat and wrapped it around his left arm and,  retrieving a sap from a back pocket, began sidling toward Alissa.  The  third man began moving, too, edging toward her from the other side of  the room.  Alissa couldn’t retreat any further, but braced herself  against the wall and flicked her eyes back and forth between the two  men.

One of the old adages of hand-to-hand combat is that if you should  have the misfortune to find yourself up against two opponents  simultaneously, you should keep them separated and to for the weakest  one first.  Nice theory.

Alissa and Burnside were on the same side of the bed; Peters would  have to go around or come across.  Peters was well juiced up for a fight  and the rolled jacket and the sap went a long way toward evening things  up.  Burnside, on the other hand, was closer and appeared to have made  no preparations at all other than the fact that he was definitely  getting closer.

Her decision seemed almost made for her.  She leapt out from the wall  in a bound, closing the distance to Burnside in a second.  As she did,  his hand came up from his side with a black cylinder in it.  Mace!   Alissa swung at him at the same instant the stuff struck her in the face  and chest.  She felt the knife bite home, but not enough.  Her face was  blinding agony and her eyes felt as if somebody had stuck them with a  hot poker.  She choked in a spasm, the stuff getting into her lungs and  she fell against the man, writhing and gasping, and then down to the  floor.  She couldn’t believe the pain.

Peters would have a certain small amount of immediate revenge and  slammed the point of his boot into her kidneys and back.  Alissa curled  into a defensive ball and absorbed the kicks with shrill grunts of  pain.  Burnside reached across her and shoved Peters away and that was  the last she remembered as she dropped down into a well of blackness.

She regained consciousness, finally.  The sky was still pitch-black;  she didn’t know whether she’d been out for minutes, or hours.  A figure  sat in a chair, the red eye of his cigarette the only light.  She  couldn’t see anybody else.  The effects of the Mace still lingered, but  the searing pain was gone.  Her eyes felt puffy, as if someone had  stuffed cotton up under the lids.

Thick straps held her arms crushed down to her sides, with her  forearms pressed tightly together behind her back.  Each of her wrists  wore a leather bracelet and straps attached to each of them had been  pulled around the front of her body and buckled.  Another strap, this  one from the buckle, stretched it way up her chest between her breasts  and circled her neck.  Her legs were separately bent back and strapped  so that her thighs and calves pressed together.  She tried to wiggle.

“No moving.  If you try to scream, nobody will hear you over the wind and you’ll wear a gag, permanently.”

Alissa twisted her neck and sought out the man behind the cigarette  eye.  She was pretty sure she could see the attaché case with the  information Fanni wanted on the floor at his side.

“Where’s your friend, Peters, and the other one?”

“By this time, I imagine ‘the other one’, as you put it, is either  dead of loss of blood, or filled with more stitches than Frankenstein’s  friend.  At any rate, he won’t be back here.  Peters will.”

“What are you going to do to me?’

“Why nothing, Miss Black.  Nothing at all.  We’re just going to sit  around here pleasurably and wait for your little girlfriend to show up  this morning.  Once I’ve made her acquaintance, we’re all going to troop  off into the woods and meet all her other little flown and hard-to-find  friends, and then we’re all going to go off and have a nice long talk  with my employer.  Simple.” He waved the cigarette for emphasis.

Yeah, honey, Alissa thought, and then one black girl, wone white girl  and one Asian girl will get themselves run through the nearest one of  the old man’s meat processing plants.  Very integrated.  She tried to  imagine herself as a sausage.

“Could you loosen these chest straps a little, please?  They’re really tight.”

“Excellent.  Good for the posture, I’ve heard.”

Shit

Later, she couldn’t tell how long, a car pulled cautiously to the  side of the shack.  Burnside was listening intently.  A vague click as  the car door was closed and then a harsh whisper through the door.

“Burnside!  Everything okay in there?”

“Come on out of the rain, Peters.”

Even in the dimness, Alissa could see Peters was a little the worse  for wear.  He was obviously soaked to the bone and the lower half of his  pants legs were clotted with mud.

“I got stuck twice out there.  Charlie’s gonna make it, they think.   Michaelson ain’t too pleased about his getting’ carved up, I can tell  ya.” His eyes never left Alissa.

“Is the little bitch awake yet?”

“Doubtless hanging on every word, I expect.” Burnside was bored.   There was a brief tiny flicker as he triggered the light button on the  side of his watch.  The sun would be up in a couple of hours.

“Hanging on every word, eh?  Imagine that, just imagine that.” He sat  on the edge of the bed, looking Alissa up and down.  She met his gaze.   His hand slid up the side of her leg, over the strap and up under the  short skirt and stopped, resting on top of the mound of her sex.  He ran  his fingers back and forth over the pantie for a bit, then took the  hand back out and ran it over her breasts.  “These straps make your tits  stick out pretty, bitch.  Real nice.” He gave them both a squeeze.

“Peters.”

“Oh, come off it, Mr. Burnside.  They didn’t say nothin’ at all about  using her a little, now, did they?” it wasn’t a question.  “Just alive  and kicking.” Peters was dead serious.  “And I never heard that a little  porkin’ ever hurt a gal, especially…” he turned back to Alissa, “…a  nigger.”

“Why you fucking cracker coc…”

The man’s vicious open-handed slap snapped her head hard to the side  and in the pitch blackness she saw a lot of popping and flashing.   Peters’ breath was coming faster.

Burnside’s hand was clenched on the silenced .22 automatic target  pistol under his coat.  Why did they saddle him with these goddamned  shit-kickers?  The old man’s organization must be going straight to fuck  if this was all the better it could do for soldiers.  Burnside knew he  was fast losing control of the situation and would very cheerfully have  shot Peters dead on the spot.  But he was afraid he’d need the stupid  asshole come the dawn.  Fuckin’ amateurs and incompetent farm boys.   Jesus Christ, what the hell was the world coming to!

“Al right, Peters.  I don’t want her hurt, though, do you understand  that?” Peters was smiling and rocking back and forth over Alissa.   “here,” he added, throwing a tangled object across over onto the bed.   “I don’t want any unnecessary noise, and I don’t think you want any  unnecessary biting.”

The object was a large pear-shaped gag and with it quickly buckled,  firm and smooth, in her mouth, Alissa surrendered to the inevitable.

Burnside was glad the room was black so that his contempt wouldn’t be  quite so obvious as Peters rutted away on the black woman.  She lay  like a limp sack of meal, staring at the ceiling as Peters exhausted  himself in her, her jaws occasionally clenching on the plug in her  mouth.  Peters had just a wonderful time.  Burnside looked at his watch  again.  The wait went on.  And on.

Dawn finally snuck in the back way, filtering through the gloom  almost like somebody sneaking home very, very late at night.  The rain  still thumped on the leaves.  Burnside was worried, and getting quickly  more so; how the hell was anybody going to get through that?  Miserable  goddamn weather.  The temperature had gone down precipitously in the  night, which struck Burnside as rather odd; it wasn’t supposed to get  cold until after a storm.  He thought.

Peters came back from their shack, a satisfied smile on his face.   Alissa lay quietly on the bed, the gag resting nest to her cheek.   Burnside glanced at both of them and then back out the window.

“She may not be able to get through this rain.”

“Oh yeah?” Peters drawled.  “hot damn, that would mean I’d have to  spend another night riding over little knife-fighter here, now wouldn’t  it?  That would just break my heart, ya know?” Peters was clearly  depressed at the prospect.  Burnside began slowly banging his head  against the wall.  He didn’t know how much more of this moron he could  take.

The motorcycle appeared through the mist at the edge of the forest as  if it had been a light bulb that somebody had just turned on.  The  rider paused at the clearing and looked around form beneath the hood of  the poncho.  Not necessarily suspicious, thought Burnside, more like  professional cautiousness.  The rider cam on, then, and Burnside strode  quickly to Alissa’s side and gagged her with the pair.  Resistance was  useless and they both knew it.  She opened her mouth wide for the gag.

The figure on the bike switched off the ignition ten yards from the  store and coasted to the foot of the steps, still turning its head back  and forth, sweeping the buildings and as much of the general area as it  could see.  The bike sagged onto its stand and the figure disappeared up  the steps and into the building.

Burnside glanced over at Peters, all tense and sweaty by the door;  the boob was as ready as he’d ever be, Burnside decided.  Shit.  Alissa  moaned, softly, and Burnside was by her side like a panther.

“One noise from you, Miss Black, and she’s dead, do you understand?”

Alissa nodded her head.

“And if she goes, you go.  Remember that.  We take both of you out of  here alive, or we leave both of you dead.  It’s up to you.”

Alissa nodded again.  Burnside stood and went back to the window.

The figure was already out of the store and headed toward the  cabins.  It paused at the first of the two little shacks, Burnsides’,  then continued onto the second in line.  Theirs.

Burnside lost sight of her as she stepped up to the door.  He could  hear her footsteps, though, making wet sucking sounds in the mud.  He  walked to Alissa’s side and put the muzzle of the silenced piston to her  temple and waited.  Peters looked over at him, running his tongue over  his lips, tense and expectant.

“Miss Black.  Alissa Black.  Are you in there?” The voice was pitched  low, barely above a whisper.  The woman rapped her knuckles lightly  against the door.

Peters looked again to Burnside.  Burnside nodded and Peters jerked  in the door.  The woman was poised, one hand raised, to knock again at  the door, and at the sight of the men, she froze.  Peters had a  short-barreled 12-gauge shotgun aimed square at her belly.  Her eyes  darted first from Peters to the shotgun and then into the room.   Burnside could see in her eyes that she was going to run for it.

“If you move, Miss Hall, I’ll put a bullet right through Miss Black’s  head.” He wiggled the piston to reinforce the command.  The woman’s  eyes darted back to Alissa, eyes big and white over the gag.  Alissa  moaned and shook her head.

It seemed as if nobody was going to move at all and then Peters broke  the stasis with a quick one-handed lunge and grabbed the girl by the  front of her poncho.  Instantly, it seemed, she twisted his arm with  both of her hands, kicked the shotgun onto the floor with a side kick  and dropped Peters to the floor with a leg tangled behind his knees.   The move was so professionally slick and effortless that it seemed more  instinct than deliberate.  Burnside jerked Alissa’s head by the air and  snapped of the safety with a click.

“Right!  There’s not need for that.  I’ll do what you want,” the  woman barked, dropping Peters and stepping away from him with her hands  out to the side.

Peters had risen to his feet in a rage, blood thick in his face and  lips working as he massaged his wrist.  He picked up the shotgun,  club-like, and came up behind the girl.

“Peters,” Burnside hissed, “you’ve already fucked up things enough as it is!  Put the fucking gun down.  Now!”

Peters slowly obeyed, leaning the gun up against the wall.

“If anybody saw what just happened, Peters, I would shoot you myself  before we left here.”

Burnside’s voice was flat and emotionless, but his  eyes were like a snake’s, boring into Peters’ with an intensity both  vicious and cunning.  Peters quailed under the glare.

“You are a totally incompetent asshole, Peters.  You fuck things up  one more time and you’re dead, guaranteed.  Now see if you can manage to  get that poncho off her without breaking your neck!”

It was Suni.  Burnside cursed inwardly.  Somehow, he’d known when  he’d first seen her walking toward the cabin that it wouldn’t be the  right one.  He sighed o himself; at least she knew where the others  were.  He didn’t think she’d just cough up their location, though.

“You would be Miss Ling, I suppose.”

Suni stared back at him.  Burnside knew that she was just looking and  waiting for a chance at him.  He still had the target piston pressed to  the side of Alissa’s head.

“Tie her,” Burnside commanded.

Suni tensed, knowing that there was nothing she could do in her head  but knowing that as soon as the ropes went on, that there would then be  nothing she could do with her body.  Her eyes danced back and forth  between the men as Peters pulled out a pile of leather straps.  She had  to do something!

Burnside read the signs.  “Easy, lady.  Easy!” he dug the piston into  the side of Alissa’s head.  Suni suddenly relaxed, her shoulders  sagging and her head drooping.  The pile of straps produced a  straitjacket.

***

“Where’s Miss Hall?” Burnside asked.  Suni tossed her head to get  strands of her hear out of her face and worked her neck around in the  collar of leather.  She looked back at him without expression.

They regarded each other for a minute.  The woman was a professional, he thought.  This is not going to be easy.

“We’ve got to understand one another, Miss Ling.  I don’t have much  time to fuck around playing games with you.  There are ways of forcing  you to tell me what I want to know.  And you will.  It will be a lot  easier on the both of us if you just get it over with.” His voice had an  almost pleading tone to it, and he cursed to himself about that.

“I’ve had some of the best torturers in the world flail away at me,”  she said, conversationally, her voice made husky by the leather strap  cutting into the skin.  “With notable lack of success, I might add.   Besides which, sport, if I read my Bertram B.  Bertram right, and I  rather guess I do, I think he’d take a rather a dim view of one of his  employees damaging me before he could do it himself.”

“True enough, Miss Ling, true enough.  But,” he bent and brought his  face close to hers, “he didn’t say anything about your little black  friend over there.”

“I’ve never met the lady, I’m afraid,” Suni sniffed.  Alissa jerked on the bed at this latest exchange.

“I think we’ll just find out how much ‘sisterly love’ you have, Miss Ling.  Peters!”

In five minutes, Peters had constructed a pyramid-shaped affair made  out of light aluminum snap-together tubing he’d taken from a  surprisingly small bag.  Each of the four apexes of the device was well  endowed with round and rectangular eyelets for straps and rope.  Each of  the legs was nearly five feet in length, giving the whole thing a  height of just slightly below that figure.

Burnside lifted Alissa off the bed and held her aloft while Peters  untied one leg.  Alissa immediately thrashed with it as much as  possible, but Peters had her ankle in both hands and guided it to one of  the bottom apex rings.  He tightened a single strap with a jerk and the  foot was secured.  He treated the second foot similarly.  Alissa put up  a good fight, Suni had to admit; her squirms and thwarted kicks had  both men struggling and the aluminum frame sliding around the floor in  jerks.

A very broad strap, now was used to replace the one that had formerly  collard her and from a ring at its base in the back, another strap was  run to and through a ring partially down the central leg of the pyramid  directly behind her back.  Peters pulled with customary enthusiasm and  Alissa’s head was pulled back in an arch till her chin pointed to the  ceiling.

The next step was securing her arms, and they ended up banded  together from the wrists to the elbows with strapping and clamped on top  of the central leg with ever more straps.  The last of the restraint  straps went from her hands clean to the bottom of the center-rear leg  and through another of the ubiquitous rings and was cinched off, pulling  her arms down the leg.

When Peters and Burnside finally stood back, Alissa had effectively  become an integral part of the pyramid, legs grotesquely splayed to  reach the rings at the ends of the base leg.  She was moaning slightly  in the back of her throat.

Burnside plucked out the pear-gag and threw it into the bag and came  back with another.  He released the collar for a moment, letting her  raise her head.  Tears of agony and frustration streaked Alissa’s face  as she looked out at them.

Burnside brought out a very heavily padded cloth and leather gag and  walked back to Alissa, who could only shake her head in mute protest and  pleading.  Burnside grabbed the scruff of her neck with one hand and  jammed the balled padding against her teeth.  At first Suni didn’t think  a human being could accommodate that much packing in one’s mouth, but  gradually Burnside worked it all in, then set about buckling the soft,  thick face mask portion of the gag into place.

It sank into Alissa’s cheeks and made what was left of her face bulge  over the top of the pad.  With the gag finally in place to his  satisfaction, the pulled the collar strap back to its original place and  again pointed her chin to the sky, jamming the gag even tighter into  her mouth and face.

Quickly, economically, then, Peters snipped off her clothes with a  scissors and she stood nude, helpless.  Peters didn’t even bother to  hide an interest that became more and more pronounced with the passing  second.

Burnside brought another bundle from the bag and laid it out on the  floor at Suni’s knees.  It contained several packets of sewing needles,  some lengths of extremely thing wire, a pair of Inox folding scissors  and a hefty pair of tin snips.  She was glad Alissa couldn’t see the  collection.

“The long and short of it, Miss Ling,” Burnside said, “is that I need  that information.  And I need it now, right now.  I’m going to assume  for the sake of argument, that you were telling the truth when you said  you’d under gone torture before.  Maybe you wouldn’t break.  Probably  you would.

“However, as you yourself pointed out, my employer will prefer to  deal with you himself, I imagine, and since I have rather strict orders  not to injure you any more than necessary, I find myself in a bit of a  bind, so to speak.

“My orders do not include that one over there, on the other hand.  My  employer might like to dabble with her, but her death would be of no  great consequence to him, one way or the other.  Specifically, any  maiming that might occur to her prior to her death would be equally  ignored.

“What I intend to do, Miss Ling, is to cut off her nipples.” He  clicked the little scissors suggestively, “And then snip of her fingers,  one by one.  If that isn’t enough, I will start on her toes.  Her  tongue after that.”

Alissa had heard every single word.  She began screaming and twisting  when she found out about her nipples, eyes huge and muscles straining  beneath a sheen of sweat pouring down her torso.  She succeeded in  shifting the pyramid about a tenth of an inch.  The big gag was very  effective and the only sound she made was a loud keening through her  nose.

“You’re crazy, sport,” Suni said.  “You’ve gone right straight to the  loony bin.” Fear was beginning to show in her eyes for the first time.

“No, Miss Ling, I am not,” Burnside said softly.  “What I am is  losing my patience.  And Miss Black,” he gestured back over his shoulder  with the scissors, “is in serious risk of losing substantially more  than that!

Suni stared at him, still silent.

Burnside stood and walked to Alissa.  Her muscles stood out, ropes  under the wet skin and she made mewling noises beneath the packing.

“Last chance.”

Still Suni stared at him.  She frankly couldn’t believe it.  Burnside  grabbed one breast and squeezed the nipple out into prominence between  his thumb and forefinger.  He brought the scissors up to within inches  of the nub and looked back at Suni.  Still no reply.  The scissor opened  like tiny jaws and closed on the nipple at its base.  Alissa went wild  in the straps, her scream continuous and awful.

“All right!” Suni screamed.  Burnside stopped; the scissors still  partially closed on the nipple.  He wanted more.  “I’ll tell you, you  bastard, you miserable sick bastard.  I’ll tell you.  Leave her alone.”  Alissa had fainted, more in shock than in pain.  A tiny drop of blood  stood out from the nipple.  No more than a scratch.  Suni had spoken in  the proverbial nick of time.

***

It was now late at night.  Burnside had gone to old man Grey’s place  to use his phone and buy some canned food for their propane stove.  In  his absence, Peters, never one to waste opportunities, had plunged into  Alissa once again with unabated enthusiasm.  She still stood mated to  the pyramid and Peters had her standing up, sweating and panting like a  dog.  Suni, gagged now herself, made herself a little promise to relieve  Peters of certain rather distinctive parts of his anatomy the first  time it was convenient.  Peters ignored her and kept pounding away.