She remembered the boys taunting him with nicknames worse than his actual name. And another taunt:

“Ginger has a finger...” someone would say. “Up Taured’s ass!” someone else would chant.

“Ginger has a finger...” she said under her breath, looking at him through her lashes. His face was such a tell; it got red—redder than his hair used to be.

He slapped her, but it didn’t hurt as much as it could have. It felt good to poke his sore spot.

She leaned her head against the table leg. She could taste blood. She laughed because she could, closing her eyes and rolling her head from side to side against the metal. When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her, a thoughtful expression in his too-close-together eyes.

“Do you think that he’ll be happy you’re killing us?” Rainy asked. “You can’t possibly think that. When he finds out what you’re doing, he’ll kill you himself.”

Ginger’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t think he had some kind of plan for all of you? Why do you think he took those photos of you? You think he wants you all out there, living the way you want, godless, ignoring everything he ever taught you?”

“A good and faithful servant,” Rainy said dryly. “You’re delusional if you think this is the key to finally getting his approval.”

He studied her, amusement in his face. “I hope the next five are as fun as you.”

“You’ll never get within a thousand feet of those women. I sent my trusty floppy disk to the police station, along with all the information I had about Feena and Sara.” Rainy had no idea if the police would be able to pull anything off the disk after it had been buried in the desert for twenty years, but at least she’d also had the hard-copy Polaroids of herself and Feena. She’d left it at the buffet with a note for the police, right where Ginger had left her the room key: Police Chowder. And under the word police, just to make sure: SOS Give to Police. Someone would notice. Hundreds of people must go through that buffet every day.

“Ha! What information? You don’t know anything. You’re smart, but not that smart, Summer.” He was sweating profusely, the hamster-and-bologna smell of him close in her nostrils.

“How did you get a copy of that disk?”

His neck jerked back like he was surprised at her question. “A disk? He showed me. He used to sit me on his knee and show me the photos of all those women on his computer. It was easy to remember them.”

Rainy turned her head, closed her eyes; she was going to be sick. She couldn’t look at him, but then she thought better of it and snapped her eyes open aggressively.