“The shit?” Alice snorted. “It began when my father stroked out. My mother, already one of those tiger moms, seemed bent on driving me insane. I was now the only thing in her life, and she wouldn’t let me alone. I ran away, yeah? A couple of real fucked-up things later, I ran into Beth, and for a time things weren’t so bad. We foraged when we could, stole when there was nothing for us in the garbage cans and Dumpsters, went to bars, had guys buy us drinks, in exchange for a suck or a fuck. Sometimes we even got a dinner out of it.” She laughed, a naked, awful sound. “Those were the golden days, yeah?”

She gestured. “Then blue eyes showed up, waving money around. He was offering us a better life in a faraway place. Six months, then we’d be free with a shitload of money to take us flying anywhere we wanted to go. Anywhere but the States.”

Charlie’s antennae came to full alert. “Wait a minute. He actually said that. ‘Anywhere but the States’?”

“Word for word.” Alice drained her tea, set the glass down. “What did we care? The last place either of us wanted to be was back in the States. So we said yes. And found ourselves here with”—she pointed to the doorway—“that piece of shit.” She shook her head. “At first, Beth rebelled, said no to the things he wanted her to do. Then came the beatings, the starving out, the lack of light and tactile sensation. He nearly drove her crazy. He broke her. She was no problem after that.”

“And you?”

Alice held her head defiantly. “I was paid money. I was promised more. I did everything he said.”

Now that she had been softened up, Charlie finally got down to the nitty-gritty. “How long have you been here, Alice?”

“It’ll be six months three days from now.”

Charlie’s heart started to thump against her ribs. “And what is supposed to happen in three days?”

“Blue eyes said he would come.”

“And you believed him?”

“I have no reason not to. The prick in there gets bored with his girls after five or six months. Like a stud bull, he requires fresh bodies or his thingy doesn’t rise to the occasion.”

Charlie threw her head back and laughed. It was something she never thought she would do in a slaughterhouse.

Chapter 21

21

There were three life lessons Joe Kinkaid’s father taught him when he was growing into manhood: never back-talk your boss, never be led astray by a woman, and never get in over your head. The problem facing Kinkaid now was that he was very much afraid he was in over his head.