24 Hours

The other thing was her sugar. She felt like it was okay, but her mother wasn’t there to measure it, and if she started to “go south,” as her daddy put it, she would need a shot. She had never given herself a shot before.

“Come out!” Huey yelled, sounding really mad now.

Abby watched him pick up a big stick and poke some bushes with it. Then he moved off farther to her left, going along the line of trees.

She looked at the cabin, the lovely yellow light streaming from the windows. She wished she could wait inside, where there were no animals or bugs. Huey’s voice floated back to her on the wind.

“There’s bad things in the woods at night! Wolves and bears and things! You need Huey to look out for you!”

She hugged herself and tried not to listen. There might be bears in these woods, but she didn’t think so. And certainly not wolves. There weren’t any more wolves.

“There’s snakes, too,” Huey called. “Creepy crawly snakes looking for warm bodies in the dark.”

A chill shot up Abby’s spine. There were snakes in Mississippi, all right. Bad ones. She’d learned about them at Indian Princesses. Copperheads and cotton-mouths and ground rattlers and coral snakes. They’d seen a coral snake on one camp-out, sunning itself on a rock by the creek. The fathers didn’t even try to get close enough to kill it. They said if it bit you, you could die before you got to the hospital. Her dad had taught the Princesses a rhyme to help them tell the difference between a coral snake and a scarlet king snake, which looked almost exactly like it: If red touches yellow, it can kill a fellow.

“If the snakes get you, it won’t be my fault!” Huey yelled, beating the bushes off to her left.

Abby shut her eyes and tried not to cry.

When Karen emerged from the bathroom wearing the teddy, she saw Hickey lying under the covers in the middle of the bed. The only light came from the lamp on the end table. He gave a long, low wolf whistle.

“Man alive. That’s better than naked. Talk about getting with the program.”

As Karen moved toward the bed, she saw Will’s. 38 lying on the floor by the dust ruffle. That was how confident Hickey was in the diabolical cage of circumstance he had constructed.

He patted the side of the bed.

As she moved toward him, she slid the gun under the bed with her foot, then turned her back to him and slipped under the covers, being careful to keep her legs together as she moved. She tried not to stiffen as her hip and shoulder touched Hickey’s side, but she knew that her tension would be transmitted to him in a thousand subtle ways.

“Damn, you’re cold,” he complained.

“Sorry.” He smelled like a stale ashtray. She stared up at the ceiling as though she had nothing in her mind but enduring what was to come with stoicism. “What do you want me to do?”

“You’re not gonna whine about it?”

“Not if it keeps you from hurting Abby.”

“Thank God for small favors.” He turned sideways and propped himself on an elbow, and she felt him press against her hip. A deep shudder rippled through her.

“Are you ready down there?” he asked.

Unbelievable. How could he possibly think that an impending rape could arouse a woman? She had to distract him from his immediate goal. “Is that what you want first? Straight to business? I thought you’d want something else.”

“Like what?” He reached up and cupped her left breast with a sweaty hand.

Every fiber of instinct told her to jerk away from the offending touch, but she forced herself to lie still and turn her face toward his. “Something you fantasize about when you see women like me in the grocery store.”

He squeezed the breast. “Like what?”

“Lie back and relax. You’ll see.”

A slow smile spread his lips. “Oh, man…”

She rolled onto her stomach, pulled the covers over her shoulders, and slid down toward Hickey’s midsection. She hoped he would leave the comforter where it was, but he lifted it so that he could watch what he believed was to come. She was foolish to have expected anything else.

“I’m cold,” she said, looking up.

“You’ll warm up.” His black eyes were bright. “And don’t think you’re going to get out of anything by doing this.”

She swallowed her revulsion, then straddled his legs and took hold of him with her left hand.

“Mmm,” he moaned.

She had to get him to look away. Closing her eyes, she worked her left hand a little, the way Will liked it. Hickey groaned but did not look away. He wouldn’t, she realized, until she progressed much further. This was what he got off on: watching a “society” woman pleasure him.

“Good,” he murmured. “Good girl.”

She slid her right hand down beneath her stomach.

“Yeah,” he said. “I want to see you do that.”

“After you finish,” she said, feeling sweat break out on her face. It was hot in the bedroom, but it was fear, not the temperature that had brought moisture to her skin.

He groped for the back of her head.

Panic shot through her. “I know what to do. Lie back and relax. You don’t want it to be over too fast.”

“Yeah.” After a moment, his head lolled back, and his eyes rolled up toward the ceiling.