Vomit burning her throat, Penny watched as two underlings materialized – variations on the dirty brute who pinned her arms to her sides, grinding himself against her. She knew what he was doing but ignored him, remembering the words of her grandmother: wolves only chase the girl who runs. Penny wished she’d remembered that sooner, wondering if she could have used it to chart a safer course to Saint Raymond.

One of the brutes was removing the pimp’s jacket as the other one whisked the contents of Penny’s stomach out of Rivard’s hair; Rivard was watching Penny. He said, “You think this is bad? You’re wishing you were somewhere else? This is a Sunday picnic compared to what awaits you across the bay, my sweet. You’re going to meet the cream of society, and they’re going to do to you what they can’t get away with doing to their own daughters and neices.”

Vasquez was still alive, gasping, bleeding, begging. While Rivard was speaking, the brute holding his jacket had removed everything of value from its pockets. Now he tossed the jacket on Vasquez, doused him with kerosene and flicked a lit match at him with the bored nonchalance of long practice.

“Even that useless shit serves a purpose now, sweet little firecrotch,” Rivard said. “My reputation in Oak Landing is strengthened by the burning of a man who, ten years ago, was Mayor of this shitpile. His own son works these very docks, but hasn’t the balls to confront me. I owe you a good turn, firecrotch. So I won’t cut your face. Yet.”

Penny was dragged, stunned, to a small private yacht loaded with a variety of goods. She was certain of her impending death. She could still hear Vasquez screaming, she could smell his burning hair and shit. Over the next horrible weeks, she never slept more than a few minutes before those memories yanked her awake, trembling, too terrified to cry.

A hunchbacked Mexican stood to Rivard’s left; he had one glaring, empty eye socket and a poorly healed broken jaw. He held the pimp’s spotless hat with the fixed obedience of a beaten dog. Penny nodded as best she could, struggling to breathe.

“Good. Let me explain something to you. I love my hats. I don’t like them to get dirty or messy. That’s Vasquez. He was supposed to be guarding the room where you woke up. That door was supposed to be locked.” So saying, Rivard stepped to Vasquez, dragging Penny, still choking her. Her field of vision was narrowing.

“Señor – ” Vasquez said, but was cut off by his intestines spilling to the dry dust at his feet, the speed of Rivard’s knife impossible to follow. Penny didn’t see where it came from or where it went, only Rivard’s arm in a gesture of curt censure. She would have vomited if her throat hadn’t been nearly crushed shut. Vasquez stumbled back, falling to his knees in his own entrails, dropping Rivard’s hat in that mess.

Rivard let her go and she was grabbed and held by the scraggly-bearded man, who reeked of sweat and shit and rotten teeth. His smell and Vasquez’s intestines brought up what Rivard had been preventing, and Penny disgorged an astounding jet of vomit.

Stooping to retrieve his hat, Rivard took the full brunt of Penny’s puke on the right side of his head and face, down his right arm. He stood. Calm. Where activity had bustled in studious ignorance of Rivard’s endeavors there in the dusty yard of the Oak Landing coach office, now all was silence. Penny heard distant sounds with complete clarity: ships’ bells. Gulls. Buoys. A child crying in the distance. A dog barking.

She knew that her life was over.