Billy's hand tightened over Ellen's mouth, and she thought she was going to suffocate. Then her heart jumped into her throat and her breath stopped completely for one long tortuous moment as she realized that she might very well be killed if she didn't cooperate. The flow of her tears choked off abruptly and dried up with sheer terror.

"That's a nice girl," Billy's wet mouth muttered in her ear. "Billy boy's gonna reward you with something real good and hard. Oh, you're going to love what I've got for you."

His breath smelled heavily of alcohol and she could feel a sticky dampness forming between her back and his stomach as he sweated through his shirt in his efforts to keep her close to the floor. The smell of his sweat and the stale odor of alcohol and the pungency arising from the other man's lap all mixed together until she thought she was going to faint from the heat and the overwhelming fear that attacked each of her senses. She recalled dimly that the men were all dressed the same and her heart jolted anew as she made the grim connection between their identical blue outfits and prison uniforms. They must have escaped from the prison downstate and driven here because it was close to the state line or even because it was near the gulf and they planned to take a boat out of the country! Oh God, maybe she was going to be a hostage just like she'd read about happening to so many people almost every day in the newspaper. But why did it have to be her? Every nerve in her anguished body strained with the sudden hope that they would only keep her but not rape her. Not plunge their thick penises into her virginally defenseless vagina like she had seen Phil and his friend doing to Jennifer earlier that evening.

As if in answer to her question, Billy's free hand began an exploratory movement out from her small girlish waist. It ran excitedly over the side of her body, then he sighed and began breathing heavily, concentrating all his brutal force on prying the soft innersides of her thighs apart with his knee.