I could hear them talking-muffled but audible through the window, the sound of the television, some old movie, underneath.

From the couch Harry said, “Chip me!”

From the kitchenette Louis said, “With your cholesterol? Isn’t a bag of cheese curls enough?”

“Don’t mama me!..I wanna Coke, too.”

“I thought you were off caffeine!”

“Not when you expect me to sit up all fuckin’ night.”

Louis was in the living room now. “ I’m the one dealing with her-what a spoiled little cunt she is!”

Harry laughed; the laugh was like Uncle Fester, too. “That’s why daddy’ll pay up, sweet cheeks!”

I peeked at them-Louis was delivering barbecue chips and Harry took them with a “Thank you,” and they interrupted their bickering to exchange fond expressions. Then Harry worked at adding a new shade of orange to his junk-food mustache.

Me, I huddled back down beneath the window, wondering what I was doing here.

Boredom, for sure.

Curiosity, maybe.

I shrugged. Time to look in another window or two.

Because Harry and Louis clearly had a captive, and a female one at that. That’s what they were doing in the boonies. That’s why they were stocking up on supplies at a convenience store in the middle of night and nowhere. That’s why there were in the market for Tampax.

And through a back window, I saw her.

She was on a single bed in the small rustic room, naked but for white panties-a wrist cuffed to a nearby bedpost, sitting on the edge of the bed, bending over in obvious discomfort, crying…a darkhaired, creamy-fleshed beauty in her early twenties, suffering menstrual cramps.