[Cedar]

PART THREE

The next time was two days later. Kathryn was already naked and handcuffed to the bed when I arrived. I wondered if Mary was keeping her like that all the time. She put up as much of a fight as she could, but between the handcuffs and Mary holding her ankles, it didn’t amount to much.

On subsequent visits, Kathryn was still handcuffed, but Mary didn’t even need to help restrain her. The fight had gone out of her. She was broken.

A month and a half after our first meeting, Mary appeared in my office again. The home pregnancy test had given a positive result. Mary thanked me for my services and paid what remained of the fee.

Time passed. Other jobs came and went. I had almost forgotten about that one until one day, six months later, the door to my office opened and there stood –- Kathryn.

She’d let her hair grow out a bit longer and she was now wearing a shapeless, ankle-length dress. The tight jeans she’d had on when I first saw her wouldn’t have fit now anyway. Her belly was so swollen that I wondered if it was twins, and the bizarre thought crossed my mind that, if so, I should perhaps try to get Mary to pay me a bonus.

As Kathryn stood before me, I wasn’t at all surprised to see that her features were set in hatred. It took me a moment to realize that I wasn’t the target of that hatred – or, at least, not its primary target.

She threw her handbag down onto my desk; it was unfastened, and half the cash it contained spilled out as it landed. I could see that it was thousands at least. I knew it must be the stolen money from the bank, the money whose hidden possession was her mother’s power over her.

“That should cover your fee,” Kathryn said through gritted teeth.

“Fee for what?” I still wasn’t sure what she intended; my hand hovered near the special drawer of my desk, the one containing my suped-up taser that could bring down a moose, never mind a girl.

“I don’t care about the details,” Kathryn said, resting her hands on her burgeoning abdomen. “I’ll leave that up to you. But I want you to do to my mother the same thing you did to me.”