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door. It wasn’t more than ten feet away. Slowly, she made her way out from underneath the bed.
    She ran for the door and heard something behind her but she didn’t stop. The door was locked and she unlocked the bottom one but the top one needed a key. She pounded it with her hands and screamed, “Help me!”
    Then, there was only pain.

    *****

    Pamela Kolkowski danced to a Lionel Richie song with some guy from IT she didn’t know and then went back to the wet bar and ordered a sex on the beach. She guzzled it and ordered another. These company retreats were the best part of her job. Everyone wanted to get drunk and get laid and most of the men didn’t bring their wives.
    It had been her idea to choose Chile as this year’s location and she didn’t regret it. She and Anderson had gone on safari yesterday and stopped the jeep, laying out a blanket and having sex not a hundred feet from a tourist bus showing a group of at least twenty the sights. It was an experience she wouldn’t forget.
    She looked around and wondered where Anderson was. Then she remembered how he’d offered for Vanessa to go down to his own cabin . . .
    Son of a bitch .
    This had happened a lot since she had been separated from her husband. She would meet a man and the man would be attracted to Vanessa and, though Pamela would know about it, she would wait to see if something overt happened. Then she would lose the man and have to find another.
    She knew right when she gave him a blow job in the office that first time that dating your boss was not a good idea. How was she supposed to dump Anderson if he was trying to fuck her daughter?
    She stormed down the corridor, checking every door. She got to the last one and it was locked. But she knew where the master keys were. Pamela ran up to the upper deck and got the set that Anderson kept there and then ran back down and unlocked the door.
    The cabin looked like the inside of a slaughterhouse. Bits of torn flesh lay on the floor and was stuck to the walls; blood coated the entire room like paint. There was something laying underneath a window and she could make out what it was: a severed arm, with pink nail-polish on the nails. Her daughter’s favorite color.

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9

    It was nearly dark when Patrick left the beach and walked back into the city. A day of surfing and windsailing and sipping margaritas and beers had relaxed him and eased the heavy gray feeling he had in his guts. He missed Andrew. Many times, they were all they had.
    He would call Andrew from whatever location in the world he happened to be and they would talk about Andrew’s schooling, the girls he was dating, the problems he was having with his father and how he would run the company differently. They rarely spoke of Patrick’s life, Andrew having learned that it was a topic he would quickly change.
    After his time in Iraq, he didn’t want to talk about himself anymore.
    Many tourists were out now on patios and in bars, enjoying the company of women being pimped by local drug lords. There was one in particular that Patrick had heard of long ago. It was difficult to find any information on him other than gossip as many of the locals believed he was in contact with evil spirits and may hear their conversations. But Patrick had picked up bits and pieces.
    He was a murderer with every policeman and politician in the city on his payroll. He was also a sadist and many had told Patrick in late night drunken conversations that the man had killed more people than anyone else in this country’s history. He would purchase prostitutes for a night and then they would never be heard from again. Some people said he used them for blood magic to speak with the devil. Some said the man was the mayor, or the governor of the province.
    In four years Patrick had never seen this man. But he no doubt existed. He was told the results of elections months before they occurred; from bartenders, bouncers and fishermen, based on who the Great and Honorable El