Page 98 of Tiger Queen

“Get up.”

“Where are we going?”

“I said get up.”

The look in his eyes made it clear that I was about to cross a line. Another word and he would shoot me out of anger. I got up and walked out of the office, then out of the visitor’s center.

“Turn left. That way.”

As we passed Caesar’s enclosure, he approached the fence and snarled at us. I had never seen such a reaction from him before. He wasn’t the only one. The two females in the adjacent enclosure watched us silently too, tails flat with anger. The chimps screamed and bounced around their cage, and the birds made extra noise when we passed.

The animals knew that Crazy Carl was back. And they did not approve.

Carl led me to the food preparation building. He unlocked it with the master key and shoved me inside.

“What are we doing in here?” I demanded.

He swung his hand, pistol-whipping me in the temple. My vision went white and I crumpled to the ground. Yellow and red particles floated across my eyes as I stared at the concrete floor and the metal drain inches from my face. There was a small piece of cow rib, about the size of a dime, that had failed to wash down the drain. My dazed brain felt vaguely embarrassed about that. I don’t why I had not noticed that. Because I had been so busy preparing the animals for transportation, I guessed.

While I groaned on the ground, Carl was busy over in the dry cabinet. He returned with a ball of butcher’s string, which he used to bind my wrists together. I was too dizzy and disoriented to fight back. Not that it would have mattered since he had a gun, too.

He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me over to the preparation table next to the band saw. The office laptop was open.

“Login to Anthony’s email,” he said in a voice that was dangerously soft. “And approve whatever it is you need to approve.”

It was difficult to put words together to form a sentence. I was probably concussed. “I don’t know his password. And even if I did, he probably has two-factor authentication. A text gets sent to his phone.”

“I don’t care if he’s got five-factor authentication. Do it.”

I shook my head. “Carl, you have to believe me. I don’t know it.”

And then I heard the worst sound in the world. A sound like a thousand angry insects all buzzing at the same time.

The sound of the band saw turning on.

He grabbed me by my hair and pulled me around to the feeding side of the band saw, then shoved my face against the stainless steel table. The band saw was a blur two feet in front of me, moving so rapidly I couldn’t even see the razor-sharp blades.

“Tell me what his password is!” Carl shouted over the sound of the saw.

I began to weep. I felt so helpless. “I don’t know! I’m telling the truth!”

He let go of my hair, and for a moment I thought maybe he believed me. Then he grabbed my bound wrists and slammed them down on the table in front of the saw.

“Had an employee long time ago who had an accident,” he said in a conversational tone, barely audible over the loud saw. “Was running the band saw, cutting meat and some such, when he slipped on somethin’ on the floor. Except instead of falling backward, he fell forward. Threw his arm out to stop himself. Instincts, ya know. This very saw cut clean through his arm just below the elbow. I never seen so much blood in my life, and I’m a man who works with tigers. It was spraying out of his stump like a garden hose! What I’m tryin’ to say is that it’s gonna be messy in here in a minute. I don’t want to get blood on my nice shirt, so you’d better give me what I want.”

With one hand on my neck and the other holding my wrists, he began pushing my arm toward the saw. I stared at the blade with the same fixation as people who watched car accidents, unable to look away from the horror that was about to come. I had seen this very blade cut thousands of pounds of meat, but the meat was always frozen. That made for a cleaner cut. Anyone who had ever cut frozen chicken breasts instead of raw ones knew the difference. I wondered what the saw would do to my arm. I doubted the cut would be very clean. Human muscle was stringy, and the blade might catch on my arm and pull us forward.

I was focused on all of this with a strange, detached fascination. It was funny what a person thought about when they were about to be dismembered.

“Last chance,” Carl said.

“I don’t… I swear…”

Suddenly a voice cut through the noise of the blade.

“Dad?”

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