" Kathy said she would do what she could, and Jan left her telephone number. After hanging up the phone she looked at her calendar. It was already Thu...rsday. On the following Tuesday, Jan would become Hugo Bingham's slave. The loan — all twenty million dollars — had to be paid on Monday. For the first time since she was a small child, Jan put her head on her arms and started to cry.Just then, her phone rang. She answered it and heard, "Mrs. Stewart? This is Kathy Carlson, Mrs. Clifford's. Gradually her head stopped spinning enough for her to realize this wasn’t her bed, and she had absolutely no idea where she was. ‘Great, just what I needed.’ She sighed. Yesterday she had been so optimistic, but it seemed that everything had gone as wrong as it possibly could. She thought back to all the events that had led to that moment. The morning before, Julia had woken up in her small apartment as usual. She had followed her regular Saturday morning routine of cooking breakfast before. .."She interrupted, "I hate to lose a bet. You didn't say I had to sleep last night."I just grinned and shook my head.Holly took mercy on me and helped me clean up after dinner. Thank god for little favors—she used more dishes than I knew I owned. However, the meal was one of her best. Shortly later she decided to crash and recover from no sleep the previous night.She cooked breakfast the next morning and after the kitchen was clean I suggested we walk to the park. We circled it once and found. ." Zzzzlkk! "Aaaah!" Zzzzlkkk! "Mercy!" Zzzzzlkkkk! "NO!" Zzzzllkkkkkkk!... He pointed inexorably. Her knees hit the boards before him. The whalebone sang into her thrice. At the third she screamed. It was like a razor, and she was sure that he had broken the skin in one place behind... "Too much noise," he pronounced. "I'll have to bit you, Slave." He went to a closet and came back with something clinking in his hand. She.