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Back Before You Were Gone Save as PDF
Chapters (58)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-one
  24. Twenty-two
  25. Twenty-three
  26. Twenty-four
  27. Twenty-five
  28. Twenty-six
  29. Twenty-seven
  30. Twenty-eight
  31. Twenty-nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-one
  34. Thirty-two
  35. Thirty-three
  36. Thirty-four
  37. Thirty-five
  38. Thirty-six
  39. Thirty-seven
  40. Thirty-eight
  41. Thirty-nine
  42. Forty
  43. Forty-one
  44. Forty-two
  45. Forty-three
  46. Forty-four
  47. Forty-five
  48. Forty-six
  49. Forty-seven
  50. Forty-eight
  51. Forty-nine
  52. Fifty
  53. Fifty-one
  54. Acknowledgements
  55. An Eastbourne Murder Mystery
  56. Canelo Crime
  57. About the Author
  58. Also by Sheila Bugler

Breathe. Focus. Thoughts were clouds that came and went. She closed her eyes, found it helped not to be looking at the darkness. She continued breathing. In and out. One, two, three. Counting the breaths. Bringing her mind back to the breathing.

She was in control again. The panic had been replaced with something else. Strength. She opened her eyes, and this time she didn’t see the darkness. Instead, she saw the tiny cracks of light coming through the gap at the top of the door.

She wasn’t going to die. Not today, not any time soon. She was going to find a way out of here. And when she did, she was going to find the bastard who’d cut her face and locked her in here, and she was going to make him pay for what he’d done to her.

Forty-four

Someone was crying. Kitty wanted to find them and comfort them. But when she tried to move, she couldn’t. She was lying on her side, looking at furniture she didn’t recognise. A throbbing pain at the back of her head made it difficult to concentrate. Something was badly wrong. Her hands had been pulled behind her back, her wrists bound together. When she tried to move them, the ties cut into her skin.

She wanted to call for help, but thick material had been stuffed into her mouth. When she tried to spit it out, she couldn’t. Panicked, she started struggling, pulling against her ties, screaming into the material inside her mouth.

A face appeared in her line of vision, triggering the flicker of a memory and a surge of fear. She was in a hotel bedroom. Maeve’s room. She’d told Kitty she didn’t want to talk in a public area. Kitty had understood. Was glad, in fact, because she’d known what she was going to tell Maeve would be painful. So they’d come here instead.

‘How could you have kept it to yourself all these years?’ Maeve was crying. Tears running unchecked down her cheeks. Her face so close Kitty could feel the heat of her breath. She twisted her head, trying to get away from Maeve’s grief and anger, but Maeve grabbed her chin, forcing Kitty to look at her.

‘You weren’t there. You didn’t see what it did to my family. It destroyed us. Can you imagine? Can you? My parents never got over it. My father… do you know that everyone assumed he’d killed her? They thought he’d killed his own child. It wasn’t enough to have to deal with the grief of losing her, never knowing where she’d gone or what had happened to her. My parents had to cope with all those rumours as well. We had to leave Ballincarraig altogether. Leave the only home I’d ever known, the only friends I’d ever had.