Ballencoa had a knife. The light flashed off the blade as he brought it up, and flashed off it again as he brought it down and plunged it into her mother’s back.

“NO!!!!” Leah screamed.

She launched herself at his back, slamming into him so hard she almost knocked the wind from herself. She struck at him with the steel pick in her hand over and over and over. Like a giant claw, it tore at him, ripping hair and flesh from the back of his head, from the back of his neck.

His body twisted and bucked beneath her as he tried to fling her off. Leah clung to him like a limpet, sobbing and stabbing at him with the hoof pick until he finally shook free of her and flung her into the dirt.

Then he was on his feet and he had hold of her, his hands crushing her arms to her sides as he picked her up. He lifted her and turned and threw her into the back of the van like a sack of trash.

Leah cried out as she landed hard. Then Ballencoa was over her, and his hands were around her throat. He was screaming at her, but she couldn’t hear him. His face was twisted and dark like a demon from a dream.

This was the last thing Leslie saw, Leah thought as she tried in vain to struggle and her consciousness began to dim.

Lauren struggled to turn over. Ballencoa’s weight was gone, but her own body felt as heavy as lead. It seemed to take every ounce of strength she had to lift a foot, to move a hand. The world had gone to slow motion, black and white, no sound.

She saw him lift Leah off the ground and hurl her into the back of the van. In her mind she screamed NO!!! But no sound came out of her.

She moved a hand . . . a foot . . . She bent a knee . . .

Hewitt lay on the ground where she had tripped over him. He might have been dead. She hoped so.

She struggled to suck in a breath, to get up on one knee.

She had a clear view of the back of the van. Ballencoa had one hand at Leah’s throat, the other tearing at her breeches.

This was what he had done to Leslie. He had stolen her off the side of the road. He had brought her to a place like this and stolen her innocence in the most vile and violent way he could.

Lauren hadn’t been there to stop him.

She was here now.

In her blindness to gain justice for one daughter, she had put the other in exactly the same brutal, horrible place to face the same brutal, horrible death.

No.

No.

NO !

NOOO!!!!