Trembling, shaking, adrenaline surging, she began to turn around, moving now in a circling motion through trees, trying her best to step lightly.

For a moment, in the dark, she thought she heard a sound.

Sarah Beth froze, pushing a shoulder against a tree and pressing against it if only for the comforting support of something rigid against her back. Breathing heavily, gasping, she looked around, blinking rapidly, desperately willing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She glimpsed shadows, outlines of shapes… But not much more.

She wanted to cry for help. But who would hear her? Only the driver.

So she swallowed back her scream, breathing shallowly now, listening… Only listening.

And then a soft whisper of a voice in her ear behind her, against the tree itself. The same raspy, pained voice. “This isn’t personal, dear. I did warn you.”

Sarah Beth screamed, trying to turn. But a strong hand yanked hard at her hair, jerking her back, her cheek slamming into the rough bark. Then something sharp jabbed against her throat. A sudden flare of pain, an attempt to scream, but no sound would come.

The last thought Sarah Beth had as she crumpled to the ground, bleeding out, was how quietly the driver had moved in the woods. She hadn’t even heard him sneak up behind her, like a ghost in the night.

CHAPTER TWO

The wide, pale eyes of a child peered up at the scissors…

“Come here, Hilda,” the voice murmured in the dark basement. “Come here now.”

The child hyperventilated, shivering and standing in dusty, dirty clothing to match the basement itself. Her eyes traced past the man with the scissors, toward the stairs behind him. Concrete slabs led up to a locked metal door.

Her gaze swished back to her father… back to the single, blunt metal key dangling around his neck.

She swallowed once, hearing the soft whimpering sounds of her siblings behind her, where they lay on their sleeping blankets on the cold concrete.

“Come here, Hilda,” the voice repeated, sharply. “I won’t repeat it again. I’m only going to cut your hair. I promise.”

The child stood stiff, braced like a rabbit ready to bolt. Her father was already breathing heavily, one hand buttressed against the bottom of the stairwell, a thin veneer of sweat across his forehead, his eyes fixed on hers. She could smell the anger, sense it in his every flickering motion. See the rage boiling beneath.

The moment he’d picked up the scissors, she’d run… Run fast, around and around the dusty, dilapidated furniture as he’d tried to catch her. She’d dove beneath the old oak table used for “family meals.” She’d run, even knocking over a chair. The moment she’d heard the splintering sound, she’d known she would pay. Still, of all her siblings, she was the one who ran most. Fleeing the inevitable.

“Only my hair?” she whispered, a tinge of hope to her voice.

“Yes, Hilda. Why must you make this so difficult? Come here. Look, see—just a haircut. Don’t run again, Hilda, or I’ll have to hurt you.”