Secrets of the Vanished

Prologue

The sky was strewn with stars, the waning moon shining as brightly as an electric bulb.

Golden light spilled from the windows, and the strains of lively music drifted on the chill wind.

Someone opened one of the French doors, and a woman’s throaty laughter followed a murmured suggestion made by a nameless man.

A cork popped and crystal glasses clinked in the crowded room, but outside there was only the thin, metallic scraping of wheels against the icy ground.

As they moved farther from the house, the sounds of gaiety faded, replaced by the crunch of leather soles on crusted snow and the deep stillness of the winter night.

The pain had abated, the freezing cold had rendered her bare limbs completely numb, and for a moment she thought she was soaring towards the night sky instead of lying in a rusty wheelbarrow.

When the stark branches of the birch trees loomed above her, realization struck, and she crashed back to earth, her heart thudding with animal terror.

No one was coming to rescue her, and she did not have the strength to fight.

Was her life truly to end so soon after it had begun? And could the very person she had trusted with her heart really be the instrument of her destruction?

The wheels gave a final squeal and the barrow came to a stop.

Her bare calves scraped against the hard metal edge as she was lifted aloft, her silk sheath flapping against her bare thighs.

She gazed up at the indifferent stars and the faceless moon, knowing this was the last thing she would ever see.

‘Help me, please,’ she whispered. But no one heard her desperate plea.