Tiffany yelped in shock as a man burst out of the trees. He was filthy, his clothes torn, his face looked as if some woman in her last desperate moments had dragged her nails over his skin, and he held a weapon high in one hand.
Her past had come back!
Somehow it had found her here in what she’d always thought of as her maiden’s mountain fastness, safe from the cruel world.
She dropped to the ground, beside the hole she’d been digging, and huddled there in the dirt.
Her final thought was how appropriate it was that she’d dug her own grave.
“Tiffany?”
She kept her head covered, waiting for the blow, the inevitable crashing slap her stepfather had so loved before the true horror began.
“Tiffany?” This time a hand touched her ever so lightly on the shoulder.
When she flinched it jerke
