Snap!
A small branch caught fire.
Hiss!
A piece of moss ignited.
Smoke drifted lazily to the heavens as a trail of flames ringed the tree. He stepped back as the prisoner’s head lolled to one side.
“Sorry, Carlyle,” he said, shaking his head as the man, almost in slow motion, tried to tear at his bonds, ropes made of natural fiber, restraints that would become nothing more than ash and even if analyzed by the police would contain the same chemicals as the clothes he was wearing. That he had been tethered and bound would be difficult, if not impossible, to discern. Even the drug now rendering him helpless would dissipate and be hard to trace.
He stepped back several steps to stare at his victim, through a rising, crackling wall of hungry flames. “There’s nothing more I can do,” he said with more than a little satisfaction. “You’re a dead man.”
Chapter 1
Three years later
“Help me!” she cried, but her voice was mute.
She was running, her legs leaden, fear propelling her forward through the smoke, through the heat. All around her the forest was burning out of control. Hot, scalding flames spiraled hellishly to the sky. Smoke clogged her throat, searing her nostrils with the hot, acrid smell. Her lungs burned. Her eyes teared, her skin blistered.
Blackened tree limbs fell around her, crashing and splintering as she ran. Sprays of sparks peppered the already-burning ground and singed her skin.
Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!
It was as if she’d somehow fallen through the gates of hell.
“Help!” she screamed again, but her voice was lodged in her throat, not even the barest of whispers escaping her lips. “Please, someone help me!”
But she was alone.
There was no one to help her this time.
Her brothers, always quick to her rescue, couldn’t save her.
Oh, dear God.
Run, damn it! MOVE! Get out, Shannon! Now!
She flung herself forward, stumbling, half-falling, the fire a raging, burning beast, its putrid breath scalding, its crackling arms reaching for her, enwrapping her, sizzling against her skin.
Just when she thought she was going to die, that she would be consumed, the fire, with a roar, shrank back. Disappeared. The black smoke turned into a thick white fog and she was suddenly running through fields of smoldering ash, the smell of burning flesh heavy in her nostrils, the ground an arid, vast wasteland.
And everywhere there were bones.
Piles and piles of charred, bleached bones.
White skeletons of animals and people, all flecked with ash.
Cats. Dogs. Horses. Humans.
In her mind’s eye, the skeletons became members of her family and though they were only bones, she superimposed faces to the skulls. Her mother. Her father. Her baby.
Pain cut through her at the thought of her child.
No! No! No!
These were only skeletons.