“How’s my little Indian princess?” The low voice was almost masculine, sharp with sarcasm and secret amusement.

Sharon.

A shudder went through Samantha. A nameless fear that sank deep into her bones. She had no idea what this woman was capable of doing. Naive as she was, she had sensed from the first that Sharon had seen things, experienced things Samantha had never even imagined. Dark things. Squinting at the pain, she tipped her head back, wanting to see her tormentor. Sharon pressed her face against the thin iron rods of the headboard and smiled.

“It’s just us girls, princess. No men to fight over.” She settled her thumbs in the hollow at the base of Samantha’s throat and pressed experimentally, choking her briefly, then sliding her hands down over her breasts. “Just us girls,” she muttered.

Slowly she rose and came around the side of the bed, her boots thumping dully against the worn wood floor. She wore a skintight black catsuit with a dark brown hunting jacket over it. Her hair was slicked back against her head as tight as the body suit, her thin, wide mouth was a slash of bloodred lipstick. From a deep pocket on the coat she extracted a slim, deadly looking knife. A dagger that gleamed as she turned it from side to side and admired the blade.

Samantha’s eyes went wide and sweat filmed her body in a fine mist.

Sharon’s mouth curved in amusement. “Oh, yes, little princess, this is for you.” She seated herself on the edge of the bed and rolled the handle of the knife between her palms, twisting the blade around and around. “I can’t have you turning Bryce’s head. I was willing to share, but I won’t let you take him away from me. I wouldn’t let Lucy have him. I won’t let you have him. He has always been mine. I won’t let his obsession with you change that.”

With one hand she grabbed the bottom of the T-shirt Samantha wore and with the other brought the knife down swiftly. She laughed as Samantha strained against her bonds and tried to scream behind the gag.

“Not yet.” She let the tip of the blade nip into the silk and sliced the fabric open from the neck down. Her eyes locked on Samantha’s as cold and elliptical as a snake’s. “I haven’t had my fun yet,” she whispered as she peeled back the halves of the shirt to reveal Samantha’s breasts. They were small and pretty. Soft-looking with dusky brown centers. A young girl’s breasts. Natural and unembellished. She thought about slicing them off.

“I wanted Bryce to share you, but he wouldn’t. He thought you were too pure. Untainted,” she sneered, her mouth twisting in disgust. “His little virgin. You won’t be untainted when I finish with you. You won’t die untainted.”

Setting the knife aside, she rose from the bed and undressed.

Tears leaked from Samantha’s eyes as Bryce’s cousin fondled her. She tried not to cry, because the gag choked her and because it only made her head pound harder, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She was caught in a nightmare that was her own fault. If she hadn’t fallen in with Bryce’s crowd… if she had remembered her place… Think what you’re doing, Samantha! You’re not like them…

She had thought she could pretend for a while, be a part of the good life, live as if she were somebody special. But she wasn’t Cinderella and life wasn’t a fairy tale. She didn’t even want a fairy tale, she thought, her heart breaking at the realization. All she had ever wanted was Will and a home and a family. She cried as much for those small lost dreams as she did for the degradation Sharon Russell put her through. The violation of her body seemed incidental to the breaking of her spirit, the shattering of hope.

She would never have Will. She would never have a family. She would die out here at the hands of a mad-woman in payment for the sin of her own stupidity. Those were the things she cried for, not the hands that touched her or the mouth that plundered or any of the vile acts Bryce’s cousin committed with twisted hedonistic joy.

“You’re tainted now, little virgin,” Sharon said, straddling Samantha’s hips. Her shoulders were as wide and angular as a man’s. Her breasts thrust out from her chest, twin cones of plastic encased in flesh. There was no fat beneath her skin, only muscle and sinew. She reached for the knife on the stand beside the bed. “You’re tainted, and you’ll be ugly too.”

She brought the dagger up and pressed the tip of it just beneath Samantha’s right eye, pressing, pressing ever so slightly. Samantha bit down hard on the gag and tried in vain to stop her body from shaking. She could see Sharon’s hand on the hilt of the knife. She could see most of the blade as she angled it up and down, playing, toying with her. The point bit into the tender flesh, and Samantha strained to push herself down into the mattress. Terror clawed through her, raw and primal. Sweat streamed down the sides of her face. She could smell her own fear, sour and strong above the ammonia stink of urine and the sickeningly sweet scent of arousal that radiated from Sharon.

Her tormentor laughed deep in her throat. “You’d be ugly if I cut your eyes out, wouldn’t you? Bryce wouldn’t want you then. He wants only beautiful things. Beautiful, like you, with your long, silky black hair.”

Abruptly, she lifted the knife and grabbed hold of Samantha’s braid. Her face twisting into a grotesque masque of hatred, she pulled the braid up hard, winding it around her fist. Samantha squeezed her eyes shut against the pain of having her head jerked to the side. It felt as if Sharon would pull her hair off her head, scalp and all, but she hacked at it with the knife instead, sheering it off raggedly at the base of her skull.

It was a relief when the last strand gave way against the blade and pressure went with it. She tried not to think of how her hair had been one of her few sources of pride, or how Will used to love to play with it when they were in bed, rubbing it between his fingers, stroking it over her skin and his skin. She tried not to think of Will at all. She tried not to think. Maybe if she could stop thinking, she could simply cease to be. She could become invisible, and Bryce’s cousin with the insane gleam in her eye would lose interest and go away.

She prayed desperately for that to happen. She prayed for deliverance from the nightmare. She prayed for a miracle.

No one answered.

Sharon leaned down and whispered in her ear. “No more pretty hair, little princess. No more pretty face,” she whispered as she laid the blade of the knife against Samantha’s right cheekbone.

Orvis Slokum sat in the cab of his ramshackle ’79 Chevy pickup, enduring what was for him a rare experience: a crisis of conscience.

Most everything that had ever happened in his life he could blame on somebody else. He flunked out of high school because the teachers had it in for him on account of he was a Slokum and his brother Clete had gone ahead of him, laying a trail of trouble. He had never been able to hang on to a decent job because every last boss he’d ever had was a son of a bitch who expected too much and paid too little and had no understanding of a man’s need for latitude. So he was late to work once in a while. That wasn’t his fault. It was the fault of his alarm clock, his mother, a woman, his truck, the weather, the clerk at the Gas N’ Go. Nor was it his fault he had landed in prison. That was the fault of his partner, the cops, the public defender, the judge, the prosecutor-all of whom had no respect for him on account of he was a Slokum-which wasn’t his fault either.

He regretted many things-not the least of which was being born a Slokum-but one of the few regrets he had regarding jobs he had landed and lost was that things had not worked out for him on the Stars and Bars. The Raffertys were good people. Will knew how to have a good time and was always friendly-had never looked down on him ’cause he was a Slokum. J.D. was a tough bastard, but he was fair and he was the kind of man other men could admire. He’d been three grades ahead of Orvis in school, and Orvis had watched him with a kind of awe. J.D. had always had an aura about him, as if he were stronger and wiser and more clear-minded than the average man. He always seemed to just know what was right, which was a true mystery to Orvis, who always seemed to do what was wrong regardless of his intentions.