Let me hear from you about the Culver Family and the Delos series. Happy reading!
Dedication
CHAPTER 1
The thundering hoof beats sent a minor quake through Lia’s slender, nine-year-old body. Her laughter bubbled up as her long, bare legs gripped the barrel of her gelding, Goldy. The horse raced down a pathway between two huge fields of sugar beets filling row after row across a hundred acres, each plant bearing wavy green leaves. The wind whipped past Lia’s tipped-up face, her eyes now closed and her arms thrown upwards toward the dusky August sky.
With each powerful beat of Goldy’s hooves striking the dry, sandy soil, Lia gripped her horse tighter with her long thighs. She had only ten days until school started, and before she left she wanted to ride like the wind each evening. This was the best time, when the temperatures climbed down from the hundred-degree mark on this eastern border town in Oregon.
Goldy’s white mane was long, whipping against Lia’s slim body. Today, she wore only a pink tank top and dark blue shorts, as well as the tennis shoes her mother insisted she wear when she rode. She preferred that her horse wear only a faded old nylon halter and a lead rope. She used no saddle, but rode his damp, sleek gold back as if born to it, laughing as she felt the powerful ripple of his muscles beneath her bouncing butt. The wind trailed between her open fingers, drying her perspiration.
The pathway between the two large beet fields was a mile in length. Even though this horse, her companion since he was rescued from a dog food factory in Ontario, was now eighteen years old, he still raced at full speed down the beet-laden corridor. Lia just loved the sensation of the two of them in full flight, probably as much as Goldy did!
The wind made her eyes water, so she kept them shut. The rope halter hung around Goldy’s neck within easy reach of her hand, but Lia didn’t want to pick it up. Her horse had carried her like this many times, and it was a special joy, as if he were Pegasus and she his rider, racing with him across the pink and orange sunset. They were more than horse and rider. Lia trusted her gelding with her life.
Although Goldy was considered an old horse, he had the innate wisdom and years of experience to know how to take care of her.
Lia lived for these moments, the wind tearing at her long, curly brown hair streaked with gold highlights. Suddenly, everything shifted.
A soft moan caught in Lia’s throat, her brow wrinkling as if to fend off an unseen threat. The night sky held colorful ribbons stacked upon each other along the western horizon. At first the sky was a pale blue, Lia watched anxiously as the sky turned pink, then fuchsia and finally, a blood red. No longer simply a color, the red became liquid, dripping down in huge, long streams toward her face, striking her and staining Goldy as he continued to race forward.
“NO!” Lia screamed, her voice cracking.
Caught in the web of her nightmare. She saw the flash of a steel blade glittering for a split second before it came down, slicing through her flesh. She felt the hot release of blood. Lia turned, striking out with her fists. She cried out for help but she knew none would appear.
Her attackers, Jorge Dominguez and Bruce Schaefer, were men she’d known for two years. They were Army mechanics she’d worked with at Bagram Air Base, near Kabul, Afghanistan. Why were they attacking her? Her mind reeling, she screamed as one man’s hand gripped her shirt, trying to hold her down on the cold, smooth concrete floor of the building. Twisting away, panting, scrambling, Lia saw a second blade swinging down and heard the man curse as he sliced open her left cheek.
Crying out in shock and pain, she jerked away, the point of the knife ripping into her again, opening up a trail of blood down her outer right arm. She realized she had to escape or die!
Air exploded from her mouth as she wrestled, kicked and shrieked, trying to get away from her assailants. Their knives flashed again and this time she heard her trousers ripping. Kicking out, she felt a hot, burning slicing sensation down one calf and then the other as she lashed out with her boots, trying to fend them off.
She wouldn’t give up! They would have to kill her before she stopped fighting. No man was going to take her down and rape her! No man! Rage and survival instinct entwined into a lethal, invisible fist, roaring up through Lia as she kicked one assailant in the face with her Army boot. Why were they doing this? Why?
She heard the crunch of his nose breaking beneath the heel of her boot and felt a moment of satisfaction as she heard him yelp in surprise, the blade dropping from his hand.
One more! One more man to take down and she would be free to run like hell! Her breath came in shallow sobs as she felt another blade slice into her, aiming to gut her, but Lia twisted away in time, the blade made a horizontal slice across her belly.