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hell the lady of the house was approximately her size.
    As she turned, she caught sight of someone in the mirror. She jumped violently, and swung to look behind her.
    She was alone.
    Incredulous, she turned back and stared. She took a step forward. She touched her cheek.
    Who was that woman in the mirror?
    Her face had been pleasantly rounded, a placid face with brown eyes and lips that smiled often.
    She dropped the towel.
    Her body had been curvy, with soft hips, a well-defined waist, and generous boobs.
    That face was gone. That body was gone. They had vanished as if they had never been. In their place were features refined by terror, by hunger, by pain. Her chin was squared-off and determined, her cheeks gaunt, and the gash on her left cheek had barely begun to heal. Her artfully highlighted hair was growing out, showing her brunette roots. Sunburn had blistered her pale skin, time and again, until it was raw on her cheeks, forehead, and arms. Her eyes were too big, like a starving African child’s.
    But those eyes contained none of the innocence of childhood; they had stared into the heart of darkness and seen her own death. The veneer of civilization had been stripped away. She was a beast like any of the other beasts in the forest; she would take whatever action necessary to survive.
    Coldly, deliberately, she would survive.

 
     
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    For the first time, Taylor understood who she was and what she was made of, what she would do and say and be to continue on this earth … and, someday, to get her revenge on the men who had destroyed her life, and find justice for herself.
    The doubts she had experienced at breaking into the home of strangers, at eating their food and claiming their clothing, faded. Someday she would make it up to them, but if this was what she had to do, she would do it.
    She rummaged through the drawers in the bathroom until she found the supply of Band-Aids. And, glory hallelujah, there was an Ace elastic bandage. She wrapped her wrist—it felt better—and went back into the bedroom.
    A glance at the photos on the desk proved to Taylor that she was never going to wear the mother’s clothes. A wedding photo taken about twenty years earlier featured a very tall, very pregnant woman in a gorgeous white gown and a man who topped her by at least two inches. Both were beaming.
    These were the owners of Taylor’s property.
    The picture almost made her like them.
    A more recent photo showed the entire family on the ski slope—father, mother, tall teenage son, and one glaring, resentful, eyebrow-pierced teenage daughter who was about five inches shorter than the mother.
    The mother was the kind of person who had pewter picture frames etched with names: the father was Brandon, she was Susan, the son was Jules, the daughter was—improbably—Cissie. They were the Renners, so all-American they made Taylor’s teeth hurt. Holding the photo, she sank to her knees and stared .
    Taylor used to be like them. She used to be the kind of woman no one noticed when she walked down the street. She wore semi-fashionable clothes, changed her hair color on a regular basis, used deodorant, brushed and flossed. Now she was … not normal. Not likely to remain clean, deodorized, or flossed. Not all-American.
    Now she wore nothing but a towel. She had nothing that was hers except for a few drawing pencils kept in a hip pack. She was even worse than poor. She was dead, an outcast, a foreigner in her own country.
    She stood, placed the photo back on the desk, and donned Susan’s robe. The hem probably hit Susan about mid-thigh; it hit Taylor right at the knee. She went back to the desk and contemplated the browser.
    She needed to communicate with someone, to explain that she was alive and not guilty, and that she had information to provide. But to whom?
    Simply to contact a random police officer or a random official of any kind seemed at best suicidal. She needed a name, someone she knew.
    Kennedy McManus