Page 1 of Three Steps Behind

Prologue

DECEMBER 19

HARPER SLIPPED INTO THE DARKNESS of the rusty shipping container, praying they wouldn’t come, but knowing she was next. Five days and counting. Twenty-two people all gone, save her.

Gunfire echoed through her mind—single shots popping in succession. Never ending. Wailing and pleading had rent the stale night air, but there had been no mercy. None.

Others went by silent measures. Necks slit or torture taken too far. Whimpers had radiated through the metal box before each person was yanked screaming from it, never to return.

Her fate was sealed, and it broke her. God had forsaken her in this godless country. She would die in a land of ghosts. So much death—it rose in the air thick and putrid.

Mounds of fresh basalt littered the harsh scrubland, black volcanic dirt attempting to cover death, but it only showed more. Open pits, not yet full, held bodies tossed asunder. Legs and arms askew.

The stench of death blanketed them—saturating the fibers of their clothes, sticking to their skin like thick lotion. It consumed the abandoned village, seeped between the broken-down trucks and crumbling walls. No more laughter filled the empty homes, no more families together, no more living.

And she was next to be dumped into a gaping hole.

Pain pulsed through her bruises. Her head, jaw, and side—all mottled in black and purple. All from beatings that had stolen her breath, penetrating deep into her marrow. With each kick, each club cracking against bone, she’d feared she wouldn’t survive but she had—so far. For what? To be tortured and tossed away, becoming one of the faceless. Nameless. No grave marker. No funeral. Just another unknown ghost in this barren Syrian hill country.

Cruel laughter echoed in the dank night air as rain thundered on the metal roof. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around her waist—trying to protect herself from the coming death. But there was no protection. No one to save her. No way to save herself.

The laughter grew louder, bouncing off the walls. The door creaked open and a man—the source of her bruises—smiled wide. The lighted poles silhouetted his husky form, framing him in a halo of light, but he was no angel. Quite the opposite. She’d been left to the demons.

“You’re next, American eahira,” he slurred.

She winced. Drunk again. The worst of the beatings had come then. The desire to holler back “I’m not a whore” rose in her chest, but he’d only beat her worse.

“I’ll miss our time together.” The words ran together, but she still heard the merciless lilt of laughter under his ripe breath.

With one last laugh on a belch, he turned and slid the creaking door back, shutting her in darkness—nearly. The door stopped an inch short. A minuscule shaft of light beamed across the excrement-covered floor.

Hope rose inside. Hope. Something nonexistent for the last five days.

Would the shaft of light remain? Was he so stumbling drunk he’d missed sealing her in the coffin?

Her breath held thick in her chest. She counted the seconds, hope rising.

The inch remained.

Tiptoeing toward the door, she paused at the opening, her breath bursting in her lungs.

She braved a glance through the tiny slit. Rain, so thick it marred the land, bounced off the ground. Puddles dotted the barren hill. No cover. Her hope faltered.

The man—if a human term could be used for the swine—was not in sight.

This was her chance—her only chance. If caught, she’d die, but she was about to die anyway. Better to be shot in the back, racing for freedom, than die by torture for nothing she had to give.

She slid the door open another inch. Singing in Arabic overpowered the sound of gushing rain. She inched the door a bit wider and held again—her heart hitting the wall of her chest so hard she feared he’d hear and come running, but the singing grew distant.

Inch by inch she slid the door open. Almost enough to slip through.

A creak echoed.

Save me, Lord! she prayed to the God who’d abandoned her.

Rain thudded, thunder cracking.

The man didn’t come.