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He landed heavily, and then, as he looked up, he was distracted by an unexpected flash of motion in the corner of his eye. Eddie slammed the brakes on, and as soon as he'd controlled the sliding stop, he looked up to where he'd seen the movement.

Through the scattered shrub and trees he saw a girl, maybe fifteen years old, wearing a plain white ankle-length dress that was gathered a little across her chest. She had tawny blonde hair, bare feet, and her dress was badly torn. He turned the bike off the trail towards her and gunned the engine, bouncing over the rough ground. She turned and ran, but she was a lot slower than his bike, and he was catching up to her rapidly.

She stumbled and fell heavily in front of him, so he stopped and dropped the bike on the ground, hopped off and approached closer to the girl. When she looked up at him, he stopped. The girl was clearly frightened. Not just afraid, but truly terrified out of her wits, as if she was a bunny about to eaten by his dog.

"Are you okay? I'm not going to hurt you."

The girl gasped and shook. He lifted the visor of his helmet so he could see her more clearly. If anything, the girl became even more afraid, shaking and barely able to breathe. Eddie was starting to become quite worried. He wasn't that scary, was he?

"Look, I won't hurt you. How about I take you to the police?"

The girl let out a tortured terrified scream, then scrambled to her feet and ran for a thick stand of bush behind her, sobbing and gasping as she ran. Eddie stood in surprise watching her go, and then sighed. It looked like it was going to be a long afternoon.


Chapter 1

For Sarah, everything had started to go wrong when old man Johnson threw her family out once her mother got pregnant again.

Her mother tried, she really did, but everything had been against her for her whole life. Anne Holding's life wasn't a pretty story, but she knew that, knew what she was; what she had become. Sarah knew that her mother comforted herself with the thought that she had fought her whole life, sacrificed herself, to protect Sarah and her other siblings from the only life she had ever known.

Anne was only fourteen years old when she'd been brought before the magistrate in Nuneaton, a small town outside Birmingham in the English Midlands, to be charged for prostitution. It wasn't like she had any choice, nor was she at all unusual, just another orphan with no other hope and nothing going for her, even as a whore, except for her young age. But she'd gotten involved in some hustler's sting, not knowing any better. She'd been caught and then the prosecutor had pleaded for the death penalty. Instead, the magistrate had taken pity on her and ordered her to be transported to the colonies to serve a ten-year sentence. She'd broken down in tears, not knowing or understanding the magistrate's pity, only knowing that she would never again be free in her own country.

After that she'd spent a few months in a small overcrowded jail and then a few more months in a foul-smelling, rat-infested floating shipwreck in Southampton Harbour, all the time gradually wasting away from poor food and not enough of that, plus the fear of her fate.