The shadows of night pressed their cold palms against the murky windowpanes of the abandoned house where Prudence had been held. With a wrist bruised from the relentless scraping of her shoe sole, her sole companion in struggle, she now sat still, breath shallow. The ropes that had once bound her so mercilessly lay slack at her side, their twisted lengths silent witnesses to her ordeal. It had taken her many torturous minutes, perhaps an hour, perhaps two; time had bled itself dry to work the knots loose.
The silence that surrounded her was not a comfort, it was the eerie hush of abandonment, of men having left with the certainty that they had broken her spirit. But Prudence had learned long ago that still waters run deep. Her blue eyes, fever-bright with pain and resolve, flitted to the rear of the dwelling. The front, she rightly surmised, would be guarded. She must slip out like a wisp of breath.
