Body Work by Fiona Brand released on Feb 28, 2006 is available now for purchase. "Fiona Brand nicely mixes romance and adventure." -- Romantic Times on Gabriel West: Still the One Fiona Brand lives in the sunny Bay of Islands, New Zealand. Now that both of her sons are grown, she continues to love writing books and gardening. After a life-changing time in which she met Christ, she has undertaken study for a bachelor of theology and has become a member of The Order of St. Luke, Christ's healing ministry. Body Work By Fiona Brand MIRA Copyright © 2006 Fiona Brand All right reserved. ISBN: 0778322890 Forty-five years ago Throat tight with panic, ten-year-old Etienne Dexter launched himself off the veranda, bare feet thudding on sun-hot dirt, kicking up dust as he ran. Lurching around the corner of the house, he cut through a ragged mass of weeds that had once been a rose garden, eyes blind to the velvety shimmer of acres of uncut hay and the hot, arching perfection of the Louisiana sky. As he barreled through the open doors of the barn a nesting swallow arrowed past his head. Heart pounding, he skidded to a halt, the breath shoving in and out of his lungs so hard it felt as if his chest was trying to turn itself inside out. Agony scored him as he dodged around the skeletal remains of ancient harvesting equipment, although he was neither cut nor burned. Rounding a stack of drums that filled the barn with the thick reek of machine oil, he crouched down, thin shoulders taut as he lifted the trapdoor in the wall, put there instead of a regular door in Prohibition days to hide the fact that Grandpa Dexter had a moonshine still situated practically on top of the storm cellar. Ducking through, he held his breath against the instant need to gag. Crawling into "the pit" — a windowless shed tacked on to the rear of the barn, with a storm cellar beneath — always made him want to throw up. A shudder of reaction swept him as he leaned against the trapdoor, preventing it from closing fully and shutting him into the dark before he'd had a chance to switch on the flashlight he'd stolen from the kitchen. Tears ached in the back of his throat and hazed his vision as he fumbled at the button. His fingers, which were normally deft, were shaking and, instead of turning on, the torch popped from his grip, hit the dirt floor and rolled. He grabbed for it, lost his balance and sprawled forward, skinning the palms of his hands. Simultaneously, the trapdoor banged shut behind him, plunging him into darkness. A sharp, metallic rap told him that the flashlight had rolled through the open cellar hatch and hit the rungs of the ladder. Raw panic spasmed, making him feel physically sick. If he took the flashlight back to his stepmother, Eloise, broken... The flashlight hit the floor with a clunk and, miraculously, turned on. Light washed up through the hatch, turning the pitch-blackness soupy. Relief flooded Etienne. He had to find Charles, but there was no way he could go any further without a light, even knowing that his twin was down here somewhere. Holding his breath against the acrid smell that permeated the wood floor, he got to his feet and started down the ladder, gripping each wooden rung with his bare toes and keeping his gaze fixed on the burning incandescence below. Even though he could breathe, he felt like a diver descending. Logically he knew that the only difference between down here and outside was the lack of light, but a part of him still wanted to bolt. The heavy blackness reminded him of the Lassiter River after a storm, the water thick with mud and so murky it was like swimming in black tea. Once he had the flashlight in his hand he felt steadier. He would never admit it to either his stepmother or his brothers, but he had always been scared of the dark, and not just ordinary scared. He would rather be beaten black and blue than be locked down here. In the old days, when the Dexter family had had money, the cellar had been used to store blocks of ice in summer and apples in winter, but after the original shed that had been built on top of the cellar had blown down, nobody much had bothered with it. Nowadays the only things the cellar stored on a regular basis were worms and mice and a whole lot of darkness. He swung the light around, orienting himself. The walls were lined with stone blocks, apart from one section at the rear, as large as a small doorway, where the blocks had been systematically removed and placed to one side. He aimed the beam down the tunnel his twin brother had spent the summer excavating. Distantly, he could hear scraping sounds. As he started down the narrow tunnel, Etienne's eyes widened with shock when he saw how much Charles had done. The last time he'd ventured into the cellar, Charles had only just begun digging; now the tunnel stretched out, straight as an arrow until it hit a boulder and took an abrupt turn to the left. He rounded the corner and saw Charles