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Page 133
She had to turn her thoughts in other directions.
She walked beneath the trees to gather more gooseberries . . . and then she heard it.
She froze, nearly dropping her bucket. Surely she'd been mistaken. The sound had seemed so low, after all, that the noise of the rushing stream almost hid it.
But then she heard it again. A low, painful cry.
It sounded like a human moan.
Couldn't be. She looked wildly around. Weren't there animal cries nearly indistinguishable from human?
She heard it a third time. It seemed to come from downstream, from the opposite direction from the way René had gone, from somewhere in the darkly ominous forest.
The noise could be a trap, luring her away from the stream. But why? If anyone were after her, it would be easy enough to snatch her. Of course, she'd scream for René.
Why wait? "René," she yelled.
"Mademoiselle!" She saw him run around the stream's bend; he must have been just out of sight. "Is something not right?"
"Yes. I heard strange sounds." She pointed. "That way."
René caught up with her, then stomped off in the direction she'd indicated.
Slowly, carefully, her breathing so slow that she felt lightheaded, she picked her way after him.
René practically stumbled over the noise's source. "Mon dieu!" he cried, then knelt.
A woman lay on the leaf-strewn ground. She was battered and bloody.
"Oh, no!" Mariah cried as she fell to the twig-prickly ground beside René, then shot her hand over her mouth. What if the woman's attackers were still around?
"Are you all right?" she whispered to the unconscious figure. Stupid question. The woman didn't move. As René touched her head, Mariah felt her neck for a pulse, as she'd seen countless times in the movies.
She was alive.
At home, Mariah would have run to the nearest house and dialed 911. An ambulance would have been dispatched

 
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