“Avebury,” Guinevere sighed, pushing her tinted wire rim spectacles closer to her eyes.  “Why would anyone want to come to this dreadful place?”

She examined the Neolithic stone towering above her, thinking about how greatly it resembled her present dress.

All those years spent in an orphanage might save her life today.  All those years wishing to be anywhere but in the same room with a nun holding a ruler.  All those years learning when it was prudent to be elsewhere or when she could shrink into the background, unobtrusive as the wall paper, to survive another day.

She’d left the orphanage at 18 to work as a kitchen helper and married exactly 3 months and 2 days later.  She didn’t understand why her boss had said, “Marry that guy and you’re jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”

Sinister ghosts of the past; that’s why she hated Avebury!  These stones reminded her of the two years in hell that defined her marriage.  At the orphanage, she’d learned to stay out of the way, but she had to learn how to avoid the attacks of a man skilled in mental and physical torture.  Understanding the innuendo’s of his face and the intonations in his words had saved her from death too many times.

Death watched her from the trees, reading her lips with binoculars.  Death watched her back from a museum and…

Footsteps moved toward her.  Out in the open with only these blasted stones for cover.  Not a good place for a confrontation.

She turned at an acceptable speed – careful — not too fast.  Trouble wrapped in pleated pants, a cardigan sweater, and suave Fedora.  If he weren’t a threat she might have passed along her room number at that dreadful 16th century inn her supervisor had booked just for this occasion.

Damn if he didn’t look just like Sterling Hayden! His skills as a tracker far exceeded most.  Beauty and brilliance.  The children he’d produce…but that was Nazi talk…

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