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Sa to collect her wits That hat had happened to the women who had owned the clothes in the other room Pryde had killed the with the clothes Was her mother one of the victims? Was her skull in one of the clay pots?

Once she had the ithal to look up again, she noticed a bulletin board over the worktable Tacked to the board were photographs As with the clothes, the photos dated from different eras The ones at the top were in black-and-white, the wo into the camera They wore bulky dresses like the hoop skirt she had found The farther down Samantha went on the board, the fewer clothes the women wore and the more they smiled

Samantha stood up to examine the pictures closer As the clothes had indicated, all of the woe, some probably more than three hundred pounds They all had dark hair and dark eyes and ranged from thirty to perhaps fifty years old In most of the pictures the woman had at least one child with her, if not raphs

He killed ain Most likely because he resented his own mother Subconsciously he seeks out victims who look like her to try and destroy the , so he would need another victim

She followed the lines of pictures until she came to the last one She sucked in a deep breath when she saw herself In the picture she was about the age she was noearing a pink T-shirt with a sunset depicted on it and the words, "San Diego, California" Her mother had an arm around her shoulders She looked allossy black hair tied into a ponytail and the same bronze skin She wore the same outfit Samantha had found in the cellar, which confirmed Samantha's worst fears

Her father stood on the other side of her, looking a little older than in her dream but otherwise the same He was a heavyset ht blue eyes, and blond hair that had begun to thin In the background were palm trees and whitish sand Apparently Pryde hadn't taken the tiraph before he died in the Fountain of Youth

She took the tack from the picture so she could hold it in both hands A scenario played out in her one in for the kill But Samantha must have heard him and tried to interfere So he had taken both of them back to Eternity He kept Moiven her so her ten years old and erasing her memory Meanwhile Pryde had killed Samantha's mother and disposed of her