Prologue It was then that I realised something weird was going on. I was suddenly being shaken from side to side, unable to breathe. My scalp was being banged against the headboard; my duvet on the floor. My arms and legs went everywhere, and I could feel a tight grasp around my ankles. My pillow suddenly fell to the floor, and the shaking stopped. 1. Brave I stood in front of the house, my car behind me, parked on a double yellow line. I knew I didn't have long before a traffic warden appeared, so I waved goodbye to the house, put my handbag on the passenger seat, and climbed into my Volkswagen Beetle. I drove off my road, with the moving van about ten minutes ahead of me. I turned on the radio, and switched to BBC Radio Two. "And finally, another two murders have taken place in the small town of Coasta, in Southern England. Sources show that these two people were attacked by a gang, who carried weapons such as a meat cleaver, and a pistol. "Witnesses tell us that the gang approached the victims in a calm manner, then, when the couple refused to go with them, one man, aged twenty-three, held the couple at gun point. This has been BBC Radio Two News, with Rowena Doherty." I sat in my car, bewildered by it all. There had been a total of twenty people killed in two months! I decided to ignore the news, as I had just moved out of that horrible town, and I was never going back. Ever. I pulled into a motorway service station, and called the moving van driver just to let him know. I walked into the building, and headed straight for the Costa Coffee shop in the far corner. Everybody in the services seemed to be scared of something, though I couldn't tell what it was they were scared of. It's probably just that gang, I thought, nothing to worry about.