Silencing Sarah

"M.L. Cordle has a lifelong love affair with the glorious mountains of Virginia, and the vivid characters who inhabit those hills. She
descends from a long line of plucky Scottish, Irish and English settlers. However, this is just the diving board from which she wrote
SILENCING SARAH. Ms. Cordle's debut novel is a thrilling hayride of a story, plucked from her own dreamscape, filled with
romance, secrets and insight into the world beyond. I highly recommend this novel, from a Virginia native, who writes passionately
and personally about a place she loves, where her own dreams were born."

Adriana Trigiani - Author of Big Stone Gap

When Madison Owens left her rural hometown in southwest Virginia to pursue her goal of becoming a writer, she never imagined that she would become a
best-selling novelist and marry the man of her dreams. But she soon learns that dreams can turn into nightmares, and when something seems too good to
be true, it usually is. Divorced, heartbroken, and suffering from a major case of writer’s block, Madison returns to Virginia with plans to renovate her
grandparent’s rustic cabin and create the sanctuary she so desperately needs.

Will McGomery is a man in hiding. After his wife’s suicide and the suspicious drowning death of a young local girl and family friend, Sarah Chambers, Will
wants nothing more than to be left alone. The plot of land and cabin he purchased from the Owens family seemed to be the ideal place to escape the
demons of his past, to live a quiet, simple life of solitude, and to silence the ghost who haunts him. But when a nosy, beautiful author shows up on his land
claiming it as her own and stubbornly refusing to leave until he answers her questions about the past, Will knows that his quiet existence is at an end.

Although she knows she should heed Will’s warnings and stay out of his life, Madison can’t escape her growing attraction to the mysterious recluse. Her
writer’s imagination is awakened by his story, just as her body is awakened by his touch. In her determination to sort out the truth from the lies, Madison
wades into a quagmire of painful secrets, where no one is above suspicion and betrayal lies around every corner. Thoroughly embroiled in the mystery of
Sarah Chamber’s death and her growing obsession with Will McGomery, Madison will invest everything—her heart and her life—in her quest to silence Sarah.

CHAPTER 1

Will had no clue why a woman would be on his property, much less caught in his trap, but he never questioned the voice in his head. Sarah Chambers’
whisper was both pervasive at times, and accurate.

Steel trap. At the spring.

He cut across the short swath of sun baked ground between his wood-working shop and his house, hearing nothing beyond the screaming in the woods, and
the ghostly Sarah whose feathery words continued to float over his fevered conscience like a caress from the grave.

Time has come.

He ate up the distance between the yard and the woods, his long strides carrying him toward the stream and whatever he was about to find there.

How long had this woman been crying for help?

His fear pushed him to run faster, to ignore the burning in his lungs. With his own racket of wood saws filling the better part of the last hour, she could have
been out there in the brush for at least as long as it took a person to bleed to death. Her voice was raw, hoarse from screaming.

He ran headlong into a flock of chickens and was impervious to the distress he caused them. Plowing through the flurry of feathers and frantic squawking, he
fled the lawn, jumping the split rail fence that bordered the woods. He was soon swallowed by the shade of looming poplars and enveloped by the smell of
pulpy undergrowth.

Under the canopy of the young but towering timber it was noticeably cooler, but the change in temperature had no effect upon his body. A vicious chokehold
of dread, and its accompanying adrenaline rush, had his sweat glands laboring like the pistons on an old steam engine.

He spotted her as soon as he stepped into the small clearing that comprised the spring box. She was on the ground. She was in the trap.

Sacrifice.

He skidded to a halt, his legs refusing to carry him any further. He took a step back, willed Sarah to be quiet.

The woman writhing on the ground was small. Clad in camouflage pants and a tank top, a spray of freckles across her nose, she might have been a child.
Wet ropes of auburn hair plastered her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes, dark and glittering with fear, were like deep pools of misgiving.

The trap had caught her just above her boot, and the brutal steel mouth of it had sawed through her pants and skin. Blood saturated the earth tone fabric, the
crimson stain spreading through it and into the white of her sock. Dread tightened his throat.

"Help me." It was a raw gasp that escaped the narrow white column of her throat. "Please!"

Sacrifice.

He took another step backward.

He couldn’t help the woman. He shouldn’t get near her. Why was Sarah doing this to him? Placing him in an impossible situation? He had to get away from
here, away from the strident pleas for help. He would find someone else to get her out of his trap. Anyone else.

She bellowed for him to come back, fear and rage building in her voice with each subsequent expulsion of words, but he didn’t slow down as he ran toward
his cabin. He didn’t stop until he saw his wife standing on the porch, her arms crossed over her breasts like tightly folded wings.

Her brows drew together in a fierce glare. "I can’t find my name in the book, Will. I can’t."

Though he didn’t want to hear this, wanted to turn around and run back into the sheltering woods, he didn’t.

He wanted to face the woman in the trap even less.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Will McGomery opened his eyes, blinking away the dream’s sticky tendrils.

He groped in the dark for his blanket, found it on the floor and yanked it over his chilled body. His bedroom had the semi-dark quality of pond water. Staring
through it, he thought of Sarah Chambers. Wondered if the cold, murky light was all she had seen when dying.

Huddled beneath the blanket, he fought the tremors racking his body and ordered himself back to sleep. But when he closed his eyes, he could see only
one thing: Marshy Owens’ daughter in the woods.

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Hmmm...

Whoever has posted used copies of SILENCING SARAH for sale on Borders Marketplace will make me very jealous if they sell my
book for what they want. $103.95? They must have been impressed with my first publication. LOL Not sure who they think will buy a
copy for that, but it's hilarious! Thanks for making me look like a celebrity novelist. LOL