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  Mia screams. “Emory!”

  I straddle the woman’s midsection and start to pummel her with my fists, first one, then the other, hitting her in the face and chest like someone who has gone mad. She’s stronger than I would have thought, and she struggles, pushing at me until I fall over backward.

  I sense Mia behind me, scrambling, and then look up to find her standing, her feet shoulder-width apart, her arms stretched out with the gun pointed directly at the woman now on top of me.

  “Get. Off. Her.” Mia’s voice is steel, unrecognizable.

  The woman looks up, snags her flinty gaze with Mia’s. And then she laughs. “We both know you don’t have what it takes.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” Mia says softly now. “This trap you’ve made here. You’re a monster. A coward. You don’t give your victims a chance for a fair fight. Anyone can lay a trap to catch someone who isn’t expecting it. How do you think that makes you superior to anything? You don’t have a heart. So how can you be human? You aren’t.”

  “Mia. Give me the gun,” I say. “Please. Hand me the gun.”

  Mia shakes her head. “No. Get up, Emory. Move away.”

  I get to my feet slowly, holding out one hand. “Give me the gun, Mia.”

  “No,” she says again. “I won’t let you carry this one. It’s up to me to save myself. You gave me the chance. And now, for every other girl, animal, or God knows who you’ve preyed on, this is for them.”

  She points the gun directly at the woman’s chest and pulls the trigger.

  Knox

  “Do not be afraid; our fate

  Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”

  ―Dante Alighieri

  COMING OUT OF a hazy stupor, he hears the gunshot, his eyes trying to open themselves, even as his brain orders them to stay closed. He fights the pull back to unconsciousness, finally forcing his eyes to open. Nothing is clear at first, a cloudy haze at the edges of his vision. He hears himself groan, pain stabbing through his side. He presses his hand to the spot, stares at his palm now covered with blood.

  He tries to remember where he is, what had happened. It comes to him in an abrupt jolt of clarity. He’s scrambling to get up then, stumbling to his feet, swiping his gaze left, then right. He stumbles over to the bathroom door which is now closed, bangs hard with his fist. “Grace! Emory! Are you in there?”

  He hears soft crying. It’s the girl. “Grace, is Emory with you?”

  “No! She went to find Mia.”

  “The senator? Where is he?”

  “He left with the other guy. Sergio.”

  “You stay in there. Do not come out until I come back for you, okay?”

  “Yes,” she says, crying outright now.

  Knox heads for the door, nearly falling into the hallway. At the end of the corridor, he sees Emory standing with a gun in her hand. On the floor, the woman who owns the hotel. Clearly, dead.

  Bracing his hand against the wall, Knox makes his way slowly toward them. “Emory. Put down the gun.”

  He can see that she is frozen with shock. Blood is oozing from a wound on her shoulder.

  The girl beside her looks stunned.

  “I shot her,” the girl says, looking at him with eyes now brimming with tears.

  “Are you both okay?” he asks.

  “Yes,” Emory says, her gaze dropping to the bloodstain on his side. “You’re hurt.”

  “So are you,” he says.

  He fumbles for the phone in his back pocket.

  “Let me.” She takes it from him and taps the screen. A moment later, she says, “Yes, we need an ambulance at the Hotel California. There’s been a shooting. Please send the police too.”

  Emory

  “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

  ―Rumi

  IN THE MONTHS following that awful night at the Hotel California, I put my focus on Mia and getting her the things she will need to feel safe again, among them the most highly recommended trauma therapist I can find.

  Grace is in therapy as well. Mia talks with her on the phone for long stretches of time, and I know that they will have a lifetime bond that no one else will be able to truly understand.

  For the first couple of months, Mia goes to therapy three days a week. She can’t sleep at night, and it isn’t unusual that she climbs in bed with me sometime after midnight. I don’t mind though. Each time is a reminder to me that she is safe.

  She decides to put college off for a year, and I make sure that we spend all my time off from work finding memorable things to do together.

  In the initial weeks after she’s told the police everything she knows, I agonize over whether charges will be brought against Mia for the death of that horrible woman. But after hours and hours of questioning, the police declare the shooting self defense, and Mia is left to focus on getting life back to normal.

  And so we spend hours on the couch with Pounce, watching movies that offer little more than an opportunity to laugh and be somewhere else for a bit.

  Mia loves the chickens, naming them Emma and Esther. Pounce is less fond of them, but with a good bit of encouragement from us, finally gives his approval to their presence in the form of completely ignoring them. We drive to the hardware store one morning and buy materials to make them a house in our back yard. Luckily, the fence we already have in place is high enough to keep them inside.

  On another day, we decide to get out of the house and drive to Poplar Spring, an animal sanctuary in Poolesville, Maryland. It’s an hour or so away, and we arrive in the middle of the afternoon when the cows and goats are lazing under the trees in front of the main house, napping and looking as close to a glimpse of what heaven will be like as I can imagine.

  “Do you remember when we came here before?” I ask Mia, looking out at the pond where dozens of Canadian geese and white ducks are dunking for bugs.

  “We found that goose with the broken wing,” Mia says. “All the other places you called said she would have to be put to sleep. But you wouldn’t accept that, so you kept calling places until you found this one. They said she could live her life here with the other ducks, and she would be protected, so not being able to fly really wouldn’t matter.”

  I smile at the memory. “She was so happy when we put her in with the others.”

  Mia nods, her gaze on the ducks. “I guess we all need to be with those who get us, don’t we?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “We do.”

  Mia is quiet for a moment, staring out at an older horse grazing near the fence. “What you did for me is what this place does for the animals that come here. You wouldn’t give up until you found me. I knew you wouldn’t. Emory, I’m so sorry for all the times I made you think I didn’t appreciate you. I was horrible to you. I was awful. Can you ever forgive me?”

  I feel a great rush of love for my sister and at the same time, gratitude that I had not given up on finding her.

  “Mia, don’t,” I say. “You were just a girl trying to grow up. And I’ve been a sister who didn’t always handle things the way I should have.”

  “You were there for me when Mama and Daddy died. If you hadn’t been, I would have had nowhere to go. You gave up your life to take care of me. And I threw that back in your face. I thought about that so many times while I was in that nightmare, praying I would have the chance to make it up to you. I spent so much time acting like I didn’t need you, Em. The truth is I always have. No one will ever be for me what you’ve been for me.”

  I reach out and put my hand on top of hers. “I don’t know why horrible things happen in this life. What I do know is that we need to find a way to use what we go through to somehow put good back into the world.”

  “I want to,” Mia says. “I don’t want to let evil determine what I end up being.”

  “It won’t,” I say. “You’re too strong for that.”

  Mia looks off across the pasture, a cloud crossing her face. “Do you think they’ll ever find Sergio?”<
br />
  Just the name sends a familiar chill through me. “I don’t know.”

  “Probably not, right?”

  I’d like to assure her that he will be found and punished for abducting Mia and Grace, but I can’t do that. If Senator Hagan could get away with escaping to the Ivory Coast, then wasn’t it true that bad people could get away with a lot of things? “Maybe one day he’ll be found,” I say.

  “Sometimes, I’m afraid he’ll find me again.”

  I reach out and squeeze her hand. “You’re safe, Mia. The Hotel California has been closed down. The other girls found there have been returned to their families. And everyone knowingly involved, arrested. That evil place doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “My logical brain knows that, but I guess fear isn’t logical.”

  “With time, it will fade.”

  “Will it?” she asks in a soft voice.

  Again, I want to reassure her, but settle for, “I hope so.”

  We spend a wonderful day there at the sanctuary, holding chickens and turkeys, playing with baby pigs, rubbing the cows and horses. In most cases, the animals who come there have endured terrible lives, abuse, neglect, starvation. But they have been brought to this wonderful place to heal.

  And sitting there on the grass of a green pasture, I want to believe that with time, the two of us will begin to heal as well.

  Emory

  “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

  —Søren Kierkegaard

  THE TRUTH IS I thought I would never hear from him again.

  In the first weeks after we were both released from the hospital, I’d let myself hope that he would call. Reach out to say how he was doing, see how I was doing. But the days and months went by, one after the other, and I began to let the hope fade, slip away like threads of sunlight sliding from the horizon at dusk.

  And then, out of the blue, late one night when I couldn’t sleep, I received a text from him.

  I’ve been working on me. I think I might finally be someone worthy of giving a chance.

  I haven’t stopped thinking about you, and it’s been nearly a year.

  If that’s where you are too, meet me at this address on Friday.

  I hope you’ll come.

  And so, here I am, stepping off the boat that has taken me from Saint Martin over to Anguilla, a place I’ve never been before, a beautiful island in the Caribbean, my heart pounding so hard that I can feel it against the wall of my chest.

  At first, it had simply seemed too insane an idea to even consider. But I’d shown the text to Mia, and she had said I would be crazy not to go. And so, less than forty-eight hours later, here I am.

  The driver of the boat helps carry my luggage into the customs office just up from the pier. He leaves me with a smiling, young woman with beautiful skin and a lilt in her voice who welcomes me to Anguilla. The process is quick by United States customs standards, and I walk outside of the building within minutes, pulling my luggage. An older man with graying hair is holding up a sign with my name on it. I lift a hand in recognition, and he smiles, taking my suitcase and pulling it toward a white van in the parking lot.

  “Would you like a bottle of water, miss?” he asks, sliding into the driver’s seat. “It’ll take about twenty minutes to get there.”

  “Yes, please. Thank you.” I sit back and take in the sights outside the window. Incredible resort hotels are interspersed with small, stucco-type houses where goats mow the front yards. As we go, the houses are fewer and farther between, and in just under twenty minutes, the driver turns the van onto an unpaved road. At the top of a small knoll, I can see the ocean in the distance. Within a couple of minutes, he makes another turn and stops the van at a house that sits just off the beach.

  It’s not enormous, but it is charming with bright pink stucco walls. Beautiful flowers in an abundance of colors climb the frame surrounding the front door.

  The driver gets out and walks around to my side of the van. “The fare has already been taken care of, miss,” he says. “I hope you enjoy your stay in Anguilla.”

  “Thank you so much,” I say, and then watch him back out of the driveway and pull away. The front door of the house opens, and there stands Knox, tan and more gorgeous than I remember. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and some kind of hip-looking swim trunks.

  “You came,” he says.

  “I did,” I manage, unable to censor the smile on my face. I’m happy to see him, and I see no point in trying to act cool about it.

  He walks toward me, and we stand there for a moment, just looking at each other, the seconds ticking by. I take him in as fully as he takes me in. And I see in his eyes the same thing I’m feeling, pure gladness to rest my eyes on him. I realize now that memory had softened my grief at the thought of never seeing him again by letting me forget how completely beautiful he is.

  “How are you?” I ask, my voice barely making the words audible.

  “Much better now that you’re here,” he says.

  I smile then, because I don’t know how to censor myself. “It’s really good to see you, Knox.”

  “It’s amazingly good to see you,” he says.

  We look at each other for a few long moments, and then he adds, “I was glad you said yes. I thought there was a very good chance that you wouldn’t.”

  “I considered it,” I admit. “It’s a little out of my comfort zone, but I’ve kind of spent the last year redefining that, so it seemed like a good opportunity to put it into practice.”

  He laughs, softly, and then reaches out to brush the back of his hand across my cheek. And I swear the current of feeling that ripples through me is like nothing I’ve ever felt. I close my eyes for a moment, letting the feeling settle in, and then when I’m looking at him again, I say, “Whatever you’ve been doing has been good for you.”

  “Just coming to terms,” he says, “with the things I can’t change and figuring out who I’m going to be now that I’ve accepted that.”

  “Who are you going to be?” I ask, meeting his gaze and holding it with the desire to see and hear his answer.

  “Just a man who wants to live,” he says, “and spend that life with someone who wants the same. Who can accept me with all my shortcomings, and my desire to do better, be better. I’m hoping that someone might be you, Emory.”

  My heart beats a note of pure gladness. And now, I touch him, my palm curving to his cheek. I lean forward, stretch up on my tiptoes, plant a soft kiss on his mouth. “That’s why I’m here,” I say.

  He takes my suitcase, without letting go of my hand. We walk through the front door of the house. The main living area faces a white sand beach.

  “Come on,” he says, leading me through glass pane doors. “I want to show you something.”

  The sight before us takes my breath away. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. The sand is a glistening white against an aqua sea.

  “How did you find this?” I ask, tearing my gaze away from the beautiful sight to meet his.

  “Basically luck,” he says. “It’s an investment property owned by a family out of England. They’re currently in a squabble over whether to develop it or not. So far, the opposition is winning, and it’s remaining as is for now. “I agreed to stay here for year, basically as a caretaker.”

  “Nice work, if you can get it.”

  “Nicer now that you’re here,” he says, smiling.

  “About that,” I say.

  “Yeah, about that.” He steps closer, loops his arm around my waist and reels me in a bit. “Hello.”

  I look up at him, smiling. “Hello.”

  “Confession?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I thought your Dr. Maverick might have ended up winning you over with his bedside manner.”

  “He was never my Dr. Maverick. And there was only one problem with him.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

  “He wasn’t you.”

  He
smiles, looks undeniably pleased. “Were you this beautiful before, or am I like that guy who’s been living out in the desert too long, and you’re just a mirage?”

  I feel the heat bloom in my cheeks. All of a sudden, I feel sixteen again, realizing the boy I’ve been crushing on likes me. “I think I’m real.”

  “So you are more beautiful?”

  I shake my head, glancing down under a bout of ridiculous shyness.

  He tips my chin up, and I am forced to meet his eyes. “You are. I don’t think my memory even did you justice.”

  “You say that to all the girls?”

  He swings a glance left and right. “What girls?”

  I laugh.

  “There is something I’ve been thinking about, here all by my lonesome.”

  “What is that?“ I ask softly.

  “What it would be like to kiss you. Really kiss you.”

  I feel the breath catch in my throat. My heart thumps once, hard. I feel a boldness I’ve never felt before. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

  The heat in his gaze ignites something inside me. I slip my arms around his neck, and he lowers his mouth to mine. We kiss, and I all but dissolve in his arms. I’ve never been kissed like this, and all I know is that I want it to go on forever.

  When he pulls back, he stares down at me, brushes the back of his hand across my cheek. “Not even my imagination lived up to that.”

  “Mine either,” I admit. We study each other, taking our time, and then I say, “Can I tell you something?”

  He nods, rubbing his thumb against my lower lip.

  I close my eyes for an instant and then open them to meet his gaze full force. “This past year, I’ve realized that life is to be lived. The desire I once had to make something of myself, become someone my parents would have ended up being proud of feels like something a little different these days, a need to really live, experience moments and places I know I will look back on one day and be grateful for having done.”