Release me. Now. Or I ****** kill everyone in this room." The man in the middle—the one who couldn't take his eyes off me—looked at all of us like we were crazy. "I don't know what you're talking about." I wasn't the least bit surprised when the woman lunged for my throat and I instinctively grabbed her wrist and shoved her off me. "Where's my wife?" I demanded. "Where's Emma?" The woman stared down at her hand as if it were covered in something sticky and disgusting. "I don't know any Emma." I was on her in a second, gripping her throat and slamming her against the wall. Then again. And again. And again. Until she didn't lie to me anymore. "No! She's the woman I married." "What woman?" I asked the guy with the gun. "No." I shook my head and let go of the woman, then pulled away from her and lifted my shirt to check my back. There was a slight scrape there, and a few more along my shoulder, but none of the blood and oozing injuries I remembered from the plane crash. As the woman slid down the wall to a sitting position, I asked, "Did you tell him to shoot me with regular bullets?" "No," she said, her voice thick with barely contained fear. I looked at her like she was a complete lunatic. Then the man with the gun, said, "We couldn't risk them coming after you in a helicopter. It would be too obvious." "Let's get out of here." The pilot turned on his radio and spoke to no one, telling us there was a fire in the main power unit. His words brought me back to the present. "Why are you doing this?" The two men exchanged a glance, then looked at me like I was a complete idiot. Before I could process what was happening, the woman shot out of the wall where she'd been hiding. She grabbed one of the small boxes and began to scream at the pilot, spitting out a bunch of words in English. The pilot's head whipped around and he began to respond to her. I lunged for the top of the box, but it was too late. She hit the reset button on a detonator box. A high-pitched scream filled the air. When the light turned from yellow to red and back again, I jumped toward the woman, pulling her off the ground. I'd just hooked my arms around her, squeezed her to me, and yanked her toward the door when it imploded into a thousand pieces. The ceiling, the walls, the ground—everything blew away in a blinding wave of noise, light, and destruction. The guy with the gun—the guy who said he didn't know Emma—dropped to the ground and covered his head. And that's when I knew I was in deep trouble. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT MY THROAT HAD BEEN SLIT in two places and the blood from my wounds had covered most of my body, but it didn't matter. There was no way for me to fight off this new guy, and I knew he wasn't going to stop until I was dead. In fact, he wasn't even waiting for me to make a move. He raised his gun, aimed, and fired before I could move a muscle. I screamed as the bullet struck the ground a millisecond before I slammed into my enemy. Everything blurred around me, spinning crazily as we continued to fall. Then we stopped. No, I hadn't gone through the ground. I'd been hit by a missile. I didn't know where we were when we landed. There was no light, no sky. Just pitch-black, a blanket of nothingness. We landed hard on top of a person, and my hands began digging into the wet suit and hair to pull us apart. Then the man landed on top of me, and we both ended up on the ground. "Get up!" he shouted. He kicked me. I rolled over, trying to stand, but my knees refused to bend and my ankles had turned to rubber, a rubber that was slowly melting and dripping into the fire from below us. I closed my eyes and started to scream. If I went like this, I might as well not exist. My attacker stood and stomped on my head a few times. Then he got close to my face and screamed, "Tell me where your wife is!" My eyes snapped open. I looked at him wide-eyed. And realized he wasn't a he. He was a she. And she was the one who'd attacked me when I'd tried to get away from the pilot in the bathroom. Ava. It made no sense, though, because I'd told them the woman was in love with the guy who'd helped them escape the cave. Her brow furrowed in confusion. "You don't know her?" "No," I said. "She worked in the kitchen. I don't know her." Her face twisted into a scowl. "What did she do? Help you get away? Or hurt you?" "Both," I answered. "She's betrayed us." A moment of silence stretched between us. "Did he have a gun? A knife?" she asked. "Gun," I answered. "Knife." The ground below us began to shake. It looked like there was an earthquake or a small earthquake with an epicenter that was right below us. The shaking stopped. "I don't care if we're caught. We will keep going until we find her. And once we find her..." She looked away, then turned back to me and smiled. "We will kill her." "I hate her," she continued as if she hadn't been interrupted. I couldn't speak. I couldn't say anything in her defense. What had she done? What was she involved in? What was I doing here in Africa? I was about to get an answer to all of my questions when the floor beneath us started to go dark, then light, then dark again. When the brightness faded, a dozen men and women were standing in the room. They were armed with assault rifles and rocket launchers, all aimed at us. The woman smiled at me again and walked away from me, waving her arms. "It was her. She's behind all of this!" She must have said something similar to the others, because all eyes were focused on me. I knew I was about to die. "No, it wasn't me. It was..." I choked on my words. My body tensed up. I clenched my teeth. My mouth opened, but I couldn't say the words. I tried to breathe. I wanted to say it, to make them believe me, but I couldn't make my mouth move. My eyes moved to the people standing before me. It was my new family. The kind of family I had lost a year and a half ago. They looked like my family, except they had jet black skin and wore shiny, bright clothing. I was certain they could hear my thoughts. I wanted to yell. I wanted to run. I wanted to escape. But it was too late. I'd just had my last meal and was on the verge of death, so whatever happened next was beyond my control. The woman turned and was about to say something to the others when I heard a male voice—a male that wasn't from this time period. It was a man. A man who'd been stabbed through the heart by a maniacal assassin. His life was over. He'd died. His eyes widened, blinked a few times, and then closed. He was no longer here. He'd fallen into another realm. I'd killed him. I screamed in pain, then opened my eyes and realized I was no longer dying. The light was fading from my eyes, and I was back in the present, sprawled on the floor and looking up at the ceiling. But there was a man above me, and I watched him step into the room, a gun in his hands and an evil smile on his face. Ava's brother, the one I was supposed to be in love with. The man who'd tried to kill us on the balcony, only to fall instead. He'd died in my arms. I shook my head, and my eyes widened as I realized what I'd done. I could feel the pain now, pounding like a drum inside my head, filling every crevice. That's when I felt the familiar presence of someone I loved. Emma. The memory of her gentle face, her beautiful smile, eased through the pain and brought tears to my eyes. She was here. She was alive. And she loved me. My body tingled as if I'd been lying in the sun, but now it was over. There was nothing to feel. I could make out the outline of the hole in the ceiling and the outlines of five bodies that surrounded us.