After I finished moving all of our clothes and anything else we might need from the master bedroom to the guest bedroom, I went out into the main cabin to find Adrian. It was light out now and it looked like the auto pilot was set because Adrian wasn't at the helm. In fact, he wasn't anywhere in the main cabin.

I walked out onto the deck and felt a twinge of sadness when I saw him. He was laying on one of the deck chairs with a blanket over him. His face was still covered in blood, and as I approached his eyes slowly opened.

"You look like hell," I said, brushing his hair off his forehead. "Why don't you go take a shower and get in bed? I got the guest bedroom all fixed up."

"I need to talk to you, Brooklyn."

"About what?"

"About you going away somewhere for a while."

"What do you mean?"

"I think you need to go and live somewhere away from me. Where you'll be safe. I can't keep you safe, Brooklyn. I've tried but I don't have the recourses they do. I can't fight them and I won't let them have you."

The sea was still relatively calm, but the boat rocked a little, which caused an empty glass to roll out from under Adrian's deck chair. I picked it up and held it in my hand, watching the legs of the remaining residue of whiskey run down the side of the glass.

"Adrian, you've been drinking and you're upset. You're not thinking straight—"

"I am thinking straight. I've been thinking the same goddamned thing for weeks now and it's just this morning I've come to the realization that there is no other option. If they come back … if they kill me, Brooklyn, do you know what is going to happen to you?"

"Yes," I said as I looked out across the gray water.

The sky was overcast and at the horizon it was almost impossible to see the separation between the dark cloud cover in the sky and the charcoal gray of the water. It seemed so long ago now when I was taken from in front of the NYU library and woke up in the pitch black, barred dungeon where Adrian's family kept the girls. I knew if the man that bought me got his hands on me I would be back in the same situation, only that time in the caverns under the villa might be the fairytale version. It's entirely possible I could wind up much worse off than that.

"Someone is going to take you and hide you away, and no one will know you are there. If I'm dead no one will come looking for you, Brooklyn. And you will never get away. Ever."

I looked back at Adrian as tears filled my eyes. I knew he was right, but I couldn't stand the idea of leaving him.

"I don't want to go anywhere without you, Adrian. Why can't we go together?"

"I'm going to try and hide you. And then I'll switch boats and take off on my own. Hopefully they'll follow me and I can throw them off. Then maybe after six months or so things will have calmed down a little."

"Six months! No, Adrian! I don't want to be away from you for six months. Where would I go?"

"You can stay with Gina. I already talked to her and she said she'd be happy to have you. There's no connection between you and her, not that they can trace. Grady knows you have a friend you work with, but he doesn't know her name or where she lives. He knew you met her in Manado, but for all he knows she lives in Indonesia, not Italy. It's the perfect solution, Brooklyn. It's not only the perfect solution, it's the only solution."

"But why? Why can't you come too?"

"I don't want to risk it. And I don't want Gina any more involved than she already is. If I can get you to her, she'll take you on her private jet and you'll be safe, Brooklyn. All I want is for you to be safe."

"But I want you to be safe too, Adrian. I don't want you to be out here all alone."

"What I'm hoping is that, if they are watching, they'll see you leave but they won't be prepared to follow you. Gina is going to use rentals, a hired plane and car, so that they can't be traced back to her. Even if they can track the plane to Italy they won't be able to track her once she's landed. If I can pull this off you'll disappear and they won't have any idea where to look."

"So you think your father's men are going to know where we are no matter where we go? Even if we did this together?"

Adrian didn't say anything for a moment. He elevated the chair so he was sitting up, and he straddled it with his legs, resting his elbows on his knees with his head in his hands.

"It's not just my father who's been following us."

"But you said you recognized the man in the bedroom."

"Yes, he worked for my father, but … I got another email from Lucas. Last night after I dumped the bodies I couldn't stop thinking about his email and why he sent it. I couldn't figure out if he was taunting me or what the hell kind of game he was playing. So I emailed him back and asked him that exact question.

"He replied pretty quickly and told me there was no joke. That he knew something had happened because one of his men let him know he had seen some communication on their servers that made him suspicious. Lucas figured it was me trying to get information and he was curious about what was going on with us, so he asked our father what was happening with the search.

He told Lucas someone else had found us in Manado. That his men were there and they watched the whole shootout go down, but they weren't part of it. Someone else has been following us all along. I suspected it but I wasn't sure, although I am now. It might have even been this other person who left the note in our hotel room in Manila."

"Do you have any idea who it is?"

"No, but Lucas said he's going to find out for me. He said he doesn't even know who my father made the arrangement with, who he sold you to, but he said that's who it is. Whoever bought you is trying to find you, and I can't let that happen."

"Then come hide at Gina's with me! Please, Adrian!"

"I need to do it this way. I need to make them think you aren't with me anymore. They don't want me. It's you they're after. But they know how to find me."

"What do you think you're going to do, kill them all?!" I yelled. I suddenly realized what it was Adrian wanted. It wasn't to lead them away from me, it was to kill them without having to worry about me being in the line of fire. "Do you really think you can fight off two armies of men? Adrian this is insane!"

"I'm not going to fight them, Brooklyn. I want to throw them off so that they don't know where to look for you."

I wanted to believe him, but I couldn't. I knew above all he wanted to protect me and ultimately the only way to do that, to make sure we were safe, would be to kill the people who were after us.

I didn't know what to think. It all sounded insane to me, but at the same time I knew neither of us was safe any longer. I didn't have any other ideas, other than Adrian coming with me, which is what I wanted more than anything.

"I don't want to be without you," I said in a quiet voice with tears tickling the corners of my mouth. "When is all of this supposed to happen?"

"The day after tomorrow. We're back tracking now—heading back to the tip of the Minahassa Peninsula, only to the east side this time. We'll dock in Bitung and Gina will meet us at a big marketplace that's near the docks. I'll hand you off to her and her driver, who also works for her as her security guard, and she'll take you by car back to Manado where her plane will be waiting, then she'll fly you out of there."

"I can't believe this, Adrian. I don't want you to be alone."

"I won't be completely alone. I talked to Grady after I got the email from Lucas and he's going to help me. Everything is going to be okay."

* * *

I watched Adrian steer the boat as he pulled into a slip along the docks in Bitung. I could tell that he had barely slept the two nights it took us to get back to the shore because he looked completely manic. He had dark circles under his eyes, which had a wild look to them.

He wouldn't let me go out on the dock to help him at all. Even when he went out to tie up he made me stay inside the boat.

I had packed just about everything I owned into a large suitcase that Adrian pulled behind us as we made our way across the wooden dock and up to the shore. It was Saturday and the marketplace that sprawled out from the docks was bustling with hundreds of people.

There were all kinds of incredible things to buy. Brightly colored exotic fruits and vegetables in burlap sacks lined the streets, as well as tables covered with bins of dried fish and chilies and fruits I didn't recognize.

Each of the stalls were covered in some sort of a tarp or tent that helped shade the merchants and keep them out of the rain. But today was an incredibly beautiful, sunny day. There was a slight breeze and the temperature was warm but not too hot.

I wished so badly that Adrian and I were here sightseeing or even staying for a month or two instead of being separated. I was filled with dread about what was going to happen to him. I didn't even care if he thought that I would be safer away from him. I just wanted to be with him.

"I hope you realize that there's no way I'm going to spend the next six months without talking to you at all. I'll buy a new phone I only use to talk to you. But we're going to talk every single day. I won't be able to function if I don't know what's going on and if you're okay."

"All right. You're the boss," Adrian said with a smile as he ran his hand down my hair. "I don't think I could stand to go for longer than a week without hearing your voice, anyway."

His eyes looked so sad and tired and I almost burst into tears thinking about everything that had brought us up to this point. He had saved my life, saved me from a fate worse than death, and now he was being tormented because of what he did.

I couldn't help but feel like it was all my fault, even though I knew that wasn't the case at all. But it was me they were after. Not Adrian.

I wanted so badly to wrap my arms around him and run away to some place where we could be safe. Just the two of us. But I had to keep telling myself we had already done that. We had already tried to run and hide and I knew Adrian was right. No matter where we went, those men were going to keep looking for us. And there would be times we would be prepared, but there would eventually be times we were caught off guard. I didn't even want to think about what my life would be like if that happened.

"Where are we supposed to meet Gina?"

"She told me that there is a statue in the middle of this marketplace. It's a square where people gather. She said if we walk straight ahead away from the docks we won't miss it. She'll be there with her security guard. In fact, they should be there now," he said as he looked at the phone he had for whenever we were docked.

We walked past tent after tent of fresh and dried produce and fish, then eventually came to a large stall that had tables that were covered in piles of fabric. They were brightly colored with intricate designs and some had flecks of gold woven into the pattern.

Adrian had his arm around my shoulders from the moment we left the boat, and when I hung back to look at the fabric his hand drifted down until it was holding mine. He turned around to see why I had stopped.

"Adrian, I want to look at these for a minute," I said, pulling his hand so he would follow me to the table.

"Okay, but we should meet up with Gina pretty soon. I don't think we're too far away."

"Okay, this fabric is so beautiful."

"It kind of reminds me of the cruise-wear designs you are describing to me. The different colors of blue in the ocean."

"That's exactly what I was thinking. This one right here would be so perfect," I said as I ran my hand over a folded square of fabric that popped with vibrant blues and flecks of gold.

I jumped as a loud crash came from behind us. Adrian and I both whipped around and watched as a tent over one of the stalls across the walkway collapsed, causing barrels of fruit to tip over and masses of round fruit to roll out onto the ground. People in the walkway rushed in to grab the fruit that rolled away from the stall as the merchants yelled and tried to gather the fruit up themselves.

As I watched all of the commotion I was pushed from behind, and then from another direction, and for just a moment my hand slipped out of Adrian's. And that's the last thing I remember.