The sound of the boots coming down the concrete stairs didn't stop my heart; it made it freeze into a solid block of ice. I stood frozen on the threshold of the open sea-door, the cold breeze from the Masasani bay whipping my hair across my face, my left hand still gripping the green plastic logbook that had shattered my entire universe. Above us, in the dark mansion with the white pillars, Isaac was breathing. Below us, the dark water of the Indian Ocean lapped against the wooden jetty where safety and escape were waiting in a small fiber canoe.
The clash inside my chest was instantaneous and violent a sudden, tearing friction between the deep, raw gratitude for the man bleeding beside me, and the ghost of the CEO I thought I had buried in the red dirt of Dodoma.
"Esther, get behind me,
