The sand of the Cape Town cove was cold, coarse, and smelled of decaying seaweed and salt. I stood there, my legs shaking, water dripping from my tattered clothes. My skin felt like it was being pricked by a thousand needles as the South African wind hit my wet frame. But the cold wasn't what made me tremble. It was the woman standing in front of the black SUV, looking at me as if I were a ghost she had personally summoned from the grave.
"You look like hell, Elena," Maricha Sonoko said. Her voice was like silk sliding over glass smooth, professional, and entirely devoid of the panic that should have come with seeing a plane crash into the ocean.
She didn't look like an architect. She looked like a general. Her tailored charcoal suit was crisp, her hair pulled back into a severe bun that
