Why is it so easy for me to trust scary, unpredictable men?

Oh, that’s right, my dad.

All Briggs needed to do was speak confidently with a country English accent, and I let him smuggle me to another country without asking for so much as driver’s license verification.

There’s nowhere to run now. Even if I were coordinated enough to duck away from these men, I’m multiple countries away from anyone I know and I’m still in the clothes I fell asleep in, without money or a phone. Continuing with Briggs is the most sensible plan…for now. Then I’m going to need proof he’s telling the truth—a pamphlet, at least.

The airport is refrigerator cold, but it’s a sweet relief from the stinging, wet heat of the tarmac. Our caravan of exhausted bodies clomps toward the next gate, where a terrified girl waits for us. Around my age and height, she shivers in a pale pink, spaghetti-strap dress. Dark brown, highlighted hair hangs in messy strands around her neck. Two other men, also dressed in black, surround her as she trembles in place like a frightened dog. But not her eyes—they’re furious.

She’s been taken, just like me.

The black-dressed men give Briggs a hard time about being kept waiting, but he charges ahead toward the girl and says, “Molly Partridge, I’m Ben Briggs. You’re freezing. They keep it so nasty cold in here. Let’s get you a coat.”

“She won’t wear a coat,” says one of the men.

“No coat?” Briggs stares into Molly’s steady, bloodshot eyes; she shakes her head quickly. “You don’t have to wear one. Come on, we’re late.”

A gale wind kicks up as our endless journey continues with a Jeep ride through a lushly green Costa Rican party town. Store signs and posh hotels advertise the pleasures of Jacó to American tourists, who slurp booze out of coconuts as they stagger through the streets despite the worsening weather. Coconut palms spring out of every corner, their fronds beating frantically in this dangerous wind. The afternoon sky might as well be midnight. Rain hasn’t fallen yet, but it absolutely has plans to do so.

I sneak my hand under my hoodie to hold Ario’s recorder and try not to think of how we’re thousands of miles apart.

The ominous weather has long since emptied the beach of its guests. Deck chairs are shuffled away by hotel workers, while out in the darkened ocean, catamarans bounce in the breaking waves against the pegs pinning them to shore. We arrive at a vacant dock with two massive, iron pylons tied to an open-shelled patrol boat, the kind they use in the Coast Guard. Molly and I turn to each other, neither of us able to open our eyes more than a slit.

A van, a plane, a Jeep, and now a boat? In this ocean? In THIS near-monsoon?

A heavy gale whips out from the gulf, tossing around my already unkempt hair. The pitch-black water…to say it scares me is an understatement. Anything could be out there—anything could be down there. Briggs scoots us along the dock as the other team members board their seacraft and secure our luggage with bungee cords. Time to climb aboard. I breathe steadily to psych myself into this, but as I grip the stern’s ladder, Briggs tugs me back.