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don’t know if I can.” I shook my head and wiped my tears with the back of my shaking hand.
    He placed his hand on my shoulder. “Just give it time. You’ll see.”
    “Time.” I nodded. “Yeah…sure.”
     

CHAPTER THREE
    Four Months Later
     
    After the day I like to refer to as my emotional Armageddon, my father wiped the slate clean. My identity was bleached, scrubbed, homogenized, and irradiated. I was so squeaky clean that even he couldn’t spot my fake identity with a thousand man-hours of digging. “The key is simplicity, Dakota. The more detail you add to your background, the easier it is to find a flaw. You want to start over? Be from a midsized suburb of a midsized city. Grow up in one town. Go to one or two school districts.” My father hadn’t stopped at alias tips either. He began teaching me what he knew about laundering money—not for illegal purposes, but to maintain anonymity. He told me where to go for passports and credit cards in almost any country. He showed me how to ensure my forged documents were usable. And he taught me the art of disappearing. For good, if need be.
    While I was grateful and knew these tricks of the trade might someday save my life, spending time with him made me realize that somewhere along the way, as a result of seeing so much corruption and danger, my father had forgotten what it meant to live. His every waking moment was spent either thinking about being attacked, and what to do about it if we were, or worrying about staying hidden, and what to do if we were caught. The man thought of little else.
    As for me, I thought about trying to move on. Not happening. We now lived on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. My father posed as a retired military consultant from Iowa—that way people weren’t suspicious of his or our tendency for short answers—my mom was a homemaker, and I now attended the University of the Virgin Islands satellite campus, studying psychology. It was a kind gesture for my father to ensure we landed in a place where I could continue going to school, but I found it hard to sleep and eat, let alone concentrate on academics.
    The nightmares didn’t help either. They were usually about a gunman from the balcony of the church shooting me down as Paolo and his new girlfriend disco danced outside. Yeah, that part was really creepy. But more than anything, I couldn’t let go of my anger. He’d stabbed me in the back and walked away.
    Anyway, after months of this never-ending pity fest, I’d finally made up my mind. Enough was enough.
    I sat down next to my mom at the glass table outside of our Italian-style villa overlooking Chocolate Hole—weird name for a bay, but the view of turquoise waters sprinkled with tiny sailboats and snorkelers was magazine worthy and not at all chocolaty or holey—and poured myself a bowl of cereal. Despite being the middle of October, we still got to enjoy breakfast outside almost every morning in the garden while my father was off doing whatever.
    “Good morning, sweetie. Want to go for a swim after breakfast?” Mom said, skimming the paper.
    “Mom, I’m leaving.”
    Her big blue eyes darted up. “What?”
    “I really love it here, but…” How could I say this without sounding ungrateful? “I need some alone time.”
    She blinked and set the paper down. “It’s your father, isn’t it? I know he’s a bit overboard with the protection stuff, but—”
    “No, Mom. It’s not that. I mean—that’s part of it. But I feel like if I’m going to have any chance of starting over, I need space.”
    Her petite frame sagged, and she tightened the sash on her pink bathrobe. I was always jealous of how even in the morning, wearing pajamas, she looked fresh and spry—blonde hair in a perfect ponytail, skin glowing, and a little twinkle in her eyes. Even now as disappointment flattened her usual smile into a straight line, she looked radiant.
    She cleared her throat. “Well, after everything you’ve been through,