A dog was scratching and snuffling at the outside wall of Ava's pen.

The muffled sounds must have awakened her –though she hadn't been aware she was even asleep. She reckoned it must be morning, and that she'd somehow dozed on-and-off through the hot, oppressive night.

She didn't know how long she could tolerate the dark, the heat, and the ghastly smell of this place. How long were they planning to keep her captive in these deplorable conditions? She knew it was a torture method meant to distort her thinking, weaken her resolve and instill a sense of hopelessness. And she feared this awareness was not going to forestall those exact results.

Ava felt panic seep into her gut when she contemplated even one more night of this horror. She had to battle the life-sucking despair.

The only effective weapon at her disposal was Adam East.

Ava summoned up thoughts of their time together. She remembered first seeing him on the beach at Conquest Bay when she'd emerged naked from the surf. She had been fearful, but an instinctive tingling in her bone marrow at the time had been a harbinger of what she felt for him now. That connection had begun to take shape on their motorbike ride to Vendetta: Her arms wrapped round his trim waist, his firm butt clamped against her inner thighs, the apple-sauce-scented words when he spoke to her, his irresistible sea-green eyes. Every minute they'd spent together served to dial up the attraction; even when they were in conflict. Deep down Ava must have known Adam was not the apparent criminal pirate he was portraying. That's why she had been drawn to him. That's why she had engaged in sex with him. It hadn't been a mistake. And even if they both ended up dying in this hellish place, she had no regrets about their relationship; only that it had been cut short.

A blast of fresh air and a cacophony of sound startled Ava out of her reverie.

"Out, out, out!" one of the three men squatting in the open doorway of her hut shouted in Arabic. Ava rolled up the front of her hood, shielded her eyes from the piercing sunlight with both hands, but could see two of the men gesticulating wildly, motioning her out of the pen.

The third man was holding an assault rifle –it was Hami. He had duct tape wrapped round his head to hold his jaw in place. He reached and yanked her hood back down. "Out," he grunted between clamped teeth.

Ava began to crawl out. She was thrilled at the prospect of leaving this foul oven. The brief slashes of daylight and the glorious whiffs of fresh air making their way into her nostrils made it seem a resurrection.

Two of the men hauled her out, and Hami jabbed her thigh with his rifle to get her on her feet. He poked her back repeatedly to hustle her along a path. Her leg was still tender from the mishap on Vendetta; she limped and stumbled along for a minute or two before they stopped her. She heard a door open and then Hami roughly prodded her forward one last time with the muzzle of his weapon. The door closed behind.