Excerpt from Find Me Unafraid by Kennedy Odede, Jessica Posner, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Leave, Ken, please. One of the men—he is showing people your picture, asking if they've seen you, if they know where you live."

I tell him to leave now, and he nods, knowing that any minute they might make their way here, using their guns and their money to get the information they need. I look at how skinny Chris is, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart for not selling me out. Even with this place turned to total chaos, I am reminded of how good people can be.

Cheetah begins to bark and won't stop. Then I hear the footsteps. Heavy footsteps. The men still have to make their way around the treacherously narrow corner. I calculate I have less than a minute to escape.

All I want to do is write her a letter, tell her how much I love her, and tell her that I should have listened, I should have left. Tell her how sorry I am for all the things we will never get to do and see together. But maybe it's just as well. Probably none of it would have come true, our late-night plans to build a life together probably just an adolescent romance. She so sweetly believes anything is possible and my heart would break watching her come to know what I know—that no matter how you try or believe, everything can end at the cry of a bullet, the sound of soldier's footsteps, the breaking of a heart. Eventually she'd tire of the challenges of living in my world, and I'd grow tired too, living in hers.

I have my own dreams here, in Kibera.

Gunshot! Followed by a howl. Cheetah! They must have shot him in the alleyway, but I cannot risk going to look. Shaken from my thoughts, I run from the house. My heart beating, feet moving, I take precious extra seconds to lock the padlock on my door. I run blindly, looking for any cranny where I can hide. There is a sheet of metal that covers the opening to a small alley near my door. I crawl behind it and will myself not to breathe, praying my shaking body won't bump the metal sheet and give away my hiding spot. Through a crack I can see my door. The men materialize, weapons slung over their shoulders, dressed in fatigues, threatening in their uniformity. Upon reaching my house, the men find the door is locked by my small padlock. Thank God I took the extra time to do that— with my door locked it looks like I am not home. Kicking the door hard, their warning clear, the intruders storm off. I wait in my hiding spot for countless hours to make sure the scene wasn't staged, and then I emerge panting and shaking, racked by both fear and relief.

I crawl on my stomach to the fence behind my house, climb over, and fall hard on the other side. My torso hits the ground like a sack of maize, but I feel no pain, as if my body has reached its saturation point. I begin running, hiding in the secret shadows of the shanties. I have no destination in mind, only the desperate desire to get away, to reach some elusive safety. I have to step over bodies still lying where they fell—the mortuary sweep has not yet begun, and everyone's afraid to venture out to claim the fallen. Kibera is a city of the dead. I am not scared of the dead, but of the living.

When I am finally far enough away, I stop to take a breath and pull out my cell phone. I swallow hard and dial.

Excerpt from Find Me Unafraid by Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner. Copyright © 2015 by Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner. A Harper book, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.