I let my forehead fall against the cold bars, a sigh escaping me as I squeezed my eyes closed. I’d led my two best friends–my only two friends–right into trouble. And it was trouble we may never get out of.
“I’m sorry, guys,” I groaned as my fingers tightened on the bars again.
“Don’t sweat it, Doc,” Alex said, his voice only slightly strained. “I’m sure we’ll get out of here…or we’ll end up stuck in a dank cell like this one for the rest of our lives after a rushed trial in which we have little to no ability to defend ourselves. A parasitic bug will lodge itself in my ear, and I’ll die a slow horrible painful death while you and Ava plan a daring escape that falls flat and are both executed.”
I screwed up my face. “Whoa, what the hell, Mav? That took a real turn.”
“Yeah, Ace,” Ava said with a grimace, “where did that come from?”
“Come on, you never saw that movie?”
Ava stared at him for a minute. “Wasn’t that in Thailand?”
“So?” Alex asked.
“This is far cry from Thailand,” she retorted.
He pulled away from the bars and crossed to pat the stone against the wall. “Uhhh, looks pretty archaic to me.”
I ran a shaky hand through my hair as I paced the floor, suddenly worried about spending the rest of my life stuck here. If we could get at least one phone call, I could call my dad. Maybe he has a connection here that could help us.
“Okay, we have to convince them to let us call someone. My dad may be able to help us out.”
“Does he know people in Belvaria?” Alex asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. When we were trying to get rid of Julia’s ex, he said he knew a foreign dignitary who owed him a favor, so maybe.”
“It does us no good if we can’t get a hold of him,” Ava said. “Do you think he’ll eventually start looking for you?”
“No,” I answered. “He’s probably glad I’m gone.”
“What about Julia? She usually checks in on you,” Ava asked.
I shrugged, scrubbing my face. “I don’t know, maybe. But Sierra probably has her so booked up with their step-mommy, step-daughter event calendar that she’ll never have time.”
I let my head fall back between my shoulders with a loud groan that echoed off the stone walls. “Ugh, this is the worst. How can this be happening?”
“Because we flew into a foreign country illegally?” Ava suggested, crossing her arms as she rose to pace the floor of her cell.
“Did we?” I asked. “I mean, all we did was land. We weren’t even off the plane. They had no idea what we were doing. Doesn’t it strike anyone else as odd that the plane was stormed and we were just hauled off with little to no explanation?”
Alex shrugged, his fingers tapping a frenetic rhythm against the bars. “I mean, maybe. It seemed like overkill, but this place could run under as tight a regime as Thailand or something, I don’t know.”
“Yeah, we really have no idea since we didn’t read that much about the place before we were suddenly arrested and hauled off to rot in prison.” Ava huffed out a sigh.
My mind spun out of control. What if this had happened to Nattie? Was she also stuck in a prison cell? She’d been on a private plane–at least that’s what we assumed.
What if she’d been arrested, too? If I ever got free, would I be able to free her?
“This is a nightmare,” I murmured as footsteps echoed, growing closer.
I rushed to the bars, grasping them as my heart sped up. Voices approached us. I twisted my head, straining to catch even a word of the conversation.
I shifted my gaze to Alex. “Can you hear this?”
His eyebrows knitted as he pressed closer to the entrance. “Uhh, something about the Americans.”
“Americans? That’s us,” I said, my voice breathy. “What are they saying about us?”
