Chapter 1
“HOW EXACTLY IS AN emery board supposed to help me break out of jail?”
“I don’t know,” Jane said. “It’s what they always smuggle in to prisoners in the movies.”
At that moment I wanted to throttle Jane, but since I was on the inside of a jail cell and Jane was on the outside, it was unlikely to happen. “A metal file,” I hissed. “Not a paper one!”
“Where was I supposed to get a metal nail file in the middle of the night? You know they don’t let you carry that stuff on the plane anymore. Terrorists could use it as a weapon.”
And I could use it to kill you. But then I’d really never get out of this mess. While I was only being falsely accused of murder, there was still hope.
I moved from the louvered window, with its layers of chicken wire marring what otherwise would’ve been a beautiful view of the Caribbean, and sat back down on my makeshift bed—a beach chair covered with a towel. The only other accoutrements in my cell, which until a few days ago had been the police station’s storage room, were two metal file cabinets, a ceramic bowl filled with semi-clean water, a half-used bar of soap, and a bucket for after-hours emergencies. During the day, the police officers were kind enough to accompany me to the bathroom. It wasn’t much cleaner than my bucket, but it had the benefit of indoor plumbing. Welcome to the Camus Caye police station and temporary women’s prison.
Jane and I froze. We’d both heard it. Something that sounded like metal scraping against rock. Jane, who was standing on an overturned garbage can so she could reach the window of my cell, pushed her face as close as she could to the chicken wire without actually touching it. Despite her revulsion at my accommodations, she looked like she wanted to join me on the inside.
I moved back to the window so we were face-to-face through the mesh.
“What was that?” Jane whispered.
Before I could answer, the scraping switched to a rustling from the edge of the clump of bushes separating the police station from the café next door.
“Oh my God,” Jane said. “What if it’s a murderer or a rapist?”
“Lurking outside the police station? It’s probably an animal looking for food.” Hopefully a very small, vegetarian animal.
“That doesn’t look like an animal to me,” she said, staring at the tall, shadowed figure moving toward us.
The figure stopped just outside the pool of light emanating from Jane’s keychain flashlight and tossed his weapon onto the ground.
“Lizzie,” Jane whispered, as if the figure standing five feet away couldn’t hear her, “he’s got a machete. He’s going to slit our throats.”
Before I could point out that if he really intended to slit our throats, he’d probably still be holding the machete, the figure spoke.
“You ladies need some help?”
Chapter 2
LET’S BACK UP. NO, I didn’t kill anyone. Yes, I’m in jail. And no, the dark figure with the machete didn’t slit our throats. But this would all make a lot more sense to you if I backed up further.
Believe it or not, a mere ten days ago my biggest problem in life was that I had to go on my honeymoon alone. That and the fact that I’d been ditched at the altar. Although technically speaking, it wasn’t actually at the altar. My ex-fiancé told me the night before the wedding that he wasn’t really the marrying type after all.
You would think that after five years of dating, the last two living together, he could’ve come up with a better excuse than that. But that’s all he said, over and over again, as I first laughed (I really thought he was punking me), then screamed so loud I was surprised the neighbors didn’t call the cops (“fucking son of a bitch” seems to stand out in my mind), and ultimately cried. That’s when he grabbed his suitcase, which the SOB had packed that afternoon while I was out buying edible underwear, and left.
Obviously the wedding was off, but I refused to cancel the honeymoon. I’d spent months reading travel magazines, debating the pros and cons of every tropical destination, until Steven—Mr. I Don’t Care As Long As You’ll Be Wearing A Bikini—and I settled on Belize. Once we’d chosen the country, I bought three guidebooks and read each of them from cover to cover (even all that boring stuff about the history of the place that no one ever reads) to determine where to stay for maximum luxury, privacy, and range of activities. After narrowing it down to five potential regions, I spent weeks online reading reviews of every hotel, restaurant, and tour operator in the area. This was supposed to be the best vacation of my life, damn it. I was not letting all of that time, money, and energy go to waste just because Steven decided he wasn’t the marrying type after all.
But that didn’t mean I was looking forward to it. Besides my depression over losing my friend and lover, my humiliation at having been dumped practically at the altar, and the massive blow to my ego, the Blue Bay Beach Resort only hosted a maximum of eighteen couples per week. While all of that individual attention was a selling point when I thought I’d be vacationing with my new husband, it now meant further humiliation. Besides eating every meal alone and taking every tour alone, I’d be spending my days explaining to the hotel’s thirty-four other guests and two-to-one ratio staff members why I was staying in the bridal suite alone. Assuming anyone would even talk to the only single girl at the couples-only resort.
I was dreading it. But not enough to cancel the trip. Besides, thinking about the warm Belizean sun tanning my shoulders while I waded into the gentle aquamarine waters of the Caribbean Sea was the only time I’d stopped crying the last three days. And yes, I did memorize that line from the hotel’s brochure. But even Jane thought I was better off reading the Belize guidebook over and over again than Steven’s wedding vows, which in his haste to leave me he’d left sitting on top of our dresser. Of course I already knew what they said—I’m the one who wrote them. What can I say, Steven begged me to. He’s an accountant who can barely scribble a grocery list.
“Do you think that should’ve been a clue?” I asked Jane, my best friend and almost maid of honor.
Jane grabbed the drink from my hand and set it down on the empty table next to us. I didn’t care. I was sucking on ice anyway. I motioned for the waitress to bring me another vodka mojito. Since Jane and I were two of only three patrons in the bar conveniently located just outside the airline terminal’s security gate, the service was exceptionally good.
“Lizzie, you need to stop drinking.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to a foreign country. You have to keep your wits about you.”
I glanced down at my watch. It was almost midnight. “I’m not going to be there for another ten hours. The vodka will have worn off by then.”
I was prepared for Jane to launch into her lecture on the perils of foreign travel, one I’d heard many times before, but instead she leaned in and whispered, “Don’t turn around, but the drug dealer at the bar is heading this way.”
Naturally I turned around anyway. I’d noticed him when Jane and I had walked in, but only because he was the only other customer.
I turned back to Jane. “Why do you think he’s a drug dealer?”
“Did you miss the gold chain?”
I looked back again as the man tried to balance a beer bottle and a cocktail in one hand and his jacket and carry-on bag in the other. He was on the short side, with a caramel complexion, a full head of dark gelled hair and, based on the tufts sticking out from the top of his black polo shirt, a hairy chest too.
“I could be wrong, but I don’t think wearing a gold cross automatically qualifies someone as a drug dealer. And you’re supposed to leave the racial profiling to Homeland Security.”
“Being vigilant is not racial profiling. Look how nervous he is. He’s checked his watch ten times in the last ten minutes.”
“Maybe that’s because he doesn’t want to miss his flight.”
“Hi,” the drug dealer said, now standing next to our table. “I’m Michael.” He extended his hand, which held both his beer and my cocktail.
“Thanks Michael, I’m—” and before I could grab the drinks from him, the glass tipped over, spilling my mojito all over the table, and his beer down the leg of his khaki pants.
“Shit!” he said, then, “Excuse me.”
The waitress was there in an instant with napkins and a wet rag. “I’ll just bring you a fresh one,” she said and smiled at me as she wiped up the spill.
I didn’t want company. All I wanted was another drink. But I didn’t want to be rude either, so I asked Michael to join us. When he turned around to pull over a chair from the next table, Jane gave me a death stare.
“What?” I mouthed.
She shook her head. I swear sometimes Jane was worse than my mother. She found disaster lurking around every corner.
