Staying On Top(76)

My legs went numb and my heart pounded in my ears as they put us in the backseat of a police car outside the terminal instead of taking us to a room for questioning. No use pretending this was a simple immigration issue, then. Not if the police had flagged our passports.

“This is fucking fantastic. If you can’t ruin my life by stealing all of my money, you’ll get me arrested so I get fined or suspended from the tour. Or banned.”

“Sam, I swear I have no idea what’s going on.”

He snorted. “Right. It has nothing to do with your penchant for borrowing things?”

“Would you shut up?” We were in a fucking police car and he was basically admitting to stealing multiple items. I normally abhorred telling people to shut up, but cripes. This was my territory. No matter how pissed off Sam was, he needed to use his fucking head.

He seemed to realize the same thing, sitting back and pinching his lips together for the remainder of the ride to the police station. It was a dingy, one-story building too close to the ocean to be so depressing—clearly not the main station, which I assumed was in George Town. The inside held a couple of metal desks, a small, square conference or interrogation room, a kitchen with coffee stains on the counters, and a single cell, where they dumped both Sam and I. The walls were cinderblock and the linoleum floors peeled up at the corners. Two wooden benches sat along the back wall of our cell, one end far too close to a stinky latrine.

“Hey, don’t we get a phone call or something?” Sam shouted at their retreating backs.

Neither of them replied, leaving us alone without an explanation for plucking us off the streets like vermin. It could be the sailboat, but I doubted it. The longer I had to think, the more I suspected my dad was behind our arrest. He’d seen the footage from the house in Belgrade, I was willing to bet, and had deduced that, for the first time in my life, I was not going to get the job done. Having us arrested smacked of him taking matters into his own hands, though how he thought it would get him the rest of Sam’s money I hadn’t the slightest idea.

Sam slumped on the other end of the bench, sticking to his plan of not speaking to me. I guessed I wasn’t speaking to him, either, but there wasn’t much more to say. He knew I was a con, that I’d been willing to help my dad steal from him. He refused to hear me when I told him the truth—that the days we’d spent together had changed my mind.

Changed my life, maybe.

I didn’t have a clue how to convince him otherwise, and maybe I didn’t deserve the chance, anyway. This had always been how it was going to end. At least we had one good day.

One of the officers returned, a young guy with a sexy British accent, shining blond hair, and muscles that tested the limits of his cheap uniform that would make half the girls at Whitman drop their panties, but he wasn’t looking at me.

He crooked a finger at Sam. “You have a phone call.”

Sam left without asking any questions, even though a bunch of them tumbled through my mind. First and foremost, who knew we were here? The answer could only be my dad, unless the press had somehow gotten ahold of the information—which, in the age of cell-phone cameras, wasn’t impossible—and why would my dad ask for Sam and not me?

The answer to that question also provided clarity as far as my dad’s endgame in getting us arrested. Sam returned to our cell, a storm cloud of anger obscuring what was left of his “go with the flow” demeanor. He didn’t sit, instead pacing along the front of the cell.

“Who was it?”

“Who do you think it was, Blair?”

I recoiled from the anger in his voice, but tried not to let the hurt show. “I think it was either my dad or that sleazy dude from TMZ.”

The joke didn’t get me a smile, but that was probably too much to ask.

“It was your dad.” He glanced down the hallway, maybe to make sure it was empty, then back at me. In his eyes, it was clear that his pain over my betrayal outstripped his anger, and the knowledge that I’d hurt him punched me in the gut.

I’d been prepared for his anger, but not this. Not pain.

“He says all I have to do is give you the information he needs and I’m free—no charges, no one will know. I don’t know how he can promise that, but that’s what he said.”

“Sam, no. I’m not taking anything from you.”

His lips twisted, a hateful edge glinting in his smile. “That’s the whole reason we’re together, Blair, right? Don’t wimp out now. I’m sure I’m not the first mark you’ve gotten close to in order to carry out your daddy’s twisted games.”