Page 73 of Past Due

“In the dark?” Besian’s mind raced with all the horrible possibilities. Suddenly, he thought of something else. “She doesn’t have her passport!”

“Or money,” Luka said, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing the credit card and bills he had given Marley before she left. “She gave this to Drita.”

“And I found her wallet in the driveway when I returned,” Zec said, pointing to the bright green leather wallet on the demi-lune table. “It must have fallen out of her luggage when she was getting dressed in the dark.”

Marley was alone in a foreign city without money or ID. Sick to his stomach, Besian rushed upstairs, taking them two at a time, to reach the guest room. He threw open the door and rushed to the drawer where he had placed their passports for their embassy appointment.

With her papers in hand, he stopped and looked helplessly around the room. What now? How would he find her? Where would she go?

He snatched his phone from his pocket and powered it up, muttering curses the whole time. Everything Rina had said was true. He was pathetic. He had let his bruised ego and his deep-seated fear that he wasn’t good enough for Marley to ruin everything.

Zec was right. I am a coward.

His phone finally connected to a cell signal and dozens of missed calls and messages from Zec, Rina and Luka appeared on the screen. Amid all of the angry texts and voicemails, there was one from a local number. He opened it and tapped the speaker so he could quickly change into clean clothing while listening to it.

“Besian? Please, please don’t hang up,” Marley begged, her voice hollow and tired. “I know you’re angry with me, and I know you don’t want me anymore. Please, I promise you I'll never bother you again, but I need my passport and my wallet.” She paused, and he could hear voices in the background. “I’m in jail. Um. I think it’s the municipal police station. I just...if you can bring my passport, they’ll release me. If you don’t, if you can’t, I...I understand. I’ll figure it out.” Someone in the background yelled at her in Albanian, telling her to hurry up. “I have to go.”

The call ended abruptly, and Besian rushed to replay the message, listening to her cracking, exhausted voice. In jail? For what?

Guilt and regret squeezed his chest so hard he could barely drag in a breath. He looked at his watch and then at the time the voicemail had been left.

Christ, she had been sitting in jail for at least four hours! A foreign jail. That didn’t cater to English speakers. That didn’t offer the same legal protections she might have expected.

Forgoing clean clothing, he grabbed his phone and her passport and rushed out of the guest room. Downstairs, he picked up the wallet, cash and credit card Luka had left on the table. On his race to the front door, Luka stepped out of his office and called out to him. “Where are you going?”

“To get Marley!”

“From where?”

“Jail,” he said solemnly and slammed the door behind him. He found his car parked where he had left it the night before and hurriedly slid behind the wheel. He drove like a bat out of hell, racing down the driveway and through the open gate. He only slowed his pace when he hit the residential street. The last thing he needed was to get into an accident.

Adrenaline fueled his tired body as he drove toward the police station. His mind was a mess of regret. Thinking of the way Marley had been treated by him and his family filled him with the most gut-twisting shame. He had treated her like absolute garbage, accusing her without giving her a chance to defend herself, and then had abandoned her to face Drita.

He should have known Drita would do something dramatic and foolish. It wasn’t the first time she had acted like a melodramatic soap opera villain. The infamous night she had thrown Luka and Rina’s cheating stepmother out of their old house was a tale everyone knew. Drita had launched the woman’s clothing out a third story window and then set it on fire in the courtyard, leaving their stepmother with just the clothes on her back when she was put out on the street.

He gripped the steering wheel as he imagined Marley, naked in the driveway, cold and afraid. She would be so embarrassed when she realized how many men had seen her that way. Luka, Zec, the guards manning the security room. She was intensely private, and she had been violated in the worst way.

And it’s all my fault.

By the time he reached the police station, he had accepted that Marley would never forget this. He wouldn’t insult her by asking for her forgiveness. He didn’t deserve it, and he wouldn’t put her in a position where she felt pressured to give it.

He parked and hurried to the front of the station only to find the doors locked. The station didn’t open for another hour. He fought the urge to pound on the door and demand help. It would only make things worse for Marley, especially if she had committed some petty crime. He might need to negotiate—or even bribe—to get her out of there without any trouble.

He hadn’t craved a cigarette in months, but he desperately wanted one now. He would have taken a jawbreaker or a stick of gum, anything, to quell his nervous energy. He leaned against the wall and fidgeted, repeatedly checking his watch. Considering his unshaven face and wrinkled clothing, he probably looked like an addict sick for a fix.

When the door finally unlocked, he darted toward it and yanked it open, startling the young policeman on the other side. “Can I help you, sir?”

“My fiancée is being held here. I need to speak with her.”

“This way,” the policeman said, leading him to a desk.

Besian knew how this was going to go, and he sighed as he waited and waited for another officer to help him. Things here worked at a different pace than they did back in Houston. Eventually, an older man appeared and took his time sitting down and arranging things on his desk. Besian wanted to scream, but he held his temper in check for Marley’s sake. Finally, the older policeman asked how he could help, and Besian explained his issue.

The policeman hummed and pecked at his keyboard with two fingers. He adjusted his glasses twice and pecked some more. All the while, Besian’s blood pressure climbed higher and higher.

“You can speak to her,” the police officer announced after an excruciating wait, “but not here.”

Besian’s brief moment of relief was dashed. “Why not here?”

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