That evening, I paced around my villa, hoping the monotonous motion would shake something free in my brain. But nothing rattled loose.

After my hundredth pass in front of the sofa, Adam reached out and snagged my hand.

"Sweetheart, wearing the floor out isn't going to help."

"I know, I know. I'm just so... Arrrrgh."

I tore at my hair in frustration as I flopped down beside him. Right away, his arms wrapped around me, holding me in place so I couldn't get tempted to do another circuit.

He kissed me gently on the temple. "I am too, but we need to get some sleep. Neither of us is at our best right now."

I captured his lips with mine. I didn't need sleep; I needed a distraction. And he gave it to me, trailing soft kisses along my jawline as one hand squeezed my ass.

"You want me to take your mind off things, baby?"

"Yes."

I wanted to escape to a world that wasn't this one.

He kissed me again, more deeply this time, and his fingers left fire in their wake as he peeled me out of my shirt. He tried to extinguish the flames with his tongue, but all that did was make things hotter.

I wrapped my legs around his waist as he picked me up, and we both landed on the bed in a tangle of limbs. I wasn't sure where I ended and he began. The Ass was mine. Over the next few hours, he took me on a journey through sweet oblivion, giving me everything I'd been missing in six wasted years with Bryce.

The trip to heaven was a sharp contrast to my day in hell.

With hindsight, perhaps we should have spent more time sleeping, but what were a few dark circles between friends? I needed Adam like a glutton needed dessert.

Our exhaustion wasn't helped by another unproductive day of searching. Although we did manage to track down Simone and Elaine, the two girls I'd met at Kat's when we had that movie night. Simone seemed nervous, and her eyes kept darting around as if just speaking to us could get her into trouble.

"Give me your number, okay? If I hear anything, I'll text you. But I know I won't. That's not how it works around here."

Elaine was a little more positive, maybe because she was several years older with slightly more backbone.

"I haven't heard anything, but I'll keep an ear out. Why don't you try contacting the families of the other missing girls? Just in case the disappearances are linked? Three voices might be harder to ignore than one."

Why hadn't we thought of that? Most likely because my thoughts were so jumbled by then that I could barely string a sentence together.

"Great idea. Do you have any idea who they are?"

"Simone knew the waitress. I'll call her."

"She wasn't very helpful when we spoke to her earlier."

"Then I'll have to be convincing. I'm afraid I never met Irina, but perhaps you could try the watersports club?"

"We'll do that. And thank you—you have no idea how much this means."

A single tear rolled down her cheek. "Kat was my friend, too."

Back at the hotel, Adam and I parked ourselves on a couple of sunloungers next to the watersports club and waited for Grace to go past. Although she didn't leave until dusk, the wait was worth it because she gave us details of Irina's Facebook page.

"You can probably find some of her family on there," she said. "Good luck with everything. Irina was a doll."

Together, Adam and I drafted a message to send to Irina's father, and also to the parents of the waitress. According to a text message from Elaine, she was called Melati and her folks lived in Indonesia.

"This is so hard," I said. "I mean, how do you write a message to a parent explaining that you think their daughter might have been abducted, or worse?"

I'd occasionally had to have difficult conversations with parents at school, but suddenly, telling Mrs. Biggs that little Katie had high-kicked Archie Maitlin in the nuts because she wanted to be Wonder Woman didn't seem so awkward anymore. Mrs. Maitlin had threatened to hire a "no win, no fee" solicitor, but Mrs. Biggs was married to a barrister so she'd said Mrs. Maitlin could bring it on, and I'd had to mediate. Secretly, I thought Archie had deserved the kick.

"Let's just keep it generic," Adam suggested. "We'll say we're trying to get hold of someone who can help us to find Irina. Then hopefully we can get a phone number and speak to them directly."

An hour after we'd sent the emails, there was a quiet knock at the door.

"Did you order food?" I asked Adam.

"Not yet. You stay there, and I'll get it."

A few seconds later, he led a small Egyptian man I'd never seen before into the room.

"This guy says he needs to speak to you." The look on his face said that he didn't want to let him anywhere near me. It didn't escape my notice that Adam kept his body firmly between the two of us.

When the man got closer, I could see he was more of a boy. Everything about his demeanour said "shifty," and he had a nasty bruise spreading across a puffy cheek. I guessed his age at fifteen.

"You are Callie?" he asked.

"Yes, but I don't think I know you?"

"I am brother of Samir. He say you look for Miss Kat and Mohammed."

My heart started to beat faster. "That's right."

"A friend of mine, he was in the prison last night. He hear there is a foreign person locked up and that it is a woman. He hear she have yellow hair."

Which would fit with Kat's blonde tresses.

"Do you know how long she's been there?"

He shrugged. "Short time, probably. People not usually last long in the prison."

"Do you know why she's there? What did she do?"

Another shrug. "That is all I know. I hope you find Miss Kat. She used to help me with my English speaking."

"Thank you for coming—we really appreciate it."

His brow furrowed with a lack of understanding.

"Appreciate—it means it's made us happy," I clarified.

He smiled at us, displaying a crooked row of brown teeth. "Afwan. You are welcome. It is good that you are happy."

With that, he darted out the door and disappeared into the night.

I turned to Adam. "The police station? Do you really think she's been at the police station the whole time?"

"I don't know, but I'm beginning to believe that in this town, anything's possible."

"Well, we need to go there and find out." I pulled on one trainer and started doing it up.

"Whoa, it's nearly nine o'clock. You can't just march into the police station and demand answers, especially at this time of night."

"Well, I can't just leave her there."

"You won't. We won't. But we need to come up with a plan before we rush in there, all guns blazing. I'll have a chat with Gabe in the morning. He seems to have a few contacts."

"But Kat's in prison."

"We don't know that for sure. The first thing we need to do is confirm that, one way or the other."

Logically, I knew he was right. But over the long hours of the night, with little sleep, my anger and frustration built. Someone had to do something. And that someone had to be me. Common sense went out of the window, perhaps because I may have been suffering from just a teeny bit of pre-menstrual tension, and I vowed not to leave Kat in jail for a moment longer than I had to.

The next morning, I waited until Adam was in the shower, then pulled on my shoes, scribbled out a note to let him know what I was doing, and ran for the taxi rank outside the hotel. By the time I got to the police station, fury had descended upon me like a pack of hungry wolves.

I marched up the steps and found a different man seated at the front desk.

Hands on hips, I stared him down. "Where's my friend?"

He shrank back and tried shrugging. What was it with all the shrugging around here?

"I do not know."

I thumped my fists on the desk, and it tilted alarmingly to the side. Half a croissant slid onto the floor.

"Yes, you bloody do. She's in there somewhere." I jerked my thumb towards the rear of the building. "Give her back!"

He looked somewhat alarmed as he stumbled backwards in the direction I'd pointed.

"I get the boss."

Guess he wasn't used to being confronted by an angry woman before he'd even finished his breakfast. I paced the room while I waited, anger fuelling my steps. This place was filled with imbeciles, and the building itself had a feeling of malevolence. Dark and dingy, its walls spoke of untold horrors. It gave me the creeps.

"Babe, what the hell are you doing?"

Oops. Adam had got here faster than I thought.

"Something. I'm doing something. Which is more than anyone else is."

The door at the back opened, and a tall, thin man sporting a greasy moustache walked out. Desk Guy skulked behind him, looking as if he'd rather be anywhere but in that room. The newcomer wore a pristine white uniform with a row of medals pinned to his chest. The big cheese?

I stomped up to him, almost at snapping point, and jabbed a finger into his chest.

"Give Katerina back."

He glared as if I'd just given him a contagious disease. "You foreigners need to stop meddling with what does not concern you. You are mushkellah. You are trouble."

"I know you've got her here, and I'm not leaving unless she leaves with me."

"You think you can come to our country and tell us what to do? Things don't work like that around here."

"Well, maybe they should. You can't just go around kidnapping people."

"You know nothing about what goes on. Stupid Englishwoman."

"Well, perhaps you'd like to fucking enlighten me," I yelled.

Where did that come from? Even Adam shifted nervously.

The cop boss couldn't hide the fury in his eyes, but no matter. I squared up to him and matched it with my own.

"Fine," he snapped, then turned on his heel and marched out the door he'd come through.

Fine? What did that mean? Was he coming back? Desk Guy gingerly tiptoed back to his chair and reversed it into the corner as far as it would go while I resumed pacing.

"Babe?" Adam tried.

"Just leave it, okay?"

Ten minutes later, the door opened again and the police captain marched out. A junior officer followed behind, half dragging a slumped figure. Oh holy hell, was that Kat? He shoved her at Adam.

The captain stood in front of me, an arrogant tilt to his nose. "You take her and you leave. You leave town. You leave Egypt. If you are still here tomorrow evening, you will be back here, all of you, and that is something you will regret. Do you understand?"

My anger had turned to fear at the sight of Kat. She whimpered in Adam's arms, her face a mass of bruises. All I could do was nod.

"Now get out." The captain pointed at the door.

Adam scooped up Kat, and the three of us almost fell down the steps in our haste to get away. That place was evil.

"We need to take her to a hospital," Adam said. "Quickly."

I ran into the road to try and flag down a taxi. Two swerved around the madwoman waving her arms before I planted myself in front of a third. The driver had two choices—mow me down or stop. Thankfully, he chose the latter. Adam bundled Kat into the back seat, and I clambered in behind them.

"The hospital," Adam ordered the quivering driver. "Now."

In daylight, I got a better look at Kat, but I almost wished I hadn't.

"Oh my goodness," I whispered.

"Callie, is that you?" Her voice came out as a croak.

"It's me."

I took her hand and squeezed it gently, trying to give her comfort, but she winced, and when I turned it over, I saw the fresh cigarette burns dotting the palm. Her eyes were so puffy they were swollen shut, and there wasn't an inch of her I could see that wasn't covered in bruises. Her hair was tangled, and a streak of dried blood ran from her scalp down the side of her face.

"Kat, what the hell did they do?"

She had a coughing fit before she managed to speak, and the driver passed a bottle of water back between the seats. I helped her to take a sip.

"They said we killed a girl," she choked out.

"You and Mo?"

A weak nod and another cough.

"They still have him. We need to get him out."

"Save your strength, sweetheart," Adam said. "We can talk about this after you've seen a doctor."

"Who..." Cough. "Are you?"

"This is Adam. You remember I told you about Adam?"

"Your hot guy?"

Adam raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, my hot guy."

At least, I hoped he was still mine after the stunt I'd pulled this morning. I'd deal with the inevitable bollocking later. Right now, we had Kat back, and that was all that mattered.

The taxi pulled up in front of a soulless grey cube, whose sign proclaimed it to be the Fidda Hilal Specialist Hospital. Quite what they were specialists in, it didn't say. Once we'd piled out, the driver sped off without waiting for us to pay the fare.

Adam picked up Kat once more and carried her inside. The reception area was as stark as the rest of the building, just a row of plastic chairs against a wall.

"We need to see a doctor," I told the young girl manning the desk. She seemed a little surprised to see a patient there at all.

"You are sick?"

"Not me." I pointed at Kat, and the girl's eyes widened. "Her."

She jabbered into the phone, eyes fixed on Kat, and a few minutes later, a man in a white coat came out.

"What is wrong?"

Good grief—wasn't it obvious? "My friend's been injured."

He gave her a cursory glance and sighed. "Ah. She has been in the police station?"

"How do you know?"

"This is what they all look like."

The blood in my veins turned to ice, and even Adam reeled at the doctor's words. Kat wasn't the first person to be hurt that way?

The doctor beckoned to us. "Come, I will treat her. But you will have to pay."

Adam fished out his wallet and tossed a credit card at the startled receptionist. "Put it on that. She gets the best of everything."