So Aria and Hanna had been excited to come here when Noel planned the vacation. Real Ali was dead, and A was gone, and they had nothing to be afraid of anymore. Then their spring-break trip to Jamaica happened. A few other awful things had gone down, too. Now, in July, Aria and Hanna were keeping secrets once more. They’d barely spoken since they’d arrived. It didn’t help that Noel wasn’t impressed with Iceland at all, or that Mike hated the place as much as he did when they’d lived here.
Tonight, the situation had sunk to a new level. At first, Aria had simply flirted with Olaf, a scruffy Icelandic intellectual they’d met at a bar down the street, to piss Noel off. Five shots of Black Death, the local schnapps, later, and Aria found herself in the alley, Olaf’s lips locked to hers. Fast-forward a few hours, and now . . . this.
The blaring house alarm increased in volume. Olaf tried to lift the window further up, but it caught, stuck.
Aria froze. If she helped him, she’d really be abetting a theft. “I can’t.”
Olaf rolled his eyes and tried once more. It wouldn’t budge. He let the painting fall loudly to the floor. “I’ll use the door!” he yelled to her. “Wait for me, okay?”
He vanished. Aria peered through the glass, but all she saw was darkness. Then she heard a screeching noise behind her. She tiptoed out from behind the bushes and peeked around the side of the house. Three police cars were screaming up the drive, the lights atop their cars flashing blue against the house’s elegant stonework. The cars skidded to a stop, and six cops burst out of them, guns drawn.
Aria sprinted for the thick woods. She didn’t even realize Icelandic policemen carried guns.
The cops approached the front door and yelled something in Icelandic that Aria could only guess meant “Come out with your hands up!” She glanced at the heavy, warped back door, which she assumed Olaf was going to try to use. It wasn’t open. Maybe it had an intricate lock system from the inside that he couldn’t figure out. Was he trapped? Would the cops find him? Should she wait? Or should she run?
She pulled out the international cell phone she’d bought for the trip and stared at the screen. She needed advice . . . but she couldn’t call Noel. With trembling fingers, she dialed another number instead.
Hanna Marin swam up out of her dreams and blinked in the darkness. She was in a long, narrow room. A picture of a stubby-legged horse hung above her head. Her boyfriend, Mike, snored next to her, his feet hanging outside the heavy duvet. The bed across the room, where her best friend Aria Montgomery and Aria’s boyfriend, Noel Kahn, were supposed to be sleeping, was empty. Hanna looked at the street sign outside the window. It was sort of in English, but also sort of in nonsense letters.
Right. She was in Iceland. On vacation.
Some vacation this was. What did Aria see in this country? It was light all the time. The bathrooms smelled like rotten eggs. The food was crappy, and the Icelandic girls were way too exotic and pretty. And now, as Hanna lay here, she was overcome with the most ominous feeling. Like someone had just died, maybe.
Her phone rang, and she jumped. She glanced at the screen. She didn’t recognize the number, but something made her pick up anyway.
“Hello?” Hanna whispered, clutching the phone with both hands.
“Hanna?” Aria’s voice sang out. There were sirens in the background.
Next to her, Mike stirred. Hanna slid off the bed and padded into the hall. “Where are you?”
“I’m in trouble.” The sirens grew louder. “I need your help.”
“Are you hurt?” Hanna asked.
Aria’s chin wobbled. At the front of the house, the police were trying to knock down the front door. “I’m not hurt. But I sort of broke into a house and stole a painting.”
“You what?” Hanna shrieked, her voice echoing through the quiet hall.
“I came here with that guy from earlier. He mentioned how a priceless practice painting of Van Gogh’s Starry Night was in a mansion on the edge of town. It had been stolen from a Jewish ghetto in Paris or something during World War II, and the thief had never given it back.”
“Wait, you’re with Olaf?” Hanna shut her eyes tight, recalling the uncomfortable run-in she’d had with Aria and that random bearded dude making out in the alley earlier. He’d seemed perfectly harmless, but Aria already had a boyfriend.
“That’s right.” The cops broke down the door. All six of them stomped in like storm troopers. Aria gripped the phone hard. “We both went inside to find the painting. I didn’t think we would . . . but then there it was. Then all these alarms went off. . . . I got out. Now the cops are here. They have guns, Hanna. Olaf is still trapped inside. I need you to come and get us on one of the back roads—we’ll cut through the woods and find you. There’s no way we’ll be able to take Olaf’s Jeep with all these cops here.”
“Do the cops see you now?”
“No, I’m around the back, in the woods.”
“Jesus, Aria, why are you still even there at all?” Hanna shouted. “Run!”
Aria glanced at the back door. “But Olaf’s still inside.”