The driver glanced at her, started the taxi, and asked, "Miss, you’re not a local, are you?"
Charlotte said, "I’m here as a tourist."
The driver was a talkative middle-aged man, occasionally asking her questions. Charlotte didn’t want to talk, so she half-heartedly responded while observing the surroundings behind her.
The driver watched her expression in the rearview mirror, and his deanor slowly beca more serious.
Charlotte sat in the car for a while, then suddenly realized sothing was off about the direction the car was heading.
She beca alert and asked the driver, "Sir, isn’t this the wrong way out of town?"
The driver didn’t respond.
Charlotte tightened her lips and forcefully twisted the door handle, discovering that the car door was locked.
As the surroundings beca increasingly suspicious, Charlotte couldn’t hold back anymore. She impulsively lunged forward to try to seize the steering wheel.
Unexpectedly, the driver suddenly slamd on the brakes, stopping the car in front of a building. He hurriedly jumped out, running into the building while shouting.
Charlotte widened her eyes, watching the driver’s running figure. She felt confused, but more than that, she felt frightened.
It wasn’t until the driver returned with several uniford n that Charlotte realized the building in front of her was a police station.
She had been taken to the police station by the driver!
The middle-aged man babbled sothing to the police officers that Charlotte couldn’t understand, but seeing the officers’ expressions grow more serious with the driver’s words, she sensed trouble.
She was dragged out of the car and brought into the interrogation room, where a female officer and a male officer interrogated her separately.
From their broken English, she learned that the driver had mistaken her for an illegal Vietnase immigrant.
Many won flee here from Vietnam to sell sex or smuggle drugs, and her pale complexion, shabby clothing, and desire to leave town at night painted her as anything but a respectable woman.
Charlotte widened her eyes in disbelief; she couldn’t understand how she could be mistaken for a sex worker.
However, no matter how she explained herself, the two officers wouldn’t listen.
They wouldn’t even let her go despite her showing them her passport.
Charlotte had never encountered such unreasonable police before; she felt both angry and powerless in the interrogation room.
Later, a male officer ca to her and said that if she could find soone to pay a bail fee, she would be released.
However, the bail fee was twenty thousand.
She had hurried here with little money; where would she get twenty thousand?
Charlotte realized she was being extorted by the police.
She had seen news stories about tourists being forced to pay bail by local police in impoverished countries, but until it happened to her, she didn’t understand how absurd it was!
Charlotte remained detained until the following day.
They didn’t give her any food, only water; she spent the night enduring hunger and exhaustion.
The female officer tried to persuade her to call her family in her ho country for a bank transfer.
Aside from rolling her eyes, there was nothing she could do.
Calling the Smith family for money seed even more ridiculous than calling Robert Stephens...
While she was thinking this, soone suddenly ca in from outside, opened the door, and said to her, "Number 201, soone has posted bail for you, you’re free to go."
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