13 Little Blue Envelopes
through the tube journey from the house to Harrods and made her repeat it back to him, then walked her through all the bus options, which was just a big jumble of numbers. Then he was gone, and Ginny was at the table alone, with her glass of syrup. She gazed at it sourly, still stung by the expression on Richard’s face when he’d seen her drinking it. She picked up the bottle and examined it to see if there was any warning, any indication that it was anything but normal juice, anything that would make her behavior less freakish.
    To her relief, there was nothing on the bottle that could have helped her. It said that it was something called “blackcurrant squash.” It was “only 89p!” It was made in the United Kingdom.
    Which is where she was. She was in a kingdom far, far from home.
    And who was this Richard, anyway, aside from a guy in a suit who worked in a big store? Looking around his kitchen, she decided he was definitely single. There were relatively few groceries—just things like this warm instant juice stuff. There were some clothes on the chairs nearest to the wall and a few scattered crumbs and coffee granules on the table.
    41

    Whoever he was, he’d let Aunt Peg stay long enough to decorate an entire room. It must have taken time to make the collage and sew the bedspread. She had to have been here for months.
    She got up and retrieved the package. After brushing a spot clean, she laid the envelopes out on the table. She looked over each of the eleven unopened ones. Most had been decorated with some kind of picture as well as a number. The front of the next one had been painted in watercolors in the style of a Monopoly Community Chest card. Aunt Peg had created her own version of the little man in the top hat with the monocle, with a very fat and round plane going by the background. She’d even managed to sketch out letters that looked like the Monopoly typescript. They read: TO BE OPENED THE MORNING
    AFTER THE SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF ENVELOPE #2.
    That required her to find out what Richard had sold the queen and getting to an ATM. She needed money anyway. All she had left was a handful of strangely shaped coins, which she hoped would be enough to get her back to Harrods.
    Ginny snatched up the directions that Richard had written for her minutes before, dumped the offending juice down the sink, and headed for the door.
    42

    Richard and the Queen
    A red bus was coming down the street in Ginny’s direction. The sign on the front listed several famous-sounding destinations, including Knightsbridge, and the number matched one of the bus numbers Richard had given her. There was a small bus shelter a few feet away, and it looked like the bus planned on stopping there.
    Two black poles with illuminated yellow globes on top of them marked the opening of the pedestrian crossing. Ginny ran to these, glanced to make sure the coast was clear, and started to run across the road.
    Sudden honking. A big black cab whizzed past her. As Ginny jumped back, she saw something written on the road.
    LOOK LEFT.
    “It’s like they know me,” she mumbled to herself.
    She managed to get across the road and tried to ignore the fact that everyone on one side of the bus had just witnessed her 43

    near-death experience. She had no idea what to pay the driver.
    Ginny helplessly held out her little bit of remaining money and he took one of the fat coins. She went up the narrow spiral staircase in the middle of the bus. There were many seats available, and Ginny took one at the very front. The bus started to move.
    It felt like she was floating. From her perspective, it looked like the bus was running over countless pedestrians and bicyclists, squashing them into oblivion. She pushed herself farther back into the seat and tried not to pay any attention to this. (Except they had to have just killed that guy on the cell phone. Ginny waited to feel the bump as the bus rolled over his body, but it never came.)
    She looked around at
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

Suck It Up

Emma Hillman

Eye Spy

Tessa Buckley

Seduction in Mind

Susan Johnson

Shadow Hawk

Jill Shalvis

The Dutch

Richard E. Schultz

The Wellstone

Wil McCarthy

Claws for Alarm

T.C. LoTempio

Twelve Red Herrings

Jeffrey Archer