Blood Ransom Read Online Free PDF Page A

jetty that led down to a stony beach. There was no one else about.
    I peered along the beach. A large motorboat was tied up at the end of the jetty.
    Another glance at Milo and Paul. I could hear their voices, though not what they were saying, drifting towards me on the fierce wind. I lowered the car boot until it was almost shut and tiptoed
across the gravel. As soon as I reached the jetty and felt the firm wooden boards beneath my feet I sped up. I ran as fast as I could, grateful that I was wearing trainers with rubber soles that
made no sound.
    As I reached the boat, I glanced round at Paul again. He was easing Milo back into his wheelchair. I had seconds left to get into the boat and hide.
    I stepped down, into the back of the boat, and looked round for the red tarpaulin Milo had told me about. There. It was on the right-hand side of the boat, stretched over a collection of
boxes and barrels. I raced over and crawled underneath, pushing a box out of the way, then pulling it back in front of me when I was properly in. It made a scraping noise, which sounded loud to my
ears. I had to hope the sound wouldn’t carry over the roaring wind.
    I stretched out as far as I could. I was having to lie curled up again, with my right leg bent at an uncomfortable angle. Well, at least it was better than lying in the boot of that car.
    In the distance I could hear the crunch of wheels and footsteps over the gravel – then thundering across the jetty.
    Grunting, Paul leaped into the boat. I guessed he was lifting Milo down, then stowing the wheelchair. I held my breath as he stomped past my hiding place. The wind crept around me, chilling me
through my top. I couldn’t even move my arms to draw the hood around my face.
    For a second I thought about crawling out from behind the boxes and jumping overboard. I didn’t have to do this. In fact, surely what I was doing was insane , going right to the
heart of Elijah’s new operation.
    And then I remembered Daniel’s little face and huge brown eyes and how I’d held him and comforted him when he’d cried.
    And I knew that I didn’t have a choice.
    I was Daniel’s only chance.
     
    10
Theo
    Where on earth was she? I’d gone back online several times and there was no sign of Rachel in any of the chat rooms we used. I threw all caution to the wind and
started asking other users if anyone with any of Rachel’s usernames had been online recently.
    Every response was a ‘no’.
    By one p.m. the lunchtime crowd were starting to drift in and the diner was filling up. Several clients wanted access to the computer, and Cheri’s boss turned up so I wasn’t allowed
to use the terminal any longer.
    I went home, feeling seriously troubled. Having gone over all the options again, there seemed to be only one possibility.
    Something had happened to Rachel.
    Something bad.
    I walked in the front door of our condo just after 1.30 p.m. It was a Saturday, so Mum was at home. Her new job involved her working from home quite a lot and her boss often came round ‘to
help’. He was in our living room right now, on the couch next to Mum. They were looking at a magazine together, but there was an odd atmosphere about them too – like maybe I’d
walked in and interrupted them and the magazine was just a cover for what they’d actually been doing.
    I really didn’t want to think about that, so I just grunted a hello and went to my room. It’s not bad, as bedrooms go. In fact, our condo here in Philadelphia is much nicer
than the flat we had in London. My room’s twice the size of my old one, with a huge, light window and loads of space to hang out in. The bed’s big and so’s the couch – not
that I have friends round here very often.
    I hurried over to the desk in the corner and opened my laptop. Another bonus of our new life was the money we’d been given to start us off. Mum used most of it to buy furniture and stuff,
but there had been enough left to get me an okay phone and a