Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

of spooky that I thought I had heard an elephant god speak to me. It didn’t really matter if it had happened or not. It was just weird, either way. Zak must have gotten out of the pool, because the next time I heard his voice he was right behind me.
    “Why do you like taking pictures so much?” Zak asked.
    “I don’t know, I just like it,” I said. “You know about the whole magazine contest thing? The student that takes the best picture gets the entire class a trip to New York, plus a camera for themselves.”
    “Nice,” Zak said. “Lots of stuff to take pictures of here.”
    “I know.”
    “I bet there’s even more stuff out there,” Zak said, pointing beyond the high stone walls of the garden.
    “Probably.”
    “What I’m saying is, this is India . Don’t you want to get out of this hotel? See what’s out there?”  
    I could see where this was going and I wanted to nip any infantile plan Zak had about skipping out of the hotel in the bud. My mom hadn’t told me in so many words not to leave the hotel, but I was pretty positive that, don’t run off , meant she wanted me to stay put. What else could it have meant? We were in a totally foreign country. It wasn’t like I could just wander down the street to a friend’s house.
    “I’m going with my mom,” I said. “When the conference is over.”
    “Sweet.”
    I snapped another shot, this time of another monkey in the cage. It was eating a banana, but instead of peeling it from top to bottom, it peeled it from the bottom of the banana, with the stem hanging down. As I snapped the picture, I idly wondered what else was upside down in India? What frightened me was this little feeling I had in the pit of my stomach that told me that whether I wanted to or not, I was going to find out.
    I noticed that there was long pause in the conversation. It was going to be a very long four days. Even though I remembered I needed to give Zak a chance, I still didn’t relish the idea. He and I were like oil and water, that was for sure. With some people, it just doesn’t matter. You can tell that however much you might want to, you just won’t get along. Oh well, at least he thought my dive was cool. My train of thought was broken by the ring of a mobile phone. I looked over my shoulder to see the ringing phone sitting on a lounge chair. A man stepped out of the pool to answer it.
    I hadn’t seen the guy get into the pool. I had obviously been either A — too interested in the monkeys, or B — asleep. But I saw him now, if only from the side. The man was of medium height and very muscular. He had a fairly dark tan and wore one of those super tight, Speedo-type black bathing suits. It’s kind of rude, but I guess the thing that most stood out about the guy was his muscular butt. His butt kind of filled out his tight black Speedo like it was made of steel or something. I don’t know why, but it reminded me of a rhinoceros. I had seen this guy for two seconds, and I already knew that forever after, in my mind at least, he would be known as Rhino Butt. Rhino Butt grabbed a towel and picked up the mobile phone for a second before dropping it back down on the lounge chair.
    “Yeah?” Rhino Butt said in a deep gravelly voice.
    “Good afternoon, Mr. Berger, I trust your flight was a pleasant one,” a silky, smooth voice said from the phone.
    OK, so I guess Rhino Butt’s real name was Berger. Didn’t matter. He was still Rhino Butt to me. He toweled off. I guess he had put the phone on speaker so he didn’t have to stop what he was doing. Busy guy.
    “It was fine.”  
    “A Jeep awaits you in Moon Surrie. I expect my men have been useful to you?”  
    “As long as they keep taking orders, they can tag along,” Rhino Butt said.
    “And the time frame?”
    “We’re getting there.”
    “Enough,” the guy on the other end of the line said. “You’re being very well paid. Have you located the Leopard?”
    The muscles in Rhino Butt’s whole body tensed.