Tokyo Surprise Read Online Free PDF

was very frightened on the aeroplane,” the
bodyguard went on. “She had received some upsetting hate mail.”
    “That’s not true!” Jessica said loudly. Josh “sshhed” her, and she frowned at him. “But it’s not,” she said more quietly. “We were there;
she was fine! She said she liked her fan mail; I’ve still got my notes.”
    “She could have been just...trying to keep her spirits up?” Josh suggested, but he didn’t believe it himself. Kiki’s publicist, a woman in a bright red suit with hair
that stuck straight up from her head, took over from the bodyguard.
    “Please,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “Whoever has taken our Kiki – please let her come back!”
    Josh watched the bodyguard carefully, as the focus of the crowd’s attention slid over to the publicist. The man stalked down from the steps, cracking his knuckles.
    “He doesn’t look badly injured,” he said.
    “You ran into him in the airport,” Jessica said. “Did he seem like he could be overcome by a single thug in a confined space? Or thrown out of a car he didn’t want to be
thrown out of?”
    “Not in a million years,” Josh said. Beside them a young woman groaned sadly at something the publicist had said, and a man put his arm around her.
    “He’s having a bit of an off day then, isn’t he? And how did the kidnappers know exactly where the car would be so they could jump in? And” – Jessica’s eyes
glinted with the excitement of a journalist onto a hot story – “why weren’t the car doors locked in the first place if they were so security conscious?”
    Josh didn’t have an answer. There was no answer. Except... “It’s all lies.” Saying it out loud gave Josh shivers down the back of his neck, but there wasn’t any
other explanation. “Something happened to Kiki, and that bodyguard’s lying about it.”
    “Look, he’s answering his phone,” Jessica said, pointing to the police barriers where the bodyguard was slipping away with a small black phone clamped to his giant ear.
    “I wish I knew what he was saying—” Josh began, but Jessica was already dodging her way through the hysterical crowd. “Jess – wait!” Josh went after her,
catching up when she had to find her way through a circle of women holding hands and singing one of Kiki’s famous love songs. Together they ducked and weaved until they spotted the bodyguard
turning down an alleyway, still talking into his mobile phone. They ran after him.
    The alley was dark and dingy, lined with large rubbish bins where the nearby shops dumped their waste. Graffiti was scrawled up the walls, a mixture of kanji and English-style graffiti
lettering.
    The bodyguard had stopped a little way down. Josh and Jessica crept closer, darting from behind a pile of discarded boxes to leap into a hidden doorway, then racing to kneel beside a large green
rubbish bin. They had drawn near enough to hear what the big man was saying.
    “Yes, Boss,” he said. “I did, Boss.”
    “ Kiki? ” Josh mouthed. Jessica shook her head.
    “ Don’t think so, ” she mouthed back.
    “Yes, Boss,” the bodyguard repeated. “She is on her way.” Suddenly he laughed. “Ha! Ha! People are so stupid. They will all see Chiba and not know it! Very clever,
Boss.” He moved away down the alley.
    “He knows where Kiki is!” Jessica hissed. “We have to go after him, maybe he’ll lead us to her.” Josh nodded. Carefully, the two of them followed, watching where
they put their feet in case they trod on something that would make a noise.
    “You know, if this was a comic book, we’d be walking right into a trap,” he whispered.
    “Oh thanks ,” Jessica muttered. “I’m so much more relaxed now.”
    They crept further into the alley, which looked like it was coming to a dead end, stepping over discarded bottles, keeping the bodyguard in sight. A rat scuttled under one of the bins, and Josh
suppressed a shudder. Suddenly Jessica poked him in the