Captive by Brenda Joyce Read Free Book Online Page B

ask someone else for directions, someone who would not be shocked by her dishevelment.
    Alex turned the corner and halted.
    Four men were sauntering down the next dirt street towardher, but they hadn’t seen her yet. Alex stared, unable to move. The men were clearly sailors, and as clearly, they were drunk. They were speaking a language that was an odd mixture of French and Italian and perhaps even German, as well. They were dressed strangely. They wore long-sleeved, colorless shirts that resembled old-fashioned woolen underwear, and baggy dark pants tucked into over-the-knee boots that were rolled down. But the real reason Alex could not move was that they all wore knives, very dangerous looking knives.
    Alex came to her senses. She turned and fled back around the corner, her heart thumping, and then around another corner as well. She pressed against a stone wall, panting. She was a fool! She was an American woman in a foreign city filled with men who had absolutely no respect for Christian women. She had to find a taxi and get back to her hotel at once.
    If only she could feel Blackwell’s presence again. She was growing frightened, and his presence would have been comforting now.
    Alex strained very hard to feel him, but she felt nothing at all. She was alone.
    Frightened, Alex glanced carefully around, but saw no sign of the sailors. She began to breathe easier and she started walking. A teenaged boy, dressed in flowing white robes, was leading a haltered goat across the street a half block ahead of her. Alex did not think too much of his bedouin-style dress, because yesterday she had noticed a few Arabs in very traditional costume, too. Although not with goats. “Please, stop!” She called out somewhat frantically.
    The boy glanced at her, then did a double take. He looked at her high wedge sandals and her pants, his eyes widening as they stopped at her crotch. He stood there and oggled her in a shocked manner.
    Alex grew angry. Clearly he was from some small, primitive village and he had never seen a woman in pants before. Alex had a new headache. Nevertheless, she strode over to him. “I need help,” she began.
    He gave her a strange, condescending look, turned, and with a stick, prodded the goat and walked away.
    “How rude!” Alex exclaimed. Alex realized she had no choice but to continue on, at least until she found anotherpasserby to ask directions of. And if she was really lucky, a cab would soon appear. If one did, even if it already contained passengers, Alex intended to flag it down.
    She tured another corner, combing her hair with her fingertips. Alex saw them at the exact same moment that they saw her.
    Two men. Men clad in turbans, colorful, embroidered vests and loose, flowing pants, each wearing a huge scimitar and an ancient pistol. Two men who looked exactly the way Alex had envisioned the Turkish soldiers she had read about in the history books at Columbia.
    For a split second Alex stared at the Turks and they stared at her. The men cried out. Alex did not hesitate.
    She ran. She ran as hard as she could, the men chasing her. Her heart had never beat so hard and her legs had never moved so swiftly. She pumped her arms. She did not have time to assimilate what she had seen, or to comprehend who the men chasing her were. She knew one thing. She was in dire jeopardy—she could not let them catch her.
    She ran down one street and then another, turning corners pell-mell, cutting behind houses and through home-kept gardens. She ran past piles of refuse. A glance over her shoulder showed her that the men had finally disappeared from view—they were hardly as well conditioned as she was—but Alex did not stop running. Her lungs threatened to burst. Alex turned another corner and faced the open door of a small stone house. She saw a dark man clad in colorful robes shuffling about inside.
    With a hoarse cry, Alex barreled into his home.
    Alex sat on a dark red velvet cushion on the floor, her legs