Dream Boat by Marilyn Todd Read Free Book Online

bangle set with pearls!
    Pie sellers and spice dealers goggled at the frantic chase, while those too slow to move out of the way found their toes crushed or else took to juggling their wares. The alleyways rang with shouts of encouragement, curses, howls of protests and cheers as the young woman whose long, dark tresses billowed out behind her snaked and slithered after a smelly, foul-mouthed youth.
    What the hell have I got myself into this time? Claudia wheezed, charging through alternating smells of wood and molten copper, aniseed and paint. I'm so broke, I couldn't pay the ransom were my own life at stake, yet here I am, playing jackals and hounds through the mean backstreets of Rome to safeguard the life of a girl I don't even bloody like!
    She hurdled over a box of squirming octopus and squid and ducked underneath a line of washing. Except, she thought, dancing out of the way of a small, black oinking piglet,
    personalities don't come into this. We're talking pond scum holding a fifteen-year-old to ransom, who foolishly imagine extortion is something they can get away with. They wish!
    Dammit, this boy can run! There wasn't even time to pinch a date from the oasis Arab's stall. Up the hill they sped, along narrow twisty lanes, arching left, hooking right, and down the hill the other side, where paint peeled from the plaster on the tenements, windows were barred, and the stench from the runnels was vile. Twice Claudia slipped on cobbles greasy from rotting vegetation, blood, fishscales and discarded oil turned rancid in the heat, but still she pursued her quarry.
    The boy was luring her deeper into the ghetto, but at least it wasn't a ghetto he was familiar with. This was the second time they'd passed that toothless drunk slumped in the doorway. Claudia's lungs were on fire. Her legs couldn't stand the pace much longer.
    She thought of Flavia. This urchin was their only link with the kidnappers. Dammit, whose side were the bloody gods on?
    Gasping, her lungs ragged, she lumbered behind him down another dark and sunless alleyway, no more than a double arm's span in width. What the -?
    'Oh, Jupiter,' she puffed, and would have grinned had she had enough energy. 'I owe you one.'
    The end of the lane was blocked by a twenty-foot wall.
    The little fish was trapped!
    Claudia slewed to a halt. At some stage, the owner of a town house on one street had wished to extend. Unable to go upwards, he'd bought a house in a parallel street and simply linked the two together, and to hell with the street in between.
    Whoever he was, Claudia could have kissed him. Until she saw the knife in the boy's hand.

Chapter Five
    It was a small knife. Obviously concealed deep within the urchin's tunic, probably in a specially sewn pouch. It was a last-ditch-desperate knife, sharp and glittering, but it was held in a tight, professional grip.
    'Back off, bitch!' The boy had turned feral, snarling and vicious in his fear and desperation. 'Don't think I won't use it.'
    Frankly, the thought hadn't entered her head.
    'I will. I'll bloody use it.'
    Claudia's heart was pounding like a woodpecker on overtime. Her whole body shook. 'Go ahead.' To an outsider, her voice sounded calm. It was only inside her head that there was screaming.
    'I mean it.' The boy's eyes bulged. Sweat cut runnels in the grime on his face.
    Back off, a little voice cried. Leave it alone. You can't win them all, let it go. 'So do I,' she said, with commendable clarity.
    Her mouth was dry. Her breathing had stopped. When fear meets an immovable force, there are only two possible outcomes. The boy had two choices: strike or lay down the weapon. Sweet Janus, there was no middle road.
    The hand which clutched the blade trembled slightly. From anxiety or the strength of the grip? He had every right to be anxious. He'd backed himself into a corner, literally, and the error was of his own making. Pride, resentment, stupidity, weakness, the passions swirled