Island of Thieves by Josh Lacey Read Free Book Online

staying here for a couple of days.
    Of course, we couldn’t. I knew that already. We’d told Otto much too much about our plans. His thugs would be out looking for us. The police, too. All the people that he’d bribed. He probably had spies everywhere. They’d be searching the whole city for us. The whole country. Hunting for Harvey Trelawney and his nephew Tom.

7
    Alejandra’s car was small, red, and smashed to pieces. It looked as if it had been in a fight with a bigger, nastier car and stumbled away, clutching its nose. The body was covered in bumps and scratches. Rust had eaten away at the metal. One of the back windows was cracked. I wondered if it would pass an inspection and then I wondered if they even had inspections in Peru.
    Uncle Harvey wasn’t complaining, so I kept quiet too. If you’re in a strange city and you need a free car, you take whatever you can get. Especially if there’s a murderous international criminal on your tail.
    Uncle Harvey loaded our bags into the trunk. I wondered if Alejandra would be coming with us, but she kissed me on both cheeks and said, “
Adiós,
Tom.”
    â€œBye. Thanks for the car. We’ll bring it back in one piece, I promise.”
    I don’t think she heard me. She’d already turned her attention to Uncle Harvey. I looked the other way. Eventually my uncle freed himself from her clutches and took the key from her hand. We got inside and drove off.
    At the end of the street, I looked back. Alejandra was still waving. I glanced at my uncle, wondering if he would wave back, but he didn’t seem to notice her. Then we turned the corner and she was gone.
    I said, “Is she your girlfriend?”
    â€œYes and no,” replied Uncle Harvey.
    â€œWhat does that mean? Is she or isn’t she?”
    â€œThese things are complicated. You’ll understand when you’re a bit older.” He punched his hand on the horn. “Are you blind?”
    That last bit was addressed to a car driving toward us on the wrong side of the road. The car didn’t change direction, so Uncle Harvey took evasive action, skidding up onto the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians, and then bumping down onto the road again and lurching onward.
    As we drove through the city, I searched the faces that we passed, looking out for Ricardo, Miguel, and Otto’s other thugs. I didn’t see them, but that didn’t mean that they—or their friends, or their spies, or their closed circuit cameras—hadn’t seen us.
    On the outskirts, we passed through miles of slums. Little kids stood by the side of the road, dressed in rags, waving their hands. Some of them were selling sticks of chewing gum or sweets wrapped in foil. Others were just begging for coins. Behind them, I could see their homes, one-room shacks with a single sheet of corrugated iron for a roof and a few old boxes for furniture. I remembered my bedroom and my bike and my computer, and I felt very grateful to have been born when and where I was. I tried to express this to my uncle, but he just laughed.
    â€œWelcome to the world,” he said. “Connecticut might not look much like this, but most of the rest of the planet does.”
    The air cleared as the road climbed. By midday, the gray mist had gone. When the road twisted, I could see for miles down a long valley.
    We stopped for lunch at a ramshackle café, where we ate cheese pies and boiled potatoes. Uncle Harvey drank yet another cup of coffee and tried to persuade me to have one too. For about the fourteenth time, I told him I don’t like coffee, but he didn’t seem to believe me.
    Throughout the afternoon, the road got steadily worse. It clung to the edge of a steep hillside and the surface wasn’t even paved. Soon we were skidding and scrambling along a muddy path that would have been a farm track at home. Out here, it was the main highway from Lima to the backcountry, the only route for