Captive - Hardcover

Grainger, A.J.

 
9781481429030: Captive
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1481429035 ISBN 13: 9781481429030
Verlag: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

When a teen is held hostage, her efforts to escape uncover a conspiracy that forces her to question everything in this psychological thriller with a twist of forbidden romance.

They told her not to worry—
because the man who shot her father was in custody.
They told her that she was safe—
because security had been increased.

All it took was one opportunity, one breach,
and then she was theirs. Kidnapped, confined, alone.

They told her she could go home when their demands were met.
That it wouldn’t take long, because she was the prime minister’s daughter.

But it has been days, and still no help has come.
She wonders when they will tire of this game and kill her.

She cannot wait around for that to happen; she will escape. She has to.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

A.J. Grainger lives in London, England, where she works as a children’s books editor. She loves writing and editing because it means she gets to talk about books all day. She is the author of Captive and The Sisterhood. Visit her at AJGrainger.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Captive

CHAPTER ONE

My three-year-old sister, Addy, is playing with her Baby Betty doll on the stairs of Number 10. Her collection of dolls is pushed up against the wooden paneling of the fourteenth step, the one that takes the stairs around the first bend. She shouldn’t be here. She should be up in our flat, getting ready to leave. She is so intent on her game that for a while she doesn’t notice me sit down behind her. When she does look up, her face becomes one big, open smile.

“Byn, cuddle,” she says, sitting down in my lap.

“Why aren’t you dressed yet?” I ask, blowing a raspberry on her baby potbelly. She squeals, slapping me around the head. I let her go and she slides off my lap, taking her doll with her, its head bumping on the step as she reaches for another of her toys: a fluffy giraffe that the Kenyan president’s wife gave her on a state visit last year. A wisp of white-blond hair twists like a curly tail on the nape of my sister’s neck. I tug it gently, watching it straighten and curl, straighten and curl as a voice rises from the hallway below. I shift Addy so I can peer through the banister.

“Thanks for seeing me at such short notice, Stephen. I appreciate it,” a tall man with round wire-framed glasses is saying. It’s Michael Bell, the head of Bell-Barkov and one of Dad’s oldest friends. He is ridiculously dressed as usual, a canary-yellow tie matched with a pale-pink shirt. If looking like a boiled sweet were in this season, Michael would be right on trend.

“Hello, Robyn,” Michael says, looking up and cutting off my train of thought. Addy appears next to me, waving her doll at him through the banister. “How are you, girls?” he asks. “Annabelle was asking after you—”

Dad cuts him short. “I’m due at Westminster shortly, and I’ve got back-to-backs all day. I can only give you five minutes, tops.”

Michael gives a brief wave, and then the two of them disappear from view down one of the corridors.

Shadow, my cat, brushes my arm. He is creeping up the stairs, his eyes on Addy. Addy’s love for Shadow is unconditional and frequently painful, for the cat. She looks up at the wrong moment (for Shadow) and launches herself at him. With a cry of “Hug Kitty,” she squeezes him tight, and the inevitable happens. Shadow lashes out and catches Addy on her cheek. It is a minuscule scratch, but baby howls join cat yowls. Thankfully, Dad and Michael have passed through the interconnecting door into Number 11, so they won’t be disturbed.

I scoop Addy up with one hand and pat Shadow soothingly with the other.

“Kitty scratch! Bad kitty.” She thumps Shadow on the back.

“Hey, hey,” I say, acting as peace ambassador. “Shadow was scared. He didn’t mean to scratch you. You have to be gentle, Ads. Remember, like I showed you.” I scoot back to sit against the wall, with Addy curled in on one side and Shadow on the other. Shadow lets out a resentful purr as I tickle him under the ears. His second purr is calmer as the hair on his haunches settles down.

Addy sniffs again. “Stroke Kitty?” she asks, wiping her eyes.

“Stroke him gently. That’s it.” Addy runs her hand along Shadow’s back, the wrong way, and her tap on his head has more in common with a punch. Shadow looks at me as if to say, Yeah right, and makes a break for it. Addy’s mouth opens again, but before she can form a yell, Mum calls my name from farther down the corridor. She comes out of one of the offices on this floor, dressed in a neat blue knee-length dress and matching two-inch heels. She looks like she’s going to a wedding or a fashion shoot. When the nation’s press camp out on your front door with their long-angle camera lenses, even the school run can feel like the runway at Paris Fashion Week. Ever since a hideous moment last year, at the prince’s christening at Westminster Abbey, when Mum wore a pleated skirt on a windy day and the entire country saw her Spanx, she’s worn tunic dresses, in heavy material, to the knee, which even a tornado couldn’t blow skyward.

Mum keeps out of Dad’s work as much as possible. In poli­tics, her motto is “See no evil, hear no evil.” She thinks you can’t be responsible for what you don’t know. She’s wrong. Dad says the only way to thrive here, in these cramped and fusty old rooms, full of too many files, boxes, aides, press assistants, and researchers, is to either know everything, or to appear to. Ultimately it is not what you know, or even who you know—it’s what people say you know that is important. People think my dad knows everything. Other people’s secrets are his currency.

“Adriana isn’t even dressed, Robyn,” Mum says, as if I’m the nanny. “Where is Karen?” (The actual nanny.) “Come here, Addy, darling.”

I carry my sister up to Mum. Addy cries out for her toys, her legs kicking out. One catches the picture of an ex-prime minister hanging at the top of the stairs, nearly knocking it to the floor. Mum lunges for Addy, and I lunge for the photo. Addy settles as soon as she’s in Mum’s arms, clamping herself to Mum’s body like a baby koala. Mum scoots her onto one hip. “Are you packed? I’d like you to show me which schoolbooks you are planning on bringing with you, Robyn. It’ll be very quiet in Cheshire, and you can make a start on some of the reading you have to do for next term.”

Addy is curved into Mum’s body, head on one side, peering up at me. I make a funny face at her and she does her shy thing, pulling Mum’s long brown hair over her face.

“Are you listening to me?” Mum asks.

“Yes. Schoolbooks. Quiet. Start reading.”

Mum’s face registers hurt, and I feel bad and grumpy in equal measure. “I’ll do some work, but I’m taking my camera as well.”

“If you must—but schoolwork first. I know these last few months have been hard, but you can’t afford to let your grades slip. You’ve got exams coming up.”

I tickle Addy under the chin, making her squeal, and then change the subject. “Will Dad be all right without us?”

“I expect so. It’s only for four days.” Mum’s lips pinch, the way they always do when someone brings up Dad. “Although heaven knows when he’ll ever remember to take his pills. I’ll speak to one of the Garden Room Girls about reminding him.” The Garden Room Girls are the bank of secretaries who work here round the clock, so called because they are based in the room off the garden. Super unoriginal and super sexist. It’s a holdover from years ago. They’re not even all women these days.

“He’ll never get full use of his shoulder back, will he?” I say.

“I think it’s safe to say he won’t be playing tennis again anytime soon. Mind you, after that humiliating performance against the US president at Chequers last year, it’s probably no bad thing.” She stops as she sees my eyes mist with tears that have nothing to do with Dad losing 6–2 to the US president and then hurling his tennis racket at the net. “Oh, Robyn, sweetheart.” She tucks a strand of my hair...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1481429035
ISBN 13 
9781481429030
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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