Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) by Christine Kling

breathing, but there was nothing. No footsteps, no voices. The air smelled of old wood and dust. Her neck ached from the cramped position she was in, but her backpack was wedged under her, and there was nothing to support her head. She put one hand on the lid above her to help her shift her body, and to her surprise it was the lid that moved instead of her body. When she’d tried earlier, the lid wouldn’t budge, but now it lifted a crack and light flooded into the box.
    She peeked out and blinked at the brightness. As her eyes adjusted, she saw row after row of wood and ceramic Buddha heads. Beyond that were some cabinets and furniture. She didn’t see any people, so she raised the lid higher, until she was able to get her other hand up on the side of the box. She stood. Around her trunk were several others,all with leather straps holding the lids onto them. She was standing inside the largest trunk of all.
    Outside the shop, people walked up and down the aisle. Some of them glanced in at her, but their eyes moved on. No one was paying any attention to her. She stepped out of the trunk and lowered the lid back down. She stepped to the back and swept aside the curtain. It opened directly onto the dark passageway behind the shops. There was no one there.
    When she dropped the curtain and started for the door, an elegantly dressed woman turned into the shop carrying a white Styrofoam cup. “Hello,” she said and ducked her head in a small bow. “May I help you?”
    Riley looked around the small space again. There was no one there but her. “Is this
your
shop?”
    The woman smiled. “Yes. Is there something special you’re looking for?”
    “Were you in here just now?”
    “No, I just went out for a cup of coffee.”
    “Did you see . . . ?”
    “Are you all right? My neighbor across the way came to find me at the restaurant. He said a strange man had run into my shop.”
    “And this man, did he have tattoos on his arms here?” Riley pointed to her forearms.
    “He didn’t say. All he said was that he had light brown hair and a beard.”
    Riley opened her mouth to say something else, but she stopped with her mouth hanging open.
No
, she thought,
not possible. No way.
    She tried to smile at the shop owner. “Thank you,” she said, and she spun around and started walking. At first, she wasn’t even aware of what direction she was going. She didn’t see the stalls or the merchandise or the people. Some sort of autopilot kicked on and was navigating her body through the crowds for her. Her mind was going backover what it had felt like when those arms closed around her and her pulse had skyrocketed. She’d thought it had been fear—fear that her pursuer had caught her. Had it been something else?
    There was only one way she could think of to start finding answers and that was to go find Peewee.
    Riley came to an intersection and saw that the perimeter Main Road was only a few aisles away. She turned and started toward the bright light.
    When she’d first arrived in Phuket, she had downloaded the Lonely Planet’s guide to Thailand on her iPhone and she used it now to locate the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. There were so many different temples in Bangkok, it was difficult to keep them straight. The one she was looking for, she discovered, was called Wat Pho. It was down along the Chao Phraya River, and she decided the safest and probably the fastest way to get there would be via the SkyTrain to Surasak and then a ferry to Tha Tien. She’d heard about Bangkok traffic.
    After the air-conditioning inside the elevated train, the heat felt good when Riley descended the stairs from the platform and started for the river. She’d missed both breakfast and lunch and the food carts along the street were making her stomach growl. The old man had said to meet in three hours, so she had time to kill. She stopped at a cart with a smoking grill and pointed to the pork satay skewers, then raised two fingers. The man