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

behind the grill placed the skewers in a square of waxy paper and handed it to her. She paid him and thanked him and hurried over to the water’s edge, where several people were gathered outside what she assumed was the ticket booth. When she got to the window, she said, “Wat Pho?” and the young woman punched holes in a ticket and handed it to her.
    Riley found an open space on the concrete bench and settled herself to eat a quick meal and wait for the ferry. She slid the still-warm chunks of meat off the sticks with her teeth and chewed thoughtfully.
    Back at the market, she had simply reacted when this Peewee guy had told her to run. She wasn’t sure why she had just taken him at his word, except for the fact that the man he wanted her to run from had obviously been following her.
    Why hadn’t she seen him earlier as she walked around the market? She had been keeping her eyes open for a tail. The only logical conclusion was that he was very good at following someone and remaining undetected, meaning he was a pro. But what did that mean? Was he police, military, a private contractor? And what was his interest in her?
    She pulled the half bottle of water out of the side pocket of her backpack and washed down the rest of the food. The people around her started getting up and moving toward a man who now stood at the entrance to the dock. He held them back as the boat approached. A boy jumped off the ferry as it neared the dock, and he blew a loud whistle when he got the spring line on the bollard. The dock man lifted his arm and let the crowd surge forward. Riley followed, wondering how they were all going to fit when only two passengers got off the already-crowded ferry.
    Riley couldn’t stand to be on a boat and not be able to watch the water, so she squirmed her way through the hard-packed humanity until she got one hand on the wooden rail at the edge of the boat. She was facing the side of the river where she had boarded so she was able to watch the techniques of the captain and crew each time they docked at a new ferry station.
    The river was busy. She saw all sorts of boats both tied along the river’s edge and charging up and down, churning the garbage-filled water into a mass of confused wakes. She loved the colorful long-tail boats with the big automotive engines on a pivot. Out the back of the engine was a twelve- to sixteen-foot shaft with the prop way out on theend. That was how they got their long-tail name. A tiller-like rod jutted out of the forward end so that the driver could press down on the rod and lift the prop out of the water, alleviating the need for a transmission. The sheer of the long wooden boats rose forward into these high curving bows, and often they were draped with what looked like garlands of flowers. Riley wondered how the drivers squatting in the stern could see anything directly ahead of them.
    There was such a stark contrast between the stilt houses at the river’s edge, built of dark bits of wood and flotsam, and the glittering high-rise towers. It looked as though class in this city could be determined by elevation.
    After several stops along the western bank, the ferry turned to cross the river. They would be docking on the opposite shore now. By bending her knees to see under the coach roof and peering over the heads of the other passengers, she saw a cluster of spires on the opposite riverbank. She consulted the map on her phone, and decided it must be Wat Arun, otherwise known as the Temple of Dawn. The
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towers were encrusted with bits of broken porcelain and they were supposed to glitter when reflecting the first morning light.
    The boat emptied half the passengers at that stop, and Riley was relieved that, at last, she no longer had people pressing against her. She was able to walk across to the opposite side of the boat to check out the scenery on that riverbank for a while. The boat was crossing back to the other shoreline, dodging around the front of a tug with a