Free The Castle by Sophia Bennett Page A

engines and my own pulse throbbing in my ears.
    The corridor ahead of me was long and wide, thickly carpeted and dimly lit by glowing glass panels set into the ceiling. It was just like how I pictured a posh hotel.
    OK. Imagine you’re in a posh hotel, Peta. A friendly, posh hotel, where as long as you’re very quiet, nobody will catch you alive and kicking. Then you can breathe.
    It helped. I crept along quickly, listening for danger. On the left was a doorway set into the wall, with a button beside it. A lift. This boat had an actual lift! Presumably that’s how they’d brought up the furniture, with me in it. On the right was a small gym (naturally – superyacht) and a room crammed with Panama hats and Gucci deck shoes in different shades of white and cream. Beyond that was a dining room (superyacht), but no kitchen, or food.
    The final door opened on to a large, deserted sitting area, facing the back of the boat. Enormous white leather sofas and low glass tables were scattered around. Crouching, I ran past them and ducked down near the glass wall at the back. Outside, I could see a deck with a large dark shadowy rectangle on it. The rectangle rippled in the moonlight. I had todouble-check. Yes, it really was a swimming pool.
    Suddenly, I spotted movement on a lower deck. I pulled back. Several metres below me, a blond-haired crewman was patrolling the boat, looking out to sea. He hadn’t seen me, but I realised it was time to stay away from the windows. Keeping low, I returned to my hunt for food.
    A long, sinuous piece of furniture ran along the far wall of the saloon, glimmering reddish-orange in the moonlight. Copper. There was a lot of copper on this boat, I realised. Behind it, mirror-backed cabinets stocked bottles of every possible kind of alcohol.
    Yes!
    It was a cocktail bar. When you live in a hotel, you learn a few things, and one is that where there is a bar, there is bar-food. One of my Saturday jobs at the inn was to stock the bar shelves with snacks. My stomach rumbled at the very thought as I ran round behind this one, crouched down and checked it out.
    Perfect!
    From the back, it looked achingly familiar. Shelf after shelf, neatly arranged with tempting-looking foil packets of crisps and nuts of every sort. By now, I’d half expected that if I found anything at all, it would be caviar or quails’ eggs or something weird and over the top, but even billionaires liked crisps and nuts, it seemed. I could have cried with happiness.
    OK, so I did. For a few moments, I admit I cried with happiness. I was tempted to scoop up an armful of packets to take with me, but people would notice that. Instead, I lifted two from the back of each row. Eight rows. Sixteen packets. Once I’d carefully rearranged the rest, you’d hardly know they were gone.
    *
    Ten minutes later, back in the closet, and full to the brim with peanuts and salted almonds, I felt better. Much better.
    When we were out camping, Dad always made sure we sat down to eat our rations long before I ever thought we needed to. But Dad said food can make an enormous difference to your mood. It’s one of the reasons the enemy starve you if they capture you – to make you too depressed to resist or escape. I should have packed more chocolate, but peanuts and salted almonds TOTALLY ROCK.
    I rethought my situation. Here I was, on a superyacht , surrounded by famous art works, great daytime views and now, night-time access to unlimited bar snacks. Marco and Ingrid were having to explain how they’d let a fourteen-year-old girl slip through their clutches, and meanwhile, the girl in question was getting ready to snuggle under a cashmere blanket, a couple of decks away.
    Yeah. Take that, kidnapper dudes.

FOURTEEN
    T he next day, the yacht sailed on, and the seas grew more stormy. With nothing to read, no internet, and not daring to turn the TV on, I discovered that even a superyacht can get a little boring after a