Free The History Mystery by Ana María Machado

kidnap girls,’ he was saying now, ‘then they take them abroad, make them do all sorts ofhorrible things. They keep promising work, fame, money, but it’s just exploitation. You shouldn’t trust these people, Faye. I think you should report this to the police.’
    â€˜Oh, Matt, you’re so sweet. It’s great having a friend like you who cares about me and watches out for me.’
    Ah, the flicker of those beautiful eyelashes made him melt on the inside. And that lovely smile. And her voice that carried on, soft but firm.
    â€˜But there’s no need to worry, Matt, I wasn’t born yesterday. Since I’ve always wanted to be a model, my parents have warned me about all that stuff. I would never follow up this kind of contact without talking to them first.’
    â€˜Good,’ said Matt, relieved.
    â€˜I didn’t give her my number. See? I know the rules! And later I got my dad to ring her . But I love seeing that you’re an angel who cares for me.’
    (Love? Angel? He was almost dizzy.)
    â€˜Anyway,’ Faye continued, ‘the woman made a couple of proposals and a few days later she sent the draft of a contract for us to look over.’
    Matt nodded.
    â€˜There were lots of technical terms in it, though. My parents said that it seemed cool, but they’re not experts, so we thought it would be good to get a lawyer to look it over. But that’s expensive, so whenI remembered your sister is in law school, Sonia, I thought I might ask her to take a look. That’s all.’
    So that was it. That’s why Faye had this mysterious need to talk to Andrea to discuss legal stuff. One mystery solved.
    â€˜But you know what?’ said Pedro. ‘I don’t get why Colin wanted you to stay on for the meeting with us. We’re here to talk to him about this virus that has been appearing in some of our computers lately. Or it could be a hacker, who knows, someone who invades people’s inboxes with weird messages and nobody knows where they’re from.’
    â€˜The same one from the history project?’ asked Faye.
    â€˜That’s the one.’
    â€˜Ah, so that’s why, of course … I get it now. See, remember I said how Colin came into the office when I was telling Andrea about something that happened to me, something a bit like that, actually, and he overheard me.’
    â€˜ What? A bit like what? Have you been getting messages too?’
    This was new!
    â€˜Yeah, I was telling Andrea about these weird messages I’ve been getting.’
    Pedro took a deep breath and asked, very calmly, ‘Could you please explain, Faye? This could be important.’
    â€˜Well, it all started with some text messages ..’
    Matt, on the other hand, wasn’t calm at all. First, he had just discovered that Faye let herself get approached by random people when she left shops, just like that, people who could drag her halfway across the world and take her far away from the classrooms at Garibaldi High. Never again that smile, that dark, shiny hair, those long eyelashes that blinked slowly as if they were dancing in slow motion. And now it seemed the girl was getting strange text messages. They could be dangerous! Threatening, perhaps. In any case, they seemed to bother these lawyers, and these were people who were experienced in dealing with criminals and felons.
    But he shouldn’t really be surprised. Of course, the whole world was probably dying to send text messages to Faye’s mobile, to ask her out or simply to tell her how beautiful she was. Not everyone was like him, too embarrassed to say how he felt. What if she accepted one of these invitations?
    â€˜What did these texts say?’ he asked.
    â€˜The first one didn’t really say anything, it just asked a question.’
    â€˜Well, what did it ask , then?’
    â€˜â€œWhat is this book that you want so badly?”’
    â€˜I don’t get