The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg Read Online Free

I dragged my boots, toes first, through the dirt, heading for the stable. Yeah. You guessed it. I’d been summoned to the torture chamber by Kick-ass Kate.
    The closer I came to the stables, the more rubbery my legs felt. Now I knew how those poor French aristocrats must have felt on their way to the guillotine. Of course Tayla had breezed through her first riding-lesson half an hour earlier and was so wired she was still gabbing away like a toy with a new battery. ‘Kate said this,’ and ‘Angel, my pony, did that,’ and ‘Can’t wait till I’m allowed to canter.’
    Suddenly, I had an idea. Perhaps if I tripped and broke my wrist I’d get out of riding over the holidays. Nah. Kate would probably laugh, strap my wrist up with fencing wire and throw me up on the horse anyway.
    I let out a long sigh.
    I could see Kate waiting, long whip at the ready, in the middle of a large sandy round-yard. She was dressed in knee-high leather riding boots, hip-hugging black and white check jodhpurs and a snowy white shirt. What with her china-doll face and long silky smug-looking hair, she could have been my step-sister Sarah in twenty or thirty years’ time.
    Beside her, tied to the fence, was an ancient horse that looked as though it had died a couple of weeks before and no-one had noticed. Its head drooped, its woolly off-white hair stood on end and its eyes were glued shut.
    “Ready, Chiana?” Kate Peterson, white teeth gleaming in the sunlight, smiled as she untied the horse from the rail and dragged its head up off the ground.
    “Hey, don’t bother waking him up,’ I said. ‘Let him sleep. I don’t mind if we give riding a miss for today.”
    “No, no. Shakespeare’s been retired for a number of years now but I’m sure he won’t mind. The horse you were assigned to has an abscess in its hoof—so Shakespeare’s filling in.”
    “Shakespeare?”
    That figured. The horse looked old enough to have taken part in the original Midsummer Night’s Dream.
    Reluctantly I took the hard white riding helmet Tayla handed me, shoved it on over my untamable copper-colored hair and fastened the safety strap under my chin.
    “Now, Cha, before we begin the lesson, I want you to give your horse a good strong pat on the neck. Let him know who’s boss.”
    Not likely. If he finds out who’s boss—I’m dead meat!
    “Chiana, pat your horse.”
    “Whatever.”
    Expecting to lose at least one finger, I inched my hand nervously toward Shakespeare and tickled him behind his left ear. The hair felt soft, his ears warm. Instead of chomping my hand off at the elbow, his eyes shut fast again and I swear he purred like a cat.
    “Are you sure this horse won’t collapse if I sit on him?”
    “Don’t worry about Shakespeare—he’s stronger than he looks. Now, up you go. It’s time to enjoy the thrill of riding. There’s nothing like it to get the adrenalin pumping.”
    Kate grabbed hold of my left leg in a grip that proved pushing a dirty great wheelbarrow full of horse-manure was a much better muscle-building exercise than working out at a gym. She threw me high in the air.
    High in the air—over the top of the saddle—and down the other side .
    Aaaaaaaaaaargh!
    It was like some slapstick comedy routine from a dumb black and white television re-run. Only this was for real. Sprawled on the ground, one arm elbow-deep in a squashy pile of fresh, warm, oozing horse-manure, I could definitely vouch for how real it was.
    With a furtive glance to check that no-one other than Tayla was watching, I looked straight into the grinning face of Noah Peterson, horse-rider extraordinaire. Noah had won the Junior Show jumping Championship at last year’s Royal Adelaide Show. And being Kate’s son, everyone at Treehaven treated him like he could walk on water.
    Everyone but me .
    “One word, Noah Peterson, and you’re snail-bait,” I snarled from the corner of my mouth.
    His answering grin almost broke his face in two. Of all the people to