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Authors: Carolyn Keene

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BOOK: Club Dread
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CHAPTER
16

NANCY

RACE AGAINST TIME

I dialed Joe again. And again. Nothing. It went straight to voice mail every time. The feeling in my stomach became heavier, like a brick sinking into a lake. Joe and Frank were in trouble.

“George, can you find a detailed map of the Wetlands? We need to find out where Nikitin's and Matthias's rooms are.”

“Sure, Nancy.” George started typing away on the keyboard, her hands flying over the keys. She sniffed a few times, but she'd mostly stopped crying.

I placed the necklace back in the black velvet bag and hid it under one of the couches. Hopefully, Matthias wouldn't come back to look for it. If he tore the place apart again, he'd find it. But if he had the chance to
search our rooms, it probably didn't matter anymore whether he found the necklace. At least not for us.

Bess and I sat silently, our hands clenched, while we waited for George to find the information we needed. As the seconds ticked past, I could feel the tension mounting. What if Nikitin had overpowered Frank and Joe? What if they were on their way to Matthias's room right now? What if, what if, what if.

“Got it, Nancy,” George said finally. “Nikitin is in this building, Room four-seven-one. Matthias is over in the employee area. Bungalow 8, Room 7.”

“George, you're incredible!” Bess jumped with joy. If it had a chip in it, George could make it work.

“All right, let's head to Nikitin's room first. Hopefully we'll find them there.”

We tore out of the suite and over to the elevator area. Everything seemed to be moving so slowly. The elevator, my feet. Everything, that is, except for time, which was flying by. Every second, I imagined Frank and Joe in danger. I kept remembering Matthias with the paddle raised over his head, ready to kill them. What if this time I didn't make it in time?

But I couldn't think that way. It would drive me crazy. Frank and Joe were safe. I just had to find them.

When the doors finally opened on the fourth floor, we took off running down the hallway. We hadn't gone
ten feet before I tried to dodge around a room service cart and tripped and fell.

“Stupid high heels!” I yanked them off my feet and threw them across the hall.

“You know, one day, Nancy, you're really going to have to learn how to run in heels.” Bess kicked her feet up at me to show the dainty high-heeled sandals she was wearing. They were cute—but not the best footwear for a mission.

Within a few seconds, we were running again. I felt much better in bare feet. We found Nikitin's room. The door was open.

“Hello?” I called through the door. “Frank? Joe?”

Silence was the only answer.

Inside, the room was a mess. Furniture had been overturned and books strewn across the floor. I had an eerie feeling of déjà vu, remembering back to our first suite. The cleaning staff at the Wetlands must be kept pretty busy. We split up to search the room, looking for anything that might indicate where the boys were now.

“Oh no!” Bess cried out suddenly.

“What is it?” George and I rushed over to her side, and then stopped. On the floor in front of her was a small puddle of blood, smeared around the carpet as though someone had rolled in it.

“There's not a lot of blood. There'd be more if…”
I didn't want to finish the sentence. I bent down to examine the blood, trying to keep myself from panicking.
Breath, Nancy,
I told myself.
You can't help them if you can't think clearly.

“It's still wet. Whatever happened here, it was recent.”

We crept into the bedroom and found more of the same. Mess, everywhere. It was clear there'd been a huge fight of some kind. But there was no sign of Frank or Joe. Or Nikitin, for that matter. Thankfully, there was no more blood either.

On the floor behind the bed I found a needle. I picked it up carefully, making certain not to touch the sharp end.

“What's that?” Bess asked.

“No way to know for certain, but I'd bet it contained some sort of sedative.” I pulled out an old plastic container from my purse. It had once been Hannah's eyeglass case, but now I used it to hold evidence when I was on a case. Particularly sharp, possibly poisonous evidence.

I inhaled deeply, trying to stay focused and calm. I doubted that Frank and Joe would have drugged Nikitin.

We checked the closets, kitchen, and bathroom quickly, but came up with nothing. Frank and Joe had been here, but they were gone now, with no sign of
where they were headed or if they had gone on their own two feet or been dragged.

“There's nothing else here,” I said. “George, can you lead us to Matthias's room?”

George nodded and we took off. I was careful to leave the door just barely cracked open—not enough that anyone would notice, but enough so that we could get back in if we needed to. I walked carefully past the room service cart this time. Then an idea hit me.

I flipped up the white tablecloth. It was dark underneath, so I pulled my flashlight from my purse. I always carry one, just in case. Sure enough, when I turned on the light, I could see small drops of blood on the undercarriage of the cart.

“Someone used this cart to carry the body—or bodies—out of the room and into the elevator,” I said. But why didn't they take the cart? They must have been bringing them somewhere directly off the elevator…but where?

Bess made a strangled noise at the word “body,” and we all tried not to think about what it implied.

George led the way out of the main part of the hotel and over to the employee area. I had never been over there before, and I was glad it was dark so that no one stopped and asked to see our ID badges.

After a few wrong turns, we ended up at a low bungalow, painted a tropical turquoise. We circled around
it, looking for Room 7. It was the last one, and the door was right up against the wall that went around the outside of the resort. There was a window to one side, a streetlight above, and (unfortunately) a sensor pad.

If it was a regular lock, I could have picked it. That was one of the tricks of the trade I had learned over the last few years of detective work. But I didn't even know how these sensors worked, let alone how to disable one.

Bess knocked but got no answer. There were no lights on inside, and it sounded quiet. Then she tried the door, hoping it might be unlocked. No luck.

“I think we're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way,” I said. “George, can you get the light?”

George reached up and unscrewed the light on the side of the building. The alley was plunged into darkness. I unzipped my purse and poured everything out onto the ground. Then I put my elbow inside it, as though it were an elbow guard. I glanced back at the front of the alley, to make sure no one was looking. Bess casually strolled in front of me, hiding me from view.

Crash!

The glass of the windowpane shattered as I slammed my elbow through it. The purse protected me from getting cut. I used it to knock away the sharp shards of glass left in the frame. Then I reached in and turned the
doorknob from inside, while George picked up the stuff from my purse and handed it to me.

“Housekeeping!” Bess called out as we walked in. I stifled a laugh.

Inside, the room was nearly the opposite of Nikitin's. It was sparsely decorated, with nothing on the walls, no books on the shelves, and very few personal effects anywhere. In one corner was a very large television. It was spotlessly clean.
At least,
I thought to myself,
that makes it easy to search
.

“Bess, you take the kitchen. George, the bedroom. I'll look in here.”

I checked under the chairs and couches, but there was nothing. Remembering the hidden listening device in our suite, I felt around for strange lumps in the cushions, but came up empty.

“Bingo!” Bess called out. She walked back into the living room holding a large container marked
FLOUR
.

“Evidence that he likes to bake?” I asked.

“Or that he likes dough,” she said. She angled the can toward me. It was filled with cash, wallets, watches, and jewelry.

“Take some photos of all that. I'm going to keep searching.”

I looked around the room. Something wasn't right. Then it hit me. The television was angled away from everything else. None of the chairs faced it. It would be
impossible to watch anything on it. Who has a television that large that they can't watch?

I looked at it closely. There were little scratch marks around the frame, and all the screws had been removed. It looked as though it had been hollowed out.

Sure enough, the glass on the front popped out easily when I pulled on it. Inside was a large cache of papers, photos, and DVDs. Everything had the ATAC logo on it. At the bottom of the pile was an ID card that identified Matthias as a member of ATAC!

Could I have been wrong? Was Matthias working with Frank and Joe? Something didn't add up. I flipped through the papers, looking at descriptions of old missions and various materials. Some of them looked different from the others, cruder, less polished. Most were addressed to Matthias, but a few had Frank's and Joe's names on them. There were also tons of photos, mostly of Frank and Joe, which seemed to have been taken by someone in hiding, using a telephoto lens.

I laid the papers on the ground and stared at them. Matthias definitely had the stolen goods from the robberies. And he hadn't mentioned anything to Frank or Joe about it. But he also seemed to be in with ATAC. I tried to piece together what it could all mean. Then it came to me.

What if Matthias was just pretending to be an ATAC agent?

Some of these papers were real ATAC missions, but some of them looked fake. Homemade. Maybe Matthias had made up this mission and committed all the robberies just to lead Frank and Joe down here. If that was the case, they were in even more danger than I had ever realized. From the pictures, it looked as though he had been following them for a long time. The sick feeling in my stomach grew worse. This whole thing had been a trap from the very beginning.

“Nancy, Bess! Come in here,” George yelled from the bedroom. I stuffed the papers into my purse and ran to join her.

The bedroom was nearly as empty as the living room—a bed, a desk with a chair, a lamp, and a chest of drawers. George had clearly already opened all the drawers and checked under the mattress—they were a mess. George was sitting at the desk, which was pressed up against one wall. It was an old-fashioned rolltop, and unlike in every other part of the apartment, its surface was cluttered with stuff.

I peered over George's shoulder. In front of her was a large machine that looked like a radio from an old movie. There was a huge pair of headphones connected to it, like the kind that DJs wore to block out all the other sound in a club. There was also a stack of blank staff ID cards on the table, as well as some tiny electronics and gadgets that I couldn't identify.

“What is all this stuff?” I asked George.

“These,” she said, holding up a handful of the small electronics, “are tiny listening devices. And this”—she pointed to the radio—“is the receiver.”

George held up a tiny gun-shaped object.

“Matthias used this soldering iron to place the listening devices inside these staff IDs. See?”

George pointed back to one of the dials on the radio. It looked like a regular station tuner, except instead of normal markings, it had only three, which had been handwritten on Post-it notes and stuck to the machine. One was labeled
Joe
, the other
Frank
, and the third,
Nancy
.

So this was why Matthias had been so crazy about Joe and Frank wearing their IDs! An idea came to me.

“If Matthias used this to spy on Frank and Joe, and now he has them with him, maybe we can use it to find them.”

I picked up the headset and put it on. George flipped the power switch and turned the dial to the place marked
Joe
. I listened for a second, but there was no sound. Either Joe didn't have his ID on him…or he wasn't making any noise.

“Nothing,” I said. George turned it to Frank.

This time I heard something. A rushing
whooshing
sound, like wind. I couldn't tell what it was.

“There's something, but I don't know what.”

Bess took the headphones from me and listened for a second. Then she shook her head.

“I can't make it out either,” she said.

She handed the headphones to George. As soon as she put them on, her eyes grew wide with recognition.

“I know that sound!” she yelled. “It's one of the hover boats. They're in the swamps! And I bet I know exactly where Matthias is taking them.”

CHAPTER
17

JOE

ALL TIED UP

I woke up from the strangest dream. In it, I was a little kid, and my dad was carrying me to bed. But my bed was one of those carts you use to move food in a restaurant, and my dad was Matthias Dunstock. Nightmare!

I shook my head to try and clear the dream from my mind and wake up. That was a bad idea. The slightest motion made my stomach feel queasy. My head was pounding, a rhythmic pain that surged through my brain every time my heart beat. I opened my eyes for a second, but everything was blurry and indistinct. Having my eyes open made my stomach feel even worse, and I couldn't make out anything anyway, so I shut them again quickly.

The one glance I had of my surroundings, though
too quick and confused to tell me where I was, did tell me where I wasn't. I wasn't at home in my room. In fact, I didn't think I was in a room at all. Wherever I was, I was lying on the ground in a heap. There were all sorts of things under me, pressing up against me. I tried to move my arms and prop myself up, but I couldn't. At first I thought they had fallen asleep, then I thought they were pinned behind me by whatever I was lying against, but as I struggled to move, I realized they were tied. Adrenaline surged through me as I realized that, wherever I was, I was in danger.

I tried to think. I could feel a breeze blowing, so I had to be in motion. Was I in a car? No…it didn't feel like a car. We were bouncing more than a car would. A train? No, the engine didn't sound right for a train, and besides, I wouldn't be out in the open on a train. Then I had it! A boat. I was in some sort of boat.

I couldn't remember how I'd gotten there. The last thing I remembered clearly was talking to Nancy and Frank. I remembered heading up to Nikitin's apartment…but everything after that was fuzzy. Matthias had been there. And Petrovitch?

Suddenly, I remembered.

Nikitin had thrown me off him and I landed in a heap in the corner of his bedroom. Just as I was getting up, he ran right through Frank and out the door. I was about to run out and help Frank, when Matthias
called my name. I turned back toward him, and I felt a sharp stab in my arm. I fell to my knees, and Matthias was standing over me with a needle. Then I blacked out.

The pain in my head was starting to die down. The fight-or-flight reaction was kicking in, and my body was becoming more responsive. Tentatively, I opened my eyes again. Frank was tied up to my left, his head rolled back against the side of the boat. I would have thought he was sleeping, except for the fact that, for once in his life, he wasn't snoring like a buzzsaw.

“Frank!” I hissed, hoping he was just pretending to be unconscious. He didn't move. Long after I knew he was out of it, I continued to stare at him, hoping he would wake up. But he was down for the count.

I looked to my right. Nikitin was slumped there, tied up as well. Blood was slowly dripping from his forehead, and his skin was a pale color. His breathing was shallow. He didn't look good. If I craned my head, I could see Matthias beyond him, standing at the head of the boat, piloting it.

What was Matthias doing? He was an ATAC agent! Why had he drugged us?

My blood froze in my veins as I realized…he'd gone rogue! It was almost unimaginable, a fellow agent turned criminal. It was terrifying. He had the resources and training of ATAC behind him. Who knew what he
could do. He could be incredibly dangerous…as Frank and I had already discovered, too late.

Matthias didn't seem to have noticed that I was awake. At least that was one thing in my favor. The element of surprise. Not that I could do much with it right now.

It was dark, but I could just make out the edges of the swamp around us. I had no idea how long I'd been out for. We could be halfway to Cuba by now!

If Frank and Nikitin were to either side of me, then the body I was lying against had to be Petrovitch. I wondered what his role was in all of this. Nikitin had seemed surprised to see him tied up on the bed. Were the two brothers involved in the robberies at all? Was this all Matthias's scheme? And why was he doing it? So many questions, and no time to get answers.

My fingers were stiff from being tied behind my back, but I started to feel around to get a sense of how I was bound. Rope, not too thick. The thicker the rope was, the easier it was to untie. This stuff would be difficult. I tested it, pulling this way and that, but the knots were good. Of course they were. They were the ones ATAC had trained us to use.

Because it was thin, though, the rope would be easy to wear through, if I could find something sharp to rub against. I felt around behind me, but Petrovitch was so large, I couldn't reach the edges of the boat around
him. I hoped the noise of the boat's engine would keep Matthias from noticing that I was awake.

My moving around must have tipped off Petrovitch to the fact that I was awake. I felt a slight movement from him too. His fingers grasped mine, squeezed them once, and then released. He was trying to send me a message! But could I trust him?

Matthias cut the engine all at once, and everything flew forward. I slammed my head into Nikitin, but he was like a giant mannequin and didn't even move. My face was stuck in his side, and I could barely breath. I struggled to right myself. I didn't live through all my ATAC missions just to be smothered in the armpit of an unconscious giant!

I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head. A hand wrapped around my hair and pulled me upright.

“I'm so glad you're awake,” Matthias said. “I was afraid I was going to have to kill you in your sleep. And that wouldn't be anywhere near as much fun.”

He shoved me backward, and I fell hard against someone again. Frank or Petrovitch, I couldn't tell for sure. Whoever it was didn't move.

“You're not going to get away with this,” I said. “ATAC knows where we are. Even if you kill us, they'll find you.”

Matthias laughed.

“ATAC has no idea you're down here. Your whole
mission was a fake. Do you think it was just chance that brought you down here? I guess the great Hardys aren't as smart as everyone says.”

Matthias's voice had a mean, hard edge to it, but also a whiny one, like a bratty kid boasting about his grades. I couldn't believe he'd faked the whole thing. What possible reason could he have? I could understand his wanting to kill us because we were on to his scheme, but why bring us down here in the first place?

ATAC had trained us for hostage situations. And one of the first things they said was to keep your captor talking. So long as they were interested in communicating, they weren't ready to kill you. I had to keep Matthias occupied until I could free myself. Or until Nancy could find us.

“Why?” I asked. “Why lure us down here where we could discover your robbery scheme? Why not just take the money and run?”

“You think this is about the robberies? This had nothing to do with money! It was always about you. You and your brother. The
golden boys
of ATAC. Just because your father started the agency, everyone thinks you're the best.”

Matthias was angry now, talking fast and low. He leaned in close to my face and grabbed me by the hair again.

“You.”

Slap!

“Aren't.”

Slap!

“Anything.”

Slap!

“Special.”

My head was ringing by the time he let me go. He had some arm on him.

“Okay!” I said. “I'll tell you everything. Just stop! Your breath is killing me.”

Matthias's face turned into a mask of rage, and I thought for a moment I had pushed him too far. Then he just laughed and sat back down.

“You always have a joke ready, don't you? I've been following you for months, you and your brother, learning everything about you. You'd have been dead days ago if that friend of yours hadn't gotten in the way. So cute—she fancies herself a detective. She's dumber than the two of you.”

Matthias turned away from me and started pulling things out of a bag at his feet. I saw more needles, a glass bottle full of clear liquid, and a gun. I tried to think of something else to keep him talking.

“And these two? Were they involved at all?” I nodded my head at Petrovitch and Nikitin.

Matthias smiled, a sick, twisted smile.

“Oh, you wouldn't believe how easy my friend Nikitin
here was to manipulate. Money, money, money. ‘My family,'” he whined all the time. “‘They need help.'”

Matthias pushed Nikitin over with his foot. He slumped to the floor of the boat, blood leaking faster from his head now. I took advantage of his momentary distraction to lean back, my fingers stretching out behind me. Quickly, I found what I was looking for—another knot. I began to untie it as Matthias started talking again. I hoped whoever I was freeing was conscious…and on my side.

“His dumb ox of a brother I would have let live. I don't understand how someone can be so large and yet have a brain so small. He almost told you that I was the last one in Jasmina's room, you know. Thankfully, I was listening to the two of you and was able to arrange an ‘emergency massage' to call him away. But then he came across me moving the last of the stolen stuff to Nikitin's room, and I was forced to knock him out. Luckily, four bodies are just as easy to dump as three.”

I almost had it. I could feel the knots coming apart beneath my fingers. I just needed Matthias to keep talking for another few minutes. He leaned in close to me again, his stinking breath in my face.

“This is one of my favorite spots in the swamp. So private. Do you like it? George certainly did. Maybe, after you've gone missing, I can take her out here to
console her. We can have a picnic…over your dead bodies.”

Matthias pulled back suddenly. “What is that?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I looked around, trying to figure out what he was seeing. Then I realized it wasn't something he saw, it was something he heard. The whine of another hover boat, cutting through the air.

Someone was coming. And I was pretty sure her name was Nancy Drew.

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