Fatal Ransom (11 page)

Sam nodded. “Then she”—he pointed at George—“called Lance and told him to meet us at the footbridge.”

Hal frowned at George. “She didn't give us away, did she?”

Jed and Sam both shook their heads.

Hal started to pace. Then he said, “I know that if we stay calm, everything is going to be all right.”

“I hope so,” Nancy whispered to George. She was pretty sure that her definition of “all right” wasn't the same as Hal's.

Suddenly Amy jumped off the couch. “Everything is not going to be all right,” she said breathlessly. “I just thought of something.”

She gestured to Nancy and George sitting on the floor. “Those two have a friend,” she said. “Someone who's working with them.”

“What?”
Hal asked.

“It's true,” Amy said. “I've seen all three of them snooping around the mall together.” She pointed at George. “That's how I knew who
she
was. The first time I saw her, Nancy Drew was sneaking up on Dracula. I stopped her, but before I could say anything her two sidekicks were behind her.”

Amy looked desperate. “I'm telling you, Hal,
there's another one who's probably looking for these two right now. And I bet she's going to try to mess up the money drop.”

“That's it,” Sam said confidently. “I'm not waiting for your uncle to call in the cops.” He strode to the front door and opened it.

“Stop!” Hal ordered.

Sam wasn't listening. “Dracula!” he called down the stairs. “Get in here.”

Dracula came springing into the apartment. Nancy wasn't surprised to see that he was the same kid she'd tried to follow at the mall.

“Hey, dudes, what's happening?” he asked jauntily.

“Hal tricked us, that's what,” answered Sam.

“That's not true!” cried Hal.

“Just shut up, rich boy,” snapped Jed.

“We're not waiting until noon for the money,” Sam explained to Dracula.

“Far out!” said Dracula, clapping his hands. “What's the plan?”

“I want you to go to a pay phone and call Lance Colson,” Sam told him.

“But we can call him from here.”

“No. I don't want anybody to be able to trace any of our calls back here,” Sam said. “Tell Colson to have the money at the footbridge in exactly one hour.”

Nancy glanced at her watch. Seven-thirty
A.M
. I must have been unconscious for several
hours, she thought for a second. Then she realized that they might just get away with it because of the time change.

“Tell him to be there in an hour or he'll never see his nephew or the detective he hired again,” Sam added.

Dracula stared at him. “You mean we really might have to kill somebody? I didn't think that was part of the plan.” His voice was quivering. “I thought we were just going to make it look as though we had.”

“We've got a new plan now,” said Sam. “I'm in charge. You just do what I tell you. And then meet us back here—wait outside.”

Dracula still looked scared. But he managed an “okay” and left the apartment.

Sam closed the door behind him and turned back to Hal—a cold, clear, calculating look in his eye.

“I guess you heard that,” he said. “I'm in charge now.”

Hal clenched his teeth. “Like hell you are.”

Hal lunged for Sam. But before Nancy could see what had happened, a gunshot blast filled the apartment, and time stood still.

N
ANCY SPRANG TO
her feet.

“Hold it!” Jed hollered. “Or you'll get the next one!”

Hal Colson was slumped over in a chair holding his arm. Blood was seeping through his fingers. From where she was standing, Nancy couldn't get a good look at the wound. But she knew that even a surface wound could be serious if enough blood was lost.

“Hal! Oh, my God!” Amy shrieked. “Are you crazy?” she shouted at Jed. “You could have killed him!”

“I could still kill you,” Jed said offhandedly.

But Sam reached over and plucked the gun
from Jed's hand. “Who elected you president of this club?” he said disgustedly.
“I'll
take care of this. You just tie them all up. The ropes are in the kitchen.”

Nancy didn't want to let that happen. She thought for a second about making a move on Sam, but there was no telling what he or any of them might do next. Nancy couldn't risk getting someone killed. She'd just have to wait for a better opportunity.

“You'll never get away with this, you know,” she said.

“She's right,” George told Sam. “Why don't you be sensible while there's still time?”

Sam swung the gun in her direction. “Is this your heart talking, babe? Or is it just your detective head?”

“Don't be a fool,” said Nancy. “Just take a second and think about this. You haven't really done anything—yet. But once you take that money, the cops will get you for blackmail and kidnapping. And you can't even be sure you'll get the money. How do you know Lance won't figure out a way to trap you?”

Hal winced. Jed had jerked his wounded arm behind him and begun tying him to a chair.

“Stop that!” Amy cried, struggling in the chair where she was already tied. “Can't you see he needs a doctor?”

Blood from Hal's arm was dripping onto the
floor beside him. His face was growing whiter by the second. Nancy wondered how long he'd be able to remain conscious.

“Look!” she said, pointing at Hal. “You almost have a murder on your hands!”

But Jed acted as though he hadn't heard a word she said. He grabbed her hands and pulled them behind her back, then forced her into another chair. In a few seconds he had finished tying her up and started working on George.

“You're smart guys,” George said helplessly. “Don't do this.”

Sam looked at her with mock sympathy. “You're breaking my heart.” He bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “It's too bad it had to come to this—especially after all we've meant to each other.” And he and Jed started to laugh.

Hal jerked his arms, trying to break free, then fell back in his chair exhausted by the effort. “I should have known better than to trust you guys.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” Sam answered. “You never were one of us, really. Just a rich kid who wanted to play.”

Hal's head was drooping lower and lower. “Nothing is turning out the way I planned,” he said weakly. “All I wanted was fifty thousand dollars of my
own
money to go to the West Coast.”

“With me,” Amy added.

Hal nodded.

Nancy still couldn't figure out the money aspect of the case. Why should someone who was heir to a fortune only want fifty thousand dollars?

“Why only fifty?” she asked. Visions of the Colson mansion, Lance's Maserati, Hal's Mercedes, and the trip to Saint-Tropez floated through her head. “Lance probably would have spent a couple of thousand dollars on you on that trip to Saint-Tropez.”

“What trip?” Amy asked.

Oops! Nancy thought. Had she said something she shouldn't have? Maybe Amy—like Monica—hadn't been part of the Colsons' travel plans.

Then Hal repeated, “Yeah, what trip to Saint-Tropez? This is the first I've heard of it.”

“What trip?” Nancy looked at him in disbelief. “Lance showed me a travel brochure to Saint-Tropez,” she said. “He told me you two were planning a vacation there to patch things up between you.”

Hal rolled his eyes. “I can't believe it! I never realized he was such a creative guy.”

“What do you mean?” Nancy asked.

Hal looked at her and George. “I've been watching you two. Up until now I thought you were pretty smart.”

“Up until now?”

Suddenly Hal seemed to have revived. “A vacation to Saint-Tropez. That'll be the day. My uncle would never spend that kind of money on me. He'd never take me on a vacation with him. Never in a million years,” he gabbled feverishly.

He turned to Amy. “Remember that time I asked him if I could go on the school ski weekend?” he asked her. “He said no, not until I knew the meaning of a dollar. Since—since the day my parents died, he's never let me go anywhere on vacation—much less let me go on one of
his
vacations.”

There was a new kind of pain in his eyes then. Nancy was beginning to think he was telling the truth.

But if Lance hadn't really been planning the trip, why had he bothered to tell her he was? Was there more to this than met the eye?

It was time to look at the pieces of the case again. Nancy was sure she had considered all the angles—but maybe she had overlooked something.

She thought about the first ransom note she had seen, the one on Lance's stationery. Monica had sworn she had had no part in it. So had Hal. Then whose note was it?

Monica's? She hated Hal. She had told Nancy all about the financial trouble at Colson Enterprises.
Hal's? He hated Lance. He only wanted fifty thousand dollars out of this.

The pieces didn't add up. If Hal hadn't known about the Saint-Tropez trip, and Monica hadn't known about the Saint-Tropez trip, why had Lance been considering the trip at all? Especially when the company was having money trouble?

Lance had to be involved in this case. But how could he have been? His car had been bombed!
Someone
had wanted
him
out of the way!

Then Nancy caught her breath. Lance hadn't been anywhere near the car when the bomb had gone off. He'd been in the house getting his briefcase—
after
he'd turned his key in the ignition. Was that just a coincidence? Now that she really thought about it, Nancy realized she'd never investigated anything related to Lance Colson. She had trusted him from the beginning.

But now at last it was clear who was behind all this. It was hard to believe, but Lance must have been calling the shots all the time—right from the beginning. Why, he must have even run her car off the road!

Nancy had to get to him. Confront him. Let him know that he'd been caught.

She tried to stand up, but the ropes pulled her back into the chair.

“Untie me!” she ordered.

Jed just looked at her.

George stared at her as though she'd gone insane.

Nancy scooted her chair across the floor and right up to Sam. “Untie me,” she insisted. “Or I'll—”

“Or you'll what?” asked Sam, his finger on the trigger of the gun.

“Or I'll see that when you're all caught, you'll spend the rest of your lives in jail.”

“Wow, what a scary thought,” Sam said sarcastically.

Jed smiled and shook his head. “I think we might as well go and get that four hundred and seventy-five grand, and then we can worry about jail.”

Sam stared at Nancy first, then at George, then at Hal, and last at Amy. A new calmness seemed to have settled over him.

“I think you're right,” he said slowly. He turned to Nancy. “We're going to go collect the money. Then we're going to come back and kill all of you.”

N
O
!” G
EORGE SHOUTED.

“Don't tell me what to do!” Sam shouted back. “You're going to be the first one to go. You had too good a time making fun of me—pretending to like me. And no one gets away with that! If you two had just stayed out of this,” he continued, “everything would have been all right.”

“Yeah,” Jed chimed in. “Why'd you have to go and ruin things? We never planned to hurt anybody. Without you guys, we never would have
had
to hurt anybody.”

“Do you really think you have the guts to kill us all?” Hal asked weakly.

“That's the
only way
they'd ever get away with this,” Amy said.