Kickoff to Danger (12 page)

“Who did this to you?” Frank asked.

It took Freeman a moment to recognize them. Then he frantically started trying to push himself up.

“Golden! Golden…in the hospital!” he gasped. “Set a false alarm. He—he's trying to get Biff Hooper!”

Frank and Joe helped Dan up.

“Come on,” Joe said, turning toward the emergency room entrance. “We'd better have a doctor look at you.”

“Noooo!” Dan feebly began pulling them toward the main doors of the hospital. “Got to stop Golden. He's in there trying to kill Hooper!”

Sighing, Frank let Dan lead them. “I think you'd better go ahead,” he told Joe. “Let the folks in the hospital know this may be a false alarm.”

Joe took off, and Frank put an arm around Dan, helping him stay upright.

The tall, gangly boy was pushing his battered body way past its endurance point. He was gasping
for breath and wobbling by the time they made it through the doors.

The lobby of the hospital was a scene of chaos. Nurses were leading patients who could walk on their own out the doors. Some of them were helped—or hindered—by worried visitors.

Other people—healthy people—were pushing ahead. Frank shook his head in silent disapproval. Apparently, the discovery that this wasn't a drill had panicked them.

A heavyset older man, intent on getting to the exit, brushed past Frank and Dan. There really wasn't enough room for him. As he went by, the stranger's elbow caught Dan in the ribs.

The tall boy folded in half, almost collapsing. His breath came out as a thin whistle as he clutched at his rib cage. Frank tried to be gentle as he held Dan upright.

“That could be a cracked rib—or worse,” he warned.

Man, he thought worriedly, Golden must really have worked him over.

“Dan,” Frank said firmly, “you've got to see a doctor.”

“No! We've got to find Golden!” Gritting his teeth, Freeman led Frank into the crowd.

“It's all my fault,” Dan muttered. He looked at Frank. “I put Hooper in here.”

Frank didn't know what to say. He'd always
thought of Dan as a possible suspect, even though Joe kept beating the drums for Terry Golden.

Dan nodded, his bruised face miserable. “Yeah. I was the one. Couple of other guys and I went after the goons who stole our books. As soon as we got into the basement, the punching began.”

He took a deep, shaky breath. “I took one in the mouth and one in the gut but managed to break away in the dark. Then I was running through that maze down there. Wound up in the furnace room. It looked like a good place to hide. Tripped over something on the floor….”

“The shovel?” Frank asked.

Freeman nodded in reply. “I'd just picked it up when the door flew open. All I saw was a big, hulking shadow coming past me. So I swung. I swung with all my might—”

He choked at the memory. “It was panic, and what I did next was panic, too.”

“You wiped the shovel clean,” Frank said.

“Thought I'd killed him,” Dan gulped. “Always read a lot of mystery stories. “So I got rid of my fingerprints and got out of there.”

He looked sick—far worse than he did from the effects of his beating. “But Golden saw me come out. He lost me in the dark again, but he was still searching when you and your brother came along. He heard you talking about the cops.”

Dan took another long, shuddering breath.

Frank thought he had the next part of the story figured out. “When did Golden start blackmailing you? Did you mess up my computer because he told you to?”

“No, I did that on my own,” Dan admitted, looking embarrassed. “You kept poking around, asking questions. I wanted everyone to forget about it.”

“That wasn't going to happen,” Frank told the other boy.

“Guess not,” Dan said. “Should have realized that. But I couldn't get my brain in gear. Then, last night…Golden called me. He was in a panic. Said he'd done something to try to stop you.”

“Oh, yeah,” Frank said, remembering his auto duel with the SUV.

“And then the news said that Biff was going to wake up. The whole story would come out. Golden would lose his possibility for a football scholarship.” Dan gulped again. “He said if he went down, I'd go down with him. The only way to stop that was to make sure Hooper didn't recover.”

Frank saw the picture now. “So your job was to come up with a brilliant plan.”

Dan nodded. “I remembered this murder mystery I'd read. The villain killed someone who was in a coma by injecting an air bubble into the intravenous drip.”

Frank had read the same story. “So all Golden
had to do was dress up as a hospital aide and cause some distraction.”

“It was all right so long as it was just a thought,” Freeman said. “But when we came down here, and he was actually going to do it…I
tried
to stop him.”

And got beaten bloody, Frank thought, looking at the boy he was helping to hold up. Dan's face was bruised and swollen. Smears of drying blood trailed around his nose and mouth.

“We were in his car—I couldn't get away.” Freeman closed his eyes, as if he were trying to make the memories of his beating go away.

“I—I must have passed out,” Dan said, opening his eyes again. “Next thing I knew, I was under those bushes. In the distance, I could hear a fire alarm going off. Then you and your brother found me.”

The tall boy turned pleading eyes to Frank. “It's not just that Golden beat me. He dumped me like I was a sack of garbage. I know he's inside the hospital now, looking for Biff. We've got to stop him, Hardy. He's really out of his mind.”

All the time they were talking, they'd fought their way against the tide of people trying to get out of the hospital. Frank noticed the reception desk was empty now.

Sure, he realized. The woman who was there probably has duties somewhere else during an emergency.

All the time they were fighting the crowd in the lobby, Frank had angled his and Dan's course. Now they reached the swinging doors that led to the east wing of the hospital.

The doors stood wide open, and the crowd in that area had begun to thin out. Those who could walk were out of the way.

Now the hospital staff could start moving the more difficult cases.

Freeman was slowing down, losing steam. Even his iron will couldn't keep his terribly injured body going.

He stopped talking, concentrating on taking one step, then another.

They were into the east wing before he turned suspicious eyes on Frank.

“You're not just taking me to some doctor, are you?” Dan demanded.

“No,” Frank told him. “This is where they transferred Biff.” He looked up and down the long hallway. “At least, his room is somewhere along here. They didn't give me the number, but we should be able to spot the police guard.”

Dan stared at Frank. “Guard?”

Frank nodded. “Joe laughed at the idea when the hospital receptionist told us. I guess we should be glad for it now. Looks as though Chief Collig suspected something like what you and Golden cooked up.”

Dan Freeman staggered as if Frank had punched him.

“I tried to stop it,” he said in an agonized voice. “You've got to believe me!”

“I believe you,” Frank said. “Those marks on your face would be impossible to fake.” He sighed. “I just wish you hadn't started this whole thing in the first place.”

He meant the crazy scheme to silence Biff. But Dan took it right back to the old furnace room.

“I thought he was one of the guys after me,” he moaned. “Self-defense. I should have gone for help. But I thought it was too late.”

Dan turned feverish eyes on Frank. “Then—then you told me that Hooper was actually trying to
stop
what was going on. I wanted to throw up. He was only trying to help us…and I almost killed him.”

Dan was trembling so badly, he couldn't even put one foot in front of the other.

“We've got to sit you down,” Frank said. “You're not in any shape to keep wandering around.”

He saw a chair in an empty room. “There. You can sit for a couple of minutes while I find Biff's guard—”

“No!” Dan struggled weakly against Frank's supporting arm.

Frank was determined to steer the other boy to the seat. “You're just exhausting yourself, Dan.
I'll be able to move a lot more quickly on my own.”

Dan suddenly froze. “There!” he said. “There he is!”

“What?” Frank turned to see a police officer backing out of a room about three doors down.

The officer was pulling one end of a wheeled hospital bed. A familiar figure lay still and silent under the covers—Biff Hooper.

Frank stared in dismay. He always thought of Biff as big and hearty, but his friend seemed to have shrunk somehow. And his face looked as white as the sheet drawn up to his neck.

One arm was out from under the covers. Frank could see the heavy-gauge needle slipped into Biff's pale flesh and taped in place. A transparent plastic tube ran from the needle to a wheeled stand. The tube ran through a beeping machine and then into a bag of clear fluid.

No, Frank corrected himself. It runs
from
the intravenous drip into Biff's arm.

He and Dan managed to take one step toward Biff when a man burst out of the room ahead of them.

The white-haired newcomer was wearing a patient's gown that flapped open at the back. It revealed spindly legs and a pale, mottled rear end as the man crouched over a metal walker.

“You're not going to leave me here to burn!” the
patient yelled, trying to balance himself and move forward.

The red-haired nurse moving Biff's IV machine looked up in alarm. “Mr. Krantz! You're not supposed to be out of—”

The patient definitely shouldn't have been out of bed. He was too weak even to pick up his walker. Instead, he pushed against the metal frame. It toppled over—and so did he.

The medical team that was moving Biff abandoned the bed as Mr. Krantz crashed to the floor. Even the cop went to help.

Under Frank's supporting arm, Dan Freeman's shoulders suddenly stiffened.

Frank's eyes went from the man on the floor to a spot farther down the hallway. He saw what had upset Dan so much.

It was the figure in the green gown. A guy with long blond hair.

Terry Golden.

The jock wasn't wearing his usual football-hero smile. His face looked as hard and set as stone.

Somewhere, he'd managed to get hold of a hypodermic needle.

And he was headed straight for the unconscious, helpless Biff….

“Go!” Dan Freeman said fiercely, pushing at Frank. He staggered when he lost the older Hardy's arm. But Dan still sent him forward.

Frank charged ahead in his best broken-field run. He darted around Mr. Krantz tangled in his walker, sidestepping the group of nurses and the kneeling cop.

“Golden!” Frank yelled. “The secret's out! There's no getting away with this. Don't be stupid. Give it up!”

But Terry Golden kept on coming.

Biff's bed—and its silent occupant—stood between them. It was like some sort of horrible race, some strange game where the goalpost had been transferred to the middle of the field.

Frank put everything he had into running. He passed Biff's bed while Golden had about two steps to go.

No time to pull anything fancy, Frank thought. He went for a plain tackle.

The two boys crashed together with bruising impact. Frank wrapped his arms around Terry Golden and held on for dear life.

Although he'd managed to check Golden, Frank hadn't fully stopped him. Golden was determined to keep going…and he was larger. Frank found himself knocked backward by the bigger boy's weight.

Frank hung on, pulling Golden with him. Even as they fell, he twisted so that Terry wouldn't be on top of him. Frank also shifted his grip.

His hands went from Golden's middle to the wrist of the hand holding the hypodermic needle.

They crashed to the floor right at the head of Biff's bed. Frank tightened his hold on Terry's wrist, smashing the hand with the hypodermic against one of the bed's wheeled legs.

Once…twice…the third time he smacked Golden's hand against the metal, Frank got lucky. The jock lost his hold on the needle. It clattered to the floor and rolled under the bed.

Yelling with rage, Terry Golden grabbed a handful of Frank's hair. He rammed Frank's head against the floor hard enough to make Frank see stars.

Frank was a little wobbly as he pushed himself up to his knees.

Golden was on hands and knees, too, half under the bed as he searched for the hypodermic needle.

Frank grabbed him around the waist and hauled him back. Golden tried to shove him off, pushing against the bed. The force of their struggle sent the hospital bed rolling forward about a foot. The intravenous tube pulled taut, and the attached machine began to beep.

The sound distracted Frank—he didn't see Terry Golden's fist flying for his face.

He felt it, though. That punch knocked him off his knees, causing him to land flat on the floor.

Then Golden was all over him, hammering him with both fists, his face wild.

This must have been what happened to Dan, Frank thought as he twisted and tried to block the worst of the blows. He was at a definite disadvantage. Golden was on top, straddling his chest. Gravity was on the side of every punch the jock threw.

Frank twisted his head so that Golden's latest punch just skimmed the side of his head and smashed into the unyielding floor.

Golden yelled, relaxed his fist, and tried to shake the pain away. Frank grabbed with both hands, catching several of Terry's bruised fingers, pulling and twisting them.

The unexpected attack caught Golden by surprise. Frank flung himself around and sent his enemy toppling to the floor.