The Stolen Bones

Let me introduce myself. I’m
Nancy
Drew
.

My friends call me Nancy. My enemies call me a lot of other things, like
“that girl who cooked my goose.” They actually sometimes speak like that,
but what can you expect from criminals? See, I’m a detective. Well, not really. I
mean, I don’t have a license or anything. I don’t carry a badge or a gun, in
part because I wouldn’t touch a gun even if I could, and also because I’m
just not old enough. But I
am
old enough to know when
something isn’t right, when somebody’s getting an unfair deal, when
someone’s done something they shouldn’t do. And I know how to stop them,
catch them, and get them into the hands of the law, where they belong. I take those
things seriously, and I’m almost never wrong.

My best friends, Bess and George, might not totally agree with me. They
tell me I’m wrong a lot, and that they have to cover for me all of the time just
to make me look good. Bess would tell you I dress badly. I call it casual. George would
tell you I’m not focused. By that she’d mean that once again I forgot to
fill my car with gas or bring enough money to buy lunch. But they both know I’m
always focused when it comes to crime. Always.

Nancy Drew

Rattled!

Bess and George followed me back to the tent. I crouched and unzipped
the flap. Under the noise of the zipper I heard a strange sound. I paused a moment,
trying to identify it. A dry rattle, like seeds in a gourd. Where was it coming
from?

I shrugged and finished unzipping the tent. As the flap fell open, the
sound got louder.

Zhhh-zhh-zhhh!

It was coming from inside the tent!

I looked in. I saw a raised head, coiled body, and shaking tail.

I was staring at a rattlesnake.

NANCY DREW

girl detective
^®

#1 Without a Trace

#2 A Race Against Time

#3 False Notes

#4 High Risk

#5 Lights, Camera …

#6 Action!

#7 The Stolen Relic

#8 The Scarlet Macaw Scandal

#9 Secret of the Spa

#10 Uncivil Acts

#11 Riverboat Ruse

#12 Stop the Clock

#13 Trade Wind Danger

#14 Bad Times, Big Crimes

#15 Framed

#16 Dangerous Plays

#17 En Garde

#18 Pit of Vipers

#19 The Orchid Thief

#20 Getting Burned

#21 Close Encounters

#22 Dressed to Steal

#23 Troubled Waters

#24 Murder on the Set

#25 Trails of Treachery

#26 Fishing for Clues

#27 Intruder

#28 Mardi Gras Masquerade

#29 The Stolen Bones

Available from Aladdin Books

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to
historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names,
characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and
any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 2008 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in
part in any form.

NANCY DREW, NANCY DREW: GIRL DETECTIVE, ALADDIN PAPERBACKS, and related
logo are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

First Aladdin Paperbacks edition April 2008

Library of Congress Control Number 2007934380

ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-3614-5

ISBN-10: 1-4169-3614-9

ISBN-13:978-1-4424-6548-0 (eBook)

1
Trespass

2
Noise in the Night

3
Footprints in the Dark

4
Damaged

5
More Mysteries

6
Rattled

7
Twin Troublemakers

8
No Claws for Alarm

9
Laws and Outlaws

10
Behind Closed Doors

11
Things That Go Bump in the Night

12
Between a Rock
…

13 …
And a Hard Place

14
Secrets Revealed

15
The Fossil Escapes!

W
hat have you gotten us into now,
Nancy?”

I glanced over at Bess in the front passenger seat. Her eyes were
sparkling, so I knew she was only teasing me. Bess and her cousin George are my best
friends, and I do get them into trouble sometimes—mostly when we’re on the
trail of a mystery. We weren’t trying to find a criminal now, though. We were
trying to find a road.

George was hunched over her GPS unit in the backseat. “Hey,
we’re not lost. I can tell you exactly where we are. It’s the road
that’s lost. And if we had the GPS coordinates of the turnoff, I could tell you
where
it
was too.”

“I did ask,” I reminded her. “They didn’t know the
coordinates.”

George snorted. She loves gadgets of every kind, and
couldn’t imagine anyone not taking advantage of a useful item like a Global
Positioning System. She’d been tracking our progress since we’d left River
Heights two days before.

Bess pointed to our left. “There’s a road. Or is it a trail?
It’s something, anyway.”

I slowed my car and idled near the turn. The land around us was dry
scrubland, with plenty of rocks and weeds, but few road signs. The rutted dirt trail on
our left might have been wide enough for a car, but calling it a road seemed generous.
Still, our directions said “go six miles, to the third dirt road on the
left.” We’d driven ten miles looking for a major dirt road, without luck, as
the sun had headed for the horizon. So we’d decided that whoever had written the
directions had a definition of
road
that was different from
ours. We had decided to backtrack and start over.

“I guess we can try it.” I turned the car and eased it onto
the dirt path. Scraggly brush grew up the center, with deep ruts on either side. I kept
my wheels on high ground so the bottom of my car wouldn’t scrape.

“And if we don’t find the place soon,” Bess said
cheerfully, “we can turn back to that last town and get a hotel room.”