Carolyn Keene - Hit and Run Holiday

Nancy did know Spanish, but after two sentences, she realized she didn’t know Maria’s Spanish. Still frightened, Maria was talking away a mile a minute, and she was speaking in a dialect that Nancy could hardly follow.

Nancy followed Maria’s story as best she could, though, and did manage to learn that Maria was an illegal alien. Her country was in the middle of a violent revolution and lots of people were escaping to the United States to start a new life. Kim had been hiding her in her hotel room.

“From the police?” Nancy asked. “Kim was hiding you from the immigration police?”

Maria shook her head and spoke rapidly again, saying something about the people she’d paid to bring her to Florida. “They were evil,” she said. They didn’t let her go, as they’d promised; they were going to make her work for them, for nothing, “like a slave.” She was running from them, and Kim had helped her. Maria said something about Ricardo, but Nancy didn’t understand. She decided to let Maria finish talking; then she’d ask questions.

Kim had made Maria promise to stay in the hotel room, but after many days, Maria had had to get out. She was followed and ran back to the hotel; someone broke in later while she was in the room, but she escaped.

That’s how they found out about Kim, Nancy thought. But who were “they“? Kim definitely had been talking to Ricardo that morning on the phone, but why? He had to be one of the “evil ones,” and Kim just didn’t know it. She’d trusted him for some reason, and he’d double-crossed her.

“What about Ricardo?” Nancy asked. “What’s he got to do with all this? And who else is involved, Maria? Don’t be afraid to tell me. I promise, I’ll help you if I can.”

Maria latched on to the name Ricardo and said a lot of things, none of which Nancy understood except that he had a bad temper. Nancy didn’t need to be told that. “But what about the others?” she asked. “Ricardo can’t be the only one. You talked about evil people. Who are the rest of them? Please tell me!”

Maria nodded eagerly. “One of them is—” She stopped in midsentence, her eyes widening in terror. “Oh, no!” she cried, pointing behind Nancy. “No!”

Nancy heard a scuffling sound in back of her and started to turn, but it was too late. Something hard—a rock? a club?—came crashing down on her head. She heard Maria scream, but it sounded muffled and distant. Then she saw the wooden slats of the dock as she fell. They were fuzzy because a dark mist was rising in front of her eyes. She blinked, but the mist kept rising; she tried to listen, but her ears were filled with a low roar, like highway traffic heard from far away. Finally the mist closed over her completely, and she couldn’t see or hear anything at all.

When Nancy came to, the first thing she felt was pain. She hurt all over, but her head was the worst. She started to open her eyes, then shut them tightly, gasping at the pain. If only she could move her hand to the back of her head to rub it and ease some of the throbbing.

Something was stopping her, though; she wasn’t sure what. She must have been lying on her arms, because they were tingling as if they’d been asleep. She tried to stretch one arm, then the other, to make the needles go away, but all she could move were her fingers.

Suddenly she became aware of another sensation—water. Her feet and legs were wet, and every few seconds, water splashed against her thighs. Had she fallen asleep on the beach?

Then she remembered. She’d been talking to Rosita. No, not Rosita. Maria. Maria had screamed, and then everything had gone black. Nancy hadn’t fallen asleep, she’d been knocked out. And whoever had done it—she’d put her money on Ricardo—had dragged her onto the beach and left her there with the waves lapping at her legs. Funny, she’d always thought the sand would make a nice soft bed. So why did she feel as if she were lying on cement?

Time to get up, Nancy, she told herself. Forget the pain, just get up and go after him. She tried to stretch her arms again and suddenly realized that they were above her head. And she wasn’t lying on soft sand, either. In fact, she wasn’t lying at all. She was leaning against something very hard, something that had absolutely no give to it.

Nancy forced her eyes open and waited for her vision to clear. It was still night—pitch black—but if she craned her neck back, she could see the moon up above. She could also see where her hands were. They were up above too, tied over her head. No wonder her arms ached.

Nancy turned her head, scraping her cheek against something rough and cold. Then she felt the water wash against her thighs again, and realized that her feet were tied too. She peered down, trying to see where she was.

The night breeze was warm, but Nancy started shivering violently when she realized that she’d been tied, hand and foot, to one of the pier pilings, a rough, wooden pillar shooting straight out of the water. She was somewhere in the middle of it; if she tilted her head back far enough, she could just see the lip of the pier. But what made her shiver, what made her want to scream, was that she could also see the waterline on the piling. It was a foot above her head. Already the water was lapping against her thighs. Soon it would be at her waist, then at her shoulders. The tide was coming in, and Nancy was trapped in its path.

She heard a low, moaning sound and realized it was coming from her. Scream, she told herself. You got hit on the head, not in the throat. She tried to take a deep breath, and that’s when she felt the gag in her mouth and the tape on her cheek. There was no way she could scream; the only sound she could make was a soft moan nobody would hear. She’d been tied, gagged, and left to drown.

Chapter Nine

Nancy fought to keep from panicking, but she lost the battle. She’d never been so trapped; the feelings of terror and helplessness were overwhelming. She was at the end of the pier, which was far enough out in the water to give her a tantalizing view of the bonfires around the bend in the beach. She could even see the shadows of the people around those bonfires, and every once in a while she heard shouts of laughter.

Frantically Nancy pulled and twisted against the ties that held her to the pier. She didn’t know how long she kept it up, but when she finally stopped, she was limp with exhaustion and her skin was burning from being scraped against the piling. If she could have screamed, her throat would have been raw.

If they wanted to kill you, she thought tiredly, why didn’t they just dump you in the middle of the ocean while you were still unconscious? Why put you through this kind of torture? They’d even tied her hands with the sash of her sundress. An extra-evil touch.

Evil. That’s what Maria had called them, and she’d been right. For a moment, Nancy wondered what had happened to the frightened girl. Ricardo must have gotten her, she thought. Then, as the water washed up, hitting the middle of her back, Nancy began struggling and twisting again. But she was too tired and too sore to keep it up for very long. Sagging against the piling, she rubbed her forehead on the back of her wrist and closed her eyes.

Breathless, half-covered with water, Nancy thought of how she must look—like a huge barnacle in a dress. The thought made her want to laugh. You’re getting hysterical, she warned herself. Her head was throbbing violently, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that the dark mist was closing in. If she passed out, she knew she’d never make it.

Nancy closed her eyes again, and that’s when she heard the footsteps on the pier. Looking up, she saw two faces bending over the edge, staring down at her. Nancy blinked, fighting back the mist, and realized that she recognized the faces. One belonged to the handsome “maintenance” man from Kim’s hotel room; the other was the guy who’d delivered the flowers to the hospital. Not bothering to wonder what they were doing there, Nancy moaned as loudly as she could, begging them with her eyes to help her. The two faces lingered above her for a moment, then faded away like ghosts into the darkness.