005 Hit and Run Holiday (7 page)

Nancy nodded. “That’s all right,” she said, also in Spanish. “I know your language, so go ahead and explain. I’m listening.”

Maria breathed a sigh of relief and began to talk.

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.

N
ANCY 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.

Ghosts, Nancy thought. That’s what they were. You’re so far gone, you’re hallucinating. She let her head drop and felt a wave splash high on her back, hitting her shoulder blades.

Then Nancy felt something else, something that made the dark mist evaporate—her feet were loose. Whatever they were tied with had stretched, and Nancy was almost able to uncross her ankles. If she could do that, she could get her feet free. What she’d do then, she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t care. One thing at a time, she told herself, and started to wiggle her feet, ignoring the scrapes on her knees and the ache in her arms.

It seemed to take forever, but finally Nancy did it. Her feet were side by side and she was able to slip one and then the other out of the
binding. Her arms felt as if they were going to rip out at the shoulders, and she managed to wrap her legs around the piling. Then what?

The water lapped at her neck, and Nancy instinctively gripped the piling with her knees and tried to push herself up. The sash binding her hands moved up too, just a fraction. That’s it, Nancy told herself. You’ve climbed enough trees, now shinny up this pole.

Inch by inch, Nancy pushed herself up the piling. The tide kept coming in, and she must have swallowed half the ocean, but finally her head was above the waterline, and even though she was still trapped, she knew she was going to make it.

She couldn’t use her teeth on the sash, but when she saw that the cloth wasn’t completely soaked, Nancy began to scrape it up and down on a corner of the piling. At last she felt the cloth begin to give. With a final burst of strength, Nancy pulled her hands free, shinnied the rest of the way up the piling, and hauled herself onto the pier.

The first thing she did was rip the gag from her mouth. Then she lay still, gasping and listening to the water swirl below her. She told herself to get moving, but her body wouldn’t budge. Her mind was working, though, and when she thought of Maria, she was finally able to sit up. For all Nancy knew, Maria was
dead. No, Maria had said something about being made to work like a slave. Whoever wanted her, wanted her alive, and Ricardo must have taken her to that person.

Ricardo. Nancy had to find him, not just for Maria’s sake, but for her own. She had a personal score to settle with him. But she wasn’t going to do it on her own, not again. She wanted the police backing her up the next time. It was safer, and besides, she’d need them to keep her from setting fire to Ricardo’s chair while he was in it.

Nancy felt the adrenaline pumping as she pushed herself to her feet and stumbled away from the pier. She even managed to trot a little as she rounded the bend in the beach and came within sight of the all-night partiers. The bonfires were still glowing, but not so brightly, and the radios and cassette recorders were playing softer music. It was getting late. No, it was getting early, Nancy reminded herself; morning couldn’t be far away.

As soon as she reached the main beach, Nancy headed for the street, looking for a public phone. She’d thought of calling from her hotel and then cleaning up while she waited for the police, but she wanted them to see her first. She knew she looked like the survivor of a shipwreck, and if the police saw what Ricardo had done, they’d work that much harder.

When she was halfway down the beach, she spotted a string of phone booths. The adrenaline wasn’t pumping so hard by then, and she felt exhausted, as if she were trekking across a desert, and the phone booth was her oasis.

Nancy had almost reached the booth when a scream rang out. At first she took it to be a good-natured, party-type scream, but then she heard other screams and saw people running toward the water. The tide had washed something ashore. What was it? A shark? A jellyfish?

“It’s a body!” a boy shouted, rushing by Nancy. “It’s a
body!”

Maria, Nancy thought instantly. Maria put up too big a fight, and Ricardo or whoever he worked with killed her. Forgetting about the police for the moment, Nancy joined the rest of the crowd heading toward the water. She didn’t want to see a dead body, but she had to find out if it was Maria.

There must have been a hundred people gathered around, and Nancy had to push through them until she was able to see. Someone had thrown a large beach towel over the body. Nancy broke free of the crowd and moved quickly to the towel, wanting to get it over with.

“Poor guy,” a voice said, and Nancy stopped.

“Yeah,” someone else said. “Drowning—what a way for a lifeguard to go, huh?”

“Lifeguard?” Nancy asked.

“Yeah.” A boy nodded grimly. “What was his name? Ricardo, that’s it. Ricardo.”