She went over to check and found that the bookshelf was slightly out of alignment.
Derek helped her push it away from the wall.
“It’s a secret door!” Nancy gasped. It was made of strong wood and had a heavy iron latch. She grabbed the latch’s handle, pulled hard, and the door sprang open. “There are stairs going down!”
“They’re cut right into the rock,” Bess said.
“George—the grotto!” Nancy cried in sudden realization. “Martika said there were stairs cut into the rock leading down from the main house! Come on, everyone!” she shouted, bounding down the dimly lit steps. “We’ve got to stop her before she gets away!”
The stairs went on forever, and as she hurried down, Nancy realized that Martika had had an escape route from the very beginning.
Nancy could finally see the iron door at the bottom of the stairs. It had a push handle on it. Nancy rammed into it with her right side, forcing it open. Derek, Bess, and George were right behind her as she barreled through the doorway.
Then several things happened almost at once. The door slammed shut behind them with a colossal clang. Bess swung around to stop it, but she was too late, and though she tried to shove it back open, it wouldn’t budge. It was locked. They couldn’t get back up the same way they’d come.
Nancy had turned back to watch Bess as she struggled with the door. Now she faced the pool again. There, standing at the stern of the little speedboat, was Martika—flushed and incredibly beautiful, holding a large leather briefcase in her left hand and a semiautomatic pistol in her right. The pistol was leveled right at Nancy and her friends!
They were trapped. Martika had left the bookshelf awry on purpose, Nancy realized, to lure them down here. Now she could finish them off and no one would even hear the shots.
“Welcome,” Martika said, with a satisfied smile. “Please put your hands above your heads.”
The four of them did as they were told. Nancy looked around. She and her three companions were still standing on the small rock ledge at the rear of the grotto. Just in front of them, the ledge ended and the water began. The small boat fit neatly into the tiny mooring place. On the other side of it, the steel bars closed off the opening of the cave.
“You’re really something, Nancy,” she said, with an admiring nod of her head. “When I invited you here, I never thought it would come to this. I’m really sorry to have to kill you and your friends. As for you, Derek, it was only a matter of time. There was no way I was going to share Maura’s fortune with you. You’d have squandered your half and been after mine in no time.”
“Don’t I have a wonderful sister?” Derek commented dryly.
“Shut up!” Martika ordered, jabbing the gun in his direction. Derek quickly complied.
“You’ve always been a loser, Derek,” Martika said bitterly. “What were you ever good for except to gamble away my hard-earned money? When Dad died, did you lift a finger to take revenge on our uncle? No. You were only interested in one thing, and that was having a grand old time for yourself.
“Well, I went out and did something for our family,” she went on. “I tracked down Uncle Peter and his only daughter. I lured her here so that I could take revenge for Dad. / did it all. Why should I have shared the reward with you?”
“You did it to save your business,” Derek contradicted her. “You knew Winchell was going to pull out, and you needed to replace his money. And there was no way you were going to risk your own. No, that’s all put away in a secret account on some safe Caribbean island where you can spend the rest of your life without a care in the world. Isn’t that right?”
Martika’s smile widened, and she raised her perfect eyebrows. “Why, Derek, you’re smarter than I thought. But you’re wrong about one thing. I did do it for revenge—most of all. The money was secondary. Of course, now I’ll never get to see that money. Once they find your bodies, it will be only a matter of time before they put two and two together. Fortunately, I’ll be long gone by then.”
Nancy looked from sister to brother and back again. The hatred between them was almost tangible.
Martika raised the briefcase she was holding. “There’s a bomb in here,” she informed them. “It’s a little present from me to you.”
Then, blowing them a kiss, she pressed a button on the briefcase. “There,” she said. “That ought to make things exciting in just a minute or two. I wish I could say it’s been nice knowing you all.”
Martika backed toward the steering wheel as she continued. “I’m sorry it had to end like this, but you have only yourself to blame, Nancy. If you hadn’t done such a good job, things would have worked out better for all of us.”
Martika was up against the wheel now. She reached behind her and pushed a remote control button on the console. Instantly the iron gate in front of the grotto opened, providing free passage for the boat.
As Martika turned around to rev up the engine and make her escape, Derek suddenly sprang into the boat, making it wobble wildly. He yanked his sister around, reaching up for the gun she held above her head. The two of them wrestled for a minute.
Then there was a shot.
Bess screamed, and she and George dropped to the ground for cover.
With a loud grunt of pain, Derek fell forward toward Martika.
Seeing her opportunity, Nancy jumped into the boat and grabbed Martika around the waist.
Again, the gun went off. This time, the shot hit the cave wall, sending rock splinters flying in all directions. Nancy grabbed Martika’s gun hand and slammed it against the gunwale of the boat. The pistol flew into the water, where it rapidly sank to the bottom.
Martika was not through yet. Somehow she managed to push Nancy off her. Freeing her hand, Martika pulled the speedboat’s throttle. The powerful little craft blasted out of the grotto so fast that Derek, bleeding from the shoulder and staggering to his feet, toppled backward, right out of the boat and into the water.
Nancy was thrown backward, too, knocking her head painfully against the gunwale. As she got to her feet, she saw George diving into the water to rescue Derek. Then, with a shudder, Nancy saw that the briefcase with the bomb was still in the boat! It was lying near the steering wheel, where Martika had dropped it during her struggle with Derek.
Before Nancy could get to it, Martika was on her and had her hands around Nancy’s throat. Nancy saw stars and knew she was on the verge of blacking out.
Summoning her last ounce of strength, Nancy reached around Martika and managed to get a hand on the steering wheel. She gave it one big yank. The responsive little speedboat nearly did a ninety-degree turn. Martika was thrown to one side, her head hitting the boat with a sharp crack. Trying to stand, she toppled into the ocean.
Nancy stared at the briefcase, which lay under the console at the front of the boat. There was no time to make a grab for it. In one motion, Nancy threw herself overboard, just as the boat exploded in a giant fireball!
Nancy disappeared under the surface just in time, and when she resurfaced, nothing was left of the boat but an oil slick and thousands of splinters of fiberglass and wood.
Swimming over to Martika, Nancy saw that the woman was sinking. This time Martika wasn’t faking it.
Nancy dove, catching the unconscious Martika and positioning her so that she could carry her to shore. She only hoped Martika was alive, so that she could get what was coming to her.
• • •
Two days later Nancy and her friends were at the St. Thomas airport, waiting for the flight that would take them back to the U.S. mainland and River Heights. They were sitting at a snack bar, watching the planes taxi in and sipping glasses of cold papaya juice. George had a newspaper, which she was poring over. It was full of news about Cloud Nine.
“It says Derek’s going to be released from the hospital tomorrow,” George informed them. “Of course, he’ll have a lot of questions to answer from the police. And get this—he’s been trying to get the nurses to play cards with hi
m! Can you believe it?” She shook her head disapprovingly.
“Once a gambler, always a gambler, I guess,” Bess commented ruefully.
“I’m just glad Martika wasn’t badly injured,” Nancy said. Captain Logan had called the resort the day before to say that the model had been treated for a mild concussion and was in police custody now.
“I wonder how she likes the accommodations at the Charlotte Amalie jail?” George said.
“Yeah,” Bess chimed in, giggling. “Do you think she’s got a Jacuzzi?”
“I think Martika Sawyer’s going to have to learn to live without luxuries,” Nancy said. “She’ll be an old lady by the time she gets out of prison—if she ever does.” She gazed out the window for a minute in silence. “It still makes me furious to think of how she tried to use me. And what she did to poor Maura.”
“But you didn’t let her get away with it,” George said, patting Nancy on the back. “In the end, she was no match for you.”
“What does the paper say about Kurt?” Bess asked.
“Lots,” George said, a smile coming over her face. “But most of it’s exaggeration. For instance, it says he’s been offered a three-picture deal with a big movie studio, but I happen to know it’s only two.”
“How do you know?” Bess prodded.
“I ran into him in the weight room at the workout center this morning while you were still packing,” George explained.
“I’m sure it was just a chance meeting,” Nancy teased.
George blushed and changed the subject. “You know, one of the movies he’s going to do is about what happened at Cloud Nine. It’s going to be called Trouble in Paradise. Do you think we’ll be in it?”
“How could we not be?” Bess asked. “Maybe they’ll even offer us parts.”
Nancy laughed.
“In the meantime Kurt’s going to stay on at the resort and manage things for Preston Winchell,” George went on.
“I heard this morning that Cloud Nine is booked solid for the next two months. I guess a little publicity goes a long way,” said Nancy. “It must have really made Christina Adams mad when she found out that Winchell decided to keep Cloud Nine open.”
“I loved the way she took off in her yacht yesterday,” Bess added. “She sure didn’t have any trouble getting it started, either.”
Just then Nancy heard the boarding announcement for their flight.
“Come on, guys,” she said, picking up her carry-on bag. “It’s time to head out to the gate.”
They were walking down the corridor when Bess suddenly stopped.
“I forgot to tell you,” she said urgently. “You’ll never believe it.”
“What?” George asked.
“I weighed myself this morning,” she said, “and I lost four pounds! I don’t even know how they melted off.”
Nancy and George, who’d been expecting something earth-shattering, both broke out in gales of laughter.
“I do,” George said at last. “It’s solving mysteries with Nancy. That’ll take the extra pounds off every time.”
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 1994 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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