Author's Note: Once again, I'd like to thank everybody who is reading, following, and especially reviewing. Your support means a lot to me.

Chapter XIV: Divide and Conquer

"I'm starting to get worried," Bess said, checking her phone for the fifth time in the last two minutes. "How could Nancy not respond to finding out about the squib? It's been an entire night."

"Burt says they still haven't heard from her or her dad either," George added.

"Worse yet, the police in Troy, Oregon don't know what's up with them," Logan interjected. "They left town in the middle of the night, night before last. They got a rental car and said they'd return it in Seattle."

"Well? Did they?" Bess asked.

"I've got a call in to the rental agency," Logan replied. "They're checking it out."

Mrs. Marvin walked into the living room at that point. "Any news?" she asked.

Logan repeated his information, and Mrs. Marvin shook her head. "I wish Nancy wouldn't get mixed up in things like this."

"She didn't even have to do anything to get mixed up in this one," George reminded her aunt.

"Well, I made breakfast. Are any of you hungry?" Mrs. Marvin asked.

"I'm too nervous to eat much, Mom, but we can't let it go to waste," Bess replied. She hurried off to the kitchen, and George followed.

"No thanks, ma'am," Logan told her. "I ate before I came this morning."

Despite her claims of not being hungry, Bess managed to polish off two helpings of the enormous omelet that Mrs. Marvin had made and a generous helping of Hannah's pancakes. The others mostly picked at their food, too nervous and lost in thought to focus on eating.

Mrs. Marvin was just starting to clear away the plates when Logan came in the room. "The rental agency got back to me," he said, his tone serious.

"Is it bad news?" Hannah asked fearfully, bracing herself for the worst.

"Carson and Nancy didn't return the car," Logan replied. "The police found it abandoned at a gas station. It appeared to have been rear-ended. It was a busy street, but they couldn't find any witnesses since they don't know when the accident occurred. That is, if it was an accident."

"And they can't find Nancy or her dad anywhere?" Bess asked, though she already knew the answer.

"That's right," Logan confirmed. "Considering everything that's happened, the Seattle police don't have to wait the standard twenty-four hours to start looking for them, but still."

"I'm getting tired of this," George burst out in frustration. "Burt and Ned are over in New York getting shot at and now Nancy and her dad are in Seattle vanishing into thin air. I'm sick of sitting around and doing nothing."

"Well, what are you going to do?" Bess asked. "We're hundreds of miles away from either of them."

George looked over at Logan. She had the beginnings of a plan in her mind, but she didn't want to talk about it in front of a cop, even one who was on friendly terms with her. So she left it at, "I don't know."

***ND***

The NYPD wasn't quite the RHPD. As Ned sat back in a chair in one of the wings of a police station, he swore to himself that he was never going to complain about the River Height police again. While Bess and George and the others were comfortably at home with a police guard assigned to watch the neighboring Marvin and Fayne houses, Burt, Aunt Eloise, and he had been persuaded to stay in one of the police stations for protection.

"In other words, we're in jail," Burt said, as if he was summing up what Ned was thinking. "I never knew getting protected was the same as getting punished."

"It's not," Ned replied. For the most part he agreed with Burt, but right now he felt like arguing. "We can still make all the phone calls we want and we've got this nice sitting room."

The sarcasm behind the "nice" wasn't lost on Burt, who looked around at the four swivel chairs, small table, and bare walls in disgust.

"Yeah, it's great," he said, matching sarcasm with Ned's tone. "The five-star hotels should really watch the competition. If news about this place leaks out, people will start doing whatever they can to be placed in protective custody. Say, maybe we could all fake having nervous breakdowns and get moved to the hospital."

"How about you try that?" Ned asked.

"Aunt Eloise might be able to convince them," Burt replied. "She's been pretty shaken up ever since – that happened."

"She's not the only one," Ned thought, but he didn't want to say it out loud. Fortunately, he was spared the necessity of saying anything at all when his phone rang. For a moment, he thought that it must be Nancy, and he couldn't help feeling a distinct disappointment when Bess's name was the one that showed up on the screen.

"Any news?" he asked, forgetting to say hello or any other kind of greeting.

"Unfortunately, yes," Bess replied.

***ND***

Carson woke up with his head splitting. For a few seconds, he couldn't remember where he was or how he'd gotten there, but he had a definite feeling that what had happened hadn't been pleasant. Then he realized that he was lying on his stomach on a musty mattress, his head bent so that he could still breathe and his arms and legs tied so that he could scarcely feel them anymore.

Painfully, he tried to sit up. Without the use of his hands, it was no easy task, but he managed it in the end. Even so, the movement caused spasms of pain to reverberate through his head. Once he could straighten his neck, he found that it was very stiff from the unnatural position that it had been in. From this and from how numb his arms and legs were, he guessed that he must have been tied up for some time.

Then Carson started to remember what had happened. He, Nancy, and Michael had cooperated with the man with the gun. They'd been told to sit on the floor of the back seat, and all of them had been blindfolded. The car had driven for a long time. Carson thought that he had tried to keep track of how long and when it had turned, but he couldn't remember that now.

It could have been hours later when the car finally stopped. The blindfold hadn't been taken off until they were all inside. They were in a room then, an office, Carson thought. It seemed like there were a lot of people in it, but maybe it had just been a small room. There had definitely been at least three men and one woman.

One of the men had been "Uncle Johann". He had yelled angrily at Michael and then smacked him across the face. Carson had tried to intervene on Michael's behalf, but all he had gotten for his trouble was hit over the head. He must have been knocked out, because that was the last thing he could remember before waking up here.

Now he was in a concrete cell. The only thing in it was the mattress that Carson had been laid down on. The mattress itself smelled horrible, like there could be mice nesting in it. Carson made a face at the thought and scooted himself off the mattress onto the floor. It wasn't particularly clean either, but at least he could see what was on it.

Now he tried to think of some idea to escape from this place. He would have to get himself untied somehow. From how numb his arms were and the fact that he had nothing sharp to help him, that was certainly going to be difficult. Then he'd have to find a way out of the cell. There was one window, too high to reach even standing up and too small to crawl through even if it could be reached. The only other exit was the door, which was no doubt securely locked.

Most of all, however, he wondered what these people had done to Nancy and where she was.

***ND***

In another cell, identical to her father's, Nancy was wondering the same thing about her father. Having been spared being hit over the head, her memory of what had happened was clearer than Carson's, but that was hardly a relief.

She had also tried to remember how far the car had gone and in what direction, but she had finally given the task up as hopeless. Without a way to measure the time precisely, there were just too many variables for the attempt to even be helpful.

Then they had been hustled out of the car into the office where a woman and four men, plus the man who had taken them prisoner, were waiting. They hadn't said a word to Nancy or her father at first. Instead, "Uncle Johann" had chastised Michael for running away and then had cuffed him on the face.

Even now, Nancy's blood boiled in rage at the thought. At the time, she had been about to try to stop "Uncle Johann" somehow, but Carson had beaten her to it. To her horror, their captor had hit Carson over the head with his gun, knocking him out.

That had seemed to sober the crooks. They promptly tied Nancy and Michael up and marched them out of the room. Nancy didn't know what they had done with Carson, or even how badly he was hurt. Then they had taken Michael off in one direction and led Nancy to this cell. They had left her inside, telling her that someone would be back to talk to her later.

"I'm not going to be here later," Nancy had vowed at the time.

Hours had gone by since then, though, and she was no nearer escape than she had been when the door had first closed behind her. She wondered just how long she would have to wait before it was "later".

The question was answered for her a few minutes later when the door to the cell swung open and the woman from the office walked in with "Uncle Johann."

"Where's my dad?" Nancy asked them.

"We'll tell you that later, if you cooperate with us," the woman replied. "First, I want you to tell me everything you know and who else you've told."

Nancy bit her lip. "What difference does it make?"

"To you, none," the woman said bluntly. "But it might help your friends."

"I say get rid of them all," Johann interjected. "You can't really think she's kept anything to herself."

"If it hadn't been for you, she wouldn't have anything to tell anybody," the woman told him acidly. "Now, come on, Ms. Drew. You'd better tell me what I want to know. If you don't, I'll put my associate's idiotic plan to use and have his hired stalkers kill all of your friends. You've already seen that they have no reservations about that sort of thing."

Nancy took in a long breath, desperately trying to calm her pounding heart. "And if I do tell you, what happens to my friends?"

"I won't offend you by trying to lie to you," the woman replied. "You already know that the answer depends on what you tell me. If you've given your friends no harmful information that has not also been passed along to the police, your friends will be spared."

"What about my dad?" Nancy asked.

The woman gave her almost a compassionate smile. "You're a smart girl. You can figure that one out on your own. You can't save yourself or your father, but you can save your friends. Why don't you do it?"