J.M.J.

Author's note: Thank you for reading! Thank you also for all your reviews! The next chapter will be out tomorrow. God bless!

October 2 – Monday

Bess sank into her seat on the plane and yawned. "The worst thing about traveling is how tiring it is," she grumbled.

"We haven't even left River Heights yet," George teased her.

"I know, but we had to get up at five o'clock in the morning to get to the plane," Bess replied.

"Oh, well, just think about how that will be nothing compared to the jet lag once we get to New Zealand," George teased her.

Bess groaned and sank deeper into her seat.

Nancy smiled but looked away. It was usually wisest to keep out of the middle of Bess and George's teasing. Besides, she was too excited to waste the moment in teasing. "You'll have plenty of time to sleep on the plane, Bess."

"I hope so, but have you ever noticed that sleeping on a plane doesn't help much?" Bess yawned again. "And what's worse is you never know if you're going to fall asleep with your mouth open. If I do, please wake me up."

"Sure thing," Nancy told her.

"You know, I figured that a mystery would come up on this case with you along, Nan," George commented, "but I didn't think it would happen before we even got started."

"At least it's giving us a reason why we have to go instead of stopping us from going," Nancy pointed out.

"True enough," George agreed.

HBNDHBNDHB

It was just after dawn when Chet came running back into the clearing around the cabin. Once Biff had come into camp to tell them that he and Joe had spotted a ship, everyone had forgotten about shifts and sleeping. They had all rushed up to the top of the hill and watched and waited to see whether the ship would come towards them, all torn between excitement that they might finally be rescued and fear that the ship might ignore the signal fire and not land or that it might be the would-be killers. As they stood and watched, they could see that the light of the ship was steadily coming toward them. However, as the night had grown darker, the ship had stopped moving, and the castaways decided that it would probably not attempt to land in the dark.

The castaways then decided that they would split up and some of them would go back to the cabin to get ready for the visitors, whether they were friendly or not, while the rest would stay up by the signal fire and make sure it kept burning and to watch the ship so that they would know where it was going to land. Since Joe and Biff had been on watch all day, they had been the ones to be sent back, while the other four stayed up on the hill, taking turns sleeping.

Now that it was dawn, the ship had begun moving again, and once the boys at the top of the hill were sure of where it was headed, they sent Chet to tell Joe and Biff. They heard him coming and were outside the cabin to meet him as soon as he arrived.

"They're landing on the east side of the island, probably the same beach we landed on," Chet reported, panting as he did.

"That makes sense," Joe said. "It's the easiest place to land. What are the other guys doing?"

"Tony's staying up by the signal fire to make sure the boat doesn't change directions, and Frank and Phil are headed down to the beach," Chet reported. "They want the three of us to come, too, if you've got everything squared away here. It's a cruiser, like the one we got brought here in, by the way, but it's not the same boat. It's painted differently."

"That's good," Biff said. "We've got everything done here. We hid all the tools that could be used as weapons and some supplies up in the jungle. So let's go."

"Have you guys seen Katina at all?" Chet asked.

Biff shook his head. "We should have gone after her when she first ran away."

"I'm sure she's fine," Joe said, a little defensively since he knew that it had been his decision not to go after her.

"Well, sure, but if those guys on the boat are going to rescue us, we need to find Katina as fast as possible," Chet said. "We can't leave her here, so the longer we have to look for her, the longer it will take us to get home."

"You think we really are going to get rescued?" Biff asked. "After all these months, I can hardly believe it."

"I'll believe it when it happens," Joe said. "I don't feel very good about this."

HBNDHBNDHB

One of the drawbacks of Callie getting most of her furniture second-hand was that sleeping on the couch was even more uncomfortable than usual. Iola didn't think that she had gotten more than an hour or two of sleep as she tossed and turned, but maybe that wasn't all the couch's fault. She was still disturbed by the scene she had witnessed with Casey, and she was a little worried that he might cause more trouble for Callie. She wished Callie would have called the police. At the very least, it would have thrown some fear into him and discouraged him from messing with her again, even if it wouldn't have accomplished anything else.

It was getting close to dawn but still dark out when Iola heard something outside. It sounded like someone had tapped against one of the windows. Immediately, Iola threw her blanket off, thinking it might be Casey returning to get his revenge. She groped around in the darkness for something that she could use as a weapon if need be but nothing was near at hand. Then she remembered that Callie had a couple of cast-iron frying pans in the kitchen. That would be just the thing to use. She rushed to the kitchen and grabbed one of the pans.

Once she was armed, she crept to the window where she had heard the tapping. The Venetian blind was pulled over it, so Iola had to carefully peel two of the panels apart to look through. She gasped and stepped back as a face appeared right in the window, as if someone was putting their face right up to the glass. A moment later, she realized that it was only her own reflection. The relief coming on the heels of a surge of adrenaline made her limbs feel weak and she laughed out loud at herself.

Her laughter died immediately as she heard the door behind her creak open. She whirled around, raising the frying pan threateningly. Two figures were approaching her, silhouetted against the light coming through the door. One of them shoved the door closed, plunging them into complete darkness. Iola swung her frying pan blindly, hitting nothing, and then someone grabbed her. She tried to scream, but before she could get the sound out, someone clapped a hand over her mouth. The frying pan was wrenched out of her hands, but Iola tried to put up a struggle.

Iola's attempt at screaming might not have woken up any of the neighbors, but it had roused Callie. She had snapped awake in her bedroom, knowing instinctively that there was some trouble. She grabbed her cell phone, but before she could make a call, the door to her bedroom was thrown open and someone shone a flashlight into her eyes. Callie screamed and tried to scramble onto the floor on the other side of the bed. The noise only seemed to propel the intruder into action and he jumped across the room and grabbed her. Callie clawed and screamed until he got his hand over her mouth, but as he was dragging her out into the main room, she bit his finger. He pulled his hand away with a curse, and Callie screamed again. Then something hit her over the head and she blacked out.

HBNDHBNDHB

Frank and Phil crouched in the brush next to the beach and watched the boat approaching. It was clearly going to land on the beach, and so they were sure that the other castaways would be joining them soon. The boat didn't come all the way up to shore, and three men were getting off it into the water as they waded to shore.

None of the three were familiar to the castaways. They weren't the men who had attempted to kill them, which was some consolation. Still, they couldn't be sure whether these men were involved with those criminals or not, and so it wouldn't be wise to reveal themselves prematurely.

"I don't see anyone," one of the men said as they reached the beach.

"We know they're here," one of the others replied.

"Yes, but…" the first began.

"That fire last night didn't light itself," the third interrupted. "We know they're here, and they probably know we're here. If they're stranded here, I don't think they'd just ignore a boat coming toward them."

"Okay, then where are they?" the first asked.

One of the others shrugged. "Let's look around and find them."

The men must have seen the well-worn path that the boys had made to the beach, as they started following it. Once they were well out of sight, Frank and Phil relaxed and came out of hiding. The other boys had also arrived silently and waited and watched until the visitors had arrived. All six of them now gathered on the beach.

"Well, what do you guys think?" Chet asked. "Are they going to help us or are they going to try to kill us?"

"If it's the latter, we've got them outnumbered two to one," Biff pointed out.

"But in that case, they're probably armed, and that does give them a little bit of an edge," Joe reminded him.

"But they're going to get us rescued either way," Frank said. "They just left their boat unmanned, and it must have a radio and a GPS on it. We can find out exactly where we are and call for help. Come on, Phil. I might need some help with it. The rest of you guys, stand guard in case they come back."

He and Phil waded out to the boat and climbed aboard. As he stood on the deck, Frank couldn't help wishing that they could just take the boat and get away now, but he knew that wouldn't be right. Those men might be honest sailors or fishermen and they couldn't just steal their boat and leave them here. In any case, they couldn't leave without Katina. Even so, Frank had never been so tempted to steal something in his life.

There was a cabin above the deck, and the castaways tried there first for the navigation and communications apparatus. Phil found the GPS right away and started powering it on. Frank spotted the radio and flipped the switch to begin warming it up. Nothing happened. Thinking there might be a short in it, Frank jiggled the switch again, but still the set didn't come on.

Phil whistled as he looked at the GPS. "We're a lot farther from Hawaii than I was thinking."

"Where are we, then?" Frank asked, turning away from the radio.

"I'm more interested in what you're doing here," someone said from behind them.

They both started and turned around to see a man standing in the doorway of the cabin. He wasn't one of the three that they had seen earlier, but he still wasn't anyone they recognized. Frank and Phil glanced at each other, but they already knew that now they had no choice about avoiding these people now.

"We're trying to get off this island," Frank said.

HBNDHBNDHB

Callie blinked as she started to wake up. She had a miserable headache that didn't even improve when she held her head still. She reached up and tried to rub her head, groaning as she did so.

"Are you all right?" Iola asked.

Callie blinked and tried to look around her. She was lying on a concrete floor. The room was small, and the only light was coming from a window high up in the wall. There was dirt and debris on the floor, but otherwise the room was bare. Iola was sitting against a wall on the far side of the room. Her hands were tied together in front of her, and she was biting at the rope as she tried to untie it with her teeth. She had paused long enough to speak when she noticed Callie moving.

"I think I'll live," Callie replied. "Where are we?"

Iola shrugged. "Some old building. It looks like some kind of factory or something. Obviously, they don't use it for anything anymore. Except holding kidnap victims, of course."

"Did those guys say anything?" Callie propped herself on one elbow. Her head hurt miserably, but she was going to have to ignore that for now.

"They barely said a word," Iola replied. "They tied me up, and then they brought us here and just dumped us off. I've been trying to get loose ever since, and I've been worried about you." She went back to tugging on the knot around her wrists with her teeth.

"Here, let me help." Callie crawled across the floor to Iola and began trying to loosen the knot with her fingers. "Since they didn't bother tying me up, they must be pretty confident we can't get out of here."

"Right. I think the only reason they tied me was to get me in here. They probably locked the door to this room, and there's a long hallway and some stairs to get back outside. There aren't too many windows, either."

"But if this place is that big, there must be some doors," Callie pointed out. "Some of them must have broken locks."

"Well, if we can get out of this room, we'd better try to find them," Iola agreed. She nodded at the door into the room. "If that is locked, we don't have anything to break it down with."

Callie didn't reply to that. Iola was obviously right about it. If they couldn't get through the door, their only other alternative was to wait for their captors to return, and that wasn't something Callie wanted to think about. Yet she couldn't help wondering about it. She had no idea why she and Iola might have been kidnapped. If Frank and Joe were still alive and working on some case, there might be an explanation for it, but as it was, Callie couldn't see any reason.

"And here I was worried about that Casey guy," Iola commented, breaking into Callie's thoughts. "Unless…You don't suppose there's any possible way he's involved?"

"I doubt it. Hiring a couple of thugs to kidnap the two of us is an extreme way to deal with a rejection," Callie said.

"Yeah. I noticed one thing about those two thugs."

"What?"

"They were Hispanic."

"So?"

"Well, maybe Casey wouldn't be going around hiring thugs, but those drug dealers that Mr. Hardy is after might," Iola pointed out. "You don't suppose that these guys are part of that outfit, do you?"

"I don't see why," Callie said as she finally managed to pull Iola's bonds loose.

Iola rubbed her wrists for a moment and then she jumped up and bounded toward the door. She tried to pull it open, but it was closed fast.

She sighed. "It really is locked. I'm not surprised, but I am a little disappointed. I guess now all we can do is wait."

HBNDHBNDHB

The castaways had no difficulty explaining their plight to the man who had been left aboard the boat to watch it. He was all sympathy and assured them that he understood why they had tried to sneak about to place a radio call.

"Unfortunately, the radio's broken," the man explained as he, Frank, and Phil came out on deck. "That's one of the reasons we stopped here after we saw your signal fire. We thought if there were people on this island, you might have an extra radio, or at least the parts to fix ours."

"We can't help you there," Phil told him dolefully. "What's wrong with the radio?"

"I think it's the wiring," the man said. "I'm pretty sure I could fix it if I had some wire cutters, a soldering gun, and some extra wire. I don't suppose you have any of those things?"

"Maybe the wire cutters," Frank told him.

The man shook his head. "Oh, well. It's not the end of the world. We can still get back to Hawaii, and we'll be happy to give you guys a ride. It'll be a little tight on the boat, though. How many people are in your group?"

"There's seven of us," Frank said.

The man glanced at the four boys on the beach and then back at the two standing in front of him. "Where's the seventh?"

"That's a long story," Frank told him. "My name's Frank Hardy, and this is Phil Cohen."

"Charlie Ream," the man replied. "Let's get on shore and find my crewmates. Then we can figure out what we're going to do. I'm not sure eleven people will fit on this boat."

They waded back to shore and Ream was introduced to the other castaways. They were all relieved that Ream seemed to be sincere in wanting to help them, all except Joe, who still had a nagging feeling that they couldn't trust this man. Their relief gave way to excitement, and as they walked toward the cabin, they were all chattering about what they were going to do when they got home. Only Joe didn't say a word.

They found the other three men at the cabin. They were introduced as Travis Longheim, Shawn Ingram, and Kelvin Weston. They all thought that they could get the castaways onto the cruiser, but they agreed that it would be a tight squeeze.

"We don't mind that," Chet told them eagerly. "Not if it means getting home."

"But we'll have to find Katina first," Biff added.

"Who's Katina?" Longheim asked. He owned the cruiser and so he acted as its captain. He was around fifty with a salt-and-pepper beard.

"She's a girl who was stranded on the island before we got here," Biff explained. "She doesn't speak English, but we've been trying to teach her. She's taught us some of her language, too, but we don't know what it is."

"I speak several languages," Ingram said. He looked to be the youngest of the men, probably between twenty-five and thirty with red hair and a dark suntan, although not quite so dark as any of the castaways now had. "What does it sound like? I might recognize it."

"Uh, let's see…" Biff wrinkled his forehead, trying to think of some of the words Katina had taught him. That was hard to do when he was put on the spot like this.

"She's only taught us a few words here and there," Tony said. "Like déntro for tree, neró for water or ocean—we're not sure which—and ouranós for sky."

Ingram nodded. Joe thought it looked a little too knowing, like this was exactly what Ingram had expected. "It sounds like Greek to me."

"Yeah, we can't make heads or tails of it, either," Biff agreed.

"No, I mean that I think the language she's speaking is Greek," Ingram said. "Katina is a Greek name, too."

"That would explain why it sounds so different from anything I've ever heard before," Biff replied.

"Well, regardless of what language she speaks, we're going to have a problem even if we do find her," Joe said. "She doesn't trust other people very much. She ran away just seeing your cruiser from a distance. I doubt we'll be able to persuade her to come on board."

"We'll just have to find a way," Longheim replied. "In the meantime, I'll bet you guys wouldn't mind having something else to eat besides fish and fruit for a change."

HBNDHBNDHB

It was another hour or two before Callie and Iola's captors returned. The men were armed this time with handguns, and they warned the girls to stay back from the door until they had closed and locked it again.

"What do you want with us?" Iola demanded.

One of the men folded his arms. "We just want to talk, and then have you do us a favor."

"You've got a nice way of asking," Iola replied dryly.

"We have some information that we want you to pass onto Fenton Hardy. It's about his sons."

The girls glanced at each other.

"What do you know about them?" Callie asked.

"We know enough to answer all his questions," the man replied. "But he's going to have to play by our rules to get that information. That's also the only way we'll let you two go."

"Who are you guys?" Iola demanded. "If you want Mr. Hardy to do something wrong, I can tell you right now that he'll outsmart you."

"You girls will regret it if he tries," the man said. "It would be dangerous to give our names. You will call me One and him Two. We already know your names."

"What do you want us to tell Mr. Hardy?" Callie asked. "And what do you want him to do in return?"

Number One took a cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number. Then he handed it to Callie. "You will tell him that we have all the information he could want about the organization who killed his sons. You will tell him that the FBI has not been entirely honest with him, but that we have the information that will fill in the gaps. You will also tell him that to get this information, he must leave Pavel Morales and Gaspar Santana alone. You will remind him that if he does not, you two are not the first young women to fall into our hands."

Mr. Hardy had already answered and Callie heard him say "Hello?" a couple of times before the kidnapper finished talking.

"Hello, Mr. Hardy?" Callie said. "It's Callie. Iola is here, too."

"Did something happen? Are you all right?"

"We've…been kidnapped."

"What? Callie, where are you?"

"I don't know. The two guys are standing here right now. I don't think they want me to say anything more than what they told me."

"Okay. All right. What did they tell you to say?"

"They say that they have information about what happened to Frank and Joe, including information that the FBI hasn't told you. They'll tell you everything, but you have to leave two people alone. What were the names again?" Callie looked up at the kidnappers.

"Pavel Morales and Gaspar Santana."

Callie repeated the names. "Do you know who they are?"

"Yeah," Mr. Hardy replied in a strained voice. "What else did they say?"

"To remind you that if you don't leave those two guys alone, then Iola and I aren't the first young women to have fallen into their hands."

"Have they hurt you at all?"

"Not seriously."

"Okay. What do I have to do to prove to them that I'm not investigating Morales and Santana any further?"

Callie looked up at her captors and repeated the question.

"Tell him to go to Hawaii. Once he is there, we'll give him his next instructions."