J.M.J.

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Chapter 13

It was good news, as far as it went, that George had gotten the power turned off. They now had a little time, at least, to get a message to Frank and Joe—or anyone else who would listen, for that matter—about what was going on in Paradise Valley. For a minute or so, however, Bess and Ned weren't sure that they would get the chance to use that opportunity. As the person on the other side of the door hesitated, Ned remained in position to tackle him if he came through the door.

No one did, however. At the moment the lights went out, Ned heard someone on the other side of the door say, "What's going on?"

Another person answered, but they must have been farther from the door, as Ned couldn't make out any words, only the general sound of speech. Then there were retreating footsteps. Ned breathed a bit easier.

"Are they gone?" Bess whispered.

"I think so." Ned turned toward the keypad and a dismal realization struck him. "We're not going to be able to open that without power."

Bess also turned to look at it. "Then what do we do?"

Ned chewed his lip for a moment or two. The hinges of the door weren't showing, and the keypad was the only mechanism for opening it from this side. "The good news is that there's no alarm connected now. Maybe we can pry it open somehow. Look around for a crowbar or hammer or something."

There was nothing in this room, and so that necessitated going back out into the hallway where the footsteps had been. That made them both nervous, which caused them to forget for a minute what else the power being out meant. They remembered a moment later. Since both calling for help and rescuing their friends were priorities with time limits, Ned ventured out to look for a tool to accomplish the latter while Bess tried to make a call to accomplish the former.

Now that there was no signal blocker, Bess's phone showed two bars of reception. It had been on silent, and now Bess noticed that a whole string of texts and missed calls were coming through, which made it slow to try to place a call of her own. Nevertheless, it did go through. It rang twice and then Joe's voice came on the phone.

"Bess?" he said, sounding much more hesitant than Bess would have expected.

"Joe! I don't know how long I have to talk, so just listen. But it is good to hear your voice. I didn't think we'd ever get out of this crazy place. Well, we still haven't, but George cut all the power so they're not blocking the cell signals right now, but who knows how long it'll be before they turn it back on."

"You're still in Paradise Valley?" Joe asked quickly.

"Yes, we all are, even Ned and your dad and Mr. Drew. The whole town is fake and they're guarding the road in, but they have some kind of electric barrier that electrocutes everyone not on the road. We're hoping it's not working with the power out, but like I said, they might get that turned on again any minute. You and Frank had better bring a lot of help."

"All right. We will. But…is that really you, Bess?"

"Of course, it is. Who else would it be?"

Joe chuckled wryly. "There's been some weird things going on."

"You're telling me. Another thing. George and Ned and I aren't exactly being held prisoners right now, but the others are. We think we know where they're at and we're trying to get them out, but if we're wrong or we can't get to them, then these people might try to use them as hostages when you get here."

"Okay. As long as you can stay on the phone, I need you to tell me everything you can about the town and the people there and what's going on, Bess."

"Okay. I'll try." Bess took in a deep breath and started describing as quickly as she could what had happened and what little she knew about the town. She was still talking when Ned came back with a crowbar. "Ned's back, Joe" she said. "He can probably tell you more." She pressed the button to turn the phone on speaker.

"Hi, Joe." Ned didn't pause in inserting the crowbar into the crack around the door. "Am I glad that Bess could get through to you."

"No kidding," Joe replied. "What's going on there? How did Dad get captured?"

Ned started telling his story, but partway through, he paused for breath as he continued trying to pry open the door. There was a peculiar dead silence on the phone.

"Joe?" Bess asked. "Joe, are you there?"

There was no reply. The screen showed that the call had been disconnected and there were no longer any bars.

"We lost him," Bess reported in disappointment. "They must have gotten the signal blocker back up. But the lights didn't come back on."

"They must have turned on a generator instead of getting the power back on at the power station," Ned surmised. "It must not power everything in town. Probably just the plant, since that's the most important part."

"Do you think George is all right?" Bess asked.

"Probably," Ned replied tersely and without conviction.

At the same moment, there was a ripping sound as the door finally gave way under the pressure that Ned had been putting on it. The entire door didn't come down, but the lock was ripped off and so the door could be opened without trouble. It opened into a small cell block with old-fashioned bars at the front of each of four cells. Fenton Hardy and Captain Dawson hurried to the front of two of the cells.

"Ned? What's going on?" Fenton asked.

"We were hoping it would be a mass jailbreak. Where are Nancy and Mr. Drew?"

"We never did see Nancy, and they took Carson somewhere else almost as soon as they had brought us back here," Fenton reported. "How did you get away?"

"They let me go." Ned looked around but it appeared that the cells opened electronically as well. "Any ideas on getting these cells open?"

"If I did, I'd be working on it already," Fenton told him.

"Why would they let you go?" Dawson asked.

"I wish I knew. It keeps making me feel like anything we do, even if it's to try to get out of here, is really playing into their hands." Ned bit his lip. "We were able to get a call out to Joe. We got cut off, but I think he knows enough to be able to get us out of here."

"Well, that's something, anyway," Fenton said. "If we could get out of here so Delvere doesn't have any hostages, that would be better."

"Right." Ned sighed. He didn't see any way to do that at the moment.

Bess had followed Ned into the cell block, and she was also trying to think of a way to open the doors. "Do you think we could bend the bars so they could slip through?"

Ned shook his head. "I don't think so."

"The walls are cinderblock. Do you think we could smash through somehow?"

Ned was about to dash that idea, too, but then Fenton spoke up. "It's worth a try. Hand me that crowbar, Ned."

The crowbar was passed through the bars, but rather than aimlessly banging it against the wall, Fenton began pounded the tip against one of the seems in the cinderblock. The concrete began chipping away under the concentrated pressure, but it looked like it would take quite some time.

Fenton paused and caught his breath. "This is going to take too long. Where's George?"

"Hopefully, getting away from that power station as fast as she can," Bess replied.

"Do you have a place where you were planning on meeting her?" Fenton asked.

"No," Ned admitted. "We didn't think we'd get this far. See, Bess and I were supposed to be the distraction so that George could get the power off and we could hopefully get a call out. We didn't think we'd be able to walk right in here without anyone seeing us."

Dawson shook his head. "This isn't any good. Even if we do get out of here, there's no way we'll be able to find everyone else without getting recaptured."

"We've got to try," Ned insisted.

"Right." Fenton nodded in agreement. "What about the controls for opening these doors? I know there's no power, but if you take them apart, you might be able to find a way to manually open the door."

"I'll try," Ned offered.

It took him and Bess a few more minutes to find a screwdriver, but when they did, they were able to remove the cover of the keypad for Fenton's cell. In the meantime, Fenton continued chipping away at the cinderblocks. Neither Ned nor Bess could make anything of the mass of wires which was revealed behind the keypad, but they did notice that the wall here was simply drywall and plaster.

"I've got an idea," Ned announced. "Could I have that crowbar back, Mr. Hardy?"

Fenton handed the tool back, and Ned began tearing away the drywall and plaster between the keypad and the cell door. He uncovered more wires, but more importantly, he found the release that opened the door. He pried at it with the crowbar, and the door opened with a click. It only took a couple of minutes to open the door to Dawson's cell the same way.

"So what do we do now?" Bess asked.

"If we knew where they took the others, then rescuing them would be the obvious answer," Fenton replied. "Since we don't know, let's try to make things as easy as we can for our help when it gets here. Getting that signal blocker down permanently is a high priority there. I'm guessing it's in the plant, since that's the most likely place for them to put a generator. Let's see if we can find either the blocker or the generator and disable them permanently."

NDHBNDHBND

It almost surprised Nancy how calm she was at finding herself stuck in an elevator in a building full of enemies. Perhaps it was because she knew that as long as the elevator was stuck, no one could get to her. In any case, her first instinct was to look around and see if there was a hatch in the top of the elevator through which they might escape. There was not.

"Looks like we're trapped," Roscoe noted grimly.

Nancy nodded, but then she quickly changed the subject. "Do you know who the man with Meyers was?"

"Sort of," Roscoe said. "He came to town earlier, before I got found out. He was with another guy. They said they were looking for you and your friends. I slipped them a message, hoping they'd bring back help, but it's starting to make sense now. I must have been suspected already, and they came in as a test. That's how Meyers found out I slipped them the note. Now they're trying to trick us again."

"That could be," Nancy agreed. "While I was locked up earlier, I overheard Meyers talking. He was saying that he would have people pretending to be people I could trust to try to confuse me, and through me, confuse Tom."

"That's all adding up then." Nancy could hear the frown in his voice, even though in the pitch dark, she couldn't see it. "I wonder why they care about confusing Tom. That part doesn't make any sense."

"Maybe they think they can manipulate his dad through him," Nancy suggested.

"They don't want to manipulate his dad. They just want him dead."

"They who?" Nancy asked suddenly. "Do you know who actually tried to kill him and who ordered it done?"

"No, not exactly. Meyers, I think, was involved, so I'd assume the orders came from Delvere ultimately."

"What if they didn't?" Nancy asked. "What if that was Meyers' idea? I get the idea that he isn't too thrilled about working for Delvere. Maybe he's got a bad habit of not following orders."

"But he'd still have to have a reason for what he's doing. What difference does it make to him whether Swift is alive or dead?"

Nancy tried to think this out. She felt like she was on the verge of understanding it, but her head was still aching too much to quite make the pieces fall into place. "How much do you really know about what's going on around here?" she asked finally.

"Not much," Roscoe admitted. "Enough to know that I don't like it and that it's definitely illegal, but beyond that, I have no idea. Delvere has been strict about keeping us security guys in the dark."

Trying to think any further just made Nancy's head hurt. She wanted nothing so much as to lie down and go to sleep. Even if she could just close her eyes and rest her head against something, it would help. Maybe that was the real reason for her calm in the face of being trapped. She quite literally didn't care what happened.

She only hesitated a few moments longer. Then she felt her way to a corner, sat on the floor, and rested her head against the walls, closing her eyes. It helped clear her head a bit, but only in that uneasy way where she knew that even though her head didn't hurt right now, it would start again if she moved it even a little. Even so, she was able to think of one more thing.

"The other guy, who was looking for me," she said. "What did he look like?"

"About your age," Roscoe replied. "Tall, dark hair, looks like he works out."

Nancy took in a deep breath. Of course, at this point, she was defaulting to not trusting anyone besides Tom and Roscoe, and even Roscoe she wasn't so sure about, but it would help to have some idea who she should be especially suspicious around.

While Nancy was sitting there, Roscoe tried pressing all the buttons out of desperation, even though without power, none of them would do anything at all. Nancy could hear the clicking of the useless buttons being pressed. Then, after what seemed a long time, the lights turned on and the elevator began going up again with a sudden jolt. It stopped on the top floor, and the doors slid open.

"I don't see anyone," Roscoe reported once he had looked out. "Come on. I don't know what's going on, but the elevator is the last place I want to be if I can help it."

Nancy got up and followed him. They went down a hallway for a short distance, and then Roscoe cautiously opened the door to a room. It appeared to be a little office, but no one was inside.

Roscoe gestured for Nancy to follow him again, and they stepped inside. Nancy closed the door after them, although she was wondering what good coming in here was. Roscoe went to the desk and slid open a drawer.

"This is Dr. Liu's office. One thing I know about him is that he's paranoid." Roscoe pulled a handgun out of the drawer. "He thinks he's going to be robbed or kidnapped or something. Who knows? Anyway, fortunately for us, he keeps a loaded gun in his desk. He had to clear it with security, you know."

"Do you think we might need to fight our way out?" Nancy asked.

"I'd say it's very likely." Roscoe handed the gun to her. "You might as well take charge of it. I know I can trust you, but you might not be so sure about me."

Nancy glanced down at the gun. "Okay. Now can we look for Tom?"

Roscoe shrugged. "We can try. One thing you've got to remember is that this building is full of cameras. We're not going to be able to move too far without being seen."