Shadows at Predator Reef (9 page)

“I didn't mean to,” Carter said meekly.

“Um, how do you accidentally release a four-hundred-pound predatory fish?” Frank asked.

Yeah, I was kind of wondering about that myself.

“Bruce was in the holding tank, waiting for a routine checkup. I figured you were onto me when you started snooping around, and I thought if I released the shark, it would scare you off. I didn't mean for him to attack you.”

“What about the puncture mark in Bruce's side? Was that an accident too?” Frank accused.

For what it's worth, Carter actually looked like he felt bad about that one. “Oh, I didn't mean to hurt him. I guess I poked him harder than I thought. It's the only way I could get him to leave the holding tank.”

Just our luck that it got him so riled up that he tried to eat me. Carter wasn't winning himself any points with the Hardy boys, that was for sure. And his appearance only made the mystery more, well, mysterious.

This was the second time in a matter of hours we'd thought we'd solved the crime only to discover it was more complicated than we could have imagined. We'd found out who devised the original plan (Mr. V) and who tried to kill us (Carter), but we still didn't know who stole Captain Hook. I was really starting to get frustrated. Were our mystery-solving skills getting rusty?

“It's about time you tell us something that actually helps us, or this is going to get really ugly for you, dude,” I warned. “Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

Frank picked up on my bad-cop tactic and assumed the role of good cop.

“You're in a lot of trouble, Carter,” he said calmly. “If you can help us find Captain Hook before she gets hurt, then it will really help your case, especially if we put in a good word for you with the chief.”

“I don't know anything else. I'd tell you if I did,” he pleaded.

It was my turn.

“What do you think Aly's gonna think when she finds out you helped the guy who kidnapped Captain Hook? You think she'll take you back then, huh, babe?” I said, adding just a touch of extra force with my knee as I held him down. Carter groaned. I kind of liked playing the bad cop.

“Think, Carter. There has to be something,” Frank coaxed. “What did the person's voice sound like?”

“I don't know.” Carter whimpered. The guy was close to turning into a blubbering mess.

“Sheesh, Carter, how do you not know what they sounded like?” I asked. “Did they communicate with you telepathically?”

“It sounded weird, like they did something to change their voice. It was all robotic.”

Another dead end. Whoever it was had obviously been a lot smarter than Carter.

“If they used an electronic voice distorter, it could be really hard to identify them,” I said to Frank.

“Yeah, but not impossible,” Frank replied. “Most distorters aren't perfect. You can sometimes still pick up clues from a person's speech patterns.”

“Was there anything they said that might give them away?” I asked Carter.

“Was it a guy? A girl?” Frank asked, forcing me to think about the fact that Aly was still out there as a suspect.

“I—I don't know,” he stuttered. At this point, Carter had given up struggling altogether and was just lying there like a useless bump on a log.

I sighed. “Let's just tell the chief he wouldn't cooperate and be done with it.”

“Wait,” Carter said. “There was something maybe. Some of the things they said sounded kind of funny.”

“Of course they sounded funny, dude, they were using a voice distorter,” I groaned in exasperation.

“No, like a different kind of funny. Like they said some of the words in a funny way,” Carter tried to explain. “Like maybe they were from a different country, you know, like they were British or something.”

Frank and I looked at each other. There was only one person we knew in Bayport who fit that description.

Dirk Bishop.

N
OW WE HAD A SOLID
lead. The arrogant black market treasure hunter from jolly old England was skilled, savvy, and shady enough to have pulled it off. And there wasn't anyone in Bayport who better knew how to move hot goods. This wasn't just gold coins, though. Gold coins don't have a pulse and they don't feel pain. The “rare goods” we were looking for had a lot more value than a price tag. If Bishop planned to move Captain Hook, we had to find out where and when before it was too late.

And those ends were still dead. Carter hadn't been able to give us a single usable clue about where Captain Hook had been taken. Even if we wanted to risk exploring the network of tunnels Joe had found, it could take days to figure
out where every corridor went—and that's if one of the tunnels didn't collapse on us. We wouldn't do Captain Hook much good buried under a pile of rubble.

“Think, Carter. Is there anything else you remember about where this person took you? Anything at all?” I asked.

“I think it was like an old warehouse or something,” he said.

That was about as useful as him telling us it was somewhere in Bayport. The port was lined with old warehouses. Even with a huge search party, checking them all could take forever.

“Can you remember anything about where the car you were in may have gone? Like going over railroad tracks or hearing factory sounds?”

“No, nothing like that. I mean it smelled really fishy, you know, but that's all.”

I'm not sure how much of a lead that was—the bay was full of fish—but something about it caught Joe's interest.

“Like normal wharf fishy or extra-stinky fishy?” Joe asked.

“Like really stinky fishy,” Carter said, actually sounding confident about something for once.

Joe nodded. “It's a long shot, but I think I have an idea where it could have been.”

“I'm listening,” I said.

“When I came out of the tunnel in that warehouse, it wasn't far from the old cannery. I could smell the fish guts all the way from there, even though it was a few lots farther down the port.”

It made sense. I'd seen something in the news a few months back about the cannery going out of business. They shut it down, but I guess they couldn't get rid of the smell. It was abandoned, it was near enough to the tunnel Joe had found, and it stank of fish.

“It's worth a look,” I said.

“It's the only lead we've got,” Joe agreed.

“Sirs,” someone said from behind us, and we both jumped.

When we looked up, Jonathan was standing over us holding a length of rope, looking particularly sinister. He was pretty sneaky for an old guy in a tuxedo. He'd walked right up behind us without us even noticing. I wasn't sure how long he'd been eavesdropping.

“For the prisoner, sirs,” he said, holding up the rope.

I didn't know if Jonathan was keeping an eye on us at Mr. V's request or if he had his own agenda. I wasn't sure if we could trust him, but he and his Rolls were the quickest way for us to get where we wanted to go.

“Jonathan, can you drive us to the closest water taxi stop?” I asked, hedging our bets. If he could drop us at the water taxi stop on this side of the port, we could save some time by taking it across to the cannery and wouldn't have to reveal to Jonathan where we were going (if he hadn't overheard already).

“If I must,” he replied as we tied up Carter.

Once we got there, we left Carter and the briefcases full of cash with Jonathan and hopped a water taxi. The stink
from the cannery got stronger the closer we got. We had the water taxi let us off by the warehouse next door so we could sneak up on the cannery without being seen.

I had second thoughts as soon as we slipped inside the cannery through a cracked back door. The abandoned industrial building with its hanging hooks, conveyor belts, and strange mechanical devices was downright spooky, especially with all the eerie shadows everywhere. “Do those look like footprints?” Joe asked in a hushed voice.

He was pointing to a shadowy corner where a trail of dirt spilled out from under a closed utility closet door. When we got over to the closet, Joe leaned down and rubbed some of the dirt between his fingers.

He gave me a serious look.

“Same dirt as in the tunnel.”

Which meant we were going to have to open that door. Anytime you open a closed door in a hostile environment, you have to be prepared for the possibility that someone, or something, will jump out at you. Joe and I had done this more than a few times, and we weren't about to be caught by surprise.

Using hand signals so we couldn't be overheard, we quickly coordinated our plan of attack—Joe to the left of the door, me to the right, both of us ready to either storm in or pounce on whatever leaped out.

I reached for the knob, ready to throw the door open, not sure what we were going to find on the other side. The door
opened with a creak and then silence. There was no one inside, man or turtle.

There was more dirt on the floor, though, and oddly, it seemed to disappear under the closet's back wall. At this point in our investigation, I had a pretty good idea what to expect next.

“Trapdoor,” Joe said.

Sure enough, we were able to pop out a panel in the wall. Behind it was the entrance to the tunnel.

“Well, we found his entry point, but still no sign of Captain Hook,” I said. “Let's scan the closet for clues.”

I wasn't sure if what we found next was good news or bad news.

The discarded red scuba tank hidden behind a bucket of mops must have been what the thief used to swim up into Predator Reef to nab Captain Hook. That meant we were definitely in the right place.

The discarded veterinary syringe with blood on its tip was a lot more frightening.

“She was here, Joe.”

“Her and Carter both,” Joe agreed. “If this is where the kidnapper brought Carter, that means Captain Hook was here just a few hours ago.”

But she wasn't there now. Joe and I stared at the syringe. It was an all too gruesome reminder of just how much danger she was in. I had the awful feeling that we were too late. That Captain Hook was already gone.

“Where to now?” Joe asked. I shook my head. I didn't know.

“The street-side entrance to the cannery is blocked off, so if he was going to move her to another location, it probably would have been from the waterfront and not the road,” I reasoned.

We made our way cautiously to the berths where fishing boats used to dock to unload their catch. A narrow wooden pier led between the cannery and an abandoned shipyard, where the canned fish had once been loaded onto container ships.

Which meant the small container ship we saw with Chinese characters painted on its side had no business preparing to dock alongside it.

“That shouldn't be there, should it?” Joe asked.

“Not unless they're picking up cargo they don't want anyone to know about.”

“Let's go,” Joe said.

“Right behind you.”

I felt a tingle of excitement as we crept along the pier toward the shipyard. This could be it. The ship that had just pulled in could very well mean that the turtle-napper was waiting on the dock with Captain Hook, moments away from getting rid of the illicit cargo. I hoped the Chinese characters didn't confirm my fear that our turtle was destined for the medicine market.

We made it across the pier and took cover among stacks of old shipping containers, rusted metal tins the size of
eighteen-wheeler truck trailers. The containers were stacked three and four high in some places, making the shipyard look like a tiny city made out of multicolor metal buildings. I wondered if one of them might be hiding Captain Hook.

I stepped forward to get a better look at the containers closer to the Chinese ship when Joe yelled out behind me.

“Look out!”

When I turned around, a metal crane hook the size of a Smart car was swinging straight at my face.

I
TACKLED FRANK TO THE
ground just as the hook swung past his ear. It slammed into one of the containers with an earsplitting
BAM
that set the whole shipyard rattling.

Somebody was trying to kill us. That was actually a good sign. It meant we were on the right track.

We picked ourselves up off the ground and took off running as the hook swung back and slammed into the shipping container on the other side, barely missing us for a second time.

“I don't think this person likes us, bro!” I yelled as we ran.

“What gave you that impression?” he replied. I was too busy fleeing for my life to take the time to look, but I'm pretty sure he was rolling his eyes.

We leaped behind one of the containers as the hook swung past again. I peeked around the corner to see if I could glimpse who was driving the crane, but I didn't have a clear view. Whoever it was, they had us boxed in on three sides by shipping containers. We couldn't go back the way we came without exposing ourselves to the hook, but we were safe for the moment in our hiding spot. At least I thought we were.

“Uh-oh,” Frank said.

I looked up. Uh-oh, indeed! The crane operator was trying a new strategy: using the hook to drop one of the huge cargo containers on top of us.

We were trapped with no option but to sprint back the way we came and try to outrun the falling forty-foot-long metal container. We both had the same reaction. . . .

“Runnnn!”

We did. The massive container began to give way with a shriek of grinding metal. Another second and it would be speeding down on top of us. There was no way we were going to make it.

“There!” Frank pointed.

He'd seen it an instant before I had. A partially open door in the shipping container to our right. We dove for it, tumbling over each other through the door as the shadow of the falling container swept over us. It crashed down to the ground and skidded into our new hiding place with the force of a tractor-trailer collision. We went flying, slamming off the metal walls like human pinballs. But when the dust
settled (and there was a lot of dust), the Hardy boys were still alive.