The Crisscross Crime (13 page)

Joe couldn't hear. “What?” he yelled.

“I think we're coming to the bay!”

The light was very, very bright now. Joe kept the throttle wide open.

Frank looked ahead. The tunnel ended! All he could see was bright blue sky.

They blasted out of the tunnel as if shot from a cannon. Frank looked down in terror. They were
sailing through the air ten or fifteen feet above the gray, choppy water of the bay.

They hit the water with a deafening
smack!
Frank bounced a foot off the seat but managed to hang on.

Stendahl hadn't been so lucky. The Hardys passed him floating in the bay, using his pack to keep his head above water.

Joe kept after DuBois, now only fifty feet ahead.

Frank pointed at a speedboat anchored in the distance. “That must be his getaway vehicle!”

Joe hunkered down to cut the wind resistance. They had to keep DuBois from getting on that boat.

Joe came up alongside the fugitive, and DuBois steered away.

Joe moved up on him again. Frank jumped. He reached out as far as he could. With his fingertips, he caught the strap of the backpack and pulled with all his strength. DuBois fell from the wave-runner. He and Frank skipped across the bay like downed water-skiers.

Then it was a race for DuBois's wave-runner. It circled lazily in the water, waiting for a rider.

Without the heavy pack to slow him, it was a race Frank won easily.

He climbed on board as DuBois shouted angrily at him. Frank ignored him and steered his
wave-runner up next to Joe's. “These things are fun,” he said. “I wonder if we can keep them.”

A few minutes later a coast guard cutter appeared on the horizon. “Hey, fellas!” Joe shouted to DuBois and Stendahl. “Here comes your ride.”

•  •  •

At eight-thirty that night Frank and Joe were back at the baseball diamond, preparing for their game. The Hardys played catch next to the bench to warm up, while Biff strapped on his catcher's pads.

“So Sylvia van Loveren wasn't involved?” Biff asked.

“Nope,” Joe said. “Stendahl tried to set her up at the Bayport Savings heist, and then she was in the wrong place at the wrong time during the Empire Federal job.”

Frank practiced his curveball. His control was his strong point as a pitcher, and he wanted all his pitches working right. “Meredith didn't turn out to be such a bad guy either,” he said.

A horn beeped from the parking lot.

“Who's that?” Joe asked.

Frank stopped throwing. “I don't recognize the car, do you?”

Joe shook his head. It was a new, gold-colored sedan.

A man and a woman got out of the car. The woman waved.

“Check it out,” Joe said. “It's Mom and Dad. And it looks like Mom has a new car.”

“Nice car, Mom!” Frank called. “When can I drive it?”

Mrs. Hardy laughed. “Never!” she shouted back. “Not after what happened last time.”

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Aladdin

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Copyright © 1998 by Simon & Schuster Inc.

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