038 The Final Scene Read Free Page B

saw tearspooled in her friend’s eyes. Nancy couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen George cry.
    “I guess we have a new case, Nan,” George said. Her voice was thin and choked.
    Nancy nodded and swallowed down the knot that kept rising in her throat. She had a case all right—one she had to solve right away. Her friend’s life depended on it.

Chapter

Three
    N ANCY AND G EORGE hurried across the marble lobby accompanied by very loud movie music. It sounded like a chase scene before the intermission when Brady and Deirdre were to be introduced quickly.
    Who was the figure in the ski mask? Why did he kidnap Bess? Nancy wondered. Was he really after Brady, or did he settle for her friend?
    “Nancy,” George stopped short before they reached the office. “You don’t think he’d hurt her or anything, do you?”
    Nancy pushed the thought away. It wouldn’t do Bess any good for her to panic. If she was going to help her friend, she needed a clear head.
    “No way, George,” Nancy said firmly. “Besides, we’re going to find her before anything could happen.”
    From the auditorium, they could hear the music swell one last time, then wild applause sounded and finally the crowd chanted, “Brady! Bra-dy!”
    “It sounds like his fans have finally gotten the chance to meet their hometown idol,” George said with the shadow of a smile. “Too bad Bess is missing this.”
    The two friends opened the door to the manager’s office. They heard Simon Mueller in the inner office, talking on the phone. Nancy heard enough through the half-open door to know that he was talking to someone from an international press agency, telling them about the attempted kidnapping of his hottest star. A moment later he dialed another number, arranging with the Tudor Hotel for Brady and Deirdre to stay on through the weekend.
    “What do you think he’s up to?” George asked in a whisper.
    “My instincts tell me that Simon Muellerhas figured out that this kidnapping is a golden opportunity for publicity.”
    “That’s right,” Mueller was talking to yet another person. “It’s just like I told you. Your paper will love the story. Local boy, teen heartthrob, nearly gets kidnapped and comes this close”—Simon held his index finger and thumb together as if the reporter were in the room with him—“to catching the guy who took another hostage. He feels so bad about it, he’s going to stay in town the whole weekend just to help find the guy.”
    “Nan, you’re right. Why else talk to the press?” George asked, sitting down in a chair beside the desk.
    Nancy lifted the phone and used the free outside line to call her friend Detective Ryan. As quickly and efficiently as possible she filled him in on the details of Bess’s kidnapping.
    “He’ll be right over,” she told George as she replaced the receiver.
    Both George and Nancy jumped just then as the door to the office was opened and Nicholas Falcone burst into the room. Locks of his dark, wavy chestnut hair were sticking out from his head and there was a wild look in his amber eyes. Despite his youth—it couldn’t have been more than a year since he graduated from college—Nancy knew that Nicholas’s energywas what made him so good at getting people stirred up to fight for a cause.
    “What’s happened?” he demanded. “I just met Joseph Hughes in the lobby, and he said something about a missing girl. Something about a kidnapping?”
    “That’s right,” Nancy answered. “A guy in a ski mask tried to nab Brady Armstrong, but he got our friend Bess instead.”
    Nicholas slammed his fist down on the desk. “It figures that something like this would happen here, in this theater. As if the place didn’t have problems enough of its own without this.”
    “Excuse me, but it is my friend whose life is in danger,” Nancy replied dryly, thinking that Falcone’s concern for the building was just a little misplaced.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, his dark eyes