“Oh?”
“Yes. She was hit by a car, right in front of the Vistamar.” Nancy kept her smile in place, trying not to sound too serious. “A lot of people were around. Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought I saw you there.”
The lifeguard shifted in his chair, glanced out at the water, and then back at Nancy. His smile was gone, and his dark eyes were hard. “You’re right,” he said coldly. “You are wrong.”
“Oh, well,” Nancy said with a shrug. “My mistake.”
The lifeguard didn’t answer. He just stared at her a moment longer, then shifted his gaze back to the water.
He was lying, Nancy was sure. But there was no way she could prove it. Not yet. Figuring she’d only make him suspicious if she asked any more questions, she decided to drop the subject for the time being. She hitched her beach bag onto her shoulder and turned to leave.
Nancy was only about three feet away from the lifeguard’s chair when she felt it—a sharp, burning pain in her left foot, as if she’d stepped on a red-hot needle. Gasping, she jerked her foot away and fell onto the sand. As she fell, she glanced up at the lifeguard. He was watching her, and his smile was back.
Chapter Five
Biting her lip to keep from crying out, Nancy grabbed her foot and looked around to see what she’d stepped on. A few inches away she saw a large, bluish, slimy object partly covered by sand. It was a jellyfish, obviously, and as Nancy rubbed her foot, she wondered what kind it was and whether its poison was going to do any more damage than it already had.
A boy who’d seen her fall trotted over and prodded the jellyfish with a stick. “Portuguese man-of-war,” he told her. “Ugly looking, huh?”
Nancy nodded. “What’s going to happen now?” she asked. “Is my foot going to shrivel up and fall off?” She was trying to joke, but the pain she felt was anything but funny.
The boy didn’t look too amused either. “Well, I don’t want to scare you,” he said, “but I think you ought to hot-foot it to a doctor, excuse the pun.”
Nancy suddenly remembered some stories about things like shock and unconsciousness. It’s a good thing I’m on my way to the hospital, she thought. The boy offered her a hand, and she got to her feet, wincing. “Thanks.”
“Any time,” he told her. Glancing up at the lifeguard, he cupped his hands and called out, “Hey, Ricardo! You’re falling down on the job, man. Why didn’t you warn her these things are all over the beach today?”
Stunned, Nancy looked at the lifeguard too. So he was Ricardo. And his chair was the “perch” Kim had mentioned. No wonder he’d clammed up when she mentioned seeing him at the hit-and-run site. She wondered what he would have done if she’d told him about overhearing Kim’s phone conversation with him, or seeing him sneaking around Kim’s hotel room. Instead of letting me step on a jellyfish, he’d probably have tried to feed me to the sharks, she thought with a shudder.
At least she knew who the enemy was. All she had to do was find out why he was the enemy. Looking at Ricardo, who had made no apology and no move to help her, Nancy realized that deliberately letting her step on the man-of-war was his way of telling her to keep her nose out of his business.
You blew it, Ricardo, Nancy thought. Scaring me off doesn’t work. And if you hadn’t tried it, I might not have learned your name, and then I wouldn’t come after you. But I will now.
Nancy started to walk away, stumbled, and nearly fell again. Her foot was beginning to go numb.
“Hey, you okay?” asked the boy who’d helped her up.
“No, but I’m sure I will be,” Nancy told him. Then she raised her voice so that Ricardo could hear her. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be back, too. You can count on it.”
As quickly as she could, Nancy made her way up the beach to her hotel. Bess and George had already changed, and when Nancy told them what had happened, they helped her change, then hustled her into the car and rushed her to the hospital emergency room as fast as possible. By the time they got there, the bottom of Nancy’s foot was red and swollen, and the pain went clear up to her knee. But after checking her over, the doctor on duty said she’d be fine.