It seemed to take forever, but finally Nancy did it. Her feet were side by side and she was able to slip one and then the other out of the binding. Her arms felt as if they were going to rip out at the shoulders, and she managed to wrap her legs around the piling. Then what?
The water lapped at her neck, and Nancy instinctively gripped the piling with her knees and tried to push herself up. The sash binding her hands moved up too, just a fraction. That’s it, Nancy told herself. You’ve climbed enough trees, now shinny up this pole.
Inch by inch, Nancy pushed herself up the piling. The tide kept coming in, and she must have swallowed half the ocean, but finally her head was above the waterline, and even though she was still trapped, she knew she was going to make it.
She couldn’t use her teeth on the sash, but when she saw that the cloth wasn’t completely soaked, Nancy began to scrape it up and down on a corner of the piling. At last she felt the cloth begin to give. With a final burst of strength, Nancy pulled her hands free, shinnied the rest of the way up the piling, and hauled herself onto the pier.
The first thing she did was rip the gag from her mouth. Then she lay still, gasping and listening to the water swirl below her. She told herself to get moving, but her body wouldn’t budge. Her mind was working, though, and when she thought of Maria, she was finally able to sit up. For all Nancy knew, Maria was dead. No, Maria had said something about being made to work like a slave. Whoever wanted her, wanted her alive, and Ricardo must have taken her to that person.
Ricardo. Nancy had to find him, not just for Maria’s sake, but for her own. She had a personal score to settle with him. But she wasn’t going to do it on her own, not again. She wanted the police backing her up the next time. It was safer, and besides, she’d need them to keep her from setting fire to Ricardo’s chair while he was in it.
Nancy felt the adrenaline pumping as she pushed herself to her feet and stumbled away from the pier. She even managed to trot a little as she rounded the bend in the beach and came within sight of the all-night partiers. The bonfires were still glowing, but not so brightly, and the radios and cassette recorders were playing softer music. It was getting late. No, it was getting early, Nancy reminded herself; morning couldn’t be far away.
As soon as she reached the main beach. Nancy headed for the street, looking for a public phone. She’d thought of calling from her hotel and then cleaning up while she waited for the police, but she wanted them to see her first. She knew she looked like the survivor of a shipwreck, and if the police saw what Ricardo had done, they’d work that much harder.
When she was halfway down the beach, she spotted a string of phone booths. The adrenaline wasn’t pumping so hard by then, and she felt exhausted, as if she were trekking across a desert, and the phone booth was her oasis.
Nancy had almost reached the booth when a scream rang out. At first she took it to be a good-natured, party-type scream, but then she heard other screams and saw people running toward the water. The tide had washed something ashore. What was it? A shark? A jellyfish?
“It’s a body!” a boy shouted, rushing by Nancy. “It’s a body!”
Maria, Nancy thought instantly. Maria put up too big a fight, and Ricardo or whoever he worked with killed her. Forgetting about the police for the moment, Nancy joined the rest of the crowd heading toward the water. She didn’t want to see a dead body, but she had to find out if it was Maria.
There must have been a hundred people gathered around, and Nancy had to push through them until she was able to see. Someone had thrown a large beach towel over the body. Nancy broke free of the crowd and moved quickly to the towel, wanting to get it over with.