Finally, she got her chance. Through the glass entrance doors she saw the security guard leave his desk. Quickly she ran up and slipped inside. She had done it! She had gotten in without signing the guest register!
Walking casually, she made her way to the girls’ locker room, entered a toilet stall, locked the door, stood on the seat . . . and waited.
Midnight arrived. As it did, the security guards swept through the building to make sure it was empty. Because they were male, Nancy guessed that they would give the girls’ locker room only a superficial glance. She was right. No one bothered to check the stall in which she was hidden, even though its door was shut and locked.
The lights went out. Nancy waited ten minutes, then moved. Her destination lay down a side hall, away from the main thoroughfares, so she didn’t have to worry much about running into one of the security guards. Along a row of administrative offices she did have to dart past one lighted doorway, though. Who would still be working at this hour? she wondered briefly. The next moment she forgot her question and continued on.
The basketball team’s locker room was open, she found. Slipping inside, she took her car flashlight from her jacket and flipped it on. One by one, she scanned the names taped to the face of each locker until she came to the one she wanted.
Michael O’Shea.
Fortunately, Mike kept an ordinary padlock on his locker. Nancy could crack simple combination locks with no problem, but key types were easier. She drew her lockpick from her pocket and quietly went to work.
She had it open in less than a minute. Mike had the usual assortment of junk in his locker: towels, uniform, sneakers, hand weights, knee brace, ointments, and a sports magazine. He also had an envelope that contained two thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills, and a list of Emerson’s opponents. Beside each one was a negative number: -10, -14, -6, -17. . . .
What did the numbers mean? Nancy hadn’t the slightest idea. She was positive about one thing, though: Mike was up to no good!
Suddenly she froze. Footsteps were coming down the hall!
She had to hide. Glancing around quickly, she noticed several old, unused locker sections against one wall. Should she slip into one of those? No, she decided. It would be a tight squeeze and they might not open from the inside. Where then? The showers?
She spotted a better place—the sauna! Darting across the room, she pulled open its wooden door and zipped inside. Through the narrow window in the door, she saw the lights in the locker room come on.
Nancy shrank back against an interior wall, her heart racing. Too late, she realized that she had forgotten to shut Mike’s locker! Oh, well. There was nothing she could do about that now. If she was lucky the security guard—or whoever—would think that Mike himself had forgotten to close it. Swallowing hard, she held still and listened.
Outside, there was silence. Then some bumping and scraping began. It sounded as if equipment was being moved around, but she couldn’t be sure. Who was it? A janitor mopping floors? Nancy remained motionless as several loud clunks sounded right outside the sauna door.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, there was silence again. The window in the sauna’s door went dark, indicating that the locker room lights had been turned off.
Relieved, Nancy waited for a minute, then went to the sauna door to leave. It wouldn’t budge. She pushed harder, but still the door wouldn’t open. It was blocked from the outside!
Not only that, Nancy realized—the sauna was beginning to get warm! Whoever it was had cranked up the thermostat. She was trapped!
Chapter Eleven
Slowly the temperature climbed. How hot could one of these saunas get? Nancy wondered. 110°? 120°? Hotter?
It didn’t matter, really. Whoever had blocked her in had probably cranked it up as high as it would go. The point was, how long could she continue to function under such high temperatures? Twenty minutes? Half an hour?
Her assailant had undoubtedly jammed the timer, too, she knew.