Carolyn Keene. White Water Terror

George sighed. “I know. Sorry.”

Nancy took the last bite of her banana split, watching George intently. “Are you sure you’ve told us absolutely everything you know about the contest?”

“All I know is what’s in that letter from Paula Hancock. I’ve tried and tried to remember exactly when I entered the contest, but I can’t.”

Bess smiled mischievously. “Well, then, maybe it would be better if we didn’t go.” She pushed her half-finished diet drink away, looking with longing at George’s sundae. “The beach is awfully nice at this time of year.”

Nancy looked at George. In the back of her mind was the growing conviction that there was something not right about the contest. But the phone call and George’s inability to recall entering it were her only clues.

“I don’t suppose you’d reconsider your decision to go?” Nancy asked half hopefully. “Maybe we could find another white water rafting trip, if you’ve got your heart set on that. There must be others that would be just as exciting.”

“Yes, but this is a free trip,” George reminded.

Nancy and Bess exchanged long looks. “What about it, Bess?” Nancy asked.

“Well,” Bess said reluctantly, “I’m not exactly thrilled by the idea of spending two whole days hanging on to a raft, getting drenched by icy water, and bouncing from one rock to another. But I hate to think of you out there on the river with some kook who makes weird phone calls.” She shrugged. “You can count me in, I guess.”

“That settles it, then,” Nancy said with a grin, laying her spoon beside her empty dish. She felt good remembering that the three of them had always stuck together, even in tough times. Whatever happened, they weren’t going to let George face the trip alone. Besides, it was already shaping up to be a very interesting vacation. “Lost River, here we come!” she exclaimed.

“Where in the world do you suppose we are?” Bess asked from the backseat of the rental car that Ned was driving. She leaned over and took the map out of George’s hands. “Here, let me have a look at that map. Maybe I can find us.”

Nancy leaned precariously over the front seat. “The road just made another left turn back there,” she said, pointing to the small hand-printed map that Bess was holding.

“Well, what do you think, Bess?” Ned asked, braking suddenly and twisting the wheel to avoid a granite boulder that had tumbled off a cliff and lay in fragments in the road. “Are we taking the right route?”

“It looks like we are,” Bess said, grabbing frantically for the armrest as the car lurched sideways and threatened to go into a skid. “But who cares? The map doesn’t have any route numbers or anything. If this is all we have to go on, Lost River is likely to stay lost.” She thrust the map back at George. “You know, it’s almost as if whoever drew this map wants us to spend the whole morning wandering around in the mountains.”

“I hate to admit it, but Bess may have something there,” George said, staring at the map with a puzzled frown. “And another thing. I can’t figure out why nobody met us at the airport yesterday, the way the letter promised. You’d think that a company big enough to run a national contest would arrange to meet the grand-prize winner when she got off the plane.”

Nancy nodded. “I wondered about that myself. What a start for a vacation!”

Actually, Nancy thought as she settled back into the car seat, it hadn’t even begun to feel like a vacation yet. The four of them had rushed to the airport but waited several hours for a flight from Denver that was so bumpy it would have made an eagle airsick. In Great Falls, there was nobody to meet them—only an envelope containing a hand-drawn map. Scrawled on the bottom were unsigned instructions to pick up a rental car and drive to Lost River Junction that night.

But by the time a car was available, it was late. They had spent the night at the only place they could find—a motel next door to the airport, where jets seemed to plow through the bedrooms every hour on the hour. Dragging themselves out of bed, they were on the road by five o’clock—anxious to get to Lost River Junction before the rafts left at nine.

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