Stage Fright (Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Book 6) (3 page)

“Whatever you do, don’t let go,” I yelled, as I got down on my hands and knees and began to climb across the hood. I tried to tell myself that I’d done way more dangerous things in the past, but at that moment, I couldn’t come up with any.

BAM!

The Mercedes slammed us from behind, and for a moment, Bess seemed to lose control. The car fishtailed wildly, and I fell to the side. My left arm was hanging off the edge of the hood, dangling just a few feet above the road. At this speed, the asphalt would feel like a giant cheese grater on my skin.

“Pull!” I yelled, and George did, slowly dragging me back to the center of the hood. Quickly, I snatched the glasses from the antenna. I started climbing back toward the windshield, when suddenly I saw the Mercedes creeping up on us again.

“Bess, speed up!”

Bess slammed her foot down on the gas as hard as she could. The car kicked and bucked, accelerating at a speed that its original manufacturers would never have thought possible. When Bess and George rebuilt my hybrid, they made it the perfect car for the girl detective on the go: fuel efficient, cute, and impossibly fast.

The force of the acceleration rolled me right over the windshield and into George’s lap.

“Looking for these?” I asked, holding the glasses up.

“And she gets a perfect ten, folks!” said George, in her best sports announcer voice. “We have a new gymnastic world record.”

“Now that you’re back with us,” said Bess. “I suggest you buckle up and hold on!”

I scooted into the backseat and swung my belt on not a moment too soon. Bess slammed the wheel to the left, sending the car swerving into the entrance ramp for the Sport Time Recreation Center, a popular hangout with arcade games, skee-ball bowling, and a whole bunch of other amusements. Unfortunately, at one a.m. on a Tuesday, it was deserted!

“Bess, what are you doing?” I asked.

“Watch,” she said.

The Mercedes, unable to corner quite as fast, shot past us down the street. Bess pumped the gas, swerving the car down the long driveway and parking lot, circling around Sport Time until we were headed for the exit ramp. A hundred yards farther down the street, the Mercedes also turned into the Sport Time exit.

“Bess!” George yelled. “They’re cutting us off!”

Indeed, if neither of us swerved, we were hurtling toward a head-on collision with the black Mercedes. I guess that was one way of getting them off our tail….

“Wait for it, wait for it,” murmured Bess. The Mercedes sped up, convinced they had us trapped. And as far as I could tell, they did!

Suddenly there was a tremendous popping sound. The Mercedes bucked up in the air and then swerved off the road, its tires flopping around like deflated balloons.

“What the heck?” I asked, as Bess nimbly avoided the stranded Mercedes and shot back out on the highway.

“The sign said no entrance,” smiled Bess. “They really should learn to obey the law.”

I looked back down the exit ramp. From this angle, I could just barely make out the sharp metal teeth that had ripped the lieutenant governor’s wheels right out from under him.

I laughed all the way to the police station.

CHAPTER
3

FRANK

CRASH AND BURN

Wow
, I thought. I’d never seen anything quite so big in my life. It made my head spin. I had to tilt my head back just to get it all. It was one huge skyscraper. And next to it was another. And another. And another.

New York City was amazing. I couldn’t help but be impressed every time we visited. And Times Square was probably the most impressive part of all, what with all the people running around and all the bright lights.

“Did you know that Times Square was named for the
New York Times
?” I told Joe, who was standing next to me with his mouth hanging open. “Before that it was called Longacre Square.”

I looked over at Joe, whose mouth was still open. “Joe? It’s cool, but it’s not that cool.”

“No,” said Joe, shaking his head. “But they are!”

He pointed to the other end of the square, where four supermodels were doing a photo shoot with an old school New York City cab. That was Joe for you.

“You know I read somewhere that for every one hundred people in Manhattan, there’s one model?” Joe said. “It’s true. I saw it on the Internet. New York has the highest model-to-normal-people ratio.”

“Come on,” I laughed. “We were supposed to get to the theater at two p.m., and it’s already ten after.”

We were staying at a hotel not far from the theater, but we’d had some time to kill this morning and we’d done some exploring. Unfortunately, we hadn’t counted on the subway taking quite as long as it did to get us back to Times Square. We were supposed to be watching one of the final afternoon rehearsals for
Wake
. The show opened in five days, and Laurel and Linden von Louden wanted us there ASAP.

Wake
was in the Matilda Swearson Theatre, which was one of the biggest, oldest, and most beautiful on Broadway. All of the greats had performed there over the years. It was the stage, they said, that could make or break your career. Or in Claire’s case, your neck.

It was only a half block off of Times Square, and it was easy to spot.

“Whoa!” said Joe. “What are all these people doing here?”

The theater was a mob scene. There must have been at least fifty, possibly even a hundred teenage fans standing outside. Some had candles. Others held posters proclaiming their love for Claire. One guy had brought a guitar and was singing Claire an original love song. I listened to him for a second. I was pretty sure he’d tried to rhyme Claire with éclair. Not cool.

“They’re here for Claire,” I told Joe. “I guess she really is as popular as the briefing said.”

We’d worked with some celebrities before, but this was pretty off the hook for a Broadway show. It had to be people who loved her TV show,
Joy!
I’d never really watched it, but I’d heard it was about a high school girl who dealt with everything by singing about it. It was the hottest show on television, and her videos had been all over YouTube. There were even three cast albums from the show, all of which had gone gold in their first month!

“We’ll just have to push our way through, I guess,” said Joe. I couldn’t think of any other way in, and so we jumped into the crowd. Boy, were these kids crazy!

“This is worse than that riot in the market in Morocco,” I whispered to Joe as we tried to force our way past angry-teen-boy elbows. “These guys are insane!”

“I’ve been waiting here for two weeks,” yelled one guy as we slipped past him. “No cutting!”

“She really brings the crazy out in her fans, doesn’t she?” said Joe. I had to agree. And I had to wonder—were we looking at a whole crowd of suspects? Crazy fans did crazy things, as Joe and I knew from experience!

By the time we’d fought our way through the crowd, it was nearly two thirty. The rehearsal would be in full swing already. I hated being late, but there was nothing we could do about it now.

“Hi!” I said to the (very large) security guard who stood between the theater doors and Claire’s fans. He was the kind of guy who made refrigerators feel small. “I’m Frank Hardy.”

I stuck out my hand, but the security guard ignored it. He stared at me silently. Joe and I must have looked like just two more obsessed fans. Thankfully, he was carrying a clipboard with names on it.

“I … think we should be on the list? Laurel and Linden asked us to come here?”

His eyes flicked down to the paper for a millisecond. “Frank and Joe?” he asked. We nodded. He checked our IDs and let us in, without ever looking away from the crowd for more than half a second. This was some tight security.

The lobby of the theater was old New York fantastic: lots of marble and velvet and gold. There was a chandelier more than six feet in diameter. The twin doors that
led into the main area of the theater were open, and from inside I could hear music and talking. We were definitely late.

“Shhh,” I whispered to Joe. “Let’s go in and see.”

Even if we had to wait to meet Laurel, Linden, and Claire, it probably couldn’t hurt to scope out the place a little. I could already tell this was going to be a hard place to wrap my head around. There were numerous doors leading to various areas of the theater. It made sense, I guess—they needed to move people on and off the stage, and audiences in and out quickly. But it made a bodyguard’s life terrible! You never knew where someone might come from or disappear to. Just in the lobby alone, I counted seven doors.

The theater was dark when we entered, though the lights were up on the stage. Joe and I slipped into two seats in the back row and looked around. At the front of the theater I could see a group of five or six people seated together. If I had to bet, I’d say they were Linden, Laurel, and some of their crew.

The stage had probably two dozen people on it, but it was easy to pick out Claire, even at a distance. She was the one standing center stage in a beautiful red dress.

“What can I do?” she sang, in a beautiful low voice. Stacks of
Playbill
s were set up by our seats, and I flipped one open.

Wake
is based on the life of Nancy Wake, a.k.a. the White
Mouse. During World War II, she was one of the Allies’ most feared and trusted secret agents. She was among the most decorated women in the war. She recruited more than 7,000 resistance fighters from occupied territory, pulled off daring raids on prison camps to rescue POWs, and once broke the neck of an SS officer with her bare hands.

“Check this out,” I mouthed to Joe, passing him the
Playbill
. “Remind you of someone?”

We met a lot of tough people in our line of work, but when it came to female spies, there was only one Nancy who I put 100 percent of my trust in—Nancy Drew. Someday, I had no doubt, there would be a play about her exploits. Or maybe even a book!

As Joe read the
Playbill
, I watched Claire. A dozen backup dancers dressed in Nazi uniforms were approaching. Aggressively, they twirled and spun and leapt toward her. Cameras projected high-def video of burning houses and flying bullets all around her. Slowly, the Nazis backed her into a corner. My heart started racing. It may not have been an IMAX theater or the new ZOMG Kill game, but this was pretty great stuff.

Or at least, the production
looked
great. The visuals and the set were intense. But the more I watched, the more obvious mistakes I saw the dancers make. And though Claire was performing her heart out, and she looked fantastic, she couldn’t keep the whole thing running on her own. Even without knowing the show,
I could tell they were messing up. One was way over on the opposite side of the stage from everyone else. Another seemed to be about three seconds behind the music.

A droning sound started to fill the theater. I looked up.

“Wow!”

My jaw dropped. Three planes were circling the stage and the audience. Their propellers spun and their engines roared. They had bullet holes in the wings, and terrifying shark teeth painted on their cockpits. Although each was only about ten feet long, they looked incredibly realistic. This show had really gone all out on the effects, if not on the actors and dancers.

“What’s that smell?” whispered Joe, quietly. “Are you still wearing those shoes from when we escaped that fire in Milwaukee?”

I looked down to check. I didn’t think I was, but … you never know. Laundry is definitely not my best skill. But no, these were new. I could smell it now too. There was definitely smoke in the air somewhere. But for the life of me, I couldn’t see it.

“Maybe it’s just a special effect,” I whispered back.

“
Wake
!” said Joe. “Now in Smell-o-Vision!”

We laughed quietly, but the smell got stronger. I was starting to see a bit of haze in the air. This was like no special effect I’d ever seen. The planes droned by again, and I looked up to watch. Then I saw it: Flames were
licking out the side of one of the planes. As I watched, one of the many tiny wires that held the plane up snapped from the heat, and the plane tilted crazily to one side! Flames were popping up all over.

“Joe!” I said, no longer trying to be quiet. “Look!”

The fiery prop plane was now belching out great clouds of smoke, flying over the audience and the stage in a big figure eight. No one else seemed to notice. Even just a ten-foot plane would kill someone if it landed on them! We had to do something before it came crashing to the stage—or worse!

I stood up, and another wire on the plane snapped! Now it was hanging entirely from one wing. And it was headed right toward the stage where Claire was singing!

“I’ll go—”

“Save Claire!” I finished, already moving toward the fire extinguisher that glowed at the back of the theater. Joe took off running straight down the aisle.

I grabbed the extinguisher and ran out of the theater. In the lobby, I chose a door nearly at random. It was the one farthest to the side. If I was lucky, it would lead me to one of the box seats next to the stage.

I raced up the stairs, taking them three at a time. The fire extinguisher was cold and heavy in my hands. I just hoped I would be fast enough.

I burst through the curtains without a second to spare. The plane was passing right in front of me. I yanked the
pin from the extinguisher, pointed the nozzle, and pulled the trigger. A cone of thick white stuff shot out from my hands like a fountain, blanketing the plane. I aimed for the remaining wires that held it up, but it was only within reach for a second, maybe two. Then it zoomed past me toward the stage. I dropped the extinguisher and ran to the edge of the booth.

The plane dripped foam as it flew directly at Claire. Because it was hanging from one wing, it was low enough to crack the skull of anyone in its path. Finally, other people in the theater had noticed. All action on the stage had stopped. Everyone was frozen in fear, except for that one dancer off in the corner, who was still doing her own thing. All the other actors stared in terror as the still smoldering wing of the plane zoomed right at Claire’s head.