Betrayed by Love by Carolyn Keene

Author:Carolyn Keene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse

Chapter

Nine

IT’S NOT ANGELA—IT’S Shannon!” Nancy shouted as she scrambled over the rocks to where Shannon lay sprawled with her arms outflung.

“Is she . . . ?” Ned couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

Nancy finished the sentence for him. “Dead? I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

Shannon’s eyes were closed, and her beautiful face was as gray as that of a corpse.

Nancy stripped off her gloves. Pressing her fingertips to the unconscious girl’s throat below the jawline, she felt a faint, fluttering pulse.

“She’s alive, but barely,” Nancy said.

Ned knelt down beside her. “I bet whoever attacked her is going to be real disappointed to hear that.”

“I don’t know if Shannon was attacked,” Nancy said. “But I do know that she’s badly hurt. She might have decided to wait for Rafe on the pier, lost her footing in the darkness, and been knocked out when she fell onto the rocks.”

Nancy moved her fingers gently to the back of Shannon’s head and felt the stickiness of blood beneath her hair. “She’s bleeding. She may have fractured her skull. She’s probably also suffering from exposure after lying out here in the cold for so long,” Nancy said. “We need to get her to a doctor right away. I saw lights on in the caretaker’s cottage when we passed it on our way to the beach. We can phone for an ambulance from there. Do you think you can carry her that far?”

“No problem. She looks like a featherweight—probably why I thought it was Angie at first.”

As Ned wrapped Shannon’s heavy black coat more tightly around her, Nancy noticed something glinting in the dim light—tiny shards of glass from the shattered crystal of the watch the girl was wearing on her left wrist. Picking up Shannon’s hand, Nancy saw that the watch had stopped at half-past twelve. The crystal must have broken on the rocks when Shannon fell, Nancy thought.

Ned scooped up Shannon’s limp body and followed Nancy back the way they had come. Light though Shannon was, his burden slowed him down. It seemed to take forever to reach the house where Soundview’s caretaker lived. In response to Nancy’s frantic knocking, a gray-haired man opened the door. He listened to her brief explanation of who she and Ned were and where they had found Shannon.

Peering at the white-faced girl in Ned’s arms, he said, “She don’t look too good. What happened to her, anyway?”

“We don’t know, but she needs medical attention as soon as possible,” Nancy said. “Can you please call an ambulance?”

“Better not,” the man said. “No telling how long it’ll take for one to get here. The nearest hospital’s in Northville, and they’re real understaffed. My station wagon’s outside—I’ll drive you there. I can’t hang around, though. You’ll have to get back on your own.”

There were few cars on the road at that early hour on a Sunday morning. As they drove, Ned and Nancy spoke quietly.

“You don’t really think this was an accident, do you?” Ned asked.

“I don’t know,” Nancy answered.

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