CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Bride’s Back?

“DON’T MOVE!” OFFICER LOPEZ BARKED at us. Before Bess, George, or I could even react, she and Officer Whipple had thrown open their doors and jumped out of the car.

“Hands up!” she screamed in Xavier and Veronica’s direction. “Police!”

Veronica was facing us, and her mouth dropped open as she stopped short and raised her hands into the air. I could see red marks around her wrists, possibly where they’d been bound. Xavier looked over his shoulder, clearly taken off guard, and put his hands up over his head too.

“Officers!” he cried. “This isn’t what it looks like! I can explain!”

“Turn around and put your hands on the car,” Officer Whipple yelled back. “You can tell us your story when we’re sure you’re not armed.”

Both Veronica and Xavier leaned on Xavier’s rental car, and the officers lowered their guns, ran over, and quickly frisked them. Seemingly finding no weapons, they handcuffed Xavier, then led him and Veronica over to a bench in front of the room Veronica had come out of.

“Wait… so he was holding her hostage, but he doesn’t have a weapon?” Bess asked, frowning at me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he has one in the car? But this isn’t happening like I thought it would.”

“Veronica looked pretty happy to see him,” George added. “The way she ran at him—I don’t think that’s how I would approach the guy who abducted me!”

“Unless she doesn’t know?” I suggested. “Maybe she’s only dealt with his hired help.” Then I gasped as another thought occurred to me. Bess and George looked over, and I felt a little guilty as I put my thoughts into words. “Or,” I said softly, “maybe they staged her disappearance? For views or money?”

George winced. And Bess shook her head.

“Veronica would never,” she insisted. “She’s too smart for that!”

I nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Bess looked thoughtful. “I guess we’ll find out the truth soon….”

The officers were speaking more quietly with Xavier and Veronica. Cautiously, I knocked on the window of the back seat of the cruiser. When Officer Whipple looked over, I shot him a plaintive Can we get out now? look. It was going to kill me to watch the police find out what was going on here while we sat in the back of a police car and waited. Officer Whipple looked at Officer Lopez, who glanced at me and nodded curtly. As Officer Lopez faced Xavier and Veronica and holstered her weapon, Officer Whipple came over to the cruiser and opened our door.

“Thanks!” I said brightly. “We just really want to hear what happened.”

Officer Whipple didn’t crack a smile. “Now that we know the suspect is unarmed and in cuffs, you can listen, but don’t get cocky,” he warned. “You may be investigating this case, but you’re teenagers. We shouldn’t have brought you along in the first place, because your parents could sue the pants off us. Don’t do anything rash and make us regret it!”

I decided not to tell him that my dad is in fact a very well-known attorney who could sue off not only his pants, but probably his shirt and shoes, too. But Dad is used to looking the other way when I take reasonable risks in my sleuthing. Instead I just smiled and hurried closer to where Officer Lopez was questioning Veronica and Xavier. Nancy Drew and law enforcement: What can I say? Sometimes we get along, and sometimes, not so much. I try not to worry about it. The important thing is that the crooks get caught.

George and Bess were right behind me. And when Veronica spotted us, her face lit up.

“Omigosh, Bess! George! How did you…?”

Officer Lopez turned to give us a wry smile. “These three have taken an active interest in your case,” she said simply. “You’re very lucky to have friends who care about you so deeply. If not for them, we may not have found you.”

“Are you okay?” Bess asked eagerly, reaching a hand out to Veronica. “We’ve been so, so worried.”

Veronica took Bess’s hand and squeezed it. “I’m okay,” she said, “partly thanks to you and Nancy, I guess.”

Officer Lopez looked at Xavier. “Okay. So tell us again how you ended up here.”

Xavier looked utterly confused. “I told you. I got a call from an unknown number. When I answered it, it was Veronica.”

“And you’ve never been here before?” Officer Lopez sounded dubious. “Security camera footage will back that up?”

Xavier raised his shoulders. “Dude, I didn’t know this place existed! I’m not from Vegas! I got a call from V, and I was just so relieved to hear her voice! She said they were holding her at the Tumbleweed Motel, and I ran down the Strip, rented a car, and plugged the name into GPS.”

Officer Lopez frowned at Veronica. “Why would you call him instead of the police?”

Veronica looked embarrassed, glancing from the officers to Xavier. “I know it doesn’t make sense,” she admitted. “I just… love him so much. When I wanted to feel safe, I thought of him first. And I guess part of me felt really bad for skipping out on our wedding. Especially when I realized he had nothing to do with the guys who were holding me.”

“Guys?” Officer Whipple asked. He’d followed us over from the cruiser. “What guys?”

“I don’t know,” Veronica replied, her eyes wide. “I’d never seen them before the day of our wedding. I was getting ready to leave the casino and take a cab to the airport—I had my passport and a credit card in my sweatshirt pocket—but then the elevator stopped on the third floor at the casino, and they were there, these two big guys. One showed me a gun, and they told me to get out and follow them. They shoved this hat on my head to cover my face, then put me in a van and brought me here. They’ve been guarding me in the motel room ever since.”

“So where are they?” Officer Lopez asked, reaching for her gun as she looked nervously at the motel building. “In the room?”

“No.” Veronica shook her head. “They leave every so often to get food or, I don’t know, meet with whoever they work for. Usually one would go, one would watch me. Today, they tied me to a chair and they both went. I managed to wriggle out, and I called Xavier from the landline in the room.”

Officer Whipple’s eyes flicked to Xavier. “How can you be sure Xavier isn’t the one they’re working for?”

Xavier gasped. “Bro!”

Veronica sighed. “Because I trust him,” she said simply.

Officer Whipple exchanged a glance with Officer Lopez, then pulled out his phone. “Here it is,” he said, flipping through his emails. “The station was able to find it.” He pulled a document up on his screen and held it out to show Veronica. “Did you know about this, miss?”

Veronica stared at the screen, scrunching up her eyebrows in confusion. “What am I looking at?”

“It’s a life insurance policy,” Officer Lopez replied, looking from Veronica to Xavier. “Xavier took it out on you four days ago. To the tune of one point five million dollars.”

“What?!” Xavier shook his head at Officer Lopez, then looked desperately at Veronica. “Babe, I would never. I don’t even—”

“Then why is your signature on it?” Officer Whipple demanded. “We know your business was in trouble. You had motive….”

“Are you saying I tried to hurt her?” Xavier asked, disbelieving. “For money? And what do you even mean about my business?”

As Xavier argued with the officers, I looked at Veronica. Notably, she didn’t look surprised. She had the sad, resigned expression I remembered from the night before the wedding. So did she know? I wondered. Is that why she left the wedding? But why did she call him for help? My brain felt like it was whirling around at a hundred miles an hour, trying to absorb all this information.

“Redd Zone owes a quarter of a million dollars,” Officer Whipple was saying to Xavier. “If something happened to Veronica, you’d get a massive life insurance payout. Are you trying to tell me there’s no connection?”

Xavier shook his head. “I am telling you, Officer,” he said, “I didn’t do that. I thought Redd Zone was doing fine! And I would never hurt Veronica! She’s the love of my life!”

Despite everything that was going on, Veronica looked touched by that. “Oh, babe,” she said softly.

“And when she called you, you didn’t come back in and alert the police?” Officer Lopez put in. “Even though you had a room full of security on hand?”

Xavier sighed. “I know, I know. Maybe it was stupid of me. But I just heard her voice and I had to get here, you know? I was so afraid… I was so afraid something had happened to her.”

All at once, something clicked in my brain. The whirling stopped.

The police definitely did not look touched by Xavier’s explanation. “So who did this?” Officer Lopez demanded.

I held up my hand hesitantly. An idea was slowly taking shape. “Uh—I think I might know,” I said.

All eyes turned to me.

“Omigosh, spit it out, Nancy,” George urged. “Please. Did Xavier do this or not?”

“I think…” I cleared my throat. “Not.”

“Thank you,” Xavier breathed, as Veronica regarded me with wide, dark eyes.

Officer Lopez placed a hand on her hip. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do this, then, teen sleuth. Tell me your theory.”

“Well,” I said, “it would have to be someone who knows Xavier well. Well enough to forge his signature. And it would have to be someone who knows Redd Zone’s finances—and knows what terrible shape they’re in.”

“I don’t get this,” Xavier said, shaking his head. “We’re doing fine! All the social med—”

He dropped off suddenly as the sound of an engine approached. We all turned to spot another car driving along the street and pulling into the Tumbleweed Motel’s driveway.

“Oh!” Bess gasped.

Was this Veronica’s captors returning to find her freed?

It was a nondescript white SUV with Nevada plates. Probably a rental, I thought. When the driver seemed to spot our group, they stopped the car abruptly just after pulling in and idled near the office. But Officer Whipple pulled a flashlight out from his belt and shone a ridiculously bright light in the direction of the driver’s seat. The driver shaded his eyes, cringing.

But we could all see that it was Max.

I was right!

Officer Lopez drew her gun and pointed it at the SUV. “Hands up! Police!”

Slowly, Max put his hands up.

“I knew it!” Veronica suddenly yelled. “Whatever was going on with the store, I knew Xavier loved me too much to hurt me!”

We all turned to look at her. Her eyes were bright as she went on to explain, “I got cold feet when my uncle told me what bad shape Redd Zone was really in… and then Xavier had his accident at the rehearsal dinner after we switched suits. Once he switched suits with me, suddenly he got worried about how dark it was and whether the jump was safe, even though he’d been pushing to do it a minute before. It just felt like too much of a coincidence.”

“Babe, no!” Xavier cried. “I would never hurt you! Ever!”

Veronica glanced at him, tearing up a little. “I know that now. At the hospital, thinking this all over, I thought maybe you’d changed your mind, or you hoped the parachute might deploy anyway. But I wanted time to talk to you about it, alone. I realized that even if it wasn’t you, someone might be trying to hurt me. That’s why I ran away from the wedding. But when I was abducted, I heard one of the men speaking to someone on the phone who sounded like Max. And I realized, he needed money just as badly as Xavier. So I thought I could trust Xavier enough to call him for help….”

“Stop! No!”

Officer Lopez’s shout cut the air as the SUV was suddenly thrown into drive and started to screech out of the parking lot.