Stacey had to give him this. No matter how crazy she sounded, her brother always listened to what she had to say… and then he decided if he really wanted to go along with her or not. Today, he did. He took another long look at the men on the beach, and then he let Stacey dump herself over onto the sand.
“Stace!” he shouted, and then bolted over to where Jelly and Wade were getting ready to pull Veleia up the ramp.
“Look!” he said. “You know the old boat shed, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Wade sounded as though he didn’t think he was going to like what came next.
Stacey didn’t care, as long as he did it.
“Get it between you and the jetty, and then get Veleia over into the surf hut and out of sight.”
“What about Stacey?” That was Jelly.
Maybe she was okay, after all. Still, only time would tell.
“This is Stacey’s idea,” Dan told her. “And we really need to hurry.”
Oddly enough, it was Wade who made the decision.
“Fine!” he said. “But you’re both going to have to explain this when we’re done.”
“Deal!” Dan agreed. “Now, get moving. They’re coming.”
Stacey heard his words from beside the chair. She’d managed to get it to go over, okay, and then had to catch her breath. Her physio would have had an absolute fit if he’d seen what she’d just done. Her physio would have had multi-coloured kittens and tried to get her mum and dad to put her straight back into the hospital’s rehabilitation wing.
She was really glad he didn’t have a clue about what she was up to.
Looking up, she focused on the beach beyond the jetty, and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Four, not two, sets of booted feet were slogging their way across the sand towards her. The way they were fanned out across the beach, you would have thought she was about to grow legs and run.
Grow legs, huh. Well, there was an idea. Was it possible for a mermaid to grow legs when she was on land? Or was that just a something the movies had made up? For Veleia’s sake, Stacey hoped not. She added it to the list of questions she wanted to ask the mermaid later, and focused on pulling herself clear of the chair.
It was hard work, and she was shaking by the time she felt her hips scrape over the chair’s arm, and onto the sand. After that, it was a matter of guessing where her legs were. And, all the time she was doing that, she was trying to watch the men walking up the beach, and listen for Dan.
And where is he? she wondered. It seemed like a hours had passed since she had heard him telling their cousins what to do—hours! Wriggling forward a little more, Stacey pushed herself up so she could look back towards the jetty, and then she almost fell down, again, with surprise.
Dan was helping guide a car and boat down the ramp, and Jelly, Wade and Veleia were nowhere to be seen. She wondered if the car had come before the men had started making their way up the beach, if it had blocked Veleia and her cousins from view, or if the men in black had caught the barest glimpse of them wheeling the chair up the ramp.
She hoped not, and then she turned herself back around, so she could view the beach. Yikes! These guys moved fast! They were only a few metres from the edge of the pier, and the one closest was already squinting in an attempt to see into the shadows.
“Dan!” Stacey called. “Dan! I can’t fix the chair!”
The plan had been for her to look like she’d tried to be too independent and fallen out of the chair. It had worked just a bit too well. Not only had she managed to tip the chair over, but she’d also managed to tangle her legs up in the blanket… and the tide was doing the rest.
Looking down, she could see wavelets lapping around her feet, soaking her legs and the blanket covering them. Those same wavelets were also helping in another way—they were covering up the tracks made by the other wheelchair. And they were hiding the drag marks, Veleia had made coming out of the water.
Stacey wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but the tide was coming in faster than she’d realised, and Dan was nowhere to be seen. Stacey pushed herself up on her hands, and swivelled around, trying to see where Dan had gone. This time, she could see the ramp, but she couldn’t see him, and she felt the first stirrings of fear.
“Dan!” she called again, and this time the note of panic in her voice was real. “Dan! Where are you?”
Her arms wobbled, and she dropped back onto her stomach, her hair falling over her face. Annoyed, Stacey pushed it out of her face, flipping the long strands back over her head. When she could see again, she realised she was not alone.
“Well, well, well,” said a voice. “What have we here?”
Black boots stood a few inches in front of her face. They were topped by black pants. Stacey looked up, following a long expanse of black-covered leg backgrounded by brilliant sunlight. She blinked, and tilted her head back, until she saw an unfamiliar face.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m the guy that’s been chasing you all morning!” he snapped, and bent down to whip the blanket off her legs. “I don’t know who’s been helping you…”
Stacey screamed.
“Get away from me! Get! Away!” And she did her best to prop herself up on one elbow and slap at his hands and legs. “Freak! Pervert! Leave me alone!”
And she screamed, again, as he pulled the blanket free of her legs, and stumbled several steps back.
“Dan!” Stacey shrieked. “Dan! Help me!”
She caught a glimpse of the man’s face as he stared down at her legs. Even in the shade under the pier, he looked like he’d turned a bright shade of red. Looking past him, she saw people running up the beach towards them.
“You give me back my blanket!” Stacey shouted. “You give it back! Don’t you just stand there staring!”
And that was when Dan arrived.
“What are you doing to my sister?” he shouted, and went to launch himself at the man.
He didn’t get very far. Two of the three men who had followed the man under the pier reached out and grabbed him. The other one walked over to the wheelchair, and put it back up on its wheels.
“Easy there, son,” he said. “We only came over to help her. We heard her shouting from under the pier.”
He took a few steps toward Stacey, and stopped.
“Now, come on… Dan. That your name is it?”
Dan nodded.
“Come and give me a hand with her. We gave her a bit of a fright when we untangled her from the blanket, didn’t we Matt?” He looked at his boss, and Stacey saw the moment when the man caught on to what his colleague was doing.
“Oh, yeah. I don’t know what she thought,” he said, trying to make it sound like Stacey had gotten the wrong end of the stick, “but I think we scared her witless.”
Stacey kept herself propped on her elbow, although the rest of her was starting to hurt. She watched as the other two men let her brother go, and Dan came over.
“You all right, Stace?” he asked, and Stacey glared at him.
It was bad enough that the bad guys had his name. He didn’t have to go giving away hers, as well. What if they came looking for them later?
“Stace?” Dan repeated, and Stacey glared at him, and then glared at the man who’d unwrapped her from the blanket.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine, now.”
And she did her best to make it seem like she still didn’t believe his original intentions. She knew he hadn’t come to help her. She knew he’d thought she was a mermaid in disguise. She only hoped he didn’t know she knew. Stacey thought about that. Hmmm, maybe it would be best if she seemed embarrassed about screaming at him.
It was just that she didn’t feel embarrassed. She still felt angry. Pretending to be embarrassed when she wasn’t, was going to be hard. Stacey was still trying to work out how to do that, when Dan came over and got the guys to help her into her chair. After that, pretending to be embarrassed wasn’t so hard, because she didn’t have to pretend.
Stacey really was embarrassed. It was hard not being able to take care of herself like she always had before. It was hard to let someone lift her into the wheelchair and arrange her feet and legs properly. And it was hard needing to have someone else tuck the blanket in around her. By the time she was back in the chair, Stacey knew she was blushing just as red as the man who’d taken the blanket off her had been.
Speaking of which.
“There you go,” he said, stepping back from the chair. “You all right, now?”
Stacey felt herself blush even more.
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you. I… I’m sorry about before.”
“Yeah, well, no harm done, eh?” he said, and reached out to ruffle her hair. “See you round.”
And he turned on his heel and left, his two friends following on his heels. Some of the other people from the beach came forward, and helped Dan pull the wheelchair up to the sidewalk at the top of the beach. The rest just vanished back to their towels, or the water, or someplace else. In no time at all, Dan and Stacey were on their own.
“Where to now, sis?” Dan asked.
“Surf hut,” Stacey told him, and let him push her along the sidewalk past the jetty.
Tipping herself into the sand had taken a lot more energy than she’d realised.