“How’d you ever talk Bess into it?” Ned asked. “Lost River must be hundreds of miles from the nearest Neiman-Marcus.”

Nancy dipped into a bowl of popcorn that Hannah had made for them before she’d gone to bed. “It wasn’t easy,” she admitted. She looked at Ned. He was wearing his light brown hair a little longer than usual and his face was darkly tanned. She wondered if he had been spending time at the college swimming pool-and if so, whether he’d been alone or…

She put her hand on his arm. “How about you?” she asked softly. “Could I talk you into a white water trip?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. As in you and me. And George and Bess, too, of course.”

Ned pretended to look stunned. “I-I hardly know what to say. This is all so sudden. I…” Grinning, he ducked the pillow that Nancy tossed at him. “Yeah, sure, I’ll go, Nan. Summer school will be over next week, and I won’t have anything else to do.”

“Well, I must say you don’t sound all that wild about it.”

Ned’s grin faded. “I guess I’m just surprised,” he said quietly. “Let’s face it, Nancy. We’ve seen each other only two or three times in the last couple of months, and even then I was taking you away from your detective work-from something I felt you’d rather be doing. In fact, during a couple of your recent cases, I’ve gotten the idea that I wasn’t a very important part of your life. We’ve patched things up, but who can tell whether the patch is going to be permanent? After all, maybe you’ve changed in the way you feel about me.”

Nancy swallowed painfully, remembering how she had felt during the Flash case when she had seen Ned holding Sondra in his arms, when they had learned that Sondra’s brother Mick was in trouble. “I guess that’s a logical conclusion,” she said, “but it’s not the right one. I know I’ve been awfully busy, but that doesn’t mean you’re not important to me, Ned.” She leaned back against the sofa pillows and clasped her hands behind her head. “You’re so important to me that I can sort of relax knowing you’ll be around, without having to worry about it a whole lot.”

Ned leaned toward her and touched her cheek with the tip of his finger. There was a slight smile on his lips. “What you’re saying is that you’ve been taking me for granted. Is that it?”

Nancy nodded regretfully. “I guess so. Maybe that’s why I was so ready to accept George’s offer of the raft trip. I think we need time together so you can help me figure out all over again just why it is I love you so much.”

“We don’t have to wait until we get to Montana for me to start working on that assignment,” Ned said softly. He leaned closer and put his arms around her. “Let me give you a couple of reminders.” He kissed her tenderly, then kissed her again. “Got it figured out yet, Detective Drew?”

Nancy relaxed into his arms. “No, not yet,” she said. “Why don’t you try again? When it comes to love, I’m a very slow learner.”

At that moment, the telephone rang. Nancy sighed. “Somebody’s got awfully poor timing,” she said as she lifted the receiver.

“Nancy Drew?” The voice on the other end of the line was low and muffled.

“Yes?” Nancy said slowly, sensing that something was wrong.

The next words struck her with an icy coldness. Her stomach twisted into a frigid knot. “The trip your friend won is no prize,” the voice said ominously. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay home-and stay alive!”

“What’s still not clear to me,” Nancy told George and Bess the next day, leaning across the table at Bennie’s Ice Cream Parlor, “is whether the phone call I got last night was a warning or a threat. I mean, I couldn’t tell from the tone of voice whether the caller meant to threaten me with harm or keep me from getting hurt.” She chewed her lip, puzzled. “I couldn’t even tell whether the voice was female or male.”

George dug into her favorite chocolate-mint ice-cream sundae. “Why in the world would anybody want to keep you from going on the trip?” she demanded. After a moment’s hesitation, she turned to Bess. “That phone call… it wasn’t you, was it?” she asked suspiciously.

Bess looked hurt. “I went to a concert last night and didn’t get back until after midnight. Anyway, you know I wouldn’t do something that ridiculous. If I wanted to keep you or Nancy from going on the trip, I’d try to convince you in person.”

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.