*~*~*~*~*~*Chapter 9*~*~*~*~*~*

"Karl sent her with a note where it said: ‘This is what will happen to Nick if you don’t follow the instructions’"

"Sent her where?" Nick asked. She looked at him sadly.

"To your house" she answered. Nick knew who was there. His family. His friends. They must have been scared to death when they saw the note and Sandra.

"How did they get into the fence? And past the reporters?"

"It was night and the guard was sleeping. They left her at the front-porch"

"Who found her?"

"I did"

Nick looked at her, surprised. He had been scared that one of his sisters had found her.

"What were you doing there?"

"I was checking security. I didn’t want anything to happen to the others. I arrived just minutes after they left Sandra. So I took her and left her to the police instead"

"What did they say? I mean, it’s not usual that a young girl comes carrying another young girl who is dead and saying that ‘I found her outside Nick Carter’s house, could you take her now’?"

"No, it’s not. In fact, it was still night, and I sneaked in and left her in the morgue" Stacey answered. Nick was quiet. He felt sorry for Sandra, even though she had been a part of it. But he came to think of another thing.

"If both you and the kidnappers could sneak inside my house, then it’s very unprotected right now"

"Oh no, my friends have kept an eye on it since I was there"

"Remind me to thank them later" he said with a smile.

"You will never meet them. They are my partners, and we usually never show ourselves like this" she said. Nick looked at the watch in the car. Forty minutes to go. Then he would see his friends again. He had a feeling that he would never see Stacey again, so he wanted to ask her a couple of questions before she left him.

"When we stood in the forest, you and Karl talked about something. You had hit him and he couldn’t press a button, what was all that?" he asked. Then added:

"If I may ask"

She looked at him and smiled.

"You may ask, but I can’t tell you all the details. I’ll just tell you a bit, ok?

We were in Danzig, Poland. Karl and his friends were about to blow up a yacht. In the yacht sat several important persons, like Germanys prime-minister, all the leaders for the Baltic states, Poland’s president and representatives for different Jewish organisations. They discussed the Second world war, and compensation for those who survived the concentration-camps. A very important meeting, as you understand" she said, and Nick nodded.

"Karl was German, and he had some friends who would be forced to pay lots of money if these persons on the boat would decide that it was pay-day"

"Karl was a nazi"

"Correct. And so is his friends. He had one contact on the boat, and this contact reported to him what happened. And as soon as Karl heard that it was indeed pay-day, he decided that it was easier to blow up the boat than try to bribe all the persons on it. Just when he was about to press the button, to blow it up, me and my friends came, just in time. It was like a movie, the dead men on the beach, the yacht, still carrying the explosives. We knew that the bomb could be detonated manually, and with that contact still onboard, we had to do something. So I "borrowed" a small boat and went to the yacht. There were hardly any guards, the meeting was top-secret, so I was practically alone. The V.I.P’s were in a room inside somewhere, and I couldn’t afford to meet anyone of them, so I locked their door and searched for the contact"