Shadows at Predator Reef by Franklin W. Dixon

myself before I could fall. When I shone my light down at the ground to see what I had slipped on, it reflected off something white. There was a muddy piece of fabric lying in the dirt. It didn’t look like much, but there was something about this particular dirty white cloth that told me it could be an important clue.
    My flashlight started to flicker. Not good. It must have been damaged in the fall. If it died and I was left down there in the dark, that tunnel was going to turn into my tomb. Time to get moving. I stuffed the cloth in my dive belt to examine more closely once I made it back to daylight. If I made it back to daylight.
    After a few minutes I reached an intersection, branching left and right. I shone my light left—another endless tunnel into darkness—and right, where it looked like there might be, just maybe, a glimmer of daylight at the end of the tunnel. Right it was.
    Right turned out to be the right call. A few minutes later,I climbed a rickety ladder and found myself in the boiler room of an abandoned warehouse. I looked around for any sign that Captain Hook had been there. There was nothing. The thief must have smuggled the turtle out of one of the other tunnels.
    I made my way out onto the dock and took a deep breath, grateful to be out of the musty tunnel and back aboveground in the fresh air. Unfortunately, the air aboveground wasn’t much better. A potpourri of fish guts and diesel fumes greeted me. I looked around and realized the aromas must have been coming from the old cannery a few lots down and a passing container ship.
    That’s when I spotted Frank on the water taxi.
    I don’t know who was more shocked when we saw each other, Frank or me. I must have looked pretty funny, jumping up and down on the dock in my wet suit, waving my arms like a crazy person. Man, was it good to see him again. After the run-in with the shark and stumbling around in the tunnels, I hadn’t been sure I’d get another chance.
    Once Frank had disembarked from the boat, I brought him up to date on everything that had happened since Bruce had so rudely interrupted our underwater investigation of Predator Reef. Then he filled me in on his chase with the hooded perp.
    â€œUm, I didn’t want to tell you this,” Frank said when he finished. “But Aly kind of makes sense as a possible suspect.”
    â€œNo way, dude,” I said. “Aly wouldn’t have—”
    But then I stopped and thought about it for a second.
    â€œShe did conveniently disappear right before someone released Bruce, and I guess she would have had access to the shark tank.”
    â€œAnd earlier today she was wearing the same kind of baggy aquarium hoodie as the perp I chased,” Frank said. “I didn’t get close enough to tell if it was a guy or a girl, but we can’t rule out the possibility it was her.”
    â€œUgh,” I said, closing my eyes. Could the girl I liked actually want me dead? Why does this have to happen every time? Whenever I like a girl, one of our cases never fails to gum things up.
    â€œAny other ideas who it could have been?” I asked, hoping he’d give me the name of someone I wasn’t interested in dating. “Or how Aly might tie in with the tunnel under the aquarium?”
    â€œNo idea, but I bet the tunnel you found is from the Underground Railroad like the one the history museum is giving tours of across town,” he said excitedly. “They’ve only excavated a few hundred feet of that one, but they think there may have once been a whole network of them. Imagine, a hundred and fifty years ago, escaped slaves could have made their way to freedom through the same tunnel you were in.”
    Yep, trust my bro to give a history lecture at a time like this.
    â€œIf the one across town is a part of the same network of tunnels as the ones I found, then the thief could have taken Captain Hook anywhere in Bayport,” I