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from where it had been tucked next to her waist. “I have more persuasive methods. If you—”
    “Oh, no!” Will interrupted.
    Nancy glanced at the boy who was standing by the window. “What’s up?”
    “The others, they’re coming here,” Will muttered.
    Nancy strode to the window and looked out. Marvin and Kenneth were roughly one hundred feet away and closing. “They can’t know we’re here. When they pass by—”
    Luke suddenly cried out. “Help!”
    “Why, you…” Nancy hurried over to the man and aimed her weapon at him. “Don’t force me to use this.” She looked at Joe. “Is there a back exit?”
    “I don’t know,” Joe admitted.
    Nancy hurried to the window and fired her pistol. The bullet whistled above the men’s heads and they tumbled to the ground before crawling to the nearest bush.
    “What did you do that for?” Will asked. “We could have had a chance to slip by them, but now they know for certain that we’re here.”
    “Now that they know we’re armed, they’ll think twice before entering,” Nancy snapped. “Besides, I’m not being captured by those men.”  
    “Why? Because they know you?” Joe questioned.
    Nancy hesitated. “ Oka y, if you must know, I was one of them.”
    Joe glanced at Jake. “So you were telling the truth.”
    Nancy shook her head. “Only half the truth. I stole the bank money, but only after I heard that they were planning to get rid of me.”
    “So you’re not a police officer?” Sarah asked.
    Nancy shook her head. “No, but my father was.”
    As she hurried away to look for a way out, the children crouched together as they decided what to do. “We can’t stay here,” Will stated .
    “But we can’t go with her,” Amy argued.
    “She’s not a threat to us,” Joe said. “She wants the paintings, not us.” He smiled as Nancy crashed through the back door. “Hey! she found a way out.”
    Will stood up. “If we hurry, we can disappear before the men know we’re gone.” He raced towards the door.
    Letting the girls race by him, Joe glanced back and saw the men near the entrance. As soon as they stepped through, they would see him. He raced after his sisters, hoping he could get through the door before they saw him.
    A yell went out just he went through the back door and he knew that he had been spotted . He muttered to himself as he followed the others.
    ~
    By the time the children arrived at the inlet, Nancy was rowing away.
    “I suppose if she was lying about being a police officer, than we should have realised that she would be lying about taking us with her,” Joe said.
    “It was worth a try,” Will said . “ Anyway , we should get back to the campsite before the men find us. Now that they know that we’re still on the island, they’ll be after us.”
    The children set off for the campsite. As they neared the wood, Joe came to a halt as he saw the three men running towards them. “Blow!”
    “Let’s hide in the wood,” Amy suggested.
    “No. We can’t let the men find our campsite. We have to lead them away from that area.” Will turned towards the hill. “Let’s go to the tree house.”
    “Good idea.” Joe sprinted towards the hill. As he reached it, he glanced back and saw that the men and were not far behind. He realised they would have a better chance of getting to the tree house if they split up. This would also mean that if the men caught up with them, not all of them would be captured .
    So , as they neared the top of the hill, Joe glanced at the others. “We need to split up.”
    Amy only took a moment to decide. “I’ll go with Sarah. And if you boys go alone, we’ll only have one man each on our tail.”
    “Are you sure?” Joe asked.
    “We’ll be fine,” Amy said. “Come on, Sarah.” The girls headed straight down the slope while Will went left and Joe went right.
Chapter 13: The Quarry
     
    For some reason, the section of the hill that the girls were hurrying down had the most number of gorse