hardy boys fan fiction
HOLE IN THE WORLD
hardy boys nancy drew fan fiction
by
Medieval Liz
Chapter 10
hardy boys fan fiction
THE CHAPTERS
Friday, March 29, 8:45am
The water in the sink was a pale crimson color and Laura regretfully dipped the stained cloth again. Although Frank had not made a noise, she could tell it hurt him to clean the cuts on his wrists. He tensed every time she touched the cloth to the skin.
During the night Frank
had to be taken to the Emergency Room at Bayport General. He had
developed a fever shortly after dinner and as a precaution Fenton had
taken him in. One of the deeper cuts on his left wrist had gotten
infected and Dr Bates, the boy’s physician for several years now, had
prescribed a mild antibiotic to help fight it off.
However, now it meant that the bandages on Frank’s wrists and ankles had to be changes several times a day to allow Laura to clean them and apply a medicated cream to keep them from getting infected again.
She carefully dabbed at the wrist with the cloth. “You know,” Laura said softly as she gently worked, “you don’t have to do this today.”
The muscles in Frank’s arm were tense, but he spoke surprisingly steady. “I just want to get it over with.”
A sad smile formed on her lips as she studied her son. A weariness was in his dark eyes, accentuated by dark circles beneath them. She knew he was having trouble falling asleep, even though he hadn’t said anything, and, when exhaustion finally won out, he was plagued by nightmares.
Unlike Joe, however, Frank shouldered the disturbing dreams in silence. He would wake without a sound, whereas Joe was prone to crying out. The two did share one trait, though, and even after six months apart it hadn’t changed. Whenever one was upset, he would seek out his brother for comfort. The last two mornings she had found Frank sleeping in Joe’s bed with his brother.
The doorbell rang then and she heard Frank inhale deeply. He knew who it was and, despite his insistence, he was apprehensive about the next few hours.
Laura finished wrapping his wrists and lifted his chin to look into his eyes. “You stop whenever you need to, alright? And remember your Father and I are right here for you.”
Frank nodded and exited the bathroom with his mother right behind him. Fenton was just showing the handful of people into the living room when Laura and Frank came down the stairs.
“Detective Younger!” Laura exclaimed, seeing the man on a pair of crutches. She walked over to him and gave him a careful hug and kiss on the cheek. “What are you doing out of the hospital?”
“I couldn’t keep him away,” Detective Cameron said with a wry grin.
Brian smiled at Laura then turned the smile to Frank who stood shyly in the doorway. “I wanted to see how you were doing, Frank.”
“I’m okay,” the quiet answer came.
Fenton walked over to his son and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure about this, Frank?”
Frank nodded and let himself be led into the living room and to the sofa. He sat between his parents and watched as Detective Cameron helped his partner into a chair. Frank glanced at the others in the room curiously.
Noticing the look, Fenton started the introductions. “Frank, you know Detectives Younger and Cameron, but this is Agents Grant-”
“Hello Frank,” a woman in her early thirties, with blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail and dull green eyes, greeted.
“And Locke with the FBI.”
A slightly overweight man also in his thirties, with brown eyes and lacklustre greying hair, nodded. “Hello.”
“This is Dr Younger, Detective Younger’s father.”
Adam stepped forward and offered his hand to Frank. “I was working for the FBI on your case before I retired.”
Frank uncertainly shook the man’s hand. “Hi.”
Once everyone was seated, a sudden tension seemed to fill the room. No one spoke at first, but their eyes were all looking to Frank. The boy shrunk back into the sofa, aware of their eyes and feeling very anxious and a little frightened.
Agent Grant cleared her throat. “Frank, I know this isn’t going to be easy for you. We can take a break whenever you need to, or if you want we can stop all together. We’ll only go as far as you want to, does that sound okay to you?”
Afraid that his voice would betray him, Frank just nodded. His mother put an arm around his shoulders and he felt his father give his arm a gentle squeeze.
Agent Grant smiled reassuringly and Locke got up from his chair. “Okay Frank. We’d like to video tape your statement, with your permission of course. This way, when the men who did this to you go to trial you don’t have to be there. We can just use the video tape instead. Is that all right?”
Frank glanced over at Locke who was retrieving a video camera from a case on the other side of the room. “They’re dead, aren’t they?”
Laura and Fenton exchanged worried looks.
“Yes,” Grant said slowly, “Two of them were shot and killed, but one was apprehended. Once you tell us your story of what happened we’ll know what he’ll be charged with and then its up to the judge what happens to him.”
“Oh,” Frank took a shuddering breath and nodded. “If it’s important, then okay. I guess.”
“Thank you, Frank.” Grant nodded to Locke and the man set up the tripod and camera, focussing the lens on Frank. When the camera was recording, Locke nodded to Grant and she turned back to Frank. “I’ll ask you some questions, and try to be as detailed as you can when you answer them. If you can’t remember, that’s all right. Just say so and I’ll ask something else. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” She smiled again. “Let’s start with something simple. You were at the University for a Government Sponsored Psychology Study, why was that?”
“I don’t know. I took one of those standardized tests that everyone in the state has to take. I got a pretty high mark and the Principal in my school said the study was just to observe smart kids.”
“So you’re a pretty smart guy then.”
Frank shrugged. “I guess. I just like to learn stuff.”
“What did you do there, at the University with Dr Paulson?”
“At first we went on a tour of the building and some of the experiments they were working on. There was one that was watching people sleep, studying their dreams or something like that.”
“And after the tour?” Agent Grant prompted when Frank was quiet for a few seconds.
“We went back to this big lab that had a bunch of tables set up with different equipment and stuff. Dr Paulson told us we could work on whatever we wanted. Like if we wanted to just read, or fool around, or whatever, we could do it. My friend Phil saw they had come computers set up. They were really high tech and he was really excited.”
“And what did you do, Frank?”
“There was a book of brain teasers that I started going through. Math problems, logic questions, that sort of thing.”
“And you did that the whole time?”
“Mostly,” Frank admitted. “I really like solving puzzles and stuff like that. They had this one puzzle box that was really hard. It took me almost an hour to figure it out.”
“What was so hard about it?”
“There were seventeen pieces to it. You had to build a tower and base. The pieces fit together several different ways and you’d only know if it was right once you got the last piece into place. If you did, it stood up on its own. If not, it fell down.”
“Your friend, Phil Cohen, told the police that you stayed behind with Dr Paulson to discuss an experiment you were working on.” Agent Grant said. “If you spent the day working on puzzles, what experiment was he talking about?”
“There was a trick to the puzzle,” Frank said with a shy smile. “All the pieces were there, and it was put together right, except it was still pretty wobbly. I told Dr Paulson that I thought she was missing a piece to the puzzle but she told me that was all she had ever had. She asked me what kind of piece, and I told her something the size of a toothpick. Really small. She found one for me at another table and I put it where there was a really tiny hole in the tower part of the puzzle. It stopped wobbling and she told me that was the trick. She said that very few people ever noticed that it was missing something.”
Frank went very quiet then, his smile fading. He knew what the next question was going to be and it made him nervous.
“Frank,” Agent Grant started gently. “Can you tell us what happened when you went to meet up with your father?”
The heart in his chest felt like it was about to explode and it was getting hard to breathe. Frank looked down at his hands, his eyes falling onto the fresh bandages on his wrists. “I-” his voice quivered and he cut himself off, afraid of loosing it in front of all these people and the camera.
“It’s okay Frank,” Laura said quietly, her hand rubbing his son’s back comfortingly. “You’re safe here, no one’s going to hurt you.”
Frank nodded and cleared his throat. “Dr Paulson didn’t want me going down to the street on my own, so she came with me in the elevator. I- I heard Joe – he’s my younger brother – and saw him with my Dad and Phil coming into the lobby of the building. I said good-bye to Dr Paulson and that’s-”
He fell silent again, but this time no one said anything. Frank knew they were waiting for him and he took a deep breath. He was home now, practically surrounded by a bunch of cops and FBI. The bad guys had been caught and some were even dead. He was safe.
But he was still afraid.
“They came up behind me,” He said, surprising himself at how calm he sounded. “One had my arms pinned to my side and covered my mouth before I knew what was going on. I couldn’t see what happened to Dr Paulson, but I heard my Dad yell when another picked up my legs. I was carried to the stairs and it was really dark when the door closed. It was hard to see and I stopped struggling as they carried me down the stairs. I didn’t like the idea of them suddenly dropping me.”
Fenton had to smile at the sensibility of that statement.
Frank continued easily now, staring at an empty spot on the coffee table, lost in the memory of that day. “I head a door open above me just as we reached the bottom and I heard Joe call my name. I was scared that they’d grab him too and I knew I had to warn him away. I bit the hand over my mouth and when he let go I tried to yell for Joe to go back, but they covered my mouth again before I could finish.”
Brian Younger listened with a new sense of admiration for the young Hardy. His concern for his brother had superseded the concern for himself, something the detective could understand completely.
“I heard Joe on the stairs coming after us but I couldn’t do anything,” his hands began to tremble and he clenched them into tight fists. “The guy holding my legs let go and I was pulled away from the stairs. As Joe came around the top of the stairs the guy grabbed his arm and at first I thought he’d be snatched too, but then… he just flung Joe down the stairs. Just pulled him right off his feet. I saw him hit the wall pretty hard and I fought as hard as I could, but I just couldn’t do anything!”
Anger had replaced his fear. The memory of seeing his brother lying there, hurt or possibly worse, was burned in his mind. No one hurt his baby brother! He felt his father squeeze his shoulder and looked up at Fenton’s face. There was such pride in those eyes and Frank couldn’t understand why.
“Frank, what happened then?”
At Agent Grant’s voice, Frank turned his attention back to the spot on the coffee table. “I was carried into the garage. There was a van waiting there and a couple more guys inside. They pulled me inside and stuck me with a needle.” His hand absently went to his neck and rubbed a spot on the side. “I think I saw Joe before the door closed, but it gets pretty fuzzy there.”
Agent Grant smiled at him. “You’re doing great, Frank. Do you need a minute or can you keep going?”
“Keep going.”
“All right, but you’ll tell me if you need to stop?”
He nodded.
“Did you ever see their faces, Frank?”
“No, they were wearing masks. Even the ones in the van.”
“Did they speak? Did you hear them say anything?”
“No.”
“That’s all right,” she assured him at the exasperation in his voice. “What’s the next thing you remember, Frank?”
There was no hiding the flash of terror on his face, or the scared little boy that immerged when he finally spoke. “A puzzle.”
“A puzzle? Like the one at the university?”
Frank forced himself to carry on. “ No. It was metal and I had to put it together.” His mouth was dry as the memory replayed in his mind.
“61 Seconds, Frankie-Boy. Not fast enough. Do it again.”
“What was it Frank?” Agent Grant pressed when the boy remained quiet.
“68 Seconds, Frankie! You’re getting slower, now do it again!”
“Frank?” Laura smoothed the hair on the back of his head. He was shaking now.
“Damn it, Hardy! Almost 90 seconds! Maybe your brother could do better, what do you think? Should we bring him here and see how he does?”
“No!”
“Then do it!”
“Frank, what was the puzzle?”
“49 seconds, very good. You can go now, Frankie-Boy.”
“He needs a break,” Fenton said, looking worriedly at his unresponsive son.
“Frank,” Agent Grant pressed a little more forcefully. “What did you have to put together?”
“That’s enough, Agent Grant.” Brian insisted.
Frank muttered so quietly that even Fenton wasn’t sure he heard him. The room went silent.
“What did you say Frank?”
“A gun,” He lifted his head and the look of self-loathing in his eyes shocked everyone. “I had to assemble a gun.”
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Disclaimer
The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.