hardy boys fan fiction
HOLE IN THE WORLD
hardy boys nancy drew fan fiction
by
Medieval Liz
Chapter 3
hardy boys fan fiction
THE CHAPTERS
Sunday, September 27, 6:45pm
Laura Hardy was lost. The sofa on which she sat was foreign to her, the living room alien, and the tea cup in her hand unfamiliar. Just the morning before there had been laughter filling the room, brightening the house and making it a home. Today, it was cold and empty. Just a place that was missing its soul.
She wanted her son back!
A half dozen uniformed officers milled about the room going through her husband’s files and information that they had compiled over the last twenty-four hours. Their voices were hushed and she caught a few of them casting apprehensive glances in her direction. They were afraid she would break. And if she had been a lesser woman she would have, but she was a Hardy. She knew how to keep a strong front.
A powerful hand rested gently on her shoulder and she looked up into the face of her husband. “Anything from Sam?”
Fenton sighed and shook his head, moving around the arm of the sofa to sit next to Laura. “Sam has dropped everything, every other case we’ve got right now, and is exhausting himself chasing after a van that may be the only lead to finding Frank. And what do I do? I go ballistic on him and ream him out for something he has no control over.”
“He’ll understand, Fen,” Laura said soothingly, her hand caressing his arm. “He’s a good man and knows you’re just frustrated with the lack of… well, everything.”
“I’m beyond frustrated,” he said grimly, rubbing a hand over his weary face. He looked into her light blue eyes and, for the first time in their life together, she saw defeat in his eyes. “I’ve got nothing to go on, Laura. I don’t know how to find our son.”
That was not what she wanted to hear. She needed him to be strong, to be her rock, to tell her that he would move heaven and earth to bring Frank back home. But here he was, falling apart when she needed him the most. She pulled him to her, embracing him in the hopes of chasing away the demons that told him their son was lost to them.
She knew what caused them. His guilt at being unable to protect their children. After Joey went missing five years ago, Fenton had sworn to protect his sons from the monsters of the world. For five years he had been successful. Yet three monsters were able to steal his son from right in front of him and he was powerless to stop them.
“Then pray, Fenton,” She whispered in his ear. “When all other roads end, pray for guidance. It will come to you when it’s meant to. Believe it with all your heart, or you will falter when your family needs you most of all. Pray, Fenton. Just pray.”
The officers inside the living room watched the heart wrenching moment discretely. Con Riley had known the Hardy family for several years , ever since he had assisted the detective recover his youngest from the Nightingales. They had collaborated, unofficially, a few times since then, but he had always hoped that he would never have to work in such a capacity again.
He cleared his throat after a minute. “Mr. Hardy-”
“Fenton, please,” the older man corrected kindly, as he pulled away from his wife to give the officer his full attention. “You said you may have something?”
“I’m not sure exactly what we’ve found,” Riley reiterated, handing the detective a folder he had been holding, “and I thought a fresh pair of eyes might be able to make sense of it.”
Fenton started flipping through the pages as Con explained what they were.
“Witness accounts of Frank’s abduction, and your own testimony Sir, made it clear that they were there specifically for your son. They waited for a precise moment to grab him and were even prepared for you. It got us thinking, Sir… how did they know Frank would be there? Or you, for that matter?”
“I don’t follow you,” Laura said, looking at the papers over Fenton’s shoulder.
“Well, his trip to NYU, Ma’am. The invitation to the study came Thursday afternoon, only two days before his kidnapping, and even then there was no guarantee you would allow him to attend on such short notice.”
“And the plan to take Frank, Joe and Phil to Coney Island was only made the night before.” Fenton added, starting to catch on to Riley’s train of thought. “We didn’t even tell the chaperones until Laura spoke with them yesterday morning.”
“So how could they have known where and when they would be able to make their move?” Con leaned over and pointed to a list of names and numbers on the paper. “These are the names of those invited to the University and their test scores on the state exam they took. Every single one of them scored incredibly high, some – like Phillip Cohen – so high that to call them genius’ wouldn’t be far off. Normally, this information isn’t available to the public. Dr. Paulson got them because her study is government funded. Not all that surprising, when you think about it but what is, is this:
“Dr. Sarah Paulson has been conducting this study for almost fifteen years in different states across the US. And, in the last eleven years, one hundred and sixty-two of these children ranging from ages eight to fifteen have gone missing. Frank makes one hundred and sixty-three.”
“Hold on,” Laura glanced up in shock. “You’re telling me that all these missing kids, and no one notices anything?!”
“Look at it this way, Laura,” Fenton said in a low growl. “Mr. Woodrow said that Dr. Paulson invited close to two hundred students to participate in the next few months. Say she does this three times a year, that’s about six hundred kids a year. Eleven years of study and you suddenly have almost seven thousand names. Factor in different States, different ages and sexes, all of a sudden you’re looking for a minute number of missing kids in the tens of thousands that go missing every year in this country.”
“Dear god!” Laura drew in a ragged breath. “What about the kids, Con? How many of them were ever found?”
“Most of them just showed up at home a few days later. Some a couple of weeks. The longest was gone two months.”
“You said most,” Fenton took his wife’s shaking hands in his, needing her comforting touch as much as he knew she needed his.
Officer Riley hesitated but knew he couldn’t sugar coat it. “ Most did come home, yes. But, of the one hundred and sixty-two, twenty-eight are still missing.”
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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.