Hardy Boys Fan Fiction at the HDA - Lie To Me

The streets were unnervingly quiet and Fenton passed only a few emergency vehicles on his way home from the police station. Chief Collig had finally expelled him from the building, telling him to go home, to be with his sons. He knew his old friend was right. Now, more than ever, his family needed him to be there. Yet he loathed leaving without more information.

He needed to know why something like this would happen in their quiet town.

His sedan pulled into the driveway of the house on the corner of High and Elm Streets. The house was almost completely dark, except for the porch light and the light illuminating the living room. Killing the engine, he grabbed his suit coat from the passenger seat and made his way up the walk to the front door.

It was as quiet inside as it was outside. He called softly to his family and received an answer from inside the living room.

Laura was sitting on the sofa with one arm draped over a sleeping Joe’s chest. Her other hand soothingly stroked his hair away from his pale face, which was nestled on her lap. It was a position the father hadn’t seen in many years, not since the days when his youngest was prone to horrific nightmares.

His eyes fell onto the stitches on the boy’s cheek and the bruise adorning the side of his neck. Fenton had seen Joe that afternoon, immediately after the stand off at the high school. The bruising had yet to show itself and the sight of it was more disturbing than he had imagined.

The gunman had done that. Someone who had been capable of killing innocent kids, for no apparent reason other than it suited him at the time.

Laura noticed where her husband’s gaze had fallen. “Frank’s is worse,” she whispered, not wanting to wake her son.

“Where is he?” Fenton asked, his voice as equally quiet.

“Upstairs,” was her answer. “Gertrude is sitting with him.”

He walked into the room and sat on the loveseat. “How’re they doing?”

She took a shuddering breath and it was then he noticed just how red and swollen his wife’s eyes were. She’d obviously been crying. “Frank? Not so good, but that’s to be expected. He hasn’t said a word since we got home. Just went up to his room and has yet to leave it. Joe’s a little better, but I think he’s just trying to be strong for his brother.”

Feeling his own throat constricting with emotion, he just nodded. They’d gone through this before, the previous year when Joe had lost Iola. And now the cruel fates had seen fit to put their elder son through the same thing.

Callie had been Frank’s first girlfriend, his first love. Even though they hadn’t dated anyone else since they started high school, Fenton had seen them sharing a future together. Perhaps they would have married, sometime after college; raised a family… and now she was gone.

“I’m worried,” Laura admitted after a few moments of silence had lingered between them. “How are they supposed to get through something like this?”

“They’re strong boys, Laur,” he assured her.

“But it’s not just Callie,” she told him as a tear escaped her control. “Jerry was killed and Biff could be paralyzed for the rest of his life. They’re just so close with all their friends…” She shook her head, unable to say any more.

Fenton rose from his seat and crouched beside his wife, wiping the tears from her face. “They have us, Gertrude, each other, and their friends. It’ll be hard, some days harder than the rest, but they will get past this.” He leaned in and kissed her softly before standing. “I’m going to look in on Frank. Call me if you need me?”

A weak smile warmed her lips and she nodded. “I will.”

Despite the lack of lights, he was able to navigate up the stairs and to Frank’s room with ease. There was no light coming from the crack beneath the door and he hesitated a moment before knocking softly.

Almost immediately the door opened and he was greeted by his older sister. “I thought I heard you come in, Fenton.”

His already aching heart anguished even more as he looked inside the darkened room. The curtains were open, the pale light from the moon casting a faint glow over his son’s face as Frank sat at his desk and stared unseeing out the window.

Even in the low light, the black imprint of someone’s hand was prominent on the boy’s throat. Laura had been right: it was worse than Joe’s. That bruise had been only on one side of the neck and there was just one. This was the result of multiple assaults by a killer determined to see Frank suffocate.

Fenton felt ill.

Gertrude placed a hand on her brother’s shoulder and wordlessly departed the room, leaving father and son alone.

Frank didn’t acknowledge him as he closed the door behind him and Fenton wondered if Frank even knew he was there. He walked the short distance to the desk and positioned himself on the edge of its surface. He watched his boy – the mirror image of himself at that age – and nearly wept at the look of despair on his face.

“Frank,” he began quietly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

When there was no answer, Fenton continued. “Chief Collig told me what you did today.”

“Don’t.”

The voice he heard was not the one he had been expecting. It was harder than he had anticipated, cold and hollow. So unlike the Frank he knew. “Don’t?”

Slowly, almost hesitantly, Frank turned his face away from the window and looked up at his father. The despair was gone, replaced by something familiar though he never thought he would see it shining in the dark eyes of his eldest son.

Hatred.

“Don’t sit there,” the teen snarled venomously, “and make me out to be some hero. I’m no hero.”

“Really,” Fenton scolded gently. “That’s not how I’ve heard it told.” He leaned forward, putting a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “You gave yourself over to an armed and dangerous man, Frank, so he would release your brother and the others. I’d say that was pretty heroic.”

With a derisive snort Frank turned back to the moonlit window. “What was I supposed to do, let the son of a bitch kill someone else?”

“Frank-”

“No Dad,” he shook his head, his eyes blazing fiercely in the pale light. “People were dying; my teachers and friends, not faceless strangers. But if I had been there this morning none of it would have happened.”

That statement surprised the father. He squeezed the boy’s shoulder until Frank looked at him. “This is not your fault, Frank! This man may have fixated on you, for one reason or another, but you are not responsible for his actions! He made the choice; he pulled the trigger, not you! ”

“That doesn’t make them any less dead, does it?”

Fenton’s mouth opened, but no sound passed his lips as he had no words to say.

A scathing sneer distorted the face, making the boy before Fenton unrecognizable, just for a second before Frank turned away again. “Just go.”

“Frank, please-”

“I said, get out.”

The callousness in his son’s voice left Fenton feeling cold. He knew Frank was hurting, but this felt different somehow. He didn’t like what he was hearing.

Reluctantly, and with one last gentle squeeze to the boy’s shoulder, Fenton got up from the edge of the desk and left the room.

~~HBHBHB~~

Saturday, June 12, 1:35am

Tears burned the rims of his eyes yet, somehow, he managed to keep them in check as he walk across the dormitory to his cot. He felt the others’ eyes on him as he moved, but he dared not return their gazes lest his control waver and the tears fall. It wasn’t until he sat on the mattress, his shoulders slumped with exhaustion, that he felt that control falter and a single tear escaped down his grimy cheek.

The cot squeaked and shifted beneath the weight of another. He didn’t need to look up to know who was now sitting beside him; whose arm it was that rested comfortingly around his trembling shoulders.

Sixteen year old Peter McKay sighed and spoke in a whisper, “You okay, Frank?”

The last vestiges of composure crumbled against the compassion he heard in the other boy’s voice. “I can’t do it anymore, Peter,” he said quietly between hushed sobs.

“Hey, don’t quit on me now!” Peter reached for a semi-clean towel hanging over the foot of the cot and handed it to Frank. “You got me wanting to fight these bastards again with all that talk about how your dad was going to bust us out of here. You and me, giving them hell, remember?”

“Give them hell…” Frank absently took the towel and wiped at the tears on his face. “Except they give it right back and are much better at it.”

“You’re pretty good at it yourself,” Peter gave Frank a sly smile and ruffled his hair. “Definitely better at it than I am. I’ve lost my touch, but I am more than happy to pass the torch to you, little brother.”

Frank smiled weakly, but the tears were beginning to dry up already. “Maybe.”

Peter leaned back on an elbow and stared up at the window overheard. “Just keep fighting them, Frank. Don’t give them what they want, or you’ll be trapped here like the rest of us. Promise me that. Promise me, no matter what, you won’t let them win Frank…

“…Frank?”

Startled, Frank jerked slightly and looked around.

It took a moment for him to adjust, the memory having been so vivid he had been lost inside it.

A cloud cover had moved in and now obscured the moon, blanketing his room in an oppressive blackness. He couldn’t remember moving from the chair to his bed, but at some point he must have. He now sat on the edge of the mattress, his hands clenched in fists so tight his knuckles were white and his fingernails had cut into the flesh of his palms.

The memory began to fade as the bed shifted beside him and he finally became aware of his brother sitting beside him. Joe’s fingers gently pried his hands open, exposing them to the faint light that was filtering through the bathroom from Joe’s room. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” he answered, pulling his hand away.

Joe sighed and went into the bathroom. Frank could hear the water running in the sink briefly before Joe came back with a moist towel and some bandages. Without a word, the youngest Hardy began dabbing at the blood that was welling from the cuts.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked during his ministrations.

The older boy shook his head, watching through the inky darkness as his brother cleaned and bandaged first his right and then left hand. It was all done in utter silence, but there had never been any need for words between the two brothers.

The silence lingered, each lost in their own waking nightmare. After a moment, he heard Joe clear his throat and, when he spoke, his voice was heavy with emotion. “It really happened, didn’t it?”

He hated hearing his brother cry, never wanted to see him in pain, but tonight it was different.

He hated Joe at that moment, despised him because he was capable of crying. He wanted to be able to reach out and hold his distraught brother, to comfort him and share in his grief.

But, for Frank, there was no grief, no sorrow, no despair. There was only the black, all encompassing hate for the person responsible.

Peter pulled the trigger.

Peter had killed.

And Frank, in turn, had wanted to kill Peter.

But Peter wasn’t the one responsible...

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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.