Fenton Hardy was awakened by the sound of the phone ringing.  Rolling off the couch, he groaned as he saw the time. 5:30 AM. He had only fallen asleep an hour earlier.

“Hardy residence,” he said with a hoarse throat.

[Fenton it’s Ezra; meet me at the station.  I’m just leaving my house now] and then the police chief hung up before the investigator could get from him any details.

Horror squeezed his heart; the police must have found out something about Joe.  And if Ezra couldn’t tell him on the phone…it must not be very good.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, Fenton rushed into Ezra’s office and found the police chief on the phone.  When Collig saw the detective he indicated for him to sit down.

Fenton listened worriedly to his end of the conversation.  He had woken Laura and told her where he was going, promising to call her as soon as he could.

“Okay…you’re sure…no, that’s fine…. Thanks for letting me know.”

Hanging up the phone, the Police Chief wiped a hand across his face.  Although he had turned into a certifiable workaholic since Rachel’s death, he still wasn’t a morning person and did not relish the call he had gotten only a few minutes before he called the Hardy house.

“Ezra?”  Fenton questioned, too impatient to wait for his friend to begin.

“That was Chief Sanchez from the LAPD, they picked up Fulton McBride a couple of hours ago,” Ezra said, and Fenton’s face went white.

“Joey?”

The Chief of Police shook his head and waited for the detective to put it together.  He was 30 minutes ahead in his knowledge, but knew the astute investigator would figure it out quickly.

And Fenton did.

“Wait a second, the Los Angeles Police Department?   Unless McBride has powers we don’t know about, there is no way in hell he could have been anywhere near Bayport, let alone the Carnival, when Joey was abducted…” 

Relief flooded the father, “Oh thank God!” but then he realized a new problem.  “So if it isn’t McBride…” He looked at his friend in frustration, “who the hell took my son?”

* * *

Frank lay in his brother’s bed and wondered where Joe was.  He wished for the millionth time that he had telepathic powers so he could at least tell his brother he missed him.

And he did.

Frank’s first memory of his brother was of being a toddler and looking down at his brother crying in his crib or playpen; the child couldn’t remember which.  But his brother was only a baby, and he was crying.

He had watched this newcomer with much interest, and it bothered him whenever the baby cried.  It made him sad.

So when his mother left the room, the toddler did the only thing that made sense to him…the thing that always made him feel better and made him stop crying. He took the pacifier out of his own mouth and popped it into the baby’s.

And baby Joey stopped crying.

That was also Frank’s earliest memory of anything, so in all honesty he could never remember what it was like to not have his baby brother around.

Sure. Joey got on his nerves sometimes, but he was still the coolest person that Frank knew.  He was always fun and had interesting ways of looking at things. 

The small boy also worshipped his older brother, and told him about everything that he had seen or done when Frank was at school.

And that made Frank feel important.

Frank cried quietly as he wished a pacifier could fix things now….What was he going to do without Joe?

Downstairs, he could hear his mother’s voice and his aunt’s.  He couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying but he knew they were arguing. 

That was always a problem.  Frank loved both his aunt and his mom and he hated it when they argued.

His Dad had explained to him once that it was because his aunt and his mother were two very different people who saw things differently…but cared about the same things. 

And when he saw that his son didn’t quite get what he was explaining, he changed tactics.

“Okay son, think of it like this way,” the investigator said, “do you remember what happened when Mr. Fitzpatrick went to Jamaica and we watched Moses for him?”

Their new neighbor, an avid dog lover, had a young golden retriever named Moses, and the Hardys had looked after him for a couple weeks at the beginning of summer while he went back to Jamaica to visit his family.

“Yes,” Frank said smiling.  It was fun having the dog around.

“What happened while the dog was here?”  Fenton watched his son for a few moments, waiting for the child to sort past the obvious.

“Well,” Frank chewed his lip thoughtfully, “we had lots of fun…” he hoped his dad would get the hint as the brothers were dying to get a dog.  And then he smiled sheepishly, “Me and Joey argued.”

“Oh yeah,” their father had grinned, “that you did.  Why?”

“Well,” Frank screwed up his face as he thought about it carefully before answering, “because Joey wanted to feed him more then he should have.”

Fenton laughed, “That among many other things, if I remember correctly.  But the bottom line is that you and your brother are two very different people with very different ways of thinking about how things should be done.  And when you put Moses in the mix, you both wanted to do what was best for him and so you argued about it…a lot.”

“Like Mommy and Aunt Gertrude!”  Frank said, very pleased to see the connection.

As his father ruffled his dark brown hair he said with pride, “Exactly.  You’ll make a fine detective some day, Frankie. Now come on, I think your Aunt is trying to get your brother to help her ball up her wool; we should go save him…or her….”

Frank smiled as he remembered the talk with his dad, but it did nothing to help him out much as he heard the two women downstairs. 

It was only now that he realized that Joe’s room, closer to the stairs then his, afforded him much more eavesdropping privileges than his own…. There might be uses for that later on, but right now, as he tried not to listen, it made things worse.

* * *

“Gertrude, that wouldn’t have changed anything,” Laura was trying her best not to fight with her sister-in-law at such a tender hour in the morning, but their normally tense relationship was not responding very well to the added stress of Joe’s abduction.

“Yes it would have, Laura.  If Fenton hadn’t quit the force then you guys wouldn’t have been at the Carnival yesterday, and my nephew wouldn’t be missing right now, having Lord knows what done to him by that pervert!”

Laura paled when she heard that and gasped, “Gertrude..!”

“I’m sorry Laura, but I know what I’m talking about.  Do you even know what that man did to those poor children?” Gertrude did not realize just how cruel she was being as she tried to make the distraught mother admit she was right by forcing Laura to imagine the unimaginable horrors her baby might be living through right now.

If he was still alive.

“As if molesting them wasn’t bad enough, he….”

“SHUT UP!”  Laura screamed.  She did not want to hear this. She did not want to know what might be happening to her son, she just wanted him back.  “GERTRUDE, SHUT UP! THIS IS MY CHILD YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT, NOT SOME PERSON X!  I CARRIED HIM INSIDE ME….I GAVE BIRTH TO HIM….NO! NOT MY SON….I WILL NOT LISTEN TO THIS…NOT NOW!”

Laura was so upset she started to hyperventilate, and Gertrude got her a paper bag to breathe into.  After she had calmed down, Gertrude sighed, “I’m sorry Laura.  I just…it’s so frustrating to think of him out there and to think…”

“Gertrude,” Laura’s voice, though exhausted, held a warning note, and the older woman stopped.

“It’s just that if Fenton hadn’t…”

Laura stopped her with a weary hand.  “We can’t live for what-ifs.  What if Fenton didn’t quit the force? What if we didn’t leave New York?  What if we never let them go in the Fun House by themselves…”

Gertrude jumped up and headed out of the kitchen, surprising Laura who called after her, “Gert?”

The older woman turned back to her and shook her head sadly. “That last what-if…is what you and my brother will have to live with for the rest of your lives….”

And then she was out of the kitchen and down the hall to the first floor guestroom that she called ‘hers’.  She could never forgive that one, no matter what else. It was as if Fenton and Laura sometimes forgot how young the boys were.

They never should have been left to go into the Carnival Fun House by themselves!

* * *

Laura was left sitting at the table in disbelief.

Her sister-in-law was right…and was wrong.

Yes, that was something she and Fenton would have to live with for the rest of their lives, even after they found Joe - she would not accept the alternative - but Gertrude was also wrong about it.

Fulton McBride was a predator.

Predators chose their prey, and if Joe had been chosen then it would not have mattered where he was when he got taken. It would have just been about timing, then.

McBride might have even broken into their house and taken him from his own room.

Shivering at that thought, Laura got up and ran up the stairs. 

She needed to see Frankie for herself and assure herself that at least he was still okay.

* * *

It was morning when Joe regained consciousness. Trying to sit up, he cried out in pain as his body hurt everywhere, and he looked around, growing increasingly alarmed as he did not know where he was.

His mouth was duct taped again but not his hands so he gingerly pulled the tape off.

“Fwankie?”  He called out for his brother first, like he always did when he was afraid, and not hearing him he tried again.  “Thaddy?” His mouth hurt and it was hard for him to get the words out.

This got a response as he heard the sound of footsteps walking across the floor above him and then a door was being opened.

“Yes son?” a man’s voice called down to him a moment before Joe saw him.

And the child’s heart froze with fear, as this man was not his father, Fenton Hardy.  And then everything that had happened to him came back to him in a rush, and he scurried as far away from this man as he could.

“Ah, you remember me then?”  Miles taunted as he watched the youngster who was chained by his foot to a small bed in the dark basement.

The bed had no pillows or blankets; it was just a dirty stained mattress on an old frame.

The ankle chain didn’t let the child get very far though.

“Are we ready to try this again?” he asked, satisfied that Joe was sufficiently frightened of him.  He hoped the kid would be more cooperative today because quite frankly he was not looking very good. The fall down the basement steps had marred him worse than Miles had…yet.

He called over his shoulder to his wife, who Joe could now hear moving around above him. “Darla, I think James is ready to see you now!” 

“Doey,” Joe said, and the man looked at him, not understanding what he was saying; so Joe tried again. “Ny nane id Doey.”

The man moved closer to the bed, and Joe shrank back even further.  “Your name is James.”

Unable to hold the man’s terrifying gaze, Joe looked down at the dirty mattress he had crawled up on to get away from him.

Darla came downstairs holding a piece of toast, and the child’s stomach growled.  He hadn’t had anything to eat since a candy apple sometime yesterday afternoon.

“Good morning sweetie,” she said pleasantly, “Are you hungry?”

Joey nodded, not trusting his voice to say something he’d get hit for.

“Good, that will make you more cooperative,” Miles sneered.

Darla sat down across from Joe and ate the toast without offering him any.

“Do you know who I am?”  she asked sweetly.

Joe shook his head.

Instantly, Miles roared, “WRONG ANSWER!”  and Joe felt something strike his arm.

Squealing from the unexpected pain, the youngster dived as far away from Miles as he could.  Looking at him with wide eyes, Joe only now saw the bamboo switch the man was holding. 

“Let’s try again,” Darla said, completely unfazed by her husband’s brutality, “Who am I?”

Joe wasn’t sure what to say.  He had no idea what the right answer was.  His terrorized mind didn’t know what they wanted from him.

His silence cost him as the switch hit him across the back this time, and he curled up into a small ball and sobbed. His whole body was hurting and he had no idea what they wanted.

Darla curled up her nose in disdain as she leaned in towards him and then looked at Miles. “He stinks!”

Miles shook his head in disgust.  “Little shit peed himself when I grabbed him.”

“Children get dirty Miles, you can’t blame them….It’s what they do. Okay, James,” Joe looked at her realizing she was addressing him, “Momma’s going to get a bath ready for you, okay?  So you just sit pretty for a few moments and then Daddy’s going to bring you upstairs.”

The last thing in the world that Joe wanted was some strange lady giving him a bath…especially one who was once again insisting that she was his mother.