HDA - Living in Darkness Trilogy - Pt 2 - The Search

"That way," the officers pointed to a door located at the other end of the room. One of them shoved Detective Noble forward and the other went to hold the door open for the prisoners. "Go in there."

The room had white padded walls, which the dirty cops found to be hilarious. Turnston shoved the lock closed as soon as the prisoners were in the room and Brigsby smiled at them, laughing as he turned away. It was a bona fide ‘rubber room’.

"Just great," Mandy muttered. "All we need now are the funny jackets with the long arms."

"We'll be fine," Noble said. "Just fine. I can promise you that. The two F.B.I. agents are still loose out there. I think they're smart enough to figure out what's going on, if they haven’t seen us when they’re done with their circuit.”

"And in the meantime, we're stuck here and can't find my brother," Mandy retorted. "Just great. This is really my idea of a good time."

She kicked at the wall and sat down on the floor. Connor sat beside her and put an arm around her, holding her close. Noble watched them, then turned his attention back to the door. He studied it, finding a fairly potent looking handle. There was no way he could get the door to open when it was locked, not unless he could figure out how to deactivate it somehow. At least this wasn’t a newer place where all the controls and handles were on the outside of the door.

"There's no way out, is there?" Mandy asked. "Unless someone lets us out?"

"Yeah," Noble agreed. "Sorry, kids."

Mandy shrugged. She fidgeted impatiently, wanting to be on the move, to be outside finding Joe and not in here.

"Who were those guys? Dirty cops?" she asked Noble.

"Yeah," Quinton agreed. "It looks like they're on someone's payroll. I'd guess your cousin has enough money to pay off some dirty cops if he wanted to keep from being found. Is he rich enough?"

"Yeah," Mandy sighed. "Unfortunately he is."

"So there they are, doing their job. It could mean that we're getting close to finding your brother, though. That you were right about this being the right place."

Mandy nodded. "I knew it was," she said. "He's so close and I still can't get to him. This sucks! I want to pound a hole in the walls. I have to do something besides sit here!”

“Love,” Connor said, placating, “there isn’t a way out of here and you aren’t doing any good by sitting here beating yourself because of what’s happened. You need to settle down, sweetheart.”

Mandy glared at her boyfriend then puffed her hair out of her face and sighed. She slumped forward, propping her elbows on her knees. She pulled at the fabric of the padded walls, still too agitated to just sit still and wait.

“I don’t suppose your gun would work on that lock , would it?” Mandy asked the police officer. “I mean, it won’t ricochet, right?”

Noble frowned and shook his head. “I don’t think that would work, Miss Hardy. I think it would cause more problems than waiting will. We don’t know for sure the bullet won’t ricochet at least once. Do you want to take the risk of getting a bullet through you while we’re trapped here? Besides that, I don’t have my gun, remember? They made me kick it away.”

Mandy sighed. “I forgot. Dangit.”

“Of course,” Noble considered slowly. “What would you do if I had a backup weapon?”

Mandy raised an eyebrow. “You have a backup weapon?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m asking what you would do if I had one.”

“It depends on if you think it’s going to ricochet or not. If one of us gets hurt and we don’t get the door open…”

Connor rolled his eyes. “Look, it’s got a locking mechanism of sorts. I don’t suppose you ever learned anything about lock-picking from your brothers, did you?”

Mandy shrugged. She wondered what kind of rubber room would have pickable locks, then remembered that this was a very old institution, from the early 1800s, and it had all kinds of things that were way out of date.

“I learned a little bit about it,” Mandy admitted. “But I was never very good at it. I’m not really patient enough.”

She chewed on her bottom lip as she stared uncertainly at the lock.

“I don’t have a lock pick kit, either,” she confessed. “Joe and Frank carry those around, I don’t.”

“Look,” Noble said as he motioned to the lock. “It’s one of those old mortise style locks. You just need a skeleton key to open it. We could probably jimmy it with a pocket knife. Want to give it a try?”

Mandy frowned but finally shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt to try, I suppose. Do you have a pocket knife?”

“Just so happens,” Noble said. “If those two louts weren’t in danger of going to jail when this is over, I would send them back to the Academy until they learn about searching a suspect for ALL weapons. They didn’t even bother.”

He handed a small pocketknife to Mandy. She opened up a medium-sized blade on it and went to peer into the hole for the skeleton key. Mandy wasn’t sure where the lock was, exactly, but she dug around with the knife until she felt something promising.

It took a long while to get it opened. There were a couple of times that Mandy was positive she had it, only to have the door fail to open when she was done. She frowned in intensity as she continued to work, digging for the clasp that she wanted to force the lock open.

Finally, however, she succeeded and the door clicked open.

“Yes!” Mandy exclaimed with excitement. “Hardy girl does good. Film at seven!”

She gave Connor a big hug and kiss as she pushed the door the rest of the way open.

Connor got up and went over to inspect the door opening. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small pocket knife and used it to unfasten the door handle.

“Shh,” Noble ordered. “We have to keep it quiet now, in case those officers are still around. Let’s go.”

The going was very slow after that, much slower than Mandy liked. Noble wouldn’t let them go into a room until he checked it out first, and at least once he made them duck into closets to wait for five minutes until he was sure an area was completely clear. Mandy chafed at the slowness of their moves; she wanted to find Joe and find him right now. This waiting around was driving her crazy.

They turned a corner and Noble waved both Mandy and Connor back. He took his backup gun into a solid grip and peeked around the corner again. Mandy held her breath, not sure what the detective saw that made him even more cautious than normal, but he finally stepped around the corner into the next room, his gun held out before him.

“All right you two,” Noble said. “Put your guns down and hands up in the air. NOW!”

Mandy wanted to peek around the corner but Connor held her back, shaking his head insistently. She sighed and stayed put, waiting.

“Now,” Noble barked. “You know me. You know I can shoot both of you before either of you get a shot off. Now put your guns down!”

Mandy flashed Connor an admiring look. Detective Noble obviously knew what he was doing; of course she didn’t really doubt it, not considering that that he was a detective.

They heard the clatter of guns falling to the floor and Noble spoke.

“Connor, come around me and pick up both their guns,” he ordered Mandy’s boyfriend. Connor stood to his full height of 6’3” and went around the corner, looking a lot like a wall heading out to mash anyone in his way. Mandy sighed and stayed put, but soon she could see Connor out of her peripheral vision as he stood near Noble.

“All right,” Noble said. “Both of you kneel down, legs crossed, hands on the back of your heads. Mandy, come here.”

Mandy came around the corner and stood beside Detective Noble.

“Do you know how to use a gun?” Noble asked her.

“I’m better with a bow and arrow, but yes,” Mandy nodded.

“Good,” Noble said. “Take one of the guns Connor has and keep it trained on them. If one of them so much as flinches I want you to put a bullet through them. Can you do that?”

Normally, there was no way that Mandy could shoot anyone with a gun, but remembering that the officers helped Andrew, and Andrew kidnapped Joe, she nodded. “I can, sir.”

“Good,” Noble said again.

Mandy took one of the guns offered to her by Connor and held it on the other man, standing in the stance she had been taught by her father. She much preferred the feel of a bow and arrow and had excelled in the use of them over the years, but she knew how to use a gun. Her father insisted on teaching all of his children when they were younger.

Mandy had a lot of respect for guns.

Noble stepped forward and pulled a pair of cuffs from his back, grabbed Officer Brigsby and dragged him to a nearby pipe. He sat Brigsby down on his rear and pulled his arms around the pipe before he handcuffed the man. He reached into Brigsby’s pocket and took his pair of cuffs, and repeated the procedure, using a different pipe for Turnston.

“Now,” Noble said as he considered his two prisoners. “Let’s talk a bit.”

“We have nothing to say,” Brigsby blustered. “Nothing at all. We aren’t talking without our lawyers.”

Noble smiled. “That would be fine,” he said. “In normal circumstances. What you don’t understand is the young woman behind me with the gun trained on you is the twin sister of the man kidnapped by your employer. Normally I wouldn’t condone violence for the sake of violence but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to hold her back. Am I, Mandy?”

Mandy almost fumbled it. She was shocked to hear Noble suggesting that she might actually shoot these guys to get information, but she managed to compose her face.

“No, you aren’t,” she smiled sweetly at the two officers. “If you’d just get out of the way, sir, I can finish them both off.”

“You’d go to jail!” Turnston yelled.

“Oh, I know,” Mandy said. “But if it helps me find my brother, well, no problem. No problem at all. Unless, of course, you have some information to offer. Like…where is my brother?”

The two officers exchanged glances and shrugged, helplessly. “We don’t know,” Brigsby said. “I swear. The kid never told us. He just said if you ever came here we were to do whatever we could to hold you up.”

“Does that mean Joe’s here?” Noble asked.

“We don’t know!” Brigsby insisted. “We were paid to keep you busy here, to keep you from looking any further, that’s all.”

Mandy said a very, very bad word that caused Connor’s eyes to widen with shock as he looked at her.

“Amanda Nicole!” he exclaimed.

“It’s all ANOTHER of Andy’s damned smokescreens!” Mandy cursed again, meaning it even more than the last time.

“Joe isn’t here,” she said, suddenly. “We have to get back to that house, Detective Noble!”

“What’s going on?” a voice from behind said. “What’s going on?”

Bill Reilly ran forward, glaring at the whole group. Kacey Turner was behind him, looking a little more ragged. She had a tiny cut on one cheek and a lot of dust and grime in her hair. She looked from prisoners to captors, a confused expression on her face.

“It seems we have a couple of bad eggs, Agent,” Noble told the F.B.I. man. “They locked us in one of the rubber rooms but we managed to escape and catch them. We were just discussing what to do next.”

“We haven’t found anything here,” Bill said. “Kacey and I couldn’t even get to the third floor, it’s completely trashed. IF anyone is there it’s going to take a week to get to them. The second floor is pretty well wiped out too, but we went as far as we could before we decided there was nothing to find.”

“Let’s get these two to base,” Noble said. “I think the hunt’s out of our hands now. I can take them if you want to meet up with your senior agent.”

Bill nodded. “You sure you can handle them on your own? We can get them into the car for you, at least.”

“That’d be a help,” Noble grinned.

Mandy relaxed and went to Connor. He put an arm around her shoulders and wiped her nose, smiling.

“Nose is dirty,” he smiled. “But it’s kind of cute.”

She laughed and kissed him as she handed the gun she held to Noble.

“I’m ready to get out of here,” she said. “Let’s go!”

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Disclaimer

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The authors 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.