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

Mandy anxiously rocked back and forth as she looked out the window of the SUV in which she rode, as if each motion made the car go faster and get her to her twin’s side that much sooner. Agent Reilly drove as rapidly as he felt safe, but Mandy clenched her fists, willing the agent to drive faster.

Connor took the hand closest to him and squeezed lightly before he put an arm around her shoulders. She smiled weakly at him and sighed, forcing herself to relax against him.

“We’ll be there soon, Mandy,” Connor said gently. “We’ll be there in no time at all.”

“Not soon enough,” Mandy muttered as she forced back the urge to start rocking again. “I know…I just…I’m so afraid that something will happen before I get there – that he’ll just disappear or something. I know that’s stupid but I can’t help it.”

As Connor rubbed her neck, gently, Mandy relaxed further. Joe was found!

Her father had not given her much more information than that over the phone, except to say he was taking both Joe and Frank to the nearest hospital. Mandy forced back another knot of anxiety as she thought of what Andrew had probably done to her brother.

“I’m going to rip his lungs out and feed them to him,” Mandy muttered. “And then I may hang him out and let the crows feed on him for awhile. Yeah, that sounds good.”

Connor cocked an eyebrow, bemused at her ranting. Mandy ignored him in favor of more creative ways to punish Andrew. Her more interesting ideas, involving corkscrews, made even the agents in the front seat smile, and Bill looked over at his current partner.

“We could hire her on,” he said to Kacey, who stretched and yawned. “And use her to interrogate our more recalcitrant prisoners.”

Kacey blinked at the older agent and shook her head. Mandy watched them for a moment and sighed, relaxing again.

“Did you just use the word recalcitrant in a sentence, Billy?” Kacey asked the other agent. “I mean…recalcitrant? Did you look that one up in the thesaurus?”

Bill quirked a grin at her and shrugged. “Maybe.”

Kacey laughed again and shook her head. She turned in her seat and Mandy saw an amused expression in her eyes.

“We like to tease Bill, you know,” she said. “He normally has about two words to rub together unless he’s in charge, then he gets all gabby on us.”

“Oh, ha ha,” Bill glared at her.

Mandy smiled, though and felt better. She still wanted to get to her brother post-haste, but she was less anxious. She worried, though, about what his kidnapping had done to Joe. Joe was so strong in many ways and in others, he was a worried little boy. And being an adult, going through rape again…

Mandy didn’t want to face it. She would, because she had to be there and be strong for her twin, but she didn’t want to face it. Merely imagining the expression in Joe's eyes made her blanch; what would it feel like to actually see the expression, to know the pain that Joe suffered while Andrew held him?

Mandy leaned into Connor's arm as he put it around her shoulders, and she wiped a tear that fell down her cheek. Connor quieted her, speaking gently to her in a low tone. The words were nonsensical but she calmed and relaxed, reaching inward for the strength everyone said she had.

"Almost there," Kacey Turner said from the front seat. Mandy smiled at her even though Kacey couldn't see it, and nodded. She took Connor's arm from around her shoulders and held his hand tightly in her own.

"Love you, babe," Connor said softly as he gently stroked her cheek.

"Love you too." Mandy kissed the hand she held, and Connor grinned.

It took moments – or days – but Bill parked the car in front of a four-story hospital located on the outskirts of Cambridge . Mandy threw her seatbelt off and flew out the door of the SUV, racing through the front doors, stopping only when she saw her father standing nearby.

"Daddy!" she called out. "Where is he? Is he all right? I want to see him!"

"Mandy…" Fenton turned to her and drew her close, kissing the top of her blonde head as he held her tightly in his arms. "He's in with the doctors right now, sweetie. We're going to have to wait a little while before we can see him. They're… well, he deserves as much privacy as he can get right now."

Mandy stared up into her father's eyes and wilted, wrapping her arms tightly around him again and holding on for dear life. Fenton enfolded in her own arms, rocking her back and forth as he led her – and Connor, Kacey and Bill – into the nearby waiting room.

"Where'd Audrey and Deanna go?" Bill asked.

"Still at the scene," Fenton said. "Going over it with a fine-tooth comb. They called a crime scene unit in to gather evidence."

"Must be where Bobby flew off to," Kacey commented. "He likes nothing more than going over a good crime scene with a fine-tooth comb.”

"I'm going to go outside and call Deanna, you wait here," Bill said to Kacey. He went back out into the hallway, and Mandy turned back to her father.

"Did they say how long it would be before we can see Joe?" Mandy asked. "What…is Andrew in jail?"

The last was said in a cold, flat, tone. A fiery glint of hope filled Mandy's expressive blue eyes, a hope combined with a look of pure hate.

"No," Fenton admitted as he rubbed the scratches on his cheek – scratches Mandy saw for the first time. "He got away."

"WHAT?" Mandy's voice crescendoed, and Fenton put a hand over her mouth.

"Hospital, Amanda," Fenton warned her. "Hospital. Quiet down."

"But how'd he get away? There were… you were all there. He can still come after Joe again!"

"I know," Fenton agreed. "But I promise you, Mandy-Nic, he's not going to succeed. He took me by surprise, to be honest. We should have cuffed him the second we got in the room, but…"

Fenton swallowed nervously and forced back the image from his mind. He'd seen it when Joe was ten and it was Derak attacking him. Now it was Andrew…and the same lost and hurt expression on Joe's face that haunted Fenton. "I didn't see anything but Joe for a while. Couldn't care less about Andrew or…or anything. I just wanted to help your brother. It was Joe who reminded us about him, and when I tried to take him into custody he scratched my face and took off running."

Fenton looked away, ruefully. "Not one of my more professional hours, sweetie. All of us were caught flat-footed and Andrew…he's got a lot of Joe's speed going for him. Hardys are long-distance men… .Mathews are speedy…"

Mandy didn't smile at her father's attempt at a joke. She settled into a seat beside her boyfriend, leaning into his embrace.

"So he's on the loose," she murmured in a low voice. "That's good."

"Why's that good?" Connor turned a stunned expression in her direction. "You WANT that s.o.b. on the loose?"

Mandy turned a calm expression his way, the smile not at all sincere.

"Of course I don't want him on the loose," she said in a low voice. "But at least with him on the loose I don't have to wait for him to get bail."

Her smile grew even wider and she turned to look at her father, blue eyes meeting brown eyes in an even gaze.

"This way," she said. "I can hunt him down myself and do what needs to be done. I'm going to do what I promised. I'm going to kill him!"

** ** **

"We're almost done, Joe; are you all right?" Doctor Virginia 'Ginny' Brody asked Joe as he lay on the table, trying desperately to ignore the doctor who examined him and the crime scene investigator – another woman named Jennifer Hudson – who gathered evidence from him as though he were an inanimate object. At every step they asked his permission to do what they felt they had to do, but it was no less degrading than what Andrew had done to him. Joe wanted to curl up and go to sleep for the next twenty or so years, to sleep long enough to completely forget about what happened.

He didn't want to face anyone. He didn't want to talk to his family, to the doctors, to the police officers and agents. He wanted to be left alone.

He wanted to forget. That was all.

But Joe said nothing about any of that. Whenever asked if they could do something else that made Joe feel like a dead man, Joe agreed in a remote, emotionless, flat voice that sounded nothing like how he usually sounded.

Joe was patched up. Stitches applied where they needed to be applied (and, he'd been told, the kind that would just dissolve into his body and cause less trauma to him), scrapes treated and bandaged, ice packs applied to sensitive areas or pulled muscles. Joe was currently attached to two different IV’s, one for fluids and one with antibiotics, and he'd had blood drawn and samples taken and…

He wanted them to all just go away!

"All right, Joe, that's the last of it," Doctor Brody smiled at him. "You did great, Joe, just fine. Why don't you lie back and rest for a few minutes before I send your family in to see you."

No! Joe shouted it in his mind but didn't have the energy to say it out loud. At the moment he just didn’t care. He doubted he could keep them out of his room, whether he said anything or not. He knew he needed them – somewhere very deep inside was the voice of his therapist, Doctor Morgan, telling him to draw his family close when something bad happened – but he didn't want to hear the voice.

Didn't want to pull them close. Didn't want to see them or let them see him.

Didn't want them to know what an abysmal failure he'd been. Nineteen years old was different from ten.

Deep down he knew. It was his fault. He should have fought his attacker off sooner. Even when he thought it was Derak, he should have stopped him.

How can they stand to look at me now? I can't stand to look at myself!

The curtain slid to one side and a blonde-haired nymph flew toward him, throwing caution to the wind and wrapping her slender arms around his shoulders.

"Joe," Mandy breathed into his ear and Joe felt tears, those damnable tears he didn't deserve to cry, fall from his eyes. If he could get to them he would wipe them before Mandy could see them, but in that unnerving way Mandy had, his sister knew immediately when Joe started to cry.

"Don't block me out, Joe," Mandy whispered as she sat up and brushed away the tears. "I'm here for you. I'm so sorry…I wish…"

"Not your fault," Joe whispered. "Not your fault. Did your best. My fault…"

Mandy's eyes widened and she sat back, shocked. Joe wondered if she would start to hate him now, if she would see what a failure he was.

"No…" Mandy said. "It is NOT your fault, Joe. Bloody hell, did you give yourself to him? Did you beg him to rape you? Did you say 'gee, Andrew, how about we shag right now?'. NO. You didn't. It's not your fault!"

Joe looked away from her and toward the curtain on the other side of the bed. He wanted to shove that curtain between them because he knew Mandy didn't understand. She was a girl.

"Mandy," he said, softly. "I'm just really tired. The drugs they put me on; the doctor gave me a sedative and I'm about to fall asleep. Can…can you just leave me alone for a while? Please? I need…"

Leave, he begged mentally. Leave me alone. Please just leave me alone!

Mandy crossed her arms and Joe sighed mentally, even wearier than before. He knew that expression, that body language. Mandy at her most stubborn. His twin ruled the entire family when it came to pure stubborn bullheadedness, and Joe squeezed his eyes shut, hoping if he ignored her she would leave.

Instead, he heard the sound of a chair being pulled up to his bedside. He opened his eyes to see her sitting down, crossing her legs and getting comfortable.

"I'm not leaving," Mandy said. "You can face facts right now or not. But I'm staying."

Joe didn't have the strength to fight her. Just like everything else, he was too weak. He couldn't even get his twin to obey.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to ignore her, to fall asleep like he meant to do earlier, but his mind betrayed him.

"Do you want to know what happened while you were gone?" Mandy asked quietly a few minutes later; she obviously knew Joe was still awake.

Joe opened his eyes and looked over at her but said nothing.

"What all do you remember?" she asked him. "Do you remember being at the house?"

Joe shook his head. He didn't remember much except being at the hospital where Vanessa was being treated and being kicked out of her room by Andrea Bender. He remembered that very well. Then something about food and going to the house….

"It blew up," Mandy said softly. "We…your car was parked out front and it got turned upside down. We…no…everyone thought you were dead. Everyone was convinced, for a little while, that you were in the house when it blew up, but I knew better. I could feel…inside I knew you were alive."

Joe sat up a little. Despite not wanting to care – he did. It changed nothing of how he felt about himself, but he needed to hear.

"We…Frank and Sam and Connor and I, were all outside when the house blew up," Mandy said. "Frank got hurt pretty badly – his leg and arm. Connor's got some busted ribs. Sam and I were knocked around a bit but we're both okay now. And I kept telling them you were alive and Frank believed me almost right away. We convinced dad and they started looking for you. We knew…we thought it was Uncle Derak."

Mandy told Joe about Uncle Derak blowing up in the helicopter – and Joe felt nothing about his uncle's loss except the sense of relief. She told him about being so close to finding him when he was still being held in Bayport. Joe was stunned to learn how close to home he had been during the first part of his captivity, and he realized Mandy knew it was Andrew who had him even before Joe had figured it out.

"So we came to Cambridge and started looking. We had the F.B.I. helping too and this lady, her name's Deanna, she was positive she knew where you were. So Daddy and Frank…they went with her and I went to check out another location. I'm sorry I wasn't there when they found you."

Mandy looked down, slightly flushed. "I was positive you were in the hospital. Even when we were there I was positive. It wasn't until Agent Merrill – Deanna – called to tell us you were found that I felt differently. I just…it seemed so…and you…"

"Whoa," Joe halted his sister's words. "It's okay. We aren't psychic you know."

Mandy smiled a little sheepishly. "I know."

"Okay then," Joe said. No sense in her taking on his guilt. No way was that going to happen.

"Aunt Cathy is dead too," Mandy said finally. "She…she was helping Andrew. We don't know why. She kidnapped Frank and dropped him in the woods. Someone shot her there and left Frank – we don't know why that happened, either."

"Is Frank okay?" Joe asked finally. He hadn't seen his brother. Maybe Frank was ashamed of him; after all, Joe wouldn’t blame him.

"He's in another room here, getting checked over," Mandy said. "He's in fairly bad shape but he'll be okay. And I know he's going to want to see you as soon as he can, so rest up while you have a chance."

Joe nodded and closed his eyes. "I'm going to take a nap now," he hinted to his sister.

"Go ahead, big brother," Mandy smiled at her twin. She settled back into her chair and got comfortable and spoke softly.

"You're off-duty now, Joe. It's time for me to keep the demons at bay."

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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.