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

Deanna practiced the more colorful part of her vocabulary as she struggled to keep her SUV on the road and she winced when she heard the passenger side scrape against a barrier on the right side of the road. The semi hit them again from behind, sending the SUV swerving the other way and Deanna wrenched the wheel, steered into the swerve before straightening again and speeding away from the semi. She sent her battered, brand new, SUV through several hair-raising lane changes, gaining ground on the semi before she whipped down an exit ramp and off the highway.

Deanna pulled into a secluded alley behind a grocery store and took a deep breath, leaning forward to rest her head on the steering wheel for a few minutes. She felt a hand touch her back and she looked to see Fenton, one hand rubbing the back of her neck.

"Are you all right, Deanna?" Fenton asked her.

"I’m good," Deanna said in a shaky voice. "I'm great. How's everyone else? Anyone hurt?"

"I'm good," Frank's voice was shaky and he had an arm wrapped tightly around Samantha's shoulders. "Still in as many pieces as I was before the crash. Sam?"

Frank gently touched Samantha's face, relying on his fingers to tell him what his eyes couldn't. Frank smiled gently at her as she sat up again.

"I'm fine," Samantha said. "Just a little tossed around. I think I hit the back of my head on the top of the seat."

"Lean forward," Frank instructed. "Show me where."

Samantha placed Frank's hand where her bump was. It was small but painful and she winced when he probed it too hard.

"We should get her some ice when we get a chance," Frank commented. "That could get bigger."

"Audrey?" Deanna turned to look at her partner.

"Fine," Audrey said. "Angry as hell though. I saw who hit us!"

"Who?" Deanna asked suspiciously.

"That rat bastard, Williger!" Audrey declared. "I swear, when I find him again I am going to rip his head off and feed it to him."

"Williger? WILLIGER is involved in this? How?" Deanna demanded. She cursed softly under her breath – mostly in other languages – before she spoke again. "Fenton, I would like to apologize to you."

"What for?" Totally confused, Fenton glanced at Deanna, perplexed.

"It seems we suddenly have two cases on our hands," Deanna said. "I just figured out who your sister-in-law bought her explosives from – and why she died for it as well."

"You did? You have? How?" Fenton asked.

"Fredrick Williger, aka Freddy Two-Banger, is responsible for a good chunk of the illegal arms trade in the northeast. Two years ago he and a team of his more exuberant workers managed to steal an army supply base blind, mostly because he had inside help on the base who helped him do it. We tracked down the accomplices and put them away and the army redid security on all its bases again but, to this day, we haven't been able to get our hands on Williger. Nobody has actually seen HIM with any of the illegal arms and any of his people we've caught absolutely refuse to finger him."

Fenton nodded. "So, Cathy either saw him when she made her purchase, or in some other way was able to identify him, which meant he had to kill her or have her killed." He shook his head. "So why is he trying to kill us? And why is he driving that semi himself?"

"Like I said, it's my fault," Deanna admitted. "You see, well, he doesn't like me very much. I'm the one that found his insiders at the army base and I'm very close to getting a federal warrant for his arrest. I just never heard he was in this area or I would have been on the look-out for him."

"I'd better call it in," Audrey said. "We can get a different team out here to track him – and that semi – down. I've never seen Willinger act so openly before. I wonder what's made him so desperate?"

Deanna shrugged as she opened the door to her SUV and climbed out. She walked around to the back to check out the damage. Fortunately, it was built like a tank, and while the back end was mashed pretty well, there was no leaking gas, and even the exhaust pipe was good. Deanna took a deep breath and turned back to the front of the car, walking all around to make sure nothing had been knocked loose or jarred out of place.

"Remind me to buy a Hummer next time," Deanna commented idly as she opened the door again. Audrey had opened her door and was talking on her cell phone with the home office, her free hand over her other ear to block out outside noise.

"Will it go again?" Fenton asked Deanna.

"Yeah," Deanna agreed. "It will go again. I just needed to make sure that we weren't going to blow up if we did go again. I'd better check in with the other teams and let them know we've hit a snag and to keep going on their ends.

"Don't worry, Fenton, we'll get back on the road – soon."

**** **** **** ****

TIME NOTE: THURSDAY OCTOBER 26, 2000 ( Ten a.m. )

Mandy huddled next to Connor as the SUV, driven by Detective Noble, drove smoothly down the road toward the deserted mental hospital located about twenty miles away from Cambridge . She felt peaceful inside, as if she was heading in the right direction at last. A few minutes before a huge upswelling of anger swept through her, filling her from top to bottom for no reason she could ascertain. She knew, then, that it was Joe.

For the first time since this whole thing happened, she knew what Joe was feeling. If he felt anger, it meant he was fighting back, it meant he was not giving in to what was happening to him.

Almost as soon as the anger began it was gone, and Mandy collapsed against Connor in an upsurge of pride and happiness. They were going in the right direction. When she saw the deed to the old mental hospital she knew it immediately. Something about the place screamed "Joe is here!" and she knew – she knew that she would find her twin.

"You kids are to listen to me when we get to where we're going, got it?" Detective Noble said again. "We don't want you getting hurt."

"We will, sir," Mandy promised, a little too quickly. She saw Connor stare at her and she winked at him, slightly. She would listen so long as what the detective said made sense but if she felt she knew better, she would obey her instincts and her feelings.

She had a better chance of finding Joe that way than by some clinical, proven, method.

The city of Cambridge began to fade away into gently rolling plains and a patchy forest or two. Mandy sighed as she closed her eyes, trying not to allow impatience get the better of her. She wanted to be there now. She wanted to search, to find her brother and hold him and tell him everything was going to be okay, that he would never have to worry about anyone hurting him again. Despite the anger he felt, she knew he would have demons to battle – the ones he fought when he was ten. He might be older now, but she knew he had to fight it all again – because he would more strongly feel he should have fought Andrew off.

The feelings of inadequacy. The hostile tempers. The feeling that he should have done more to prevent this from happening. I can help him battle every one of those feelings and I will.

I'm not ten anymore either.

"Do you miss your aunt?" Connor asked her quietly a few minutes later.

Mandy sat up and looked at him, frowning. "Aunt Cathy? Why would I?"

Connor shrugged. "She's still your aunt, Mandy. She did wrong, we know that. She helped Andrew with what he was doing and didn't care what it would do to Joe in the process. But she was your aunt. You haven't said a word about how it makes you feel."

Mandy sighed and studied her hands. Her fingernails were chipped and cracked, the polish from her last manicure nearly gone. She chewed on her thumbnail until Connor removed her hand from her mouth and held it tightly in his own.

"I don't know how I feel," Mandy said finally. "That's why I haven't said anything. She may have been my aunt but Joe is my brother – my twin. I do know I'm so angry at her I want to hurt something…but she's dead. I can't ever tell her what I think of her for what she did. Maybe that's selfish of me but it's honest, too. I want to bring her back to life, chew her out…"

Mandy shifted uncomfortably. She hated it when people asked her hard questions like this. Sorting out her emotions was no easier for her than Frank or Joe or her father. She preferred to keep them to herself until long after the hurt went away.

"I don't want her dead," she sighed. "I don't think I even want Andrew dead. I just want him to be locked away – for a very long time. I couldn’t care less if he gets help. I don't know how insane he is or whatever, but I want to make sure he doesn't ever do this to anyone else, that he leaves Joe alone for the rest of our lives."

"But you don't miss your aunt?" Connor asked again.

Mandy turned to look at him. "Why are you asking?" she asked.

Connor shifted uncomfortably and stared out the window for a minute, something uncharacteristic for her boyfriend. Mandy turned as far as the seatbelt allowed and touched his shoulder, turning his face toward her. "What is it?"

"You know I have an aunt…" Connor said. "Aunt Peggi?"

Mandy nodded. Connor had talked about his aunt quite a bit over the last year, usually stories from when he was much younger and spending time at her home.

"I think… I'm pretty sure she caused my Uncle Conrad's death," Connor said. "It's never been proven, but he had a heart attack very suddenly when he was only thirty-three or thirty-four. I overhead my parents one day about three years ago talking about how the doctors were sure he hadn't had any heart problems before his death and they could never figure out, exactly, what else caused his death.

"I was thinking about that last year, after I met you and Frank and Joe and I remember something she said to me when I was fifteen or sixteen. About how, even though you work hard and you do everything right, sometimes you have to do something you wouldn't ever do if it meant fixing something that was wrong. I tried to ask her what she meant but she only repeated it.

"I started wondering if maybe Aunt Peggi did something to Uncle Conrad to kill him. I was only nine or ten when he died but he was my favorite uncle. You know, the kind that will play ball with you all day long, show you how to throw a football, instill in you the love of the game? And I thought about how much more he could have taught me if he hadn't died…and I realized if Aunt Peggi really did cause his death…well…I don't think I could ever forgive her. I just wouldn't want her dead."

Mandy nodded as she leaned her head back on his shoulder. "I think you're right," she said, softly. "I don't want Aunt Cathy dead. I just don't think I'm going to miss her very much. We weren't that close, really. I didn't see her very often after Uncle Derak went to jail. And I think she may have had an involvement in warping Andrew even more than Uncle Derak did."

Connor nodded and gently stroked Mandy's long, blonde hair. She relaxed against him even more and closed her eyes, half-dozing.

I can forgive a lot, Mandy thought. But I can't forgive them for hurting my brother. I can't.

The SUV finally stopped about twenty minutes later in front of an old, deserted, three-story building. The building was large and L-shaped, with bars over part of the windows. A fence ran in front of the property but someone had already broken the lock on the gate and opened it, as there were two cars already parked in the overgrown parking area.

Detective Noble parked next to the other two vehicles and climbed out ahead of Mandy and Connor. They gathered with Bill, Kacey and two police officers to look at a layout of the hospital which was spread over the hood of one of the cars.

"It looks like there's three main entrance points," Kacey pointed out. "Not considering any broken windows or holes in the wall we might find. They're here, here and here."

She pointed them out on the map, clearly lining them out for each of the team members. An expert at search and extraction, she was a quick read when it came to reading architectural drawings.

"I think we'll go like this," Bill, as the senior F.B.I. agent, said. "Noble, you take the two kids and start here at the front and work your way down this hallway to here," he pointed on the map. "When you reach these stairs go up."

"Down," Mandy interrupted. "We have to go down."

Bill blinked and stared at her. "Why down?"

"That's where he is," she said. "Down. Somewhere down."

Bill frowned. "It doesn't look like there's a basement in this place. It's all above ground which makes the first floor the…first floor."

Mandy shook her head insistently. "Somewhere in there is a way to go down. It may look like a half staircase. It may look like a half of a ladder or something like that. I just know it's down."

"Are you sure, Mandy?" Connor asked her.

Mandy nodded her head insistently.

"The rest of us will search up," Bill said finally, not really agreeing but not disagreeing either. "If you find a way to go down, contact me and let me know. I don't want any team going into a situation where they may meet up with hostiles without backup. Got it?"

"Yes sir," was chorused around the team.

"Head out," Bill motioned.

Mandy and Connor followed Detective Noble into the hospital and Mandy immediately put a hand to her nose and pinched her nostrils together.

"Ew, what's that smell?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," Noble admitted. "Maybe some animals got in here and died."

"It reeks," Mandy made a face.

They walked cautiously down the hallway and checked every single room they ran across. Most of the rooms were empty, emptied out at the time the hospital closed. A few rooms still had a table and a couple more had bed frames in them but the mattresses were already decomposing into mush.

Mandy checked every wall, every floor, every crevice for any sign of a down staircase but, by the time they reached the end of the hallway, they found nothing at all of help. They did, however, run into another of the teams, consisting of the two police officers.

"Here's the end of the line," Officer Brigsby said, smiling, as he held a gun on them.

"Hand over your weapon, Detective," Officer Turnston ordered. "Right now."

"What's going on?" Detective Noble demanded as he reached into his holster and pulled out his gun. He set it on the ground and slid it off in another direction, away from the two officers.

"What's going on, Detective, is this. We've been paid a lot of money to stop you guys in your tracks. If you cooperate, nothing else will happen. If you fight us, well, we'll just have to kill you and get it over with. Now, come with us."

Mandy and Connor stared at each other in consternation as they raised their hands and followed.

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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.