Sunday, September 24, 2000 (12:40 am)

       Frank lay in a fetal position on the floor next to his bed, his body curled in on itself as he held his arms over his head in an effort to protect himself as much as he could.  It was an instinctive reaction, not something he had been trained to do.  Nothing, he knew, could really save a person from being shot at point-blank range.  He froze a moment later, not even breathing, when he felt the very cold business end of some kind of gun right next to his forehead.

       “Good evening, Mr. Hardy,” a low, almost reasonable sounding voice, said to him.  “I believe it is time for the two of us to have a serious discussion with each other.  As you know, if I wished it, you would be very dead right now.  In fact, I am very tempted to just finish you off and, yet, that seems very unsporting of me.  I am a great believer in giving chances, you see, though a wiser man might wish to do away with pests and not worry about it.  I do hate rash killings, however and I feel that I must give you this one, last, chance to obey me.”

       Frank swallowed, fear making it impossible for him to speak to the man.  He was glad he couldn’t speak, he would have told the man he would do anything, he was that scared.  The man didn’t really expect him to speak, however, instead, he continued.

       “Your friends and you will cease these discussions that you have in the snack bar,” the man said in a business-like voice.  “You will cease to discuss anything concerning myself or my associates.  You will go to your classes and you will go to your events, like football practice and you will return to your dorms and not worry about things that have nothing to do with you.  The next time, the very next time I see any of you involved in something you shouldn’t be, you, Mr. Hardy, will be making the payment for your friends idiocy.  You are, you see, the most helpless one of them all and yet the most dangerous one of them all.  That’s what tempts me to pull this trigger right now.  You’re too smart for your own good, Mr. Hardy.  More so than your brother, who can see, you are smart and you see things that you shouldn’t.  So, you can expect to be the one that dies when next you cross me.”

       Frank swallowed and forced himself not to whimper in fear.  He felt completely cold inside.

       “Remember, Mr. Hardy,” the man leaned close to him and whispered into his ear.  “Next time, the very next time, you are mine.  I may not give you the pleasure of a fast death.  I may just slowly take you apart with my bare hands and let you feel every agonizing moment of pain.  Remember.”

       Frank felt the gun withdrawn from his head and he lay shaking as he heard the door to his room close.  He found himself unable to move, unable to even push himself out of the fetal position he lay in.  He wanted to crawl under his bed and never come out again.  The man was completely correct.  Frank was an easy target.  The man could come after him anywhere, anytime and Frank wouldn’t know he was there until it was too late. 

       Frank felt a cold, hard, ball form in his stomach and knew he would have to force himself to fight past this.  He’d been scared before.  He’d been almost as dead before.  This was no worse than those and he had never let anyone intimidate him before. 

       Damnit, he thought as he continued to shake.  I wasn’t blind before!  I could anticipate a bad guy’s moves!  I could usually see them before they got to me.  It is different.  It is!

       He wanted to cry.  If he was honest with himself, he knew he wanted to cry.  He wanted to run home and hide in his parent’s room, or in his parent’s closet, as he had done as a little boy after a nightmare.  He had hid there even when he had leukemia, when he was afraid that death would find him if he stayed in his bed.  Frank had survived that, he had survived near-death in a hundred situations since then; he had to survive this.

       Frank finally rolled over so that he was on hands and knees.  He pushed himself to just his knees and used his bed to push himself up to his feet.  He stood, leaning against his bed, for several moments, until he could trust himself to walk again.  His stomach ached from fear and he was jittery as he made his way to his sink, where he washed his face.

       A knock on the door drew him up short and he froze for a moment, before the door opened and he heard a familiar voice,

       “Frank, you all right in here?” Jase Aleman asked him.  “God, Frank, you look awful.  What happened?  I thought I heard something going on in here but I wasn’t sure if it was your TV or not.  I saw Connor outside in the parking lot so I thought I’d better come check on you.”

       “I’m all right,” Frank said softly, forcing himself to speak normally.  “I, uh, just had a, uh, run-in with a madman, of sorts.”

       “Your pillow!” Jase exclaimed.  “Frank, what the heck happened?  You look as pale as a sheet!  Do you want me to run downstairs and get Connor?  Is Joe back? I could go and get him, if you want!”

       “No, that’s all right,” Frank said after swallowing a handful of water. 

       Frank told him a shortened version of what happened, leaving out the parts where Frank lay on the floor in terror, waiting to be dead and instead telling him the actual events and an abbreviated version of what was said.  Jase made several gasps as Frank spoke, though Frank had no idea what kind of gasps those were. 

       “I should have come in sooner,” Jase said.  “I thought I heard shots being fired but they were muffled.  I used to go with my dad to the firing range sometimes when I was younger.”

       “Your dad taught you to use a gun?” Frank asked, grateful for any subject to take his mind off of what happened. 

       “Yeah,” Jase said.  “He was a cop, you see.  It was in a rather small town but he loved his job.”

       “Was?” Frank asked, sympathetically.

       “Yes,” Jase said, softly.  “He’s dead now.  He was killed in the line of duty, just last year.  I still miss him a lot. I just… well, we weren’t that close.  He was always on duty and he didn’t have a lot of time for me.  Still, I wish he were still here.  When I really needed him, he was always there.”

       “I’m sorry, Jase,” Frank said to his friend.

       “S’ok,” Jase said and though Frank couldn’t see him, Frank suspected his neighbor was shrugging.  “I hate that he’s dead but he went the way he would have wanted to go.  He loved being a cop.  And they caught the guys who did it and threw the book at them so they won’t get out until I’m about 80 or so.”

       “I’m glad to hear they were caught,” Frank said, softly.  “Too many murderers don’t get caught and don’t get punished.  My father was a police detective before he went private, with the NY PD.  I think he likes the private sector more than the public.  He gets more variety in his work, too.”

       “And he gets to choose his cases,” Jase said.  “My dad would have liked that.  Sometimes he had to go after people he didn’t think were really involved in whatever case he was looking at.  But what can a guy do?  You have to obey your superiors.”

       “True,” Frank said.  “That’s how the public sector works, though.”

       “Hey, Connor!” Jase said then as the door opened again, this time not silently. 

       “Jase…” Connor said, slowly.  “Frank?”

       “I’d better get going,” Jase said to Frank.  “Take care of yourself, Frank, let me know if you need help with anything.”

       “Thanks, Jase,” Frank said, honestly.  Frank made his own way back to his bed and he sat down on it just as his legs gave out on him.  Once Jase was gone from the room, Frank allowed himself to start shaking again.  It had been easy to forget for a while but he felt like he was in shock. 

       “Frank? You want to fill me in?” Connor asked his friend.  Connor sat down on Frank’s bed and Frank felt a hand on his shoulder.  Frank pulled his legs up close to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.  “Frank, you’re going totally pale on me here and your pillow looks like it lost a pillow fight.  Talk to me, Frank.”

       Frank finally did, in a raspy voice fatigued from the reaction of his attack.  He told Connor everything, from the shots fired to what the man said, to how he felt both during and after the attack.  Frank couldn’t stop shaking now. 

       “I’ve probably been this scared before,” he finally admitted to Connor.  “I just don’t remember when.”

       Connor was quiet while Frank worked himself through his shaking fit and they finally subsided.

       “You know we’ll do everything we can to make sure that no one is able to either hurt or kill you, Frank,” Connor told him, softly.  “And we’ll do everything we can to make sure that you don’t ever have to face them again.  I think we’d better make absolutely sure that you aren’t alone anymore.  If I have to be somewhere, we’ll make sure Samantha or Chet or someone is here with you.  But we won’t let them take advantage of the fact that you can’t see, Frank.  That’s letting them win.”

       “That’s the truth, though,” Frank said.  “I can’t see.  Two weeks ago, almost three weeks ago, I was able to see.  I could have gotten out of that attack, hopefully with a minimum of pain but I wouldn’t feel like I can’t defend myself.”

       “You defended yourself pretty well just the other day, Frank,” Connor said, softly.  “And we both know that you and Sam could have been hurt then.  You didn’t let that scare you.  Why let this one?”

       Frank shrugged.  He didn’t know why.  He just knew how he’d felt during the attack and knew that he believed the man, believed that he would die if they continued to look for that man.  And he knew that they would look for the man.  They had to.  There was no other choice!

      

       It was still on Frank’s mind all through church the next morning, where he sat with his parents, Mandy, Connor, Sam, Vanessa, Chet and Kaitlyn.  His mother knew something was wrong with Frank, her internal mom sensor seemed to be functioning quite well because as soon as church was over, Laura had trapped Frank near the back of the church to ask him what was wrong.  Frank told her only briefly but said nothing of his fear or his feelings of inadequacy.  He did not want to worry his mother over much, though he knew she worried anyway. 

       Connor and Mandy separated from them to head to the police station to go through mug sheets while Samantha, Vanessa and Frank went to see Joe at the hospital.  Laura and Fenton went to dinner, since they still wouldn’t allow more than two people at a time in Joe’s room; they would go by in an hour or so to see their son.  Frank and the rest loaded into Vanessa’s jeep for the ride to the hospital. 

       The hospital was quiet when they got there, though several family members were gathered in various rooms.  Frank, Vanessa and Sam were stopped outside of Joe’s room, however, by one of the nurses who oversaw the Intensive Care Unit.

       “What’s wrong?” Frank demanded as the nurse held his shoulder and told them to wait a minute.

       “Your brother took a turn for the worse this morning,” the nurse said in a soft voice.  “Please come with me for a few minutes, the doctor would like to explain what has happened.  They tried to reach your parents but weren’t able to do so.”

       “We were in church,” Frank said in a choked voice.  “What’s wrong with my brother?”

       The nurse led them into one of the waiting rooms.  “Please, just wait here.  The doctor will be here in a few minutes.”

       “Why can’t you tell…?” Vanessa tried to ask but she stopped, obviously when the nurse left the room.  “Why couldn’t she tell us?”

       “I don’t know,” Frank said.  “What could have gone wrong now?”

       The doctor didn’t come for another twenty minutes, while Frank sat and worried about his brother. Was his brother still alive?  Was he dying?  It had to be bad for them to have to wait for the doctor to come.

       “Frank,” Doctor Carlisle said a moment later.  “Thank you for waiting for me, I wanted to let you know what happened before you see Joe.”

       “What did happen?” Frank demanded.  “I’m tired of waiting.”

       Doctor Carlisle sighed but Frank knew he was putting on his ‘lecture face.’ 

       “The poison that was given to Joe replicated sometime last night so that this morning he experienced more convulsions and seizures,” Doctor Carlisle said.  “He stopped breathing twice, though his heart never quite stopped.  He’s unconscious again.  We’ve put him on a new anti-toxin, one that is still really being tested in clinical trials.  It was the only thing that I could come up with to counteract the poison he was given.”

       “Is he… is he going to be all right?” Vanessa asked in a shaky voice.

       “We hope he will,” Carlisle said.  “It may take a little while, however.  This stuff we gave him, well, it’s incredible, but it’s slow.  It will slowly clean out his bloodstream, counter-acting chemical toxins.  A man named Doctor Rich created it.  He was a genius and it’s really too bad he went south like he did.”

       “Doctor Rich?” Frank said, shocked that the man who blinded him was suddenly involved in this new case.  “He created the anti-toxin that you’re giving to Joe?”

       “Yes,” the doctor said.  “But, I do think it was Joe’s only hope of surviving, that’s why I got approval to give it to him.  His vital signs have been stabilizing over the last half hour, in fact.  He’s still not conscious.”

       “Can we see him now?” Vanessa asked. 

       “Sure,” Doctor Carlisle said.  “He won’t be able to hear you, but you can sit with him for a few minutes.  Are your parents coming, Frank?”

       Frank nodded as he stood.

       “You can all three go in,” Doctor Carlisle said.  “Just try to be quiet while you’re in there.”

       Samantha led Frank into the ICU ward and into Joe’s private room.  There was a nurse sitting with him, checking the various instruments that were attached to Joe.  She smiled as Samantha, Frank and Vanessa entered.  Frank heard the instruments, two of them beeped, softly. 

       “He’s so pale,” Vanessa whispered to Frank.  “More pale than the last time I saw him.”

       “He’ll be OK,” Sam told her.  “He will.  Don’t worry about it, Van, he’ll be OK.”

       “I hope,” Vanessa said.  Frank heard her sit down into a chair; it squeaked.  Sam led Frank to the other side of Joe’s bed and sat him down in the chair there.  Frank found one of Joe’s hands and held it for a moment, then leaned back.

       “Keep fighting little brother,” Frank said to Joe.  “That’s what you always tell me to do.  Keep fighting.”

       Samantha led him out again a few minutes later and they sat in the waiting room to wait for Frank’s parents and for Connor and Mandy.  Frank kept thinking about what the doctor had revealed, that the anti-toxin was linked to Doctor Rich.  Why did his name pop up and why did it ring bells in Frank’s head?  Doctor Rich was out of the country and he would be arrested within minutes if he showed up at any airport in the US.  Besides, this was just a cure, right?  Just something Doctor Rich had already invented?  If it was in the test stages that meant it had been invented a few years ago. 

       “What are you thinking?” Samantha asked Frank.

       “Doctor Rich,” Frank said.  “I guess I’m a bit like Joe is with Uncle Derak.  Doctor Rich’s name came up and I want to immediately blame everything on him.”

       “He’s out of the country, right?” Samantha asked.

       Frank nodded.  “And besides that, there’s no other way this case relates to him, that we know of.  It’s just I heard his name.  Anyway, Connor and Mandy will hopefully be here soon.”

       “Doesn’t it take a while to go through mug sheets?” Samantha asked.  “I mean, there have to be thousands of people in the books if not more than that.”

       “They’ll do a sketch first, then do a computer match,” Frank told her.  “That’s the fastest way to do things these days.  Mandy already had one drawn so they wouldn’t have to wait for a police sketch artist.  It should just be a matter of scanning it in and then running the matches.”

       “Oh, good,” Samantha said.  “I thought they’d be stuck at the police station all day.”

       The Hardy’s parents arrived first and Frank told them both what the doctor had said.  Laura ran into Joe’s room while Fenton questioned Frank about the last couple of days. 

       “This is getting to be too much, Frank,” Fenton told his son.  “I really think you should all come stay at home for a few days.”

       “I think so too,” Frank agreed without argument.  He’d been about to make the same suggestion himself.  There was such a thing as courage and such a thing as stupidity.  Staying at the dorm was stupidity.

       “And tonight I want you and the other kids to go over everything that’s happened since the first attack,” Fenton said.  “I’ll hire bodyguards if I have to, to keep you all safe.”

       “I don’t think you have to be that extreme, dad,” Frank protested.  

       “I don’t think keeping all of you safe is extreme, Frank,” his father sounded angry and tired.  “And I think three trips to the hospital in the last week alone is three trips too many.  I’m not going to let any of you get killed and that’s final.”

       “Yes, sir,” Frank said, obediently.  Sometimes, his father could make him feel like a kid, even at twenty.  He supposed his father would always have that ability, even when Frank was sixty.

       “We got him!” Mandy’s voice rang out a moment later and they turned their attention to her. 

       “Well, we might have found him,” Connor amended as they came closer and sat down in the squishy seats across from Frank and Fenton.  “The guy’s name is Thomas Pankovic.  He was in the computers because he was in jail for a few years on charges of fraud, blackmail and theft, all stuff done at a job he held here in Bayport.  There’s a problem with him, though.  He was declared dead last year in an automobile crash.”

       “Then how…?” Frank asked.

       “I don’t know how, Frank,” Mandy said.  “But as soon as Connor and I both saw him we knew it was the same guy.  He has distinctive features, ones I took great pains to memorize the first time we ran into him.  He’s tall, too, about six foot, five inches, hefty and from all accounts strong.  There’s another problem, though, Frank.  He doesn’t have any ties to our family that we could find.  He was initially arrested by two police officers that were clued in by the guy’s employer.  I guess the guy was not covering his tracks as well as he should have.  He was out on parole when he supposedly died.”

       “But you don’t think he’s dead…” Frank said.

       “I don’t,” Mandy said.  “According to Con, his car was a total loss, it caught on fire and it burned for almost two hours before the fire department could put it out.  He was caught in a head-on collision with a semi.  Nobody survived the crash.  They didn’t expect to be able to find a body, though they did find some… residue.”

       “So you think someone else was in the car when it crashed?  How did they determine Pankovic was the one that died?” their father asked in his analytical voice.

       “Eye witness reports just before the crash said they saw a man of Pankovic’s general description,” Connor stated in answer.  “The police didn’t see any reason to dispute the claims.”

       “Now we just have to figure out why,” Frank said, softly.  “Why he’s after us.  What he’s up to.”

       “We can have Vanessa run a search on him, can’t we?” Mandy asked.  “Maybe there is a connection we just don’t know about yet.”

       Frank nodded and leaned back in his seat with his eyes closed.  He felt a hand on his other shoulder but didn’t bother to open his eyes.  No need to, really. 

       Frank and Samantha went in to see Joe a short while later, after Frank’s mom had come back to tell them that Joe was still unconscious but out of danger.  Samantha led Frank into the room, then, sensing Frank’s need to be alone with his brother, she kissed him on the cheek and told him she’d be back after she found a restroom.  Frank smiled somewhat wanly at her but appreciated the gesture.

       Frank spoke quietly to his brother, telling him that he had to come back and help Frank nail the person who kept trying to kill Joe and Frank.  Frank also told Joe, in a low whisper, that he didn’t think he would be able to function without Joe.  It was one thing to be alone and be able to see and while Frank knew that Sam and Mandy would help all they could, Frank wanted his partner back.

       Finally, his mother came back to tell him that the doctors needed to run more tests and to suggest that they go back to their dorms to get whatever they needed to spend the night that night.  Frank sighed but finally agreed and Laura led him out to Samantha.

 

       That night, at the Hardy house, after stops at Eldridge and Tauhausen Halls, Frank sat on the couch in the Hardy living room, sandwiched between Samantha on one side and Connor and Mandy on the other side.  He heard his father talking to his mother nearby, probably on the love seat across the room and he heard Vanessa in the recliner beside the couch talking to Samantha about a class project.

       Frank mulled over the case again, finding it impossible to focus on homework of any kind.  Doctor Rich.  Did he really figure into this or was it just coincidence that his name came up again?  If he had the cure for what poisoned Joe, had he been responsible for the poison itself?  Those things sometimes came in twos, Frank knew.

       “We need to see if we can get our hands on the large man,” Frank said out loud.  “See if he really is this Pankovic guy that you found or if he just looks like him.”

       “I can get Chet and Eric to help me with that,” Connor said and Frank heard Connor crack his knuckles.  Mandy giggled.

       “I’ve got to come with you,” Frank said.  “I’ll stay out of the way, but I need to ask him the questions.”

       “All right,” Connor agreed placidly and Mandy giggled again.  It was getting on Frank’s nerves.

      

       Later that night, after everyone else had gone to bed, Frank lay on the couch in the living room, where he’d agreed to sleep that night, giving Sam Frank’s room, Connor Joe’s room and Van sleeping in with Mandy.  Frank stared up sightlessly at the darkness around him, still thinking, unable to sleep.  He sat up a moment later when he heard something outside the house.  The sound of footfall on the gravel in front of the house, next to the window met his ears and he reached immediately for his cane.  Frank swung to his feet, pulling his robe on around him as he went to the door.  As he keyed open the door he gave a startled cry as the door opened and someone fell through, knocking Frank backward!

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. I've only borrowed them to play with for a while but I promise to return them whenever I've finished with them.  (I make no promises as to condition, that's entirely up to them).  I promise, I'm only writing for fun and I'm not making a single dime off of this (unless you count personal fulfillment).