September 22, 2000 (7 PM)

       “God, Frank,” Connor thought as he looked around, berating himself for having left his friend behind.  “FRANK!  FRANK!!”

       He looked around the back of his SUV and then on his side and then inside, hoping to see that Frank was just trying to scare Connor to death but he found no signs of his friend.  There was no way Frank could have wandered away too far, no reason for him to have left the SUV, not on his own.  Connor felt helpless as he continued to look for his friend, looking inside of every car that he found, listening as hard as he could for anything that would lead him to Frank’s location.

       At the end of the long row of cars, Connor stopped as he heard what sounded like a thumping sound in one of the cars on the end.  He stopped and listened closely, then ran to the trunk of the car where he definitely heard several thumping sounds. 

       “Frank?!” Connor called out.  “Frank, is that you?”

       He heard what sounded like a muffled yes and more thumping on the roof of the trunk.  Connor checked out the catch on the trunk, checking to see if he could open it but it wouldn’t budge.  He jiggled at it, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed Michael.

       “I need you to find out who owns a blue Ford Taurus, license NY 2078.  I need the keys to it like now,” Connor said as soon as Michael said hello.

       “What? Why?” Michael asked.

       “Because Frank is locked in the trunk, that’s why,” Connor said.  “Someone locked him in there and it’s not very damned funny.  I want someone to open this trunk or I’m going to tear it apart getting him out.  Is that simple enough for you?”

       He hung up on Michael and paced, surveying the problem and trying, again and again, to get the lock to open.  It refused to budge an inch.  Frank had quit pounding, probably because he knew that Connor was trying to get him out.  He finally tried pulling on the back door and found that it, at least opened for him.  He tested out the back seat but, unlike some of the older model cars, there was no way to get to the trunk from the back seat.  He sighed, dejected, ready to call in a locksmith if Michael didn’t come through in a few minutes, when Michael suddenly ran out of the dorm, followed by, of all people, Maidlin.

       “But I never leave my trunk locked!” Maidlin protested to Connor.  “No reason since there’s nothing in there!  I don’t even have a spare tire!”

       “Then they locked it when they put Frank in, but the point is open it,” Connor told Maidlin. 

       Maidlin put his key into the lock on the trunk and a moment later, the trunk lid popped open.

       “I don’t see how they could lock it,” Maidlin muttered as he stepped back.  “It’s not like you can lock it without a key.”

       “Do you have one of those magnetic key holders?  You know, the ones that most people use so they always have a spare key to their car in a handy place?” Connor asked.  He had one himself but was careful to hide it in a place on his car that most people wouldn’t think to look.  It was dirty work getting the thing out but at least it was safe.

       “Oh yeah,” Maidlin said with a nod.  “I have one behind the front right fender.”

       “There you have it,” Connor said.  “Go see if it’s there, I’ll get Frank out.”

       Frank was scrunched inside of the trunk, a piece of tape over his mouth, his hands handcuffed behind his back.  By the scuffmark on his knee, Connor knew that was how Frank had been pounding on the trunk roof.  Connor hauled Frank out of the trunk and sat him on his feet, then sent Michael inside to Connor and Frank’s room to get the handcuff keys Frank kept in desk. 

       “What happened?” Connor demanded of his roommate after Connor removed the tape off of Frank’s mouth.

       “Almost as soon as you ran off someone grabbed me,” Frank said.  “They gagged me and put these handcuffs on and told me that if I didn’t keep my nose out of other people’s business, next time he would just kill me.”

       “The same guy that attacked Joe,” it wasn’t a question.

       “I think so,” Frank said.  “He had a low voice but… well, it almost has to be, he used the almost exact words that they used with Joe.”

       “That guy is starting to get on my nerves,” Connor muttered.  “I am going to find him, Frank.  He’s not going to be able to hide forever.”

       “It’s gone!” Maidlin called out after inspecting his car for his key holder.  “The whole holder is gone too.  That must be how they locked the trunk.”

       “One mystery solved at least.  You didn’t see anyone snooping around your car, did you?” Frank asked him.  “When was the last time you used that key?”

       “I used it just yesterday, actually,” Maidlin coughed.  “I had to go to the Sports Arena, you know, the one in the really bad part of town?  I had to lock the car there only I locked my keys inside.”

       “So they must have taken the other one sometime today,” Frank mused. 

       Frank coughed and leaned back against Maidlin’s car as Connor straightened Frank’s hair and brushed off Frank’s clothes.

       “Well, you still look presentable,” Connor said.  “Now if Michael would just hurry up, we might get to the girls before they’re ready.”

       A couple of minutes later Michael did appear and he handed the keys to Connor.  Connor unlocked the handcuffs then helped Frank back over to his SUV.  Connor unlocked the door and waited until Frank was inside and belted in before he went around to the other side.

       “I want to get some more sunglasses,” Frank said.  “Two or three pair this time.  I should buy stock, the way things are going.”

      

       Dinner proved to be a quiet affair, after exclamations about the attack on Frank and the loss of his cane and sunglasses.  Mandy had solemnly produced a unisex pair that she owned and Frank agreed to use those for the evening and in the morning Connor would take him to the mall to buy more.

       Joe was seated on the couch in the living room, Vanessa seated beside him, when they got to the Hardy house that night.  Joe had his sore feet propped up on the coffee table, which Frank knew again because of Sam’s descriptions of things.  They all took seats in the living room as Frank told his brother about the attack on him earlier that evening.  Joe grunted angrily, vowing to find the guy and rip his head off.  Frank merely smiled at his brother, grateful to still be able to hear such bravado in his younger brother’s voice.  For a while, Frank thought he might not hear it again.

       “Did you find out anything on Governor Peters, dad?” Frank asked his father when he heard Fenton Hardy come back into the room. 

       “So far, no,” Fenton said.  “I’ve used a couple of my contacts, both with the local White House administration and with his state administration but beyond the normal death threats any leader receives, they don’t really have anything that concerns them.  In fact, they haven’t heard anything specific about the Bayport stop at all.  If there’s someone after Governor Peters, no one but the people after him know anything about it.”

       Frank frowned as he scratched his head, trying to come up with another angle.  “You know, it’s possible this might just be the typical disgruntled ex-employee trying to make trouble.  Or maybe there’s something specifically at the campus that he wants.  The question is which is it?”

       “Has to be something that the gang working with him can get to,” Joe said in a husky voice.  “It’s not like most professors or even the regular college staff are going to let non-students into just any place on campus.  Technically they’re trespassing if they don’t have real business on campus.”

       “You know,” Mandy said, slowly.  “What if he’s not really doing anything on campus at all?  What if that’s just a smokescreen to draw attention away from whatever he’s really doing?  Maybe he’s attacking you both because he wants you to think you’re getting too close to something he’s doing, but he’s really doing something totally different.”

       Frank could only gaze, dumbfounded, in her direction for a moment.

       “You know, one of these years you two are going to remember that I have a brain and generally know how to use it,” Mandy teased her brothers.  “And that my father is a detective too?”

       “It just confuses things a lot,” Frank said with a sigh. “I guess I want to keep this nice and simple.”

       “Not to mention,” Joe said.  “That my instincts are screaming that he’s up to something on campus.  Has anyone done a search for the green-eyed guy yet?  If we could figure out who he is, we might have a better chance of figuring out what he’s up to.”

       “Or maybe the important thing is to just find him before he can do whatever he wants to do,” Connor said.  “Before he does manage to kill one of you or one of us.  He’s been pretty boldly coming after you.”

       “Personal vendetta?” Samantha asked.  “I mean, do you think it’s someone who might have something against one or both of you?  Maybe his whole warning thing is a smokescreen?”

       “There are just too many possibilities still,” Frank said.  “We need to find them and follow them, hopefully then we can get some answers.”

       “And stay in one piece doing it,” Connor said.  “But, ok, I volunteer to follow if we can find them.”

       “I can…” Joe started to say.

       “Oh, no, Joseph Hardy,” their mother told Joe firmly.  “You were told to stay put until Monday and that’s what you’re doing.  Your feet are not up to you running around chasing bad guys.”

       “We can’t just let Connor do it by himself,” Joe protested.  “He’s still new at this.  He needs experienced help.”

       “He has experienced help,” Mandy said.  “Or have you forgotten all ready who it was that saved your bacon a couple of weeks ago?”

       Joe sighed.  “Girls just never let you live anything down, do they?”

       “Well, we would, if you wouldn’t always forget,” Mandy grinned.  “But that’s settled, right?  Connor and I will both follow the bad guys when we find them.”

       “Only if you promise to be very careful, Amanda,” Laura told her daughter.  “Two injured sons are more than enough for now.  I do not want a phone call from the hospital telling me my daughter’s there.  I don’t think my heart could stand it.”

       “All right, mom,” Mandy agreed.  “I promise, I’ll be careful.  No hospital stays.”

       Frank settled back into Samantha’s arm and smiled as she rested her head on his shoulder.  This case was baffling, if only because they didn’t have any information on it. Three warnings to not get involved but involved with what?  What weren’t they supposed to find out?  Frank turned the few pieces over and came up with nothing at all. 

      

       Saturday dawned and Frank enjoyed a morning of being able to sleep in again without having to worry about classes, books or anything resembling the word study.  He knew, later, that he would have to get some research done for a paper due in his abnormal psych class in a week but for now, he could roll over and go back to sleep if he wanted, or he could plug in his computer and surf the net.  The second option won and he plugged in his earphone.  The voice system wasn’t perfect, it often misunderstood what he was saying and he sometimes had a hard time understanding what the computer voice was saying.  Still, he managed to check the weather, the sports and to even post a couple of notes (he hoped) on a couple of bulletin boards.  The computer took forever to read back messages to him, especially the e-mails.  He deleted out junk mail with a vengeance.

       After that, Frank spent some time thinking and began another search, as best as he was able to manage on his computer.  He never realized how much code he picked out with his eyesight alone.  Hearing it just didn’t bring the whole picture to him like he wanted.  He got into the Campus Mainframe and went through a grueling process of trying to ferret out a list of activities and ex-employees.  He stored a chunk of what he found onto his hard drive, to go over at his leisure.  The less time spent in not-so-legal places, he thought, the better.

       He spent another half-hour listening to what the computer found for him.  He found several files with listings about the upcoming visit by Derek Peters and worked his way methodically through them.  He really wanted Vanessa to take a look at them later and to apply her sometimes-magical touch to the files.  He could listen until he was blue in the face and he would still miss things.  Vanessa, on the other hand, could tear apart a could junk of data in the time it took to say, “Data chip.”

       The phone rang just as Frank was closing up his computer case and he reached over to grab it.  For once managing to find it on the first grab, he pulled it to his ear.

       “Hello, this is Frank,” he said.

       “Frank, it’s Mandy,” his sister said.  “I need Connor to get over here like now.  I’m at the Student Union and there is this really large guy eating breakfast.  Vanessa came up with an excuse to walk by him and she said he has green eyes.  I think it’s our guy!”

       “Mandy, just stay put if he leaves,” Frank ordered his sister.  “I’ll get Connor up but if the guy leaves before Connor gets there, don’t follow him.  Promise me you won’t go by yourself!”

       “Party-pooper,” Mandy muttered ungraciously.  “But, all right, if you insist.”

       “I insist,” Frank commented, dryly. 

       It took almost two minutes to actually wake Connor up and was ultimately accomplished when Frank pulled Connor from his bed.  Connor protested but when Frank finally explained what was going on, Connor was dressed and out of the room two minutes later.

       Frank made his bed by feel and paced the length of his room several times, feeling tied in place because he didn’t have his cane.  Every nerve ending told him to follow after Connor but Frank had no way to get to the Student Union.  He paced again, contemplated and rejected calling Samantha.  She would have already left to go to her work study assignment that she did every Saturday morning. 

       Frank walked slowly across the room, feeling his way past Connor’s bed and the divider that separated one half of the room from the other.  He went to stand at the window, finding it by the warmth of the sun that shone threw it and he moved until he was fairly sure the sun was hitting him full in the face.  The heat was unmistakable.  He stood for a long time, and allowed the sun to warm him.  He realized, again, that he wished he could actually see the sun shining on his face or see the light that it was, no doubt, putting forth.

       He jumped when the door to his room opened and he turned away from his sunbeam, one hand still on the window.

       “Frank?” Mandy said in a soft voice.  “Are you all right?”

       “Sure, why?” Frank asked her.  “And what happened?  Did you follow him?”

       “We followed him for a while but we lost him.  He went from the dining hall over to the exhibition center and then over to the football field.  We lost him when we had to duck into one of the tunnels at the field.  I don’t know if he saw us,” Connor said as he closed the door to the room and tossed something onto his bed.  “But he’s big enough, Frank.  And while his wanderings looked fairly aimless, he seemed to have some idea what he was doing.”

       “Any ideas?” Frank asked them.  “I mean, did you notice anything that the places he went have in common?”

       “I was thinking about that,” Mandy said.  “Everywhere he went is some sort of public place, you know, like the Exhibition Center and the Football Field.  It seemed to me like he was looking for something in particular, you know, like a place where he might cause the most trouble.  Or maybe a place where the event going-on will serve as a distraction for what it is he’s really doing.”

       “Does this bring us back to Governor Peters’ visit?” Connor asked.  He seemed to be digging in his drawer again.  Another pair of socks hit Frank in the stomach.  Frank tossed them back almost immediately, not knowing if they hit or landed on the other side of the room.

       “There’s one way to find that out,” Frank said.  “Look up the list of events on my computer.  I just downloaded them.”

       He heard one of them, probably Mandy walk back across the room to where his laptop sat on his bed.  Mandy carried it around to Frank’s desk, set it up and turned it on.  A few minutes later she whistled and pulled her brother over to her side.

       “What is it?” Frank asked her.

       “Well, it’s a good list of planned events for the Governor,” Mandy said.  “But, Frank, he’s not going to either the exhibition Hall or the Football Field.  He’s going to the Student Union.  I really don’t think this has anything to do with the Governor’s visit.”

       “That smokescreen you’ve been talking about,” Frank said a moment later.  “If he’s going to do something that he doesn’t want us involved in, he may use the Governor’s visit as his distraction.”

       “That’s just terribly coincidental,” Mandy said, frowning.  “We still don’t know what he’s doing.”

       “But you’ve seen him now,” Frank told her.  “Time for you to do what you do best?”

       “Oh, shoot men through the hands with an arrow?” Mandy laughed.  “OK, OK, I’ll draw a picture of him.  Do you want me to have Vanessa run it when I’m done?”

       Frank nodded, and then frowned in thought.  “Don’t you need a key or something to get through the gates at the football field?”

       “Well, you’re supposed to,” Connor said, slowly.  “I mean, I usually have to make prior arrangements with the Coach beforehand if I want to walk the field before a game.  Speaking of a game…”

       Connor sighed and said, apologetically,  “I’m supposed to meet Coach at the Field Hall early.  He wants to run through some extra plays with Coonby and I and then we’re having a team meeting.”

       “That’s all right,” Frank said to Connor.  “Go take care of business.  I want to see if Vanessa can come and take a look at my computer for me and then we’ll go home for a while before the game.”

       “If you can get your parents to agree, I’m sure Coach would really appreciate if Joe could sit the bench, if he’s feeling up to it,” Connor said.  “I know it’s killing Joe to not be able to play, but if he can give Coonby a few pointers, it would really help.”

       “I’ll bring him,” Mandy said, confidently.  “If Frank has to carry him, I’ll bring him.”

       “Gee, thanks for volunteering me,” Frank said.  “I really appreciate it.”

       “You’re welcome!” Mandy said in a singsong voice. 

      

       Joe woke up from his second nap of the day to stare up at the ceiling of Frank’s room, fascinated by the interesting pattern that it made of crisscrosses.  Joe felt better, at least energetic enough to want to get out of bed but, instead, he lay still, as if waiting for something to happen. 

       Paranoia, he told himself a moment later.  A lot of paranoia.  Talking to Mandy helped but I still feel it.  Afraid of my own shadow.  Ready for the worst to happen.  Thinking the boogey-man is waiting just around the corner.  I not only don’t want to get out of bed now, I don’t think I ever want to get out of bed.  I’m not going to let them win.  I will get out of bed.  And I will face my shadow.

       Joe knew it was a process.  Mandy had told him as much when she talked to him last night.  Doctor Winslow would probably tell him the same thing.  Resigning yourself to a new problem, to a new feeling, was a matter of process.  You had to accept it, you had to deal with it and you had to cope when nothing else worked.

       “By the smell of the socks in my bed, I’d have to say that it’s been invaded by the creature from the black lagoon,” Joe looked up and saw Frank standing in the door on the arm of Joe’s twin.  “Have you moved in permanently or is there a chance I can reclaim my bed someday in the future?”

       “Oh, I don’t know,” Joe said, laconically.  “I like this bed, I thought I’d go ahead and claim it for myself.  What are you two up to?”

       “Five foot three and one eighth,” Mandy said with a grin as she crossed and kissed Joe on the cheek. 

       “Never forget the one eighth!” Frank said as he worked his way across his room to the computer that sat on the desk at the far wall.  He sat his laptop on the table beside his bed as Mandy filled Joe in on the day’s events.

       “Where are mom and dad?” Mandy asked as she got up to go sit in Frank’s computer chair.  “I though they’d be here.”

       “I don’t know, I just woke up from a nap a few minutes ago,” Joe said.  “But I heard mom say something about the grocery store earlier.  And I heard dad protesting that he had things to do and I heard mom explain to him that if he didn’t go grocery shopping with her, he was going to have to eat cold beans and rice for the next month.  But what are you two doing?”

       “I’m going to look through the files that Frank absconded off of the Campus Mainframe,” Mandy said.  “I want to see if I can find a picture of that guy who’s been attacking you and Frank.”

       “In that case,” Joe said.  “I’m going down to find something to eat.  My stomach’s trying to eat itself.”

       “Do you want me to go for you?” Mandy asked him.  “This can wait a few minutes.”
       “No,” Joe said.  “I need to stretch my legs and try out my feet.  Besides, I think I can find my own way downstairs.”

       “If you fall down the stairs,” Mandy warned him.  “Mom and Dad will have my head.  Or Frank’s hand.  Or both of our heads.  And then Aunt Gertrude will start in on us.”

       “I promise,” Joe raised his right hand solemnly.  “No falling down the stairs.  But you two should get started on that data.  I don’t need help getting breakfast!”

       He slid his legs off the bed and gingerly put them on the floor.  He slid a bit of weight onto them and then stood, wincing slightly but finding the pain to be not too bad.  Joe padded his way carefully out of the room and down the stairs, in search of something to make his rumbling stomach much more happy.  Maybe some of Aunt Gertrude’s donuts or, if he was lucky, cinnamon rolls.  Oh yeah.  He thought happily of the kinds of treats he might find in the kitchen and moved more assertively from the stairs to the kitchen.

       Ah, donuts he thought with a happy smile.  Just what an injured boy needed to help him feel better.  He poured the rest of the milk in the refrigerator into a glass and took a drink as he settled on one of the bar stools and dove headlong into a donut.

       Donuts, Joe thought with a happy sigh, make the world go round.  Now if they could just convince the people at the cafeteria that donut is not synonymous with ‘hockey-puck.’  Now where the heck is the paper at?

       Joe looked over toward the dining room table where his father normally left the morning paper when he was done reading it.  It wasn’t there however.  Joe didn’t see the bag for the paper in the trashcan but Joe figured his father might have taken it up to his office this morning, instead of reading it at the table.  Joe wasn’t about to go upstairs looking for it so he settled back down to his donut and milk.

       A sound outside caused Joe to jump and he got up cautiously.  He stepped over to the door that went outside from the kitchen, unlocked and opened it.  He looked down and grinned as he saw the newspaper laying on the front stoop.  The paperboy must have slept in this morning.  No wonder he hadn’t seen the paper on the table.

        Joe stepped out and grimaced when his feet protested the contact with the concrete, even through the socks and bandages.  He picked up the paper, closed the door and padded back to the kitchen bar.  He opened up the paper, found the sports section and took his donut.

       “Oh, yum,” Joe murmured again as he took another bite of his donut and let his feet dangle off of the high bar chairs he sat in.  He took a healthy bite and another swallow of milk and was about to take another, when an arm snaked around his neck and held him tightly enough that he had to struggle to breathe.  The man turned the bar chair that Joe sat on, adjusting his position so that he still had a firm hold on Joe’s neck and so that Joe was able to see his eyes. 

       I forgot to lock the door! Joe thought, a sick feeling coming to him.

       “I see my warnings have gone unheeded, Mr. Hardy,” the man whispered in his ear.  “And that you refuse to listen to reason.  I’ve come to the very painful solution that your family is need of more of an object lesson.  Once they find that you are dead, they will stay away from me.  Believe me, I wish it hadn’t come to this.”

       “You kill me, they’ll never stop looking for you,” Joe whispered as he struggled to get free of the man’s grip.  God, he was strong!  He could barely whisper and he needed to scream.

       “Then I kill them too,” the man said with a shrug.  “Point is no one is stopping me.  And the point is, little boy, that you started this.  You can end this.  And you will end this now.”

       “Don’t… know… what… doing…” Joe gasped out as the hand became even tighter around throat. 

       “You expect me to believe that?” the man asked him in a cold voice.  “No, it doesn’t matter, boy.  Here’s what matters.”

       The man reached into a side pocket and pulled out a very ugly looking knife, probably the one he had threatened Joe with a couple of days before.  Joe struggled against him even harder, calling up ever ounce of strength he had to break through from the man’s grip but the man’s hand wouldn’t budge.

       Joe watched the knife hand raise and fall, right toward his chest!

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).