"This is not a coincidence," Connor said for the umpteenth time as he watched the paramedics loading Doctor Rich into the back of an ambulance. "It's not a coincidence. Someone knew that he was helping us."

Mandy snuggled close to him as she wrapped her light jacket around her, feeling a chill not from the weather, but from the latest events. Her blonde hair fanned out over the sleeve of Connor's shirt and he wrapped his arm more tightly about her, a stunned expression still on his face. Vanessa held her own work more tightly in her arms as she watched, her face slightly pale.

"This isn't going to make Joe happy," she said, softly. "We really needed his help."

Mandy agreed with that but what could they do about it now? They had to keep on with other angles, angles that would hopefully lead them closer to the person after her and her brothers. Was it someone tied into her father? She had no idea; whatever it was, she wanted to find out, as much as Joe did.

"Clear out, kids," a police officer told them a moment later and Mandy frowned, looking up at her boyfriend who, technically speaking, was not a 'kid.' Connor looked too shocked to even care about the officer's comment. Mandy stepped back, her momentum drawing Connor along with her, until they were at the steps of the Art Center building.

"How did anyone know what we were working on?" Connor asked. "We didn't tell anyone. I was very careful to make sure no one saw that I even brought anything into the lab."

"It all ties in, still, to our assailant being someone on campus," Mandy commented. "Look, let me get to class. If I skip any because of a case, my parents will not be happy. I'll write down some ideas as I think of them. And, look, love, Sam can meet me here before we go and see Frank, I already asked her. Go and take a breather. I'll check on Doctor Rich while I'm there, all right?"

Connor gazed down at her, his expression very unhappy, but he finally nodded. He kissed her before he led her down to her classroom and watched her go inside. He turned back to Vanessa who was standing quietly by his side and they went past the room and out the door on the other side of the building.

"That's not good," Joe said with a hangdog expression on his face. He had just come from his political science class and wore the same, half-asleep expression that most people coming out of a Dr. Whitmore class wore. The anger that normally rode just under the surface was gone now, too. He looked defeated, as defeated as Connor felt. "Let's go look through your lists, 'Nessa. And I like the idea of going through the yearbook to match the sketch. That's about the only lead we still have going for us."

"There's a chance that Doctor Rich isn't badly hurt, Joe," Vanessa said, softly. "Maybe he'll remember something. Let's not give up on him until we know for sure what happened."

"Let's do what we can now, though," Joe said. "I have class again in an hour."

They nodded and went to the Student Union to sit in a much more crowded Snack Bar. They weren't able to get the corner booth but they found one away from the rest of the people in the snack bar. Joe flipped open the printouts that Vanessa brought him and read through them, quickly and quietly. After going through them once, he went back to the first page and started crossing off unlikely suspects.

"We're down to five," Vanessa said when Joe was done.

"I've been narrowing down the yearbook," Connor said. "Here, take a look at some of the ones I've circled and let me know if any of them match your lists?"

That took Joe several more minutes and when he was done, he merely shook his head. Joe looked very frustrated, with small lines near the corners of his eyes and creased in his forehead. He leaned his head over on his hand a moment while he tried to put facts together, to come up with anything. So far, he had nothing but suppositions. Things that might be but probably weren't. He sighed as he rubbed at his head and tried to figure out what to do next. Blast, this was not easy!

"All right," Joe said, finally, as he sat back up. "Here's what we have so far. One. A powder bomb blinded Frank. The powder was being researched by Doctor Rich who has sense been attacked because of that. Two. The device that held the powder was sophisticated and expensive. That means, like the powder, not just anyone could get their hands on it. That means, whoever is behind this, is either a wacko, genius scientist or has no problems with money. Three. A message was left on Frank and Connor's mirror, warning us, the Hardys, to leave the campus. Another message was left when Mandy was attacked. Another one was left when I was attacked last night. Four. The guy who attacked me in my room the other night is too afraid to talk, so it must mean that he's more scared of whomever is behind the attacks than who..."

Joe's voice faded off and he went just slightly pale as reached down to pick up the lists that Vanessa had given him. He flipped through the quickly, tossing them to one side, then looked up, his face even more pale.

"Joe?" Vanessa touched him on the hand, gently. "Joe, what is it?"

"Uncle Derak."

"Uncle who?" Connor asked, stunned into disbelief by the look on his friend's face.

Vanessa pulled the sheets out of Joe's hands and found the listing that Joe had been reading. She read it out loud for the benefit of a very confused Connor.

"Derak Richards, age 42 years, jailed in 1991 for two accounts of..." Vanessa looked up at Joe and back down at the sheets and then silently handed them over to Connor.

"Sodomy," Connor said, softly. "Paroled on July 19, 2000."

"It's him," Joe whispered, his voice catching in the back of his throat. "I know it's him. He's got more money than Midas. If anyone could be behind this..."

"Joe..." Vanessa said, slowly. "You... I mean... he didn't...?"

Joe didn't say anything in response. He merely stood up, tossing the papers he still had to one side. He ran before he knew he was running, racing for the parking lot where his car was parked. He was halfway home before he knew that was where he was driving and he pulled up into the driveway of his home only twenty minutes later. He leaned his head forward on the steering wheel, his breathing coming in heavy heaves as he leaned there, and tears streaming down his eyes.

His mother must have seen his car pull up for she came up to his side of the car and peered in at him. She knocked gently on the door, then opened it and reached in to put her arm around his shoulders.

"Joe, what is it?" Laura asked her youngest son. "What's happened?"

Joe couldn't say anything for several moments. He was still caught in a past too horrible to mention, a past that he hadn't wanted to think about again. He sat, shivering, unable to control the tremors that those memories dredged up in his mind and he when he was finally able to look up at his mother, his voice just wouldn't work. He couldn't spit it out.

"Come into the house," Laura encouraged her son. She reached in to help him out of the car and held onto him, his head resting on top of her head, as they walked up the steps into the house. He was still crying, he couldn't seem to make himself stop.

"Fenton!" Laura called out as she came in the door. "Come downstairs!"

Fenton appeared almost instantly and raced down the stairs, stopping when he saw Joe and saw the tears streaming down his face.

"What is it?" Fenton demanded. "Is it Frank? Did something else happen?"

Joe shook his head, gasping, finally, for a decent breath of air. Laura sat him down on the couch and he leaned forward, burying his head in hands, trying to hide the tears that refused to stop.

It took him, talking in starts and stops, to tell his parents about the attacks against him and Mandy on campus and about their subsequent investigations. He knew his father was partially aware of some of what they had done because of his work earlier with Vanessa. He told his father about the attack on Doctor Rich because of Doctor Rich's work with the white powder.

"You didn't tell me that... that Uncle Derak was out of jail," Joe said in a rough voice a moment later. "As soon as I saw his name on the list, I knew... it has to be him. I know it's him."

Fenton and Laura exchanged a dubious look but then looked back at Joe. Knowing how sensitive this issue was to their son, they didn't belittle him or openly doubt him. Laura handed Joe a box of tissues from a nearby table and Joe leaned back on the sofa.

"I was trying to put it all together," Joe whispered. "What we knew for sure, I mean. And what I thought we would have to work for and it suddenly hit me what name I had seen on these lists. It has to be him. Who else would want to torture us like this?"

"I can think of any number of people, Joe," Fenton said, dryly. "But I don't know that Derak knows the BU campus that well, if at all. Besides, the last I heard, he was living on the other side of the state. It's not easy to start over after a sentence like that, even with money."

Joe turned to his father in disbelief.

"You're defending him? That monster? You're seriously defending him?"

Fenton shook his head. "No, Joe, I'm not defending him but I am saying that you need to make sure you don't lock your attention down on one subject. He's as good a possibility as anyone."

"Joe, don't you think you and Mandy should come home for a few days?" Laura asked. She rarely let her worry get ahead of her but sometimes, her mom instincts begged her to. "It would be safer for you both here, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know," Joe said. "I just... if I leave, I'm letting them win. It's not worth losing Mandy over, no, but I really want to find whoever hurt Frank. Mom, we don't even know if he's ever going to be able to see again. We don't know if he's going to be able to breathe on his own. Those little things, they're nagging at me. If I don't keep at this, I don't think I'm going to be able to live with myself."

"Then I want you all to take extra precautions," Fenton said. "Not only you and Amanda, but your friends as well. Potentially, you're all targets now. Keep to the same precautions you have for Mandy. Keep in pairs all the time. It may not stop them but hopefully it will slow them down."

Said in that no-nonsense, listen to me or I'm going to bring you home, way, Joe listened to his father and nodded in agreement.

"Dad," Joe said, slowly. "Could you... could you please make sure that... that Uncle Derak is where you think he is?"

Fenton nodded. "All right, Joe. I can do that."

"Thanks, Dad," Joe said with a sigh of relief. "I'll feel better if I know he's not anywhere in the area. I still think... well, I'll keep an open mind."

The ringing of the phone interrupted them and Laura stood to answer it. She smiled as she nodded over to Joe and he picked it up.

"Joe, are you all right?" Vanessa's voice was strong if a little wavery. "You ran out of here so fast. I wasn't sure where you went."

"I needed to talk to my parents," Joe said. "I'm all right, 'Nessa. I'll be back on campus in awhile. I'd better go get my assignments for the class I'm missing right now. Oh, and 'Nessa? My father suggested that we should all make sure we stay paired up and I agree with him. Please don't walk to your next class alone."

Vanessa paused, then said in an obviously confused voice. "OK, but I didn't think the bad guys were after anyone but you and Frank and Mandy."

"Never hurts to take precautions," Joe said, not believing that he was the one suggesting precautions. That was usually Frank's job. Frank did defense, Joe did offense. It always worked out well for Joe.

"All right," Vanessa said again. "I love you."

"I love you too. See you this evening, 'Nessa."

Joe took a deep breath, then reached over to hug his parents again. The past always came at you in the most unexpected ways. He went back out to his car and drove it, slowly, toward the BU campus, taking a longer way back to force himself to relax and better think things through.

It was, he realized, easy to blame Uncle Derak for everything.

Seeing his name on the release sheet had been the catalyst to memories that Joe did not welcome at all. In Joe's mind, he could come up with a plausible way for his Uncle to be behind everything, from Frank's injury to the attacks on him and Mandy, to Doctor Rich's attack. His Uncle was insane and didn't think like others did. He was also a bit of a genius. He'd led Fenton Hardy and Sam Peterson on a merry chase when he'd kidnapped Joe and two other kids years before. He'd been caught because of his own undoing, not because of anything that Fenton or Sam had been able to do to find him. And that made it possible for Derak to be behind the latest problems.

Somewhere inside that twisted mind, Joe thought, is the answer to our latest problems. I know it. My instincts are usually good.

The only problem was he wouldn't be able to figure it out until he actually met up with Derak, or saw him with his own eyes. Joe sighed as he shook his head, willing the memories to go away. He was just too tired to deal with them right now.

After an afternoon filled with a quick visit to see Frank, getting his assignments for the class he missed and dealing with football practice, Joe found himself ill at ease when he went back to the snack bar to meet up with his group of friends. They all sat in the corner booth again and Joe slid into a seat beside Vanessa again.

"Joe?" Mandy said and she reached across the table to take one of his hands in her own. He looked away from her, however, not wanting her to see what he was feeling just now. He'd managed to push away thoughts of Uncle Derak during his practice but now he saw them only too vividly. Mandy had been spared the whole story, though she had known back then that something was wrong. She always knew when something bothered Joe, even when he went to great lengths to hide it from her.

"I'm all right, Mandy," he said. "Let's talk about what we found out today. Samantha?"

His brother's girlfriend was watching him, her violet eyes large. Joe was the first to admit he liked her a lot more than Callie. For one, she never seemed to mind how close he and Frank were and for another, she was smart, sassy and didn't get in the way. Those were all things Joe liked to see.

"Chet and I staked out Tauhausen, like you asked, Joe," Sam began. "And we hit pay dirt, at least, we found out more than we know now. I got my info from Maidlin, of all people but I verified it with two other people by the end. They all agree that it was an older, navy-colored station wagon. A large man, probably the same man that's attacked you and Mandy, tossed the ball into the window from the sunroof of the car. They all agree that the man had dark hair too, but no one got a really close look of the man."

"That is good news," Joe said, having to admit that's more than they did know.

"That's not all," Samantha said with a happy smile. "Chet got more. Well, we both got more. We were walking back over the quad when we happened to see a navy colored station wagon sitting in front of the Student Union parking lot. I got the license plate number from that, Joe."

"And," Chet said, his smile as happy as Sam's. "It matches a partial number I got from one of the witnesses from Tuesday. It's definitely the same one!"

"You have a license plate number?" Joe asked, dumbfounded. "An actual license plate number?"

Samantha nodded. "And that's still not all, Joe. I saw the man who was driving the blue car. He's tall, about six foot five, beefy more than muscular, with brown hair. He has a receding hairline and a scar on his right arm. I know that's him."

"Does he match anyone...?" Joe asked but he was cut off again, this time by Mandy.

"Here, Sam already described him to me. I did a sketch for you," Mandy told her brother. "This is he."

Mandy pushed a pencil-sketched picture across the table to her brother and he stared down into the face of the man who had nearly killed him at least once. He had no idea who the man was, beyond a vague sense of familiarity. Something was familiar about the man but Joe wasn't sure what or why. He knew he didn't know the man's name.

"It's not Uncle Derak," Joe said in a soft voice, almost to himself. Mandy stared at him for a moment, then shook her head.

"I followed him when he left the SU, Joe," Chet said. "He went to MacRedy Hall. I followed him inside and tracked him to room 325. I saw him go in there. I walked right past him and saw that it must be his room, it was half-filled with all kinds of work-out equipment."

"Good work, Chet," Joe said with a smile. "I think we should go take a look around his room and see what there is to see. Anyone up for a nice hike?"

"What if he's there?" Samantha asked.

"We can see if his car's there. If it isn't, we'll go in. If it is, we'll wait. You up for this?" Joe looked over at Connor.

Connor shrugged. "Sure."

"I think the rest of you should either wait here or go back to your dorms. Not alone though," Joe said. "If more than two of us go, we're more likely to get caught."

"We'll walk Joe to Tauhausen and then go back to Eldridge," Mandy said with a sigh. "Come on, girls, our work isn't finished for the night."

After they left, Connor turned to Joe. "So, what are we going to do, exactly?"

"I want to see if we can find anymore of that white powder. If I do, I'm going to wipe his face in it," Joe said. "And if we don't, we find out where he got it and where there's an antidote for it."

"If there is one," Connor commented.

The journey to MacRedy was uneventful. The two boys walked side-by-side, talking as normally as they could while they neared the Hall. Just as they got close to the dorm, however, Joe pushed Connor back around the corner. Joe's face had gone white again and he was holding his breath, a frantic expression on his face.

"What is it, Joe?" Connor demanded.

"That," Joe hissed. "Is Uncle Derak!"