Mandy sat in the waiting area of the hospital, in the middle of her mother and father, across from where Frank sat in his wheelchair with Samantha sitting on his lap, nuzzling close to him. In her own little world, Vanessa sat in a chair by herself, her eyes closed as she waited, fretfully, for the doctor to come to them.

The ride to the hospital from the campus building where Joe and Connor had been held had been one of the most harrowing of Mandy's life. Joe had stopped breathing and the CPR that Mandy and Vanessa applied on him had not seemed to work. Samantha had driven like a banshee woman, running red lights and stop signs, breaking more traffic laws than Mandy remembered in an effort to get to the hospital in time.

They had been waiting for over an hour now. Mandy couldn't move, didn't want to think. She could only sit and pray, pray that they would both live.

"They're both going to be all right," Doctor Carlisle's low, sonorous voice brought Frank out of a stupor and, as Samantha sat up more on his lap, he looked toward the direction the voice had come from, wishing he could see the Doctor's eyes to know if the Doctor was telling them everything.

"They're both exhausted," Doctor Carlisle continued. "And we need to keep them until we're sure the dust is cleaned out of their lungs but they managed to not take in very much. They've already both emitted what was in their lungs, that's a bonus."

"Thank God," Mandy whispered and Frank had to agree with her.

"They're being moved up to the ward Frank is in," Dr. Carlisle continued. "You can go and see them there, if you'd like."

Samantha stood and pushed Frank's chair forward. Frank released a breath he didn't know he had been holding and reached a hand backward until he found hers. It wasn't a comfortable way to sit, but holding her hand was his one way of knowing, for sure, she was there. Listening, he could hear breathing and various sniffles of his family and friends and knew, they too were with him.

It took no time to get up to Joe and Connor's room, which they were sharing. Samantha pushed Frank up to Joe's bed and he reached out a hand until Joe clasped it with one of his own and pulled it onto the bed. Joe, Frank noted, was lying on his stomach facing Frank.

"Did I imagine things," Joe said a moment later. "Or were we rescued by the girls?"

Mandy laughed and Frank imagined her smiling at her twin. "You didn't imagine things," Mandy said. "In fact, we did rescue you. Almost too late, though."

"We couldn't have found it any faster," Vanessa warned her friend. "It's not like BU is a small campus, you know."

"How did you find us? Where were we?" Connor asked.

"That's a story by itself," Mandy said. "But, all right. The reason we found you is Frank. Sometime yesterday, probably right after you first went missing, he remembered something else he had seen on that form that Professor Tylange dropped. Frank, you tell it."

Frank cleared his throat. It still hurt to talk but this wouldn't take too long to tell, at least not his part of it.

"I remembered seeing Doctor Rich's name on the form," Frank said. "More to the point, I specifically remembered seeing 'Suit against Doctor Malachi Rich' written along the top of the design. Once I remembered, I called Samantha."

"And I went to see Professor Tylange. I had already had a class with him, so I didn't feel so funny about going into talk to him. I told him everything, basically, that Frank had been put into the hospital and that we suspected it had something to do with bumping into him that day. I put on my most winsome, vacant smile so he wouldn't be thrown off-guard. He admitted that he was representing Doctor Rich in a legal case, helping him get out of a spot of trouble he'd been having. He denied, categorically, having anything to do with your injuries or the attacks on the rest of us, though," Samantha told Frank and then turned to the others. "He left to go to class and escorted me out, but I ducked into the lady's room that was down the hall, came back out and, well, broke into his office again. I found out what the computer component was. It wasn't a component at all, it was a sensor. Namely, the sensors that they put in the powder-puff bombs."

"In the meantime, I went and did some looking around in Doctor Rich's office. It wasn't his office that got destroyed, it was his lab. That's where he'd been keeping his samples," Vanessa took up the story next. "I didn't find out anything about a sensor, but I did find a blueprint of an architectural drawing, namely, of old Kasper Hall, you know, the one they turned into the maintenance center? That's where we found you. He had part of that set-up as a second lab."

"They told me what they found and we decided to come look for you," Mandy said. "It took us awhile to find it, the area they had you hidden in was behind what looked like a blank wall. The door was a little tricky to catch."

"So..." Frank said as he processed all of that information again. "Doctor Rich had stolen the blueprints for the sensor and was using it for his own purposes. And the lawsuit was probably from the people who originally designed the chip."

"That would be the government," another voice said from behind Frank. It took him a moment to place the voice and then he knew it was Con Riley. "Doctor Rich actually designed the chip three years ago, to help the guidance systems for the fighter craft and when he was let-go, he stole the chip designs, destroyed any that he had in the system and left. The FBI started getting word that he was selling the plans to the chip to the highest bidder but he had to come up with some way to manufacture some to start with, so that the would-be buyers could know where to buy them. Essentially, you all got in the middle of a deal that would have made Doctor Rich very rich. It still might since he's still on the loose. The three you captured, however, are singing like canaries."

"What does Uncle Derak have to do with this?" Joe asked a little tentatively. "I saw him in front of MacRedy Hall the other day and the large guy who captured us said he was going to give me to Uncle Derak. Where does he come into the picture?"

"Ryan Stone is a two-bit gun-for-hire," Con said to Joe. "He was working two ends against each other. He says your uncle hired him to kidnap you and bring you to him. He also says that he was working for Doctor Rich, trying to help scare you off campus. He's the one that threw the orb through your window, Frank."

"And the explosion in the quad? Who did that?" Connor asked.

"That, actually, was a water main break," Con answered. "It just had the misfortune of killing two students, but it wasn't anything malicious. A pipe running under that part of the campus had corroded and chose that moment to burst its bubble."

They were all silent for a minute after that and it was Fenton who broke the silence.

"It's been a long day for all of us," Fenton said, softly. "You boys all need to get some rest, I'm sure and I'm going to take the girls back to campus to take a nap themselves. I think we've covered all the bases."

"Dad," Frank turned his wheelchair in the direction of his father's voice. "If Doctor Rich is on the loose, it may not be safe."

"It's all right, Frank," Con said. "We had word and confirmation that Rich has already flown out of the states and is due to land in Libya in about an hour. He slipped through the security detail at the airport. You should all be safe now."

There was another profound silence after that until Samantha said, softly, "I'll take you back to your room. Mr. Hardy, I'm going to stay here with him, I can drive myself home later."

"We're staying too," Vanessa and Mandy chimed in.

"Go on, mom and dad, we'll be fine here for a while," Mandy said.

EPILOGUE

"Step up. Step up. Step up. Step up," Joe spoke in a monotone voice to his brother as he led Frank up the steps of Tauhausen Hall toward the room Frank shared with Connor. "Five more. Same distance."

Frank had his hand on Joe's shoulder and a cane in his other hand that he tapped against each step before he took a step up. That's what his therapist had told him to do. Let the cane check, not your toe. So he let the cane check and then he stepped up, until the fifth step and he stopped.

He wore dark glasses, his brown hair carefully combed back and he draped the cane over one arm. He carefully took his hand off of Joe's shoulder as they turned the corner that led to his room and he took a deep breath.

"Maidlin, ten o'clock," Joe muttered to him in a low voice.

"Hey, Maidlin!" Frank called out to him in a cheerful voice.

Maidlin, however, said nothing in return and Frank looked back over at Joe. Touching Joe's arm imperceptibly, he felt Joe's shrug and turned back to Maidlin.

"Touché, Maidlin, have a nice day."

He continued down the hallway, brushing past Maidlin and stopping near where he thought the door to his room was. Joe edge him forward just a little and he reached out to approximately where he thought the doorknob would be. Finally, he pushed the door open.

"Welcome home, Frank!"

The voices of his friends called out to him from inside the room and Frank knew, somehow, someway, that everything was going to be OK.

THE END