A/N Hello, my lovely readers, I've returned on the 25th to give you the 25th chapter, lol.
Thanks to all reviewers!
Dedication: To all my wonderful reviewers: kungfukitty2006, ukfan101, franknjoe, Cherylann Rivers, whitetigers, and Miss Fenway.
Disclaimer: Me no own, you no sue.
"Excuse me," Vanessa said drawing the attention of the sole nurse at the nurses' station. "Has Callie Shaw been here to sign her release papers?"
"No," The nurse replied looking up from the stack of charts in front of her. "Dr. Williams said to get the papers ready for her over half an hour ago, and she hasn't shown up. If you see her send her to the nurses' station to fill out her paperwork."
"Oh, okay, thanks." Vanessa said absently before heading in the direction of Joe's room.
"Any luck?" Chet asked immediately when Vanessa entered the room.
"No, and I'm starting to get really worried, you don't think anything happened to her, do you?" Vanessa responded.
"I hope not," Joe responded frowning in thought. "Did you guys try having her paged over the hospital intercom? I'm sure you could find someone to do it."
"No, okay , I'll go try that." Vanessa responded heading out the door again leaving Joe and chet staring after her worriedly.
-I am a line-
"I had them page her, but she didn't show up, I waited by the nurses' station for over ten minutes." Vanessa announced when she came back in the room. "And, I checked with the others, and Tony said she wasn't in the cafeteria, I'm really worried that something happened to her."
"Normally, I would think we're panicking a bit too soon, but…I have this feeling that something happened to her, and it's really not like Callie to be out of touch, and since when has she ever turned off her phone?" Joe asked. "The Callie I knew a year ago was practically super glued to her cell phone, I don't remember her turning it off whenever she visited Frank or I in the hospital before and even if she did she would tell someone before she went wandering off." He continued.
"I know, it doesn't look good." Chet replied.
"I know that neither one of you believe that I saw Frank, but I did, and when I was kidnapped they planned to use me as leverage against Frank, but I proved to be too much for them to handle, they probably thought that Callie would be a good threat to hold over Frank and a lot easier to control." Joe said earnestly. "Just listen and I'll tell you everything Frank told me, okay? And then, you can decide
whether you want to believe me or not." He paused for a moment. "Maybe you should get the others so that I don't have to repeat the story, it's fairly long."
"I'll go get them," Chet volunteered rising from his seat at Joe's bedside and heading out the door. He returned several minutes later with Biff, Liz, Tony, and Phil.
"Go ahead, Joe." Vanessa prompted when everyone had settled themselves on various chairs or in Vanessa's case on the foot of Joe's bed.
"As I was telling Vanessa I think the people who kidnapped me took Callie, they belong to some kind of terrorist organization and they're planning an attack on New York City, they staged Frank's death because they needed someone who both knew government passwords and had the capabilities to hack into other websites and accounts. The only other people with that kind of knowledge are very high up government agents and if anything happened to them there would be a large scale investigation, but no one would think that Frank would be kidnapped for something like that. So, they started murdering the children to distract the police and eventually killed Danny because they knew it would make Frank think irrationally, from there Reynolds tied Frank to a rock and then dragged me down the mountain so that I wouldn't be close enough to see one of the other terrorists sneak up from the other end of the cliff and cut Frank loose just before the explosion." Joe explained to his thunderstruck audience.
"Okay, assuming Frank is alive, why did they kidnap you?" Biff asked.
"I had gone to get groceries, because I didn't have anything in my house that was remotely digestible, and on my way home I bumped into Frank, he was with these two men, who work for the head guy, and I knew it was Frank, he tried to deny it, but I knew it was him, and then the two guys with him grabbed me and took me with them, because they couldn't have word getting out that he was alive when they were in the middle of planning their attack." Joe explained.
"So, they took Callie to use as leverage against Frank?" Tony confirmed.
"It looks that way. Phil, is there any way you could hack into the hospital security footage and see if there are any recordings of Callie being kidnapped? You should probably start with the footage from this floor." Joe asked.
"I'll be right back; I've got to go get it from the car." Phil said getting up from his seat and exiting the room. He returned around ten minutes later with his laptop. He quickly located a plug and proceeded to load his computer from there his fingers were a blur of movement on the keyboard as he hacked into the hospital mainframe. After around fifteen minutes he managed to pull up the security tapes from an hour ago. He pulled up the recording of the hallway outside of Joe's room and they watched the screen waiting for Callie to appear. After a few minutes they saw Dr. Williams enter the room and shortly after that Callie emerged. They watched the woman head down the hallway obviously going toward the nurses' station until a door shot open and Callie was grabbed and dragged into whatever room it led too.
"Can you slow down the footage?" Joe asked. Phil nodded and hit several keys.
"That should do it." Phil said.
"Look! Do you see that guy?" Joe asked pointing to a barely visible figure on the screen. Phil had pressed pause when Joe spoke. "That's Marion's second in command." Joe explained.
"So, we hunt down this Marion guy and we find Callie and Frank?" Chet asked having reached the conclusion that Frank was alive.
"Yes." Joe responded. "I don't think we can do much while I'm in the hospital, but Dr. Williams said he's releasing me tomorrow and then we can really get to work. In the meantime though, can you try to get any information you can on Marion?" Joe asked directing his question to Phil.
"Yes, I'll start on it right away." Phil replied immediately. He really hoped that they would manage to find Frank, it seemed too good to be true that his friend had survived the explosion but he severely doubted that Joe could hallucinate anything on such a large scale especially when the doctor had said his concussion was only mild.
The door to Joe's hospital room opened at that point and a nurse entered. "I'm sorry but you're all going to have to leave now visiting hours are over."
"Alright, bye, Joe." Vanessa responded bending down to hug him before exiting the room. The others echoed her goodbye before following her out the door.
A/N Review the 25th chapter written on the 25th of June.