J.M.J.

A/N: Thank you so much for continuing to read this story and if you have favorited and/or followed it! Thank you especially to Candylou, Caranath, Highflyer, max2013, Cherylann Rivers, SunshineGirl99 (I'm glad you're back!), ErinJordan, and BMSH for your reviews on chapter 24, and to drogorath for your review on chapter 12!

Chapter XXV

The Trapdoor

There was a dim light coming from some crack or crevice near the top of their prison. It must be daylight outside. Frank yearned to be outside in it. He wasn't sure how long he and Callie had been in here. He had distant, dream-like memories of being moved once, but everything was so foggy, he couldn't be sure if those memories were real. He did know that he and Callie hadn't been given anything to eat the entire time they had been held, and he was beginning to wonder if they had possibly been drugged. That would explain why everything was so confusing and why there were so many gaps in his memory. Frank settled back against the wall, wishing he and Callie could be closer together, but their chains wouldn't allow that.

Callie shifted in her position against the wall. She had slept most of the time, which also supported Frank's theory about them having been drugged, and was weak from the ill-treatment and lack of food. She had been thinking about the past for most the time that she had been awake, and even in sleep, her troubled dreams were all about things that had really happened in her past. "Do you remember that time when we were on the island out in the bay and the hermit jumped out at us with the gun?"

"What made you think of that?" Frank asked, recalling the occasion vividly.

Callie sighed and closed her eyes. "I thought then that that was the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to me. You must have thought Iola and I were so silly, screaming like that."

"I've never thought that," Frank told her. "It wath thcary. Bethideth, there'th been tho many timeth you've helped on catheth. Like that time you and Iola pothed ath waitretheth to try to get the inthide thcoop on that rethtaurant."

"We just applied for jobs there, and neither of us got them," Callie reminded him. "We weren't that helpful."

"You learned enough to get uth on the right track in that cathe," Frank said. "Even though you've never liked detective work. But you've alwayth underthtood."*

"It's part of who you are," Callie told him. "You wouldn't be Frank Hardy without stumbling into a mystery every fifteen minutes and having to solve it."

"Maybe I thould try," Frank replied. "We wouldn't be in the meth we're in without my detective work."

"No," Callie admitted, "but then I might never have met you if it wasn't for your detective work. You're not forgetting how we met, are you?"

"No." Frank smiled slightly at the memory. "Your thtolen backpack. It had your thetth – thketh – your drawingth in it." The word "sketchbook" was surprisingly hard to say without front teeth.

"My art and your detective work," Callie said. "That's how we met, and that's why we're where we are now."

"Maybe you'd be better off that way," Frank commented.

Callie shook her head. "If this is how meeting you was destined to end, I'll take it. The last nine years were worth it, even if we haven't seen as much of each other in the last five as either of us would have liked, with college and all. But I'm even glad for those years. They've shown me a little glimpse of what life would be like without you, and I'm even more certain than before that I don't want to spend the rest of my life like that."

"Tho, you haven't thanged your mind about getting married?" Frank gave her a crooked smile that just barely showed the gaps in his teeth. "Even if I do thound like an idiot right now?"

"No." Callie almost giggled, and the sound was strange in the gloomy setting. "There's got to be a way to fix that, though. A dental implant or something. But even if there wasn't, I still wouldn't change my mind. I'd just be glad my name wasn't Susan or something like that."

"Thuthan," Frank repeated, and this time they both chuckled.

"I was thinking," Callie said, trying to forget their current predicament, "we could have the wedding in January, while I'm on break. It's not the most romantic time, maybe, but if there's one thing I've learned, we're not exactly guaranteed indefinite time. Then you could move to Rome with me for a year."

"Jutht you and me," Frank mused. "I like that idea. I like it muth better than having to thpend another year apart."

"Then it's settled," Callie replied. "That gives us almost seven months to plan, which it will take that much time. You'll have to get your visa the second we get out of here."

"Hopefully I won't have to take a new picthure before I can get my teeth ficthed," Frank said.

They were just beginning to feel less afraid and more optimistic when there was a creaking sound of a door opening. It was accompanied by a blinding inrush of light and a smell that instantly reminded both prisoners of home. Yet neither of them was so naïve as to think for a moment that this meant their visitor had good intentions for them.

HBHBHBHBHB

"Man, my parents really need to stock their fridge better." Chet was rooting around in the refrigerator. "There's nothing but vegetables in here. What am I supposed to eat when I come visiting?"

"Vegetables, apparently," Biff retorted. He turned to Ned, the only other person in the kitchen right now. "So, Ned, about this Vanessa. Do you know her very well?"

Ned had been lost in thought, and the sudden question startled him. "Uh, what? Vanessa? No, I only met her last night. Joe knows her better."

"Joe?" Biff repeated. "Aw, man. Some guys have all the luck. Figures he'd meet a gorgeous girl like that."

"I think she's just a friend," Ned replied. "I mean, Joe doesn't have a lot of time to chase after girls right now."

"Well, in that case," Biff started to say, but Chet's throw-away phone ringing cut him off.

Chet looked at the screen of the flip phone and saw that it was a number he didn't recognize. "What should I do?"

"Answer it," Ned told him.

"Hello?" Chet said into the phone.

"Uh, can I talk to Joe?" a somewhat confused male voice replied.

"Who's calling?" Chet asked, instantly on the alert.

"Mario Beretta," the voice replied. "I met Joe at St. Vincent's Mission."

"Oh, right. He mentioned you." Chet covered the phone with his hand and whispered the information to Ned. "What should I tell him?"

"Joe did call the mission from that phone," Biff offered. "I think he gave them this number to call back."

"He's probably real, then," Ned said. "At any rate, it can't hurt anything if you find out what he's calling about."

Chet nodded. "Joe's not here right now. I'm a friend of his, Chet Morton. Are you calling about Tony?"

"That's right." Mario sounded wary himself. "Joe said to call him back at this number if I had any news."

"I thought he talked to somebody named Chris." Chet tested him.

"He did, the first time he called," Mario told him. "I answered the second time, when he said Tony might be in danger."

"Okay." Chet relaxed a little. "Is Tony all right?"

"Yeah," Mario told him. "Thanks to Joe's phone call and Tony's own quick thinking. You see, I talked to Joe the second time he called. With all the craziness that's been going on, I figured there was probably something to Joe's idea that Tony was in danger, so I did the sensible thing and called the police. Then I headed over to the hospital myself. Hoh, boy, did I ever walk in on a scene. See, Tony had just woken up a couple of hours earlier, but they hadn't let him see anybody yet. Apparently, this 'nurse' came into his room with a hypodermic. Even in his condition, Tony didn't like the looks of this nurse and pressed the button to call for another nurse. It's a good thing, too, because it turns out the first one was a fake. She had enough morphine in that hypodermic to cause a major overdose, especially with the painkillers Tony was already getting. The real nurse called for help, and there was a cop right down the hall who came running. Problem is, the fake nurse, being cornered, gave herself the dose of morphine. The doctors were still working on her last I heard, and they're not sure she'll make it."

"But Tony's all right?" Chet asked, thoroughly alarmed by the story.

"Uh-huh," Mario replied. "She didn't touch him."

Chet was about to answer when he heard the report of a gun from somewhere in the distance and froze. Ned and Biff responded in the same way.

"There are sometimes people target shooting in these woods," Biff ventured.

"As if I'm going to just accept that when my wife is out there somewhere and terrorists are running around," Ned replied, making a dash for the door.

HBHBHBHBHB

"Shouldn't one of us go back and get help?" Vanessa asked in a quiet tone as she trailed behind Joe and Nancy, who were, in turn, following the Black Rose man.

Joe and Nancy exchanged a glance. Then suddenly, Nancy rolled her eyes.

"I'm certainly not thinking too great today," she said. "It'll be faster to just call Ned." She handed the rifle to Joe and then took her phone out of the pocket and pressed the button to dial Ned. The call didn't go through. She looked at the screen in frustration to see that it showed almost no cell reception.

"Bayport's terrible for that," Joe told her apologetically.

"It should be enough to get a text out, at least." Nancy typed out the message and pressed the "send" button. It took more than a minute, but finally the text went through.

"We're almost there," the man said.

"You just keep quiet then," Joe warned him.

Vanessa was tense and walked closer to Nancy and Joe, looking over her shoulder several times as they proceeded.

"Oh," she said suddenly. "I almost forgot, Joe. I think you dropped this." She held out the St. Jude medal and dropped it into Joe's outstretched hand.

"Thanks," Joe told her. "Now, we need to be quiet."

They continued on for several more yards. Then their guide drew to a halt and raised his hand in a signal to the others to do likewise.

"We're here," the man whispered.

"Where?" Joe narrowed his eyes. All he could see was more trees. "This doesn't look like any kind of hideout."

The prisoner pointed. "There's a trapdoor in the ground over there. There used to be a shed or something there probably. We've been using it to store things. We were told to tie you and the girl up down there and someone else would come to pick you up."

"Okay. Then where's your friend?" Joe asked.

"He knows the rules," the man said. "He must have split as soon as he dropped the girl off."

"Stand right there and don't move or make a noise," Joe ordered him, and then retreated a few steps with Nancy and Vanessa to talk about the situation. "What do you guys think?"

"It's a great place for an ambush," Nancy replied, glancing around. "I can't make myself believe that they planned for this guy to get captured and then lead us here – especially since they didn't have any way of knowing that Vanessa and I would be following you – but I suppose it could have been a plan B."

"It wouldn't surprise me if these people plan for every possible thing that can go wrong," Joe muttered. "Well, what do we do? If Iola's locked up in some hole in the ground, we have to go rescue her, and we won't know she's not there if we don't look."

"I agree completely," Nancy assured him. "We'll just have to think this out."

"Can't you send another text and ask for help?" Vanessa suggested. "I would, but you told me to take the battery out of my phone, so I didn't bother carrying it with me."

Nancy took out her phone and shook her head. "There's no reception at all here. If we want to send a text out, one of us is going to have to run back with the phone and send it. That's probably our best option. It won't take more than a few minutes for help to get here."

"How's this?" Joe explained. "Vanessa goes back with the phone and tries to get help that way. While she's gone, Nancy keeps an eye on this guy with the gun, and I go and look for this supposed trapdoor. Just in case he's lying. You know, so we don't waste any more time."

"All right, as long as you don't go out of my sight," Nancy agreed.

Vanessa also nodded her agreement. Nancy handed her the phone, and she sprinted away, not wanting to waste a moment in summoning help. Then Joe and Nancy ordered their prisoner to point out exactly where the trapdoor was. Once he had done so, Nancy told him to lie face down and positioned herself a few paces away. Joe, meanwhile, began hunting for the trapdoor.

The prisoner, it turned out, had been telling the truth, at least in part. Before he had been looking for many minutes, Joe spotted a square of partially rotted boards in the ground. He stooped down and tried to open the door, but it was stuck.

"I need a crowbar or something," Joe grunted after failing to get it open. "Unless it's locked from inside. Is it?"

"That wouldn't do us much good, now would it?" the prisoner countered.

"Just answer the question," Joe ordered him.

"It's not locked," the man said.

"Maybe you can find a branch that would be stout enough to pry the door up," Nancy suggested.

Joe nodded absently, but he immediately began searching for a branch. After a few minutes, he found one. He pushed one end under the trapdoor and began to press down. There was a loud creaking, followed by an even louder crack as one of the boards splintered. Despite the boards being on rusted hinges, Joe was able to open the door the rest of the way with relative ease. The sunlight filtered down into musty darkness below.

Joe furrowed a brow. "There's something wrong here. That other guy couldn't have wrestled this door open, tied Iola up, shoved her down here, and gotten away before we got here. Besides, why wouldn't he wait to at least see if his buddy captured me? If this –"

He was cut off by a sharp groan. He snapped his head up to see that the tables had been turned on Nancy. She was on the ground, and her former prisoner was now holding the rifle again. Worse still, they weren't alone. The other Black Rose man had appeared as well, holding one hand clapped over Iola's mouth and the other with a handgun pointed at her head. He was several yards away from his compatriot and Nancy, and it took Joe little imagination to guess that he had made some noise to distract Nancy, giving the prisoner just enough time to knock her to the ground and wrestle the gun away from her.

"You'd better step away from there, Joe," the thug holding Iola said. "Wouldn't do for you to see what's really down there."

It was no time to argue. Joe slowly stepped away from the hole he had opened in the ground. His heart was pounding wildly, seeing Iola and Nancy in such grave danger, and he feared this might trigger another flashback. There certainly couldn't be a worse time for it.

"It will be very handy for us when the cops call in the FBI," the thug holding Iola went on. "They'll have a hard time believing this entire story of yours, especially after they hear the part about what happened here."

Joe felt he ought to make some retort, but he couldn't think of one. He jammed his hands into his pockets nervously and felt the small medal there. It instantly reminded him of Mario and Vanessa and Tony and everyone else who had been there for him through all of this. He hadn't been alone then, and he wasn't now. Vanessa would be back any second with help. He just had to stall.

"No sense wasting time on this," the former prisoner told his companion. "There was another one who went for help. We'd better hurry or we'll have witnesses."

"All right." The other released his grip on Iola and shoved her forward so that she fell to the ground. Then he raised his gun and pulled back the hammer.

*The cases Frank and Callie mention here are from the original blue-cover series. The case Callie mentions is book #4 The Missing Chums, and the one Frank mentions is book #7 The Secret of the Caves.