J.M.J.

Author's note: Surprise! I seriously did not think that I would get any more Tuesday chapters out, but I think I'm in the end of story crunch to get it finished, so here we are. Plus, it's probably the least I can do after the way I ended the previous chapter. That was a tough chapter to write, and I did think long and hard about whether I should really go through with it or not. It's not something that I just did and then I'm going to ignore. As a matter of fact, it really sets things up for the next book. Speaking of the end of this book and the beginning of the next, the end is coming up very quickly. This chapter's a little bit of a downbeat chapter with a lot of information, next chapter will be the climax, then there will be a long resolution chapter (unless I decide to split it into two chapters; still deciding there), and then an epilogue. If all goes well, we could be at the end of this book next week. I've been writing this one for so long that it's starting to feel a little unreal that I'm actually that close to finishing it. I know I couldn't have made it this far without all your support, so thank you to everyone who has left reviews since I posted the previous chapter: MargaretA66, Candylou, ErinJordan, max2013, DusktoDawn21, angelicalkiss, Bkworm4life4, and drogorath! You guys are awesome!

Chapter XXI

Lisa's Confession

Joe paced up and down one of the rooms in the Bayport Police Headquarters. He hadn't wanted to come down here very much, but he had to give a statement about what had happened, and since the doctor had given him the go-ahead, Captain Olaf had insisted on him coming down here. Yet, it wasn't getting dragged down to a police station against his will that was uppermost in his thoughts. All he could think about was Iola and how horrible it must be for her right now. As far as he knew, she was awake. What was she thinking? He really should have been there, but he knew he wouldn't have been allowed to see her, even if he hadn't been dragged down here. Maybe she wouldn't even want to see him. That grenade had almost certainly been meant for him, and so maybe she was blaming him for it. Joe was certainly blaming himself.

"Joe, why don't you sit down?" Laura advised him. "You really should be getting some rest."

Wordlessly, Joe sat on one of the hard chairs that lined the room. All the rest of the Hardy family was there, and they were all quiet and glum.

"You know, there really wasn't anything you could do to stop it," Laura told him, putting her arm around his shoulder as she sat down next to him.

Joe looked up at her, a little surprised that she had realized what was going through his head. It wasn't that hard to guess, though. After all, maybe everyone was thinking the same thing: that this was his fault. He didn't say anything. He knew his mother was trying to make him feel better, but there was nothing words could do right now, so what was the point in using them?

Frank watched his brother out of the corner of his eye. He had also already guessed that that was what was going through Joe's mind, especially since he had realized just earlier that morning that Joe and Iola had feelings for each other. He shoved his hands in his pockets. All this waiting around was making him jittery.

"I wish Olaf would hurry up and get this over with," he muttered under his breath.

Gertrude managed to overhear. "I don't see why he can't wait to ask questions. Surely, he doesn't think the boys have anything to do with any of this."

"Of course not," Fenton told her. "But the police need all the information they can get as soon as possible if they're going to catch these people."

"Why aren't you out there looking for them then?" Gertrude asked him.

Fenton raised an eyebrow slightly in surprise. It wasn't often that Gertrude actually encouraged him to work on a case. "This new development has thrown a wrench in everyone's understanding of the case. We need to rework our strategies. Talking to the police and getting all the information we can about what happened this afternoon is working on the case. Anyway, Sam's working on some leads, too."

The conversation was interrupted by Tony and Lisa Prito entering the room. They looked a little surprised to see the Hardys.

"Hi," Tony said. He glanced at Joe. "I thought you were still all at the hospital. How's your hand, Joe?"

Joe looked down at the bandage and shrugged. "It'll be fine."

"How's Iola?" Tony asked next.

Everyone paused. Fenton was the first one to clear his throat. "Not too well, unfortunately. The doctors don't think her life is any danger, but she is paralyzed from the waist down."

Tony sucked in a deep breath, unsure what to say. Unfortunately, Lisa wasn't at any such loss.

"Too bad. Can't say she wasn't asking for it, though, the way she's been acting."

Joe started to jump up, but Laura held him back. Both Tony and Frank started to say something, but Gertrude beat them to it.

"What is the matter with you, young lady?" she demanded, stepping right in front of Lisa with her hands on her hips. "You should be ashamed of yourself. Don't you have any sympathy for anyone? Don't you think about anyone else besides yourself?"

Fire snapped in Lisa's eyes. "Of course I do. Why else do you think I joined School of Thought? They're only thing that can stop Black Rose. I did it to protect people like you who can't get over themselves enough to realize that everything's not right in the world."

"You're still saying that even after you've been shown proof that School of Thought was Black Rose?" Gertrude demanded in disbelief.

"You mean that recording Frank supposedly made?" Lisa retorted. "That doesn't prove anything. Not one thing. It's all just a lie."

"It's no use, Miss Hardy," Tony spoke up. "It's always this way when we try to talk to her. She doesn't listen to anybody."

Lisa turned to him, her face livid. "Just shut up, Tony! What do you know about any of this? You never listen to what I say. You don't have any room to talk about anyone being selfish."

Tony shook his head. "Who do you think you're fooling, Lisa. We were all there. We all saw you. We saw you fake having an injured ankle so you could run off and lure Frank and Mario into that ambush.

The look of total shock on Lisa's face was enough to convince Frank that she was telling at least part of the truth when she burst out. "Is that what you think I am? A murderer?"

If Tony agreed that maybe that was going a little far, he didn't admit it. He set his jaw. "What else am I supposed to think after what happened?"

Lisa slapped him hard on the face. "I hate you. You know I actually hate you."

She hadn't finished speaking before Gertrude had grabbed her wrist and Fenton and Frank had jumped up to make sure Tony didn't try to fight back. Fortunately, at that moment, one of the long-overdue police officers decided to make his appearance. It wasn't Captain Olaf; it was Chief Collig. He had been a police officer a long time, and he recognized at once that there had been some trouble. It wasn't much of a leap to guess what this trouble had been.

"All right, everybody, calm down," he said. "Tony, why don't you go home and cool off?"

"Sure," Tony replied through clenched teeth before he headed out the door.

Then Collig turned toward Lisa. "Why didn't you stay where I told you to?"

Lisa tossed her head. "It's a free country, isn't it?"

"Yeah, well, that doesn't mean you get to wander around wherever you want in my police station, especially not when I tell you to stay in a particular spot." Collig took a radio off his belt and said into it, "Officer Welling, please come and escort Ms. Prito back to the interrogation room."

Less than a minute later, a female police officer came and took Lisa out of the room.

There was a pause before Fenton asked, "Are you holding Lisa?"

Collig let out a long breath. "We're still trying to sort everything, but for the moment, yes. There is reasonable cause to suspect that she may have some complicity in the attack on Frank and Mario. Speaking of which, I'm going to need the recording on your phone as evidence, Frank."

"Right." Frank handed over the phone.

"What have you got on this Black Rose outfit, Fenton?" Collig asked. "You've kept an eye on them over the years, haven't you?"

"I've tried, but there's not much to go on," Fenton said. "They have a talent for crawling into the woodwork whenever they've made too much noise, which is what they did fourteen years ago."

Collig nodded. "You must have something, though."

"I did turn up a few new things," Fenton admitted. He explained about how Black Rose evidently used ideological cults to recruit and weed out new members, usually in their teens or early twenties.

"There's just one thing with that," Joe spoke up, surprising everyone. He had been uncharacteristically quiet since the incident with the grenade. "Lisa was insisting that Black Rose is evil and whatever, and that School of Thought is opposed to them. What's the deal with that if they're one and the same?"

"Good question," Collig agreed. "She is very insistent on that point, and I think she honestly believes it. It doesn't make much sense for Black Rose to be indoctrinating their potential recruits against themselves."

"I'll admit, that does seem to be a hole in the theory," Fenton said. "Still, we can sort that out later, when we have more facts. For now, let's focus on running down Evangeline and her two compatriots. What have you learned there, Ezra?"

"Nicholson already lined up a forensics team to come down here and work on that gun and the pieces of the grenade we found." Collig glanced at his watch. "It'll be another couple of hours till they get here. Some of my people already took prints off the gun and are running them. That's where Olaf is right now. I've also already had Evangeline's picture circulated to all my officers and I'm working on getting it around town. I got descriptions of the two men who were with her from Mario, but I would like to also get descriptions from Frank to make sure they match up."

Frank nodded. "Sure thing. Did you get anything out of Lisa? If she'd just talk, she could probably clear the whole mystery up."

"Yeah, no kidding," Collig agreed. "Ever since she's been here, she's alternated between refusing to say a word and screaming at us. We're not getting very far on that front."

"Could I talk to her?" Laura asked. When everyone in the room turned to look at her, she looked down and scratched her ear self-consciously. "I'd just like to give it a try. I have an idea for how to get through to her."

"Be my guest," Collig invited her. "If you can get any information at out of her, it will be better than the rest of us have done." He called for an officer to come and take Laura to where Lisa was being held.

A few minutes later, Laura was sitting at a table across from Lisa in one of the small rooms used for interrogations. Officer Welling had left them alone. Lisa was sulky and wouldn't say a word at first, which made Laura a little nervous. Nevertheless, the woman cleared her throat.

"How are you doing, Lisa?" she asked.

Lisa examined her fingernails, pretending not to hear.

Laura sat back in her chair a bit. "I'm sorry everything's worked out this way. I was really hoping nothing like this would happen. I also know we haven't been very fair to you and I'm sorry."

Lisa still didn't respond to this verbally, but she did look up and seemed a little bit mollified by the apology. That was some encouragement, at least.

"You must have learned a lot from School of Thought," Laura went on. "I'd like to hear about it, if you want to tell me about it."

"Why do you care all of a sudden?" Lisa asked. "Or are you just trying to prove that it's wrong?"

Laura weighed her words carefully before she replied. "There are aspects of School of Thought that I think are wrong and that no matter how good the reasons they give are, I'm not going to be convinced otherwise. Like them being so secretive. If they have this information that is so important and could help keep the world safe, don't you think they should make that information available to everyone?"

"They do, but no one will listen," Lisa insisted.

"Well, I'm listening now," Laura told her. "And just because I think them keeping this information so secret is wrong doesn't mean that I think the information itself is wrong. I've got an open mind about it and I'll give it a fair chance."

Lisa scoffed. "Yeah, right."

"Look, Lisa, there are people out there trying to kill my husband, Sam Radley, and Mario Beretta. They tried to kill Joe and Iola. They've already killed a very good friend of ours. It looks like somehow they might be connected to School of Thought. I'm not saying that you're involved. I don't believe that you are. And I don't believe that you'd get involved in any group that you knew would hurt anyone, but you're also not stupid. You have to realize that all of this can't be a coincidence. You also know perfectly that that woman who tried to kill Frank and Mario knew you and knew School of Thought. You also know that covering up for someone like that is wrong. Now, maybe she's just a bad apple. Every group has them. But the thing is that defending the bad apples in your group isn't helping your group as a whole. It's hurting it. The best thing you can do for your group, your cause, whatever you want to call it, is to tell us anything you know about this woman."

The tears forming in Lisa's eyes betrayed her attempts to look and act tough. "I…I need to think about it," she said.

Laura nodded slowly. "I understand. I really do. But you have to understand, too, that every minute these people are loose gives them another opportunity to hurt people. I know you don't want that. I also know you don't want them giving your whole group a bad name and making it even harder for people to believe what you're saying. I know it's hard. It feels wrong, like you're betraying something you believe in. But sometimes the classic movie advice of 'follow your heart' is wrong. Sometimes—a lot of times—you really do need to listen to your head."

There was a long pause and then Lisa said, "Okay. I didn't know what they were going to do, honest. Ugh. I guess that's the wrong place to start. So, after you join School of Thought, they use codes to communicate with you. They give a code book to decipher the codes. I kept mine in my jewel box. I must have dropped the key in Rudger's car when he gave me a ride the other day. It fell out and that's how Iola got hold of it. He told me he saw her pick it up after he drove away."

"So, Rudger is the one who was stalking Sally?"

Lisa sighed in annoyance. "He wasn't stalking her. He was just keeping an eye on her to see if she was for real about wanting to join. I told them she wasn't, but they wanted to give her a shot anyway."

Laura was tempted to point out that that was still stalking, but she decided that setting Lisa straight on some of her skewed ideas of right and wrong could wait until later.

"When all of you showed up and were asking me what was in the jewel box, I knew you'd get inside it sooner or later," Lisa went on. "We're not supposed to show the codes to anyone. It would be disastrous if anyone outside School of Thought saw them. I didn't know what to do, so I ran. I found a phone and asked Rudger to come pick me up. He was really mad when he found out what happened. He said I'd broken the School's trust and if I wanted to continue being a member I'd have to prove I deserved it. He called in Eva, and she said she had an idea."

"Eva?" Laura repeated. "You mean, Evangeline?"

"I guess. That's what all of you have been calling her. She calls herself Eva. Anyway, she said that our only chance was to intimidate all of you into not looking into the box. I didn't think it would work, but both Eva and Rudger were pretty insistent about it. They drove me out to Mortons' farm and had me shout for help close enough to the house that someone would hear me. Everything went according to plan at first. We were hoping you'd all come, but obviously you didn't, and Eva said it was fine this way. I was supposed to get them to split up, and Rudger and Eva would take care of the rest. I didn't know what Eva was planning on doing. I would have never gone along with it if I had. And I don't think Rudger would have, either."

"What happened to Rudger, then?"

"I don't know. To tell the truth, I'm kind of worried about him. Eva might have done something to him."

"What about the grenade?" Laura asked. "Do you have any ideas who threw it?"

Lisa shook her head. "Maybe Eva had it done? I know Rudger wouldn't have."

"Okay. Do you know where Eva might have gone?"

"Maybe. You know, I think Eva's been planning this all along. She's the one who really pushed to have Rudger let Joe and Sally join the School. I think…I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if she was at your house or the Radleys' waiting for someone to show up."

Laura started slightly. "But surely she wouldn't try something as bold as that after what happened at the Mortons'?"

Lisa shrugged. "I wouldn't put it past her. Even before I knew what I know about her now, I didn't like her. She seemed kind of…cold and plotting. If she's really out for revenge, that would explain it. And in that case, I really think almost getting caught would only make her more desperate to get her revenge. You know, she's the sort of person that if she really wanted something like that, she wouldn't mind getting caught so much as long as accomplished what she set out to first."