J.M.J.

Author's note: Thank you all so much for continuing to read! Thank you especially to everyone who reviewed since I posted the previous chapter!

ErinJordan: Enjoy the update! :)

MargaretA66: Do you mean about Jones getting kidnapped or still having a crush on Frank? Probably neither one is exactly a shocker…

Angelicalkiss: I totally understand getting behind on a story. Don't worry about it! They're definitely not going to get in much R&R.

Max2013: I know. I can't help being an evil, cliffhanger-writing author. And I'm afraid the end of this chapter isn't going to be any better. ;)

Thank you to everyone else who is reading! I appreciate all of you! God bless!

Chapter VI

Unlike Frank and Biff, Joe wasn't having any trouble staying asleep. He hadn't gotten much sleep in the last few days, worrying about Iola and everything, and then there was the long trip across the ocean, so he was pretty well exhausted. He probably could have slept until the sun came up—which would have been sleeping the clock around and then some—except that he was startled awake by someone shouting his name. He sat bolt upright, grabbing the flashlight next to him and switching it on before he even was awake enough to realize where he was.

"Joe. No. Joe!" Fenton said again, his voice rising with each word.

Joe turned the flashlight toward him and saw that his dad was apparently talking in his sleep. At least, he had been. He woke himself up with his shouted and sat up, breathing hard and looking around him in confusion.

"Hey, Dad, it's okay. I'm right here," Joe assured him.

Then he realized two things. First, they weren't the only ones in the room anymore. Half a dozen or so other men had come into the room and gone to sleep on their own mats. Second, none of these men were asleep now.

"Sorry, guys," Joe told them, as he scooted over to his dad's side, casting a brief questioning glance at Frank's and Biff's empty mats. "Dad, are you okay?"

Fenton bowed his head forward and shook it as he became fully awake. "Yeah. It was just a dream."

"I figured that." Joe wasn't sure what to do. Consoling someone after a nightmare, especially his dad, wasn't exactly in his wheelhouse. Whatever they did, they really couldn't stay here and talk.

"Are you all right, Mr. Hardy?" Jim asked from where he had sat up on his mat.

"Yes, I'm fine. I…" Fenton paused as he also noticed that two members of the party were missing. "Where are Frank and Biff?"

"I don't know," Joe replied.

"I'm going to go look for them." Fenton stood up, grateful for an excuse to escape the room. It was bad enough having these dreams when Laura was the only one around to witness it, but it was another thing entirely to have a whole room full of witnesses, most of them strangers for whom this was their first impression of him and the rest being his sons and his sons' friends. Maybe Laura was right that he should be more concerned about this whole state of affairs.

Joe followed him out of the room. He wasn't sure whether his dad wanted to be alone right now or not, but he figured that if he did, he could just ask Joe to go back. Neither of them said a word until they had gone a little distance down the corridor.

"I'm sorry about that, Joe," Fenton said, keeping his eyes focused on the floor.

"There's nothing to be sorry about. It was just a dream. Everybody has dreams." Joe tried to act like he was shrugging it off, but his dad's body language was sending him a signal that there might be more to it than that.

"Yeah. I know. Funny how they can get to you, though."

Joe wasn't sure what to say to this. It was so unlike his dad to be rattled by anything. "Do…Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really." Fenton let out a long breath. "Maybe it is only fair for you to have a warning. I've been having these dreams fairly often lately. It might happen again."

"These dreams…Are they always about me?"

Fenton hesitated a few seconds before he replied in the affirmative.

Joe wrinkled his brow. "It doesn't have anything to do with when I got shot, does it?"

Fenton flinched. "Yeah. It does. I know it doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean, you were the one who…who almost died, and you're either much better at pretending than I am or it's never bothered you nearly as much."

"Well, I had some dreams about it, too, at first." Joe shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it was that therapist the doctor made me talk to."

"You only saw him twice before you managed to get out of that."

Joe chuckled softly. "He was a good therapist, I guess. But anyway, Dad, it does make sense. In a lot of ways, you were worse off than I was. I was unconscious for most of it and even though I kind of knew what was happening, it wasn't…I don't know how to explain it. Anyway, I'm okay."

"No thanks to me," Fenton muttered. "I should have gotten the situation under control. I shouldn't have hesitated."

"Dad…" Joe stopped walking, and although he didn't right away, Fenton stopped, too. "So that's it," Joe went on. "It wasn't your fault. There wasn't anything you could do to stop it, and the way I remember it, you saved my life. There's nothing to feel guilty about."

He couldn't tell in the darkness whether his dad seemed convinced. He doubted it, but he never got the chance to find out for sure, because they were interrupted at that moment by a loud, shrill, feminine scream.

HBHBHBHBHB

It couldn't have been more than a minute or two later that Frank came to. He was leaning with his back against the trunk of a tree, and his head hurt so that he felt like he was going to be sick. He reached up to try to feel what was the matter, and he found that his hair was damp and warm and sticky. As his fingers made contact with the injury, he felt more nauseated than ever, and he leaned forward, holding his stomach as if that would hold the contents in.

Luckily, he hadn't eaten in over ten hours, and that probably did more than anything to contribute to the fact that he didn't actually get sick. He remained in the same position for another minute or two, and gradually, the feeling passed as he began to remember what had happened. He had been with Jones and they had heard a noise. He had gone to investigate and had gotten jumped by some thug. Then the thug's taunt rang in his ears as clearly as if he was hearing it again: Going for a moonlight walk with your girlfriend? That's just fine. You'll be so busy looking for her, you'll forget all about Foy. Then Jones had screamed.

Frank forced himself up. He had to find Jones. He had to…He leaned against the tree and looked around. Jones and the thug were gone. It was too late.

"Frank! Frank! What's going on?"

He turned toward Joe's voice and saw his brother and dad running toward them.

"What happened, Frank?" Fenton asked.

"Some thug grabbed Jones." Frank squeezed his eyes shut as he began to feel woozy again. "He slammed me against a tree. I was out for a few seconds."

Fenton insisted on looking at the back of his head and he saw that the injury was bleeding. Silently, Fenton told himself not to panic; head injuries usually bleed profusely even when they aren't serious.

"I wonder if this is the sort of mission that has a doctor running around somewhere," Joe commented.

"Never mind about that! We've got to find Jones. It was only a couple minutes ago. There might be time to find her," Frank insisted.

"I could run around and look," Joe offered.

"Not by yourself," Fenton told him. "There's no way of knowing where he went, and even if you did find him, you probably couldn't stop him."

Joe was about to argue, but then they heard several people running toward them. Out of instinct, Joe took a defensive stance in front of his dad, who was helping to support Frank. The newcomers, however, turned out to only be Biff, Alyssa, and Wanda. Joe noted with interest that the two women were fully dressed; clearly they had already been awake when they heard the scream.

"What's going on here?" Wanda demanded. "I knew taking all you in would be trouble, but I didn't think it would start this soon. What did you do?"

"Trouble?" Joe repeated as innocently as he could manage. "Who said anything about any trouble?"

Wanda gave him a withering glare. "I heard Jones scream. That usually spells trouble."

"How do you know it was Jones?" Fenton asked.

For a moment, Wanda looked nonplussed, but before she had a chance to answer, Alyssa stepped forward, her attention on Frank.

"Hey, you okay?" Alyssa asked Frank. "You look a little pale. And your head's bleeding! I'll go call a doctor."

"There's no need for that," Frank insisted. "I'll be okay, but we've got to find Jones."

"What happened to her?" Biff asked.

"It looks like she was kidnapped," Fenton said.

Wanda threw her hands in the air. "This is worse than I expected! I'm not putting up with this kind of thing. I want you all out first thing in the morning."

"Whoa, hold on, Wanda," Alyssa protested. "It wasn't their fault. At least, I'm sure they didn't mean for Jones to be kidnapped."

"Of course not," Joe agreed. "Besides that, we're your best bet to find her. You can't just kick us out on our ears."

Wanda shook her head impatiently. "You don't understand. There's been a kidnapping of a United States citizen in my mission smack in the middle of a country that can't decide whether it favors the U.S. or China. I can't afford an international incident here. We could get shut down. We could even get arrested when it comes out that the reason it happened was because I let myself get talked into letting my mission be used as a cover by a bunch of wannabe spies."

"Spies?" Alyssa made a noise that was somewhere between a chuckle and gasp. "I didn't think the Hardys were here as missionaries, but spies? What is going on around here?"

No one answered right away, and then other people from the mission started arriving, everyone asking the same question about what had happened.

"Don't tell them!" Wanda hissed at Fenton and the boys.

Fenton didn't like lying to all these people, especially when it was almost certain that the truth would be out in the morning anyway, but he also knew that starting a panic before he'd even had a chance to get any of the facts wouldn't help anything. He nodded and said, "As long as you keep them back so we can investigate the area."

Wanda sighed in relief and stepped forward, holding her arms out to signal to the crowd to back up. "It's all right. There was just a little accident. It's not a big deal. Just go on back to bed, all of you."

Fortunately, most of them did, except for Jim who was guessing that there was something much bigger going on than a simple accident. As soon as the others had backed off, Jim was brought up to date on what had happened.

"I am sorry that this would happen," Jim said, lowering his eyes. "Do you think it has to do with my uncle?"

Frank glanced at his dad, even though he knew that he was the only one with the information that this was certainly connected to the murder of Foy Jie.

"I'd say so," Biff spoke up. While Wanda had worked on getting the crowd away and Fenton had been briefing Jim, Biff and Joe had already started searching the immediate area for clues. Biff held up one: a black rose. He touched the petals with the tip of his finger. "It's a real rose, too. That's funny. The black is just painted on." He held up his finger so that the others could see in the light of the flashlights that the tip was stained black. "Underneath it's white."

Alyssa whistled softly. "So, you're after them. That Black Rose outfit."

"They murdered my uncle," Jim confirmed.

"Hold on," Fenton warned him. "They also obviously knew that we were here as soon as we arrived, or possibly even before we arrived. How could have that happened?"

Alyssa took a step back. "Don't look at me. I didn't know you were coming until you were here, and I was too busy after that to tell anyone about it."

"Besides Jones and the police, Wanda is the only one I told about my uncle," Jim said, "and I only told her and Jones about you coming. I am certain that Jones did not tell anyone else, either, because we talked about it."

All eyes shifted to Wanda.

"I didn't tell anybody, either," she protested. "The last thing I wanted was anyone finding out why you were coming. Like I said, I don't want any trouble."

"What about that guy at the airport?" Joe asked his dad. "Edmund Wight. He knew we were coming before we got here."

"Did anyone tell him about this?" Fenton asked.

From the blank looks on the faces of Jim, Wanda, and Alyssa, none of them appeared to have even heard of Edmund Wight.

"Well, we'll work on that part of it more later," Fenton said. "Right now, we'd better take see about Frank's head. Ms. Lakin, Ms. Roche, if you wouldn't mind helping me, we could get him inside and take a closer look before we decide whether to call a doctor or not. Joe, you stay out here with Jim and Biff and keep looking around."

"Right," Joe agreed.

"No, I don't need a doctor," Frank insisted. "I'm fine."

"We'll see about that," Fenton said.

Frank was still protesting as Fenton and the two women escorted him back inside the mission building. Joe, Biff, and Jim searched the area for any further clues, but they didn't find so much as a footprint in the hard ground.

"Let me see that rose, Biff," Joe requested, and Biff handed over the flower, which Joe began to scrutinize.

Jim hovered nearby to look as well. Apart from the bit of white that Biff had uncovered, it was completely black.

"They must have just painted it," Jim commented. "The paint is still wet."

Joe nodded and frowned. "The paint might be fresh, but this flower isn't. Look how bad it's wilting."

Biff was trying to rub the paint off his finger with his opposite hand. "Why would they paint it, anyway? Why not just use a black rose?"

"There isn't any such thing," Joe told him. "There are really dark purple roses that are almost black, but that's the closest they get naturally. To get a really black rose, you have to dye it, and since white is easy to cover up, they usually use white roses. The thing I don't get is why they would have painted it. Usually to dye flowers, they put them in a vase of water with the dye in it. Then the flower sucks the dye up and turns that color."

"At least we know it was definitely Black Rose who did this," Jim said. "But why? And how did they know you would be here?"

Joe stared at the rose thoughtfully. "If you and Jones and Wanda were the only ones who knew about us coming, and none of you told anyone, that can only mean one thing: one of you is Black Rose. It couldn't have been Jones…"

"Or me," Jim quickly interjected.

"So it looks like it must be Wanda," Joe said. "Or Alyssa. I noticed she was dressed like she was already awake. Maybe she did some eavesdropping and found out about it. Then there's still Edmund Wight. I still don't know how he fits in."

"It couldn't be Alyssa," Biff said. "She was with me the whole time, and she said she's only been here a couple of weeks."

"Frank said it was a man who attacked him," Jim pointed out. "It could not have been Wanda or Alyssa."

"True, unless one of them had an accomplice." Joe paused for a few seconds to think. "We're going to have to find out more about both of them. I don't think we're going to learn anything more out here tonight. Let's go and see how Frank's doing and if Wanda still wants to kick us out of here."

They started toward the mission building, but partway through the garden, Joe noticed that Biff was lagging behind. He turned to ask him what was holding him up, but in the beam of the flashlight, Joe saw that his friend's face had gone deathly pale.

"Hey, Biff, what's wrong?"

Biff didn't answer. His eyes rolled up and he collapsed on the ground.