"Acquaintances of your father," the first intruder stated. Joe knew then that these men had nothing to do with his or Frank's case.
"My father's not here," Joe said. "He hasn't been home for days."
"We know. He's been putting his squeaky-clean nose into our business," the masked intruder snarled, his brown eyes hard. "He took something that our boss wants back and you are our insurance we're going to get it back."
Joe tossed his cover aside, scattering papers everywhere, and jumped out of bed, ignoring the agonizing protest from his side. He ran for the bathroom, knocking off a book that had lain on the edge of the nightstand. If he could get to the bathroom, he could escape into Frank's room and out his door but he never made it. The second intruder latched onto Joe's hair as he passed him, pulling Joe to a painful stop.
"Try that again and you'll be taking a nap you won't wake up from," Joe was warned as the business end of the revolver was nestled into the back of his neck.
Joe was forced out of his room and down the stairs. Exiting through the kitchen, Joe gasped when he saw Chet lying there but was relieved to see the rise and fall of his chest. Joe was pushed outside, still in his bare feet, toward the car that had smashed into the trash cans earlier. The back door was opened but before Joe could get in, he felt something hard connect with the back of his head before the world went black.
When Joe came too, he was lying on hard concrete with his wrists and ankles tightly bound. A large piece of duct tape surrounded his mouth making speech impossible. He winced when a light was turned on over head. The light made the drumming in his head louder and Joe squeezed his eyes shut to block it out.
"Craig, you and Mack head to the restaurant to pick up the disk. Go by Stone's to check it out and make sure it's the real thing. If it is, call me and I'll let the kid go," Joe heard one of the men present speaking.
"And if it's a fake?" demanded the intruder who had first appeared in Joe's room.
"Call me," the first voice instructed. "If Hardy hasn't followed instructions, we'll give Blondie here a swimming lesson."
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"What are we going to do?" Frank demanded, his brown eyes wide with fright. He had wanted Joe to cease his undercover assignment but not by being kidnapped or killed!
"Get a disk you won't mind losing," Fenton instructed. "And put it in the container requested." Fenton turned to Con. "Get hold of the chief and ask him to meet me at Sam Radley's," he requested.
"Sam?" Frank asked as Con left the room.
"These men play for keeps," Fenton told Frank solemnly. "We have to have a plan with a good back up and Sam's the only one I know who can pull it off."
At ten till nine, Fenton walked down the alley behind Turtles restaurant, past a homeless man lying half in a cardboard box, and up to the second trash can. Looking around to see if anyone else were about, he quickly put the small box containing the disk under the lid as he had been instructed. On his way out of the alley, a hobo bumped into him, burping up into his face with a stench that almost turned his stomach. "Got a sp...(hic-up) spare dollar?" the hobo asked, gazing up the three-inch difference into Fenton's brown eyes with a pair of bloodshot hazel ones.
"No," Fenton replied, frowning at him and moving away. Fenton returned to his car on the street, climbed in and returned home, waiting anxiously for news of Joe.
Nine o'clock came and went. As did ten and eleven. At twenty minutes before midnight, two men came into the alley and headed straight for the trash can. "Shouldn't we be a bit more cautious?" asked one of the men.
"We've been watching this alley since Hardy came in here," the second man said. "Let's get the disk and go. Hardy won't try anything. He knows his baby boy is dead if he does."
As the two men passed the homeless man, he looked at them and then to the alleyway entrance where the drunk had passed out some time before and lay in a heap near several papers and a bag of trash. The hobo quietly picked himself up and vanished out of the alley, unseen by all but the homeless man.
The two thugs left the alley, package in hand and returned to their car not seeing the homeless man jump up and follow behind them. As they drove away, the homeless person removed a cell phone from his clothes and placed a call describing the car, giving the tag number and the direction it was headed as he hurried away from the alley toward the unmarked police car on the next block.