Chapter 2

Legacies and Liars

A/N: Ropers are a type of cowboy boot; they have a ½ inch heel and are Packers; in other words, they lace up. The style I usually don when I wear jeans are just tall enough to support my ankles (as a dancer of 13 years I'm always twisting at least one ankle, so shoes that support them are a necessity for me), and are black.

Joe Hardy hung up the phone in disgust for the fourth time, glaring at it and cursing angrily under his breath. "Busy!" he muttered. Why, of all times, was Vanessa's work number busy now?

"Dad?"

He looked up; one of his twelve-year-old twins, Elen, was standing there—Gwladys (Welsh for Claudia & pronounced the way Gladys is pronounced) was at soccer practice.

"Something's not right," Elen said, her eyes suddenly widening. "It's Uncle Frank, isn't it?"

Joe nodded. She'd been in school when the men had come, and had just gotten home—and he'd learned long ago to trust her hunches.

"A fire?"

Again, he nodded. "Elen, he's dead," he told her heavily.

But she shook her head, her two plaited pigtails waving with the movement. "He's not dead, Daddy," she assured him, her face the usual blankness she acquired during times of clairvoyance- times such as this.

"You can see him?" Joe asked eagerly. Like a schoolboy.

"Let me concentrate!" Elen complained. "This doesn't always work, you know. What I'm seeing now might not happen for a month!" She paused.

Precocious, isn't she? Frank's voice said in his brother's mind as Elen concentrated.

The two brothers were at a family Christmas three years ago; Elen had been observant even then.

Frank had just gotten back from a case in the Chautauqua Institution area of New York State, and was in the process of telling Joe and their father, Fenton, about it. "And then, you wouldn't believe this, but the girl I'd been using to get information for a sting turned on me! She claimed she was with the police, and, well…" he trailed off, embarrassed. "So there I was, in the booking room, and I was trying my best to explain that I was with the Network without actually giving away vital information!"

"You should have plead entrapment, Uncle Frank," Elen commented seriously, climbing into Fenton's lap to listen to Frank's account of being arrested as a spy.

"And why is that, Ellie?" Frank asked, trying hard to keep a straight face.

"Well, you didn't know that your confidential informant was actually playing the Muggable Mary part, did you?" she replied. "And since she was a police officer to begin with, thinking you were the kingpin of the whole operation, it really was entrapment."

Elen said slowly, "He's in some kind of prison, along a border. Overseas. It's green and blue, maybe a few old castles in the area." She gave a wry smile. "Sorry, Dad. That's the best I could do."

Joe sighed in frustration. "Can you be any more specific, Ellie?" Ellie. He hadn't used that name since she was ten.

Elen imitated Joe's own sigh and shook her head. "I see only outlines. Besides, I'm never certain it'll be today, or two weeks from now, or a month from now. It's been only once that I've seen something happening when it happened, and that was the electronic theft case a while back, remember?"

He reached over and tugged one of her pigtails. "You did the best you could," he said.

She smiled sadly. "But my best isn't good enough."

On most days, the Grey Man was happy for an interruption from the tedious task of paperwork. This day, however, he was not.

It had started when his secretary had announced that a Mrs. Nancy Hardy was here to see him. Nancy, Frank's wife, had a hotheaded temper more suitable for a redhead than a blonde. But the Grey Man had to admit that she made a useful spy for their side: she always had a new trick up her sleeve. Yet that was another downfall, the Grey Man reflected ruefully: she used her tricks on him whenever she could to get information on the cases her husband was assigned to.

She was standing in front of him now, looking ravishing—as usual; she looked good in anything—in a black, Western-style collared shirt with two inches of black leather fringe hanging down from the breast and tight, stone-washed blue jeans decorated with a belt and turquoise buckle. On her feet were black ropers- dangerous boots, he remembered with a slight wince, for he'd seen the damage Nancy Drew could do with those things.

"I don't believe that Frank died in a fire," Nancy said icily, her arms crossed. "I don't want to believe it, and I won't." She paused. "I told Joe and Vanessa he died. They're on their way over here as we speak. And what of Brett? He's only ten years old! He'll never remember the legacy his father was save for the stories, and never will know the legacy his father could have been."

"Mrs. Hardy, we'll let you know if there are any more developments if we get them, all right?" the Grey Man tried.

She stared at him levelly, her face carefully blank. But her blue eyes were flashing. "All right."

Liars.