Disclaimer: I do not own, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, the characters associated with them, or any pop culture references I may choose to include.

Author's Notes: Thank you for your reviews. I'm glad that you all are supportive of this story. I especially appreciate all of the constructive reviews that I have been receiving, they really help motivate and encourage me.

Italic are thoughts.

Chapter Five

Joe slapped his hands on the front desk as he reached it, slightly out of breath. In order to save time he had taken the stairs downstairs to the emergency room, and he had run. All in all, it was a wonderful experience that proved even though he was in shape, he was no longer seventeen.

"You again?" The voice that posed the question was incredulous and surprised.

Joe's blue eyes were brought up to focus on the same tired nurse he encountered the day before. He could just imagine the help she could be. "Yeah, it's me." He flashed her a little bit of his trademark smile. Maybe some Hardy charm can soften her up a little.

Her dull eyes just bore into his. "What brings you here this time?"

Or not. "You can't by any chance point me in the direction of Dr. Drew, can you?" The nurse in fact did point, towards a large crowd. Joe looked, but couldn't make anything out in it besides a huddled mass of people. Normally he would have used her trademark strawberry blond locks to puck her out of the crowd, but the auburn blended too well with any dark color of hair. Maybe Frank has a point. "Do you think you could be a bit more specific please?"

"The door."

"She's at the door?"

"No. By now she's out the door. Probably out of the parking garage too. She left about ten minutes ago."

Joe thought for a moment. This wasn't going to make things easier. But he knew there was always the option of preventing her date from meeting her altogether, which as he thought was looking better and better by every second. "What about Dr…" He trailed off, waiting until the name came to him. "Phillips. Can you tell me where Dr. Phillips is?"

"It's within my capabilities as a human."

"Will you tell me where Dr. Phillips is?" Joe tried again, reminded of a grade-school teacher who had been a stickler for grammar; he had never been a fan of that particular teacher.

"Well, he left with Dr. Drew. To the best of my knowledge they are together. And if that kiss this morning was any indication, they're going on a date."

"Do you know where they were going?"

"I might have heard them say something about going out to dinner. Probably a restaurant."

Joe took a deep breath to calm himself at this point. He really didn't have time for this. He was also fairly confident that he didn't have the time to search every single restaurant in the city due to the fact that he knew that would be a large amount of restaurants. "You didn't hear them say anything about a specific restaurant? Or a type of restaurant at least?"

"Sorry. I'm afraid I was busy working. Which I have to get back to."

The nurse turned away, and Joe started to walk away, berating himself for not getting anyway to contact Nancy from her. He sighed and decided to head back upstairs; there was no use running all over an unfamiliar city no matter how much he needed to find Nancy. It would be quite a fruitless search. He figure at this point he might as well go upstairs, make sure Camilla was set for the night, and then he would figure out something that he could tell Frank.

"Uncle Frank?"

Frank turned at the voice of his young niece. She had woken up a few minutes before, but had been content looking at the colorful painting on the wall in silence, so they had been sitting in a silence. "Yeah Cami?"

"Where's daddy?"

It was quite a simple question, but Frank had no idea how to answer it. His brother had just run off. He did have a rough idea of course, but that wouldn't be easily explained to a four year old. "He went to go find somebody."

Sparkling green eyes widened in excitement. "Is he getting that nice lady? Dr. Drew?"

Frank resisted a sigh at this. "Why would you think that?"

"Daddy said that you, him, and her used to be good friends. 'Specially you and her." Cami informed

"Did he now?"

"Uh-huh." She nodded quickly. "He said that you two were like…" She fumbled with her hands for a moment before holding one hand up with her index and middle finger interwoven. "This."

Frank found himself briefly thinking of a different hand gesture that described their current relationship perfectly. "What else did he say?"

"That he'd bring her to see me."

"Well, we'll see."

"I bet that's where he went." She paused thinking for a moment. "Uncle Frank?"

"Yeah Cami?"

"Will you tell me a story?"

Frank gave small smile at this; this was much more familiar uncle territory for him. "Where are you in Princess Bride?"

Camilla shook her head. "That's daddy's story. You have to tell a different one. A new one."

Damn. "OK…uh…A long, long time ago… there was a beautiful Princess named... Natalya. She lived with her father, the King of the Royal Courts, and her housekeeper."

"It's not a housekeeper it's a servant, silly." Camilla corrected.

"Sorry." Frank quickly apologized, then continued. "Natalya wasn't like other princesses. She liked to go out and help people by finding out the reasons behind their problems. A lot of the time she would help these people with two knights."

Camilla interrupted once more. "What were their names?"

"Um…Joshua and…" Frank struggled for a moment on the other name. "Fergus. Natalya would…work very closely with Fergus and Joshua, and together they would be able to stop many sorts of injustices that occurred in the many kingdoms that they traveled to. Natalya and Fergus were very close, and a lot of people used to say that they were in love. Fergus secretly agreed with this, but he knew that he could never be with Natalya, because she had promised to be with Nathanial, the Prince of Emerson.

"At one point the three were nearly inseparable, and almost always did their work together. But eventually that changed when Natalya went back to her home to visit her father. She never returned to work with the two knights and she never contacted them. They worked alone for ten years hoping they might find her one day."

"Did they?"

"They did." Frank nodded grimly. "But they soon found that she was different. Instead of going to different kingdoms to help people, Natalya had fully accepted her place as royalty. She was also very secretive, and she and Fergus didn't get along anymore. They were always fighting, and Fergus said things that he shouldn't have, which made her really mad.

"Natalya had plans to attend a small royal dinner at the castle of a visiting prince. Fergus overheard this prince talking to one of his…attendants that he was planning on locking Natalya into his castle and keeping her forever to be his wife and queen."

Cami gasped. "What did he do?"

"Well he tried to warn Natalya, but she was still so mad at him because of things that he said, that she didn't listen to him and she decided to go anyways."

"What happened then? Do Joshua and Fergus go to rescue her?"

"You can find out tomorrow." Joe's voice came from the doorway. "It's time for bed."

"But daddy, it was just getting to the good part."

"I know." Joe smiled. "But you need to rest. Uncle Frank will tell you more of the story tomorrow night."

Camilla sighed . "OK."

Despite everything on his mind, Joe couldn't help but grin as they exited the hospital about an hour later after Camilla had gone through every bedtime ritual she could think of in the hopes of extracting more of Frank's story out of him, only to get a bit more of Princess Bride. "So Fergus, when were you planning on telling me that we were knights?"

"Joe…" Frank trailed off. If possible he was more tired than he had been at the beginning of the day, and he knew that was saying something.

"Sorry, I'm afraid that my name Joshua, Fergus."

"Are you going to be throwing this in my face for a long time?"

"Just until we get back to the hotel."

"We can't go back to the hotel. What about Nancy?"

"You mean Princess Natalya?" Joe sighed reminded of the problem. "There's nothing we can do."

"There has to be something. We can't just let that guy--,"

"First of all, you're dead on your feet. Second, what do you want to do? Go out and search every single restaurant in the city?"

"Well it's a start. And while we're at it you can tell me what you know about what's going on. I know you know more than I do."

"No. We're going back to the hotel and you are getting some rest." Joe put on his stern father voice "End of discussion."

"I'm sorry about that." Tom apologized returning to the table where Nancy sat, quietly eating her dessert.

Nancy shook her head, partially to wave off his apology, and partially to shake the nagging feeling in the back of her mind. "No, it's fine."

"I'm afraid that I'm not going to be able to finish the evening with you. That was the hospital."

"Is everything alright?"

"It's just a patient of mine that I asked them to page me if anything changed." Tom started to pull his credit card out. "I have to go check it out. I'll pay on my way out. You should stay and enjoy the rest of your dessert."

"Are you sure? I can give you a ride back to hospital. We did take my car." Nancy stood as he did.

Tom waved her off. "No. You stay and finish. I'll take a cab." He leaned over and kissed her shortly, but similarly to the kiss they had shared in the emergency room earlier that day. "I'll see you soon."

"Well, we do work together." Nancy fought a frown off at the odd statement. "So I'll see you then."

"Maybe even sooner." Tom turned before Nancy could say anything.

She sat back down, bewildered, with the nagging feeling coming back a bit stronger. Maybe I should…No. Don't be ridiculous, Drew. It's just first date awkwardness. It took her a moment more, but once again she talked herself out of the mood as she finished her dessert.

As she left the restaurant, she checked to make sure that Tom had covered everything, found that he had, and continued on her way, driving in a silence until she reached her apartment building, which was bathed in darkness.

"Evening Nancy." The night doorman greeted with a smile on his face.

"Evening Roger." Nancy returned the smile.

"How are you doing?"

"I'm great." Nancy quickly answered. "How are you?"

"I'm fine." He opened the door for her. "The power in the building's out. Be careful on your way up. And get some rest."

"I will. Thanks Roger."

Nancy made her way up to her apartment slowly, using the emergency lights as her guide. As she got to her door though, she realized that it was ajar. She perked up, stepping forward quietly, and then pushing it further slowly. As more of her apartment, bathed in moonlight, became visible she saw that it was empty, and nothing was out of place. Relax. Frank has got you paranoid. You were rushing this morning, you probably just didn't close it.

She knew the action wasn't like her, but it was the best explanation she could come up when the apartment was empty and she didn't want to deal with the other possible explanations of everything. She sighed and stepped into the apartment tossing her bag onto the kitchen table cluttered with mail. Using one foot she kicked the door closed gently.

No sooner had she done this did she feel a blinding pain in the back of her skull. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she fought to hang on to consciousness. However it was a quick fight, which she most definitely lost as her world went completely black.

Joe would have thought that by now the floor would have fallen through due to the extreme amount of pacing that had occurred. Frank was asleep on the bed, and had been for quite a while. Joe however, couldn't sleep. He was far too concerned about what could possibly be going on with Nancy. Why didn't I get her number?

He exhaled loudly falling into the chair next to the small desk. There was always the possibility that Frank had been completely wrong about what he had heard and Nancy was perfectly safe. here was always the possibility that Frank had been completely wrong about what he had heard and Nancy was perfectly safe. Yeah right. And he's Sir Fergus of Bayport.

Dejectedly, he shoved his hand in his pocket, only for it to come in contact with a crumpled slip of paper. He pulled it out, curious as to what it was. As he read, his eyes lit up and he quickly pulled out his cell phone. How did I forget this?

"Hello?" A tired, yet extremely feminine voice answered.

"Bess? Is that you?" Joe asked excitedly.

"Joe?"

"Yeah."

"Is it in the detective code or something to call in the middle of the night and wake me up?"

"What?"

"Nothing." Her voice gained a lot of energy very quickly. "How are you? When Nancy called me yesterday and told me that you were in Port Winston, I couldn't believe it. We haven't heard from you in forever. She told me you're still solving mysteries with Frank, and that you have a daughter, who just sounds adorable by the way. But that's it, and I need more details. So dish. Spill. Oh yeah, she also told me how you two were just as cute as ever. So tell me, how have you maintained those hunkishly good looks?"

"Bess, as much as I would love to do the whole catch up thing with you right now I really need some help."

"From me? All the way back in River Heights? Ooh, is this about setting Nancy and Frank up? Because I totally already gave her plan. Don't tell me she didn't follow it. That girl seriously has to learn."

Joe wisely decided not to tell her that Nancy had gone out on a date with a different guy. "No. I just need to be able to contact her. The sooner the better."

"Is something wrong? Should I be worried?"

"I don't know. I just need to be able to talk to her."

"Well she's really unreliable with her cell phone, and her land number just changed and I have no idea where I put that."

"What about her pager?"

"She has a pager?"

I guess that answers that question. "OK. What about her address? I really need to talk to her."

"Oh that's right over here. Hold on one sec…"

Thoughts?