Outside of Fenton's office stood a man, who listened intently to what was being said. When the conversation was over, he cursed under his breath and pulled out his cell. Heading for the backyard, he passed through the house with out second glances or questions.
"Kolplay… Yeah it's me… Listen we have a problem. Hardy's catching on…. yeah I've tried to…its not that easy! I know what our job is! If it wasn't for our plan Hardy would have caught on long ago! Alright…you're right…I'll see what I can do, but are you sure…right, I understand. We'll do what we can."
Jimmy hung up, anger etched on his face. "What's up?" Jake asked, as he spared a glance at the two men in the room with him. Jimmy sneered at him, then turned and whispered something to the other man, who quickly left. Jimmy then turned back to Jake.
"There is a problem, however we had foreseen this. All I need you to do is confuse Bayport's finest."
"I can do that," Jake said as he got to work.
The boys pulled into the Hardy's drive about two hours later. They were greeted by the angry face of detective Reynolds.
"Where have you four been?" he yelled at them as they got out. "Do you understand what's going on? Do you realize how much danger you guys are in?"
The boys hung their heads slightly, but only for a moment before they all started to talk eagerly.
"Whoa! Whoa! Slow down fellas! What are you talking about?"
Joe rolled his eyes, "We don't have time. Look, why don't we get everyone together and we'll explain then ok?"
A few minuets later Collin, Fenton, Reynolds, Jesse, and Con, had joined the boys in Fenton's office. The boys quickly explained what they had been doing while they were gone. Then Joe turned on the tape that he had been given, and they all watched in silence.
Frank groaned and rolled his head from side to side. He coughed.
"Great, just fucking great," Frank said with a bitter laugh, "This damn box won't have to suffocate me, I'm going to drown in my own blood." Frank started to cough again.
When nothing happened for a while Joe fast-forwarded, biting his lip to keep from crying. Listening to Frank and seeing him like this was the worst part about the whole thing. Frank was always the calm one, the one who didn't freak out. But now, when he was in the coffin, he just seemed so…so…freaked. 'Guess I would be too. Locked in a box, underground. All my air running out, being powerless to stop it…' Joe shuddered and stopped fast forwarding. Frank was moving again.
"…Then I went to the Juke Box, yeah, yeah that's…"
Joe rewound it some.
"Callie and I went out for dinner. Then I dropped her off, it was about nine, she had to go to her grandmother's, for a party I think. She's going to call me when she gets home tonight. Then I went to the Juke Box, yeah, yeah that's right. Joe's CD, My Chemical Romance, he's going to crack up when he sees it. Then I started heading out to the van, I got hit in the head I think…."
Frank arched his back the best he could. "My head still hurts. The storage shed or closet, it was freezing…Camp Sunshine meets Hitler, such a wonderful place, this world that you live in, with a deceptive face. It's got lots of cabins, all pretty with white lace, one side for people, the other for your evil." Frank half sang, half spoke. "They take you on a long drive, then thirty minutes of unpaved hell. The men they all beat you, the women all smile, and when you're no good, they bury you with no style," Frank choked slightly, his voice drifted slowly into a coughing fit.
Again Joe fast-forward, but all he could see was Frank trying to push open the coffin, weakening with each attempt.
It made Joe sick to watch, but there was a spark of hope…"Dad, did he just give us a time line and a location?"
"Not an exact location, but yes, I think he did," Fenton said.
"What? What do you mean?" Reynolds asked.
"Frank wasn't just singing, he was trying to tell us where he was with out letting them know," Fenton said, eyeing the detective.
"I don't…" Reynolds said, still confused.
"Well, Frank said that he was kept in a storage room, in some kind of camp ground. From what Joe tells me, the Kolplay's camp. Then they drove him at least thirty minutes, where the beat him and then buried him," Fenton said with more than a hint of anger.
"You know this for sure?" Reynolds asked.
"It was all in the tape," Fenton said, nodding his head.
Reynolds looked as if he was about to ask another question, when the chief's cell went off.
"Collin…What? When? Alright, we're on our way," Ezra hung up, and looked at the others in the room. "There was a call about some explosions outside of town. We need to be going, this is going to take a while," Collin said as he locked eyes with Fenton. Both shared the same thought, 'diversion.' But what could they do?
After the officers had left, and Jesse as well, Fenton decide to catch the boys up on what he and Ezra were discussing.
"Sounds about right, at least it makes sense," Joe said when he was done.
"So the Kolplays see you as the bigger threat, and want to make sure you're taken care of," Phil summed up.
"Hmm…Frank was taken at about eight or nine last night," Fenton started.
"Nine, the Juke Box closes at nine," Chet piped in.
"They knocked him out, and then took him to the Kolplay's camp, than dragged him off some other place to bury him," Joe said.
"With their first message he was at the camp," Fenton began and catching Joe's gaze added, "Ezra had his lab guys go over it. They heard kids in the background. Then they took him someplace else. According to Frank, it was thirty minutes away. Then they buried him. They told us he had fourteen hours, but I'm guessing that he probably had thirteen by the time we got the tape. It takes two hours to get to the camp, you spend an hour there, two back, and two hours back up."
"Frank has six hours left," Joe said. "We have six hours to find him before he dies."
It's getting ther, closer and closer. Won't be long now.
