Disclaimer: I don't own, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, or the characters associated with them.

Author's notes: Thank you reviewers. To clear a few things up, the restaurant host guy, was doing the whole thing as a warning to them, not because he was involved in the plot to get Nancy or anything. It's basically that he heard about it, recognized her, and decided to do her a favor.

Impressions Are Only a Form of Flattery if You Do Them Well

Nancy sat on the bed next to her repacked suitcase. There was a police officer outside on the porch, guarding her, and waiting to escort her and the brothers to the airport. The first course of action was to get her off the island. She knew the Hardys were taking care of that, so now she was left, waiting.

A knock on the door stirred her from her activity of staring at the wall. "Ms. Drew? Mr. Hardy would like to see you." The officer announced from behind the door.

Nancy didn't bother considering which one it was, just stood and walked over to answer the door, finding the officer, and Frank standing before her. "I thought you might like one walk on the beach before you leave for the airport." He offered with a bit of a smile. "I already cleared it with your shadow here. He'll be following us at a distance, but I figured that it was better than nothing."

"Uh, sure." Nancy agreed, putting a conscious effort forward to prevent herself from biting her lip. It wasn't that she didn't want to go for a walk on the beach, or be around Frank for that matter; she wasn't even that concerned about going outside while there was a contract for her death on her. She just didn't want to get in the place that being with Frank always put her. Emotional, vulnerable, and confused. Three things that she couldn't deal with being right now. "Just let me grab my sweatshirt."

Frank nodded, waiting until she came back wearing a zip-up sweatshirt. Without a word, they left the bungalow, and walked down to the beach. He knew that things weren't going well. First of all, the vacation that had been planned to cheer Nancy up, was now being interrupted by someone who wanted to kill her. And this had caused her to go pretty much silent, which was definitely not in the plan. They were starting to walk down the beach when he finally decided to speak. "So, how are you doing?"

"Pretty well for someone who has an entire island out to kill her." Nancy wrapped her arms over her chest in a sort of protective motion. This was step two in her plan to keep things as neutral as possible between herself and Frank. So far she had eliminated the possibility of him lending her his own sweatshirt, and now she had gotten rid of the option of contact.

He smiled a little at her sarcasm, that was delivered in a tone that was anything but sarcastic. "Yeah I guess that was a dumb question." But really, what else was there to talk about? It wasn't as though he could go on asking her about all the other aspects of her life, when he knew most of those were still sore subjects. He was limited. "Joe just finished making travel arrangements for us. We're all going to be taking the charter flight back to the main island, but there were only two seats on the first flight back to Florida." He paused. "Joe's gonna be going with you and from there you two will go on a direct flight to New York."

"What's in New York?"

"Dad and some of his FBI buddies are setting up a safe house for you. They're also working on finding out who put the offer out."

"Oh. And what about you?"

"Me?" Frank shoved his hands into his pockets. "I'm just gonna follow you guys out on the next flight and meet you up there."

They walked for a bit more, looking at their feet as they did so. "Some vacation, huh?" Nancy shook her head a little wryly. "We can't even last a day anymore. I'm starting to think that I'm cursed."

"I'd say cursed is a little harsh Nan."

"I've managed to ruin the vacation haven't I?"

Frank stopped walking, and put a hand on Nancy's arm to stop her and turn her to face him. "You haven't ruined anything. You've just moved it."

"Trust me. It's a little hard to have a Bahamian vacation locked up in a safe house in New York." Nancy smiled a little wryly. "But I appreciate the whole attempt at making me feel better."

"I was hoping it would be more than an attempt."

Nancy smiled, but then pulled it from her face and turned away, starting to walk again, remembering the earlier precautions see had set for herself. This wasn't the time to fall for anyone. "So do we have any ideas about who wants me dead?" That was a topic that couldn't possibly lead to anything romantic. A new barrier between the two.

"Well, you would know better than me." Frank shrugged, tucking his hands back into his pockets. "But if I had to guess I would say that it's someone wealthy that you got arrested."

"The money could be a ploy though." Nancy countered. "It's not like this person went to a professional contract killer who would get a down payment and check to see if the person had the money. He spread some information about me around and said that if I was killed that person would get the money. But as far as we know everyone here is just motivated by greed, and they haven't done anything like this before. If the guy behind this is smart, he chose to go to them because he wouldn't have to actually pay them. "

"I hadn't thought of that."

"Well I'm always getting the stuff that you miss Hardy." She teased a bit, suddenly forgetting everything, and getting brought into the moment.

"You are not."

"Oh yeah? Eighth grade when we first met at that academic bowl. Every question that you got wrong I got it right." Nancy pointed out triumphantly. "And I believe that I was the one who solved that case. Not you and your brother."

"Well frankly Miss Nancy, I don't give a damn."

Nancy rolled her eyes at the bad southern accent. "Frank, I thought we agreed that you weren't going to do any more impressions."

"I don't remember such a conversation."

"I think it was right around the time we were helping out the Ingrid and Ragner. You were doing an absolutely horrible Humphrey Bogart and—."

"My Bogart is not that bad." Frank protested.

"Have you heard it?"

"Nancy, god, you're wounding me here."

"Oh you poor thing…"Nancy teased a bit more, as they stopped walking, hitting another silence.

For a moment they just stood, looking at each other. "Nancy I--."

"Hey guys, if we're gonna make the charter flight we have to leave now." Joe jogged up in between the two.

"Uh...right." Nancy took a step back adjusting a strand of her hair. "Let's go."

"So, what exactly was it that I interrupted this time?" Joe looked over to Nancy, towards the middle of their flight back to Florida.

Nancy closed her book and looked over at him. "What are you talking about?"

"You know…You and Frank. On the beach. Getting awfully close." Joe playfully winked at her, a little bit of a smirk on his face.

"You didn't interrupt anything. We were just talking."

"Nancy I know what just talking is. You two were not just talking. There was something going on there."

"Well what exactly do you want to hear Joe? Because all we were doing was talking."

"I want to hear the truth, about what would've happened."

Nancy sighed, briefly looking out the window, and then turned back. For some reason she couldn't avoid telling Joe like she would have been able to avoid telling Bess or anyone else. "We probably would've kissed."

"You sigh like that would have been a bad thing."

"No. It's just that, I'm too messed up right now to start anything."

"Nance, you know that you are no more messed up than my brother."

"Joe, I just don't want to screw things up. And doing anything right now would just screw things up."

"OK, I get what you're saying." Joe took a sip of his soda. "Just don't wait too long OK? Frank tends to get moody when he's lonely."

"So how long do we have til the next flight?" Nancy asked Joe as they stepped into a food court like area of the airport.

"A couple hours." Joe shrugged, turning his cell phone on, in case Frank or his dad needed to check in with him. "I will be your personal body guard until then. Don't you feel safe?"

"Oh you have no idea."

"You know I get the feeling that I'm forgetting something." Joe stepped into a line in front of a pizza kiosk. "I don't know what though."

"You probably left a shirt on the island or something."

"No it feels bigger than that."

"Relax. It's probably nothing."

Before Joe could get another word in, his cell phone started to ring. "Hello?" He answered it quickly.

"Do you know who I just ran into?" Joe listened as Frank started talking. "Bess."

Joe clapped his hand to his face. He sighed in realization. "We forgot to call Bess and tell her not to come down."