J.M.J.
Author's note: Thank you for reading! Special thanks to Candylou, MargaretA66, ErinJordan, and max2013 for your reviews on the previous chapter! I'm afraid this chapter won't do much to resolve the cliffhanger from the last one, though. I hope you enjoy anyway! God bless and have blessed Advent!
Chapter XXVII
"Frank!" The word left Joe's mouth in a scream of horror as he watched the tip of the spear bury itself in his brother's side. He saw the look of shock and then pain on Frank's face and then he wasn't sure what happened after that. He knew that he had tried to get to his feet, to get to Frank, but Angelo had tried to stop him. Even with his hands bound, Joe had kicked and screamed and bit and bucked and twisted in such a way that it should have been impossible for Angelo to hold onto him. But he must have, because Joe didn't remember ever reaching his brother's side. The whole thing sort of faded away like it was nothing more than a nightmare and the next thing Joe remembered was lying on a cold, hard, dirty wood floor and there wasn't an inch of him that didn't hurt.
He hoped it had been a nightmare. He knew deep down it wasn't, but he clung to that hope anyway. He tried to get up and he realized that the rope holding his hands was very loose. It must have come loose in the struggle. But no. The struggle was just a bad dream. Joe had to believe it. He had to.
As Joe was pulling his knees under him to try to get up, he felt something sharp held against his throat. He looked up to see Angelo, with a new nasty bruise on his cheek, holding a sword at his throat.
"Maybe I'm still dreaming," Joe murmured.
"You wish," Angelo retorted. "Whatever you were dreaming about couldn't be worse than what's really happening to you."
"Frank?" Joe said, the plea in his voice plain to hear.
Angelo smiled. "He got exactly what he deserved. He shouldn't have messed with Black Rose. Then he wouldn't be dead. Or dying, more likely. It will take him a little time to bleed out."
Even with a sword pointed at him and his hands tied, Joe made a move as if he was going to lunge at Angelo. The tip of the sword cut him just below the jaw line and he stopped, realizing that he would be dead before he could get to Angelo to strangle him.
"Why didn't you kill me, too?" he asked.
"Grateful, are you?"Angelo quirked an eyebrow.
"No."
"Good. If you were, I'd probably kill you right now just to spite you, and then I wouldn't have a hostage if the cops show up."
"You're not getting away from here if the cops show up, hostage or no hostage."
"You really think your dad's cop buddies would be so heartless as to make him lose both sons on the same day?" Angelo clicked his tongue in mock disapproval. "I don't know what you're making all this fuss about, anyway. I didn't think you even liked your brother that much after the way you were arguing a couple of months ago."
Joe leaned forward again, like he was going to try to spring at him.
"Relax, kid," Angelo advised him."I could literally hand you a weapon and I know you wouldn't kill me. You had the chance before, remember? So you can squawk all you want about how I'm going to pay and blah, blah, blah. It doesn't amount to anything but empty threats." He chuckled. "It's funny. You had the chance to kill me and you were all like 'Oh, no, I can't kill a person. I can't have that on my conscience.' And now, because of you, your brother, your pal Tony, and that brat Darcy are all dead and my brother almost died. Talk about having things on your conscience."
Joe drew in a shuddering breath. Angelo could see that the fight was being taken out of him, so he pulled up a chair from a nearby table and sat in it, crossing his legs.
"I wasn't actually the one who killed Darcy," Angelo admitted. "That was Alyssa. But it was all part of the plan to get rid of anyone who could be damaging to Black Rose. We found out about her sending you that information from Rudger. After that, she couldn't be left alive. It was kind of a relief. She was a real pain. You knew that, of course. She told me about your, uh, brief romance."
Joe looked down at his lap and kept his gaze there. He vaguely realized that Angelo was just trying to poke at him in all the most damaging ways he could think of. What Angelo apparently didn't notice was that he had already hit home and there was no need to continue. Frank was dead and it was Joe's fault, just like Tony was dead and it was Joe's fault, and everyone else that Angelo had killed in the last couple months.
He tested the rope binding his hands. He could get out any time he wanted. He wondered whether Angelo realized that or not. Then he looked around the room. It was another cabin. It wasn't the same one from earlier, but there was something vaguely familiar about it. Whatever it reminded him was unpleasant, so he tried to focus on anything that could help him get away and get this maniac to jail. He noted that in addition to the sword that Angelo was holding at the moment, a second one was lying on the floor next to him. He must have grabbed it, too. Joe didn't see the gun anywhere, and considering that Angelo was using a sword to keep an eye on him, Joe was guessing the gun had been left behind. He wondered about that. Maybe Angelo had finished losing his mind. Carrying two swords while dragging a semi-conscious prisoner would be harder than carrying a gun. Whatever Angelo's reasons, Joe was almost grateful. If he could only get his hands on that other sword, they would be on a level playing field.
HBHBHBHBHB
Callie shoved her hands in the pockets of her coat as she waited at Jack Wayne's hangar. It was close to midnight and being alone was making her nervous. Jack's plane hadn't been on time. If she would have known that he was going to be late, she would have waited in the terminal. At least there would have been other people there then.
Then finally, she saw the lights of a small plane landing on one of the airport's three runways. It was taxiing toward the hangar. Even though Callie was fairly certain that it was Jack, she ran to hide behind some oil cans until she was certain.
The plane came to a stop in front of the hangar and Callie recognized Jack's plane, the Skyhappy Sal. Even so, she stayed in her position until she saw the people who disembarked from it: Jack, Phil, Jenna, and Shaun. Relieved, she stood up and went to meet them.
"Hi, Callie," Phil greeted her. "I hope you weren't waiting here too long."
"It seemed longer than it was," Callie replied. She could see in the dim light that there were several bruises on Phil's face. "Are you all right?"
"Fairly," Phil replied casually.
"He's supposed to be resting," Jenna said with mild disapproval mixed with admiration. "But there's been a change of plans from that."
"We're going to take the Sal back up as soon as I refuel her and see if we can find any clues to where Frank and Joe are from the air," Jack explained. "Apparently, they might be somewhere near Gresham."
"But it's dark," Callie pointed out.
"That's what I've been trying to tell them," Shaun said. "We're not going to be able to see anything."
"It's a clear night," Phil argued. "We might see something. Anyway, anyone who doesn't want to go doesn't have to."
"I'll go," Jenna said promptly. "I didn't come just to hide out. I want to help."
"I'll come, too," Shaun added. "It's the least I can do after the trouble I've caused."
"Do you want to come, Callie?" Phil asked.
Callie hesitated. There was her promise to Frank and she didn't want to break it. But then, how much danger could she get into in a plane?
"Yes, I do," she said finally.
HBHBHBHBHB
Laura rested her head against the window of the SUV. It was cold against the top of her head, but she didn't care. She couldn't remember the last time she was this tired. Axel had led them to another side road where tire tracks showed that the kidnappers had used a vehicle to move the boys again. The search party had once again split up to try to determine where the kidnappers might have gone, and so the Hardys were by themselves again.
Then they had gotten the call from Iola. She and the boys' other friends had gotten the name of a road in Gresham from Lisa Prito. Fenton had practically jumped when he heard it: Flosniger Road. Laura hadn't understood at first until she had thought about it. Then she had realized that flos niger meant black flower in Latin. They had immediately driven to Gresham to check out the lead, stopping in Baitesville to pick up Sam Radley, who wouldn't have it any other way despite his injuries.
Flosniger Road was long and they had found nothing driving down it once. Fenton had started back up and then had stopped so that he and Sam could examine some tire tracks in the freshly-fallen snow on a side road and to try to determine whether they were likely to belong to the kidnappers. Laura wasn't sure how they expected to do that simply by looking at them, but she hadn't said so. They were the professionals, after all.
Gertrude, however, wasn't so trusting. She was standing by the SUV, shivering against the cold and tapping her foot impatiently. Every now and again, she would open one of the doors to poke her head in and complain to Laura about how they were wasting time.
"I can't believe we're just sitting here, debating whether or not to follow some tire tracks, while my nephews are being held captive by a ruthless gang who wants to murder us all," she said on one of those occasions. "They're your sons, too. Can't you get them to see reason?"
"I don't know," Laura said, tiredly sitting up a little. "We don't know whether those tracks were made by the vehicle they were in or not. If we guess wrong either way, we could set ourselves back hours."
Gertrude shrugged. "It's a fifty-fifty chance. We're not going to make the odds any better by standing around. At the rate we're going, we could investigate both this road and the main road again in the time they're trying to decide on one."
Laura knew that was an exaggeration, but she could see the point. Perhaps it would be better to try to hurry the detectives along or at the very least find out if there was any real hope of gaining anything by continuing to examine the tracks. Laura got out of the SUV and went to stand by Fenton.
"Are you getting any closer to figuring anything out?" Laura asked as he and Sam stopped talking and looked up at her.
Gertrude joined them with her arms crossed. Axel, who had also been in the car, followed her, eager to be a part of whatever was going on.
"There's no way to really tell whether the tracks are theirs or not," Fenton admitted to begin with. "That's actually not exactly what we've been debating the last few minutes."
"Then couldn't you have debated it in the car?" Gertrude retorted.
"We were still debating whether we should try this road or not," Sam put in. "The tracks just weren't necessarily the deciding factor by themselves."
"Then what is?" Gertrude eyed him skeptically, as if she suspected him of some negligence in his investigation.
"I know this side road." Fenton nodded toward it. "I was down it a few years ago. We're close to Gresham, you know."
Laura caught her breath, instantly guessing what her husband was getting at. "Then this is the road…"
Fenton nodded. He could tell from her tone what she was thinking. "It goes part of the way to an old cabin and then you have to walk the rest of the way. It's the same old cabin that that serial killer was using to hold her victims before she killed them."
"Then that's where she was keeping Iola a prisoner," Laura said. "And that's where she…she shot Joe."
Fenton closed his eyes, trying to shut out the horrifying memory of his younger son having such a close brush with death, but he nodded. "I expect it must be abandoned since then. If so, Black Rose might have adopted it for their purposes."
"It seems like a big coincidence if they did," Gertrude pointed out.
"Not necessarily," Sam replied. "That serial killer wasn't involved in Black Rose, true enough, but if Black Rose really is interested in the Hardy family, they could have easily learned what happened. Even if they hadn't used it before, they might have gotten the idea to use it when they took Joe prisoner. They might figure that it would give them even more of a psychological edge over him."
"I think you're right," Laura declared. "I know there's no proof, but I can just feel it that that's where they're at."
"You need more than just feeling in investigating a criminal case," Gertrude said. "But it's just as likely to be true as not, and I'd rather investigate something than just stand around."
The men agreed also. Fenton wasn't thrilled about seeing that cabin again, but nevertheless, he took the SUV as far as they could. They never found the vehicle that made the tracks, so they guessed that it must have been coming out instead of going in. Since the tracks didn't go very far down the road, it wasn't hard to imagine that someone had been caught in the snowstorm and had pulled off the beaten path in hopes of finding a shortcut to get home sooner or because they simply had the wrong road and had ended up waiting the storm out there.
Even so, the investigators got out and prepared to walk to the cabin. Axel jumped out of the SUV and instantly began sniffing around, as if he guessed that finding trails was still his job. Suddenly, he lifted his head and gave an excited bark.
"What is it?" Laura asked him, hardly daring to hope that the dog could smell something.
Axel turned to look at her and then he took off through the snow.
