J.M.J.
Author's note: Thank you so much for reading! Thank you to Candylou and max2013 for your reviews on the previous chapter! I actually have some time today, so I'm hoping to get quite a bit of work done. If I do, I might have more chapters than usual for you next week! It might not be the best timing, though—FanFiction seems to be having one of its glitches where it's not sending out emails about new chapters. Some of you may be missing chapters because of it. I think Chapter 18 was the first one in this story affected, so if you haven't already, you'll probably want to go back and read the last couple of chapters before moving on to this one. ;) Thank you again! I hope you enjoy! God bless!
Chapter XX
When Fenton and Frank had arrived at Fenton and Laura's house to get Fenton's things, Laura had followed her husband to his room and Aunt Gertrude had discretely left to give Frank and Callie a few last minutes alone. They were silent at first, holding onto one another. Frank felt sorry about leaving Callie alone—at least, somewhat alone—but at the same time, his thoughts kept going to Joe.
He wondered whether Joe would be somewhere safe when the storm hit. What if his captors continued going even after the storm started and they went off the road, where they would all then freeze to death? Or what if Joe had managed to escape from them, only to get caught on foot in the storm? Or what if the storm was no concern to Joe because his kidnappers had killed him the moment they had felt that they had escaped? What if, when he found Joe, he would be a few minutes too late, just like he had been with Tony?
Callie must have felt him grow more tense as his thoughts took a darker turn, as she held him more tightly. "Frank?"
"What is it, Callie?" he asked.
"Do you think you can get to Baitesville before the storm hits?" Callie asked, burrowing her face into his shoulder.
"No," Frank admitted. "But don't worry about that. We'll get as close as we can and then stop. That will save us a little time that we can use to look for Joe."
Callie looked up at him. "I'm scared, Frank."
"I know."
"Be—Before Tony, I worried sometimes about you and I was scared when I got involved in your cases, but it wasn't like this," Callie said. "I still felt like it would all work out. It would all be okay. But now…I just feel like…you're not going to find him."
Frank held her closer. He debated within himself whether to admit that he felt the same way. He decided not to. "It doesn't mean anything. Feelings are wrong just as often as they're right. It's just harder to convince yourself that you're wrong."
"But I could be right."
"You could be," Frank admitted. He sighed. He knew there was every reason why his and Callie's bad feeling might very well be correct. Not least of all among those reasons was that Black Rose had managed to evade the law for years. They didn't have any solid plan for finding them quickly, and now the storm would obliterate any trial they had left behind.
"What are you going to do?" Callie asked.
Frank didn't answer right away. "I'm not sure. If Joe was here, we could probably figure something out. Back when we were a team, we were never at a loss for what to do."
"I wish I could do something," Callie said wistfully.
Frank stiffened. "Callie, I don't…I want you to promise me something. No matter what happens, promise you won't put yourself in any danger. It would be bad enough to have you in danger, but now, if anything happens to you, it won't be just you. If I can't ask you to keep out of danger for your own sake, maybe I can ask you for our baby's sake."
Callie smiled slightly. "Don't worry. It is way too soon for me to have to worry about this kid getting mixed up in a mystery."
A small chuckle escaped Frank, but he immediately became more serious. "Are you definitely okay?"
"I think so." Callie also became more serious. "I haven't noticed anything. I'm thinking I should make an extra doctor's appointment, just for a check-up to be sure."
"It wouldn't be a bad idea."
They were interrupted by the click-click-click of a dog walking down the hallway toward the room they were in. They both looked at the doorway in time to see Axel putting his head in. He pricked his ears up at them and gave them a hopeful look. He wagged his tail and then bounded toward them, eager for the attention he had been lacking the last few days. He jumped up on Frank and tried to lick his face.
"Hey, hold on there," Frank told him, grinning slightly in spite of himself. "I don't need covered in dog slobber."
Callie edged away from Axel. "Besides, I'm starting to think this dog is bad luck. Something terrible has happened to both his owners now."
"That's not Axel's fault," Frank defended the dog as he succeeded in persuading him to get off him. "I'm sure he wants to find Joe as much as we do." He paused as a thought occurred to him.
"What is it?" Callie asked, recognizing the expression on his face.
"Maybe nothing. Just an idea I have."
HBHBHBHBHB
It had only been a little over twelve hours that Phil had been in the hospital and he was already eager to get out. From his second conversation with Frank, it sounded like he didn't have much choice about going back to Bayport. He didn't mind, as long as he could do something to help bring an end to Black Rose once and for all. Waiting around in the hospital wasn't accomplishing that.
He would have liked to get his phone back. That would have given him something useful to do, since he could keep trying to call Shaun and find out what happened to him. As it was, the doctor didn't want him to have it until he had rested for the night. Jenna had made all necessary calls in the meantime.
Now the only thing Phil could do was wait. He couldn't sleep much more than the minimum to take the edge off his weariness. Fortunately, his window faced the east, so he could watch the sunrise.
After awhile, a nurse came into the room. She seemed momentarily surprised that Phil was awake, but she smiled at him and wish him good morning.
Phil returned the greeting and then asked, "Is the doctor going to let me go home today?"
"He's going to do a few tests this morning," the nurse replied. "If they come back all right, you should be able to go home."
"How long is that going to take?"
"We should know by ten or ten-thirty."
Phil sighed and sank back into the pillows. "I guess I should just be glad it isn't any worse."
The nurse smiled again. "There was someone who stopped in to see you already this morning. It's not visiting hours, and even if it was, under the circumstances, we wouldn't have let him in without checking. He said he might come back later."
"Did he say who he was?" Phil asked, instantly suspicious. He couldn't think of anyone who would be coming to see him before daylight besides possibly the police or Jenna, but it clearly wasn't either of those.
"No, but he left a note. I was just bringing it to leave it in here. I hope it's nothing upsetting."
She handed him an envelope with his name written on it. Phil tore it open and read the message inside:
I need to talk to you about what happened. Please call me. Shaun.
"Is something wrong?" the nurse asked, noting Phil's expression.
"I don't know. Could I have my phone back? It could be an emergency."
"Well…" The nurse hesitated. She must have seen that Phil was in earnest, because she went to a stand near the wall and took the phone out of a drawer. "Since it sounds important."
HBHBHBHBHB
HBHBHBHBHB
It was cold in the cabin, especially being propped up against the wall as Joe was. The only heat was from a small gas-powered heater. Angelo and Alyssa were hovering near it, but Shun was stoically sitting at the table, far enough away from it that he must have been cold, too. Perhaps he was trying to prove to Joe and to his subordinates that things like heat and cold were beneath him. Joe could almost understand it, in a way. He'd have to be a lot colder than he was right now to want to huddle with Angelo by the heater. As it was, he didn't have a choice in the matter. He was bound hand and foot with a gag stuffed in his mouth, and if he so much as dared to move, Angelo would notice immediately and shout a threat at him.
Joe didn't understand why they were just sitting around in this cabin. He couldn't see that it was doing them any good. Maybe they were waiting for someone, this "Great One" or "Faceless One" or whatever he was. A moment later, Alyssa confirmed that for him.
"I hate this place so much," Alyssa was complaining. "If the FO wants me to call him the 'Great One' now, he's going to have to at least get us a decent place to wait for him."
Shun frowned deeply at her. "Your disrespect will not go unnoted by the Great One. This cabin is completely untraceable. There are no roads to it, there are no utilities, and there have never been any workmen who have come to do any work on it. Your government does not know anything about it. If you would prefer staying someplace where we could be found out at any moment, you are welcome to go there, provided you can get there before the storm hits."
"Oh, well, we're stuck here for the rest of the day, and maybe all night, too, at any rate." Alyssa rubbed her hands together and then held them up to the heater.
"We will leave as soon as the storm has ended," Shun said. "But the two of you should not take much comfort in that. This is the second assassination in which you have failed."
"The second for Angelo," Alyssa groused. "It would be the third for him, if it hadn't been for me."
"Shut up," Angelo growled at her. "What do you want, to make me look incompetent? You were in Florida when I killed the Prito kid."
"Uh-huh. And I had to talk you through it," Alyssa reminded him. "Remember? You had your hands on Callie Hard and you were freaking out because you didn't know what to do and you thought you should just split and let the Hardys find Prito. Honestly, I almost which I would have let you. Then the next hit I would have been ordered to pull off would have been you instead of that Darcy girl."
Joe tensed and sat up. He hadn't expected to wind up hearing a confession, though it made his blood boil to hear these two talk about murdering his friends as if it was something to be proud of.
"You may be glad that you did not," Shun told her, his voice even more disapproving than it had been. "You should care more for Black Rose's interests than your own."
Alyssa had her back turned to Shun, so the man didn't see her roll her eyes. "Oh, sure I do," she said in an impressively convincing voice. "That's what I meant. We wouldn't have Angelo making a mess out of everything, and that would be in Black Rose's interests."
"I have not made a mess out of everything!" Angelo insisted.
Alyssa scoffed. "Oh yeah? What about your brother? You were supposed to kill him, not just get the disks away from him."
"I thought I had," Angelo replied sulkily. "And I did get those disks. It was hardly a complete failure."
"Yeah, the floppy disks. No one would have ever even found the evidence on them," Alyssa asserted. "Most people don't have the adaptors to read them anymore. If Mario ever found them, he probably would have just thrown them away. Besides, if they were so important, why didn't we go after them sooner?"
"You would do well not to ask so many questions," Shun warned her, "and not to ask them so arrogantly. You have not always proven yourself the most valuable member of our organization, and after failing to kill Radley and Joe Hardy, you are not in a position to annoy the Great One further."
"If it was up to me, I'd get rid of her before she could be any more of a liability," Angelo declared. "I'm not so sure she wasn't serious when she said that she was working as a double agent to bring Black Rose down."
Alyssa gave him a withering look. "I was assigned that cover story in case things went wrong. It came in handy since that Edmund Wight bought into it and thought he could let me go. He even helped me get back into the US. What an idiot. Not that I'm not grateful."
"Maybe he was right," Angelo insisted. "You've done nothing but get in my way since you've been back. It's almost enough to make me think your whole mission is simply to make me look bad."
"Like I'd waste my time when you do a perfectly good job doing that yourself. Let me repeat one more time: I was assigned that cover story. I didn't think it up. Not like you."
"I had to think of something," Angelo retorted. "It was supposed to be Tony Prito in the parking lot that day. When it turned out to be Hardy over there, I had give him something to get him off the trail of what I was really after. It was the first thing that came to mind, but only because you'd used it before."
Alyssa shook her head. "Talk about making yourself look bad. Joe Hardy looks nothing like Tony Prito. How you could mistake one for the other is beyond me."
"I have had enough of this senseless argument," Shun broke in. "We will not be able to leave this cabin until the storm has come and ended. It would be more pleasant to spend that time in complete silence than to listen to the two of you fight. If you think that I will help you gain favor with the Great One because of it, you are mistaken."
The two of them dropped their bickering immediately. It was a bit of a disappointment. They had answered a lot of questions, but not all of them. At least he could sit and work them out in silence in his head.
Angelo and Alyssa had been lying when they had claimed to be working against Black Rose. That had come as a surprise, since Joe had taken for granted that that, at least, had been the truth. Once he had seen Shun, he had begun to suspect that they were still working for him, but now it was confirmed. Or was it? They'd lied about so many things, how could he take their word for it now? In any case, at the very least, they clearly wanted to make it look like they were working with Black Rose, and they would be willing to do anything to prove it.
They had already killed to prove it. They had worked together to kill Tony. Joe knew for a fact that that had been Angelo, and Alyssa being the woman Callie had heard on the phone added up. There was no reason to doubt that. Alyssa had killed Darcy and Angelo had attempted to kill Mario. That seemed likely enough to be true. There wasn't any reason for them to lie about that. The attack on Mario had been to get evidence that he unknowingly had in his possession, just as Joe had guessed. He wondered what was on those floppy disks. They were obviously left behind by Mario's parents. What evidence could they possibly contain that would still be so vital for Black Rose now? And as Alyssa had asked, why get them now instead of sooner? Why did Shun refuse to answer that question?
From there, it was more questions than answers. Joe was convinced now that Tony had been the target all along, but why? Something to do with Lisa, probably. Perhaps Lisa also had some evidence and Black Rose was trying to get her to surrender it through her family. That would explain why Alyssa had been following her and about the roses left on Tony's grave. But why now? Why not several years ago? For that matter, getting evidence or silencing a witness was probably the motive behind Darcy's murder, but again, why now? Something must have happened recently to trigger all these events. Someone was closing in on Black Rose or some shift had happened within the organization itself.
Joe's thoughts turned to Edmund Wight. He had tried to get the Hardys out of the way, maybe because he was on the verge of a breakthrough with Black Rose and he didn't want anyone who wasn't aware of the situation to interfere. That could explain him letting Alyssa go. As much as Joe didn't like Wight, he didn't think Alyssa's assessment of him as an idiot was correct. Perhaps he had let Alyssa go so that she would unwittingly help him get to the bottom of everything.
He couldn't come to any more conclusions from what he had to work with after that. He tried, but none of it added up to anything. It was getting colder and he was tired. Eventually, he found himself just sitting there and glaring at Angelo and Alyssa. The thought intruded on his mind that he could have put a stop to this if he would have killed Angelo when he had the chance.
The bluntness of the thought startled him, but it was true. Joe had confronted Angelo a couple of months before and Joe had been armed, but he hadn't used the gun. He'd tried to subdue Angelo by brute force instead and had failed, and so Angelo had escaped and had killed Tony. It was a terrible price to pay for a wasted life like Angelo's. And now the price was only getting steeper.
Then some of his anger gave way to guilt. For years, the worst thing that could possibly happen in Joe's mind was that he would get Iola hurt because of a case of his, because he couldn't protect her. Because he wouldn't protect her, because he couldn't bear the thought of killing someone in self-defense or even the defense of someone he loved. It turned out it wasn't Iola who had paid the price for it, but it had still hurt more than Joe could say to lose a friend. Perhaps it was confirmation that he was right in how he had dealt with Iola, breaking up with her before anything more could happen to her, but instead of giving him any peace about his decisions, it made him regret all the more that now he would never get the chance to tell Iola he still loved her.
Desperately, Joe tried to think about something else: the case, the weather, anything. His brain kept circling back around to Iola. He would probably never see her again, and she would always think he didn't care for her anymore. And worse still, all he could do was pray that that was what she preferred. It was a cruel irony that in what may well be his last hours, he had to pray that Iola didn't love him.
