J.M.J.

Author's note: Thank you for continuing to read! Thank you especially to Candylou, max2013, and MargaretA66 for your reviews and to caseykam for your PM'd review! Although I do have to say, that isn't exactly how this is going to go, caseykam. ;) FanFiction still seems to not be sending notifications for new chapters, so again make sure you haven't missed any before going onto this one. The first chapter affected was Chapter 18. Thanks again and God bless!

Chapter XXII

Phil waited until the nurse had left the room to place the call. He wasn't sure what Shaun was going to say. He knew that Shaun had essentially set him up, but he wanted to hear his friend's side of the story before coming to any conclusions.

The phone rang several times, and Phil was beginning to wonder whether Shaun was going to pick it up at all. Finally, a sullen voice said, "Hi, Phil."

"Hi, Shaun. You said you wanted to talk to me." Phil hoped his voice didn't sound annoyed.

"Yeah. I guess you know that I set up that thing at Jazz's."

"That seems obvious. Why did you do it?"

"I didn't want to, even before I knew what they were going to do. If I did know what they were going to do, I never would have done it." Shaun went on to tell the whole story about the woman at the beach and the threats and promise that nobody would be hurt if Shaun cooperated. He was speaking so fast that Phil had a hard time following everything he said, but fortunately he also repeated most of it more than was necessary, so by the end Phil understood what had happened.

"Okay," Phil said simply when the story was done and he was trying to process it.

"I guess you must be furious with me," Shaun said in a small voice.

"That would be a good way to put it," Phil admitted. "But what's going on here is bigger than a personal argument. Look, you're probably in danger now, too. The Hardys are insisting I go back to Bayport as soon as they let me out of this hospital. Maybe you'd better come, too."

"Why would you want to help me after what I did?" Shaun asked.

"Oh, come on. Don't even go there. I should be getting out later this morning, around ten. You'd better meet me here, okay?"

"Okay," Shaun agreed.

HBHBHBHBHB

Frank wasn't sure how long he had been following Axel. The dog was plunging through the snow with an attitude that made Frank feel certain that he knew what he was doing. Maybe he could smell Joe's trail through the snow. In any case, even when the snow came up to the dog's chest, he didn't slow down. Frank was glad that he, at least, had snowshoes. Without them, he would have never made it this far.

The sky was beginning to get dark when Frank finally realized what the trail that Axel was following was. They came to a place where several trees close together had made a windbreak and their branches had caught most of the new snow. There was only a skiff of snow underneath them. Several drops of rust-colored liquid had stained the snow there. Blood. Frank had to take a moment to steady himself. They were really on the trail of the people who had been in the car, and one of them was injured badly enough that he was still bleeding by the time they reached this point.

But where had they gone? Frank felt sick at the mere thought of that question. There was nothing out here. If Joe's captors had tried to take him away on foot, they would have certainly been caught in the storm and no one could have survived a storm like that if they were unprotected. Frank leaned wearily against a tree trunk. What was he going to find at the end of this trail?

Whatever it was, Axel seemed eager to find it. He paused and looked back over his shoulder at Frank. Then he whined softly to get Frank to follow him again.

"I'm coming, Axel," Frank assured him, and he forced himself to continue.

It wasn't long after that when Frank saw the outline of a building ahead of him. He felt a hope rise up in his chest. If Joe and his kidnappers had reached this building, they might have survived. Warning Axel to be quiet, Frank hurried forward. He saw now that it was a cabin and that there was a light in the window.

It was now dark enough that Frank felt comfortable approaching the cabin's window. He peered inside. His heart leaped when he saw Joe sitting on the floor. His nose was bruised and swollen, but otherwise he looked unhurt. His hands and feet were tied and there was a gag in his mouth. He was watching two people, who were sitting at a table and talking with their heads close together. Frank recognized them at once: Angelo and Alyssa. So they were the ones who had kidnapped Joe. Frank wasn't very surprised. Angelo's arm was bandaged. It had been his blood that had left the trail.

Frank stepped back from the window and nearly tripped over Axel, who whined earnestly.

"Stay here," Frank told the dog, which obediently sat down.

Angelo and Alyssa obviously weren't expecting anything, Frank reasoned. Why should they? The storm should have covered their tracks. Only a tracking dog could have found their trail. All Frank had to do was take them by surprise: kick the door open, draw his gun, and tell them to freeze. It would work.

He worked his way around to the door of the cabin and cautiously tried the doorknob. It turned, so it wouldn't be necessary to kick the door open. That was just as well, since getting a door to open on the first kick wasn't a sure thing and this required split-second timing. Frank took a deep breath, took off the snowshoes, and then flung the door open.

"Police! Freeze!" he shouted, leveling the gun at the kidnappers.

Angelo and Alyssa seemed genuinely surprised and they obeyed the order immediately. Joe also looked up, surprise and relief written on his face. In an instant, that changed to concern and he leaned forward, attempting to mumble a warning through his gag.

A moment later, Frank felt a hard blow to the back of his head. He stumbled forward, even though he didn't lose consciousness. Alyssa was quick to pounce on him and wrestle his gun away from his stunned fingers. In the meantime, Angelo grabbed his own gun.

"Frank Hardy. How did you get here?" Angelo shouted, pointing his gun at Frank and pulling the hammer back.

Joe tried to kick at Angelo's feet and knock him off-balance, but he was too far away. What stopped Angelo was a harsh voice from behind Frank.

"Stop, Angelo; the Great One will want to see them both."

In the moment that Angelo hesitated, as if he was trying to decide whether to obey or not, Alyssa slapped the gun out of his hand. "Shun said to stop it," she reminded him.

Frank struggled to sit up, rubbing the back of his head as he did so, and turned to look at the old man. He hadn't been sure he could believe his ears, but now his eyes showed him the same thing. "Shun? What are you doing here? I thought you were still in Ziyou."

"Black Rose is no longer welcome in Ziyou, because of you and your family," Shun replied.

"That's not the only thing the Great One has against you," Angelo added.

"Who's this 'Great One'?" Frank asked. "I thought your leader called himself the Faceless One."

"He has a new name now," Shun replied.

"But he's still just as determined to make our lives miserable." Frank tried to stand up, and no one stopped him.

"The Great One's interest in you is not what you think," Shun told him.

Alyssa laughed. "You Hardys need to get off your ego-trip. You know, not everything revolves around you."

"Like you say, the Great One doesn't really care about them," Angelo pointed out. "I say we finish them off here and now. Dragging two of them back is going to be more hassle than it's worth."

"If you raise a hand to harm either of them, then you will not live to reach the Great One," Shun warned him. "We have wasted time enough already. Let us go before anyone else discovers us."

"How do we know they haven't already?" Alyssa asked. "Frank wouldn't have come alone if he was smart."

"I saw him arrive. He brought only a dog. If the dog bothers us, we will shoot it," Shun reported.

Joe mumbled in protest against his gag, guessing that the dog in question had to be Axel.

Angelo kicked him in the ribs, probably as recompense for tripping him. "Shut up, or that dog's not the only thing getting a bullet in it."

"We can't leave now," Alyssa complained. "It's dark and we have to walk."

"Then stay here and get caught by the cops," Angelo told her. "Good riddance, too."

Alyssa cast him a glance of pure hatred, but then they stopped their bickering long enough to attend to their hostages.

Frank's hands were tied in front of him and both he and Joe were forced to their feet. The gag was left in Joe's mouth. They were shoved outside into the snow. Axel met them at the door, wagging his tail when he saw Joe but then he growled at the three captors. Shun raised his gun.

"Get out of here, Axel!" Frank shouted. "Go home! Get!"

It couldn't have made much sense to Axel, but the faithful dog didn't question the command. He turned around and started running back toward the road. In spite of that, Shun fired a shot after him, but missed.

"What did you do that for?" Frank demanded. "He's not going to bother you now."

"I wanted to be sure," Shun replied evenly.

They started walking in the opposite direction that Axel taken. It was hard going in the deep, drifted snow. Shun, Angelo, and Alyssa wore snowshoes, but they didn't allow their captives the same privilege. That meant that Frank and Joe would go a few steps on the hard-packed drifts and then they would step on a soft spot and sink in over their knees. Several minutes of floundering through deep snow would follow until they reached another drift. If didn't take long before both Hardys were exhausted.

Even in the midst of this, Frank managed to whisper to Joe, "Are you all right?"

The gag was still preventing Joe from saying anything intelligible, so he merely nodded.

"I wonder what these people have in store for us when we get wherever we're going," Frank muttered.

They finally reached a road that had been plowed. An extended SUV was waiting there for them with a young man with dark hair in the driver's seat. The Hardys were shoved into the third row of seats in the very back, creating a tangle of legs too long for the small seats. Angelo and Alyssa sat in the middle, keeping an eye on them, while Shun got into the front passenger seat. They began to drive, with no one saying a word for the first half hour. Frank's head was pounding from the bump he had gotten earlier and the long, hard walk. Without either meaning or realizing it, his head fell against Joe's shoulder and he fell asleep. Exhaustion also overtook Joe and although he put up a fight for a few minutes, he soon fell asleep leaning against Frank.

HBHBHBHBHB

The storm and the subsequent condition of the road had kept Chet and Iola from leaving that night, but they had called Jerry. The first thing Jerry had said was to complain that nobody kept him up to date on anything anymore and the second was to say that he would head out on his snowmobile immediately. When Chet and Iola got there in the morning, he'd meet them.

It had been a cold ride for Jerry to Baitesville, but a short one. He had gone straight to police headquarters to offer his assistance to the police. That was where he had learned about the lead that Fenton and Frank had found. Jerry readily volunteered to join those who would be searching the area near where the SUV had been seen. It was dark by the time he reached there, but when he realized that the Hardys were still out looking on foot, he decided to at least drive around on the back roads for awhile.

That was how he found Fenton, walking along the road away from town. Fenton hesitated when he saw the snowmobile coming toward him in the dark.

"Who's there?" he called, shading his eyes from the light on the vehicle.

Jerry throttled it down. "It's me. Jerry Gilroy."

Fenton sighed in relief. "How did you get here, Jerry?"

"I heard what happened, and I don't live too far away, so obviously I wanted to help search. I don't suppose you've had any luck?"

Fenton shook his.

"Get on," Jerry invited him. "I'll give you a ride back to town. It's dark to search now. Where's Frank?"

"I don't know." Fenton's voice sounded grim as he said it. "We were supposed to meet back at the fork in the road. He wasn't there when I got there. I was trying to follow his tracks, but you can see how that would be."

He shone his flashlight on the road. The wind was still causing the loose snow to skiff along it, covering any possible tracks.

"He probably stuck to the road," Jerry pointed out.

Fenton climbed onto the snowmobile behind him and they continued down the road. It hadn't been plowed and the snow was packed down hard. Between that and the fact that Frank had been wearing snowshoes, any tracks he had left behind were easily filled in by the still-drifting snow. It was made all the worse by the fact that the darkness contrasting with the snow, which was reflecting back the light from the snowmobile, made everything confusing and difficult to focus on. They passed by the SUV that Frank had found without seeing it and continued on down the road.

"He couldn't have walked this far," Fenton shouted over the sound of the snowmobile. "He must have turned off the road and we missed it."

Jerry throttled down. "Maybe he went back into town."

"He wouldn't have done that without letting me know," Fenton replied.

"He might have, if he found something and needed to get back right away," Jerry said. "There's no cell reception in through here—at least, I don't have any—so he couldn't have called for help. He also couldn't have called you."

"What could he have found that would be that much of an emergency?"

"I don't know," Jerry admitted. "Well, at the very least, if he still out here, we're going to need help finding him and better lights."

Fenton was reluctant to head back into town now that it was dark and Frank was still out there somewhere, but he had to admit that Jerry had a point. He finally agreed to go back.