J.M.J.

Author's note: Thank you so much for continuing to read! Thank you especially to Candylou, angelicalkiss, MargaretA66, ErinJordan, max2013, and caseykam for your reviews! I love reading all your guesses about who/what FO is. All I can say is that we'll find out before too long…I hope you enjoy this chapter! God bless!

Chapter XVIII

The sky was lighter than it had been. Dawn was coming gradually. The sky was too cloudy for the sun itself to show, but Fenton stood at the window, waiting anyway. Joe and Sam should be getting here soon. He would have liked it better if they had waited until morning to leave Philadelphia, but Joe had called not long before, saying they were only an hour away. The predicted hour wasn't up yet, so there was no cause for concern. Yet Fenton couldn't shake a feeling that something had happened.

"Fenton?" Laura's voice came from the top of the stairs. She didn't sound sleepy in the least.

"I couldn't sleep after…all that," Fenton replied without turning away from the window.

"Me neither," Laura said.

He heard her coming down the stairs, her slippers padding softly on the wood steps. Then she came and put her hand on his arm and leaned her head against his shoulder.

"When are they supposed to get here?" Laura asked.

Fenton checked his watch. "Half an hour, maybe. Probably a little more."

"Mmm. Why does Philadelphia seem so far away after dark?"

Fenton didn't reply. He didn't think it was a question that Laura intended for him to answer.

"Fenton," Laura said after a pause. "Why are they targeting the boys' friends now? First Tony, and now Phil. It doesn't make any sense. If they want to come after us, why not just do it?"

"Maybe they realize it's easier this way. They can throw Frank and Joe off their game and make them easier targets. Or maybe Tony and Phil really were targets for Black Rose somehow. Phil was looking into that Darcy girl's murder. Maybe he found out more than he realized."

"I'd hate for any of the others to get hurt, or worse," Laura said. "They can disappear when they want to, and even you haven't been able to find them. Why do they come looking for us?"

Fenton frowned slightly. He'd wondered the same thing before this, but he could never come up with a plausible theory.

His phone rang. He looked at the screen and saw that it was Sam. His premonition of disaster came back into the foreground of his focus as he answered the call.

"Sam? What is it? Where are you?"

"Baitesville." Sam's voice sounded strained. "Is Laura there, by any chance?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I'm not going to make you repeat this to her. Put her on speaker."

Fenton pressed the appropriate button. "Okay. We're on speaker. What happened?"
"We stopped for gas in Baitesville. We were ambushed, probably by Black Rose."

"Joe?" Laura asked fearfully.

"They've got him. He was alive when they took him."

Laura put her hand over her mouth as she attempted to process this. Fenton closed his eyes. It didn't take much imagination for him to picture what might be happening to his younger son right now. He'd seen it happen to others before, and he'd seen it happen to Joe in his nightmares more often than he admitted.

"Fenton? Laura?"

"Are you okay?" Fenton asked. He knew that Sam wouldn't have let Joe get kidnapped in front of his eyes without putting up a fight.

"There was some shooting," Sam admitted. "I was hit in the arm. I'll live. I wouldn't have if it hadn't been for Joe, though. He saved my life."

"Tell me everything," Fenton requested.

HBHBHBHBHB

It was good to have a few moments of silence. The news shouldn't have been a shock to Frank, but it was. He wasn't sure what he was thinking or feeling. All he knew was that he needed a moment. The break room at police headquarters served as a refuge. At this time of night, he was alone there and it was quiet. Maybe he shouldn't have retreated so quickly, but when he had asked Collig if he could have a minute, the chief had said he could.

Frank had heard the whole story, relayed from Sam Radley to the Baitesville police and then to Collig and finally to him. There was no way to know where the abductors had taken Joe or why or what they intended to do with him. But Frank could imagine the answer to that last question. He closed his eyes and seemed to see Tony as he had found him two months before. Tony hadn't lived long enough to tell what he had endured at Angelo's hands, but the marks of it had been clear enough on his body. Frank wasn't naïve enough to hope that Joe would fare any better. In all likelihood, he would fare worse. He was no innocent bystander taken by mistake, after all. Suddenly, Frank felt sick. He hugged his arms around him tightly as if he was trying to hold his stomach in place by force and leaned forward until his forehead touched the table in front of him.

He tried to think of something else. There could be other reasons they had taken Joe. Maybe they just wanted leverage to stop the Hardys from investigating. They might not hurt him in that case. Threatening to would be enough. As long as Joe was alive, there was hope.

It seemed for an instant that he could see Joe locked up in some damp, dingy room with a ceiling too small to stand up. His clothes were torn and dirty and his face was covered in cuts and bruises, but he had such a look of trust about him as he gazed upward, out a tiny window high in the wall. Frank shook himself. It was just his imagination, vivid though it was. But no. It wasn't entirely. Joe really was probably being beaten at this very moment, and he probably was clinging resolutely to a trust that Frank would rescue him. Or was he? He didn't have much reason to these days. Frank sighed heavily and he felt a tear slip out from beneath his closed eyelids.

He jumped as he heard the door open and then close softly. He was instantly on his guard, trying to get rid of any evidence that was close to crying, but he relaxed when he saw it was Burns. Burns smiled at him and then slipped into the chair next to him.

"How are you doing?" she asked softly.

"I don't know." Frank heaved a long sigh. "We don't have the faintest idea where to start to look for them."

"There must be some clue," Burns insisted. "Radley might have seen more than what we heard. Maybe when you talk to him, he could give something more."

Frank shook his head. "I doubt that. He would have told the police everything he knows."

"Probably." Burns admitted. "By the way, they ran the license plate of that SUV. It was reported stolen here in Bayport a couple of days ago."

Frank nodded. "If they kill Joe…" he began in a sudden flash of fury and he once more imagined his brother in the hands of the man who had murdered one of their closest friends.

"They won't," Burns said.

"I wish there was some guarantee for that."

HBHBHBHBHB

There were a few snowflakes falling from a cloudy sky. Iola was sitting next to the window and watching them, daydreaming about what the future might hold. She wondered whether there was any chance for her and Joe, or whether she should even be thinking about that. Maybe it was better if they were apart. They couldn't hurt each other that way, and their relationship had been little more than a series of hurting each other.

"Iola!" her brother's voice broke into her thoughts and she turned away from the frosty landscape outside the window to look at him. Before he could say another word, Iola already knew something terrible had happened. She felt her heart beat faster and she asked him what it was.

Chet paused, his face pale enough that his freckles were standing out sharply. "Callie just called me. She said she tried to call you, but you didn't answer your phone."

Instinctively, Iola reached for her phone in her back pocket, but it wasn't there. "I must have left it in my room. What happened?"

"Joe and Sam Radley were on their way back from Philadelphia and they were ambushed in Baitesville."

The world came to a crashing halt. "No, no, no, no," Iola protested, barely knowing what she was saying. "No, they couldn't. How? Was he…hurt?"

"I don't know," Chet admitted. "Callie didn't know, but they took him off in an SUV. Mr. Radley tried to chase them, but they got away.

That was the final blow. Iola felt numb all over. "Why?"

"I don't know," Chet replied. "I'm going to go to the Hardys' house right now. I'm going to help look for him, even if they don't want me to. Are you coming?"

"You couldn't make me stay," Iola replied.

She stood up, but she swayed slightly as she did. A future without Joe seemed to gape in front of her eyes and she knew the truth at once with a certainty so sharp and blinding that it almost hurt. She loved Joe and she would sooner have her own heart ripped from her chest than have Joe torn from her life like this.

HBHBHBHBHB

The Hardy house was silent. It often was. On a typical day, Fenton would be working and Gertrude would be out volunteering or visiting one of her friends. Even since Joe had come back home, he had been quieter than he used to be and had often gone for walks with his dog when he wasn't working, and so Laura was used to having the house to herself. But the silence that reigned now wasn't like that peaceable, homey silence that Laura had come to appreciate. It was a tight, dry silence in which every second might be the one that immediately precedes disaster. She dreaded that her phone would ring. There was no way of knowing whether Joe was still alive, but with all the police who were undoubtedly scouring the area, they might discover the answer to that question at any moment.

Images of how that scene might look, of her baby lying lifeless by the side of the road or being washed away in the ocean invaded her mind. It made little difference whether she had her eyes open or shut; the image was still there, gnawing at her heart and turning her stomach. She almost wished Fenton hadn't gone straight to police headquarters, but it was the first step in searching for Joe and the last thing she wanted to do was be an obstacle in that.

Laura was sitting on one corner of the living room couch when again the unwanted images swarmed in upon her, more vivid and graphic than they had yet been. She drew her knees up and squeezed them against herself, like a child trying to hide. She wanted to cry, to fall apart and let someone else pick up the pieces for once, but long-standing habit forbade it. She had always told herself she needed to be strong, but now she realized that her pushing aside of all emotions wasn't really strength and perhaps never had been. It was just stoicism, and it was nothing to admire. A mother ought to weep for her child in danger and out of her reach. She almost loathed herself, like some sort of alien creature devoid of even the most natural affections and emotions of a human heart. She couldn't have even forced herself to cry.

"Laura?"

It was a soft voice, in a tone that could have easily been asking for "Mom" instead. Laura looked up and saw Callie standing in the doorway, her eyes red-rimmed and her face pale. She must have just arrived.

"Are you all right?" Callie asked.

Laura nodded before she could muster the words to say, "I think so." It was a lie, and Laura knew it was a lie even as the words were passing her lips, but it was as if she couldn't help telling it. It was part of the act that she couldn't escape from now.

Callie came and sat next to her on the couch. "I don't know how you do it. I'd be such a mess. I'm a mess as it is. I don't really know what I'd do if it was my child—yet."

The last word was lost on Laura, who was too caught up in her own anxieties to do more than pretend to be attentive to anyone else's needs. "It's nothing impressive," she said, and this time, there was no lie whatsoever in her words.

Callie rested her chin in her palms. "Laura, if you knew that things like this were going to happen and all the pain they'd cause you, would you have still had children?"

Laura raised her head to look at her in so much surprise that it softened her worry for a moment. "No matter what happens, I would never, ever wish that either of my boys hadn't been born."

"I know, but before they were born," Callie persisted. "If when you were first married, you could somehow look into the future and saw yourself at this moment, would you have wanted to have children?"

"If I could only see this moment, I don't suppose anyone would." Laura's eyes strayed to the wall where a number of family pictures were hanging, both old ones from when the boys were little and more recent ones. "But if I could see the whole story ahead of me, even if it turns out that this is how it ends, I wouldn't have done anything differently."

"Don't you think it's a little…selfish to bring a child into the world who is going to be in danger?"

"If it is, there isn't a parent alive who isn't selfish, because no one has ever had a life away from danger." Laura gave Callie a critical look. "Why are you asking this?"

Callie turned away. "I'm just scared…And I don't think I could handle it if I was in your place right now."

Laura pulled her arm away from herself to put it about Callie. It was almost a relief to have someone to comfort. That was more what she was used to. "I know. Being a parent is hard enough without worrying about your children getting into danger like this. But there's also nothing more worth every sacrifice it demands of you. When you have children of your own, you'll understand."

"I hope so." Callie sighed and then looked up again. "What if they don't find Joe in time? I don't think I could stand it."

Laura caught her breath. She wasn't so sure she could bear it either, and if she hadn't been so caught up in her fears for her own child, she might have guessed that there was something more behind Callie's questions beyond her concerns for her brother-in-law.

"They'll find him," Laura said. Her voice sounded far more confident than she felt, but then she had been practicing that for years. "Fenton and Frank will find him, or else Joe will escape. It won't end like this. It can't."

"It did for Tony," Callie said softly and distantly, as if she had forgotten for the moment that Laura was there.

Laura closed her eyes, telling herself not to cry. She couldn't be afraid. It almost seemed like if she could hold herself together and believe everything would be all right, then it would be, but if she once broke down, if she admitted for the smallest fraction of a moment that it might not be, then it wouldn't. The images of what Joe's captors might be doing to him at that moment flooded back on her and for a few seconds, she felt as if she really was underwater and didn't know which way was up.

It was Gertrude's sharp voice—sharper than usual because she was frightened—that pulled her out. Laura opened her eyes and found that her sister-in-law had entered the room without her noticing and was addressing both her and Callie.

"Worrying about what might happen isn't going to do anyone any good," she was saying, and Laura realized that she had blocked out the first part of the speech, whatever it had been. "You'd think it wasn't my brother who was investigating. After all the cases he's solved, do you really think he's not going to find his own son?"

Callie smiled faintly. "I know he will if he can—and Frank, too. But they're only human, after all. They can't work miracles."

"Well, then, it's a good thing there's no miracle necessary," Gertrude insisted. "Those criminals must have left some clues behind, Fenton will find them, and he'll have Joe back here before we know it."

"Maybe," Callie admitted, "but I think I'll…go and pray for a miracle, anyway." She stood up and left the room.

Gertrude watched her go, shaking her head. "That girl's going to have to steady her nerves if she thinks she's going to spend her life married to a Hardy."

"She'll learn," Laura said, trying to wipe away her tears and think of something to say that would make it sound as if she was all right. The best she could come up with was: "You do more worrying than her and me put together usually, anyway."

Gertrude crossed her arms, but she couldn't make herself look as hard as she intended to. "I don't really worry. I just point out the logical consequences of Fenton and the boys insisting on their detective work. But I haven't in the last few months, if you've noticed. The boys already learned about that."

"That's true." Laura buried her face in her hands. "For what it was worth."

Gertrude sat on the couch, taking Callie's place, and put her hand on Laura's shoulder. "If there's any possible way to get Joe home safely, you know that Fenton and Frank will do it."

"And what if there is no possible way?"

"Well, then, maybe we'd better do the same as Callie."

HBHBHBHBHB

"Where's Frank?" was Fenton's first question as he arrived in the police station and saw his old friend, Con Riley, in one of the hallways.

Con nodded toward a door to the break room. "He wanted some time to himself."

"I'm going to go to Baitesville," Fenton said.

"I figured that already," Con replied.

"I just wanted to talk to Collig first," Fenton went on.

His phone rang right then and he automatically answered it without bothering to look at who was calling. He assumed it was something to do with Joe. The rest of the world had stopped and there was only the search after all, wasn't there?

"Hello? Mr. Hardy?" The young female voice was familiar, but it took Fenton a few seconds to recognize it in his agitation.

"Oh. Belle. Is something the matter?"

"Well, yes and no. I've tried calling both Frank and Joe, but neither of them would answer," Belle Beretta replied.

Fenton winced. "What is it?"

"Mario woke up about an hour ago."

"That's great," Fenton said with little enthusiasm. Nothing seemed truly great at the moment.

"Yes, definitely. The doctor says he's out of danger," Belle told him. "There's just one thing. He says it wasn't Evangeline who attacked him."

That managed to rouse some of Fenton's interest. He had practically forgotten about Evangeline, and the reminder was enough of a jolt to actually interest him. "Who was it?"

"It was my brother, Angelo."