J.M.J.
Author's note: Thank you for continuing to read! Thank you especially to MargaretA66, Candylou, ErinJordan, and max2013 for your reviews on the previous chapter! God bless!
Chapter XV
Tony would have given anything to have been woken up by Axel licking his face. He had started to come around even before Angelo had tased Joe. It had taken some time to get his wits about him as he had been waking. Before he was really aware of what was happening, Angelo was waving the taser in his face, threatening to use it again if Tony made a sound. He didn't have a chance to make any noise, considering that a handkerchief was instantly shoved into his mouth and then his arms were grabbed and bound together.
Angelo pulled him to his feet and walked him to a car. By this time, Tony's mind was starting to clear more and he realized that he was about to be in for a lot of trouble. He started to struggle. Instantly, Angelo used his taser again. It meant he had to practically drag Tony to the car, but it probably was easier than fighting him the whole way.
When Tony came to this time, he was in the trunk. There was barely room for him, and even if his hands hadn't been tied, he wouldn't have been able to move much. In a panic, he tried pounding on the lid with his foot, but he had to kick from the side, and that quickly became so uncomfortable and accomplished so little that he gave it up after a few tries.
By the time the car finally stopped, Tony was too cramped and stiff to move, even if he hadn't felt more than a little sick. When Angelo opened the trunk, Tony just lay there for several seconds instead of even making an attempt to escape.
"Get out of there." Angelo grabbed him and pulled him out.
Tony lost his balance and fell to the gravel hard, cutting his lip and scraping his right arm from the shoulder to the elbow. If it wasn't for the gag, he wouldn't have been able to help letting out a cry of pain. As it was, all he could do was close his eyes and wait for the worst of the stinging to subside.
Before it did, Angelo grabbed him by the left shoulder and hauled him to his feet once again. "Those scratches are going to be the least of your worries."
He yanked the gag out of Tony's mouth, which surprised him, but when he looked around, he saw that they were well out of town. There wasn't a light to indicate a house anywhere, but then Tony reminded himself that it must have been past three in the morning. All the rest of the world was asleep. It was still strange that there was no house here, where Angelo had brought him.
"What are we doing here?" Tony asked. He slurred the words slightly. His facial muscles were still a bit numb from the tasing.
Angelo just yanked him away from the road. "This way."
They climbed up an embankment and then started picking their way along a dry creek bed between two hills.
"I hope we're not going far," Tony said as he stumbled with almost every step.
"Far enough."
After about a quarter of a mile, they reached the unmistakable mouth of a mine. Even with Angelo prodding him along, Tony stopped and stared at it incredulously.
"You've got to be kidding. I thought they only hid prisoners in abandoned mines in movies. How do you just conveniently come up with an abandoned mine?"
"We're right in the heart of gold rush territory," Angelo reminded him. "There's dozens, maybe hundreds, of abandoned mines around here. Most of them are blocked off, but the government hasn't found all of them to close them off. Come on. It's a good place to hide a prisoner. When I'm done with you, I can cause a cave-in, even without explosives, and they'll never find you."
Tony had been about to resignedly follow him, but now he planted his feet in the ground and refused to move another step. "What do you mean by that? Aren't you going to let me go if you get what you want?"
Angelo gave him a rough shove forward so that he had to stumble several steps toward the mine's entrance.
"What do you think I want?"
"You said something about that picture Lisa had…"
"Good. Then the plan might be working."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm not planning on letting you go alive," Angel said, rather than answering the question. "You can spend your remaining time trying to figure out why. You might even come up with the answer."
"That's not going to work out for you," Tony said, an element of panic rising in him. "If you kill me, the Hardys are going to hunt you down no matter where you go. You'll never get away."
Angelo scoffed. "I doubt that. We've already seen how Joe reacts to things not going his way on a case. He'll blame himself and fold right up. Probably jump off a building or step out in front of a truck before he does any hunting. Frank might give me some trouble, but I can deal with him."
"You're crazy. Why are you even bothering to hold me prisoner at all?"
"You can try to figure that out, too. I'm going to have to make sure your stay isn't pleasant. We're going to have our first session right away."
HBHBHBHBHB
The room was too hot and crowded and the light was too bright. Joe had a pounding headache. He kept his face buried in his hands since even closing his eyes wasn't enough to block the light that seemed to pierce into the very base of his skull. At least, that's what he told himself he couldn't stand. Certainly, the light was compounding his headache, but worse than that, it allowed him to see the way all his friends were looking at him.
It was hard to say which was the worst. Callie was staring at him with her mouth a little open. She looked shocked and like she was trying to hide it. Shaun looked angry, his forehead wrinkled up and his eyebrows close together. Joe wasn't sure who he was angry at, but he was low enough now to assume it was him. Mario looked like he was pitying him and his discomfort made it clear that he saw some fault in himself in all this. Phil's expression was grim, but trusting. Even after all this, Joe realized that Phil still trusted him to be able to solve the mystery and save the day. Out of all of them, Phil's eyes were probably the hardest to meet, but when Frank and the police had arrived, Phil's expression was immediately eclipsed.
The only sort of look Frank had given Joe was one of disappointment. It wasn't surprised disappointment, like someone who had expected better of him. It was the disappointment of someone who had hoped for better, but had gotten exactly what he expected. That look haunted him through the entire interview with the police.
"Joe, I'd like you to tell me exactly what Angelo said again," Gomez was saying.
"I already did," Joe muttered.
"I know, but I want to be sure I have everything. I don't need to remind you that your friend's life might depend on it."
No, he didn't have to remind him. If Gomez had reminded him without throwing that phrase in, it probably would have elicited a different response. As it was, something in that phrase, I don't need to remind you, set him off.
Joe jumped to his feet. "Then don't remind me! Don't you get it? This is all because of me. If I…" His throat caught and he realized that he was dangerously near tears. That couldn't be tolerated, not with everyone staring at him. He closed his eyes and found it was too late. There was already a tear falling down his cheek.
"There wasn't much you could do," Gomez unexpectedly excused him. "The suspect was armed and you weren't. Trying to put up any kind of a fight would have most likely just made things worse."
Joe turned toward the wall so he wouldn't have to watch anyone's faces. "That's just it. I didn't have to be unarmed. I had a gun here in the apartment. I should have taken it outside with me. I should…" He stopped talking as he felt more tears on his cheeks. He wasn't sure whether it was more dignified to wipe them away or not, but then he realized he didn't care.
Frank cleared his throat. "Captain, could I talk to him alone for a minute?"
"Sure," Gomez agreed. "Come on, everybody."
Joe heard the crowd of people move out of the room and go out the door. He waited until he heard the door shut behind them.
"What do you want to say?" Joe asked severely. "That you knew something like this was going to happen if I worked on the case?"
"Joe, you've got to get a grip on yourself," Frank said. "Tony's going to be okay. We'll find him."
"You and Gomez?"
Frank sighed. "The local police will need to be heading up the investigation. I'll help them, but I really think you need to sit this one out."
"You want me to sit around and do nothing while Tony's being held prisoner by a murderer?" Joe shook his head. "I don't know what to do."
"I'm telling you what to do," Frank replied, only realizing after he had said it that it was an unfortunate choice of words.
Joe bristled. "What gives you the right to tell me what to do?"
Frank shook his head. "What's the matter with you? Do you want be a detective or not? You say you don't, and then when we tell you to follow through on that, you say you do. If you can't even make your mind up about something as simple as that…"
"It's not simple," Joe cut him off. He wasn't sure what he was going to say, but he felt like some explanation was on the tip of his tongue. Then he lost it and all he could say was, "Things are different now than when we were solving cases together."
"How? Why's it so different?"
"Ziyou." Joe practically whispered the word. "That was the start. It's when you first started thinking I was losing it."
If it had been a year or two before, Frank would have readily cracked a joke, but he wasn't even tempted now, and that, oddly enough, cut more deeply than anything so far. "How did that make such a big difference?" he snapped.
"It does! Don't you see?" Joe closed his eyes and tilted his head back as he tried to get control of himself well enough to say what he had to say. "It changes everything. Whatever it was that was in that monastery was no figment of my imagination or trick by Black Rose. It couldn't be my imagination because Biff and those two priests saw and heard what I did, at least until Biff ran out of there. And what we saw couldn't be a trick. I'll grant you that any sound could be a trick, but what I saw couldn't be. I didn't just see it, either; I felt it, too."
Frank let out a long breath. He didn't believe in ghosts. Joe hadn't, either, until the incident in Ziyou. There was an explanation somewhere. That was obvious. But it didn't matter so much right now. "All right," he conceded. "Let's say what you saw was really supernatural. How was it such an earth-shattering thing?"
"You still don't believe it," Joe replied.
Frank shook his head. "That's beside the point. Hypothetically, we'll agree for the sake of whatever point you're trying to make that it really was supernatural. Why does that change everything?"
"Two reasons. First, you don't believe me. If you don't trust me on this, how can you trust me on anything? When it comes down to it, how can I trust you? If you think you know better than me in something, even if I'm talking about things I saw with my own eyes and you didn't, then you've already shown me that you're going to stick with your interpretation."
Frank wanted to protest that that wasn't fair, but he was starting to see Joe's point. The whole thing had resulted in a breakdown of trust between them. It had gotten much worse since Joe had pulled out of the detective agency and moved to California, but the roots were there, back in Ziyou. That's why that hostage situation a year earlier almost turned so ugly. They weren't working as a team anymore, and deep down, Frank knew that he was at least as much to blame for that as Joe. He just wasn't ready to admit it yet.
He cleared his throat and instead of commenting, he simply asked, "What's the other reason?"
Joe looked down at his hands. "Whatever was in that monastery was dark, darker than anything I've ever imagined. Black Rose was even scared of it. You didn't see any of their people going behind those walls. This isn't a game. At least, it's not a game you can afford to lose."
"Nobody said anything about losing."
"No." Joe sighed again as he felt his frustration rising in him again. "I don't know how to explain it. You remember Clare and Tanner, the people who held us hostage last year?"
"I've been thinking of them quite a bit lately. What about them?"
"What they were doing was wrong, very wrong. Obviously. Armed robbery and attempted murder are pretty wrong. If they would have been killed in the middle of that robbery, what do you think would have happened to them?"
"You mean, do I think they would have gone to hell? That's not really for me to say."
"No. No, of course not," Joe agreed, "but it is a possibility. If they survived it, they could have a chance to turn their lives around. I didn't want to be the one to make the decision whether to strip them of that chance or not. And don't tell me I wasn't the one making the decision. I had the power to let it happen or to stop it. It was my decision to make."
"Well, and your decision turned out for the best in the end," Frank conceded. "They were captured and nobody was killed, and that's a good thing."
"Yes, definitely, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. When I say this isn't a game you can afford to lose, I mean nobody can afford lose it. From what I saw of…of what losing might look like, I don't anyone to lose. And when I say that I really do mean anyone, not just people I care about or even well-meaning people in general. I don't want to see even all the worst people who have ever lived lose. I don't think anyone can call themselves a decent human being who says they'd like to see anyone in hell, no matter who they're talking about. At least not anyone who knows what they're talking about."
"Okay. That's not that hard a sell, actually, but what does it have to do with anything?" Frank asked.
"It's why I could never kill someone in self defense. I'm not so sure I could even to protect someone else. And that's why Tony's been kidnapped."
Frank mulled this over for several minutes. "All right. This is good."
"Good?" Joe repeated incredulously. "How exactly is it good?"
"You put everything out on the table. That's good. You said we didn't trust each other and couldn't work together effectively until we did, and you're right. This is how we start to fix that."
Joe sank into the chair once again. "Aren't you paying any attention? I'm done. I'm through. I'm washed-up as a detective. When I said you didn't trust me anymore, I didn't mean that you didn't have a reason for that. What if we got in another situation where it was up to me to protect us? I wouldn't be able to do it."
"No. Obviously, we can't work together anymore," Frank said. "If you really believe everything you were just saying, then you've got to agree to that, and that means that you need to stay out of this."
Joe rolled his eyes. "That's why this isn't simple. I am involved, whether anybody likes it or not. Angelo wants to deal with me. He's not going to deal with you and the police. You know as well as I do that if this was a regular kidnapping case and the victim's family were all just ordinary civilians and the kidnapper was trying to deal with them, the police wouldn't refuse to let them do anything. Whatever you and Gomez might think, I'm not crazy and I'm not going to double cross you. If Angelo wants to meet me in person again, you've got to let me go. If he wants me to do anything, you've got to let me. I'll cooperate with the police and do anything they say, as long as they're the ones carrying the guns."
Frank's expression was grim. "Gomez doesn't want you to have anything to do with this, but he's not completely unreasonable. I admit, you've got a point. I'll talk to him again. But you've got to abide by whatever he says."
"I said I would," Joe replied.
