J.M.J.

Author's note: If you're still with me after last chapter, thank you so much! I know that might have been a shock, but there's a reason why I'm doing this. I'll talk more about that in the endnote on the last chapter. I'll be posting the last two chapters next week, so not much longer to go. I'd like to give a special thanks to MargaretA66, Candylou, ErinJordan, max2013, and caseykam for your reviews! God bless!

Chapter XXV

There were few moments in life that had been more of a relief to Joe than when he felt his pocketknife sever the last bit of the duct tape holding Callie's wrists. It was harder to cut with a knife than one might expect and Joe had to be careful so that he wouldn't accidentally cut Callie. As soon as her hands were free, Callie threw her arms around Joe's neck and hugged him.

"Oh, Joe, you really are alive! I thought he'd killed you."

Joe hugged her back. "Hey, it would take a lot more than a bump on the head to kill me."

"But I heard a shot. I thought…"

"Cal, I'm okay. I've just got a headache, is all. I need to get you free the rest of the way."

"He said he's going to kill Tony," Callie repeated, her voice shaking. "I don't know why. I don't understand. We gave him what he wanted."

"I don't know, either. He's either just nuts or he's got something else up his sleeve."

"There was a woman," Callie said suddenly.

Joe stopped sawing on the tape to look at her. "A woman? Here?"

"No. On the phone. He called her. She told him to kill Tony. They wanted me to tell you about it."

"Who was she?"

"I don't know. Angelo didn't say her name, and I didn't recognize the voice. She seemed…"

Callie stopped speaking abruptly when the sound of a gunshot echoed through the mine, rapidly followed by three more shots. Both Joe and Callie froze for a second. Then Joe threw caution aside and sawed through the tape in record time.

He helped Callie to her feet, but he said, "You'd better stay here."

"As if," Callie replied.

Joe didn't want to argue, and he couldn't blame her, anyway. "Stay close then."

Despite their worry, they made their way slowly and carefully. Not only was there a shooter to worry about, but the gunshots could have also triggered a cave-in. Here and there were dirt and small rocks falling from the ceiling, which made them nervous, but there was nothing bigger than that.

After walking for several minutes, they saw a light ahead around a corner. They slowed down and peered around the corner. There was a flashlight lying on some rocks, and in its beam, they could see Frank kneeling next to Tony. There were tears on Frank's face, a sight which Callie and Joe, even though they were the two people in the world closest to Frank, had only rarely seen. They hurried forward.

Frank looked up when he heard them. "Joe, you've got to go call for help. Paramedics and a LifeFlight. Hurry!"

Ordinarily, Joe would have immediately done anything Frank told him in that voice, but he knew he didn't have a phone and now that he was closer and could see Tony better, he wasn't sure paramedics could help. Wordlessly, he dropped to his knees next to his friend and tried to find a pulse.

"What are you waiting for?" Frank demanded.

"It's too late." Joe's lips felt numb even as he said it. Such a wave of emotions was washing over him that he couldn't identify any individual one and it almost felt like having no emotion at all.

"Oh no," Callie murmured, kneeling as well. "Are you sure? Isn't there anything we can do?"

Frank also felt for a pulse. He knew, deep down, that Joe was right; he had thought it was probably so for the last several minutes, but somehow, he hadn't even thought to check for a pulse. Now that he did, he found just what Joe had: nothing.

"Joe's right," he announced in almost a daze. He let up the pressure he had been placing on the blood-soaked vest and rocked back on his heels.

Callie brushed back the hair that was hanging over Tony's forehead as her eyes brimmed with tears. "It isn't fair. It's not fair at all." Her voice broke and for a second she couldn't go on. Then she added, "To be so close but just a few minutes too late."

Frank slowly stood up. Then he turned to the wall and drove a fist into it, making both Joe and Callie jump. "We weren't too late. At least, I wasn't. I should have gotten control of the situation. I shouldn't have let this happen. It's my fault."

Joe glanced at Callie before standing up and going to him. "Frank, your arm is bleeding."

"That doesn't matter," Frank said dismissively.

"It's bleeding pretty badly," Joe insisted. "We'd better bandage it up."

"I don't care about that," Frank retorted. He put his left hand over his face; obviously, his right arm hurt too much to move. "Don't you see, Joe? Angelo didn't shoot him until after I arrived. I surprised him. I should have been able to get the situation under control. This is the sort of thing I've been trained for, first with Dad and then with the police. I should have been able to save him."

"I'm sure you did everything you could," Joe told him. "It's more my fault for coming out here with no backup. By the time you got here, there wasn't much you could do."

Frank shook his head, not willing to relinquish his self-punishment of taking on the blame for the deed. Then, unbidden, the memory of the explosive came back to him. "Angelo planted an explosive in here, and he has a remote detonator."

Joe jumped. "We'd better get out of here! There's no telling if he'll decide to set it off."

"We can't just leave Tony here." Callie looked up from where she was still kneeling next to him.

"We won't," Frank told her. "We can carry him."

"With your arm, you're not in any shape to carry anything," Joe said. "You'd better lean against Callie in case you start feeling faint. I'll carry Tony."

Frank tried to protest, but Callie got up and took his good arm and started leading him toward the way they had come in. Joe struggled to pick up Tony, who was heavier than he expected, but Joe found he could manage it. Despite the danger, they couldn't move quickly. Moving at all was making Frank notice how faint he really was feeling, and he was leaning against Callie more heavily than he expected. Joe could move only slowly with his burden. They made a somber procession as they made their way out of the mine.

Once they were in the sunlight, it was even worse. They looked even more disheveled and their red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks were more obvious in broad daylight. They kept going until they felt that they had gone a safe distance. Then they stopped. Joe laid Tony on the ground but remained crouching next to him, staring at him as reality sank in. He began to cry.

Callie had never stopped crying, and neither had Frank, who was leaning disconsolately against a boulder. In a way, Callie was almost grateful to have a distraction in taking care of Frank's wound. She tried to find something she could wrap around it, but she didn't have anything on her person. Finally, Frank remembered that he had a handkerchief in his pocket which he carried for this sort of purpose. Callie was tying this around the wound when she heard the footsteps of several people approaching. She looked up and saw that it was Captain Gomez and three of his officers.

It only took Gomez a glance to realize what had happened. The first thing he did was to stride forward and check Tony himself. Then he looked up at Joe.

"Beretta did this?" he asked.

Joe nodded.

"Where did he go?"

"I don't know," Joe said. "Frank saw him."

Gomez turned to look at Frank.

"He shot Tony and then shot at me," Frank said. "He got away while I was trying to help Tony. We were in that mine shaft, a little ways away, but there's an explosive in there that might go off any time."

"Okay." Gomez turned to his officers. "I want an APB on Angelo Beretta and I want every available officer here, combing this canyon. Call in the state police, the highway patrol, and the sheriff's department, as well. Get a blanket from the car and cameras. And call for an ambulance and a coroner."

This last request, along with the fact that someone else was here to take charge of the situation, brought new tears to all three Hardys' eyes. Callie wrapped her arms around Frank and buried her face in his chest, while he held her with his good arm and leaned his head forward against hers. Joe sat heavily on the ground and didn't even try to stop the sobs that wracked him. He was surprised when he felt Gomez grip his shoulder. He looked up and saw such sympathy in his eyes that he almost forgot his former dislike for the man.

"I'm terribly sorry," Gomez said. It wasn't the stiff sort of condolences that one might expect from a professional. It was more like how a friend might say it.

Joe only nodded.

By the time the officers returned with a blanket and a report that they had done everything Gomez had asked, all three Hardys were a little more composed, though still in shock. One of the officers covered Tony with the blanket, while Gomez escorted the Hardys back to where they had left their cars. They found the police cruiser parked behind Frank's rental. Gomez asked them questions, and they answered them as well as they could. When the ambulance arrived, he insisted that they all go to the hospital. The first impulse for both Frank and Joe was to try to argue, but it only took them both a few minutes to realize how terrible they felt.

At the hospital, Callie was quickly given a clean bill of health. She had a few scrapes and bruises from the ordeal, and the former were treated with antiseptic. After that, they asked her to stay in the waiting room since the emergency wing was busy and every room was needed.

It was terrible to sit in that waiting room, alone but in the midst of strangers. Callie was embarrassed to cry in front of them, but she kept thinking of Tony and she couldn't help it. Several people stared at her, some sympathetically and some just curiously. It was hard to say which was worse. It was very much like nightmares Callie had had, where she had been a crowd and somehow was a spectacle, but she just couldn't get away from everyone staring at her. She wished she could be anywhere else right now.

"Callie."

The sound of a familiar voice was next thing to heavenly. She looked up and saw Phil approaching her, a white, shocked looked on his face. Instantly, she ran to him and threw her arms around him.

"Phil! How did you know to come here?"

"Captain Gomez called me."

"Then he told you about…"

She didn't have to finish the question. For that matter, she hadn't had to ask it. She could tell from the look on his face that Phil had heard.

"Yeah. I…um…" Phil's voice became too husky to talk and he cleared his throat. "Where are Frank and Joe?"

"I don't know. They're still being looked at by the doctors, I guess. No one has told me anything. I've just been sitting here, thinking about how this is all like a bad dream and wishing it really was." Callie took in a shuddering breath. "Oh, Phil, I can't believe it."

"Me, neither." Phil guided her back to some empty chairs and they sat down. "Gomez didn't tell me the details of what happened."

Callie shook her head. "I can't. Not now. It's too awful."

Phil nodded to acquiesce. "I just…I took it for granted that…that everything would be okay. It always has before…"

"I know. I did, too. I mean, deep down, I did. On the surface, I admitted that it might not be, but I was mostly blaming Gomez for it. I thought that if he'd just let Frank and Joe handle it, then they'd take care of everything, Or at least one of them. But that's how it all backfired…and…and it's really…I think I'm going to be sick."

From the shade of green that Callie's face had turned, Phil thought that she was probably right.

"Is there a nurse around here?" he called to the room in general.

It took a few seconds, but a nurse came. She quickly understood the situation and hustled Callie away. Ordinarily, Callie would have rather died than have one of her friends—especially one of her male friends—see her be sick, but being alone was even more horrible, so she asked Phil to come, too. The nurse took them to a little lounge and gave Callie something to drink that helped settle the nausea.

"Are you feeling better?" Phil asked after a few minutes as her color returned to normal.

"I guess so," Callie replied despondently. She took a deep breath. "It just isn't fair. Why? Why would God let something like this happen?"

"I don't know," Phil said, speaking slowly. He had been wondering that same thing, but he had only come up with one solid thing to hold onto. "Maybe we'll understand later."

"That's not good enough," Callie insisted. "I need to understand now. Tony was a good person. He didn't deserve to…to die. Not like this."

"No, no, he didn't," Phil agreed. "But there has to be some reason."

"What reason could possibly be?"

Phil sighed, shaking his head. "I don't know." He cleared his throat several times as he felt it grow husky again. "Did…Did they catch Angelo?"

"I haven't heard. They were sending a big search party looking for him. I hope they found him. If he gets away, then I'll know there's no justice in the world."

HBHBHBHBHB

"You'll be all right, Frank," the doctor was saying as a nurse finished putting stitches in his arm. "There's no sign of infection, so as long as you keep the wound clean, it shouldn't give you any trouble. You are going to need to take it easy for a little while and there will be some lifting restrictions. The nurse will give you those instructions."

"That's good," Frank replied absently. "What about my wife? And my brother? Can I see them now?"

"I don't know about either of them," the doctor admitted. "I'll have to make some inquiries. If their doctors think it's all right, then it's all right with me."

As if she was summoned, the door opened and a nurse looked in. "Excuse me. Is there a Frank Hardy in here?"

"Yes. Why?" Frank replied.

The nurse gave him a kind smile. "I was helping Dr. Bailey examine your brother. The doctor's finished now, and Joe's been asking to see you. Very insistently, I might add. Dr. Bailey said it would be all right, for a little while."

Frank had already gotten up off the examination table. "Where is he?"

"I'll take you to him," the nurse said. "Dr. Bailey said you shouldn't stay for too long and you need to be careful not to upset Joe any more than he already is. He has a concussion and he needs rest. Dr. Bailey wants him to stay overnight for observation, but Joe doesn't seem too excited about that. The doctor's hoping you can help persuade him."

She showed Frank to the door of another examination room. Frank went inside and found Joe alone. He was lying on an examination table, staring up at the ceiling. As soon as he saw Frank, he started to sit up.

"Are you sure you should do that?" Frank asked.

"Probably not, but I don't care. I can't talk to you, lying on my back like that." Joe finished sitting up and took in a deep breath. "Frank," he started, but at the same time, Frank had said, "Joe." Both paused, and then Frank nodded for Joe to go ahead.

"Frank," Joe said again, "I don't know what to say. You were right. This is my fault, and I don't know how I'm going to live with it."

Frank shook his head. "No. I shouldn't have said that. This is my fault, several times over. I should have been willing to work with you to begin with, and then, there at the end, I could have stopped Angelo. I should have gotten that situation under control."

"I shouldn't have tried sneaking behind your and Gomez's backs," Joe insisted. "Like you said, we should have been working together. If I would have had back-up, none of this would have happened."

"But Gomez wouldn't have sent you back-up. The only back-up you could have had was me, and I wouldn't have cooperated. I would have blown it either way."

"Gomez was right not to trust me," Joe maintained. "And if I couldn't work with Gomez, you were right to work with him instead of me. He has the authority for one thing, and he doesn't have a bunch of hang-ups affecting his judgment like me." His voice shook. "I took Dad's gun with me. I had it. I could have stopped Angelo. If I just…"

"That's no different from me," Frank pointed out. "We could keep going on here forever. We both made mistakes. There's no point in arguing over whose were worse."

"Yes, let's stop arguing," Joe agreed. He closed his eyes. "I'm sorry about the way I've been acting the last year and more. Never calling, never visiting, never even explaining why I left. And before that…Well, you probably know what I mean."

"Not really." Frank sat down on the examination table next to him. "I'm sorry, too. I've been acting like an idiot this whole time."

"You were right, though," Joe replied. "Oh, I know we just agreed that we both made mistakes, but that doesn't change the fact that I personally made the mistakes that…that got…Tony…killed." The words nearly choked him, and he turned his face away.

"I made several, too," Frank said. He struggled to hold back tears, too.

"It doesn't seem fair that there aren't any second chances here," Joe said, his voice cracking with every other word as he struggled to get it all said. "There's nothing we can learn or do differently that's going to make any difference. Not to Tony. It's so…final."

Frank nodded. "If I could take back the last twenty-four hours…But it's no use wishing that. It can't happen. There is one thing we can do, though."

"What?"

"We can make sure Angelo doesn't get away with this."

Joe agreed and clasped his hand in a handshake.