Chapter 11: Can't Get There From Here

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Frank grimaced as Fenton ushered them to the car. He was all smiles now, but both he and Joe knew it would be hell later. He was about ready to cry. He hated lying to the police officer. He hated it. But he had to protect Joe.

"That was very good of you, Frank," Fenton said once they had watched Don loaded into the back of a patrol car and driven away. He smiled at Frank, but it wasn't a fatherly smile. Something about it made Frank's bones shiver.

Fenton started the engine of his own car and pulled out of the apartment complex's parking lot. A few minutes later, when he was sure no-one was following them, Fenton pulled over into a small convenience store. Since he had gotten Frank to lie about Alan's kid, he was confident he had the upper hand, again. As long as Frank was worried about Joe, he would do whatever his father demanded. Fenton wasn't concerned about any more mutinies – he had even let the boys sit together in the back seat. Joe was sniveling like the little wretch he was, and Frank was patting his brother absently on the knee. Just to be on the safe side, Fenton glared at them in the rear view mirror. "I'm going inside. If you move so much as a centimeter, or say anything to anyone, I swear to God I'll bash both your heads in."

Frank just nodded, his eyes locked on Fenton's in the rear view mirror. He was back to being mute again, thinking that if he had never talked, this never would have happened. Joe's crying kicked up a notch, and his stomach clenched in cold, hard fear. He was terrified of what was to come.

Fenton didn't know whether to be happy it was going so well, or disgusted at his spineless sons. He tried to make up his mind as he climbed out of the vehicle and went into the store. As soon as Fenton walked inside, Frank leaned a little closer to Joe, and clutched at his knee. "I want you to run," he whispered quietly.

Joe was so shocked he stopped crying. He turned wide eyes to Frank. "Run? Are you crazy? He'll kill you, and probably me, too!"

"I don't think he'll kill me," Frank said, remembering what he'd overheard at the compound, "and to be completely honest with you, even if he does…" Breaking off the thought, he took his hand off Joe's knee and dug around in the pocket of his jeans, pulling out all the cash he had. "Trust me," he pleaded, shoving it at Joe. "You've got to hurry. Stay low, don't go anywhere he would think to look, like the FBI building. Just get out of town, somehow, and run for your life!"

Joe shook his head and looked stubbornly away. "What about you?", he asked the window. "I won't leave without you, and I won't take your money. Where would I go, anyway? And what good would my life be, if you're not part of it?"

Frank swallowed hard and spoke thickly, shoving the money at Joe, again. "Please. You've got to go now. I'm going to distract Fenton. I'll find you somehow. I swear, Joe, I'll find you!" Before Joe could protest further, Frank dropped the few bills in his lap and scooted out of the door. Outside, he leaned to look in the window, and allowed Joe to see the tears in his eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment. Slowly, Joe's hand closed over the money, he broke the gaze, and opened his own door.

Frank waited until Joe was out of sight behind the store before he walked in. He spied his father and another man in a corner, and strode up to them boldly. "Did you really think you'd get away with this?", he demanded, and Fenton's head whipped around in surprise.

"What the hell, Frank! You disobeyed my orders!" His eyes strayed toward the front of the store and he began to look a little uneasy. "Where is Joseph?"

"It'll be a cold day in hell before I tell you that," Frank answered, trying to give Joe as much time as possible to get away. Fenton backhanded him viciously across the face.

A middle-aged woman standing near the cash register shouted and pointed a loaf of bread at him. "Hey! Keep your hands off that boy!" She fumbled in her purse for her cell phone. "I'm calling the police, you can't just abuse a child like that!"

Fenton reached behind his back and pulled a gun out of the waistband of his jeans. He leveled it at her with one hand while he propelled Frank toward the door with the other. When he was only a few feet away from the woman, Fenton squeezed the trigger. "Shut-up, bitch," he snarled, as she flew one way, and the bread flew the other. Blood splattered on Frank, and the woman dropped in a dead heap, a third eye appearing in her forehead. "Get the hell in the car," Fenton growled, stepping over her leg. "No-one tells me what to do. Not some nosy bitch in a grocery store, and certainly not you."

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Don glared at the glass door, not quite sure what to do. With his one phone call, he had called Colby, telling him to get all the evidence they had against Fenton down to LAPD as soon as possible. Then, he had demanded an attorney and refused to say another word to anyone. He was stalling for time. The detectives had tried anyway, and even brough out their sorry rendition of "Good Cop/Bad Cop", but they had finally left him stewing alone in an interrogation room,

Not exactly a stranger to such places, Don still found it a little disconcerting to be the one being interrogated. Suspected. Whatever. He was freaking handcuffed, for Pete's sake, and this was all kinds of insane.

Why did you lie, Frank? Don's mind screamed. He concentrated on maintaining his level of anger at the oldest Hardy brother. He tried to tell himself how unfair it was of Frank to lie about him after all the Eppes family had done for him and Joe. He rattled at the handcuffs and tried to use the pain to keep himself from understanding – but it didn't really work. In the end, he knew Frank had done it to protect Joe. He'd seen Fenton's threat with his own eyes. In his soul, he felt badly for the kid, and he knew why Frank had done it. Because if it ever came down to it, Don would do the same thing for Charlie.

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Jeff paced the basement. He was waiting for a call from Fenton, and Charlie was asleep., or passed out, or some damn thing. He sighed. He was bored and miserable, and worried that the whole thing was falling apart, and it was all Charlie's fault. Originally, Jeff thought he should grab Frank and Joe so it wouldn't look suspicious, but Fenton had insisted on going there himself. He wanted to know how many people Charlie and Frank had told their stories to, so they could be taken out before the big campaign began.

Jeff stood over Charlie, who was lying in a protective ball, cradling his broken arm. Grinning slightly, he raised his boot, took careful aim, and delivered a solid kick that dislodged the wounded limb from its relative safety and sent it hurtling toward Charlie's head. Charlie cried out and tried to scramble away before he was even awake, and it was a bonus when he hit himself in the head with his own broken arm.

Jeff laughed.. "Good morning," he said. Feel like talking, yet?"

Charlie whimpered, pushing with his feet to scoot himself further back against the wall. His eyes teared with pain as he again gingerly took hold of his injured arm with his good hand. He looked away from Jeff, refusing to acknowledge him.

This, of course, only served to make Jeff angrier.

He squatted in front of Charlie and grabbed a fistful of curly hair. He slammed Charlie's head against the bricks behind him for punctuation. "Tell," Slam. "Me." Slam. "Who." Slam. "The," Slam. "Hell." Slam. "Knows."

Just before he passed out again, Charlie had a flash of memory; of another, much-smaller head being slammed against this wall. His eyes widened in horror. "Oh, my God," he whispered. "You killed her. You killed Jessica."

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Fenton drove to the house in technicolor anger. When they had gotten outside the building, he had ordered Frank to lay down on the backseat. He didn't care if anyone saw them; he was planning on killing the worthless bitch anyway – once he had Joe. He wanted to find Joe and kill Joe in front of Frank, then suffocate and torture Frank so that he would die a painful death. He wanted them to suffer. He could easily pawn the killing off on one of his men.

Now that he had helped the little whelp escape, Frank didn't seem too lively, too concerned with escape. In fact, he was almost docile, dejected and silent in the back seat. Still, Fenton spent more time keeping an eye on him in the rear view mirror than he did watching the road. Little asshole already fooled him once.

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The nest time Charlie woke up, disturbed by his own moans, Frank was leaning against the basement wall next to him. Charlie blinked up at him, trying to sharpen his focus. Between the pounding of his head and the throbbing in his arm, though, he knew he wasn't going anywhere. He didn't even try to sit up. "Fr-Frank?", he rasped, quietly. "Where's Joe?" He had a sudden thought and it was enough to make him lift his head, slightly. His voice shook when he spoke again. "Don? Oh, God, what did they do do Don?

Frank's duct-taped hands were wrapped around his knees. He wished he could help Charlie. He wished none of this had ever happened, to any of them. He swallowed, miserable. "Joe got away. I don't know where he is. Fenton…Fenton had Don arrested." He looked away from Charlie, ashamed.

Charlie moved a little more beside him, hissing as he pushed himself up into a sitting position against the wall. "What? How? For what?"

Frank's stomach clenched in fear, and he still wouldn't look at Charlie. "I had to do it. He was going to kill Joe. He showed up at Don's apartment with a cop, and said th at Don had kidnapped us. I knew if I didn't back up his story, he'd get to Joe somehow, and kill him." He snuck a look at Charlie, who now sat pale and open-mouthed beside him. "I had to," he whispered, tears threatening the back of his eyes. "I had to. For Joe."

Charlie, who had only been sitting up a few seconds, began to slump in the other direction, away from Frank. "How could you?", he mumbled, falling awkwardly onto his broken arm and stifling a cry. "Oh, Frank…how could you…" Charlie curled up into his ball again, his shoulders shaking, and Frank could hear the sobs tear from his throat.

Tears streamed down his own face as he looked toward the stairs, again.

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Two hours later

Colby stormed down the sidewalk toward the front entrance of LAPD, livid. Oswald, Megan and David were barely keeping up with him. He shifted some file folders in his hand. "I just can't believe that kid lied," he repeated. "All the Eppes have done for him, and us letting him hang out at the office all week…dammit, Oswald, I thought you were a better judge of character than this! Frank Hardy is nothing but a sniveling little sunuvabitch who…"

Before Oswald could defend himself, a blond teenage boy exploded out of the shrubbery alongside the walk and threw himself at Colby, knocking files all over the cement. "Frank is not a son of a bitch," he screamed, pummeling at the huge agent's chest with his fists. "My mother IS NOT A BITCH! You take that back!"

Megan reached a hand toward her service weapon while David pulled the kid off of Colby. "Who are you?", she demanded, fingers itching.

Oswald took a step forward, afraid that he was about to see some teenager's brains spread all over the sidewalk. "Joe? Are you Joe? Frank's brother?" Oswald wasn't sure, but this could be the kid in the picture Frank had showed him the other day from his wallet, when he had finally started spilling everything.

Megan glanced at him sharply and David relaxed his hold a little. The blond nodded quickly, and a tone of begging entered his voice as he looked at Colby. "You don't understand," he explained. "You don't get it. Frank had to lie," he said, "I'll bet if he hadn't have said what my Dad wanted, Don would be dead, now! Not to mention Frank, and me…maybe even the cop!"

Colby exchanged a look with David, then bent to scoop the files off the sidewalk. "Come on," he finally said lowly when he straightened up again. His eyes were roving the area around the building. "Let's get inside, where it's safer. Then you're gonna talk."

END Chapter 11