I'm finally getting to grips with and have worked out how to put up little messages! So before you get started on the latest chapter, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been reading Pandora and to those who have left such lovely reviews. I also wanted to take the opportunity to assure all you Joe fans that he won't be sidelined from this story in preference to a Frank and Nancy love-fest (that will never happen with my stories). You'll find that all the main characters in my stories are given plenty of growth room – even the secondary characters. Hope you enjoy the rest of the story. :-)

Dawn FD x

Chapter 13

Frank awoke that morning feeling a hundred times more positive then he had the previous two days and then he remembered why and grinned slowly at the memory of he and Nancy kissing the previous night. His heart lurched a little, a feeling that had been alien to him since Callie left.

He raised himself and started the shower running and then returned to the room and started to sort out some clothes. As he opened his backpack, his cell phone started to beep, indicating that he had a text message. Surprised, he paused in his search for clothes and instead went to the side pocket and unzipped it to pull the handset free.

Accessing the screen, he saw that it was a message from Joe. Without thinking his thumb automatically went for the green button but then he remembered that Nancy had told him – Joe's phone had been taken from him by the gang when they kidnapped him. He threw it down on the bed as though it was constructed of razor blades.

Shaking his head, he backed up, stepped out in the hallway and went to the next room to tap on Nancy's door. There was a short wait before Nancy answered, her eyes still full of sleep. "Hello," she said and smiled.

"I got a problem," Frank said.

Her face dropped. "About last night…?" she asked.

"Oh! No, no, never ever think that!" he said hurriedly, taking her shoulders.

"Well, what then?" Nancy asked, confused.

"I got a message from Joe's cell phone."

Nancy looked surprised and pushed past him to enter his room. She found the handset on the bed and looked at the screen herself. "Are you going to read it?" she asked.

Frank was leaning up against the doorframe. "I think I should, but not here. If I access my phone, it could draw whoever sent that straight here."

"Why don't we drive out after breakfast and read it somewhere away from here. Then afterwards, we can simply drive away."

"Sounds like a plan to me."

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­As planned, following their breakfast, Frank and Nancy excused themselves to Mrs Holliday and left the house. Frank wore a cap and wrapped a scarf around his lower face until all that was really showing was his eyes.

Climbing into the car, they drove a good few miles away from Bayport and pulled into a lay-by.

"Okay, let's see what I've been sent," Frank said, finally able to hit the green button.

Nancy leaned closer so she could also see and they both glanced at one another in surprise as it became clear that it was a video he'd been sent. Frank unwrapped the scarf from his face, discarded it, and hit play.

Whoever took the film didn't have a very steady hand and the beginning of the video just consisted of blurring as the cameraperson made a ham-fisted attempt at trying to hone in on whatever was to be filmed. Eventually the lens settled and the picture stopped roving and focused on a doorway. There was no sound to the film.

"Recognise it?" Nancy asked.

Frank swallowed and nodded, a sense of dread rising up inside. "Yeah, it's where we work, it's our office block."

Nancy placed a hand on his leg.

Presently, they saw the silhouette of someone through the window of the door who was obviously heading for the entranceway to leave. Suddenly, the shape of a gun was introduced in the foreground of the shot just to the side of the cameraperson. The mysterious figure opened the door and stepped outside and the gun kicked – obviously, it had been fired.

"It's Dad!" Frank said, his hand gripping the phone harder.

"Oh my lord!"

Fenton was seen to pause for a few seconds, his hand reaching up to his shoulder and then to his face. And then he turned and looked almost straight at the camera.

"Do you think Dad got hit? I think he got hit!" Frank stammered, his face horrified. He sat up straighter in his seat.

The gun hand jerked again a couple of times and Fenton was seen to duck down defensively and dive headfirst into the building's hallway, the door slamming after him. Now a silhouette once more, he stood up and moved quickly away. The pistol again bucked and the window shattered. Fenton dropped.

"NO!" Frank screamed out shrilly. He dropped the phone, scrambled for the door handle, and nearly fell out of the car. Catching himself, he staggered into the snow and sank down to his knees to lean on his hands.

In the meantime, Nancy had snatched up the cell phone and rewound the image slightly to watch it right to the end. She then exited on her side and ran around the car to where Frank was down on the ground.

"Frank…" she said and dipped down in front of him. "…Frank, watch the rest of it – he got away, sweetie, he got away!"

Frank looked up and Nancy turned the phone so he could again watch it. This time, instead of turning away as his father fell, he forced himself to view it until he saw Fenton pick himself up and run madly up the passageway and out of sight. Then the screen went blank.

"What's at the end of that corridor?" Nancy asked.

"The back door. Dad must have gone out through the back door." Frank took a deep breath, his head dropping again. "I feel sick," he muttered.

"I'm not surprised." Nancy said and shuffled forward so she could take him into her arms and give him a comforting hug. "Come on," she said presently, raising herself and in so doing, Frank as well. "Let's get back into the car, your hands are freezing. Haven't you got any gloves?"

"No, I didn't have time to grab some from Joe's when I got the other supplies."

They sat back down in the car and Frank went back to the video. "There's something else with it," he told Nancy. "A text message."

"What does it say?"

"Hang on…" he clicked and accessed it, "…basically it's saying that they'll keep on making moves on Dad and Joe until I give myself up. They've given me a number to contact them on…"

"You're not doing that!" Nancy said derisively.

"What choice do I have?"

"More than just that one! You're being reactionary and playing straight into their hands. They know that your family is the most important thing to you and they're using it as a weakness to get at you." Nancy turned toward Frank and held both his hands. "Instead, do the complete opposite – warn Joe and your Dad to keep themselves, your mom and Gertrude safe. You know how brilliant they are, they'll do whatever it takes to look after themselves until you can sort things out."

Frank's face was looking at her and listening, but it was unreadable and stony, impossible to read, so Nancy carried on verbally pushing:

"What do you think those men will do to you if you give yourself up to them? They'll get the key and then they'll kill you! How do you think that would make Joe and Fenton feel once they found out why you gave yourself up? They'll want you to fight, Frank, not roll over and die!"

Frank's face finally moved and he looked at the phone again and started juggling it in his palm, weighing up his options. "You're right," he finally agreed quietly. "I should stick to my original plan of finding the code and destroying the programme. They won't be interested in me or my family once I've done that."

"Exactly. If those guys really are professionals, they won't carry on their vendetta afterwards, it just wouldn't be worth anything financially or politically to them."

Frank pulled on his nose, thinking hard. Eventually he turned to Nancy. "Okay, this is what we do. We drive…like now because we've been sitting here too long…"

"Crumbs – yeah!" Nancy spluttered, and immediately started the car and pulled away.

"…we go the next town and find an Internet Café. I'm going to send a message to Vanessa for Dad and Joe. Chances are, no one will be monitoring Vanessa's account so we should be okay."

Nancy took her eyes off the road for a second and smiled at Frank. "Now there's my old Frank. I knew you were in there somewhere!"

Nancy pulled around to the back of the hotel again some two hours later. They had driven to the next town and had a drink while Frank had sent his message with Nancy keeping watch. There was plenty of foot traffic that day, but no one had taken any real interest in them, or what they'd been doing.

Mrs Holliday met them at the back steps and let them back into the house. "Would you both like a hot drink," she asked.

"Yes please!" Frank responded, rubbing his hands together and breathing on them to try and warm them up.

Mrs Holliday turned to leave just as the telephone started to ring. "I wonder who that could be," she muttered and headed for the kitchen.

Frank and Nancy went into the front room and took their usual seats by the fire. They could hear her talking on the phone, but the words were very muffled and they couldn't make out what was being said. Presently she returned.

"Well, my dears, it would appear the cat may have escaped from the bag!"

"Why?" Nancy asked.

"That was a Lieutenant Riley on the phone asking if I had a guests staying by the name of Nancy Drew or Frank Hardy and gave very good descriptions of you both."

Nancy and Frank stared back at her, aghast.

"Uh-oh," said Frank, if that was the Lieutenant Riley I think it is, then the cat is not only out of the bag, it's run up a tree and is waving a banner which says 'Frank and Nancy are holed up together'."

"You didn't tell him anything, did you Mrs Holliday?" Nancy asked.

Mrs Holliday tapped the side of her nose. "Of course I didn't, my dear. As if I'd tell nosey parker Lieutenant Riley anything! I told him I was closed for business and had no guests at the moment."

"Thanks Mrs Holliday." Frank said, smiling gratefully.

"My pleasure, young man," she said. "Right, back to making you those drinks, you must be spitting feathers…" and she left again.

"Bang goes me being able to use my cell phone." Nancy remarked. "I wonder how Con found out so quickly? Oh well, nothing we can do about it now. What's on the agenda for the rest of the day?"

"Keeping our heads down, by the looks of it!" Frank answered. "But other than that, I would like to research Professor Hope to see if we can get a handle on that code."

Mrs Holliday carried two steaming cups into the room and passed them out.

Frank turned to her. "I don't suppose you've got a computer with Internet access have you, by any chance?" he asked, taking a huge gulp of his hot drink.

"Actually," she said proudly. "I've got a PC you can use that's got a wireless hook-up. It's got 3 gigahertz of Extreme Quad Core power and 2.5 gigabytes of Dominator memory with HTT Hyper Threading Technology."

Frank immediately coughed up his mouthful of coffee and started choking. Mrs Holliday caught the cup to stop it being spilled and Nancy hurriedly left her seat to bang him between the shoulder blades.