Chapter 32
Con pulled into the parking spot around the back of the hospital grounds, hoping that he'd understood Nancy's directions and that he was waiting in the right area. He was immediately satisfied to see Officer Anderson, Nancy and Vanessa all emerge from the shadows of the little knot of trees across from Joe's hospital bedroom window. They helped each other to climb quickly over the railings.
Nancy and Anderson got into the back while Vanessa sat up in front to direct Con to her mother's house.
Con leaned back in his seat to talk to Nancy and Vanessa caught site of the powder scorch mark and hole in his jacket. "What's that?" she asked, pointing to it.
"Had a little disagreement with one of Frank's bad-guys and he shot me," Con answered, matter of factly.
Vanessa gasped, appalled, but couldn't stop her natural curiosity from making her lean in to take a closer look and put her finger to the gap. "He got you right in the chest – why aren't you dead?"
"No big deal." He assured her and slid the zipper down on his jacket to show her what he was wearing beneath his clothes. "A cop's best friend, his bullet proof vest" he said, tapping it with his fist.
"The bullet's still trapped in it!" Vanessa exclaimed, picking at it with her nail.
"I know…pretty cool, huh? Wait until tomorrow, I'll have one hell of a bruise to show you!"
Nancy laughed at that. "You sound like you're proud of it, Con. You nearly got yourself killed out there – it was luck alone that the guy didn't shoot you in the head instead!"
"Having the time of my life." Con admitted, one side of his mouth lifting. "Beats wiping new recruit's behinds, that's for sure…sorry Anderson, no offence."
"None taken."
"What did you do with Rodden?" Con asked, looking back at Nancy and changing the subject.
"Handcuffed him to the bed and gagged him good with Joe's robe tie. He won't be able to contact the Network for a bit, unless he's an escapologist! I still think we should get to Vanessa's place as quickly as possible though – siren and lights, Con?"
"You betcha. Hold onto your hats, friends." Con said. He put his foot to the floor and shot forward, pressing everyone back in the seats. "Is there anyone on my squad that isn't corrupt or working for someone else?" he asked, his voice rising about the sound of the siren.
"Me, Lieutenant." Anderson said and raised his hand.
"Good for you, lad," Con replied, laughing softly.
"Take a right here…" Vanessa said, starting to give him directions. "What happened at the hospital with Joe and Frank?"
"Joe was comfortable and being prepped for surgery again, and Frank…well, there was no change there, but Fenton seemed pretty positive after he'd talked with the specialist." Con glanced across at Vanessa and then in the rear view mirror at Nancy, but they were both staring stoically ahead, concentrating hard. "Nancy, what's with this memory stick, why don't you just stamp on the thing?"
"Because Frank wants the actual Pandora programme destroyed. He's concerned that someone might mess about with it and set something off by mistake. He feels that if anything of Pandora is left, then someone at some point will do something with it for his or her own ends. I'm inclined to agree with him."
"Me too," Vanessa said. "Go two blocks and then take a left and then a sharp right, Con."
Nancy continued: "And, to be fair to Frank, after all the trouble, planning, double-dealing and out-manoeuvring, he deserves to have this seen through to the end as he wants it to be done – especially as he was prepared to jump out of tree with a noose around his neck for me..."
"…He was what?" Vanessa asked, twisting in her seat to stare at Nancy in wonderment.
"He did it so that they'd let me go. You should have seen him, Vanessa, it was the most romantic thing. He was magnificent!"
"Women…!" Anderson groaned.
"Get down, out of sight!" Con suddenly shouted, spotting something ahead of them and pushing Vanessa's head down.
All, except for Con ducked. "What is it?" Vanessa asked.
"There's a whole entourage of black cars making their way towards the hospital. It might be nothing, but they could be your Network friends. They look pretty conspicuous." As he shot by them, Con put his hand up against the side of his face so no one could get a glimpse of him, even if they tried. "You can come back up now," he said and they all arose as one. He took the left turn that Vanessa had directed him to and then the sharp right.
"My house is just up here, the one with the blue mail box."
"It won't take them much time to work out where we've gone," Nancy said. "They'll know Vanessa's was at the hospital, and Gray knows enough of her history to work out she's likely to have a powerful computer, so it won't take a huge leap to put two-and-two together. And of course, Rodden can tell them as well, once they find him."
"Let's get a move on then!" Con said and pulled up the driveway and stopped in front of the house.
They all jumped from the car and grouped around the door as Vanessa quickly opened up to allow them all to enter. "Mom?" she called.
Andrea, Vanessa's mother came out from the kitchen and peered at them. "Hi honey – oh!" she started in surprise at the sight of Officer Anderson and then Con, her eyes dropping to the hole in his jacket. "Is everything all right?"
"Sorry mom, but we'll have to explain later," Vanessa said. "All I've got time to say is that we've got something important to do on my PC, and things could get a bit hairy! Mom, you have to trust me – this is Lieutenant Riley," she said, indicating to Con, who pulled out his badge and showed it to her.
"What do you mean, 'hairy'?" Andrea asked, clearly even more startled now than she was when she'd first set eyes on the tall Con Riley and the handsome young officer accompanying her daughter and friend.
Suddenly there was a knock at the front door, and a loud one at that. "Open up, this is police business!" someone shouted on the other side. They all looked towards the door as one.
"Damn! They were fast!" Nancy said, backing away.
Andrea started to automatically head for the door to answer it. "No, don't do that, it's not the police!" Con said, pulling her up short by the upper arm. "Vanessa, show Nancy to your computer."
"Upstairs," Vanessa said, grabbing Nancy's hand and starting to run up.
The banging on the door was growing ever more insistent and violent. Whoever was on the other side was endeavouring to break it off its hinges.
Con turned Andrea towards the stairs, and she automatically started up after her daughter. He then turned to Anderson, "Use your weapon, lad – hold them off for as long as you can, I'll do the same up here. Just don't kill anyone!" he said and started up; taking the stairs two at a time until he'd caught up with the other three.
He heard the door starting to splinter and Anderson shouting for whoever it was to cease what they were doing.
Nancy and Vanessa entered a room; Con grabbed hold of Andrea again before she could follow them and pulled her along the corridor opening doors until he found the room his was seeking and pushed her inside. Keeping hold of her with one hand, he tapped the bathtub and found it was made of iron. "Get in," he ordered her.
"I beg your pardon?" Andrea asked.
"Things are about to get intense, so get into the bathtub and lie down. If anyone starts shooting, at least then you won't get hurt."
"Shooting? There might be shooting? What about my daughter – what about my house?!" she asked, trying to push past him.
He dipped, pulled her close and lifted her off her feet. "Sorry 'Vanessa's mom', but you have to do what I tell you to do." He plonked her unceremoniously into the tub. "I've got Vanessa covered, but the longer I'm in here with you, the longer she and Nancy are on their own, so stay low," he ordered and shoved her down. "You'll just have to trust me and your daughter."
She was so shocked at being man-handled that she just gaped at him as he left the room, taking the key from the inside of the door and then locking up after himself. "Dang, she's attractive!" he randomly thought as he ran back down the corridor and drew his gun out to stand at the top of the stairs and aim it downwards. He could hear that Anderson was already losing the fight; shots starting to be fired. Then there were noises akin to struggling and shouted protests, and then darkly dressed figures were running about the ground floor.
Immediately upon opening her bedroom door, Vanessa went for her computer and Nancy glanced back to see Con pulling Andrea away from the doorway and disappearing out of sight with her. She then watched as Vanessa turned the power on to her PC. "Quick Van, I think I can hear the front door caving in."
"I can only go as quickly as my computer lets me," Vanessa protested and started entering her password and user code.
Con appeared in the doorway again. "They're in the house," he reported, holding his gun high. "I'll hold them off for as long as I can, but you girls need to move it!"
"Is my mom safe?" Vanessa asked, now logging onto the Internet.
"Yes," Con said and sprinted off down the hallway again.
"I'm in Nancy, do your thing…" Vanessa said and stood away to allow Nancy access to her PC.
Nancy had readied herself with the memory stick and was pushing it immediately into the USB port on the front of Vanessa's tower system when all hell broke loose. Footsteps were heard thundering up the stairs and along the corridor, and Con was heard shouting aggressively at the top of his lungs, and then a couple of shots were fired. She turned in time to witness him tumbling into the doorway with three men on top of him.
Con had lost his gun as it was no longer in his hand, but he still managed to shake one attacker loose and punch another before a further body was joining in the fray to try to pin him down, but finding it a real struggle. A fifth man started to make headway into the room to confront the girls, but Con managed to hook his ankle and trip him, sending him sprawling onto the carpet at Vanessa's feet. The old adage of 'going down fighting' was the perfect description for what was happening to Lieutenant Con Riley.
Nancy turned back to the computer and saw Vanessa move to her bedside table, pull a drawer open and grab for a small black spray can. She turned it on the fifth man who was now getting to his feet and let fly with a direct hit to his face. He staggered back, hissing and clutching his eyes. "Pepper spray," Vanessa shouted to Nancy. "Thank heavens for Joe's paranoia in insisting I keep a canister. Come on Nancy, just this once, us sidekicks are going to have to save the day!"
Nancy was trying to ignore what was going on behind her now and concentrate fully on the job at hand. She heard someone shout: "Stop her!" but didn't know whether the instruction was aimed at her, or at Vanessa, who was proving to be a pretty good shot and was now standing at her back, shielding her.
The memory stick connected automatically with Pandora, which was a bonus as Nancy had assumed she would have to locate a copy of the game first. Pandora walked into view and set her box down and tiles were flying out and settling on the screen. She pointed at the empty text boxes and wordlessly invited Nancy to enter the 16-digit code into the four spaces provided. Nancy began to do so: 5336-4910-68…
"Dammit! I ran out of pepper spray!" Vanessa yelled as a warning. She was grabbed and pulled away, but Nancy could hear she was fighting and screaming and not allowing herself to be removed easily…and her choice of language! Nancy was pretty confident Joe had never heard his girlfriend use those particular phrases before!
Nancy carried on unabated entering the digits: …43-1810 and she hit 'enter' and was confronted with a choice of instructions, exactly as Frank said she would - 'continue', 'abort', or 'self-destruct'. She clicked on 'self-destruct' with the mouse and her hand went straight for the 'enter' button, but it didn't get that far because her wrist was immediately seized and restrained and an arm was about her middle, pinning her left arm and lifting her into the air.
"Oh no you don't!" someone said into her ear.
"No!" she shouted out disappointed and swung her heel back hard and connected it audibly against the shin of whoever was holding her. He yelped and staggered a little so her feet were back on the ground and her right hand was free again, but he still had her tight around her middle. She brought her hand up and went for his eyes.
"Regular fire-cracker aren't you?" he said, catching onto her flailing arm.
"Isn't she just?" said another male voice.
Nancy felt a jolt and suddenly felt herself tipping backwards as the arm was ripped from her waist, and then she was rocked forward again and steadied by a strong hand. She didn't quite know what had happened and really didn't care, she'd been set free and that was all that mattered – she reached out and hit 'return'.
Pandora, who had apparently been observing the fight through Vanessa's PC screen the entire time, was now looking at Nancy in disappointment. But at least she gave a little wave, and a wink before the screen went blank and the computer crashed. Nancy almost felt sorry for her…almost!
Everything was eerily silent now in the room. Everyone had frozen in what they were doing and Nancy could sense them looking at her as she calmly retrieved the now useless other half of the programme from the USB port and dropped it down to the ground.
"Do it, girl!" Con goaded.
So Nancy put her heel to it and ground her entire weight down, hearing a crunching sound. When she lifted up, the stick was crushed, but she still wasn't satisfied enough so started stamping. "In your face, Arthur Gray!" Nancy cried, and carried on battering until the stick was smashed to smithereens and unrecognisable.
She finally turned triumphantly to see what had happened to her new friends and to see if they needed her help, but the fight was over and she was surprised to find Fenton there, pinning a man up against the wall. "Where did you come from?" she asked.
"Through the front door, and just in the nick of time by the looks of things." Fenton stepped back and turned the Network agent around by the scruff of the neck. "Skedaddle!" he said and shoving him unceremoniously in the direction of the doorway, sending him skittering backwards.
Anderson appeared, out of breath, and started pulling bodies off Con who was already extricating himself and muttering angry, dark threats to each man in turn. Agents were slowly slipping away and leaving the house, realising that there was no point in them being there any longer, helping colleagues who'd either been pepper-sprayed, or injured by some other means. Whoever had been holding Vanessa must have let her go as well because she was suddenly standing at Nancy's side and giving her an excited hug.
"You okay, Con?" Fenton asked, offering his friend a hand up.
"Yeah, they never actually did me any damage, just held me down. I did more hurt to them." He accepted Fenton's hand and started dusting himself down. "Anderson, go downstairs and make sure the house is empty of darkly dressed, uninvited men. If there's any still about, feel free to kick them up in the air!"
"Yes sir!" Anderson said, gleefully.
"They were probably under orders not to injure any of us," Nancy said. "The Network is a government agency, not a terrorist one, so their primary aim would have been to simply get the memory stick away from me."
"How did you get here?" Con asked Fenton. "Your ride was left at the school, wasn't it?"
"I borrowed Dr Cox's car. I promised I'd put a good word in with Frank and Joe about her doing some sort of study…long story." He turned to Nancy. "Is it really destroyed?"
"Yes, it's finished."
"Does that mean those thugs won't be coming after Frank and us any more?"
"That's what Frank said. He didn't think it'll be worth anything to them financially or politically to come after him if there's nothing left of Pandora. Look at the way the Network just disappeared into the ether as soon as she was killed."
"Before we start celebrating and assuming too much, just let me confirm the game's really dead," Vanessa said and went back to her computer to see if she could still find Pandora.
They all gathered around the screen and watched as Vanessa rebooted and logged onto the net. A lot of the gaming sites she went to were down, all experiencing server problems – except for the ones that didn't have the Pandora game. She then moved to see if the version of the game she'd downloaded to do experiments on was still on her PC's desktop – there was an icon, but when she double clicked, nothing happened. Finally, just to be doubly sure, she went to a message board she frequented and found several new messages from people complaining that their computers had just crashed for no good reason and were still crashing, just like her own had done.
"It really has gone." Vanessa finally confirmed. "You did it, Nancy."
"No, we did it," Nancy corrected.
Fenton stared at the at the icon on the screen, and then all the pent up energy he'd been storing suddenly zapped from his body leaving him feeling physically exhausted.
"You okay, buddy?" Con asked him, putting his hand on Fenton's elbow. "You've gone a strange color."
Vanessa jumped up to give him her chair and he sank down into it. "Yeah, I'm okay, just relieved…really relieved, and tired. It's been a severe week."
"What now?" Vanessa asked.
"I'm going back to the hospital to sort my boys out and make sure they get back on their feet," Fenton said. "Do some damage limitation before Laura gets home. I don't want her to have to see them at their worst if I can help it."
Nancy glanced at Vanessa. "We're coming with you," they decided as one.
Con said, "In that case, I'll stay here with Anderson and make sure the house is secure. Fenton, I need to have a chat with you about something, but it can wait for a while. Go and sort your kids out first, and..."
He was interrupted by a disembodied voice calling from some distance away. "Can I be let out of here now?"
"Oops, I forgot about Vanessa's mom!" Con said guiltily.
Vanessa looked up at him and made a silent 'O' of horror with her mouth.
"Stop calling me 'Vanessa's Mom', my name's Andrea – now unlock the door you big oaf so I can see the damage that's been inflicted on my home!" Andrea shouted, obviously having overheard him.
"Uh-oh, you're in trouble!" Vanessa whispered to him, pointed to her head and dropped her voice even more. "Ears like a hawk!"
Con grinned and left.
Fenton's phone started to ring in his pocket. He quickly answered it, assuming it would be the hospital, it wasn't. "Fenton Hardy speaking…Oh, hello Sam!…What?…Slow down, Samuel you're not making much sense…Who?" He lowered the phone and looked at Nancy. "Do you know a Mrs Holliday?" he asked.