A/N: Sorry for the wait on the update! It occurred to me that I haven't expressed my immense appreciation for all those reading, so although this won't cover everyone (in other words, sorry if I missed you!), a huge thank you to the following: j, max2013, Shani8, Book girl fan, purpledramagirl17, TheCleverEye, Sally01, Tiger lover, Kitten15, ACertainIdioticScientist, Rheadyn, Fandomsunite98, VerityD, and everyone else that has been reading. Reviews are the best incentive to update (and I am in shock that there are over 100), so thanks! :)
Nancy woke up in Frank's bedroom and almost had a heart attack. Even as her body reacted, moving before her mind could process what she was actually seeing, she was out of the bed and forcing Frank onto the floor with his arm twisted behind his back.
"I submit, I submit!" Frank said breathlessly, a small laugh escaping from him. "I guess I should have expected that before trying to take Nancy Drew by surprise."
Upon realizing her mistake, Nancy dropped his arm immediately and apologized furiously. Frank laughed and reassured her, but it didn't stop her face from turning bright red in the dark bedroom. It had just been a reflex, pure and simple - you see a dark figure standing over your bed, assume hostility and engage combat. Obvious. Except in this case, pretty embarrassing, too, and her sleep addled mind hadn't really helped matters.
"Like I said, that was totally my fault. Don't worry about it." Frank smiled kindly, massaging the soreness in his shoulder and stretching out his arm to work out the tenseness from the awkward position it had been forced into. He stepped back to flick on the light switch, illuminating the quiet room. "I know it's still the middle of the night, but I woke up and realized the storm is gone."
Nancy blinked, not really following where he was going with this and still trying to adjust to the sudden light in the room. "So, you woke me up because...?"
He smiled, then, an enthusiastic grin that accompanied a sparkle in his eyes. "There's something I want to show you."
Without waiting for her response, he headed out into the hall and down the stairs, calling behind him, "Grab something warm from my closet first!"
Slightly bemused, Nancy did as instructed and took out a navy sweatshirt, pulling it over her messy titian hair and grabbed a pair of woolen socks for good measure. She hopped out of the room as she pulled them on, and when she made it to the entrance hall she was met with an almost bouncy Frank.
"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" she asked, smiling. It was cute seeing him so excited, and his bed hair and rumpled appearance just added to the look. He had her coat waiting for her, and held it out for her to put her arms into. After grabbing hat, gloves, scarves, and boots, Nancy let Frank lead her out of the cabin with a hand over her eyes, shivering from the moment she stepped out the door.
Under normal circumstances, losing her sense of sight would be rather alarming for Nancy. But Frank was an exception.
"This is going to be awkward to manage with your eyes closed, but I'm going to lift you up, okay?" Frank warned her after leading her only a few steps away from the front door. Nancy kept her eyes dutifully shut, and gasped as she felt her feet lift the ground, Frank's strong arms encircling her momentarily before he set her down on something.
She heard rather than saw Frank jump up onto... well, whatever it was she was sitting on, before feeling him settle down on the snow beside her. She had a vague feeling they were off the ground by a fair amount, and when Frank finally let her open her eyes she found herself perched on the layers of snow piled against the shed roof.
The storm had blown all the snow onto here, it seemed - but Nancy wasn't altogether too concerned with that. Instead, she had finally realized why Frank had woken her up and what had made him so excited and she forgot all about being cold.
The gray clouds that had covered the sky had blown away with the storm, and in its place was the twinkling of thousands of small stars, shining in the sky like diamonds. A crescent moon hung above, glowing in the sky with a sort of magic. The moonlight reflected off the snow all around them in a new and dazzling way, casting the ground into silver.
Even the forest surrounding the cabin was eerily strange and different. The towering trees were black and cast striking shadows around them, contrasting the white snow completely. And yet, it too was equally beautiful.
Nancy was speechless. Even if she could find words to describe everything she was seeing and feeling, she almost didn't dare utter them for fear of breaking the silence of the night. The familiar bird calls were gone; there was no rustling in the undergrowth, and the entire area seemed like it had been abandoned where it was. Even the snow, which lay unbroken as far off as she could see after the storm, contributed to this effect.
For the first time since opening her eyes, she turned to look at Frank and found him watching her silently with bated breath. A grin broke across her face and she flung her arms around his neck, whispering a quiet thank you in his ear.
Frank smiled too, pleased at her reaction as she sat back again to stare at the stars once more. "I thought you might like this. When I was little, Joe and I always liked sneaking out when we could to find the stars and we would just lie on the ground and watch them, not talking."
"I can see why," Nancy said, taking his hand and holding it in her lap. "It's beautiful."
"Not as much as you," Frank teased, acknowledging the total cliché of the moment but meaning it anyway.
Nancy blushed, but still called him out on it. "You realize that line has been said in probably every romance movie or book ever made, right?"
Frank shrugged. "Doesn't make it any less true." He paused, then, hesitated for a fraction of a moment before continuing on. "There's actually something that I wanted to tell you..."
Nancy waited as he trailed off into silence, then prompted him to continue after a beat had passed and then another and he still had not spoken.
He took a deep breath, steeling his resolve and already feeling the blush forming on his cheeks, then turned to face Nancy fully and stared into her deep blue eyes. "What I wanted to say, is that... I love you, Nancy."
Nancy's eyes widened at those three little words, and she could feel her heart stop, then leap into double time to make up for the missed beat. Realizing he was waiting for her to respond, a small part of her mind noting how adorable he could be when he was nervous, she began babbling in a flustered state.
"Me, too. I mean, not me too, like, I don't love myself, I mean anymore than people normally do or should, but I mean that I wanted to say-"
Frank closed the distance between them and cut her off with a kiss, soft and gentle and completely different from the ones filled with passion they had shared earlier that night.
He leaned back and smiled at her still red face. "I'll take that to mean you feel the same way?" he asked hopefully.
Nancy nodded vigorously, meeting his eyes for just a moment before looking back at their intertwined hands. "Of course I do, idiot," she muttered.
They sat on the roof together, holding hands in silence, until the warmth of the cabin beckoned them from the cold and snowy night. Frank slid off first, landing on the ground easily from such a small distance. He offered a hand to Nancy and helped her down as well, and then they retraced their footsteps to the front door and entered, casting one last glance to the beauty of the starry sky.
After she had hung up her coat and put away her outer wear, Nancy turned to Frank, who was still taking off his boots in the hall.
"Thank you," she said, trying to pour as much meaning as she could into the words. Not for waking her up, or for helping her to the roof and back off, obviously. Not just for showing her something she may never have seen on her own, either, and not for being brave enough to express his feelings so bluntly. But ultimately, just for wanting to share this experience with her, for wanting a moment with her that was theirs, and theirs alone, for no other reason than simply because he loved her.
The thought gave her small tingles that ran up her back. He loved her. All at once she was grinning and she found it rather hard to stop.
"What are you smiling about?" Frank teased, ruffling her hair playfully.
She didn't answer, but rose to her tiptoes to give him a light kiss on the cheek. "Next time I wake up, the sun better be shining through the window, Hardy."
Frank watched her head upstairs, bringing a hand to the place she'd kissed him. He grinned to himself. After so many interrupted moments and last minute issues, he was glad that they had finally managed to have some time together, even if it was just 10 minutes in the freezing cold, to be with each other and nothing more. He took a moment to line up their boots neatly and put away their gloves, then yawned and decided that it really was time to get back to bed. Once morning came, both he and Nancy would have to be at the top of their game to catch the criminals running around the resort.
AaA
Bess woke up to the rather unpleasant sensation of drool on her shoulder, accompanied by a snoring that couldn't belong to anyone else but Joe Hardy. She grumpily pushed his head off her shoulder, using a sleeve-covered hand to wipe off his spit from her sweater, then took a deep breath and shouted, "Wake up!" only inches away from his face.
He jolted up like a startled rabbit, almost falling off the bed in the process. His face morphed from shock to desperation and he only managed to catch himself (rather comically) at the last second by gripping the comforter underneath him. Bess couldn't help it. She started giggling at his confused expression, and her giggles soon turned into full on laughter.
"Ha, ha, very funny," Joe grumbled. "I suppose you thought that was very clever?"
Bess wiped an imaginary tear from her eye. "Couldn't resist the opportunity. Don't give me that face - I know you would've done the same," she said accusingly, pointing at the wounded-puppy look he was giving her.
Joe paused to consider this statement, then decided that the veracity of it was probably undeniable. He pouted anyway, but seeing her smile was infectious. Now that he was at a fully awake and functioning state, something that normally took much longer to achieve, he was looking forward to getting something done.
He hurried to the windows and drew back the drapes fully, peering outside. To his immense relief, the storm had died down and all that was left was a sparkling field of dazzling white snow, untouched by humans or animals yet.
Bess, in the meantime, had started making them some coffee with the limited resources from the kitchen. "It's only 6:30am," she called out to Joe. "Sun's only just come up."
Joe walked over to the door and prayed it wouldn't be stuck in the ice and snow. Of course, as his luck always seemed to go, he found the door didn't budge in either direction. He frowned, assessing the situation. It wouldn't do to be stuck in the cabin any longer. Even though Bess seemed perfectly fine, indeed even whistling happily from the 'kitchen' of the small cabin, he wouldn't be satisfied until a proper doctor had looked her over at the lodge. And being stuck here would effectively hinder that plan completely.
He turned in surprise as he noticed Bess, who had come up behind him silently. "What's wrong?" she asked, concern clouding her blue eyes.
Joe grimaced before answering. "The door's jammed. We'll have to leave through the window, I think."
Bess smiled wryly, responding, "I don't know why I expected our luck to be any better after everything that's happened last night." She let out a huff of breath, but shook her head and decided there was no reason to be grumpy about this turn of events.
She watched as Joe opened the window latch and struggled to lift the sash. When he did though, he jumped back with a small oath and slammed it back down. "Okay, so that throws another wrench in our plans," he frowned. Bess didn't need him to explain - just opening the window by a crack had let in a blast of Arctic air that sent shivers down her whole body. There was no way they were equipped to walk back in that kind of cold, not for a hike all the way back to the hotel.
Instead of bemoaning the situation further, Bess walked over to the door and began rummaging around Joe's coat, hung sloppily over the edge of a wooden chair. Though Joe raised his eyebrows, he offered no comment until she triumphantly pulled out Haines' journal from one of the pockets.
"Ah yes... the mystery of the coded journal. Toss it here," he said, holding his hand out for a well-aimed throw. "We've got time to kill, so we might as well take a crack at this now. Maybe it will reveal something new about the mystery, or the mystery man."
He sat heavily on the chair, Bess joining him shortly after with their coffee, and began to look through the pages. There had to be something - a repeated string of letters, perhaps, or a way of rearranging the order in which one read the letters. Joe puzzled through the pages for a few minutes before slumping back with a groan.
"Wish Frank was here," he sighed. "He never seems to mind the boring jobs. What kind of cipher is this coded with, anyway?"
"Maybe I can take a look," Bess suggested, twirling a lock of hair in her finger absentmindedly.
"You think you can break the code?" Joe asked in surprise. Bess was smart, of course, and a big help to Nancy - he knew that. But if he was being honest, he hadn't thought that codes and ciphers were exactly her forte.
"Well, I might as well give it a try... I always found it fun to take a look at some of the stuff Nancy's had to decode while on her cases, so I do have some experience with these kinds of things," Bess explained with a shrug. She flipped through the book idly, scanning the letters and 'words' for anything that jumped out or seemed to be an obvious pattern.
Joe moved to the desk to pull out a pad of paper and pen he'd noticed when he, Bess, and George, had searched the cabin the first time. Plopping back down on the bed, he patted the blanket beside him and gestured Bess to sit down. She joined him, taking her time, and settled onto the bed much more gracefully before plucking the paper from Joe's hands.
She scribbled away at the pad, trying out various combinations of letter substitutions and going through the basic code types she knew. Joe watched her in fascination, surprised by the intense concentration that had come over her face. This was a different Bess from the one he normally saw, the girl who flirted around and shopped til she dropped, the one that could change the oil in an engine just as easily as she could tie her shoes. And Joe felt... glad, that he had seen this new side to her.
He shook his head. Something was obviously wrong with his brain today. Suddenly, his quiet monologue was interrupted by a shriek of delight. He jumped, turning to Bess in surprise.
"I've got it!" she exclaimed happily. She snorted, then added, "And you thought I couldn't do it."
Joe began to protest, but she waved her hand to silence him. "Yes, yes, you're sorry, and I'm absolutely amazing and smart and wonderful for cracking the code when you couldn't do it," she teased him. "Now shut up and let me explain it to you."
"For the record, though, I never doubted you for a second," Joe said, throwing his hands up. "And I know you were joking, but it's still true."
Bess raised her eyebrow for clarification, then realized his meaning and blushed rather uncharacteristically. She forged on ahead, ignoring how cute Joe looked as he sat eagerly at attention while she began to explain, and told him how she had worked it out.
"So you remember that scrap of paper Nancy found in Haines' hotel room? I figured, since this is his journal, maybe there was some kind of connection."
"That paper just said 'Pierre', though, so how-"
Bess cut him off before he could finish. "No interruptions. Now, as I was saying, I realized that there had to be some kind of link between the journal and the paper, and from there it was just a process of elimination, I guess. I know a fair number of ciphers thanks to Nancy, so I ran all of them through like you did before," she continued, gesturing to the pad of paper now covered in letters that had been crossed out and scribbled over multiple times. "So that meant it was a polyalphabetic cipher."
Joe snapped his fingers and let out an exclamation. "Oh! I was wondering if it was a Vignere cipher; I mean I even tried the Kasiski examination and everything but-"
Bess cut him off again. "Seriously? After I just told you not to interrupt?" she shook her head in mock frustration. "If you would be so kind as to let me continue..." she smiled as Joe mimed turning the key and throwing it away, then continued speaking. "So I'm just going to ignore the fact that I have no idea what a Kas-whatever thing is, and finish explaining what I'm sure you now know anyway. Obviously, the code is a Vignere cipher, and the keyword to break it is Pierre. And, last thing before you can speak again, I've got to say that if he went to this much trouble to hide it, there has to be something good inside."
A grin broke her face and she handed the journal over to Joe, who paused and glanced up at her momentarily. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again and began to work on decoding the rest of it. "You know, it's really cool that you figured this out," he said conversationally.
She laughed, saying, "Just don't expect me to help do the rest. Deciphering a code may be fun, but actually decoding it?"
"Not so much," Joe finished her thought with a grin.
They sat there together on the bed, him chewing his lip and referring back to the alphabetical chart he'd made numerous times, and her just resting her head against his shoulder in a tranquil silence. Before long, and after a number of quiet exclamations under his breath, Joe summarized what he'd learned from the journal to Bess.
Her blue eyes widened as she absorbed the new information. "At least we finally have a name for him," she said optimistically.
"Chasseur... It means 'hunter' in French, if I'm not mistaken," Joe said.
"So he and Haines have been working together this entire time to take down the resort, huh. I wish it didn't cut off so abruptly," Bess huffed in annoyance. While the journal had detailed the plans of Chasseur and Haines in fairly good detail, it stopped before Haines' death. The only clue it gave regarding the murder was Haines' one mention of the fact that he wanted out of the entire venture. By the looks of it, the next day he'd turned up dead.
"The only problem is their third partner," Joe grumbled. "Haines keeps on making reference to 'the boss', but he doesn't mention a single name or identifying feature that would help identify him."
Bess smiled wryly. "I feel like this entire case has been about identifying people - the suspects have dropped right into our laps, we just don't know what their names are."
Joe agreed ruefully. "It's a weird case, alright. But we're finally closing in - and considering you girls will have to leave in a few days, I have a feeling we'd better hurry."
The two blondes sat on the bed chatting lightly of other matters, a mirror image of last night when they fell asleep, as they waited for the sun to fully rise and the temperature to go up to a more bearable level. They couldn't wait to let the others know everything they had found out.
AaA
Nancy woke to the sun shining in through her curtains and smiled to herself thinking about last night. It had been so perfect, she wouldn't have been surprised if she had dreamed the whole thing. The thick sweater she'd pulled on to go outside was the only indication that it had actually happened, and upon recalling everything that had happened, Nancy gave herself exactly one minute to have a quiet freak out.
Frank Hardy. Loved. Her. She didn't think she would get tired of remembering those three little words for a long time, and this surprised her. She hadn't ever really imagined herself as that 'type' of girl; in fact, it was much more like Bess to get all in a tizzy about a guy. Still, though. Could she really be blamed? Just one look at his handsome features and dark brown eyes and she was already acting much less rational than she should under normal circumstances.
Her minute up, Nancy headed downstairs to the smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen. She paused for a moment to rearrange her expression into one that might resemble neutrality, but when she saw Frank smile upon seeing her - the eye crust, messy hair, and all - her carefully composed image broke and she almost bounced up to him to give him a kiss good morning.
In no time at all, they were dressed and ready for the day, and as soon as they were both presentable they made their way to the lodge. On the plus side, they now had a snowmobile at command thanks to their nighttime encounter: though they hadn't noticed it upon arrival, the small shed they had sat on actually served solely as shelter for the small black vehicle.
Nancy rode behind Frank, arms wrapped snugly around his waist, and the two parked near the lodge and headed in to search for George. The closer they got, the more concerned they grew about her safety. What if something had happened with Adam while they had been trapped in the cabin?
Nancy spotted George in the lounge first and noticed immediately that the person she was talking to animatedly was none other than Adam. Poor George had had to spend the night in the lodge, it seemed: she was still wearing the green dress from last night's ball, and was holding a folded pillow and blanket on her lap.
They approached cautiously, Frank and Nancy, not sure of how they should respond to Adam with the information George had found.
George jumped up as soon as she saw her friends coming towards them. She gave a rushed apology to Adam, then moved to meet Nancy and Frank, leaving Adam in a state of slight confusion.
The brunette grinned in relief seeing her two of her favourite detectives safe and sound again. But there were more pressing issues to be discussed.
"So you guys may have missed out on quite a lot," George began.