Chromde, tired of snowflakes, franknjoe, Miss Fenway, thanks for enjoying the prologue. Snowflakes: those who read my stories knows when I get the angst right, that's either fluke or time to buy lottery - I actually won one based on the date of someone telling me - hey that's angst! ;p

Tukkie: Thanks for the Xiangsheng clips, you know how much I love MaJi. Here is Chap 1 - let me know if this is the right one. Nomi.

WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS

Chapter One

-o-

It is interesting how one can without even trying in hindsight, fits everything that ever happened into the numerology of bad luck. I did not want to believe in bad luck, but when everything fits so nicely as in my case, I cannot help but to believe.

My name as you know by now is Joe. Or rather Joseph, but I preferred to be called Joe. My biological father's name is Fenton Hardy. My biological mother's name is Laura. I have one brother who is a year older than me. His name is Frank.

My biological parents met in the summer of '74. They were both 19 and still in college. They married the year they graduated in '76. Frank was born in spring of 1977, I was born a year later. Dad continued working for the CIA in New York City, while Mom quitted her job at the State Library to take care of me and Frank full-time. Dad's job was highly demanding and he travelled a lot. So when Frank was nine and I was eight, Dad quitted the CIA and took up a much less demanding position as a detective with NYPD. With us both attending school and Dad spending more time with us, Mom took the opportunity to return to part-time work at the State Library. Five years later, Fenton Hardy at thirty-five became the youngest officer to make First Class Detective. We celebrated his promotion together in one of those fancy New York restaurants on the day I turned thirteen.

Those five years with Frank, Mom, and Dad were the sunshine days of my life.

It was thirteen days after my thirteenth birthday celebrations that Fenton Hardy was pulled in to assist the FBI in a seemingly straightforward case of financial fraud. Forty- eight year old Andrew Kempton and his only biological twenty-two year old son William was running a major financial scamming outfit. Unfortunately, that case took several sinister turns, and thirteen weeks later on Friday the thirteenth, my Dad was abducted and tortured by that very same father and son team for three days. He was barely alive when they found him, and he spent three weeks in the hospital.

You see what I mean now?

That was the last case my Dad wrapped up for the NYPD. He quitted the force soon after that, and we moved to Bayport, a nice and safe upper-middle income suburb by the Great South Bay just eighty minutes from New York City by the Freeway. And it was in this 'safe' neighborhood just a half hour east of Amityville where Al Capone ran his coastal smuggling operations through the 1920s and 1930s, that Fenton Hardy together with his friend and fellow detective from NYPD Sam Radley, set up their very own detective agency. They named their private enterprise The Hardy and Radley Investigations Inc.

None of us knew the real reason why we moved; not back then. And I still did not know what my Dad went through. But from what I remembered of what I went through…

-o-o-0-o-o-

It was autumn in the year 1991. The weather in New York City was nice and cool. Fenton Hardy was working late that night. He just had a few loose ends to clear up from the Kempton case before he could officially close the case and put it all behind him.

His eyes landed on the little 'thank you' note from Marianna and her teenage son Jonathan. Gladness filled his being. Both mother and son should be somewhere far away from New York by now with their new identities and enjoying their new lives.

'They need never fear again. Andrew Kempton and his son William were both heading for maximum security prisons with multiple and consecutive life sentences,' Fenton thought with much satisfaction as he wrapped up his report for his superiors.

Waving goodnight to the person on duty, Fenton left for home. Tired as he was, he left his pager at his office. And in doing so he missed that incoming message that might have changed everything that was about to happen to him and to his family.

Fenton took the same route as he did everyday to and from the subway. He had traversed that route so many times in the last five years; he could almost make the trip with his eyes closed. Occasionally a vehicle would sped by him. He paid them little heed. Instead, he found his thoughts going back to the Kempton case. He was still amazed at how sinister the case had gotten. It all started when he and his partner, Sam Radley, was roped in to assist in a major FBI sting operation to expose of the most successful 'Boiler Room' brokerage operations in New York City. Kempton and Son Investment was a 'chop shop' brokerage firm that runs a 'pump and dump' operation – pump up the price and then dump the poor investors after skimming off the profits. Within a week, the FBI and NYPD moved in taking both the owners and their brokers into custody, all of them being charged for wire fraud, mail fraud, extortion, stock fraud and many other white collar crimes. All of them were let out on bail pending court hearings.

That was where things started turning bad. Bodies started appearing in the darkest corners of the city, not necessarily mutilated; the coroner confirmed they either expired from fear or pain.

It turned out that Andrew Kempton and his son William had a hidden sadomasochistic side in addition running that highly successful scamming operation. Andrew Kempton was a failed med student turned serial torturer. None of his victims survived; they all died a slow agonizing death. William was clearly his father's son; at the age of ten, William watched his father tortured his mother to death for trying to leave them. For the next few years, the father and son team travelled from place to place, running a small investment operation scamming vulnerable old folks of their life savings. Along the way, they continued to hone their grisly talents leaving behind a trail of unsolved homicide cases.

Then Andrew hits upon the idea of a brokerage, and where else better than to create his company in the very heart of the financial world in Wall Street? As their company started to grow, they also lost the anonymity of the small time travelling salesman. But they still needed to exorcise their desire to inflict pain. So Andrew targeted a grieving widow with a young son and married her. With the child as hostage, Andrew found his outlet for his dark desires. In the meantime, William made life miserable for his much younger step brother.

Andrew and William could have gotten away with their numerous murders of not for their overly inflated ego. To terrify Marianna into compliance, Andrew boasted to her of all his 'achievements', and showed her the trophies he kept from each victim. Marianna and those trophies would soon become his downfall.

Fenton Hardy admitted that he was getting nowhere with the rising body counts until a chance encounter had Marianna making that fateful decision to trust and confide in him. From that point onwards, everything starting falling in place, and soon he was helping the FBI tie Andrew Kempton to at least another two dozen homicide cases all over America.

So engrossed was Fenton in the details of those grisly murders that he failed to notice a dark colored van slowing down next to him. Suddenly a stinky drunkard bumped into him and knocked him off balance – right into the opened doors of the still moving van. Something sharp and cold hits the base of his neck. Everything about him slowed. He watched through blurry eyes the van's doors slid shut. He felt the van move. And then it was all darkness.

At least he now knew what all those victims had gone through, Fenton thought as he tried to access the extent of his injuries an unknown length of time later.

He was lying on his stomach on the slimy damp floor of some basement room. Every part of his body hurts. His eyes were so swollen he could barely open them. He could no longer feel his legs; his captors broke them to make sure that he could not run away. He felt every bit of the pain as he heard the loud dual crack of his tibia and fibula bones being snapped into two, one at a time. Andrew, Fenton knew, savored every second of his agony and every pitiful groan he uttered. In the following hours, he would come to fully appreciate Andrew's expertise in inflicting pain using a variety of impediments ranging from bare hands to knives to whips.

He gasped for breath. That movement sent a wave of fiery pain through his entire back. Fenton could not prevent a shudder from moving through him as his mind again recalled the soft whistle of the cat-o-nines as it traveled through the air before landing squarely on his exposed back, cutting deep into his skin and gouging bits of flesh off his back. When the second lash landed just an inch from the first, he knew the perfect control Andrew had over the use of that whip. By the time Andrew was done, his back was totally flayed.

Andrew wanted to know where his traitorous wife and step son was.

Fenton kept silent. There was no way that he would betray Marianna's faith in him, and there was no way that he was going to let this mad man gets his hands on her again. Later, he managed to keep silent only because he imagined that it was Laura and Joe that he was protecting. He would keep them safe at all cost, he vowed. Much later, Fenton was glad he had no idea where Marianna was, because he would have talked. That was how good Andrew was. And Fenton knew the only reason why he was still alive was that Andrew had deliberately kept him alive – for now.

He was alone in that basement now. God knows what Andrew and his son was planning up there. Fenton fought hard against the despair that threatened to overwhelm him. He knew he had been held captive for at least two days, and since he was a law enforcement officer, he knew exactly what that meant – his chances of getting rescued just plummeted.

There were footsteps coming his way. Fenton felt his heart constricted in fear. He fought valiantly to hide that sense of dread rising in him. The door opened. He did not like the look on William's face. He was terrified of the expression on Andrew's.

"You have been a worthy opponent, do you know that?" Andrew commented. "And what pleasures you have given me in the last few days!"

Fenton did not bother to answer. He needed to conserve what little strength he had left for whatever Andrew had in mind next for him.

"But I have decided that I don't need to take my vengeance on that ungrateful wife and son of mine anymore," Andrew announced almost cheerfully.

A really bad feeling started in the depths of Fenton's guts.

"Do you think your sons inherited your resilience?" Andrew asked in an innocent sounding tone.

Terror ripped through him as he realized who Andrew might be going after next.

"Do not worry, I am a fair man," Andrew continued with mocked assurance. "Since you took my younger son from me, so I will take your younger son from you. I can be a very fair man…"

"No!" Fenton wanted to yell back, but all that came out of his parch throat was a dry rattle.

"Jonathan's seventeen this year, and so I will come for your younger son some time after his seventeenth birthday. That would give you four more years with young Joseph, wouldn't it? That is, if you survived today. See, I can be such a nice person…" Andrew laughed at the terror and anger in Fenton's eyes.

If Fenton had the strength, he would kill Andrew with his bare hands on the spot. But two little helpless jerks were all that his battered body could take.

"Just remember, Fenton, that in four years' time, your younger son is mine. Mine to play with, and mine to torture… And just in case you die before that day, I will even tell you that he will grow to hate you, and he will die believing that it is you who wanted him dead," Andrew added most maliciously before nodding to his son. "So enjoy your remaining time with your son… if you can…"

"I believe my father had his fun, and now is my turn," William took over cheerfully. "I left a little clue with that partner of yours telling him where to find you. So you better hope that he is good, Mr. Hardy, because you have to hope that he finds you before you get eaten up alive by these starving black rats I have here…"

William set the cage down on the floor just a meter away from where Fenton was lying, shackled to the wall. He set the timer for the little trapdoor to open in two hours time.

"Good luck, Mr. Hardy," William stood up, ready to leave.

"I hope you survive, Fenton. I look forward to pitting my skills against you again," Andrew added.

With that, both the father and son left him alone in the basement. Soon the only sounds left were that of those hungry rats working to break free of their cage.

Most people would have been terrified to death in that situation. But Fenton had his family to worry about. He fought to stay alive. Sam would find him, he kept repeating to himself and he forced his battered body to move inch by inch to a more defensive position from those rats. He must live! And then he would have four years to hunt down the Kemptons. They would regret ever giving him the chance to fight back.

Sam was almost too late. The rats got to him first. They fed on him voraciously while he was too weak to fight back. But he survived, and that was what matters. He spent the next three weeks in the hospital recovering from his various injuries and fighting off the infections that followed. He spent the next few months on a wheelchair, and later with clutches.

He was furious to find out that the courts had granted bail to the Kemptons; that was how they got him in the first place. They jumped bail, as he expected they would. When his superiors moved him off the Kemptons case, and he found out why, he quitted in disgust. He used the small inheritance he got from his grandfather to pay for the house he bought in Bayport. And there, he set up his own private investigation firm with his partner. They would now be free of the politics that plague every bureaucracy.

He never told Laura what Andrew threatened. Laura, he felt, deserve to enjoy motherhood with her sons to the fullest – because he knew that he would never be able to unless Kempton was caught or dead.

Over the next four years, he built his business and his reputation. He hunted for Kempton whenever he could. Despite his efforts, he never found them. And on Joe's seventeenth birthday, he celebrated it with a smile on his face but with dread in his heart.