J.M.J.

Chapter 8

Frank hesitated as he looked at the screen for the doorbell camera. He knew perfectly well who the woman on the other side of the door was: Katrina Bayley. He wasn't particularly keen on letting her in the house, not without his dad or his brother here. But then, Katrina wasn't likely to try anything here.

He hadn't noticed Callie follow him into the room when the doorbell rang until she asked, "Who is that?"

"A Network agent," Frank replied. "And not a particularly friendly one, I might add. Although, there isn't much chance of running into a friendly one these days." He pulled the door open. "Hello, Katrina," he said in an even tone.

"Frank, we've got a problem," she announced crisply, without bothering to return the greeting.

Frank scoffed. "Tell me something I don't know."

Katrina rolled her eyes as she pushed her way past him. She nodded stiffly to Callie but didn't bother to ask for an introduction before she turned to Frank again. "Do you know where your father is at?"

"He's out looking for Iola Morton somewhere. I haven't talked to him in a few hours, so I can't say exactly where."

"Call him and get him here. We need to talk."

Frank started to reach for his phone, but then he stopped. "You know, this wouldn't be the first time a Network agent has trapped us."

"And you're too clever to fall for it again." Katrina's tone was almost mocking, but she quickly dropped that for the old tone of urgency. "If you want proof that you can trust me, then call the police, too. It doesn't matter, because I'm no part of any plot against you."

"What are you doing in town, then? And how long have you been here?"

"You need all your answers first? All right, fine. I'm in town trying to track down Spencer Hale. I've been here a few days now, after I got a tip of where he was staying. I've been staking it out, along with my partner. We hadn't seen Hale at all, but the neighbors admitted that a man answering his description had been at the house in question. Today, my partner finally saw him, although unfortunately, he was a bit late in spotting him. Hale had gotten in the back way, and my partner didn't see him until he was leaving. He didn't leave alone, either."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

"He had your brother and Chet Morton with him. No doubt, they're his prisoners."

Frank didn't delay any longer. He quickly called his dad and gave him the message. Then he folded his arms as he looked at Katrina. "Okay. I want some straight answers now. Are you trying to threaten us?"

"Hardly," Katrina replied in a tired tone. "I know you don't believe this, but the Network was not behind your kidnapping in June nor is it behind anything happening now. Spencer is working completely on his own. Everything he's told you is a lie."

"Why would he be doing that?" Frank insisted.

"I don't know, right off. Like I said, everything he's told you is a lie. There's no reason to trust anything he's ever told us. The theory is that he must have sold out to some of the organizations we've been trying to shut down or something of the sort and he must think that we have evidence on him. Or, what I think is more likely, your father had evidence on him that he hasn't seen fit to share."

Frank's expression hardened. "Why would Dad hold anything back from the Network? At least, before June, anyway."

"You tell me."

"Well, he wouldn't have kept it from me, and he hasn't told me anything, so we can rule that one out."

"You maybe can," Katrina replied. "Anyway, my partner tried to follow Spencer and the guys. He lost them in traffic. I don't think I need to tell you that they're in danger. Spencer is unstable, to say the least."

"Then how do you suggest we find them?" Frank demanded.

"I have an idea where he might have taken them," Katrina admitted, "but we'd better not go there without some back-up."

HBHBHBHBHB

The first thing Joe was aware of was someone gently slapping his cheeks and telling him somewhat less gently to wake up. He blinked and looked up into the face of Spencer Hale. He groaned. "Oh, great. A nightmare."

"All right, then," Hale said, pulling him up to force him to sit. "You can't be hurt too bad if you're already cracking stupid jokes."

Joe grimaced as the pain in his head was aggravated by moving. The second thing he noticed was that his hands had been bound in front of him with zip-ties. Even in his addled state, that seemed a little odd, both that Hale would leave his hands in front of him and that he would use zip-ties instead of handcuffs. But that thought was quickly driven from his mind when he noticed the blood coming from his leg.

"Hey! What's going on?"

"Relax," Hale told him. "I don't think you're going to bleed out, and if you do, that might be just as well for you. You've made quite a problem for me with that little stunt you pulled."

"That's good." Joe looked about him warily, trying to remember everything that had happened. As it came back to him, he glanced around. The car Hale had been moving them in was parked right by them, as if Hale had just dragged Joe out of it to wake him up, but Joe didn't think they were in the same spot where he had been shot. It was barely even a road at this point, just a bit of gravel scattered on the ground. There was a shed and a small house some yards away. Chet was nowhere in sight.

Hale stood up and looked toward the house. "Wade! Never mind the water! Let's get this over with!"

"Wade," Joe repeated accusingly.

Hale chuckled slightly. "Sure. It's exactly who you think it is, but you also don't realize who it is."

Joe only frowned at him. He was in no mood for riddles.

Wade came shuffling out of the house, his hands shoved into his pockets. He came and stood over Joe, looking down his nose at him. "I thought for a minute that you'd ruined everything. As it is, it's only half-ruined."

Hale gave an annoyed snort. "There's no need to be so melodramatic. We'll get Frank here, just in time."

Wade let out a skeptical grunt. "What about him? Is he going to last that long?"

"Him?" Hale prodded Joe's injured leg with his toe, causing him to wince. "He's got a long way to go before he bleeds to death."

"I don't want him to bleed to death at all. This isn't any good if he's dead."

Joe glanced from one captor to the other. There were a lot of questions he could ask, but he decided to start with the two that were most pressing. "Where's Iola? And what happened to Chet?"

Wade raised an eyebrow. "The girl's brother? Why would he be asking about him?"

"Who knows?" Hale replied cooly. "The shock, probably. We'd better get this done quickly."

"He doesn't look like he's in shock to me," Wade protested. "Where's the girl's brother?"

For a few moments, Hale looked like he was trying to think up an excuse. "He was with Hardy when I grabbed him, but there's no possible way he could have followed us. There's nothing to worry about from him."

Wade frowned, hugging his arms about himself. "So it's time, then? I'm not sure if I can do it, after all."

"Seriously?" Hale scoffed. "How else are you going to get justice?"

"I thought, maybe, you would do it."

"Where's the pleasure in that?"

"I don't want pleasure!" Wade burst out. "I want justice! I want him and his brother to know exactly what they've done and have to live with it! But that girl…I didn't like hurting her, you know."

"You've hurt Iola?" Joe made a move to get up, but Hale pushed him back down.

"Relax. If he did what he was supposed to, all he did was to rough her up a little. Nothing she won't survive."

That was little comfort to Joe, who continued trying to get up, despite that there was nothing he could do if he did. Hale held him down, and finally, he was forced to give up the struggle.

"This is almost making it worth it in itself." Wade took in a deep breath. "I've just got to be strong. It's just that she reminds me so much of her. I don't know…"

"Oh, go pull yourself together. We've got a little time. Let me think this over." Hale paused. "It might be for the best. Let me alone for a little while to think."

"No, let's do it now," Wade argued. "I'll just talk myself out of it if we wait any longer. I'll go and get her."

"You'll do what I tell you to. Go in the house and get something we can use for a bandage. All his moving around is making his leg bleed worse, and we both know you don't want him bleeding out," Hale said.

"Oh, no," Wade agreed. "We definitely can't have that." He turned and ran back toward the house.

Hale watched him go. Then he stood up and moved over next to the car, where he could lean against it and face Joe. He took his gun out of its holster and aimed it toward Joe.

"This isn't very friendly, but I don't feel like taking any more chances with you," he said. "You know, this is going to be hard for you to swallow, but you and I are on the same side here."

Joe scoffed. "If this is how you treat your allies, I'd hate to see what you do to your enemies."

"Maybe 'the same side' isn't quite the right words," Hale admitted.

"It's certainly not how I'd describe it."

"We want the same thing. I guess that's the best way to say it," Hale went on. "But no. It isn't quite, either. Everyone wants the same thing, really. They want to live in their own way. And every conflict there has ever been has come about because people couldn't agree on whose way of life they were going to allow. Now, you and I have a similar idea of how to live. Law and order. Peace and quiet for those who want it. I don't care much to live a peace and quiet type of life myself. Sounds boring. But I don't begrudge the people who do want that, like Wade, for instance."

"Look, I'm not in the mood for a villain monologue at the moment," Joe interrupted him. "You're not going to convince me that you and I are so much alike and whatever else."

Hale shook his head in disappointment. "I guess I can't claim that I wasn't going to make that point. It happens to be true. But all right. We'll cut to the explanations. You deserve to know why this is happening. First, you don't know who Wade is, do you?"

"No," Joe said, although it was with some hesitation. "I've had a feeling all along I should know, though."

"You might have seen a picture of him, but you wouldn't have looked too close. And of course, you recognize the first name."

Joe froze, not wanting to let Hale see his emotion. He only know of one person named Wade, and he had been hoping desperately that this wasn't him.

Hale saw it, though. "That's right," he said grimly. "His last name's not Smith. It's Lawsen. He's the fiancé of that girl, the one we got killed in New Orleans."

"We? You're finally taking responsibility for it?"

"The Network always has. We do what we need to do to get the job done. It might not be pretty and it might not fit in with your sense of morals, but someone needs to do it. Anyway, that's the way it was, back when Arthur Gray was still around."

Joe was pretty well at sea now. He only stared at Hale questioningly.

"It's my personal belief that Gray's killing was an inside job," Hale said. "But that's neither here nor there. The point is that the new leadership is exactly what you Hardys think it is."

"A corrupt bunch of psychopaths?" Joe asked.

Hale gave a sort of fair enough nod and frown. "Probably not the psychopaths part, and the rest of it is understating the matter badly, but I'll let it stand. You see, our leadership is in a unique position to line their pockets handsomely. We don't have the amount of oversight we should have, and so it's an easy matter for our leaders to take bribes and get away with it. They crack down hard on those terror organizations who don't care to pay them tribute, but the others are permitted to grow under our very noses. I didn't know about it, though, and neither did a lot of other agents. It was your dad who tipped us off. You see, he thought you and your brother had cut ties with us over some big corruption scandal, so that's what he was looking for."

"You honestly don't think setting up innocent people to get killed isn't corrupt?" Joe asked.

"Not if it serves the common good, but quiet. I'm trying to explain. Katrina and a few others and I realized that he might just be onto something, and we started investigating ourselves. Your dad didn't trust us, so we had to launch our own investigation. One of our hackers got into a leadership computer, and found enough evidence to completely sink the Network. Unfortunately, he was almost caught. They knew someone had gotten in, but they couldn't find out who. We couldn't risk our investigation, so we set it up so it looked like your dad was the one. Leadership then decided that they wanted him disposed of, as well as you and your brother and your mother, since he might have told the lot of you about it."

"You've got to be kidding me," Joe said. "You mean, the Network is out to get Dad because of something he doesn't even really know?"

"Yeah, that's the size of it. But see, we're obviously further into our investigation than your dad was. If they were going to get rid of someone, it made more sense for it to be him than us."

"You're just as sick as the people you're trying to bring down." Joe shook his head. "Why didn't you just tell Dad about this? You were the one they sent to get us. You could have told all of us instead."

"Right, and made an even bigger mess out of things. You know the joke about burning your house down, trying to get a spider. That's what you want to do. You see a spot of corruption in the Network, so you want to tear the whole thing down. You wouldn't have helped."

"There isn't a 'spot of corruption' in it. The whole thing's rotten inside and out."

"That's your opinion, and I happen to think you're wrong. Anti-terrorism is important, and it gets more important every day. We can't afford to lose the Network. We have to simply excise the corruption in our leadership. And you Hardys could help do that, but only indirectly. We planned that out so that it would look like a total disaster so that someone among your many friends would unravel who was behind your deaths. We didn't care if it was Sam Radley or Nancy Drew or anyone else. As it happened, we got both Sam and Nancy investigating, and they proved a little cleverer and you proved a little luckier than we anticipated. The idea was that after you were all dead, we were going to produce the receipts to prove that our leadership—without the knowledge of experienced field agents—had contracted with terrorists to dispose of you. There would be nationwide outrage, leadership would be gotten rid of, most likely Katrina or myself would take their place, we'd toe the line as long as we needed to for people to forget, and then it would be business as usual. But then Frank escaped and the lot of you survived and were able to link me to the whole thing, so I wouldn't make a very sympathetic figure to present our case. Moreover, leadership was suspicious of the bungling. We had to abort the mission."

"But you kidnapped Nancy's kids," Joe reminded him. "What did they have to do with anything?"

"Extra outrage. They weren't going to be killed. It wouldn't have been necessary."

"But you would have killed them if you thought it was necessary." It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"And you killed at least one of your own agents," Joe added.

"No. I killed or had killed several of the leadership schills. Besides, we opted to cover up with the story that I was a rogue agent, so I had to make it look good. I would have had them killed even if they were on our side."

Joe stared at him in disgust, but he decided not to say anything in response. It wouldn't be any use. Instead, he opted to keep going. "What about all this that's going on now? If at first you don't succeed…?"

"Actually, that's pretty much it," Hale admitted. "Our leadership still wants the lot of you out of the way. They have enough sense to realize that a direct hit on you would instantly be linked back to the Network after everything that came to light back in June, so they decided that the way to go was to radicalize someone who already had a grudge against you to take care of it for us. Katrina is still a trusted agent, and so she was put in charge of it. Of course, secretly, she's still working with me. I suggested Wade as our assassin, and Katrina liked the idea. You can't separate his grudge from your involvement with the Network as you can with so many other people who could be just as easily persuaded. Besides, Wade was already mostly radicalized. Finishing the job was quicker than anticipated." Hale made a face. "A good deal too quick. He was ready to come out here on his own and do the job. That would have been fine with the Network, but our plan needed a little finesse than that. We had to move up our timetable. And let me tell you, Wade has been nothing but trouble the entire time."

"I really feel for you there," Joe retorted sarcastically.

"I'm not looking for your sympathy. I'm just telling you what happened. We needed it to look as amateurish as possible, so that no one would suspect that Katrina and I have been as heavily involved as we have been. At the same time, we needed to ensure that the plan would work. It's been a difficult balancing act. Katrina sent out those messages to warn you and tell you what to do. We needed Wade to look as unbalanced as possible. Also, he wouldn't know about Fraternité's chess code, not without talking to the Network. That's going to be one of the subtle clues about who put him up to this. The biggest problem has been Wade wanting to follow his own ideas. You see, he doesn't actually want to kill you and Frank. He wants you to live with exactly what he has to live with. So his plan is to kill Iola and Callie and then let you go."

"But they don't have anything to do with all this!" Joe protested.

"I know, I know, but he's fixated on this idea that his girlfriend's life was worth more than you and your brother put together. Just killing you wouldn't really be justice." Hale shook his head. "He had this whole crazy, elaborate scheme of befriending Iola and then taking her prisoner. We tried to talk him out of it, but he snuck out Sunday morning and tried to meet Iola at church. Fortunately, you and her following him scared some sense into him on that one. He agreed to just get it over with, nothing fancy that he was going to mess up. The only part he wouldn't agree to was killing you. But we saw a way through that one. So I brought you here. Our only problem now is your friend, Chet."

"He got away, didn't he?" Joe asked, grinning. "After he saw you kidnap and shoot me. And admit to murder. So you and your bunch are going to be wiped out with the rest of the Network."

"You shouldn't be so delighted," Hale retorted. "Katrina and I were planning on salvaging the Network and just removing the current leadership. Now the Network isn't going to be able to continue doing our important work. Just think how different the world is going to look without our efforts."

"Yeah, there won't be anyone to murder innocent people in the name of anti-terrorism. Heartbreaking."

Hale ignored the jab. He stared into space for a few moments and then nodded. "Yes, I think it could work. Of course, it would be best if we could find your friend before he talks, but I'm not particularly hopeful about that. I think we can persuade him that things weren't quite the way he assumed them to be."

"What are you talking about now?"

"We'll have to make a small change to the plan. I think you'll approve, though. It means I'll have to stop Wade from killing Iola. We're going to need her alive." Hale checked his watch. "Now, Katrina is out rounding up your brother and your father and the police. They should be here in about twenty minutes or so. That should be just enough time. Not enough to call her and clear it with her beforehand, but she knows that in situations like these, you have to be flexible. She'll be able to play along, especially when I call her and tell her it's already done."He pushed himself up from leaning against the car and walked around Joe, who was eying him suspiciously the entire time.

"So what's the point of telling me everything?" Joe asked. "Obviously, you don't want me telling anyone what you just told me, but I don't think you just wanted to gloat."

"No, I was working the problem out. I had thought, maybe, about offering to keep you alive if you'd say exactly what I tell you to say. It's not like you haven't been responsive to blackmail before." Hale grinned. "But that was your reputation at stake in the past. This is only your life, and I've seen how cheaply you'll risk that, so I don't think I can trust you. Sorry about that. But it did help to sort things out in my mind."

He was behind Joe now, who tried to turn to face him. Because of his injured leg, he could only turn so far. Hale shook his head and then he gave Joe a rough kick in the back of his shoulders, causing him to fall face-forward. Then Joe heard the sound of a gun cocking.