Friday, October 20, 2000 (10:30 a.m.)

"I really, really, really hate these old mansions like this," Deanna Merrill said to Fenton Hardy as they went in through the side door of the old mansion located in New Haven, Connecticut. "They always give me the creeps. And they always smell, like nobody has cleaned them in about a thousand years. Why in the world would anyone build something like this and then not keep it, I don't know, clean?"

"My wife's great, great, great, great grandfather, I think, built this and it got built onto by several of his descendants," Fenton said as he thought over the history of the house told to him by Laura. "It's sort of four or five different houses all built together right now so that it became this big ramshackle place. I think it was her grandfather who actually built the portions that connected the different houses so there are corridors in here that seem to go absolutely nowhere and there are rooms that attach in ways you would think were impossible. I haven't been here many times; the last time was when I came here to get Joe... back when he was ten. None of us have wanted to come back since then."

Deanna looked sympathetically up at him and brushed back several lengths of her golden-blonde hair. Her blue eyes danced about the hallway before she shone a flashlight into one of the darkened rooms they passed. In some ways, her blonde looks and navy eyes reminded Fenton of Laura but their builds were entirely different. Deanna was slender, as Laura but a little more... stacked was the only word Fenton could put on it. Deanna carried herself differently, too, though Fenton wasn't sure why he thought that. She really didn't look like Fenton's idea of even a female FBI agent, though she did dress the part with a dark suit and white shirt underneath the jacket. Her blonde hair, if not bound up, would probably fall to her waist.

"I live in a rather large house," she admitted. "Some would even call that a mansion. We both have money we inherited. Daniel and I, I mean. The house was my father's but he gave it to me when I got married. He didn't really like living in DC anyway."

"What are you doing on a case in Connecticut if you work out of DC?" Fenton asked curiously.

Deanna didn't answer right away but, instead, she stood to one side of a door and then slowly opened it. She shone the flashlight into the room, to chase away the shadows that shone in the corners, caused by the hallway light and then closed the door again.

"I'm sort of an... anomaly... in the FBI," Deanna confessed with a shrug of her shoulders that lifted the hair that remained free just a little. "I always have been, really. I joined young, just at eighteen and without what you would call a college education. I fortunately flew right through the Academy. Anyway, I've been on so many dangerous duty assignments that I pretty much have the ability, within reason, of course, to pick and choose the cases I want. I asked for this one because I absolutely abhor pedophiles and I consider it my... bailiwick... to get rid of them."

Deanna ducked into another room and shone the flashlight. She carried a small gun in one hand, the flashlight in the other. Fenton noticed she carried the gun in her left hand. She carried the flashlight in what looked like an awkward hold in her ring and pinky finger of her right hand.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Fenton asked as he pointed to the flashlight. He opened a door on the right side of the hall and stepped into it slightly, to peer around the corners he knew was in that room. One of Laura's ancestors had an abhorrence for straight lines and that bugged Fenton to no end. The rooms tended to run off into rather odd directions. Joe could be hiding in just about any of those catacombs and would be easily missed if they weren't careful.

"What?" Deanna asked, distracted as she came out of another room. "Oh, no, not really. I hurt that in Libya a few years ago. Er... anyway."

Fenton's jaw dropped and he closed it immediately. He stared at the seemingly young woman next to him and changed his opinion of her again.

"You went to Libya?" he asked in surprise.

Deanna opened a door next to them and panned her flashlight through the darkened room. She stepped into the room just a little, her gun still drawn as she looked behind a couple of pieces of furniture. She came back out of the room and closed the door and looked back at Fenton.

"Let's just say that I don't give up easily," she said with a shrug. "On anything. Ever."

She motioned for him to continue down the hall and she followed along after him. A single overhead light that worked for about thirty feet of hall before the shadows began again lighted the hallway. Fenton looked about for another light switch but didn't find one. Either the bulb was burnt out or the switch was elsewhere in the area. The electricity was helter-skelter about the place since the older portions were built before electricity was abundant. "The rest, well, as they say, if I told you, I'd have to shoot you."

Fenton grinned at that as he ducked into a room on the right side of the hallway. He peered inside then stepped into it to peer around another of those odd angles that proved to be a shadowy alcove with an upright piano sitting behind it. No people here.

"What about this Derak?" Deanna paused in the hall and stepped slowly into the shadows at the end of their trail of light. "Is he really the psychotic he sounds like?"

"Worse," Fenton said grimly and wished he could forget what he saw that day - when he pulled Derak off his ten-year-old son. "He's lucky I didn't kill him that day. I might have, if Laura hadn't been there to stop me. I was that furious. I still have those urges now, when I think of all Joe had to go through just to be able to sleep at night again."

"If it was one of my kids, I'd kill him," Deanna opened another door and panned her flashlight around once more. "Or worse than that. I hate people who hurt kids. Maybe boiling in oil."

"You have children?" Fenton was more than a little surprised by that. His assessment of her changed yet again. Married, sure, he could buy that. A freewheeling FBI agent he could buy as well. Mother... that part came just a little harder.

"Six," Deanna smiled, or Fenton though so. The shadows made it hard to tell for sure. "Five girls, one boy. Three sets of twins."

"Joe's a twin," Fenton said.

"I'm a twin," Deanna smiled. "My husband has a brother and sister who are twins. I'm hoping to not have anymore. We've already beat the odds by quite a bit having three sets of them in a row. My doctor still doesn't understand it. I told him he should have been a geneticist if he was serious about figuring it out."

Fenton smiled at that and opened a door to check it out again. He closed it again a moment later. Fenton finally figured out what it was about her voice that sounded... different. She had the slightest hint of an accent of some kind. Not one of the American accents, like southern or Midwest or New England but something else, maybe something foreign.

"Can I ask you a question?" Fenton asked.

"French," Deanna answered without him asking. Fenton shook his head in surprise.

"Everyone always figures it out," Deanna shrugged. "I've lived in the US since I was seventeen. I was born in the US, but I went to live with my grandmere at two, to be raised in what she called the old ways. I left there at seventeen to live back at home but I still haven't quite managed to lose all the accent."

"It's very slight," Fenton said. "I'm surprised most people even notice."

"I've worked pretty hard at getting rid of it," Deanna said. "My husband does a good job of letting me know when I'm getting 'too French' in my pronunciation of words. If I visit home too often listening to my mother can bring it back in about ten minutes and hers isn't that intense."

Fenton nodded and was silent as they worked more of the hallway. They reached the end of the corridor they were casing and Deanna sent out a notice to the other two teams in the mansion over a walkie-talkie she had clipped to her collar.

"Right or left?" she asked Fenton.

Fenton thought a moment and tried to remember what was either way.

"Right, I think," Fenton said. "It doesn't really matter."

"Right it is," Deanna went right without hesitation.

The old mansion smelled musty and most of the rooms they searched were covered with dust that stirred whenever they opened the door. Several times, Fenton or Deanna had to stop for a sneezing fit that lasted over a minute and then continue on when it finished. Fenton checked every room and every room he was disappointed to find out that his son wasn't there.

"Agent Simpson to Agent Merrill," Deanna made a moue of distaste for some reason.

"This is Deanna, what's up, Audrey?" Deanna asked.

"We've finished a search of the top floor, including the perimeter. We're going to continue down to the next floor."

"Check," Deanna said. "Keep in touch."

They both opened the door into the next room, which was near the middle of the house itself. This room was a combination, if Fenton remembered right, of two rooms from two different houses, built more or less together when the expansion was done to include all of the houses into one. He knew for sure when he saw the obvious step-down from one part of the room to another part of the room. They were getting to the heart of the house now, near the oldest part of the mansion.

"This has to be the creepiest room I ever saw in my life," Deanna made a face. "I'm not just saying that for the benefit of all concerned either."

"I never figured out why they did this room this way," Fenton shrugged. "It used to be a bedroom but the furniture got moved out about fifteen years ago, don't ask me why, I don't know."

Deanna shrugged as they peeked behind some curtains. No area was really big enough to hide someone as large as Joe but Fenton wasn't about to pass anything by. He opened the door at the back of the room and peeked out it. As he took a step he heard a slight click sound. He was about to move again when Deanna grabbed his arm.

"Don't move, Fenton," she said.

"What?" Fenton asked and he looked at her.

"Look down. Carefully, without moving your feet," Deanna told him.

Fenton frowned but did as she told him. When he looked down he saw a single piece of copper wire pulled taut against his leg. He followed the wire to where it disappeared into the wall about two feet away and then looked back at Deanna.

"Stay very, very still," Deanna warned him, unnecessarily.

"No problem there," Fenton swallowed nervously. "I can stand here forever."

Deanna smiled a little smile as she knelt and laid her gun very carefully on the floor. She grasped her flashlight with her other hand and very carefully followed the copper wire. She dug into the wall a little to see if she could find out where the wire went but found nothing.

"I'll be right back," Deanna said. "Don't move."

Fenton heard her talking on her walkie-talkie as she left the room from the door they originally came through and heard her a few minutes later coming down the hallway by the door where Fenton now stood. She was still talking on the walkie-talkie, admonishing both teams to be careful as she knelt down in the hallway and continued her perusal.

"Oh, blankety, blank, blank," she exploded a few minutes later. "We have a live one here, Fenton. Don't move!"

Fenton had absolutely no intention of moving, ever.

"This thing is set to explode whenever you release the tension on that wire, Fenton," Deanna told him. "And it's rigged with a motion device so if I move it, at all, it's going to explode. If I cut the wire it will explode."

Fenton swallowed nervously.

"Even worse," Deanna looked back up at him. "When you touched that wire it started a countdown timer. It's going to explode in... six minutes, ten seconds, no matter what you do."

"What are you doing here?" the voice hissed at Frank again and shook him a little. Frank grimaced and pulled his arm free, then debated lashing out with the cane he held in one hand. Almost as if reading his mind the cane was yanked free of Frank's hand and the voice demanded, once more. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you, Uncle Derak," Frank said in a calm voice as he reached over and gently pulled his arm free of Derak's grip. His Uncle had a grip like a vise and Frank grimaced a little. "And Joe."

"Joe?" Derak actually sounded confused. "What do you mean you're looking for me and Joe?"

"It's just what it sounds like," Frank said. "The FBI, the police, my father and Sam Radley are inside the mansion looking for wherever it is you put Joe. Why don't you just tell me, Derak?"

Frank felt considerably calm considering he stood next to a man he hated, didn't trust and couldn't see. Derak grabbed his arm again and shook it, then pulled him forward. Frank, not fond of any games from his sick Uncle, lashed out with a karate hit from his free arm and connected with Derak's upper arm. Derak yelped and hissed in pain as he stepped back and Frank took up an unsteady karate stance, hands extended as he waited for his Uncle to try something else really stupid.

"I don't have Joe," Derak hissed at his nephew. "And I haven't even seen him since that day on Campus when I was looking for Andrew. I had to hunt for my own son, Frank; do you know what that's like? I was told he was going to Bayport University and when I turn around where do I find him? He's in Massachusetts or something."

"Whose fault is it that you couldn't find him?" Frank asked, coldly. "You only have yourself to blame. And you can cut out the games about Joe, too, Uncle Derak because we know you have him."

"You don't know anything of the kind!" Derak exclaimed. "Because I don't! If you do then someone has gone to considerable trouble to set me up. Your father has enough enemies I don't have to be the bad guy in ever situation, you know. I was once and I'm sorry for that but it wasn't me!"

Frank backed up a step and ran into the car again. He really, really wished he had his cane but in lieu of that he slid along the side of the car. His Uncle's harsh breathing echoed in his ears.

"I have not touched Joseph," Derak hissed. "Not in almost ten years. I won't ever again. I'm going far, far away, away from the whole family and I don't plan on doing anything to prevent that from happening. That's all I want, Frank, just to get away from you, your father, your mother, everyone, including Joe!"

Frank fixed his best glare on his face and cast it in the direction of his Uncle's voice. He wanted to wipe the street with his Uncle's face. He would have to settle for getting him locked away, once they found out where Joe was. His Uncle might try this tactic as another of his little mental games but Frank was having none of it. He was not going to give his Uncle the remotest satisfaction. Regardless of what all they found, he felt strongly that his Uncle was involved, that if he badgered Derak enough Derak would tell him where Joe was being hidden.

"What about the helicopter?" Frank demanded. "And the secret lover Aunt Cathy was talking about? Are you seriously going to tell me that Joe isn't the secret lover who makes you so very happy?"

"Secret lover?" Derak scoffed. "You're deranged, boy, I haven't spoken to your Aunt Cathy in weeks. I do all of my communicating with her through our lawyers. I don't write her letters, I don't talk to her on the phone, I don't visit her. I do see Andrew on occasion, now that I have found him, and that's it."

Frank continued to slide forward, using the smooth surface of the car as a guide to get him away from his Uncle. He had no grandiose ideas about getting away, not with his bad leg, but at least he hoped to make it harder on his Uncle. Frank continued to listen to his Uncle's raspy, harsh, breathing and he hoped that Derak didn't have a heart attack before he told Frank where Joe was hidden. He grimaced again in pain when he landed wrong, and too hard, on his bad leg.

"Whatever my plans," Derak continued. "They are none of your business. They are nobody's business but my own. I have no interest in you, in your brother, in anyway, except getting as far away from all of you as I can. I will say that as many times as I can to get that through your head. You're supposed to be the smart one, Frank. Think about it."

"I've thought about it a lot," Frank said. "I thought about it when I was in the hospital getting over the little present you left at our house. I thought about it when I was out of the hospital and having nightmares about what you were doing to my brother. I even thought about it when we drove up here and it all comes together very nicely. You haven't gotten over whatever fixation you have of Joe and you probably never will. People like you don't change, Uncle Derak. You never do. Your sick little mind won't let you change."

"I went to jail for pedophilia, Frank," Derak said. "What interest would I have in a grown man like Joe?"

That, Frank thought with a frown, Is one of the points that I am having a hard time with but never mind all that. I know what I know. I feel what I feel.

"You haven't gotten over your fixation for Joe," Frank accused him. "He got away from you before you really got what you wanted from him. He was indirectly responsible for you being locked away from your family for ten years and you want him to know how that feels."

"Rationalizations for how you feel," Derak scoffed. "And all of it lies. I do not have any more interest in Joe. My interest in him died while I was in jail. Whoever took him, for whatever reason they took him, those are your problems. Go look elsewhere for him because I'm not your man. Have a nice life, Frank."

"You aren't going anywhere," Frank said. He didn't know if Derak was actually leaving or not. "Because I don't think my father or the FBI agents or the police are going to be too inclined to let you go."

Frank heard nothing but he felt something. His Uncle grabbed his arm and wrenched it up behind his back. Frank froze as he felt his heart climb up into his throat and strangle his breathing.

"It seems," Derak said in a still cold voice. "That I do have an interest in you after all, Frank. I have a lot of interest in you as a temporary hostage. If you cooperate, I won't rip your arm off and shove it down your throat. Now, let's go."

Frank had no intention of cooperating with his deranged Uncle and, in fact, pulled with all his might on the arm Derak held so tightly. Derak gripped him about the neck with his other arm, this time, Frank felt the cold grip of steel against his throat.

"Go ahead, Frank," Derak chided his nephew. "If I'm going to be cast as the perennial bad guy in your docudrama I might as well be the bad guy. I was willing to just get out of the way forever and never have to worry about you or anyone else but if this is the way it has to be, then this is the way it has to be."

He shoved Frank forward but never let go of the grip on Frank's arm. Frank grimaced in pain whenever he landed wrong on his bad leg, which was just about every other shove. He tried to squirm free of his uncle's vise-like grip but Derak never gave an inch and Frank couldn't get a good enough hit on his Uncle to force Derak to let him go. His uncle had a grip like a steel trap. Frank suspected if his knee didn't hurt so much or had more strength in it he might be an even match for his Derak but as it was, right now, he wasn't.

"Go on," Derak told him.

"I can't see where I'm going," Frank gasped breathlessly.

"You don't need to see where you're going," Derak said. "You're going where I take you, that should be simple enough to understand."

Oh no I'm not, Frank grimaced in pain. I'm not going to be a victim again and especially not to you, Derak!

One the next step with his good leg, Frank planted it, firmly and locked his knee so that he had all of his weight and his strength there as well. He knew his next move was going to hurt and hurt bad. In almost one move, and a move that his karate sensei would be very proud of, he grabbed Derak's arm quite firmly with his free hand, jerked, twisted and planted his very bad leg in Derak's side.

Frank's other leg twisted and he lost his balance and fell and his bad leg began to throb mercilessly but he continued to roll on the ground and came up on his feet, to take a karate stance once more. Derak didn't expect me to do that but now, Frank thought with grim determination. The ball is in his court.

The Loss PG