"Derak?"

Frank felt a cold chill fill him when he heard the name of his uncle, the same cold chill that swept through Frank every time he heard that name for the last nine and a half years. The name evoked nausea, fear, pain and such an anger that Frank felt his face heat and redden. He saw Joe's face, the haunted and lost look that took nearly six years to finally leave, the same look that came back on those few occasions when Derak's name was mentioned.

Derak.

Frank unclenched his fists when he realized he clenched his hands hard enough to make them ache. He shook his hands several times and stopped only when he felt a hand on his elbow. He grimaced and flashed his best rueful smile in the direction of - Sam?

"Where did you go, Frank?" Sam asked and Frank felt her loop one hand around his elbow. "You turned red and... you looked furious."

"Sorry," Frank meant it and he pulled her gently closer so he could hold her. "I'm sorry, Sam. I'm afraid I can get just as angry and upset about Derak as Joe does. I didn't mean to scare you."

"You didn't scare me," Frank heard the protest in her voice. "I was just so worried for you, for what I saw."

"He does that to all of us, Sam-Ann," Many said and her voice shook slightly. "He gets to all of us because of who he is and what he did."

Frank still felt nauseous, the memories evoked invaded despite his best attempts to forget. He rocked with Sam for a minute, unable, again, to speak. He forced himself back from the cliff of memories with the same thoughts. It's over, Frank. Derak can't touch Joe ever again. Joe's grown now, he's not a scared ten-year-old anymore. We're safe from him.

"Oh, God, Frank!" Samantha said in a breathless, slightly scared sounding voice. "Oh, Frank, oh God, you went away again! Talk to me, please talk to me, please, Frank."

Frank shook his head. "Not here, not in public. When the police are done. Then, ok?"

"All right," Sam said after a brief hesitation. Frank knew she was in no hurry to hear the story - Frank was in less of a hurry to tell it.

"Kids," Frank winced when Con - again - called them kids and a vision of himself at 80 and a hundred year old Con calling him 'kid' assaulted him. He chuckled, unable to help the amusement at the vision. Someone - Mandy most likely - nudged him, hard, in the ribs and he winced again.

"I wrote down your statements," Con said. "Mandy and Connor. Please read them over and if they match what you said, please sign your names at the bottom."

"Are you going to talk to my Uncle, Con?" Mandy asked as Frank heard the rustling of paper and the sounds of people opening and closing car doors. He also heard several news teams and a dull roar of questions being asked and answered.

"I can't talk about that here," Con said. "I will try to let you know, later, what our investigation turns up."

Con lowered his voice before he spoke again. "I'd keep my head down, Mandy. If this was meant for you, well, you be careful."

"I will," Mandy said and the rustling of paper was heard again and then faded.

"I'll go get the car," Connor said. "Let's see if we can sneak past the press."

"I'm all for that," Mandy agreed. "I'll get our Bibles and purses, Sam, if you'll help Frank."

"Sure," Frank felt someone he assumed to be Samantha grip his right bicep again and heard Mandy's heels clip-clap as she walked away.

"Some of the press are headed our way," Samantha said in Frank's ear. "Let's start walking to the car, Connor will be along in less than a minute."

Sam's calm relaxed Frank; she was more press-shy than he. More, he knew, due to her father than to any shyness; Samantha Ellington possessed the courage of a hundred lions. Samantha quickened their pace and told Frank they were veering slightly left to duck behind the ferns in front, then they had a clear shot to Connor's Blazer. Frank blinked and furtively wished he could just see! He sighed as they began to run as a cacophony of voices and questions were heard behind him and he nearly tripped. Samantha kept him on his feet by strength alone.

"Slide in!"

Samantha put his hand on the seat, his other hand on the door and he climbed up into the back seat. His visual memory kept him from bumping his head or tripping. Samantha muttered to herself as she pushed Frank further into the car and Frank heard car doors slam and Mandy tersely tell her boyfriend to go!

"Whew, they're like vultures swooping in just after you die," Mandy muttered. "You would think they'd have something better to do!"

"They don't," Connor said. "Arrows fired off at a church is big news, Mandy. I figured none of you wanted to talk to them."

"Too true!" Mandy said.

Frank leaned back and closed his eyes. Samantha squeezed his hand and he turned and flashed a smile in the direction where he knew she sat.

"Can you tell me, us, about Derak now?" Samantha asked.

Frank sighed and sat up and turned his face in the direction of the heat of the sun. His heart sped up at just the briefest thought of those events but he sighed and nodded.

"It all started the day I was first diagnosed with leukemia," Frank told them, though the last thing he wanted to do was rehash memories of either what Derak did to Joe or of the leukemia. He had promised though, and neither Connor nor Samantha would really understand until they knew the whole story. The Hardys' childhood friends, Chet, Biff, Tony and Phil knew a little but only because of the changes in all of them.

"I was eleven," Frank continued. "And Mandy and Joe just celebrated their tenth birthday.

"Their birthday, I remember, was the day I got so violently ill and was put into the hospital for tests. I was only in for a night and no one saw any reason for Joe to cancel his trip out to visit our cousin, Andrew. Joe talked constantly about it for a month and canceling it would not have been good. Many didn't want to go, she thought Uncle Derak's house a completely creepy place."

"I thought Derak was creepy," Mandy interrupted his story.

"True," Frank agreed.

It went without saying Frank's baby sister usually has good insight on people at first meeting.

"I remember I had to sit outside of the doctor's office while he talked to my folks and the nurse kept offering me soda and waters if it would keep me from worrying about what the doctor was saying to my parents. Then mom and dad came out of the office and mom's face was all white.

"I kept asking what was wrong," Frank continued. "I knew it wasn't good because dad squeezed me into a bear hug. We went back into the doctor's office and he explained to me that I had leukemia, what leukemia was and how they would have to treat it. I was certain that I was going to die. I remembered a classmate from first grade, Kyle something, died of leukemia and I begged to go and get Joe, I needed Joe."

Frank had to stop there for a minute because, even now, now years later, the feelings were too intense. Samantha put her arm around my shoulders and told him that he didn't have to tell her anymore, he could stop but he couldn't, not now, not that he had started.

"My parents decided the family needed to be together so we drove home and picked up Mandy. She was staying with our housekeeper, Mrs. Arnolds, then. That was before Aunt Gertrude came to live with us.

"We drove to Uncle Derak's - he has this huge house in Connecticut, about three hours away. The first hour was quiet. I could sometimes hear mom crying but I fell asleep for a while. I only woke up when Mandy kicked me, then she sat up and unfastened her seatbelt. She stood up and tugged on dad's shirt.

"'Daddy!'" she said. "'Someone is hurting Joe, daddy. We have to hurry. Please hurry!'"

"Dad told her to sit down but Mandy wouldn't," Frank remembered without wanting to. Mandy's eyes had been as large as saucers and she began rocking back and forth like she does when Joe is in some danger and she can't help. "She insisted - insisted - Joe was being very badly hurt. I remember Mom and Dad looked at each other, more curious than anything, but when we got to Uncle Derak's house, they made Mandy and I stay in the car. We normally didn't touch much, unless, of course, to hit each other but I remember we clung to each other. Mandy was sobbing and I didn't know what was going on.

"I don't really know how long we waited," Frank continued. He knew his voice was flat now, emotionless. It was the only way he could tell this story at all. If he tried to tell it any other way, he broke down halfway through. "It might have been five minutes or an hour but I couldn't wait any longer. I told Mandy to stay put, opened the door and ran up the stairs. I opened the front door into Derak's mansion and I heard screaming and yelling from above. I raced up one flight, then another, convinced Joe was dead."

Frank had to stop and he began shaking. He always did. Seven years of therapy and even if his reaction was a tenth of Joe's it was enough.

"Joe was huddled in mom's arms, crying, sobbing with tears. Andrew was lying on the bed. They were both naked except Joe had a blanket around him. Uncle Derak was on the floor and he was naked too and my dad was so furious I thought he was going to kill Derak. He had his phone out though and he told the police to come.

"Mom saw me then and I think she was going to tell me to get out first, before she realized she needed me. She told me to stay with Joe. So I sat and held him and he was shaking even worse than I had been when I found out about the leukemia. I didn't understand it then, not at all, what it all meant but Joe wouldn't let me touch him.

"The police came and finally they took Derak away and Mom and Dad took Joe and Andrew to the hospital."

Frank's voice shook.

"It was the first day I ever heard two words. Sodomy and rape. I don't think I was meant to hear them but I eavesdropped when the doctor spoke to mom, dad and Aunt Cathy. I looked them up when I got home.

"It was literally months before Joe and I went near each other. Him, because he didn't trust anyone but mom or Mandy to go near him and later me, because of the chemo, they couldn't let him near me, or Mandy, because of infection. And then, when the leukemia went into remission and we could touch, he hugged me and cried and said it was his fault. HIS fault I had been so sick because HE - HE - had been naughty with Uncle Derak! He was ten years old and he thought what Derak did to him - FORCED ON HIM - was his fault! I was sick when I heard it. I told mom and dad and after some intense therapy Joe finally believed it wasn't his fault - but I have never, ever forgotten or forgiven Derak for that - and I probably never will."

Frank leaned back in his seat again and heard Sam sniffling next to him and heard sobs from the front seat. Mandy had never before hard that part of the story, had never known Joe blamed himself. Something touched Frank's cheeks - a Kleenex from Samantha - and Frank wiped his tears again. Nobody said anything, could say anything, for the rest of the drive to the hospital.

Samantha Ellington trembled as she watched her boyfriend withdraw and turn inward, his defense mechanism against pain activated to shut out everyone and anyone. She held his hand as she worried her bottom lip between her teeth, her violet eyes closed as the unspoken emotions enclosed in the car washed over all of them. She did not know Derak Matthews but already she hated him intensely enough to want him back behind bars.

Samantha, pre-law student, knew what sodomy was, knew what it meant without a clinical or dry textbook explanation. Sodomy was the rape of a young boy, a minor, by an older man, a person defined as being of eighteen years-of-age or older. She knew it happened all over, had suspected upon first learning about 'Uncle Derak' only six weeks ago that one of his two counts of sodomy had... involved... Joe.

Nine years later and Joe's family and Joe himself were still healing. Samantha marveled at the courage that her friends had, the courage that made them the crime fighters that they were, the desire all of them had to seek out occupations to continue their detective work. Samantha sometimes wished she had half the courage that they did and yet, in her own way, she knew she did. She was not going into law to fight for the criminals but to fight the criminals. She full-well planned on being a DA someday, to be one of the people who prosecuted criminals and not one of the people who got them off.

Samantha squeezed Frank's hand and he sat up again and blinked, a sign that the stupor he fell into after telling the story was wearing off. He smiled at her and reached out a hand. He waved it until he came into contact with her cheek and he brushed his finger along her cheekbone, gently, in comfort.

"We're almost there," Connor said, finally breaking the silence in the car. "I'll drop you guys off at the front door and head out to pick up our order at Chezanne."

"Do you want me to go with you?" Mandy asked as she reached over to push Connor's hair off of his cheek.

"No," Connor shook his head as she kissed the back of Mandy's hand. "It won't take me too long and you should go in and be with Joe."

"All right," Mandy agreed and kissed him on the cheek as she slid out of her side of the Blazer. She stopped by Frank's door and waited until he climbed out himself, then led him around the Blazer to Samantha and passed him off. She raced through the front door of the hospital then and disappeared, leaving Samantha with Frank.

"I think you picked the wrong person to be Flash," Samantha told her boyfriend as she walked with him into the front doors. "I haven't seen her move so fast before."

"She wants to tell Joe about Derak before anyone else gets a chance," Frank said in a terse voice. "And before he sees anything on the news about it. If Joe even thinks Derak had something to do with the car that hit Vanessa, well, I wouldn't want to be in Derak's shoes. He's liable to go ballistic without waiting for any facts."

Samantha smiled, unable to help herself. "Uhm, Frank, love, that describes Joe pretty much any other time, doesn't it? He dives in head first and doesn't wait to see what the clearance is in the water below?"

"More like he doesn't notice that he's diving onto a plate of sheetrock," Frank murmured. "But Mandy will tell him and keep him calm doing it; if he finds out from the news or Con or someone else, he wouldn't listen to anyone later."

"It has to be all over about the arrows at church," Samantha said. "On the news I mean."

"Con won't have released any information though," Frank said. "On who fired the arrows or who is suspected to have fired the arrows, not yet at any rate. Nobody actually saw who shot the arrows."

"True," Samantha sighed. She was exhausted, just from listening to that story and she wished she hadn't opened that kettle of fish for Frank and Mandy. At least Joe had been spared having to hear it all again but to see Frank so fierce and so angry and so cold all at once had been something Samantha didn't ever want to see again. "I just hope they catch whoever did it, whether it's your Uncle or someone else."

"Me too," Frank agreed. Samantha led them into the waiting room and they sat down in some chairs there, while Samantha reflected that if she came to the room too many more times, she was going to ask to have it repainted and maybe put in a cappuccino machine. She leaned her head over onto Frank's shoulder while they waited for Mandy to come back.

Mandy felt sick to her stomach when she looked into the room where Vanessa Bender lay attached to more machines than Mandy knew existed, her life hanging on by a thread, possibly because of actions by her own Uncle. Mandy knew it was possible that Derak had nothing to do with any of this, that her own arrow fletching being used on arrows fired at her was a coincidence, but Amanda Nicole Hardy did not believe in coincidence. She did not believe in things happening by chance. They happened by reason, by design, by the nature of God looking down on the world and saying 'let it be so' in his best Jean-Luc Picard fashion.

Mandy remembered when she was only six years old her Uncle Derak showing her how to fletch her first arrow and showing her how to put a dab of paint along the edge of the feathers so that they were her own design, unique and original. They had picked out her silver paint that day and she had never changed it, even after all that happened with Joe, because she had made the design her own.

Mandy sighed and shook her head, her dark blue eyes filled with remorse for the still form of her best friend who lay on the bed. She seemed to lose best friends to car wrecks; she lost Iola Morton, her best friend in High school and Joe's girlfriend, to a car bomb meant for her brothers. Now Vanessa Bender, who had filled a hole in Mandy and Joe's hearts both lay on a bed, hanging onto her own life by the merest thread.

Mandy wished she had stopped to get something to drink but she was half terrified that she would find Joe already gone to track down their Uncle. She didn't want Joe going anywhere near Derak, did not want a return of nightly nightmares that would cause Joe to wake up screaming at night. Mandy very much did not want her twin to go through that agony and pain again that came whenever he remembered. He would always remember, though. They all would.

"Hi, big brother," Mandy said affectionately as she forced herself to step into the room and she went up behind Joe to hug him and kiss his cheek. "How is she?"

"No change," Joe said in a tired, sleepy voice. "But she's holding on, I guess that counts. She's so pale, though and... it's bad. It's very bad."

Mandy pulled up a chair beside her brother as Joe turned to look at her. She knew he saw the strain in her face and he took her hand for a minute in his own.

"What is it?" he demanded anxiously. "Did something else happen?"

Mandy nodded. "Someone show off some arrows today after church," she said. "That's what took us so long to get here. We were coming out of the church and Connor swears they were all aimed at me, only they went over our heads or beside us."

"Did anyone get hurt?" Joe was more anxious now and Mandy shook her head quickly to calm him.

"No, nobody else got hurt," Mandy said. "We're all fine. I just... I was with the police when they were gathering the arrows that were fired and they were all in my fletching pattern. The same color of silver paint I use."

Joe's face flushed more red.

"Joe, I want you to promise me you'll listen and you won't go flying off the handle. Vanessa needs you and she needs you to stay calm. I need you to stay calm. I want you to promise me, Joe!"

Joe took several breaths and unclenched his hands from the ends of the armrests and nodded.

"I know Uncle Derak showed me how to do that pattern," Mandy said. "But that's not any proof that he's had anything to do with any of this. Promise me you won't go after him, Joe."

Joe said nothing for a minute and Mandy wondered if she had been wrong in telling him but, no, she knew she had to be the one. He would listen to her, even if she had to tie him to a chair for a few days to make him listen.

"Promise me!" she said urgently.

"I promise," he said in a husky voice. "But, Mandy, if we do find out it was him, nothing's going to stop me this time."

"I'll hold your coat," Mandy said breathlessly and she leaned back in her chair. "All right, Connor is coming with some food and I think we should go down to the waiting room and eat. We'll tell the nurse to let us know if there are any changes, any changes at all."

"I'll stay with her," Mandy turned and saw Andrea at the door. Andrea shrugged out of her coat and draped it on the back of the chair Mandy sat in. "You two go eat and take a breather. Joe, I think you should get some fresh air. Take the food out on the patio."

Mandy nodded in agreement. Joe did need the fresh air and they would relax more outside.

The patio off of the second floor of the Hospital was a nice change of pace for all of them and the food from Chezanne had been kept warm and fresh. They sat at a picnic table off to one side, overlooking the only parking lot there, next to the parking garage. They ate in relative silence, their only discussion were not about the case but about school the next day and/or assignments in classes. They discussed whether to have the picnic at their house that night and agreed that they probably should, if only because it would be their only chance for all of them to get together with Biff and Tony for a while and Vanessa would want to know all about it when she woke up. Joe remained pensive and moody, his blue eyes often clouded up and he would look away from her.

They were about to go into the hospital again when Andrea Bender came running out onto the patio, her eyes wide with shock and she flung herself at Joe in hysterics.

"Mrs. Bender? What is it?" Joe asked. "What's wrong?"

"It's Vanessa," Andrea gasped out and Mandy took her other arm to keep her from falling if she passed out. "The doctor said she's slipped into a coma!"

The Loss PG