Blood Relations (5 page)

Frank swallowed hard. So it was true. Mr. Rawley was tied up with the crooks.

But—then again, maybe he wasn't. Maybe the guy was lying. That would be one way of concealing who was running this show.

Joe was shaking his head in disbelief. He had believed so strongly that Walter Rawley was innocent that nothing short of hard evidence would convince him of Rawley's guilt. Hard evidence was what they had to find. But first they had to figure out a way to stay alive long enough to look for it.

"You're trying to tell us that our stepfather is mixed up with you?" Frank said scornfully. "Who do you think you're talking to? We're young, but not dumb."

"Save your fairy tales for bedtime, bonzo." Joe added.

The man in the white T-shirt answered sarcastically. "Hey, sorry. I didn't realize I was dealing with such cool customers. Looks like I have to find somebody you will believe. Fortunately, I got the perfect person. Come on, wise guys."

He gestured to the gunman to follow with Frank and Joe. "This way. Down the hall," he commanded.

Down the hall another gunman stood guard in front of a metal door.

"Open it up, Jack. We got two more guests."

Jack unlocked the door, and the first gunman said, "Okay, kiddies, in you go. And no funny business. I'd just as soon squeeze this trigger now as later. The only reason you're still alive is that I have my orders."

Frank was expecting to see her, and so was Joe. There was only one person who could be in that candlelit room.

Linda Rawley.

The chic red dress she was wearing hung in a mass of wrinkles. Her blond hair was disheveled, her makeup smudged. And there was terror in her blue eyes.

"Hey, lady, you got visitors," the gunman said from the doorway. "Your own darling little boys. Aren't you going to thank me for arranging this nice little family reunion?"

Linda Rawley's mouth literally dropped open when she saw Frank and Joe. It took her a moment to find her voice, and when she did, it was high and pinched. "What is this? Some kind of a joke?"

"No joke," the gunman assured her. "You told us how close you are to your sons, so we figured you'd want to be with them."

By now Linda Rawley had gotten control of herself. Her voice was strong as she said, "What are you talking about? These aren't my sons. They're Frank and Joe Hardy, two kids my sons know."

"What the — " Gap-Tooth said. Then he paused, and his voice filled with contempt. "You aren't fooling me, lady. You're playing out of your league trying to outfox us."

"And I tell you these aren't my boys—thank God," said Linda Rawley defiantly. "You people have fouled up." She turned to the Hardys. "Frank, Joe, do you have anything that might convince these idiots?"

"But—" Frank started to say.

"Believe me, I know what I'm doing," Linda Rawley pleaded softly. "I'll explain later. But right now, do what I say, please. Show these men who you really are."

There was no arguing with the desperation in her voice, in her eyes.

"Okay if we reach in our back pockets for our wallets?" Frank asked.

The man shrugged. "Okay, but do it slow. Remember, there are two guns on you."

Frank and Joe were careful to obey orders. Then, while Jack held his gun on them, the first gunman and the muscle-bound guy went through the wallets, examining the Hardys' driver's licenses and other ID.

"Look real—but I have to check it out," the man said. "Meanwhile, you can keep breathing until the boss tells me how, when, and where you stop."

He turned to Jack and said, "I'm giving the boss a call. Lock up, and stay awake guarding the door. We can't afford a slip-up."

"What about that, I almost forgot to give them back," he said sarcastically. "But maybe I ought to hold on to them for safekeeping. You're in a real bad neighborhood, you know. Full of people who'd slit your throat for a buck." He grinned at his own joke, then added, "While you're at it, you kids better empty out your pockets and toss me what's in them. I wouldn't want you having anything that could get you into trouble."

The Hardys had no choice but to obey. The men looked over the coins and keys they tossed out. The gorilla held up a prize to the flickering candlelight. "A Swiss army knife. That's a bad-die. A toy like this could give you kids all kind of dangerous ideas."

Pocketing the loot, he walked out of the room, followed by the other two. The door was slammed and the metal vibrated like distant thunder. Finally a bolt was thrown with a loud click.

Joe stared at the door. "A month's allowance," he said mournfully.

"Forget it. There's nothing you can buy in here," said Frank. He turned to Linda Rawley, waiting for an explanation.

"If they thought you were really Greg and Mike, we'd all be dead within the hour." "Why? What do you mean?" asked Joe. "That's complicated," Mrs. Rawley said. She motioned for them to join her by the room's only window, which was covered over with one piece of sheet metal. She said to them in a low voice, "I don't want anyone listening from the other side of the door."

"Good," Frank whispered back. "But we've got to be even more careful."

Each took one side of the room and checked the floors, walls, and ceiling for any sign of an electronic bug.

When they were finished, Frank said, "Looks like the room is clean. I think it's safe to talk as long as we whisper."

"Then I'll begin at the beginning of this nightmare," said Linda Rawley. "Walter and I decided to remodel the bedroom — enlarge the closets, repaper, things like that." She stared off for a moment, as if she was seeing another, happier time. "When the workmen were ripping out what had been Joanne's—Walter's first wife's—closet, they found this little red book in an envelope at the back of a shelf in a corner of the closet. The book turned out to be Joanne's diary."

"It must have been there for a long time," said Frank. "She died in that car accident years ago." "The first entry was made a year before she died. Anyway, it's hard to resist reading a diary. I couldn't, at least. The first entries weren't very interesting, and I was about to stop reading. Then she began to write about Walter's recent activities. He was staying out late, making secretive phone calls, leaving the house at all hours. The first thing she suspected was another woman. But it wasn't that. It was worse." Linda Rawley paused and looked down at her hands. "A lot worse."

Frank and Joe glanced at each other. What had he been into? Drugs? Gambling? Embezzlement? "Piece by piece Joanne Rawley put together the puzzle," Linda Rawley said. "It looked like Walter was involved with foreign intelligence agents. They had given him the money to start his electronics firm, and as the company got more and more top government contracts, he was repaying them with super-classified technical information."

"Did Joanne report this to the authorities?" asked Frank, thinking it couldn't be true that Walter Rawley was a spy.

"She was going to—when she was absolutely sure of what she suspected," Linda Rawley said. "But she hadn't enough hard evidence to confirm her suspicions, and she loved her husband too much to accuse him without positive proof that he was guilty." Linda Rawley swallowed hard. "She never did get the evidence she was looking for. The diary ended abruptly—with one last terrifying entry ..." Her voice trailed off. "What was it?" asked Frank gently. Mrs. Rawley took one deep breath and began.

"Joanne had a habit of tying a thin, almost invisible thread around the metal catch of her diary, to make sure that no one found it in her drawer and read it. In her last entry she wrote that the thread had been snapped, and that she was afraid, horribly afraid, that someone had read it. She was even more afraid of who that someone was. Her husband—Walter. That was why she hid the diary—in case something happened to her." Linda Rawley shook her head, and her voice was as chill as death. "That last entry was dated the day of Joanne's car accident — the accident that ended her life."

"And you think—?" asked Joe. He didn't have to finish the sentence. What else was there to think?

Frank finally broke the silence. He tried to get the conversation back to the dangers of the present. "So what did you do when you read the diary?"

"Nothing." Linda Rawley sighed. "You see, I loved Walter too. So I decided to wait until I was sure, one way or another. I'm sure now, but now it's too late."

"I'm still confused, Mrs. Rawley," Frank said. "Who do you think did this to you?"

"I—I don't see any other explanation," Linda Rawley stammered. "The only person who could have had me kidnapped was my husband. I knew I was in trouble when he came home unexpectedly and found me rereading Joanne's diary. I shoved it into my purse quickly and tried to tell myself that he hadn't noticed. He said nothing about it. I know now how foolish that was of me. I found out when those men kidnapped me. The first thing they showed me was the diary that someone had stolen from my safe. All they wanted to know was if I told anyone what I found. They promised to hurt me unless I told them." Linda shuddered. "It was then that I came up with the lie that saved my life—for the time being, anyway."

"And that was?" asked Joe.

"I think I know already," said Frank. "You told them that you had let Greg and Mike in on the secret. That's why you didn't want them to think we were your sons. Otherwise they would have killed us all. But with Greg and Mike still free, they can use us to force Greg and Mike to keep quiet.

Linda Rawley nodded. "You've figured out everything. Everything, except that I didn't tell them that my sons had the information. I told them that I had made a photocopy of the diary. Greg and Mike were to pick up the copy if they found out I met with any kind of fatal accident."

"You're pretty fast when you need to be," Frank commented.

"It's amazing how fast you can think when you're facing death," Linda Rawley observed.

"I hope you're right," said Joe, looking around the room for a way to escape. "Because it'll be really amazing if we get out of this place alive."

LINDA RAWLEY SHOOK her head in despair. "I haven't been able to think of a way out of here," she said softly. "We're caged in. Four solid walls — the only window sealed—and a guard right outside the only door. I feel like a rat in a trap."

"Except that it's the rats who have us in a trap," said Frank, his eyes slowly taking in all the walls — all four corners.

The room was bare except for the solitary candle standing vigil in the center.

"I've been here for over twenty-four hours— and I'm being driven slowly mad," Linda Rawley groaned. In frustration she slammed the palm of her hand against the sheet-metal covering the window. The sound bounced off the four walls and echoed faster and faster for a couple of seconds until it stopped.

Suddenly Frank was alert. "Hey, do that again," he said, excitement in his voice. "No, on second thought, don't. I'll do it. Mrs. Rawley, can I borrow your scarf?"

"Of course," she said, picking up the light silk scarf that had been lying on the floor and handing it to Frank.

"It'll muffle the noise," he explained, wrapping it around his hand. Making a fist, he hit the sheet metal close to one side of the window. No reverberation that way.

"That's what I thought," he said, peering at it closely. "Look, it's coming loose. Now if we just had something to dig the nails out."

"As a matter of fact, we do," said Joe. With the flourish of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, he pulled his Swiss army knife from his pocket.

Frank's face lit up in an appreciative smile. "Nice job of palming it."

"Nothing that any other brilliant, resourceful, and talented guy couldn't do," said Joe, prying the metal up. "The nails are coming away nice and easy."

"It's an old building and the wood frame must be rotten," said Frank.

Joe hummed the tune "I Love New York" as he gave the sheet metal one hard tug. He quickly laid his palm against the center to deaden the vibrations. It swung far enough away from the window to leave them the space they needed to exit.

"Good thing we're on the ground floor. Ladies first," Joe said, instinctively stepping aside to let Linda Rawley out. Then he reconsidered. "I'd better lead the way to see if these rats have guards outside."

He boosted himself up and over the window ledge and dropped soundlessly onto the concrete alley. "The coast is clear. Come on out. It's a beautiful night," he whispered back in.

It was a beautiful night, Frank thought. If you craned your neck to look up at the slit of starlit sky high above the dank alley that the window opened onto.

But the three of them didn't stand still long enough to stargaze or take in the garbage-scented air.

They started moving soundlessly toward the the end of the alleyway, and when they reached it they looked back to the left and saw something that made them sprint silently off in the opposite direction.

Someone was guarding the front of the building. They didn't wait to see who. Just as they thought they had gotten away clean, Frank stumbled into a hubcap lying buried under a newspaper.

Behind them the man shouted. Suddenly bullets were whizzing near them, chipping showers of brick off buildings and ricocheting off wheel-less abandoned cars. The man had a silenced automatic weapon. As he ran Frank wondered why he bothered with a silencer. There was no one to hear the gunfire in this neighborhood.

They tore around a corner, praying that the gunman would be as slow in chasing them as he was bad at shooting them.

Suddenly a pair of headlights caught them in a white shaft of light, blinding them like deer on a highway.

They came to a stumbling halt, almost tripping over one another as the car skidded to a stop not three feet from them.

They all held their breath, forgetting to exhale. To have escaped and then to be captured so quickly seemed so unfair.

"Hop in. Quick."

It was Greg! With him in the front seat of a car they couldn't identify was Mike. And holding the back door open was Callie.

No time for questions. Joe shoved Mrs. Rawley into the backseat before he and Frank dove in and pulled the door shut. The car shot into motion, made a screeching U-turn, and headed out of the neighborhood through deserted streets.