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01.
“Nancy—” Joe Hardy beams proudly, puffing out his chest like a kid presenting a rare beetle he found in his backyard. “I present to you my brother, Franklin Hardy!”
Nancy blinks at the figure sitting at the hotel room desk, hunched fastidiously over what looks like a microscope. The head, crowned in dark, slightly disheveled hair, moves intermittently from the lens to an open file, and there’s a pencil behind one ear.
Of course she’d known Joe Hardy had a brother; how can the international news be overtaken by incredible tales of cases solved by the Hardy Boys if there’s only one of them? What’s throwing her is the fact that Frank seems to hold none of his younger brother’s happy-go-lucky attitude, enthusiasm, or tendency to speak sentences. He hasn’t looked up from the setup on the desk, not even at Joe’s announcement of his name.
“Frank,” Joe repeats, without lowering his arms, “Hardy.”
When this yields no results, he leans toward Nancy with an apologetic look on his face and whispers, “I’m so sorry he gets like this sometimes will you excuse me for just one second thanks.”
He darts over to his brother’s shoulder and jabs him repeatedly in the side, whistling the way one would for a wandering dog. Frank mutters something, waving a dismissive hand.
Joe makes strangling motions at the air before swiping the file off of the desk and whacking Frank on the head with it.
“Joe!” Frank yelps, raising his arms to shield himself. “What’s the idea?! I said not now!”
“We’ve got a guest, dummy,” Joe retorts, hitting him once more for good measure. “Nancy Drew! The Nancy Drew! Are you deaf? I’ve been standing in the doorway talking to her for like an hour!”
“It’s just been about five minutes, actually,” Nancy says, stepping into the room and making sure to stand up straight. She preemptively offers her hand to Frank Hardy’s back. “Hello, I’m Nancy Drew. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I must say I’m very impressed with you and your brother’s work. Or, well, what I’ve read of it.”
“She hacked into our ATAC files and now she wants our help on a case,” Joe explains excitedly. “Us! The Nancy Drew wants help from us!”
Nancy has to admit that the admiration is nice. It’s more than she’s ever gotten in River Heights, anyway, but that’s going to change someday.
“Nancy who? Wait—she did what with our ATAC files?” Frank barks.
He whirls around in his chair—and narrowly avoiding crashing his face into Nancy’s hand.
He gives it a startled look before following the arm attached to it up to Nancy’s face. His eyes go wide.
“The, uh,” he says.
Joe is grinning. Now a little annoyed (because her name is Drew, not Who), Nancy brandishes her hand to remind Frank that it’s there.
“Hello,” she repeats, glaring at him.
Frank swallows noticeably before fumbling his own hand up to grasp hers and shake it, but he doesn’t break eye contact with her. Nancy’s learned to develop a high tolerance for penetrating stares and uncomfortable silences, what with her talent for posing the kinds of questions that often earn them, but she’s standing there noticing that Frank Hardy’s eyes are brown and steady and that his hand is warm and it makes something in her stomach give a single, pointed pinch, which concerns and perplexes her.
To shoo away the feeling, she quickly rifles through all possible exits and hiding places in the room, along with every way she could neutralize him in the event of attack. It helps a bit.
“Hello,” he replies in a quiet voice. “Sorry. I’m not…” He shakes his head dazedly. “Very good with, uh, with people. New people. What did you say you were? I mean, who?”
“A detective,” Nancy answers. “My name’s Nancy Drew. I’m from River Heights. Up the coast. I was hoping I could get your help on a case of mine. See, I found this map that might lead to a treasure, but there are notes in the margins in code, and I’ve tried just about everything—Caesar shift, substitution, transposition, frequency analysis, Kasiski examination… it’s getting me nowhere. Since the two of you just cracked that cipher in Bruges, I thought maybe you could help.”
Frank looks, for lack of a better word, dazzled.
“You… you know the Kasiski examination,” he says in wonder.
Nancy makes a face. “Of course I do.”
“Have you tried using a tabula recta?”
“It’s more complicated than any simple shift cipher.”
“How do you know?”
“This document was made in the 1700s. I’m sure whoever hid the treasure wanted to put more effort into keeping its location secret than just sticking it in a code that any amateur gold-digger could break with a little research.”
“1700s? Have you considered the possibility that it could be polyalphabetic?”
“I told you, I tried performing the Kasiski examination on it and it didn’t get me anywhere.”
“Vigenère wasn’t the only polyalphabetic cipher, it could be Alberti, if the person who hid the treasure wanted to use something less widely known.”
Nancy brightens. She likes him. “I hadn’t considered that!”
Joe’s eyes dart from Nancy to Frank and back to Nancy again, and something resembling realization starts to dawn on his face before he clears his throat and abruptly sticks his right arm between their faces, effectively startling them apart. Nancy blinks several times, her hand jerking back to her side.
“Well,” Joe half-yells, “that was a thing that happened! Now that we’ve all been introduced, how ’bout we discuss this potential Jersey Devil, huh? Yeah!”
“We—we aren’t talking about any Jersey Devil, we were never talking about a Jersey Devil,” Frank sputters.
Joe, demeanor unchanged, says, “How ’bout we discuss this case we were discussing? Yeah!”
The treasure is, of course, found, and Nancy almost dies, as usual, but Joe Hardy, in a fit of resourcefulness that Nancy admits she hadn’t expected, narrowly saves her. And Frank Hardy learns to think twice about doubting the credibility and capability of a girl in a skirt with a driver’s license and wilderness survival skills and a certificate in codebreaking from River Heights Community College (that she earned when she was fourteen). And Nancy buys them breakfast on the morning they get into their car to drive back to Bayport, and she can tell Frank is only ordering a coffee because he wants to look like a legitimate adult, and she remembers that when she and Joe had come hobbling back, covered in dirt, from the booby trap that had nearly crushed her under two tons of rubble, it had been the first time that she had seen the eldest Hardy brother smile.
It’s a smile worth remembering only due to its rarity. That is what she tells herself.
02.
“You’re going to be okay,” Frank reiterates, and through her dot-distorted vision, Nancy thinks she sees him lift a hand to her face, falter, curl his fingers in, and draw away again, back to examining the sliding puzzle on the cavern wall. “I’ll get us out, I promise. Just… just hang on.”
“Frank, I’m fine,” Nancy tries to tell him in an exasperated tone. She really has no idea if it comes out properly or not. It’s too cold to concentrate on forming syllables.
A blizzard and a broken ankle and a definite concussion don’t make a good combination, she now realizes, and while she’s grateful to Frank for knowing where to look for her, she does wish he’d brought Joe for backup, or at least known not to step on the one booby-trapped stone in the mountain tunnel to this Victorian-era thief’s hideout, because a room full of priceless jewels and thousands of dollars worth of gold ingots is largely useless when you discover it only to die alone of exposure and starvation.
She’s been out here hours longer than he has, mostly by virtue of figuring out the identity of the man incurring massive property damage in the nearby town with a fabricated Amarok (all in the interest of finding the loot himself—oh, it’s all very complicated; she’ll spare you the details) and going after him on her own, out of habit, or out of pride, or out of prideful habit—the point is that she’s freezing and exhausted and unable to walk and probably on the brink of slipping into a coma, and she’s starting to consider taking a vacation.
“Nancy?” Frank is shouting, and her name cracks in two on his tongue, dragging her out of her growing drowsiness. “Nancy, stay awake!”
“What do you care?” Nancy mumbles, or thinks so. “Six months ago, you… you didn’t even know who I am. Was. Am. You don’t… know me.”
His hands are most definitely on her face this time. She can tell because every time she’s encountered Frank Hardy’s hands, they’ve been warm, and her cheeks are no longer prickling with sharp cold, and she thinks she feels fingers skirt across her forehead to move her matted hair away.
“I know more than you think,” she thinks she hears him say. She fades out for a moment, and then comes back, shivering.
“Nancy, I promise, if you stay awake, you’ll be home in no time,” he tells her, his thumb coming to rest at the arch of her cheek. “I know how much it must pain you not to be figuring this slider out yourself, but you’re just going to have to trust me.”
“I trust you.” That comes out all right.
—
“So, crutches, huh?”
Joe blows out a commiserating breath, patting Nancy on the back and not the head because the head is currently wrapped in bandages. She’s propped up by pillows in her hospital bed and he’s standing next to her, looking intermittently from her Jell-O cup to the nature documentary playing (muted) on the TV screen over her bed.
“Tough break, Nancy. My condolences. I had to get crutches once when this Russian mobster busted my leg. It was kind of cool at first, because Aunt Gertrude brought me all my meals and I got to watch Law and Order reruns all day, but I share a room with Frank and he always guesses who did it and while I’m perfectly capable of doing that myself, I prefer being able to turn off the detection so I don’t ruin the surprise. Anyway, those crutches came in handy when I used them to hold up a collapsing mine shaft a couple weeks later. The point of this story is that you are a hero to us all, and that I’m grateful to you for making sure my brother remembers how having love-feelings works, since he’s normally the dictionary definition of emotionally-stunted-stick-in-the-mud, which I know isn’t in any dictionary anywhere ever, but.”
“Thanks, Joe,” Nancy says when he’s done, meaning it. Then she falters. “Wait. Making sure Frank remembers how having love-feelings works?”
Joe waves a hand. “I know you were in and out and stuff, but he carried you all the way here from that tunnel entrance and stayed up all night in here with you; I only just got him to go back to the hotel—he didn’t even want to give you over to the nurses when he got here; they only got you away from him when they promised to let him come visit you first, after your dad and your housekeeper, obvs. He’s pretty much got a cold now, so that’s going to be the worst, because Frank with a cold is greater than or equal to Joe with a mad desire to run into oncoming traffic, but now that he knows you’re gonna be okay, he’s finally sleeping, at least—”
Nancy stares at him, eyes protuberant, cheeks heated, telling herself that the reason her head suddenly feels so weightless is because she’d been struck with a baseball bat only a day and a half prior.
The longer she watches him, the more uncomfortable Joe starts to look, until his jaw slackens and the color drains from his face and he squeaks, “He did… not tell you any of this. Which means you did not know. Which means he did not want you to know. Which means I am dead.”
Instantly, he moves to recover. “You see, Nancy, my brother Frank is very much concerned with the human race at large. He’s an empathic soul, dedicated to helping those in need, sharing pain with those who are already in it. He’s only lost sleep because he’s been worried you’d sue him if you went into a coma because he didn’t solve the slider puzzle—or, wait—or, no…”
“Joe, I’m… a little tired,” Nancy murmurs in the midst of his scrambling.
“Oh,” Joe says, suddenly solemn. “Oh, sure. I’ll get going, then. Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
She levels him with a dry look. “If I’m not, I’m sure the fully staffed hospital of trained surgeons and EMTs will take good care of me.”
Joe gives her a thumbs up. “Right.”
03.
“Hello,” Frank greets the program director, offering a subdued smile and a hand for shaking. “I’m Franklin, and this is my girlfriend, Carolyn.”
Nancy does not know why the point of investigation in this case of kidnapping and theft had to be a popular couples retreat. She does not know why she could not have gone undercover with Ned. Or, well, actually, she does, and it’s because Ned, bless his heart, once tried to iron her swimsuit for her. And also because Ned is not an experienced amateur detective.
“You guys are gonna have to be convincing or they’re going to suspect something,” Joe had said over the disposable cell phone he’d given Frank to use on the retreat that he and Nancy are infiltrating. “I’m talking, like, mega-convincing. Like kissing all the time and sleeping in the same bed and sharing a toothbrush.”
“Joe!” Frank had choked out, sounding disgusted. Nancy had tried not to bristle at his tone (although she realizes, later, that it had only been due to Joe’s suggestion of sharing toothbrushes).
“What? I’ve been watching a lot of romcoms, all right; it’s the only thing on!” (Joe is in crutches again.) “So listen. I’ve been hacking into the info files on all the other couples on this retreat thing, and I did a background check on the director dude. It doesn’t look like Lloyd Werther is his real name, because it’s not turning up anything except for some credit card info in the past eight months. He might change it for every retreat, which would make sense, since participants aren’t allowed to do repeats. Also, the people in the hotel room next door to you, the Smythes? First of all, totally British, in case that wasn’t obvious; but more importantly, the wife, Linda, has some major gambling debts all over Europe. Could be a motive for kidnapping richies. And—ooh, commercials are over! Call back later!”
Presently, Lloyd Werther, or whatever his name may be, shakes Frank’s hand stoutly, clearing his throat. He’s bald, and wiry, and his eyes dart around, and he smiles too much. Nancy squints at him.
“Pleasure to have you aboard,” he tells Frank. “I’m looking forward to helping you and your fiancée iron out the rough patches in your relationship that have brought you to us today. How long have you been together?”
Frank glances over at Nancy, who nods. Slowly, with painstaking care, Frank slips his arm around her and rests his hand on her hip, and she steps closer to him, simpering at Werther, who seems to approve of the casual contact.
“Two years,” Frank answers.
“And twelve days,” Nancy adds in a chipper tone. She beams brightly up at Frank, but steps just slightly out of his hold—the retreat is for couples on the brink of ruin, and looking too happy or healthy might draw suspicion. Surely he knows that.
Frank’s fingers graze across the fabric that hangs loose at the small of her back. She remembers the sensation vividly when she steps out of the bathroom that night after taking a shower and Frank gives her a strange look, all furrowed brows and an agog mouth, like he’s poised on the very edge of telling her something dire and important, but finds the slope of her exposed shoulders distracting.
Linda Smythe’s husband, Donald, has much larger debts than his wife does, and he’s also a bigamist, so it turns out that he’s the one who’s been engineering the kidnappings, under the guise of the retreats, each time appearing with a different woman and therefore skirting the rules about repeated attendance.
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to calculate the remainder of your debts in prison,” Nancy tells him triumphantly when she and Frank have him cornered.
“Bitch,” Smythe spits.
Because it’s the only appropriate response to that sort of thing, Nancy steps forward and punches him in the face. It knocks him against the wall until he’s doubled over, cursing and clutching his nose.
“You’re amazing,” Frank breathes.
Nancy brushes her hands off and turns her head over her shoulder, not having heard him. “Hm?”
“Good job, I said.” That time, he buys her breakfast.
04.
“You again?” Deirdre’s perpetually contemptuous voice has been crackling out of Nancy’s phone so frequently over the past two hours that it seems to belong to it now. “What’s going on now?”
The words come out loud and urgent and there’s a desperate pitch to them that Nancy hadn’t wanted: “Frank isn’t answering his phone.”
“Yeah, shocking as it may seem, boys do tend to do that when the only thing you ever talk to them about is theft and murder and, like, that time you almost got burned alive in a toolshed.”
“Deirdre, you don’t understand; he’s about to confront a suspect in his case with some evidence he found, but I’ve just finished talking to someone who implicated that suspect in the murder! I have to get ahold of him; if I don’t, he could be—”
She cuts herself off, and it feels strange, doing that, because she’s normally so unruffled by things like worst-case scenarios and walking into traps and theorizing the end results thereof. She grips the phone more tightly and her hand starts to shake.
“I don’t know what to do,” she grits out, in a thick and shuddering voice that feels out of place in her throat. She’s never had to admit such a thing in her life. She doesn’t like it. “I know there has to be something, but I-I… I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
“Whoa, okay, please don’t, like, up and cry on me,” Deirdre says. “Listen up, Drew. Pull yourself together and call him again. Leave him a message or something; maybe he’s not picking up because he’s driving. Call the cops in the area where he is and explain the situation. Call his brother, too, duh. This is all super basic stuff, girl genius; what’s the deal?”
“I’m—I don’t know,” Nancy says again.
There’s a beat of potent silence, and then Deirdre inhales sharply in a very epiphany-like manner that makes Nancy’s jaw clench.
“Oh, my God; you like him,” Deirdre exclaims, but her voice is hushed instead of triumphant, and Nancy, before her brain starts to deny it, immediately thinks that the statement is too juvenile for whatever it is that’s causing the bile to rise in the back of her throat.
She gulps it down and scrubs a palpitating hand over her face, dragging it to a halt over her eyes and chuffing out a strained breath through her nose.
“I don’t know,” she croaks.
“Okay.” Deirdre sighs. “Nancy? Listen to me. It’s going to be fine. And if you tell any living being that I just referred to you by your first name and comforted you, I’ll make it my number-one priority to put untraceable poison in that chocolate you’re always gorging yourself on.”
(And things really must be falling apart, because in that second, Nancy feels convinced that Deirdre Shannon is her friend.)
“Get the heck off the phone with me and call him again. And if he survives whatever’s going down, which I am sure he will, since you detective weirdos have some kind of fate-resistance to anything perilous, get off your crime-solving robot mode and tell him you want to investigate dangerous curses with him for the rest of your life. I assume that’s romantic in Freak-Land. And I’m not just saying this because of my long-standing plan to move in on your ex-boyfriend, although that definitely contributes. I’m going to hang up now, and if you haven’t saved his life and made out with him by the time I call you back, I am legit going to despise you for all eternity. Bye!”
Nancy doesn’t give the universe any room for vacillation; her thumb slams down on Hardy, Frank in her contacts list and her eyes rake over the contact photo of him smiling awkwardly at the camera with one hand shielding his face from the sunshine. Every pulse of the dial tone clubs her in the eardrum. She starts, frantically, to pace her bedroom, hating her inability to teleport herself to the other side of the country where headlines like body of famed detective found in woods culprit evades authorities blunt force trauma might be trailing black lines along newspapers in the morning, hating the sick feeling starting to overtake all the parts of her that she only ever uses for solving puzzles and unlocking doors.
“Frank,” she blurts out in a rush, her mouth moving ahead of the stuttering movements of her brain, “Frank, it’s Nancy; get out of there; I spoke to the witness and looked at the data you sent me and it’s him; don’t go talk to him; he’ll know, and you need to come back here, all right, you need to think about Joe and you need to think about your father and I know you know what you’re doing, so don’t you dare pretend you don’t; you don’t make mistakes, do you hear me, and I swear, I swear, if you do not answer this phone right now—Frank—please, Frank, just be all right; I… I need you to be all right; that’s the only thing I ask; just come back all right so I can—tell you… Frank, there’s something—you were right about me, you were right all along, and I’m sorry, but I’m still n-no good at these—”
Message length exceeded.
“Relationship talks,” she shouts into the receiver, the only part that matters, and she’s winded, slumped against the wall by her shoulder, her eyes wrenched shut.
To finalize this message, press pound. To erase it, press star, or hang up.
Nancy breathes. Thunder roils in the dark clouds outside her window. The steadfast ticks of the clock on her bedside table tempt her heart into steadying itself. And she wishes there was a monster, somewhere, for her to identify as just a hologram; she wishes there was a lock to pick or a liar to condemn or a secret passageway in a wall leading her to a mystery less frightening than the mystery of why the edges of her eyelids are wet.
She bites her lip back and hangs up the phone and dials Joe’s number.