Secret of the Red Arrow (8 page)

“You mean the triangle with legs?” Joe asked.

“The wha—?” Our father stopped himself and laughed, seeming to get it. Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the smile was gone. “I’m serious, boys. This is very, very serious business. Some things are best left alone. Uninvestigated. Do you understand? And one of those things is the Red Arrow.”

Joe looked at me.
The Red Arrow
, he mouthed. So the triangle with legs had a name.

And our father knew it. And didn’t want to talk about it.

Which, for Fenton Hardy, was pretty unusual.

“But, Dad, if the Red Arrow exists,” I said, “and it’s that terrible—so terrible that no one can even hear you talking about it—shouldn’t someone do something about it?”

Dad looked at me. Hoo-boy. This look was even worse than the Laser Gaze. This was the Son, I’m Disappointed in You, But I’m Going to Let My Eyes Do the Talking Gaze.

“Well, Son,” he said calmly, “you’re assuming that someone hasn’t already tried.”

I took that in. My mind was reeling with questions: Does
that mean . . .? Is he saying . . .? But before I could decide whether even one of them was safe to ask, we were interrupted by loud, tinny music.

“Hit me baby one more time . . . !”

Joe sat up and reached into his pants pocket, yanking out his phone. “I like the classics,” he told me sheepishly as he clicked the talk button. “Hello? Yeah, this is he . . . Yeah . . . No, that’s . . . Oh no. Oh, man. Okay. Yes.”

He clicked off the phone and looked up at Dad and me. “Um,” he said awkwardly, “well, thanks, Dad, and point taken. Listen, I think I need to talk to Frank.”

Dad nodded and waved us out of his study. “All right, I need to get back to this chapter. Remember what I said, boys.”

We assured him that we would and stepped out of the study. Joe closed the door behind us and turned to me with a frantic expression.

“That was Sharelle,” he whispered urgently. “Neal was hit by a car today. He’s in the hospital!”

H
OSPITALS ARE NOT HAPPY PLACES UNDER
the best of circumstances, but when we spotted Sharelle in the lobby of the Bayport Memorial ER, we knew something big was up. Her face was streaked with mascara-y tears, and she was clinging to her cell phone like it was her only friend in the world.

“Frank! Joe!” she cried when she saw us come in. We ran over to her.

“What’s going on?” Frank asked urgently.

Sharelle shook her head. “Oh, gosh,” she breathed, closing her eyes. A couple more tears squeezed out of the corners, following the trails down her cheeks. “I don’t know exactly, except that Neal was hit by a car downtown. It was
going fast for the city, and he was unconscious when he came in. The hospital called our house, and I was the only one home. My parents are on their way from work in the city. The doctors are working on Neal now.” She paused, then swallowed and squeaked, “I hope he’s okay.”

“I’m sure he will be, Sharelle,” I said, putting my arm around her. I didn’t know at all, of course, but I know a person who needs comfort when I see one. I glanced at Frank over Sharelle’s head. His expression was as grim as I felt.

Someone had hit Neal with a car? After he’d gotten beat up last night? It couldn’t be a coincidence.

We sat down in the uncomfortable plastic chairs that every hospital must buy from the same catalog. Sharelle was sniffling, digging soggy tissues out of her pocket and swiping at her eyes. Frank pulled a handkerchief—yeah, a handkerchief, he gets it from our dad—out of his pocket and handed it to her. Sharelle thanked him and pressed it to the corners of her eyes.

“Sharelle,” Frank said in what I knew was his gentlest tone, “can you tell us what really happened last night?”

Sharelle sobbed, pressing the handkerchief to her eyes and then slowly, with shuddering breaths, calming herself. “I’m so sorry, you guys,” she said, looking up at Frank and then me. “I know we put you in a really bad spot.”

“You can make it up to us by telling us the truth,” I suggested.

She took a deep breath. “Right. The truth.” Rubbing the
handkerchief between her fingers, she stared down at it and started talking. “It was the police sirens that woke me up. By the time I got out of bed, the police were already at the door, talking to my parents. I didn’t hear those guys break in or start beating up Neal. I wish I wasn’t such a heavy sleeper. . . .”

She trailed off and stopped. Frank and I just watched her patiently, and a few seconds later she began again.

“As I walked out into the hall, Neal’s door opened. He looked awful. Beat up, but more than that, more scared than I had ever seen him. Ever.” She looked from Frank to me. “You guys are brothers. You know . . . when you grow up with someone, you see them at their best and their worst.”

“You mean you’d seen him scared before,” Frank said.

She nodded. “Right,” she said. “Like, he hates roller coasters. Or you should have seen him when we rented
Paranormal Activity
. . . .” She shook her head. “Terrified. But this was way worse than that. This was like . . . he’d seen the ghost from that movie right in his bedroom. Like he’d seen the worst thing he could possibly imagine, and nothing could scare him worse.”

I looked at Frank. It probably goes without saying, but that level of fear did not sound like it was caused by a football players’ prank.

“I asked him what had happened,” she said. “I was really worried about him. The police were there. I knew it had to be serious.”

Frank nodded. “What did he say?”

She stopped and took in a breath, shaking her head. “He just said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ ” She looked at me. “Can you believe that? Of course I was like, ‘What?’ and he said it again, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ ” She paused and bit her lip before continuing. “Then he took me by the shoulders,” she said. “He looked me right in the eyes, and I could see how terrified he was. He said, ‘Sharelle, if you care about me at all—don’t worry about it. Okay?’ ”

I frowned. “So what did you do?” I asked.

Sharelle shrugged and looked at me again. “What could I do?” she asked. “I was really freaked out. I said okay. And then Neal said that no matter what happened, I had to back him up, and I said I would. I had never seen him like that.”

I looked at Frank. I knew that he, too, was thinking about the conversation we’d just had with our dad.
Some things are best left alone.

It seemed like Neal Bunyan certainly believed that. Even as terrible things were happening to him. What scared him—and Professor Al-Hejin, and my dad—so much? What could be worse than someone sneaking into your house in the middle of the night and beating you up?

As I was pondering this, a nurse came over. “Miss Bunyan,” she said, gently touching Sharelle’s shoulder, “your brother is resting in a room and ready to see you now.”

Sharelle jumped up, turning back to gesture for Frank and me to follow her. “Let’s go.”

The nurse gently stopped her. “I’m sorry, it’s immediate family only.”

Sharelle stopped and regarded the nurse. She was, as I might have implied previously, not someone who was easily dissuaded. “These are my brothers,” she said simply.

The nurse looked from Sharelle—who resembled a red curly-haired fireplug—to serious, dark-haired Frank, to me. I have been told I look like a young Owen Wilson without the nose. And with a chin. Which I guess means I don’t look much like Owen Wilson at all. But anyway, my point: I don’t look all that much like Frank, and neither one of us looks anything like Sharelle.

The nurse seemed to get this, but as quickly as she registered it, I could see that she was making a decision not to ask. “Okay,” she said, and smiled sympathetically at all of us. “Please come with me.”

Neal was already set up in a shared room on the third floor, but the other bed was empty. He looked bad. His right leg was in traction, he had a jagged, stitched-up cut along his right arm, and he had two black eyes. The right side of his face was all scraped up, like he’d been dragged along the street.

Looking at him, all I could think was,
Ouch
.

“Neal!” Sharelle cried, running right to his side.

Neal looked happy to see her for just a few seconds before his eyes turned to Frank and me, and his expression darkened. “What are these two doing here?”

Sharelle gave her brother a frank look. “Neal, come on. I’m not playing around anymore. You could have been killed today.”

Frank stepped forward. “Look, Neal, if someone is after you, don’t you think you should tell someone about it?”

Neal glared at him. “It was an accident,” he said stiffly.

Sharelle looked at him in disbelief. “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “After what happened last night, you expect me to believe this was random?”

Neal looked away. “I don’t care what you believe,” he said. “It was an accident. Just an accident.”

There was silence for a little while, and in that silence I had an idea. “Hey,” I said, turning to Sharelle, “how old were you when you and Neal got into arrowheads?”

Sharelle looked at me like I was out of my mind. “What?”

Frank caught my eye and nodded. “You know,” he said, stepping forward. “When you painted that little figure above Neal’s bedroom door? It looked like . . .” He gestured to me. I grabbed a notepad that was on the nightstand and started drawing, pushing the pad toward Sharelle when I finished.

Her jaw dropped.

“The Red Arrow?” she asked, turning toward Neal, who was already gesturing for her to lower her voice. “You got Red Arrowed and you weren’t going to tell me?”

Neal shook his head. “
Shhhh!
Keep quiet, Sharelle.”

“I’m not going to keep it quiet!” Sharelle glared down at him. “You know how freaking serious this is, Neal!”

Neal sighed and looked at his sister. It was clear from his expression that he did, indeed, know how freaking serious this was.

“Um,” I said, raising my hand like I was in class. “Not to interrupt, but Sharelle, could you explain to us how freaking serious this is?”

She looked at me, unamused. “Come on,” she said in a low voice. “You guys have lived in Bayport your whole lives, haven’t you?”

I looked at Frank, who nodded. “More or less,” he agreed.

“Then how do you not know about the Red Arrow?” she asked.

I sighed. “I’m realizing that we may be the last people in town who don’t know,” I admitted.

“But no one will talk about it,” added Frank.

Sharelle looked grim. She seemed to be gearing up to tell us what she knew, but before she could begin, Neal broke the silence.

“It’s like a curse,” he said weakly, staring out the window. “It’s been around forever. Nobody knows where it comes from or who’s behind it. But if you find the mark of the Red Arrow on your stuff, your life is basically over.”

Over? I looked at Frank. “You mean, they’ll kill you?”

Neal didn’t respond for a moment. “No,” he said finally, “or I mean, not necessarily. Maybe your business will dry up. Maybe your boss will fire you the next day. Maybe the love of your life will suddenly decide she needs to move to Reno
to find herself.” He stopped and looked over at us. “Maybe a couple of masked guys will break into your house and beat you up. Or maybe someone will plow into you with their car while you’re crossing with the light.”

I frowned, confused. “That seems like pretty serious stuff,” I said. “Why not report it to the police?”

Neal scoffed. “The police!” He shook his head. “Everyone who’s ever reported it to the police . . . something worse happens to them before the police can do anything.”

“You mean someone on the police force is in their pocket?” Frank asked.

Neal shrugged. “Maybe.” He paused. “I don’t know how far up this thing goes, but nothing would surprise me. The police. Firefighters. City officials. This has gone on forever, and sometimes it stops for a few years, but it never goes away.”

Hmm. I was still taking all this in. Neal was basically telling me about a criminal organization that had been operating right under our noses for our entire lives. Was it possible that the Red Arrow had always been part of Bayport, and somehow escaped Frank’s and my notice?

“Neal,” Sharelle said, “why do you think this is happening to you? What did you do to tick someone off?”

Neal sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve been trying to think about it. The only possibility I can come up with is . . . Pyro Macken.”

Frank raised his eyebrows at me. Pettigrew “Pyro” Macken was a notorious troublemaker, the son of a wealthy
blueblood family whose father was busted years ago by our dad. Frank, in turn, busted Pett a few years ago for arson (hence the nickname “Pyro”). He was sent to juvie. Now Pett’s out, and he’s mostly a harmless eccentric, quarreling with his family. I don’t really think he’s that dangerous. But Frank thinks otherwise. “Pett Macken is a grenade with the pin pulled,” he told me once. “The fuse may burn for years. But one day he’s gonna go off.”

“Um . . . what did you do to Pett Macken?” he asked now.

Neal sighed. He looked like he wasn’t proud of what he was about to tell us. “I kind of stole his girlfriend,” he said. “I mean, not really. But at this party, I met a girl he’d been seeing for a few weeks and, well, we kind of ended up kissing.” He shrugged. “And then she kind of told Pyro she didn’t want to see him anymore. And we dated for a few weeks.”

I could see the gears turning in Frank’s head. “You think he was mad enough to hurt you?” he asked. I could tell that, in Frank’s estimation, it wasn’t exactly outside Pett’s wheelhouse to cause somebody bodily harm.

Neal looked at Frank like it was clear. “Yeah. I mean, he’s kind of crazy.” He stopped and fingered the long, jagged cut along his arm. Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “He really hates you two, by the way.”

A
FTER THE WEAKLY LIT GLOOM OF THE
hospital, the bright sunshine and vibrant sounds of Main Street were almost too much, too overwhelming. It seemed strange that life could go on, people could still be shopping for groceries and doing laundry and paying parking tickets, when a shadowy criminal organization was terrorizing our town.