J.M.J.

Author's note: Welcome back! Thanks for reading! This is a little later than I expected to have the next part of this series ready, but my writing schedule always gets all wonky when I finish a book, so things have been a little hectic. It might still take me some time to get it all worked out, so for the moment, much I hate to do this, I'm only going to be posting one chapter a week. I'm going to try for Friday night/Saturday morning, and I will be posting one this upcoming weekend. This story is a bit shorter than most of the other ones in the series (I think—you never know how these things will go). This one takes place a little less than a year after Traitor's Game. The prologue takes place in April of the following year, while the main story takes place in June.

I hope you enjoy this story! If you do, please consider leaving a review to let me know! Also, please let me know any constructive criticism you might have—I can always improve as a writer. So, without further ado, I present to you:

White Roses

Part 6

Blaze of Glory

Prologue

Las Vegas, Nevada

A young couple was sitting in an old, bullet-riddled Ford V8. They weren't supposed to be sitting inside it, but the exhibit was open twenty-four hours a day and at two a.m. on a Tuesday night, no one was around but a tired-looking employee who instantly shed a bit of his weariness when the young man passed him a twenty-dollar bill to forget about the rules for a few minutes.

The man was sitting in the driver's seat and the woman in the passenger. Both were silent, almost reverent, as they lost themselves in thinking of things that happened long before they were born to people they had never met. Years before, another young couple had spent their last few hours on earth in this very car.

It was the woman who broke the silence first. "I hope hell is real and the guys who did this are rotting in it." Her voice was quiet, but hard and cold.

Her companion chuckled dryly. He was nobody's fool and he knew his days were running out, but he really didn't care. "In that case, they're burning there, too."

A sigh escaped the woman's lips. "There's no justice anywhere, is there?"

"Not for people like you and me, darling." The man reached over and grasped her hand. "But maybe, we can prove something before the end. Maybe they'll eventually listen."

The woman shook her head. "I'm not holding my breath."

HBHBHBHBHB

Bayport, Massachusetts

"How did I wind up with so much stuff?" Frank Hardy paused as he tried—unsuccessfully—to shove another box into the back seat of his car. "I didn't think it was going to take this many trips."

"It wouldn't if you didn't literally own an entire library." His brother, Joe, half-set and half-dropped a box full of books on the sidewalk next to the car. He leaned against the passenger's door. "I didn't think it was even possible for one person to read this many books in a lifetime."

"It helps when you actually sit down and read," Frank retorted. He set his box on the ground and closed the door. "One more trip ought to do it."

"I doubt it. I told you to rent a moving van."

Frank rolled his eyes. "I'm moving three streets away. Renting a moving van would be a waste of money for that."

"Yeah, and since you can get free labor out of me, why not?" Joe replied, but the complaining was all in good humor. Perhaps it was also to disguise the lonely feeling of knowing that he and his brother would probably never live under the same roof again, certainly not for any long-term arrangement. They were only a year apart and were as close as brothers could be, even allowing for the occasional disagreement. It wasn't like it was premature, either. Frank was twenty-one and Joe was twenty and they were both certainly responsible enough to be living on their own.

It wasn't hard for Frank to guess from Joe's body language what was going through his mind. "You know, we could be moving your stuff, too. There're two bedrooms in the apartment. I wouldn't object to having someone to split the rent with."

Joe resolutely shook his head. "No. I've thought about it, you know, but…Well, for one thing, I don't think there'd be room for me and your three thousand books in that place."

Frank chuckled. "Please, Joe, it couldn't be more than 2999 books."

"Oh, well, that makes all the difference."

"Seriously, though, why not?"

Joe shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Honestly, I don't know. It's just…I guess I'm not ready yet. Pathetic, right?"

"I don't think so, unless it's just because you want to freeload off Mom and Dad, but I know you well enough to know that's not the reason. Anyway, the invite's always open, unless I find another roommate before then."

"Nice to know how much you care, bro," Joe replied with a smirk. Then he glanced down and he happened to notice something in the box of books that Frank had carried outside. "Say, how many of these books have you actually read?"

"Most of them." Frank tried to follow Joe's line of sight to guess which volume had attracted his attention. It stood out to him immediately, considering the type of reading Joe had been doing recently: Hauntings Explained: Case Studies of 13 Locations Believed to be Haunted. Frank pulled it out. "This was an interesting one. Do you want to read it?"

"Sure." Joe held out his hand and took the volume. To Frank's bemusement, Joe immediately turned to the "About the Author" section and started reading about the author's qualifications and then scanned the bibliography.

"What are you doing?" Frank asked. "You honestly think I'd own a book that wasn't well-researched and written by an expert?"

"Sorry, force of habit." Joe reluctantly closed the book. "You know, you've got to be really careful trying to research this topic. A lot of quacks write about it."

"You don't say." Frank wrinkled his forehead slightly. "So, with all the research you've been doing, do you still think you actually saw a ghost?"

About nine months earlier, Frank and Joe, along with their dad, Fenton Hardy, and one of their friends, Biff Hooper, had been in a small Asian country on an investigation. The Hardys were detectives, and it certainly wasn't the first case that had what some people believed to be a supernatural aspect to it. In fact, Frank and Joe had tackled so many cases like that where the "hauntings" always turned out to have a perfectly natural explanation that they both had taken it for granted that ghosts weren't real until this recent case. Joe and Biff had been searching an old Buddhist monastery, where the monks had been executed all at once decades earlier by the communist government. While they had been there, they had seen and heard enough to convince them the place was really haunted. Frank hadn't been there, but he felt certain that there was a natural explanation to it all. It sometimes frustrated him a bit that Joe didn't see that, but more than that, it worried him that Joe was so preoccupied with it, reading all kinds of things from all kinds of people to try to make sense out of it.

"I know I saw a ghost," Joe replied, shivering anew at the memory. He didn't think he'd ever really get over it. It was seared into his memory so vividly that it was just as clear as the day it had happened. He glanced up at Frank suspiciously. "This book is going to try to tell me I didn't, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but maybe the guy has a point. He is a psychologist, so he should know what he's talking about."

"Or maybe he's just never encountered someone who's really encountered a ghost," Joe pointed out. "I'll read it anyway, though. Maybe he can convince me that it was all in my head and I'm actually just crazy. That would be very comforting."

Joe's cell phone rang, cutting off the conversation. Frank used the opportunity to drive to his new apartment with his load of belongings while Joe took the call.

As soon as he saw who was calling, Joe braced himself. He knew he shouldn't feel that way when his girlfriend, Iola Morton, called, but anymore, he couldn't help it. He raised the phone to his ear.

"Hey, Iola, what's up?" Joe asked, forcing himself to sound cheerful and at ease.

"Well, nothing for once," Iola replied. "I'm actually home and I don't have anywhere I need to go or anything I need to do all of spring break. I thought maybe, for once, we could actually go out together and talk."

"Sure." Joe briefly wondered what Iola wanted to talk about and whether this counted as a date and whether they were still even dating at all when they had barely seen or talked to each other for the better part of a year. "I'm still helping Frank move, so I can't until later. Maybe we could go for dinner and a movie tonight."

"Dinner, yes, but not a movie. I'd rather talk."

"This sounds serious."

"I…I think it's about time we have a serious conversation."

Joe let out a slow breath. "Yeah. I think so, too." Something told him he knew exactly what this serious conversation would be about.