Kickoff to Danger (13 page)

But when he tried to jump onto Golden and subdue him, Frank felt a foot in his chest. He flew backward, crashing into the corridor wall. Biff's bed stood several feet away as Frank pushed himself up. Golden was much closer.

If he goes for that hypo again—Frank thought.

Instead, Terry Golden staggered to his feet, pulling himself up on the rolling intravenous stand.

He looked around wildly as if searching for a weapon. Then he found one—the heavy metal stand he was clinging to.

Golden was tall, and he had muscles. Even so, he grunted as he brought the stand around to waist level. The machine's warning beeps turned into a shrill alarm as Golden reared back to swing the weighted base down on Biff.

“Golden!” Frank wheezed. “It's no good. You can't get away!”

One look at Golden's face showed him that the jock was too far gone to think anymore. He'd come to silence Biff Hooper, and that's what he'd do, no matter how many witnesses saw him. No matter what the consequences might be.

Frank readied himself for a hopeless leap. He was just too far away.

And then Golden was stumbling, the IV stand flying from his hands to crash to the floor. Frank's eyes went from Golden's face to his feet, where a bruised Dan Freeman clung tenaciously to the jock's ankles.

Terry Golden howled like a frustrated animal, kicking at Dan. But Frank was on his feet now and closing fast. His fist caught Golden on the point of his chin, hammering him back.

Golden went down on his back, away from the hospital bed and its helpless patient. He tried to pull himself up, but Frank knocked him flat with a body block. Even so, Golden struggled, screaming and clawing.

Now Frank had him down and kept him down.

And then the police guard was pounding up the corridor, his pistol drawn….

“Sounds like I missed a whole bunch of excitement.” Biff Hooper's voice was very, very quiet in the hospital room.

It was four days after the wild fight on the floor of the east wing. Two days had passed since Biff had opened his eyes and come out of his coma.

Joe Hardy grinned. “Yeah, a couple of things happened during your relaxing nap.”

He and Frank were Biff's first nonfamily visitors. After hearing what had happened, Biff had demanded that he see them.

He shifted in his bed to look at Frank. “Looks like Golden managed to land a few on you,” he said.

Frank grimaced, then winced. He carried quite a few bruises from Terry Golden's wild barrage of blows.

“If you think Frank looks bad, you should see Dan Freeman.” Joe shook his head. “Put Dan and you side by side, and he'd make
you
look healthy.”

That brought a grin to Biff's pale face. Although the worst was past, he still faced a long recovery.

“And you managed to miss the big fight completely,” he said to Joe.

“I did consider taking a swing at a couple of hospital administrators.” Joe couldn't keep the disgust out of his voice. “They were still giving me the why-should-we-listen-to-some-punk-kid routine when the cop told them to call for backup.

“That's all we'd have needed,” Frank burst out. “The cop wasn't sure who was up to what. He wanted to arrest all of us.”

“Con Riley straightened things out when he arrived,” Joe said. “By then the hospital folks realized Terry wasn't an employee.”

Frank nodded. “And then there was the hypodermic needle with his fingerprints all over it. Not to mention poor Dan telling the whole story.”

Biff got more serious. “Sounds as though he took some pretty bad lumps stopping Golden.”

“I hope it does him some good,” Frank said.

“You mean if he gets charged for swinging that shovel on me?” Biff said. “I've spent some time thinking that over, and I don't blame Dan. He thought he was defending himself.”

“Yeah, but there are other charges, too,” Frank said. “Hindering a police investigation. And he's the one who came up with the crazy scheme to shut you up—permanently.”

“He also fought to stop it,” Biff pointed out.

“Doing the right thing—even if it happened pretty late in the day,” Frank said, “that could keep him from doing jail time.” He shook his head. “Dan's getting punishment enough. All the top colleges that were so interested in him…well, they're a lot cooler on him now.”

“So his big plans have gone up in smoke,” Biff said.

“Just like Terry's football career,” Joe put in.

“I don't know about that,” Biff said. “Look at some of the people in the NFL.”

“You mean the National Felons League?” Joe joked. “Even so, I don't know that many colleges that would be happy with his unnecessary roughness.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Biff said, “You want to know the really weird thing? They were all worried about what I would say when I came to. But I never knew what—or who—hit me.”

“You could have told the cops who was behind it all,” Frank pointed out.

Biff made a face. “I knew Golden had something in mind for the basement, but I didn't know what—or when.”

“Then Wendell Logan told you,” Joe said.

“I thought I could stop it if I grabbed the bait—those books—and got those kids out of there.” Biff sighed. “Maybe things would have been a lot easier if I'd just gone to Mr. Sheldrake.”

“There was a time when
I
thought about talking with Old Beady Eyes,” Frank said. “But I didn't want to get people in trouble. Including you.”

Biff could only shake his head. “It amazes me that I went along with Golden as long as I did. He talked a good game, about being a team, being special—”

“So long as you kissed up to his big, fat ego,” Joe said.

“And when I tried to pull myself out of the whole mess—I guess I wasn't thinking too clearly,” Biff confessed.

“Seems like a lot of people were guilty of that,” Frank said.

“Yeah—jocks
and
brains,” Joe agreed. “This time around, everybody dropped the ball.”

“I guess that's the difference between football and life,” Frank said.

“I always thought the big difference was not having cheerleaders,” Joe joked.

Biff laughed, gesturing at his bed. “Is being stuck in here the real-life version of getting benched?”

“Maybe you should complain about unnecessary roughness,” Joe suggested, grinning.

Frank smiled to see Biff reviving with Joe's kidding around. “Hey, sometimes life plays rough. The best you can do is try to recover your fumbles.”

Biff got serious again. “Like Dan Freeman.”

“I was thinking of
you,”
Frank said. “You showed you were one of the good guys—even if you took some lumps for it.”

Joe gently punched Biff's shoulder. “Always glad to have you on our team, big guy—way to go!”