Christmas 2018
Laura was tired. Being a full-time parent these days to Spencer had a lot to do with it - she hadn't quite realized until she was alone with Spencer in France how much she had come to rely on Kevin to be co-parent - but it wasn't only Spencer being home for Christmas break. She was physically and emotionally and mentally so tired.
The two of them spent last night with Lulu, Rocco and Charlotte and Christmas morning with Elizabeth and the boys and Franco but even surrounded by her grandchildren she felt alone. Especially considering Christmas was also supposed to be her first anniversary.
Which Kevin was spending with Ava Jerome. And she knew that because when Kevin called her two days ago with more demands that they start the divorce proceedings she heard Ava in the background crooning for Kevin to come back to bed, that they would have Avery in the morning and could spend their first Christmas together as a family. Spencer had been the one to unplug the answering machine from the wall as soon as he'd seen the look on his grandmother's face and hadn't said a word when she'd gone straight to her bedroom and shut the door or when even through the closed door he'd heard her crying. But Kevin hadn't called since and Ava had kept her distance. She had her suspicions that Spencer had said something to one or both of them and she wasn't going to ask what. Sometimes with that boy it was better not to know.
It was a dull ache in her heart, all the time, when she thought of Kevin and how her marriage had fallen apart so spectacularly. But Spencer was her priority and he was losing another parental figure for no fault of his own. She needed to help him through this and in time, maybe she could heal herself.
She wasn't counting on it anytime soon, though.
Her faithful-to-a-fault husband was spending Christmas with his mistress and hadn't called Spencer or any of the other grandchildren to even say hello, no amount of presents and good food and wine could fix that.
Even the word mistress in relation to Kevin sounded funny when she'd said it out loud to Mac and Felicia. The man she knew, the man she had fallen in love with and gone to bed with on their first date, the one that had been so conscientious about making sure she hadn't regretted moving so fast, that man had been so affected by Lucy's betrayal and the end of his marriage that she knew he would never cheat. Lucy herself had attested to the same thing when Laura has asked her. But yet he was and had been for months, with the woman that betrayed her murdered son's memory by recanting her statement against Valentin Cassadine. None of Kevin's behavior lately made sense.
Sometimes, when she was alone in their bed at night, she wondered if he was okay and wished she'd made it a condition of the divorce that he meet with a mental health professional. She worried something terrible happened in his life or in his work that had pushed him to the edge of a breakdown and whatever it was it was so bad that he hadn't wanted to tell her about it and even that him pushing her away so completely was a misguided attempt to protect her. Carly and Lulu told her she was lying to herself and making it harder for herself to let go of the Kevin she remembered, the one that loved her. Something bad happening might explain why Kevin had been so cold that night on the docks when he told her he wanted a separation and there was nothing worth trying to save in their relationship, it might have even explained why he had walked away from her when she'd cried, but it didn't explain Ava. Dammit, Laura thought to herself, if only she'd been a better wife and made him talk to her it might not have come to this. They were a team. Hadn't she told him the morning after they made love for the first time how his steady and calming presence in her life had been the only thing that made losing Nikolas the way she had bearable? Kevin had been her emotional support, her constant, for the past two-and-a-half years, he deserved for her to be that same support for him, even for only just once. Whatever he was going through they could have worked it out together.
Laura opened the glove compartment to her car to hopefully find some extra tissues and instead what tumbled out were two moderately-packed envelopes and an assortment of papers. She laughed. It was clear she needed to clean out her car, she didn't know what most of this was. Kevin teased her about the junk drawer in her car and that she'd never be able to find anything when she really needed it. Like tissues. But what made her stop, look, and immediately put the car back into park in Elizabeth's driveway, was a blue post-it note stuck to the bigger of the envelopes. Her name in Kevin's handwriting and underneath her name there was a note for her to take all these papers to Mac and Robert right away as soon as she found them, that Mac would help her understand. That Kevin wished he would have had the courage to tell either of them (especially her) in person about the contents of these envelopes but he was scared. Not for himself, but for her, and Spencer and Lulu, and Mac and Felicia and Maxie and for all of Port Charles.
She ignored the warning voice in her head that called her a fool for not immediately calling Mac or Robert and opened the first envelope. Inside were medical reports, papers on studies that Kevin must have read because certain parts were highlighted, some papers that listed various psychiatric drugs, a few other papers she didn't understand, but all of them bore the name and symbol of the Ferncliff Institute For The Criminally Insane and on every page Dr. Kevin Collins was listed as the physician on record and Wilson Ritter the patient. In Kevin's distinctive scrawl Ryan Chamberlain was written underneath Patient Name and Wilson Ritter crossed out.
It was a moment or two before Laura remembered to breathe again. Ryan Chamberlain had been dead for the last twenty-five years. Kevin barely talked about him. It was the one topic between them that was off-limits. But if Kevin's secret stash of paperwork meant what she thought it meant and Ryan Chamberlain had somehow survived the fire at the funhouse and was under Kevin's care at Ferncliff there were so many questions that needed to be answered. People that needed to be notified, most important being the police and Mac and Felicia.
She reached for the second envelope with shaking hands and that produced even more bombshell information. Namely a chain of email correspondence between Kevin and a permanent staff member at Ferncliff. Dr. Peterson was evidently the only staff member besides Mary Pat Ingles that he trusted with the knowledge of Ryan's true identity. In the emails back and forth Kevin grew more and more frightened of what would happen if Ryan ever got out and he and this doctor had decided to go to the police together. He no longer wanted to be responsible for harboring a fugitive.
She recognized that name, the woman Kevin had been emailing. Jamie Peterson, a doctor at the Ferncliff institute, had been found dead at the bottom of a cliff in early September, with traces of a controlled substance in her bloodstream. She hadn't been connected to the other murders because her driver's license was secure in her wallet when they found her body but Laura had always been very good at math and it didn't take long for her to add two and two together and get four.
Dr. Peterson and Mary Pat had been murdered because of what they knew. She couldn't fit Kiki's death into it all but that didn't matter right now. She needed to call Mac and tell him that it wasn't his best friend that was acting so strangely and out of character because she knew, she knew it for certain now as sure as she knew her name, that the man in Port Charles that was spending Christmas with Ava Jerome wasn't Kevin. He was Ryan Chamberlain.
Mac's phone went right to voicemail. She sped out of Elizabeth's driveway and took the back roads to Mac and Felicia's house, calling everyone else she could think of in the meantime. Elizabeth. Lulu. Sonny and Carly who had picked Spencer up half an hour ago to take him for the afternoon and evening. Lucy and Scott. Even Julian to keep watch over Ava, despite her feelings for the woman that slept with who she believed was "Kevin." But her first phone calls were to Robert and Anna and Dante. Kevin trusted them most of all as far as detectives went and she owed it to Kevin to get the best people to him as soon as possible and to apprehend Ryan before he was allowed to hurt one more person.
She never saw the brake lining fluid that stained Elizabeth's concrete, or the car down the street that followed her as she drove away.
Laura was three-quarters of the way to Mac and Felicia's house when she realized she was going too fast. And there was a swerve coming up in the road. The speedometer stayed at the same speed even as she tapped the brakes. She pressed the brakes again, harder, more desperately. Nothing happened. The curve in the road that led her to Mac and Felicia's house was coming up closer and closer and nothing Laura tried made any difference at all. She grabbed her phone to call Mac and had scarcely hung up the phone when at the very last moment before she would have careened off-road and crashed a car screeched to a halt in front of her and stopped, saving her from almost-certain death. Her heartbeat thudded fast in her chest. The car that saved her was a car she recognized immediately.
Kevin's car.
But she knew, she knew the man inside the car that looked so much like her husband wasn't Kevin.
Not that she had much time to think about it before Ryan Chamberlain struck her hard across the face and half-dragged her at gunpoint from the car. His face contorted with rage, his eyes glittering with everything evil in the world, and she cursed herself for ever, ever believing this man could have been her sweet husband. And all at once she remembered how the last time Kevin was in France with her he made it a point to tease her again about the mess in her glove compartment. He had been trying to warn her the only way he could think of, trying to give her a clue. She had missed it but she wasn't going to fail him now, not this time, not when his life and the lives of so many others depended on it. The force Ryan used to yank her from the car propelled her so far forward she struggled to keep her balance but she stayed on her feet. His arm went around her throat. "Sweet sister-in-law, you couldn't just let this go, could you?"
"Trying to save my marriage to a husband that loved me?"
His eyes narrowed and the cold metal of a gun touched her cheek and trailed down her collarbone. "Don't ever insult my intelligence and pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. The first thing I did when I moved into Kevin's house was make a copy of every key he had and then I put a tracer on your phone. I know every text message and phone call you make. So I know you've been meeting Mac, Felicia and Lucy every week. Pretend I don't know why and you tell me."
Laura flinched. She knew Ryan had every intention of killing her, but that didn't mean she had to make this easy for him. Lulu had Rocco and Charlotte, she shouldn't be obligated to take on Spencer if anything happened to her. "No one will believe Kevin would shoot me," she whispered. "You won't get away with this."
Ryan seemed to think about it, but shrugged. His smiled at her, but it was an evil, predatory smile. "I have so far. It's been four months. And no one knows who I am."
Laura fought back despite her realization that Ryan was right. "I know who you are. Mac, Robert, and the police know who you are." Whether or not that was true at that particular moment didn't matter. "We're going to find Kevin and it's over for you whether or not you kill me. It's over, Ryan."
He shrugged again. "I cut your brake lines to get you out here and I cut Mac's just in case he went looking for Kevin before he came to rescue you. Call it a two-for-one special."
"Call it attempted murder instead." Another voice came from a distance a few feet away and Laura could have sobbed in relief. Felicia stood facing both of them, the gun in her hand trained directly at the space between Ryan's eyes. "Cameron noticed the brake fluid where your car was and Elizabeth called Dante. Dante called Mac and we took an educated guess that you'd be coming out here when Mac got your call," she explained to Laura never taking her eyes off of Ryan. She gave Laura a small smile of reassurance. "Mac's backing me up and Robert and Dante have everyone's safety under control. Sonny assured us that Spencer will be fine." Felicia turned her attention to Ryan. "Even Mac knew better than to argue with me about me getting to be the one to shoot you. I caught you in the middle of trying to murder your brother's wife so it would even be self-defense if I killed you. I won't even go to jail."
Ryan stared at Felicia in shock, not quite believing she was there in front of him holding a gun, and it was as if Laura could literally see his twisted obsession coming back to life. He took hesitant steps forward to meet her and held out his hand to Felicia. "You're just as pretty as I remember," he murmured to himself in almost quiet awe.
It was the opening Laura needed. Felicia tossed Laura her own car keys and in one motion Laura plunged the sharpest pieces of metal into Ryan's stomach.
Ryan twisted backwards and yelled a scream that was more surprise than of pain, interspersed with a multitude of curse words, but they knew it was the only opportunity they were going to get. Felicia reached for Laura's hand and the two of them ran as fast as they could, doing their best to shield each other from the rapid-fire bullets shooting past their heads. There wasn't time for Laura to ask Felicia how she and Mac had gotten there from their house if Ryan had tampered with Mac's car or where Mac was and why wasn't he coming when he heard the shooting. For Felicia's sake she prayed Mac was safe. But Ryan was running after them and more bullets were flying. One bullet only just missed Felicia's head and one exploded the side window of Laura's car but they kept running. And once they got to the relative safety of the PCPD cruiser - it crossed her mind to ask how Mac had gotten permission to take this car considering he wasn't on the force anymore but she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth at a time like this - Felicia took control and went for the driver's seat. Every neuron in her body screamed for her to take a minute and look for her husband but Mac would never forgive her if she stayed behind on his account for even a few more seconds and put herself and Laura in more danger. They had to go. She had to trust him.
Laura didn't dare look back to see where Ryan was. She immediately turned on the flashing lights and they went in the direction of Ferncliff. They had been so unbelievably wrong all along, all of them had. Kevin wasn't having a breakdown or a midlife crisis or having an out-of-character affair with Ava Jerome. His emotional and psychiatric state was not and never had been in question, not Kevin's. It was evident now, however, that his life was.
If he was still there. If he was alive.
Felicia squeezed Laura's hand. "We'll find him and we'll get him well again." The car was silent, save for the occasional sniffle from Laura, until Felicia gasped. "Maxie borrowed Mac's car and she has James with her!"
Laura took Felicia's phone and called Dante to tell him to get to Maxie now, the car she was driving they had reason to believe had been tampered with, and was about to hang up when an incoming call from Mac came through. She spoke to Mac for a few moments and her face soon lost all color as the phone dropped to the floorboard and she told Felicia to do whatever she had to do to drive faster and get to Ferncliff now. The emotion of the past hour took over and tears fell unchecked down her cheeks.
"Mac took a bullet in the leg but he said to tell you not to worry, he's fine. He and Robert will meet us at Ferncliff." Felicia's eyes were full of frantic shock and Laura took no pleasure in the fact that there was something else, something even more unsettling. "Ryan took off after he shot Mac and Mac tried to keep up but he got away. But - Mac found Kevin's driver's license in a pile of dirt next to my car, right underneath the window that exploded."
"He's going to Ferncliff to kill him." Felicia immediately filled in the blanks of what Laura hadn't said. Laura nodded, the tears falling faster now. Felicia squeezed Laura's hand again. "Mac, Robert and I will be there. Laura, you don't -"
"Like hell I won't be there," Laura snapped with the strongest defiance she could conjure up at the moment. "Kevin's my husband. He needs me. End of discussion." Felicia overheard the last part even though Laura said it quietly. "I'd take on Ryan a million times if it meant Kevin and everyone I love would be safe."
Felicia chose not to go against the determination in Laura's expression only because she knew she'd do and say the exact same things if it was Mac stuck in Ferncliff awaiting a final showdown with his murderous brother. Not that Robert was murderous, but the sentiment was the same. Felicia put both of her hands back on the wheel, Laura's fingers absently traced her engagement and wedding ring and they didn't speak for the rest of the ride to Ferncliff, each of them privately terrified about what exactly they would find when they got there.
It was only when Ferncliff came into view that Laura realized she'd been holding her breath. She didn't see Ryan but they knew that didn't mean he wasn't there. She didn't see Mac or Robert either.
Please, please let Kevin be okay!