Chapter Ten

Brady couldn't believe it. He had finally found Chloe! He slowly walked up to her, unable to believe his eyes. The gazebo was the perfect setting for Chloe's unusual beauty. "Chloe, oh god, I…" Brady was stunned speechless by Chloe. She didn't react, just looked at him out of her extremely large sapphire eyes. He reached for her and pulled her to him, repeating over and over, "I love you, I love you, I love you." Finally, Brady turned Chloe's face up to his to receive his soul-searching kiss. They were interrupted by an incessant pounding nearby. "What the hell?" Brady murmured as he looked up from Chloe.

Brady suddenly sat up from his bed, extremely disoriented. "Chloe?" he questioned, looking around for her. Then, realization sunk in. She wasn't here. It had just been a dream, a wonderful, tortuous dream. Brady dropped back onto his pillows, wondering if he would ever see his Diva again.

Brady broke out of his reverie when he heard loud voices downstairs. "Now what's going on?" Brady wondered as he pulled himself off of his bed. Before he exited the room, Brady glanced one more time at his bed, praying that his dream would really come true.

"Calm down," Marlena was saying soothingly to someone as Brady headed down the stairs. "Take it slow. Now, tell us again. What has happened?"

"Come on over," Brady heard Belle to someone on the phone as he passed her door. "I'm sorry, Shawn. I've got to go. Something's going on downstairs." Belle hung up the phone and raced out of her room. "Brady!" she whispered loudly to him as she met him in the hallway between their bedrooms. "What on earth is going on?"

Brady turned to face his sister, a worried expression on his face. "Tink, I don't know. Let's go find out." The two hurried down the Belle met Brady before they reached the landing. They peered down into their living to witness a very distraught Nancy and an upset Craig explaining something to their parents.

"Maybe it's about Chloe!" Belle said as she followed Brady down the curving stairs. She was aware that Brady still hadn't been contacted by Chloe. She was starting to feel very annoyed at her best friend for allowing Brady to experience such anguish. "I hope they know where she is!"

Brady turned as he neared the last step and looked meaningfully into his sister's eyes. "I know."

Brady and Belle joined the chaos of the foursome as Nancy and Craig both tried to explain what had happened earlier this morning.

"Calm down," Marlena repeated. "Take a deep breath. John, will you please recap for Brady and Belle what the Wesleys have told us so far?" Marlena asked her husband as she noticed their entrance into the chaos.

Nancy glanced hopefully at Brady, ready to anxiously ask him about Chloe. Craig knew her well. He put a restraining arm on her before she could go off into another round of hysterics in the Black's living room. Granted, she had every right to be hysterical. But, they needed to calm down if they were going to solve this problem.

"Let me get this straight," John began as he noted Belle's and Brady's arrival into their group. "An official from the adoption agency visited you this morning and reported that Chloe was not your daughter." Nancy nodded tearfully. She opened her mouth to expound on his statement but Craig stopped her again. "After she left…"

Nancy interrupted uselessly, "Craig threw her out."

John held onto his patience with effort. "All right. After Craig threw her out, DiMera came by. He wanted to see Chloe, but she wasn't there."

"DiMera went to your house?" Brady asked incredulously to the Wesleys. "Man, he has some nerve."

"That's not even the beginning of it," Craig said. "We haven't told you everything yet."

"No, we haven't told you what that awful man did! He…" Nancy was about to begin a very longwinded dialogue.

Craig interrupted his wife gently, knowing her tendency to exaggerate anything. He wanted to make this as simple as possible, for them and the Blacks. "Let me tell what happened." Nancy stopped but nodded her head agreement. "When we told him Chloe wasn't at home, he dropped veiled threats to us. He wanted us to make Chloe leave our house for good."

All of the Blacks' faces dropped in amazement. "Oh my god!" Brady exclaimed in astonishment. "That man is truly evil!"

"We couldn't believe it either. Of course, we wouldn't let Chloe leave. That's her home." Then, Craig took a deep breath as he replayed the worse part of the scenario. "Chloe must have heard what had happened. We never saw her, though. Nancy went up about an hour ago to check her room again. We were hoping Chloe had snuck in. Anyway, most of Chloe's things were gone and we found this letter on her bed." Craig handed the letter to John.

Brady leaned over John's shoulder as he read the first communication he had access to since Chloe's world had been destroyed. When they finished reading the letter, John passed it to Marlena and Belle. Marlena fluttered her eyes dramatically while she read the letter. "Oh, no!" she breathed. "Do you have any idea where she could be?"

Nancy looked tearfully at Craig before she said hesitatingly, "We were hoping Brady or Belle might know."

Belle looked up sadly from the letter. "I haven't talked to Chloe since last night at the ball. I don't know where she is."

Brady also admitted, "I've been looking for her all over Salem, but I haven't found a trace of her yet." He couldn't help feeling that he needed to find Chloe, fast, before something else happened to her.

"I think I might have an idea," John said as a light bulb went off in his head. He remembered that Greta had gone after Chloe. "I'm gonna go make a call." John left the group and headed towards his study, without any explanation.

There was a loud knock at the door. It startled the group that was huddled in the living room. "Oh, that's Shawn!" Belle exclaimed as she remembered their earlier conversation. She ran towards the door, opening it quickly, revealing an angry boyfriend.

"Hey, Belle," Shawn said as he entered the room. A surprised look came over his face when he surveyed all of the people in the room. He carried a tabloid in his hands.

Belle noticed the tabloid. Maybe that's what's got him all upset, she thought as she said, "Come on in and join the party."

John came out of the study as Shawn greeted the other people in the room. "I didn't get an answer," he began as all eyes turned to him. He held up his hand to ward off the questions he could almost visually see tripping off of Nancy's tongue. "I could Greta's house to see if Chloe was with her. I left a message. Greta'll call back."

"That could be where she is," Brady said as he, too, remembered how Greta had promised to take care of Chloe last night. Then he noticed the tabloid in Shawn's hands. "What's that?" he asked curiously.

Shawn answered bitterly, "You really don't want to know." He handed it over to Brady anyway.

Brady looked quizzically at Shawn as Bray accepted the tabloid. Belle, Marlena, and John looked eagerly over Brady's shoulder as he looked at the front page of the tabloid, "Private Eyes." "OH MY GOD!" Brady exclaimed loudly. Could things get any worse? he wondered. John, Marlena, and Belle looked at each other worriedly as they eyed the tabloid.

"What is it?" Nancy asked as Brady grimly handed her the tabloid. "Oh, Craig…." she began as she, too, was shocked by the headlines.