Chapter Twenty-Five – "What's Love Got to Do With It?"
Previously: Ethan left Zendall, whom he had been holding at gunpoint in a meat locker in the Big Black Building, so that he could set the detonator of the bomb he had planted elsewhere in the building. Looking through the keyhole and listening at the door, Tad learned of the bomb and followed Ethan to it, intent on stopping him. Instead, Ethan knocked him cold and his accomplice crashed a vase over Aidan's head. Kendall noticed the gun Zach was carrying and urged him to save their lives by shooting Ethan. Zach refused. As soon as Ethan returned, Kendall grabbed the gun and fired.. As we rejoin our Adventure, Brooke is confiding her worst fears to Derek as Jonathan and Lily listen intently.
Brooke was confiding her worst fears to Derek as Jonathan and Lily listened intently.
"Tad isn't here, and he should be," she said. "Back in the building he was telling me he didn't trust Ethan. Derek, what I'm afraid of is that Ethan found out Tad was suspicious. What I'm more afraid of is that Tad was right to be suspicious! Aidan went back to look for him, but he didn't come out again. And his phone's turned off. So is Tad's."
Derek, who felt infinitely happier, not to mention saner, since he spotted Livia in the crowd of the Former Vanished and gotten her into a squad car heading back to Pine Valley, took Brooke's fears to heart.
"We'll get there in time to save everybody, Brooke," he promised, stepping on the gas. "Climb in!"
Most of the Former Vanished had been put in squad cars and were headed back to Pine Valley, which reduced the Police Convoy by about three-fourths.
"Derek, you're an Angel!" Opal called out before she was driven off. "You don't know what we've been through!"
"Shut up and get in the car," Palmer advised her. "None of us knows what we've been through."
"You got that right, Dahling," Myrtle affirmed. "I'm beginning to think Ethan wasn't on the up-and-up with us!"
"Ya think?" Opal said, frankly disappointed that her dream of a Veteran resurgence on AMC was beginning to look like nothing more than a pipedream.
"I never thought I'd want to see Pine Valley again," Liza was muttering as she and Colby got into a squad car. "Actually, I still don't."
"Poor Liza, poor Colby," Marian commiserated. "Stuart, do you think Ethan's plan worked? Do you think the Powers That Be will use us more in the Show?"
"I think Tad may have been right about Ethan's motives," Stuart replied sadly. "And I always liked Ethan!"
Brooke had already told Lily that Erica and Jack were safe, but as they drove on with Derek to the Big Black Building, Lily was still worried. She wasn't the only one.
"But why aren't they here?" Jonathan wondered. "Why isn't Ryan here?"
"Kendall didn't come out with the rest of us," Brooke explained again. "Neither did Zach. Neither did Tad. Aidan went back to look for Tad and he didn't come out again."
"This isn't good," Lily said, beginning to rock. "This is the opposite of good. This is bad."
--
"What the hell was that?" Greenlee was asking at that exact moment, hearing Kendall's gunshot.
"Somebody is shooting in there!" Erica screamed out. "Ryan, we have to save Kendall! It may already be too late!"
"Erica, that sounded more like a backfire," Jack lied, hoping to keep her calm.
"Greenlee, I've got to go back in there and save Kendall and Zach," Ryan said soberly. "I wouldn't be surprised if they were in mortal danger."
"Thank you, Ryan!" Erica said with all of her heart. "You know I've always been all Rendall."
Hearing Erica say that, something clicked in Greenlee's mind and heart. She suddenly realized something vitally important. Whether or not she was on AMC anymore, she was still connected to Ryan Lavery. Not the perpetually enraged Ryan she had seen in that Fight Club, but the heroic Ryan she had once fallen so hopelessly in love with and married. The Ryan who was standing in front of her now, ready to risk life and limb and who knew what else to save a woman he hadn't cared about in years and a man he had never cared about. Briefly, Greenlee wondered if Ryan's feelings for Kendall had come back to life since she'd been away. But how could that be? Ryan loved his Green Butterfly. The Original Greenlee! Not Gina, the Imposter-Greenlee. And certainly not Kendall!
"Forget Rendell, Erica," she therefore said, her gaze never wavering from Ryan's. "Come on, Ry. You know how much mortal danger turns me on! You can choose between Greenlees later on. But remember, whatever happens, Kendall doesn't get you!" She laughed. "Because Kendall doesn't GET you!"
JR's Mercedes drove up and screeched to a stop.
"I'm coming in too!" Di said, racing out of it, along with JR, Babe, Adam, Krystal Amanda and Erin. "Tad's missing! So is Aidan! So is Zach! So is Kendall!" Suddenly she realized she was face-to-face with the Original Greenlee. "Whoa! How can YOU be here? Isn't this against some law of physics?"
"Screw physics," Greenlee decried. "Let's go back in there and save our friends!"
--
Kendall missed Ethan by a mile. Before she could re-aim, however, her former lover wrestled the gun away from her and pocketed it.
"Gutsy move," he complimented her. "You never deserved her, Dad."
"We agree," Zach said. "So why don't you open the door and let her go? This is between us, Son. You and me. Kendall has nothing to do with anything that's happened between us."
"She tried to kill me," Ethan pointed out. "You didn't notice that?"
"This is Kendall we're talking about. If she wanted to kill you, you'd be dead."
But Ethan wasn't having any of it.
"You're whistling in the dark, Dad. Or if not, you're grasping at straws. Either way, it won't do you two any good. I set the timer, which means in fifteen minutes or so this entire building is going to blow sky-high. With your corpses in it. It's so wonderful when a plan comes together!"
But Kendall was not about to let her husband go quietly into that good night.
"Ethan, Zach loves you!" she spoke up. "He didn't want to shoot you! I took the gun from him because he didn't want to shoot you! He could have stopped you from taking the gun away from me, but he didn't!"
Ethan raised an eyebrow at that.
"You didn't want to shoot me?" he checked with Zach. "You love me?"
Zach only shook his head. "Kendall, my son doesn't care if I love him or don't love him. All he cares about now is hurting me."
"But you told me he wouldn't kill you!" Kendall cried out, trying not to look at the swaying meat hooks. "You told me it wasn't in him!"
Zach stared at the gun Ethan was leveling at him. "Let her go, Son."
Ethan laughed a chilling laugh.
"Who wants to die first?" he asked them. "Dad? Step-Mum?"
--
Di and Erin raced ahead of the others back into the Big Black Building. Once back inside, Di found Tad easily enough by following the sound of his moans.
"Tad! Are you okay? What happened to you?"
He was rubbing the back of his head and trying to sit up.
"Give us a hand, Watson," he requested of her. "We've got us a detonator we need to deactivate!"
Erin burst through the door as Di was helping Tad to his feet.
"Where's Aidan?" she demanded in agony.
"Right here," Aidan said, walking in, rubbing the top of his head.
"Looks like Ethan had a chat with you too, Fish 'N Chips," Tad observed.
"Not Ethan," Aidan corrected him. "Somebody else is helping him. I didn't see who. Came up from behind me."
"Oh, goody!" Tad said. "Exactly what I wanted to hear!"
--
Before Rylee, Jabe, Jerica and the rest of the Posse could storm the Big Black Building in search of Zendall and Taidan, Derek and the remainder of the Police Convoy drove up and immediately began laying down yellow tape, putting up barricades and issuing orders.
"This is a crime scene," Derek informed them all. "Nobody goes beyond this line. I'm in charge."
"Derek, Ryan and I have got to get in there to save Kendall!" Erica tried to make him understand.
"Ryan and YOU?" Greenlee hooted.
Jily and Brooke got out of Derek's squad car and headed straight for the Posse, who were crowded at the yellow-taped, barricaded entrance to the Big Black Building.
"Derek doesn't like other people trying to do his job," Lily earnestly told Erica.
As if to emphasize that point, a uniformed officer handed Derek a bullhorn.
"Ethan, it's all over! Come outside with your hands up, and no one will get hurt!"
--
"Ethan, it's all over," Kendall echoed Derek, whose offer had boomed at them loudly enough to keep a surprised Ethan from pulling the trigger. "If you go outside with your hands up, no one will get hurt."
"But I want somebody to get hurt!" he said, sounding nothing if not petulant.
"Sometimes we don't get exactly what we want, Son," Zach said carefully.
"I never get what I want," Ethan said sounding nothing if not rueful. He cocked the revolver and aimed straight for Zach's heart. "Except for this time! In ten minutes this building will be history! But you two are about to become history first! Good-bye, Daddy! Enjoy yourself in Hell!"
"Ethan, your father loves you!" Kendall screamed out, trying her best to shield Zach by throwing herself in front of him, before he could do anything stop her.
Ethan shrugged. "What's love got to do with it?"
--
Tad, Di, Aidan and Erin all heard a deafening gunshot. They were too absorbed in detonator deactivation, however, to dream of investigating where it came from.
"What's that ticking sound?" Di asked fearfully, looking down at the detonator as if it were a rattlesnake.
"Don't worry about the ticking," Aidan said. "It's when the ticking stops that we need to worry. Unless we figure out a way to deactivate it, of course. That would stop the ticking in a good way."
"So there's a red wire and a green wire," Tad summarized, looking at the ticking detonator's red wire and green wire.
"There's always a red wire and green wire," Aidan explained to Di and Erin. "One of them has got to be cut to deactivate the detonator. Cutting the other wire will make the bomb go off immediately."
"So which wire is which?" Erin and Di asked together.
"That's an astoundingly apt question," Tad said tensely, his eyes never leaving the wires.
"The problem is, it changes from detonator to detonator," Aidan continued to explain. "Unless the bomb is yours, you never know which color wire will deactivate it and which color wire will set it off."
"Somebody should think of standardizing that," Di observed.
"Too late now," Tad sighed. "Which do you prefer, Watson? Red or green?"
Di hesitated. She might never get another chance to tell Tad what she needed to tell him most.
"Tad, there's something about Dixie that you need to know."
"Tell him later," Erin urged. "The ticking's getting louder."
"There may not be a later," Di said.
Tad was looking at Di as if she'd gone bonkers.
"Cut the red wire," Aidan said, handing Tad his pocketknife. "Just a hunch."
"Dixie isn't dead," Di blurted out, lowering her eyes in case Tad's horrified or elated or puzzled face was the last thing she would ever see. "Dixie is alive, Tad! I've known for a long time but she swore me to secrecy!"
Tad cut the green wire.
--
Did Tad cut the right wire? Did Ethan kill Zach or Kendall or both? Will Derek's yellow tape keep the Posse outside? Please read the next exciting chapter as we race toward our inevitable conclusion! Reviews are treasured!