What to say in light of this week's news?

Sorry, I got nothing. You couldn't write the roller coaster that has been the last two years . Hopefully, some day, somehow, another twist awaits...

Until then, there are a few more loops to come on this little coaster, so strap in!

####

"It's a bit…"

"Odd."

"Why would two women who have every reason to hate each other just -"

"Take off together?"

Erica would ignore the irony that she was now, in fact, dissecting the exploits of Liza Colby and Jenny Gardner with the wife of the man that she -

"I have a strange feeling that they know something, something that could be of more help to us than meeting up with the likes of Adam Chandler."

"So you want to follow them?"

"I wouldn't put it that way."

Nina lifted an eyebrow. "So you want to….travel in the same direction as them?"

"Well…yes."

Each took note of Erica's lack of transportation.

Nina pulled out her keys and motioned to her passenger door. "As it happens, I'm heading in said direction."

####

If that sack of mangy dog hair didn't want to end up back in his wheelchair, or worse, he needed to be getting his slimy eyes off her nieces.

The piece of cow manure sighed – actually sighed – when Miranda and Gabby disappeared around the corner.

"The older one - she is rather….resistant. Special measures, I fear, will need to be taken with her." Oh, that piss-stain did not just say what she thought he said.

"Then again, what can we expect? She does come from lower stock, which is unfortunate. My impulsive, bumbling son and your dear sister who, despite her charms, engages in an abnormal -"

That's IT! "The only 'abnormal' load of skunk spray in this place is you, you -" Zach had best be moving his hand unless he wanted to lose it.

That blight on humanity wasn't acknowledging her or even Zach. He was smiling. "Not to worry, with time – and the proper motivation – she can be fixed. She is, after all, family."

No, Kendall was wrong before. THAT was it…

####

"He told me…he told me that he's my grandfather."

Tad glanced over at Dixie, who was trying to comfort the smallest one. She gave the little girl, who finally seemed to be emerging from her shocked state, a high-five.

Turning his attention back to his own charge, he tipped a finger under the girl's chin. Lively eyes that were such a combination of all the complicated women in Miranda's family looked up to him. He couldn't stand the sadness pooled in those eyes. Leaning forward on his knees, Tad tried his best not to talk down to the little girl. "Does he know what makes you laugh like you can never stop? Does he know all of the things that make you you?" At the girl's tiny head shake, Tad affirmed what everyone but Miranda understood: "He's no part of you, sweetie. Where we come from doesn't make us who we are. " He, more than anyone, knew that truth.

"But he's bad, like my dad was." There was the chin tremble , the concession that showed if this girl took after any parent, it was not the likes of Michael Cambias. " I know that my dad hurt my mom, then she had to hurt him. And now she thinks I'm bad because I – I probably look like him or act like him. That's why she's never happy, because of me. So maybe I should go away."

Tad swallowed tears that stirred an ache in his throat. His resolute words, though, would not be tempered. "Listen to me for a minute. Just a minute, OK? I've known your mom a long time, and I can tell you for a fact that she's never been happier than when she's holding your hand or fixing your braids. I don't need to hear her say it or even see her smile to know how much you mean to her. You know why? Because that's the way I feel about my…about my kids. All of them." He cleared his throat, trying to maintain the calm this girl so desperately needed. "You gotta believe me, OK? I'd never lie to a friend, and having somebody like you as a friend gives this old man a little more cred."

Miranda both giggled and rolled her eyes, a combination that was balm to his throat and his heart. "You're silly."

"Don't I know it." He responded with a waggle of the eyebrows. "But still, I'm going to need a pinky promise that you believe what I'm telling you." He crooked a finger.

The girl rolled her eyes again but, surely enough, that little finger hooked onto his own.

The small grin that had once again peaked from the girl turned thoughtful. "Kathy's really lucky."

His own smile twitched, and the ache in his throat pulsed just a little more.

"Miranda, do you know where Kathy is?"

####

The hair might be different, the clothes might've been fit for a tomboy, and the smile might have taken a hike, but Opal sure as shootin' knew her grandbaby's eyes anywhere. Right now, those baby browns were trying mighty hard to tell her something. She may have lost track of Jenny and the she-devil, but she wasn't going to let her Kathy down.

"Oww, it hurts, it hurts!"

"Stop playing around, kid."

"Can't you see he's sick?" Those eyes turned to the brute hovering over Spike Lavery. "He's probably got appendicitis or something."

Kathy touched Spike's left side and, as if to hammer home the point, the boy howled.

Right side, pumpkin. Opal gritted her teeth while she fumbled through her satchel, hoping that the muscle in the man's noggin wasn't as big as the ones in his arms.

Mr. Muscles looked skeptical, and she thought for sure they were busted and good. After a hot flash–second, though, he pushed the gun back where the sun didn't like to shine and bent down to examine Spike.

Kathy nodded quickly in her direction.

Good girl.

With a quick prayer to the Big Man, Opal armed herself for battle and raced across the room….resisting the urge for a warrior's holler.

####

She'd battled bears and deranged doppelgangers. She'd seen her fair share of mornings, especially recently, when the idea of getting out of bed filled her with more dread than anticipation: a fact she could, nor would, ever admit during the light of day.

This man, all things considered, was but a speck in the grand scheme of her life.

Before Nina could pull her back, Erica walked into the room they'd stumbled upon. If she left life's stage with one lesson as her legacy, it would always be to keep the head high and the fear low. It would be a lesson born not from words, but from action.

"Hello," she said, without reservation….even as the man swung around, the barrel of his gun making the same trip.

The figure before her was a giant who didn't need the weapon almost consumed by his massive hand. That hand was easily its own weapon

That hand was wavering now as the man owning it transformed briefly from stone-faced enforcer into awe-struck little boy "Are you? -"

"Looking for someone? Yes." She tilted her chin to the two children resting peacefully in their bassinets. "They must be quite a handful." She wasn't close enough to distinguish who the children were, but she knew that this man was no doting uncle.

The giant recovered his voice. "How are you here? Why are you here?"

She kept the dazzling smile in place. It had always been her weapon. "'How' is by car, of course. As to 'why,' as I said, I am looking for someone."

The hand steadied, and the gun centered.

Erica extended her hands, palms out. "I think it would be wonderful if we could talk without any added stressors."

"I like the stress." The man glanced briefly at the kids, and in that momentary action he also provided a glimpse into himself. "Your grandkids aren't here, I'm sorry."

Those words hammered into her, twisting painfully that nauseous coil she'd not yet conquered. "What do you mean?"

"So even the great Erica Kane can let her guard down?"

The smile, the easy one fashioned for the public, disappeared, replaced by something far more primal. "If you do not tell me why you mentioned my grandchildren, I assure you that you will see exactly what happens when my public persona is gone."

The glimpse of humanity that escaped the giant widened just a bit more. At the next waver in that granite arm, Erica reached out. "Why are you doing this?"

One jerk, and his eyes hardened. "You think you're gonna shrink me, lady? Get me to open up about my crappy childhood, my stint as a teenage street hustler, so I can cry on your shoulder and be a guest on your next talk show in a prison jumpsuit?"

"No, I can't say I really give a damn about why you're a cowardly kidnapper who just follows orders because he's too weak, too lacking in himself to take ownership of his actions."

"You think this is easy? You think it's easy down here in the real word, making your choices and living with them? You don't know the first damn thing about it."

Erica tore blindly at her scalp until the wig (her newly restored barrier against hope, against believing)...until that crumbling shield lay on the ground.

"Don't I?"

####

Zach grasped Kendall's waist right before the lunge. She struggled at first, but his quiet whisper against her ear eased the resistance in his arms: "Let me, please."

With those words, he released his wife and stepped before Alexander. "You're gonna fix them, huh? That it? What will you teach them...how to be your perfect little soldiers?"

Time nor circumstance could ever temper the absolutely slicing ice in Alexander Cambias' voice. "Obedience! Respect! Things you know nothing about. " When Ian stirred, Zach nearly needed a handler of his own. " Unlike the disappointments, the failures I once called sons, these children will honor my legacy."

Kendall stepped beside Zach, and the pulsing warmth as she slipped her hand into his kept Zach anchored.

Here. Now.

"Your legacy of murder, torture, and sadism that covers up all of your….shortcomings? That legacy?" Deadly calm, she added. "Over my dead body."

"That can be arranged, my dear. Then again, perhaps I should just let destiny take its course, like it did with poor Joshua, hmm. Alex?"

A trembling hand found solid ground with one squeeze. Zach blinked back his weakness, claimed his strength.

"Does it hurt you to hear the name that I gave you, the name that you denied? My grandchildren will know who they are. They will carry the Cambias name with pride." His hands, his absolutely disgusting hands, patted Ian's back. "Such pedestrian, uninspired names, though. Those, too, will have to go…..except little Gabrielle, I am rather partial to that name. We can perhaps retain that one. Tell me, Alex, who named the little one, Mommy or Daddy?"

"Shut up, you –"

"Temper, temper, Ms. Slater. We will let that question alone. I am curious about another matter, though. Perhaps you could answer this query." A sick smile twisted into a snarl. "How did it feel to wake up from your ill-timed slumber only to discover that your devoted husband had created a life with the Kane sister whom has always held such a special place in his heart?"

It was his turn to be the anchor - to squeeze her hand, to reassure….but she did something in that moment that absolutely amazed him, and that made him fall impossibly further. She spoke with raw honesty.

"It hurt like hell. Every word, every tactic you've used to burrow in my head….already thought. Already felt. So many days I was convinced a part of me had been sliced out with my heart: the part that could understand, the part that could forgive….the part that could love." Those diamond eyes that reflected a thousand unique dimensions turned to him...

"Now, I can feel it. Still there. Still beating strong. Still unbreakable."

The small smile that bubbled from inside him could never say everything. He could only hope it said enough.

"How...touching."

When Kendall returned the smile, Zach realized that the soulless voice - their intruder - was only as powerful as they were powerless. The reign was about to end.

"But we really must return to the matter at hand."

Another dawning realization convinced him of one more thing. Turning back to Alexander, he asked. "This was never about extorting money for Orpheus, was it?" "For any of you."

They had to get the hell out of here, and fast.

That unrighteous sermoner's tone confirmed Zach's every fear. "Orpheus is crucial to our long-term plans. You and I both know the positive strides it can accomplish. But yes, like most plans, ours was multi-purpose. For some of us, the allure of family was our greatest reward. For others...well, you know what they say - revenge is a dish best served -"

"Is Spike with them? Where is my son, you bastard?"

Alexander directed his full attention to Kendall and Zach instinctively pushed her behind him. Or tried, at the least.

"Young Mr. Lavery is….nonessential for my purposes." He advanced a few paces, then retreated. Ever the chess player. "You have a choice. You can stay here and continue to banter with me until my personnel arrives, or you can leave the boy with me—where you know he will come to no harm – and you can find your son, whom I cannot make similar assurances about, I am afraid." The poison in those words stripped them of their false sincerity, and exposed their speaker as the venomous serpent he would always remain. "I have been informed that your eldest may be invited to another gathering at the Chandler mansion, and, as we all know, those never tend to end well."

####

Before Cara could register the man who should be sitting in a prison cell – the man who'd she had last seen on the backside of a too-complicated situation – Bianca provided a greeting for all of them.

Luckily, Yasmin stopped her collision with JR's chair.

"You did this! Is it some kind of sick payback because I gave you a sliver of what you deserved?"

JR's wide eyes mirrored Cara's own, but - she suspected - not for the same reasons. For her, a previous mystery had fallen into place. For him –

"What are you talking about?"

At that moment, they were joined by four unlikely cohorts.

"You have exactly one minute to explain why you people have taken it upon yourselves to intrude into my house." Adam directed the question to her, but received his response elsewhere.

"Right after you explain why you're harboring a fugitive."

Caleb, who had immediately and protectively moved beside Bianca, bent down, whispering to her. She seemed to calm, at least for the moment.

"JR didn't do it, Bianca," Cara said.

She finally forced her gaze to eyes that, in one instant, reflected gratitude, concern, and….something she had become all too familiar with: fear.

"What happened, Cara?" he asked.

"Miranda, Gabby…..Alejandro…" She inhaled sharply on the last name. "They've been kidnapped."

When JR pushed forward, she pushed back.

Survival instinct.

"They only sent these…." She took the ransom notes from Yasmin, turning and handing them to Adam.

"And they led us here, where it all began." Bianca emphasized the final part with every bit of anger she could muster - and every bit of desperation she tried to suppress.

After scanning the pages, Adam echoed what had become the recurring theme for this day: "My God." He walked numbly to his desk and dropped the notes on a matching sheet of paper. The light weight thundered.

####

"AJ."

Thankfully his brother solved the mystery for him, while complicating things about a hundred times more. Leo took his first good look at David's grandson, who currently had a gun pointed straight at their mother's head.

All in the family.

"What is he doing here?"

Leo held his hand up, and surely enough David walked straight into it.

"First my son, now my grandson. We knew this had your prints all over it, but even I underestimated the perversion that is Vanessa Bennett." David shook his head with disgust. "I never thought you'd hurt a child, your own blood. Then again, you've spent our whole lives cutting us, so what should I expect?"

Vanessa kept one eye on the boy and another on David. "Don't snivel, David. It is really quite unbecoming. But hasn't it always been your downfall, this streak of…sentimentality?"

She turned her full attention to her eldest, and Leo's hand dropped on his brother's shoulder: flimsy comfort.

"You pretend to be this great mastermind, but oh, the potential you have wasted. Quite tragic. Every great achievement, you fail. Why? Because despite all of your bluster, you're still every bit that weak little brat who just wants adoration and approval." She spat the last word, and Leo could feel David tense. "Your dear aunt was plagued by the same…issues, I'm afraid. Poor, pathetic Gwyn. No matter how much they took from her, from us –" At the break in his mother's voice, Leo heard traces of the woman he'd idolized growing up. The woman that was almost…human. "She begged, she pleaded. And look what it got her: the life of a sad, pitiful drunk that couldn't even use her brats to keep a man. I can tell you one thing: I will never beg!"

Leo's eyes darted to Greenlee, who was moving closer to AJ with each word.

"I will admit that I have succumbed to my own weaknesses. You, my boy…" The flicker of warmth intensified, then extinguished from those eyes as Vanessa set her sights on him. "You had the greatest potential of all. So much wonderful promise, all squandered away by –"

With a sudden jerk, Vanessa swiped at Greenlee's leg, knocking her against the wall.

"That," she finished.

Leo rushed to Greenlee's side. "I'm OK," she said with a grimace. "Vanessa's never had the best aim when it comes to me. Must be the old age thing."

Vanessa turned back to the boy, a sick admiration in her voice. "Now, I have my second chance. Look at him. So young, so…malleable. Steady hand, that steel in his eyes. He wants to - don't you, my boy? You have inherited that 'killer' instinct."

For all of Vanessa's twisted proclamations, all Leo saw was a scared kid who didn't think he had a way out. He knew the look; he'd lived it every day.

"That's it." David moved forward. "I was insane to save you."

Vanessa licked her lips. "Blame that sentimentality, your need for what you know you have never had….Mommy's approval."

"Everybody shut up!" The gun arced wildly…

"Yes, embrace it." …and settled once again on the speaker of those words.

David knelt. "Hey, buddy, it's –"

"Don't call me that!" The boy's breathing grew more ragged.

"OK." David held his hands up. "This is your call, and I know how much you might want to hurt her, believe me –"

"Is she related to me?"

David nodded. "Yes, unfortunately, she is. But she'll never get a chance to hurt you, AJ." He turned a pointed gaze to Vanessa. "That, I can promise."

"Then it's in me even more."

At the boy's broken words, Leo scooted closer. "Hey, AJ."

The boy stepped back as Leo smiled, extended his hand. "Sorry we couldn't meet at a better time, but I'm your great-uncle Leo, which makes me sound kinda old, so maybe we should just stick with 'uncle.'"

"I don't know you."

"No, you don't. But I've gotta tell you, I feel like I know everything about you. The people around here, they can't stop talking about you."

"About what...I am." AJ centered the gun on Vanessa's head. "Sometimes, I just want to –"

"I know," Leo said, finally close enough to touch the boy's elbow. "I know emptiness. I know feeling like there's this big hole inside you that can't ever possibly be filled with anything good. I know anger: the kind that creeps up inside you and you don't know why. I know carrying this big weight on your shoulders, except never knowing what it is. I know missing big chunks of yourself, not knowing where they are, or what they are. I know wearing the perfect mask" - His eyes met Vanessa's before sliding away - "and hoping to God it covers what's there. I know wanting to stare in the mirror and see what's there, but stopping, not because you might find a monster, but because you might not find anything. And, most of all, I know finally getting up the courage to look in that mirror and seeing that the guy staring back at you isn't so bad after all. He just needed a little help finding his way." This time, his gaze fixed on the one constant that had ever been in his life. The safe harbor in the whirlwind: his perfect, perfect paradox. "He just needed somebody to believe."

He still held a light grip on the boy's arm. He could make a play for the gun, but he was closer still to maybe, just maybe helping this kid look in his own mirror. For an agonizing minute, each second stretched into hours. Leo waited, hand still resting on AJ's unsteady arm.

At last, a clatter as the gun fell near Greenlee's waiting hands.

The boy collapsed into his arms, giving Leo his first – and best – hug of the day. "We're gonna be okay," he whispered with a shaky exhale.

When Leo at last looked up again, he was in awe that a couple more minor miracles seemed to have unfolded. For one, Vanessa was in handcuffs, resistant as ever.

Her protests were directed at the source of the second 'parting of the Red Sea' moment. David stood side by side with the man Leo was fairly sure wouldn't be making his brother's Christmas list anytime soon: the good chief Jesse Hubbard. They were actually…working together, tag-teaming Vanessa.

Leo rose, and AJ followed him as he joined Angie and Greenlee.

"I'm not telling you anything," Vanessa hissed. "You won't find the rest of those brats unless I get my deal."

"I know where they went." All eyes turned to the smallest, and the biggest, voice in the room. AJ gave them all a solemn, resolute command. "Let's go get them."

####

I just - I had to kill somebody, you or me.

One of the guiding truths of his life. This time, however, the outcome would be different.

The moment Alexander put the needle down, Zach reached into his jacket and pulled out the gun.

This earned a gasp from Kendall and a quite uncharacteristic reaction from Alexander. It was subtle, oh was it subtle, but that slight clench of the jaw always, always spoke more than any curse. "We'll go." He aimed the gun at an ever-elusive, ever-present target. "But we'll be taking our son and nieces with us. As for you," Zach shrugged. "One of two options that I see."

"Brava, brava, my son. I will say one thing for you – you know how to keep it interesting."

"'One doesn't discuss strategy until it's too late for the outcome to be altered.'" Those words, that mantra, ingrained in him since he had the power to form words. His own twisted nursery rhyme paid back in full. "That time has come, Alexander."

Alexander shifted Ian once again in his arms, covering one target. Exposing another.

"Zach," Kendall whispered.

"We end this now," he muttered. To her.

To himself.

"What was that? Are you scouting your kill again, ready for any collateral damage that might come your way? Are you telling your dear wife to watch closely, so that she may see a demonstration of what happened to her brother? Aim for the head, correct, Alex?"

Don't call me -

"Take it."

His head pounded.

"Take back your destiny."

The gun settled. Steadied.

"My son."

That pinpoint – that 'nothing' he needed - he couldn't find it.

He never wanted to find it again.

Zach dropped the gun to his side.

"My boy…"

That soft smile, that twisted tenderness he'd spent his whole life avoiding, maybe searching for in some way – that smile stayed in place even as Alexander sunk, laying Ian on the ground almost reverently. He finally collapsed forward, the needle jutting from the back of his neck.

Standing in his place was Dixie Martin.

She and Zach exchanged a silent nod before she knelt, touching the skin around the puncture and nodding again.

When Kendall ran to their son, it broke his own paralysis. Together, they enveloped the boy, soaking in the feel of him for all it was worth. They parted only long enough for Dixie to examine the boy.

"He's heavily sedated, but once he regains consciousness, he should be fine."

Fine. Such a simple word, such a loaded word.

They willfully ignored the still figure lying inches from them.

"The girls are with Tad," Dixie said. "They know where Kathy and Spike are."

"So do we. Let's go." Even with the weight of their son on her shoulder, Kendall was at the door before Dixie could utter another word.

Dixie's gaze briefly fixing on the man who had cost her so much - the man who had cost them both. "We should –"

"We should go," Zach stated flatly.

She lowered her head a moment before rising.

"I'll be there, I just…need a minute," he said, not looking up.

Hesitation, then soft, receding footfalls.

He was alone, yet he wasn't.

Zach ran a palm over whitening strands. Frail strands.

There's always been a purpose to my actions, a goal to be achieved.

His hand stopped at an unmoving shoulder.

"Your grand purpose, your goal…." Zach shook a head that no longer – and perhaps for the first time in his life – throbbed with pain, with the weight of regret. He released his hand.

"Goodbye, Father."

Released himself.

"Goodbye."