Beach House, Hamptons

When Daniel returned to the beach house, because he had forgotten some important papers, he found the house empty. Frowning, he looked at the clock and realized that it was still time before Emily usually got up. As he went upstairs to the bedroom and the nursery and saw that the baby crib was empty, a feeling of anxiety came over him. Had something happened to Julian, that Emily had to leave all of a sudden? Although the baby had developed well, he still needed monitoring as a precaution, for he had trouble with breathing during sleep. The nervous feeling grew even more when he tried to reach Emily on her cell phone unsuccessfully. It was not like her to turn the phone off when she was out and about. Something had happened! Perhaps his mother or Charlotte knew more about it, this thought flashed through his mind. Determined, he went to the Manor. Since he still had a key, he went straight inside, without giving notice of his coming and was surprised to meet his mother's guest again.

"Daniel?" Victoria looked up from the breakfast table. "I thought you were in the editorial office."

"I was." He ran a nervous hand through his hair. "Do you know where Emily is?" He came straight to the point of his appearance.

She shook her head. "No. Why would you think I know where she is?"

"I left an hour ago, and she was still sleeping then," he explained. "And now I'm back and she and Julian are gone." He paced back and forth. "She didn't leave any message," he continued. "And her cell phone is off."

Victoria dipped her mouth with the napkin and then rose. "You think something happened to Julian?" She surmised, also visibly worried.

Daniel nodded. "She never switches off her cell phone. Unless... they're in the hospital." As the thought manifested itself in his head, the panic he'd tried to suppress caught hold of him.

"Calm down!" David tried to reassure him. "There can be a lot of reasons why someone turns off the phone."

Daniel gave him an annoyed glance. "Is that so? And does this also explain why she simply left like a thief in the night without giving me notice?" He started to pace again. "If she had planned to go out so early in the morning, she would have informed me about it."

David looked at him doubtfully. Perhaps their meeting was the reason why Emily needed fresh morning air, he thought. "I didn't want to jump to conclusions. I just wanted to say that there's a chance that she might be somewhere else and not in the hospital."

Daniel span around. "Stay out of this!" he snapped at David. "Do you have children? Do you know how it is to see your child lying there wired with tubes, struggling for his life? And then you come home and can't sleep because this stupid monitoring device sets off the alarm every night!"

"Daniel, calm down!" Victoria put her hand on his arm. "David didn't mean to bother you." She saw his eyes widen and knew she had made an ill-fated mistake.

"David?" Daniel echoed, looking at the man confused. "Didn't you say your name was Robert?"

Victoria exchanged a look with David and relaxed as he nodded slightly.

"David Clarke," he said. "I decided to change my identity a long time ago. It's a code name. After all, I escaped from jail and would have brought the police to the scene again."

Daniel looked bewildered at his mother. "You hide a convicted criminal?" He shook his head in disbelief. "Does Dad know about it?"

Victoria looked anxiously over at David, who looked completely relaxed. "His criminal act is time barred," she tried to defend him. "Besides, he was in jail for a crime that he didn't commit." She saw Daniel's eyes widen all of a sudden, and she knew that he had recognized him.

"David Clarke?" He fixed the man with a piercing look. "You were an employee of my father," he recalled. "You were accused of being responsible for the terrorist attack on Flight 197 in 1993."

David nodded. "Yes, they accused me, but I was not involved," he said. "I've been innocent in jail for years."

Daniel looked at him thoughtfully before he nodded. "Yes, I know."

David looked at him surprised. "You know that your..."

"I think we should go to the hospital now, so that Daniel can be rest assured that Emily and the baby are doing well," Victoria interrupted quickly, realizing what David had almost said. Daniel knew nothing about what Conrad and she had done back then. And it should stay that way. "I'm just going to change. I'll be right back." She ran up the stairs and stormed into her bedroom. Could she risk leaving the two alone? As she stepped out onto the balcony and looked to the beach house, she just saw Emily opening the door and then disappearing into the house. She ran quickly downstairs. "She's back!" She shouted excitedly, when she was back in the living room. "I just saw Emily going into the house. She had Julian with her."

"Thank God!" Relieved, Daniel closed his eyes and slowly exhaled. "I hope they're doing well. I'm off!" He gave a nod to his mother and David and then ran as quickly as possible back to his home, to find out the reason why Emily had left the house early in the morning.