Previously...

In a heated confrontation, Will told James that he knew that Ethan was his son, prompting James to believe Will had kidnapped Michael in retaliation for his keeping it a secret.  The police intervened and James dropped his 38 revolver under a chair at Will's estate during the confusion.    After spotting Philip at her father's party, Heather withdrew and hid away in her bedroom while reliving the nightmare of the night on Joel Armitage's office.  Miranda refused to forgive Brett for using Heather as a pawn against Will Thomerson.  Janet broke into Will's estate to steal back her manuscript, but instead found the DNA test Will had done to prove Ethan was his son.  Fed up with Stormy budding into his business at the studio, Brett told James about Stormy's affair with Samantha Fallmont. James blasted Stormy for putting Blackthorne-Reynolds at risk. Baines told James and Brooke that they had no more leads in Michael's kidnapping.

Episode 43

"Exeunt"

Brett was in the gym at the Blackthorne mansion, lifting weights on the bench press as he exhaled steadily with each repetition.  When the door opened and Stormy entered, he barely acknowledged him, but the look on his face told him that he’d just came from seeing his father.

“You self serving son of a bitch,” Stormy exclaimed, his eyes narrowing on his brother-in-law.  “You couldn’t wait to corner my father and tell him about what you overheard that night at dinner, could you?”

Brett tried his hardest to ignore him while he finished his set.  Before he could react, Stormy came rushing up, standing above him and grabbing hold of the barbell.  He quickly tried pushing the weights up off of him but Stormy leaned in with his body and forced it down, inches from Brett’s neck.

“Do you honestly think you can turn my father against me?” he asked, gritting his teeth as he struggled to push the weights against him.   “You’re an outsider and you always will be, Brett.  Nothing is going to change that.  I swear I’ll make him see what a manipulative liar you are!“

Brett’s body convulsed as he struggled to force Stormy and the barbell off of him.  His face and neck turned red with exertion, finally summoning all his strength and pushing him off.   Quickly, he sat up on the bench and struggled to catch his breath, clutching his neck and breathing heavily.

Satisfied that he’d made his point, Stormy turned and walked out to the hallway when Brett came charging after him.   He jumped, knocking Stormy down to the ground outside the gym.   Drawing his fist back, he punched Stormy in the nose and grasped at his neck, slamming his head into the floor repeatedly.

Finally gaining the upper hand, Stormy pushed him off and rolled over, sending his fist into Brett’s gut over and over again.   Brett quickly kicked him away, sending him crashing to the table against the wall where a vase topped over and shattered into pieces.

“You want to get rid of me?” Brett asked, taunting him relentlessly.   “Then you should have killed me back there in the gym because that’s the only way I’m going to leave this house.”

“Then I guess I will have to kill you,” Stormy shouted in a rage just as James, Brooke and Detective Baines emerged from the library down the hall.  They saw the two men grappling, throwing punches and rolling around on the floor in a heated struggle.

Tightening his hands around Brett’s neck, Stormy shook him violently and slammed his head into the wall.   He drew his fist back and was about to deliver a mind-shattering blow when James and Detective Baines grabbed him and pulled him off.

“That’s enough!” James yelled angrily.   “Just what the hell is going on here anyway?’

Brett coughed and sputtered, clutching his neck violently.  “He was trying to kill me,” he said.  “You heard him.  He would have if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”

Baines raised an eyebrow, looked at James with concern.  “Is everything okay here, Mr. Blackthorne?” he asked.

James shook his head in contempt.  “You mean aside from my son and my son-in-law trying to kill each other?” he asked, glaring at them both.  “I ought to have you take them downtown and booked.  Maybe that will teach them a lesson.”

“James, I was working out in the gym when he came in and attacked me for no reason!” Brett exclaimed.

“No reason?” Stormy asked, struggling to get free of his father’s grasp.  “Dad, if you knew everything he’d been doing since he got here you would not even listen to a word he has to say.”

“Damnit, I don’t want to hear any more of this,” James argued.  “Stormy, do you think I have time to listen to the two of you bickering?  My child has been kidnapped and we’re doing all we can to find him.  Your paranoia about Brett is nothing but a distraction.”            

“It’s not paranoia!”

“Don’t interrupt me!” James shouted.  “Now I told you that you were on thin ice.  One more stunt like this and you’ll be sorry.”

Seething with contempt, Stormy pulled himself free and bolted down the hall to the staircase.   Brett took a deep breath and offered an apologetic smile to Brooke.  “I’m sorry about all of this,” he said, gesturing to the broken vase and table.   “I’ll clean it up after I get changed.”

After he’d gone, James led Baines down to the foyer.  “I’m sorry about that, Detective,” he said.  “Now, I assume since you’ve let Thomerson go you’ll have someone watching him closely.  Even if you didn’t find anything to convict him, I’m positive he’s hiding something.  I know he took my son.  It’s the only explanation that fits.”

Baines shrugged indifferently.  “I’d like to, Mr. Blackthorne,” he said.  “But unfortunately this is the end of the line for me.”

James and Brooke exchanged worried glances.  “What are you talking about?” he asked.  “You’re not giving up on my son!”

“The force is still treating the case as an active one,” he replied.  “They’ll follow up on any leads that come through, but unfortunately it’s no longer considered a top priority.”

“Not a priority?” Brooke gasped, tears threatening her eyes.  “My son is still out there somewhere!  Someone has him!  It is a priority, Detective!” 

Baines looked at them sorrowfully.  “I’m sorry.  The FBI will follow up on any new developments, but-“

“But what, Detective?” James demanded, then waited a beat.  “Answer me, damnit!”

Digging his hands into his pockets, Baines shook his head and pulled open the front door.  “I’m afraid the odds that we’ll find your son after all this time are slim to none.  Most cases are very time sensitive.  Whoever took Michael could be in another country by now.  They could have given him a whole new identity.”

“So you are giving up,” James deadpanned.  “I don’t believe it.”

Baines gave Brooke a final look of regret.  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Blackthorne.  I truly am.  If your son is still alive, then-“

“If he’s still alive?” Brooke asked, covering her mouth with her hands.  ”What are you saying?”

“I know it’s harsh, but we can’t rule it out as a possibility.”

After he left the house, Brooke collapsed into James’s arms, sobbing hysterically.  He smoothed his hand down her head in a futile attempt at comforting her.  Futile because there were no words to comfort her.   It was like a nightmare coming true.

He was more certain than ever that Thomerson had taken Michael, and he was going to get him back.  If not, he’d see the man dead.

The next day, Alex walked down the stairs at her house in Malibu, rushing to reach the door before the person knocking gave up.  Praying it was Jordan, she pulled the door open and sighed with disappointment at the sight of a delivery man from a boutique on Rodeo Drive.

“Ms. Reynolds, I have your gown,” he said and handed her the garment neatly zipped up into a vinyl hanging bag. 

Unable to hide her frustration, she hastily took the bag and closed the door, abruptly dropping the twenty thousand dollar gown onto a chair.  She quickly sauntered across the room and picked up the phone, dialing Jordan’s house in Beverly Hills.

“Gordon, it’s Ms. Reynolds,” she said when the butler answered.  “Is Mr. Rydell home?”

“No, I’m sorry Ms. Reynolds.  He left a little while ago.  Can I have him call you?”

Sighing with frustration, Alex shook her head.  “No, no, thank you Gordon.”  She hung up the phone and quickly lit a cigarette, beginning to pace the room. 

Ever since Jordan came to her house the night before asking where he could find Philip Whitacre, she’d had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.   Something was going on and all she knew was that it involved Heather.  But what had him in such an uproar?

The only thing she was sure about was that her husband was more upset than she’d ever seen him.  She ran up the stairs to get dressed, determined to find him and find out what was going on.

Jordan rushed inside the foyer of the Blackthorne mansion as Leilani opened the door.  “Is Stormy home?” he asked.  “I need to talk to him right away.”

“What do you want, Jordan?” Stormy asked as he made his way down the stairs, his right eye bruised from the volatile fight with Brett the night before.  “As you can see I’m not exactly up for another showdown.  As it is, I’ll look like a prized fighter at the Filmmakers awards tonight.”

Jordan rolled his eyes.  “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said.  “Listen, I need to know where I can find Philip Whitacre.  Alex said you and James went to find him when you thought he’d kidnapped Michael.”

Frowning, Stormy took a few steps closer.  It struck him as incredibly odd that Philip’s name kept coming up.  “Why?” he asked.  “What’s going on?”

“I just need to know where he lives,” Jordan insisted.  He knew that Philip was the only one who could tell him who had drugged his daughter and set her up to star in some low budget porn flick. 

“Does this have anything to do with Heather?” Stormy demanded, growing increasingly disturbed.

“Why?”

“Because she was the one who told us where to find him in the first place,” Stormy replied.

“What?”

He nodded.  “I asked how she even got mixed up with the guy and she wouldn’t tell me.  She just gave us the address of some porn studio in West Hollywood.”

“And did you go there?”

“Well yeah, my father and I went to the studio and talked to some greasy director.  I think his name was Armitage…yeah, Joel Armitage.  Anyway, he was the who told us where Whitacre lived.”

Jordan’s eyes widened.  Luckily Stormy had saved him a step.  Now instead of going after Philip, he could go right to the director and find out who had put him up to it.

“I have to go,” Jordan said and quickly turned back to the door.

“Wait a minute!” Stormy yelled and pulled him back.  “Tell me what’s going on.  I know this has something to do with Heather.  I want to know.”

“Forget it,” Jordan said and pulled the door open. 

“I have a right to know what’s going on!” Stormy yelled, grabbing hold of his arm and spinning him back around.

Glaring wildly, Jordan shook his arm free and gritted his teeth.  “If it hadn’t been for you, none of this would have happened!”

“Me?”

“Yes!  If you hadn’t left Heather for that trampy singer last summer then she’d still be married to you and wouldn’t be involved with that sleaze Whitacre and this Armitage guy!”

Refusing to give up, Stormy followed him out to his car under the porte-cochere and jumped into the passenger’s seat.   “I’m going!” he yelled adamantly.  “I can show you exactly where the studio is.”

Jordan, too frustrated to continue arguing, started the car and sped off down the long driveway to the main road.

Ethan opened the door of his house in the Valley and picked up the morning paper from the front porch.  He opened to the front page and read the headline quietly to himself. 

Blackthorne, Thomerson Hollywood Hopefuls at Filmmakers Awards.

Below the headline was a picture of James and a picture of Will.  He went back inside the house and kicked the door closed, scanning the article with a heavy heart.  It was true that they were two highly anticipated nominees in the best picture category, yet ironic because the award symbolized something so trivial.  In reality, their feud was about so much more than who produced a better film.   And if Will turned out to have had something to do with Michael’s kidnapping, it was only the beginning.

“Are you going?” Janet asked as she walked up next to him and read the paper over is shoulder.  “To the awards ceremony tonight?”

He sighed and rubbed his face with his hands.  “Good question,” he said.  “If I did go, would I be there to support my uncle, whose wife I slept with last year, or Will Thomerson, who may very well have kidnapped my….Brooke’s baby.”

Janet put her arm around him and pulled him close.  She knew what a difficult position he was in.  Being caught between the two men couldn’t be easy.  What made it worse was that she knew something that could change everything.   And if Ethan found out that Will was his father, it could destroy him.  His uncle’s deceit and his father’s treachery were powerful weapons.  The fact that it was in her hands troubled her.

“If you want to go I’ll go with you,” she said.  “I want to be there for you, Ethan.  I think you need someone right now.”

He smiled and pulled her into an embrace.  “Thank you,” he said.  “I don’t know what I’d do if you hadn’t come back.”

Janet looked into his eyes, feeling her knees growing weak by his penetrating stare.  She’d never quite expected to fall for him the way she did.  To her he was just another source for her manuscript.  But along the way he put her into a trance that she couldn’t seem to wake up from.  His deep, sensitive voice; his smoldering dark eyes; his strong arms wrapped around her at night while he made expert love to her in bed.   How could she destroy that? 

“I promise I won’t let anything hurt you,” Janet said and laid her head on his chest.  “I will do whatever I have to do to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Ethan frowned and pulled back.  “What’s that all about?” he asked, flattered that she felt so protective of him, but curious as to her enigmatic tone.

She quickly rebounded and shrugged indifferently.  “I just know how much you care about James and Brooke and that baby and I-“   A pause while she reflected on something that strangely enough hadn’t occurred to her before.  “Ethan, is Michael your son?” 

He looked into her eyes for a moment before turning and walking across the room.  “I think so,” he said without much hesitation.  “I mean, Brooke denies it but I’m pretty sure he is.”

Slowly the implications of what was happening came to her.  She’d never thought much about people who said history repeated itself, but in this case it seemed to be dead on.  For his entire life Ethan had been lied to about who his father was.   Was Michael destined to the same lie?   It wasn’t fair.  True, Ethan was probably better off without knowing who his father was, but Michael deserved to know the truth when he got older.   Ethan was a wonderful man and had so much to offer a child.

“What are you going to do?” Janet asked.

He turned to her and smiled sheepishly.  “If Michael isn’t found then there’s not much sense in fighting it,” he said.  “I know it sounds horrible but it’s easier to handle when it’s my cousin who was kidnapped rather than my son.”

Janet wrapped her arms around herself and grew into a daze.  She was more sure now than ever that she had to protect Ethan.  If Will Thomerson made her manuscript into a movie, it would crush him, and he’d had enough pain and misery for one lifetime.

“I haven’t seen Stormy or Jordan today,” James said to Alex as they stood in the conservatory at the mansion that afternoon.  “And speaking of our son, you won’t believe what he’s done this time.”

“What do you mean?” Alex asked with a note of concern in her voice. 

“It turns out the injunction on our pipeline that Senator Fallmont is proposing is all because Stormy has been sleeping with his wife.”

“What?” Alex gasped and took off her fur wrap.   “This could ruin everything!”

“I know, that’s what I told him,” James agreed.   He poured himself a drink and stared at the fireplace in a moment of reflection.  “Now that I think about it, I might have been a little hard on him.  I said some pretty terrible things.  Tell me, why were you looking for Stormy?”

“Jordan was going to be coming here to ask him about something and I thought I could intercept.”   She shook her head in despair and stepped forward.  “James, what about Michael?” she asked.  “What’s happened?  When I got here I could tell there was something going on.”

James leveled his eyes on her and shook his head solemnly.  “Detective Baines said they’re pulling him from the case,” he announced with some difficulty.

“Why?”

“There’s no evidence.  They arrested Will Thomerson but couldn’t find anything to implicate him in the kidnapping.  Now they’re questioning whether my son is even still alive.”

“Will?” Alex asked in surprise.

He nodded and handed her a drink.  “He had the opportunity, the means, and of course the motive.  He…found out about something that I’d kept from him.  Now he’s paying me back.”

Suddenly Alex was faced with a devastating reality.  Could she have prevented Michael’s kidnapping if she’d come to James sooner?

“What is it, Alex?” James asked, sensing that she was struggling inside.

She closed her eyes briefly.  “James, I know about Ethan,” she said.  “I know that he’s Will’s son.”

Frowning, James set down his drink and walked toward her.  “How could you know that?”

She shook her head in despair, overwrought with guilt.  “I overheard you on the phone.  You were talking to a private detective or a lawyer or somebody and you said that you never wanted Will to know the truth about his son.”

“When was this?” James asked in bewilderment.

She shrugged and turned away.  “When I came to the house after Miranda got back from marrying Brett in Las Vegas.”

“That was a year ago!” James exclaimed.  “If you’ve known all that time then how long has Thomerson known?”

“Not long!” she lamented.  “He came to me and asked if it was true.  I didn’t say anything but he saw right through me!  He didn’t believe me!”

Storming around the room in a huff, James racked his brain and tried to calm himself down.  “Alex, you should have told me this months ago!” he raged.  “Do your realize that if I’d known this I might have been able to stop him!”

“I wanted to!” Alex cried.  “But Jordan was so jealous and possessive!  He didn’t want me to keep going to you with every little thing!  He threatened to leave me!”

James stopped and shot her a penetrating stare.  “Well he certainly made good on that threat,” he said bitterly.  “Damnit.  Now I’m more sure than ever that he’s behind Michael’s kidnapping.  Don’t you see?  He’s paying me back because I kept Ethan from him.”

“Does Ethan know?”

James shook his head.  “No, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let Will tell him.  I swear I’ll see him dead first.”

“There’s got to be a way to stop him,” Alex said, grabbing at her purse with determination.  “There’s got to be.”

“Where are you going?” James asked as he watched her head to the door

Pausing, she turned back and looked at him with resolve.  “I’m going to make things right,” she claimed.  “I should have done something months ago but I didn’t.  At least now I can try to fix it.”

James ran his fingers through his hair and turned around, throwing his crystal glass across the room and watching it shatter to pieces before him.