Previously...

James confronted Brooke about Michael's true paternity.  An angry Brooke threw James out of her hotel room, and James went straight to Leigh for a romantic liason.  Brooke told Ethan they needed to take things slow.  Brett tried to console Heather after hearing of Jordan's disappearance, but she sent him away and leaned on Stormy for comfort instead. Jack Fallmont confided in James about his marital problems.  Sierra refused to talk to Renee.  Renee warned Nathan to stay away from their daughter.  Nathan snuck into Renee's room and went after Sierra.  Terrified, Sierra stabbed Nathan witih a letter opener.  

Episode 66

"Exit Stage Left"

Renee walked into her hotel suite, her eyes landing immediately on Nathan, writhing about in agony on the floor, a letter opener sunk into his rib cage and blood seeping into the thick cream carpet in the entryway.

“Sierra!” she exclaimed in horror. 

“Mother, I didn’t mean to do it,” Sierra sobbed, her hands stained with blood and her entire body trembling.  “I was so scared and he came at me and I didn’t know what else to do.”

Alex followed fast on Renee’s heels. “Dear God…” she whispered.

"It's okay," Renee said in a panic.  "Baby, it's okay.  Just go wash your hands.  It's going to be okay."

"But mom-" she whimpered, unable to keep from staring at Nathan, quietly moaning in pain and slowly drifting into unconsciousness.

"Go," Renee insisted.

Sierra finally turned and raced into the bathroom, leaving Alex and Renee alone with an injured Nathan.

"We're going to have to call the police and then they're going to ask questions," Renee began, pacing frantically around the room.  "They're going to ask why Sierra stabbed him and then it's all going to come out.  Everything I've done to try to protect her will be for nothing."

"Renee, get a hold of yourself!" Alex shrieked, grimacing at the blood that poured from the wound in Nathan's chest.

"The tabloids are going to be all over this!" Renee insisted.  "You know that as well as I do!"

Alex racked her brain, wishing that things hadn't gotten so out of hand.  It was because of her that any of this happened. Not just for revealing the truth about Nathan and Sierra, but for letting the man go twenty years ago at his trial.  Now an innocent young woman was going to pay the price.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door.

. . . . . . . . Twelve Hours Earlier. . . . . . . .

The oil tanker’s horn blasted through the night, a makeshift distress signal to alert the marina of the fiery collision.  He woke up underwater almost directly beneath the massive vessel.  The current carried him to the surface and he thrashed about violently, sucking in pockets of air and coughing up salt water   He was exhausted and bleeding.  Fiery debris was scattered as far as he could see.  He couldn’t hear the tanker’s engines, an indication that it had stopped in response to the accident.

Glancing toward the docks, he knew he couldn’t make it by swimming.  He was too weak.  A rescue boat in the distance caught his attention and he waved his arms as best he could, but even that proved to be too draining of his energy.  When he realized they were going in the opposite direction, he turned to look for something to latch onto.  At least he’d be able to float until he was rescued. 

A rope hanging from the oil tanker was as good as anything.  He grabbed on and allowed his legs to float on the water.  With any luck he’d be able to hang on long enough for the rescue team to find him.

After several minutes his eyes closed and he fell into a welcoming sleep.  The next thing he remembered it was daylight and he was coughing up water and seaweed, a group of people gathered around him and watching in anticipation. 

“You okay, man?” asked one bystander, a young blonde lifeguard who had successfully performed CPR on a water-logged Jordan.

“I think that’s the guy they’ve been looking for since last night,” said a girl onlooker. 

By the time Jordan was conscious and alert enough to survey his surroundings, he realized he was beneath the pier on a sand dune.   The current must have carried him inland sometime during the night.

“You don’t look so good, dude,” said the blonde kid.  “Your head’s all bleeding and junk.  You wanna go to the hospital?”

Jordan shook his head and slowly climbed to his feet.   His knees gave out and he fell to the sand again.  “I have to go home,” he said.  “Can somebody give me a ride?”

“You sure?” the kid asked.

Jordan nodded, allowing several of them to help him to his feet.

They drove him home to Beverly Hills where he showered off remnants of sand and salt, changed clothes, drank a gallon of water, and bandaged his various cuts and wounds himself.  It would have to do for now, he decided.  He had to get to Renee and Sierra and make sure they were all right.

He had his driver take him to Hotel Terranova.  James was in the restaurant with Jack Fallmont and Kenny DeWitt, who frantically raced over to him when they spotted him ambling through the lobby.  He didn’t stop to talk.

Landing in the hall outside of Renee’s suite, he knocked firmly and waited impatiently for an answer.  He heard voices inside but the door remained closed.  He knocked again.

"Oh my God, they're here," Renee said and cowered away from the door.  "This is it.  This is the end of my life.  My daughter is never going to forgive me when this gets out."

Another knock, and they both looked nervously at the door.

“I have an idea,” Alex said, staring down at Nathan, who was now white as a sheet.  She turned and went to pull the door open.  To her dismay, Jordan was standing in the hall.  A gasp tore loose from her throat and she threw her arms around him.

“Jordan, thank God!” she cried, overwhelmed with relief that he was alive and well. 

“Jordan?” Renee asked and made her way to the door.  She couldn’t believe he was standing there in front of her.  After the search team failed to find him, she was certain that he’d been carried off to sea, or worse yet, blown to bits from the explosion.

“Are you okay?” Jordan said to Renee.  “How is Sierra?”

Renee looked at Alex and then glanced behind her.

“Renee?” Jordan repeated.  “Is Sierra okay?”  He pushed his way past them and entered the hotel room.  His eyes immediately landed on Nathan, unconscious on the floor with the letter opener protruding from his chest.  “What happened?”

Renee and Alex exchanged worried glances again.

“Is he dead?” asked Jordan and bent down to examine Nathan’s motionless body.  He felt for a pulse and stood up again.  “He’s still breathing.  Did you call an ambulance?”

Alex shook her head.  “Not yet.”

“So what happened here?” he asked again, confused by what he’d walked into.

“I stabbed him,” Alex maintained. 

Renee looked at her with wide eyes. She couldn’t believe what Alex was doing.

Jordan picked up the phone in the entry and quickly dialed 911.  While he was on the phone, Renee pulled Alex aside and whispered in her ear.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Alex waved her away in an effort to avoid suspicion.  “I’m saving you and your daughter, now shut up before I change my mind.”

After summoning an ambulance, Jordan hung up the phone and turned back to them.  He approached Alex and examined her carefully.  “Did he hurt you?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “He tried to but I fought him off,” she explained, pulling a story out of thin air and hoping that it sounded plausible.  “I came by to check on Renee and Sierra.  They were downstairs at breakfast.  Nathan came by and we argued.  He was going to rape me again so I picked up the letter opener and I stabbed him.”

Jordan sighed with despair and pulled her into an embrace.  “I’m so sorry that I wasn’t here,” he said.  “I woke up on the beach and-“

“What the devil is going on here?” asked a voice from behind.

They turned and saw James enter the room, staring in disbelief at Jordan and the fact that he had miraculously survived the explosion on the yacht.   When he and Alex stood aside James saw the body of his uncle lying motionless on the floor.  

“What happened?” he asked.

“He came after me and I stabbed him,” Alex explained.  The pressure of maintaining a believable story weighed heavily on her.  “The paramedics are on their way.”

“He’s alive?” James asked. 

Jordan nodded and turned just as Sierra came out of the bathroom, her eyes red and puffy from crying.   She looked at Nathan and felt the tears surface again.  As much as she hated the man, she was horrified by what she’d done to him. 

“Sierra, are you okay?” Jordan asked and rushed toward her.

“Is he…” she slowly asked.  “Oh my God, I swear I didn’t mean to kill him.”

Jordan raised an eyebrow, glancing back at Alex and Renee just as the paramedics arrived.   They immediately went to work at checking Nathan’s vitals, placing an oxygen mask over his mouth while everyone watched in bated breath.

“Why am I not surprised to find you here?” Miranda said when she knocked on Brooke’s hotel room and Ethan answered.  “Haven’t you ever heard of discretion?”

“Miranda, what are you-“

“Where is she?” Miranda asked and walked into the room. 

“Huh?” Ethan asked.

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Miranda said and issued him a look of warning.  “I heard the news about Michael.  Daddy is hurt, as you can well imagine.  How could you do this to him, Ethan?  He practically raised you.  He pulled you up from the uncivilized depths of Kansas and brought you here and gave you a whole new life.  And how do you repay him?  You steal his wife and get her pregnant.”

“I haven’t stolen Brooke.  James lost her all on his own.  And as for Michael, that happened a long time ago.”

Miranda folded her arms and peered into the bedrooms.  “I knew that witch was going to destroy this family.  Well where is she, the infamous Galleria makeup counter trash?  I want to give her a piece of my mind.”

“She took Michael to get his twelve month checkup.  And I don’t want you upsetting her.  She’s been through enough.”

“Well isn’t that too damn bad,” Miranda scoffed and flung her black hair over her shoulder.  “You tell her that when she gets back I want to see her.”

Ethan followed her to the door and shook his head in frustration.  “Miranda, leave it alone.  Let you father and Brooke works things out on their own.”

She exited into the hall and gave him a final parting glance.  “I warned her that I would make her sorry if she hurt my father.  Consider this fair warning.  I’m going to decimate Brooke Taylor.”

After breakfast, Jack Fallmont decided to follow James’s advice and do something about his suspicions regarding Adrienne.  He made his way across town to Beverly Hills and paid Eddie Distefano a visit at his private investigative offices.   When he got there, Eddie was amidst a make out session with a vivacious redhead on the sofa.   His shirt unbuttoned and girl in her bra and mini skirt, Jack was the last person Eddie expected to see.

“Now I see the resemblance to your father,” Jack said with an amused smile.

Eddie quickly shot to his feet and handed his conquest her blouse.  She clumsily slipped it over her arms and made her way to the door.   “Call you later,” he said and gave her a knowing grin.

After she’d left, Eddie turned back to Jack and laughed nervously.  “Sorry about that,” he said.  “What brings you by, Mr. Fallmont?”

“I need to find out if my wife is having an affair,” Jack said and sat down across from Eddie’s desk.

 “That’s my specialty,” Eddie grinned and buttoned his shirt.  “What do you have so far?  Mysterious phone calls?  Late night meetings?  Disinterest in sex?”

 “All of the above.  Plus she’s made several sizable withdrawals from our bank accounts.  I think she’s using the money for an apartment or a villa where they’re rendezvousing.  I can get you copies of the bank statements.”

“Good,” Eddie said and leaned back in his chair.  “What’s her schedule?”

“Schedule?” Jack asked as if the idea that Adrienne did anything was foreign to him.  “She doesn’t have a schedule, unless you consider nine am Pilates lessons, lunch at noon with the Beverly Hills Ladies Club, and then shopping until 5 a schedule.”

Nodding, Eddie jotted down a few notes.  “Where does she have lunch?”

Jack shrugged.  “The Polo Lounge, The Yacht Club, Hotel Terranova.  Other than that your guess is as good as mine.”

Eddie stood up and tucked in his shirt.  “I’ll get started right away.”

“Good,” Jack said and shook Eddie’s hand.  “And just so you know, I need to keep this as quiet as possible.  Nobody can know that you’re working for me.”

“Of course,” Eddie said with a grin.

The paramedics strapped Nathan onto the stretcher and wheeled him out of Renee’s hotel room.  They made their way down the hall just as Miranda stepped off the elevator and looked around in bewilderment.

“What’s going on here?” she asked Detective Baines who was jotting notes down on a pad of paper.  “I’m the manager of Hotel Terranova and I demand to know what’s happening.”

“It seems Nathan Blackthorne has been stabbed,” Baines said and led her into the suite where Renee, Alex, Sierra, Jordan and James were gathered.  “Your mother claims she was threatened by the victim and picked up a letter opener in self defense."

“Mom!” Miranda exclaimed and ran over to Alex.  “Are you okay?  Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head.  “I’m fine, Darling.”

“Is he dead?” Miranda asked.

“No, we’re not that lucky,” Jordan remarked.

Suddenly Miranda realized that Jordan was no longer among the missing.  She hugged him warmly and kissed him on the cheek.  “Thank God you’re all right.  Does Heather know?”

He shook his head.  “Not yet.  I’ll go down and see her as soon as we’re done here.”

“Before we get too carried away with this family reunion, I do have a few more questions to ask,” Baines said with a frown.  “Miss Reynolds, you stated earlier that you came to Mrs. DeWitt’s hotel room to talk to her.  What did you want to talk about?”

“It was Blackthorne-Reynolds business,” she lied.  “And when I got here, Renee was gone.  I was about to leave when Nathan showed up.”

“The door was unlocked?” Baines inquired.

“What?” Alex asked, caught off guard by the technicality.

“The door to the room.  It must have been unlocked when you got here.”

She shrugged.  “Yes, it was.  Sierra was here.  She was in the bedroom.”

Jordan frowned, again finding glaring holes in Alex’s story.  When he arrived she told the story differently, saying that Renee and Sierra were both down at breakfast.  He immediately knew that something wasn’t right. 

“Miss Merteuil, could you hear Miss Reynolds and Mr. Blackthorne from your bedroom?” the detective asked Sierra.

“She was sleeping,” Renee chimed in.  She knew her daughter wasn’t prepared to answer questions about what happened.  She wanted to protect her and to make all the unpleasantness go away.

“I believe I was directing the question at your daughter,” Baines said with a sarcastic grin.   “Miss Merteuil?”

Sierra looked at her mother and then at Alex.  “No, I couldn’t hear anything.”

“There, you see,” Alex remarked with irritation.  “I’m telling you, Nathan came on to me, threatened me, and I felt that he was going to attack me so I picked up the letter opener and I stabbed him with it.  End of story.”

Baines sighed.  “I find it difficult to believe that Miss Merteuil didn’t hear any of this going on.  Her bedroom is right there.  It isn’t a stretch to think that she’d be able to hear if you were out here in the living room being attacked.”

“It all happened very fast,” Alex said. 

“Did you scream?”

“I don’t remember,” she said.  “I might have.  I stabbed him, he fell to the floor, and Sierra came out of the bedroom.  Then Renee showed up and then Jordan showed up.  Honestly, I don’t know what more you want from me.  I stabbed him.  Arrest me if you want, but it was self defense so I’m afraid you’ll never make it stick.  Never!”

Renee rolled her eyes in response to Alex’s dramatic performance.  She recognized the exact same speech from one of her early movies.  Hopefully Baines hadn’t seen it.  Then again, nobody had.

“Nobody’s getting arrested,” James indicated.  “Alex was acting in self defense.”

“So it seems,” Baines said and pushed his notepad into his pocket.  “Well, that’s all for now.  I’ll get to the hospital and see what condition Mr. Blackthorne is in.  Miss Reynolds, please remain available for further questions.”

After he’d gone, Jordan took James aside and whispered quietly.  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked. “As soon as I got here, Sierra said something to me about not meaning to kill him.”

“You think Sierra stabbed Nathan?” James asked. 

Jordan shrugged.  “Alex sure as hell didn’t.  Her story was all over the place.”

James nodded in agreement.  “Well, I can see why she would.  If the police found out that Sierra stabbed him, they’d start asking questions.  It would only be a matter of time before they figured out who she is.”

“Let’s go talk to Baines,” Jordan said and led him out into the hall.  They caught up with the detective before he got onto the elevator.  “Baines, wait up.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised that this day has come,” said Baines.  “The two of you were Nathan Blackthornes number one supporters.  Now your ex wife stabs him and you don’t seem to have any problems with that.  What’s the catch?”

“Yes, we were wrong,” James said.  “He’s a rapist and he should be behind bars.”

“It’s doubtful that’s going to happen now,” Baines declared with a certain amount of regret.

“What do you mean?” Jordan demanded.   “His re-trial is coming up in a few weeks.”

“The re-trial is a joke,” Baines laughed.  “It’s so the D.A. can look like he’s making an effort.  He knows that Blackthorne isn’t going to be convicted.  There aren’t any witnesses to testify.  Debralee Scott is dead, as are her parents.”

“What about Alex?” James insisted.    “She just got done telling you that he tried to rape her again today.  With her testimony the jury won’t have a choice but to convict him.”

“Are you kidding?” Detective Baines asked.  “The D.A. isn’t going to let Alex Reynolds testify again.  Not after the mockery she made of the trial in ‘87.   Convicted perjurers don’t usually make good witnesses.”

“So that’s it?” James asked angrily.  “He just gets away with everything?”

“I’m sorry.  Without a viable witness there is no case.  Unless there’s another woman he’s attacked or tried to attack since he returned to Los Angeles…”

They looked at each other, fully aware that they were backed into a corner.

“You have got to be kidding,” Ethan said and paced around Brooke’s hotel room.  “Did my uncle send you here to ask me this?”

“It was my idea too,” Jordan said, digging his hands in his pockets and watching Ethan storm around the room.

“He didn’t even have the nerve to ask me himself,” Ethan said and chuckled under his breath.  He turned to Jordan and folded his arms.  “So he finally realized that Brooke was telling the truth, is that it?  All it took was for her to leave him and for him to find out the truth about Michael.  Now he suddenly wants to do the right thing and send his uncle to prison?”

“If Nathan survives, Brooke may be our only hope.  She’s the only one who can testify against him.”

“If you and James hadn’t worked so hard to bring him back here, you wouldn’t have to ask Brooke to testify!” Ethan yelled angrily.

“We were wrong,” Jordan said.  “But what’s done is done.  Now are you going to ask Brooke or not?”

Ethan ran his fingers through his hair and picked up the phone to call Brooke’s cell phone.  If it were up to him, they’d leave James hanging.  But if it meant getting Nathan off the street then he’d have to convince her.

Renee wrung her hands together nervously, glancing at the phone and waiting for James or Jordan to call with news from the hospital.  She was on pins and needles waiting to hear if Nathan was going to pull through.  Part of her wanted him to die a slow and painful death, but in reality she knew that if that happened they would be in a lot more trouble than they already were.

“I just can’t believe you did this,” she said and glanced over at Alex. 

“I did it so no one would find out your secret,” Alex insisted.  “You know, it isn’t often that I do something so selfless.  I think a thank you may be in order.  If he dies I could go to jail!”

“If he survives, he’s going to tell the police that Sierra was the one who stabbed him,” Renee exclaimed.  “Your phony story will hold up for about ten minutes before they come looking for her.”

Alex lit a cigarette and puffed heavily while she paced around the room.  “We’ll just say that he hallucinated.  He was in shock from the blood loss and he imagined that it was her.  Trust me, we can explain it away easily enough.  Besides, I don’t think it will come to that, because the police will want to know why she stabbed him, and he’s not stupid enough to open up that can of worms.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Renee.  Deciding to check on Sierra, she walked to the bedroom door and opened it slowly. 

Inside, Sierra was lying on her bed, sobbing into her pillow.  She looked up and immediately threw her arms around Renee. 

“Mom, it was horrible,” she cried.  “I was so scared.  I thought he was going to-“

“Shhh, I know baby, I know,” Renee soothed her, stroking her hand down her back and holding her close.   “Y