August 26, 11 P.M.
"Oh, he's adorable," Caroline said as she cooed over Adam. "Eight months old and cute as a button. He takes after his daddy, doesn't he?"
Jamie was sitting in the Brady living room, doing her best to not have a total and complete mental breakdown. Max was in the kitchen, making Adam's bottle and she was sandwiched in between Shawn and Caroline on the sofa.
She smiled weakly, "Yes, he does take after his father."
Her son's eyelashes were ridiculously long, and his hazel eyes blinked sleepily and he began to wake up from his long nap as Caroline rocked him in her arms. The tuft of hair on his head was platinum blonde and would probably darken as he got older, and there was a tiny cleft in his chin. Any moment now he would push out his bottom lip and his face would begin to resemble a squashed tomato when he was prepared to announce to the world that he was hungry.
"Such a strong, handsome young boy, a Brady's Brady," Shawn remarked proudly as Adam opened his mouth and let out a scream that indicated his impatience.
Jamie sighed softly as Max arrived with a warm bottle.
"May I?" Caroline asked.
"Please," Jamie replied and got up from the couch as Max handed the bottle to his adopted mother.
As Shawn and Caroline exclaimed over their newest grandchild, Jamie and Max stepped into the kitchen.
"Eric's here," Max said quietly and without preamble.
Jamie paled visibly, but gave not other indication of her distress.
"As in here in this house 'here,'" he clarified.
"Okay. So what do we do now?"
Max opened the fridge and took out a carton of orange juice. He poured it into a glass he took from the drying rack next to the sink. "Here, drink this."
She drained the glass and washed it out in the sink. "How is Sami?"
"She was arrested today."
"What for?"
"Murdering her would-be groom."
The glass slipped from Jamie's hand and shattered in the sink. "That's impossible! Sami couldn't commit murder. It's against her very nature."
Max hugged Jamie. "It's going to be all right, believe me."
"Max, why are we here?" Jamie asked before she drew in a shaky breath.
"I don't know," he answered, hugging her close to him. "I just thought it would be good to see my family for awhile. And Eric needs to meet his son."
The forensic reports were in and it didn't look good. Abe Carver sat at his dining room table and read over the section that stated from the angle that Sami Brady would have been shooting from, it would have been impossible for the bullet to have caused the kind of damage that it did. All of the photographs made that fact abundantly clear.
Lexie sat down next to him and nudged him gently. He looked up to find a mug of steaming hot chocolate in front of him.
"Thanks, baby," he said, reaching for the mug and taking a sip. "With a dash peppermint schnapps, my favorite."
"I know," Lexie said as she rested her head on his shoulder. "What is all of this? The forensic reports?"
"Yeah, what we were able to gather. No autopsy, of course, since the body disappeared this afternoon."
"What would anyone want with Franco Kelly's body?" she asked, peering at the photographs. "It's hard to believe that someone would want to steal it."
"Well, it's not as if he got up and walked out of the hospital all by himself," Abe remarked, rubbing the bridge of his nose before planting a kiss on the top of her head.
Lexie's face lit up as a niggling doubt became a full-blown suspicion. "Maybe it did."
"What?" Abe asked, looking at her and trying to understand what she was saying.
"What if Franco Kelly's not dead?"
Mike woke up abruptly from a very pleasant dream and started to curse his overactive imagination when he realized he was in bed with someone else, and his right arm was asleep.
"Carrie," he whispered, unwilling to believe that she was actually there with him.
"Hmmm?" she murmured sleepily as she turned over, freeing his arm as she cuddled into his chest and slipped her leg between his.
Mike was in agony, and for more than one reason. Feeling was returning to his arm and he was having rather the visceral reaction that he'd come to expect when he was near her. Accompanying it was a feeling of incredible tenderness.
Simply put, it was amazing, this being able to lie next to her in bed, to feel her breath on his neck, the weight of her arm as it lay across his torso, and the coziness of her leg between his. Nothing in his life had ever felt this right.
And to think, she loved him. Carrie loved him. He wanted to wake her up just so he could hear her say it again. But he let her sleep and found himself drifting into dreamland as he pondered the effect that Augusta Fredericks had on him in the space of one day of his life.
"I owe you one, Gus," he said softly into the darkness as he hugged Carrie close.
Mike owes me one. Gus thought to herself as she watched Roman sleep off his temper tantrum. He owes me one big time.
She stared at his back, willing him to disappear so that she could get a good night's sleep. She was tired, she was in shock, she had lost a lot of blood. Her leg hurt, her back ached, and she wanted nothing more than a good rubdown, a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a shot of Jack Daniels.
Her life had gone to pieces in the space of ten hours. Her ex-husband, who she still loved, was getting married to a red-headed Barbie doll. It was the first time she'd been able to see her daughter in over a year and she had to sacrifice that because of this stupid mission she had accepted from Shane Donovan. And if she had to listen to anymore whining from Marlena Evans, Kate Roberts or Sami Brady or anyone else in Salem, she was going to have a hard time controlling her trigger-happy impulses.
Ramon and Rafael were here. So was her daughter, her baby, the little girl she'd given up. She'd almost had sex with a married man who she'd known for less than a day. Her leg would probably be infected before long.
Still, she mused, I've been in worse situations before.
Not very much could top catching her husband in bed with his secretary when she arrived home early from an evening shift. The fact that their infant daughter was sleeping not two doors down while Trevor and Miss Penny Plummer cavorted between the black satin sheets that Mike had given her as a gag gift for her wedding.
After getting a quickie divorce and suing for custody of Claire, but having to settle for partial custody because the judge was an old dinosaur, Gus felt ready to let her husband experience the joys of fatherhood (which he'd neglected to avail himself of during Claire's early months) and do something really dangerous.
Thank God she was still keeping in touch with Rafael. He was able to pull some strings for her and get her an assignment posing as a doctor in an Israeli hospital. But when she got there, who should she be working with but good old Mike.
It was easy to tell him everything. Mike was one of the most close-mouthed men she knew when it came to important secrets. Her target? An arms dealer going by the name of "Eve" who was reputedly exchanging medicine for guns against the Palestinians.
What a debacle. From start to finish, the three-year assignment was arduous, hazardous and stressful. Now Gus was facing the task of keeping Jeremy safe while she locked horns with Miriam Jacobs.
I should call Robin and see how she's feeling, Gus said to herself. She wrote it down on a piece of paper from the desk of the doctor whose office she was inhabiting. The header on the note paper: Dr. Craig Wesley, M.D.
Gus groaned and wondered what would happen when Craig came back to his office. This is just my luck.
August 27, 1998
12:12 A.M.
The Kiriakis mansion was covered in police tape, but the front door was accessible. Sami cowered under the gaze of the Salem police who were still gathering evidence from the living room. She held tightly to Austin’s hand and ducked her head behind his shoulder, wishing that she could escape from this nightmare.
“It’s all right,” he said softly as he guided her through the foyer to the kitchen.
He sat her down at the kitchen table and began to rummage in the fridge.
“Where is Kate?” she asked.
“Mom’s still at the hospital. She refuses to leave Lucas’ side. What would you like to eat?”
“ Do we have any ice cream in the house?”
Austin grinned and dug through the freezer until he found what he was looking for and set it down in front of her. “Chubby Hubby, right?”
“I can’t believe you remembered!” Sami exclaimed, “This was all I wanted when I was pregnant with Will.”
“I know,” he said, and got her a spoon.
Sami dug in with obvious hunger as Austin sat opposite from her, stealing occassional spoonfuls. They enjoyed a comfortable silence while the warm wind blew in through the curtains.
Finally Sami put down her spoon and rested her hand on her chin.
“I can’t believe that this would have been my wedding night,” she whispered softly.
Austin slowly reached a hand across the table and squeezed hers. “It’s going to be all right, Sam.”
She turned to look at him. “What did you call me?”
His gaze never wavered from hers. “I called you ‘Sam.’”
“That sounds so. . . different.” Sami tested the name in her mind and found that she secretly liked it.
“I think it suits you much better than ‘Sami.’ It’s more mature. It’s the name of a responsible woman; ‘Sami’ makes me think of a little girl.”
“Is that how you think of me?” she asked, not willing to trust her intuition. “You think I’m mature and responsible?”
“Yes, I do, Sam,” he answered, using the name deliberately. “You’ve been through a helluva lot today, especially these past few hours. I was going to start calling you that a long time ago.” He wasn’t looking at her, he was watching the stars through the window, but she felt the warm pressure of his hand on hers.
Sam didn’t know what to say. She just sat there next to him while the rest of the ice cream melted into a soggy mess and their spoons became stuck to the placemats.
Craig Wesley sat in the doctor’s lounge, thankful that he’d been able to explain the hickey on his neck. Telling Nancy that Gus had jumped him wasn’t too much of a stretch for her to believe, but he didn’t want to press his luck.
He massaged his temples as he realized that he was due to go on shift at one o’clock. He needed his lab coat, which he’d left behind in his office. Working the emergency room tonight would be agony, but hopefully he’d be able to remain on his feet and not kill anyone. A bracing shot of caffeine, followed by one of those addictive doughnuts from the nurses’ lounge would do the trick.
His mind drifted to Gus as he rolled down his shirtsleeves and began to button his cuffs. What a piece of work. If I were Mike, I’d have gone after her in med school.
Strangely enough, he had a vague recollection of a long, tall woman who strongly resembled Gus being in his dissection unit during his second year. Always partnered with Mike, and the two of them were constantly competing with him and his partner for the top scores in the class. He remembered her being very cool and collected when it came to examining the cadavers. In fact, it was Mike’s memory that saved his grades more often than not because he was the more squeamish of the two.
Then there was that woman that they both dated, what was her name? Oh yes, Juliana Roberts. Rich, pretty, and older than the two of them by a couple of years, but still an incredible knockout. Whatever happened to her? Craig wondered. He assumed she’d gotten married to some boring stiff who could drape her in all the jewelry and couture that neither he nor Mike had been able to afford when they’d been doctors-in-training.
Craig checked the coffeepot.
Empty, of course.
He decided he’d rather go for one of the flavored roasts that Nancy had given him to keep in his refrigerator. Hazelnut sounded like a good choice. He’d weasel a doughnut out of that sassy Ali McIntyre when he saw her next. With her skinny little frame he doubted she ever went near them.
“Gus.”
“Hmmm, what?!”
Gus woke up with a start. Roman was shaking her gently.
“Gus, I gotta go home. This couch is murder on my back.”
She nodded sleepily as she pulled out her Glock and cocked the hammer. Roman knew what she wanted.
“I promise I won’t get on Mike and Carrie’s case.”
Yawning as she pointed her gun at him, Gus said, “You so much as threaten them and you’re dog food. Save it for your ex-wife. Got it, Brady?”
He mock-saluted her. “Got it, Chief.”
“Now get out of here before I fire a warning shot up your nose.”
Roman exited the room quietly, chuckling as he did so. Leave it to Gus to make him cool his heels and his temper on a doctor’s couch.
Carrie shifted in her sleep and hugged the warm body even closer to her own. Funny, she didn’t remember it smelling this good before. She sighed and smiled.
It had to be an incredibly fabulous dream she was having about Mike. She’d had them before. There’d been sweet, innocent dreams in which the two of them had done romantic things like lie in a field at night looking up at the sky, trying to pick out the constellations. She’d also dreamed about slightly risque encounters in which the two of them had been dancing close in a crowd of people and they’d publicly kissed. And then there were the extremely graphic ones like she’d had earlier in the day, the kind that made her blush when she remembered them and had made her avoid certain items of furniture like Mike’s desk, the couch in his office, her own desk, and even her kitchen counter.
And she invariably woke up from these dreams lying next to the snoring and sheet-stealing man who was her husband.
Truth be told, their sex life was getting dull. In the beginning, she’d been very attracted to him and everything they had done together had seemed wildly exciting. Now it was all routine: he’s kiss her, undress her, and she’d just lie there while he “took care of business” because he firmly believed that once he found the way to do it, variation was superfluous.
She found herself hating the words “make love,” which was what he called it. It wasn’t love. She didn’t feel anything that resembled love while she waited for it to be over.
Sitting on Mike’s lap in that broom closet and taking advantage of him had been the first time in many, many months that she’d felt sexual desire. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was the first time in months that she’d been able to act on those potent emotions that became unbearably magnified whenever she was alone with Mike.
Truth be told, Carrie had been fantasizing about Mike for months, pretending that it was him, not Austin who made love to her whenever her husband got around to that part of their relationship. She could never tell Austin that. It would break his heart.
As the warm body hugged her back and she realized that she was awake and this was not a dream, Carrie almost screamed. It was all coming back to her. She was in bed with Mike, albeit fully dressed! She wanted to cry from happiness.
“Carrie, are you all right?”
His voice, soft and careful, came to her through the darkness as she felt his fingers brush her hair from her temple.
Was she all right? She was in his arms, safe, warm, cuddled, loved. What a stupid question to ask!
“No, Mike.” She felt his body tense and his hand stilled. She smiled and kissed his bare chest. “I’m better than all right. At this moment, I feel perfect.”
He laughed and it was a sound of joy and relief. “I love you, Carrie Brady, even if you just gave me the scare of my life.”
She hugged him to her tightly. “I love you, Mike Horton, and don’t you ever forget it.”
She thought she could make out his grin in the dim starlight.
“Yes, ma’am!”
Gus stretched her leg and grit her teeth when she felt it start to cramp. She needed to change the bandages and there was little to no chance to get it done, even though she was in a hospital. This situation was ludicrous.
She put her gun on the blotter next to Roman’s and tried to massage the pain as best she could. It was a frustrating situation to be in.
The sound of a key turning in the lock made her swiftly pick up her gun and c--- it as she pointed it at the door.
It opened slowly, and Gus wasn’t surprised to see Craig Wesley step through the door.
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