Rated R for violence
****
For the next week the search continued to be on. An all points bulletin search was on for Nicholas, but he had escaped because Jim had to let him go after questioning because he had been forced to and because of no direct connection to the kidnapping and now they knew they had screwed up and now the had slipped out of their sight and control. In Madison, Grace was trying to have a good visit as she got to know her mother’s life in Connecticut. She got to spend a lot of time with her sisters and even got in a proper visit to Yale when her mother came through with connections to get in on a personal tour of the campus. And they even drove over to Harvard for the day and saw the prestigious university. The twins came along on that tour and Alexandra fell in love with Harvard just as much as her older sister did. Carrie gagged at the thought of going to one of those schools. They were on nice campus’s, but it wasn’t her style. But she had a good time on the tour. Still Grace had managed to find value and enjoy the tour despite the threat that hung over her head. The leak of the pictures hadn’t happened yet, but she knew it was coming and it had given her plenty of sleepless nights and because she was unable to see Jake and seek comfort from him, so it made for some tense times.
“So, how are you feeling?” Grace heard as she sat in a doctor’s office as her mother had insisted she see her friend, and she had resisted because she knew she didn’t need any professional telling her to slow down, and to grieve in her own way, and not use sex as a way to keep that grief away.
“It’s be an eventful couple of months,” Grace muttered as she thought of how everything had started to slide out of control with her last trip here in Connecticut when all she was doing was rebelling by going out of town with a friend, and she didn’t know what she would discover with that trip, and here she was back in the state again, when her life was completely different.
“Your mother is worried,” Brian asked.
“So, you helped my mother, right?” Grace asked as looked around the office and then back at the doctor at the mention of her mother. “She was your patient, right?”
“She has stopped in every once awhile” Brian admitted as it continued to blow his mind how much his colleague’s life had change in a span of a few months as he knew administration had a side bet going on how long Beth would stick with the hospital.
“Then how come you didn’t help her get her memory back?” Grace asked. “Why couldn’t you have helped come back to us when I was younger?”
“Sometimes it doesn’t work like that,” Brian sighed. “I wish her memory could have come back to your mother a long time before it has, but at this stage it’s about trying to deal with what she does remember and how it impacts your life.”
“I guess,” Grace sighed murmured as she thought of how having her mother back when things were simpler might have helped and saved them so much pain, and yet if this was because they had found out her mother was alive, she didn’t know that was good or bad but it might have saved some heartache.
“So, I heard your friend is missing?” Brian asked as he sensed there was tremendous pain underneath the girl’s exterior that she was trying to bottle up. “That has to be a lot for you to deal with given you miss her…”
“Yeah,” Grace said with hatred in her eyes. “It should have been me…”
“Why do you say that?” Brian asked.
“Because it’s truth,” Grace murmured. “It should have been me,” Grace sighed as she knew she couldn’t really say anything about it given how bizarre it would sound, and because it had a direct line to the part of herself that couldn’t be spoken out loud to the general public. “But it wasn’t… and I will have the live with that for the rest of my life.”
“Sometimes we have to make peace with choices made and try to forgive ourselves…” Brian asked.
“That is me” Grace murmured. “If only I had let people in before I did…” she asked as she wondered how much they could have prevented some of Nicholas’s attack maneuvers if only she had been honest about Tommy Ellis back in January. They had allowed him the ground to move from, and she’ll never forgive herself.
“I am told you’re spending a lot of time with your friend’s older brother?” Brian asked as he knew there was a lot of unspoken pain she obviously suppressing and unwilling to talk about and knew that could cause trouble in the end.
“My mother speaks too much…” Grace groaned.
“She can’t help but be worried,” Brian asked. “She’s your mother, and she worries, and she knows she wasn’t there for much of your life, but she’s trying to be here for you now…”
“I know, and I love that I have my mother back, but she shouldn’t worry because Jake is the best thing about what is going on with my life right now. We support each other, because we both miss his sister, and sometimes that leads to other activities.”
“You do know becoming sexually active at your age can lead to emotions you’re not ready for, right?” Brian asked.
“Something tells me I am aware of that, but given that being with Jake saved my life… I think god is okay with whatever we might do together, and how is sex bad for me when it has to a better alternative than too much alcohol or drugs. Being with Jake is one thing that saved me from the fate my friend is facing… They say I am only young once and some people don’t even have the chance to be young, so yeah, I think my conduct is pretty tame compared to how it is for my friend” she murmured as the appointment ended before he could dive into her thinking and she left office, and sat in the waiting room as her mother went in for a few minutes.
“She’s greatly troubled” Brian advised Beth. “Her life is in upheaval, and the longer it goes on, the more she’s going to act out, and engage in risky behavior…” Brian made a point of saying and Beth nodded because it didn’t take a outsider to understand that Grace was crying for help but unwilling to take that help because she had too much burden on her shoulders because of her status, and what she couldn’t say. “You and her father both are going to have to face a lot of harsh realities if you want to help your daughter.”
“We already do,” Beth sighed as she sadly smiled as she knew some of what Grace was facing and knew it went well back to what happened with Ellis as she though of the troubles facing her eldest daughter, a child she was only beginning to understand and know as she nodded and thanked Brian and left the office as she and Grace left for her home. “We have to talk” was all she said…
“Oh great, what now?” Grace muttered as they sat in the car as she knew in some ways being away from Roswell wasn’t the vacation it should be because she felt too much, and she missed home too much.
Beth knew this, and instantly knew what she had to do as she dropped her daughter off at the house, and then she made a phone call, and made some arrangements before telling her daughters that changes were afoot.
They just didn’t know what kind of changes were on the way.
*
Back in Roswell, Max was fully concentrating on the search for Elizabeth who got more and more dependent on the drugs they kept withdrawing and feeding her to her to taunt her as they tried in vein to get Nicholas last piece of the deal to get off the planet, but so far nothing was happening as they tried to build up Elizabeth’s system with stem cells to allow for a pregnancy that her body was rejecting up to this point.
“I told you we should have taken the Evans girl” said one of the men. “She’s the King’s daughter, anyways, right? She would give us what we need.”
“No, this is perfect” Nicholas muttered as he stared over the rails at a zoned-out Elizabeth who laid before him on the gurney as he patted her head and felt her hair. “As much as I want off the planet, it might actually be good to play the long game on this one.”
“What do you mean?” the man asked.
“Just something I am playing with,” Nicholas mused to himself as he was having a good time at dealing this piece of revenge on Guerin. “He’s not going to see it coming.”
“All because you want revenge on the father?” Stuart Barnes asked as he wondered if Nicholas was getting a little too obsessed with his revenge against Michael Guerin and was bypassing their other targets. “What about Evans?”
“That is too easy, this is so fun” Nicholas said as he strolled his fingers along Elizabeth’s arms with a tender trail of touch as she started to whimper out of a mix of fear and need. So, he leaned down and whispered into her ear, “My baby needs her bottle, doesn’t she?” he asked as her whimpers through the tubing increased. “That’s right, she needs what she needs and she’s always going to remember me, isn’t she because I give her what she truly seeks… her bottle” he asked as he held the plunger of drugs and plunged it into the feeding line as she immediately settled as he patted her hair. “That’s right, my baby is all better, now isn’t she?”
As her eyes closed and she slipped into drug induced slumber. “Go ahead on the plan against Evans, but I am going to need some more time with this one” Nicholas grinned because he was having too much fun in trying to wreck the Guerin’s worlds with his actions to pull any termination button and get rid of Elizabeth and proceed back to their initial idea of Grace. It was too delicious, for him to play with Elizabeth.
Khivar will get what he wants, he will just have to wait as I want my fun. More than twenty years of being a slave to other masters had made him to twitchy, and wanting it done his way, “So, what’s up doc. Anything?”
The newest doctor who was blackmailed into doing the bidding of Nicholas looked up from his work. “It is still not working. All the drugs you’re slipping her might be preventing anything from working or she’s not meant to provide what you’re wanting.”
“She’s providing what I want” Nicholas smiled. “And the other thing is a necessity doctor or you’re dead just like the person who held your job before you… So, make it happen doctor, or wifey gets the pictures and the cops get a call.”
“One way might want to think about transfusing blood into her from someone who is like the potential father, of the same genetic makeup so that the body doesn’t reject it. You might get more success out of it. Its like her body thinks it’s supposed to reject what we have given her so far…”
“Damn her human mother,” Nicholas sighed. “Why couldn’t Michael have slept with Isabel like he was supposed to… and mate with her… then this would be so much easier.”
“Excuse me,” the doctor asked.
“Just do whatever you can to make this happen now…” Nicholas muttered as checked his phone, and had enough people on his staff to know that he was now the only suspect on the list that Valenti was working with regarding his granddaughter’s disappearance. He managed to move around surprisingly with ease but knew time was counting down and he did need to get out of town until it would blow over as he dreamt of what his next goals to accomplish his newest toy. “Okay doc, I’ll be the donor. You are right, she’s too human, and she might need to be more like me, so what do I have to do?”
“The first one should be direct to the patient, and the others we can store for future sessions” the doctor muttered as they pulled the other gurney over so Nicholas could lie down.
“This is too damn perfect,” Nicholas smiled, and she patted a drugged-out Elizabeth. “It will give me something to hold over her if I am apart of her, as she won’t be able to get rid of me as much as she’ll try”
and something her father will never get over if she lives to see home at the end of this. Imagine this Guerin, because then what kind of girl your warrior princess will she be?
“Lie down and we’ll start,” the doctor indicated, and Nicholas laid next to Elizabeth and a needle was inserted into Nicholas and then the tube was inserted into Elizabeth’s arm and the blood flowed as Elizabeth was oblivious to what was happening as in her brain a taunting Nicholas was muttering his dire warning about her father’s reaction to all this and how she was a disappointment swam through her drug filled mind. “Your Daddy will be so embarrassed” Nicholas smoothly taunted her brain…
She was beginning to believe him.
*
Speaking of Michael. He was losing it. He stormed out of the Sheriff’s Department after another disappointment meeting had gone by and still nothing had come up to where Nicholas had taken his daughter. Max came out after him as he was also on tender hooks because Grace was due back any day now, and the threat of the pictures still hung over his head and Michael and Maria were still separated. Without Maria steady hand, Michael was a loose cannon. Jake was living full time at the motel. Maria was in no shape to be anyone’s steady influence as she was finally left the kids with Amy and Jim and went up to the cabin, away from her family, as she hadn’t talked to anyone in days.
The meeting had gone badly because the rumors of an allegation of abuse against Jake were starting to make the rounds, and not simply in their little group as it was starting to get out into the general public. It made Michael explode, and Max didn’t blame him. Although Jim was trying to stamp them out but because of his relationship to the story. It wasn’t going to be easy and Isabel’s dream of Elizabeth’s state of mind wasn’t making things any easier as she explained to her brother that it was truly terrifying as the girl had no will left to be able to fight what was being done to her, and she was falling more and more under the influence and she might never come back to them. Max feared for Elizabeth, and feared for what it would do to his friends, as it was already hard to manage Michael…
“Go up to the cabin and talk to Maria,” Max advised. “You both need each other during this time of need. It’s making things worse for the both of you to be apart.”
“How about you and Beth?” Michael asked.
“That is different,” Max murmured. “You have a wife who is crying for your support, and you need hers. Don’t let Nicholas drive you apart… as he’s already done too much to give him this.”
“He has my little girl Max,” Michael said. “I know I said I didn’t want children back when we were kids, but Elizabeth was special from the moment she was born. I saw me in her eyes, and she had the spunk of Maria. It was a sight to see. She may have given some grief lately, but I will take that all back to even get a piece of that girl back. You haven’t told me. Isabel hasn’t told me about her latest vision, and I know it can’t be good. To know it’s because of me. To know it’s because of who we are…”
“We don’t know why Nicholas is doing this…”
“He’s doing it because we stopped him from taking the Granolith and Courtney sacrificed herself to prevent him from getting it when he was trying to rape her mind. The Summit is a reason he’s mad at you, when you didn’t take the offer from Khivar but you’re just fun for him, it’s me who forced him to stay on Earth.”
“It was all of us…” Max thought back to high school. “We allowed him an out to be out there seeking the advantage he had on us. He hates all of us and is trying to ruin us.”
“You know Isabel is right. Nicholas is trying to split us up….” Michael spat. “By destroying our children, he destroys us.”
“We’ll win in the end…”
“How?” Michael asked. “Tell me Max, how are we supposed to win when he has my girl and has had her for nearly two weeks and the horror, he has inflicted on her. This is on us. We should have seen it and been more protective. They blindsided us with Liz and we went back to sleep on the watch. We allowed the kids to think it was just fun horror stories of our childhoods and we allowed to think they had a chance, but they don’t Max, they don’t”
“We will find Elizabeth…”
“Who will we get back, if we do Max…” Michael asked. “You were only in the White Room a few hours and you came back changed. It’s been two weeks Max, and we don’t have any clues as to where she is. Maria doesn’t need me to be there with her because every time she looks in my eyes, she sees the regret that she didn’t take Jake back to New York once he was born or to Los Angeles and meet someone else and have a nice normal life, and have nice normal children. Instead, she got this…”
Max sighed as the phone rang. Assuming it was Grace, he picked it up, but it was his sister. “What is it Isabel…” he asked. “No, I haven’t… Damn it, really? Thanks for letting me know. Call Jake and tell him to get to my place, on the double” he asked. “I know I am on hiatus from the office, but I am his lawyer…”
“What is it?” Michael asked.
“It’s gone live. The pictures, tape and everything else leaked on social media making it hard to track who’s responsible. We need to get to my place because Jake is going to get swarmed.
“And you think we can win this in the end?” Michael asked as he wanted to punch someone.
“Maybe you’re right, maybe we can’t win this in the end, but we have to try. We have kids counting on us Michael. We need to at least try to make this life is somewhat livable for their sake so to not be defeated otherwise there will be no coming back from this…”
“Good luck there because we have no chance at this point,” Michael murmured as he got into Max’s car and they drove back to the Evans house. Jake was pulling up when they arrived. “Don’t say anything! We will figure this out…”
“Grace is coming back,” Jake announced.
“Fuck!” Michael murmured as Max only shook his head as this was the last place, he wanted his daughter.
“I guess her mother needs to go to a medical conference for the next few days. She’s filling in at the last minute, and she didn’t have any choice given all the time off she’s taken lately. The twins are staying with her friend Serena, but Grace is coming back…”
“Does she know?” Max asked. “About the other thing.”
“No,” Jake said. “I got Isabel’s call right after talking to her. She’s on the plane now, she’s not going to know anything she lands.”
Max nodded.
“About the other thing,” Jake asked.
“Has anyone tried to call you?” Max asked.
“I turned off my phone once I got Isabel’s message” Jake muttered. “What are we going to do?”
“You’re going to go pick up Grace at the airport personally, and since the cabin is nearby. You can spend the night there and can come back tomorrow or better, yet Saturday and we’ll figure out where to go from here. We’ll know more of the fallout by then…” Max said determining he needed some more time to figure out a safe route for his daughter and Jake.
“Mom doesn’t want any company,” Jake asked.
“Tough,” Michael muttered. “She better but I do think she’ll understand, and if she doesn’t then she can call me”
“That will be a fun call,” Jake muttered.
“That doesn’t matter at the end of the day. All you have to do is protect Grace with all you have until she’s back home, and then we’ll figure the rest out” Max thought as he wished his daughter could stay in Madison a little while longer because this was getting too big to control.
“I will,” Jake nodded.
“You better get going,” Max nodded as they watched Jake ride off on his motorcycle as Max turned to Michael. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we’re screwed.”
“Thanks for coming back to my team,” Michael muttered as they sat down to figure out how to manage this disaster and it’s resulting carnage.
*
“Your daughter is special,” Serena was commenting as she drove Beth back from the airport. The car was in the shop because it was acting funny, and Beth wasn’t taking any chances due to recent events and so Serena offered to drive her to the train station afterwards so she could take the train to New York as the twins were already at the Rogers house playing videogames with the boys.
“She is,” Beth commented as she felt distracted as she thought of what Brian said after the appointment with Grace, and she knew there was only so much the girl could say to a strange doctor, given the situation they all were in and she knew it. She also knew Grace and Jake were reacting the upheaval, and if Elizabeth wasn’t found soon, it could lead to even riskier behavior and it haunted her that all three girls needed some finality, and some semblance of normal.
Sighing, she also wished she could have told Max personally about the change in plans but the conference came up last minute when Jessica couldn’t attend and they wanted someone else from the hospital to go, and she didn’t have any justification to say no given her extra time off recently. Grace elected to go home instead of staying with Serena even though they got along fine, but Grace missed home and Beth wished she could have warned Max but hadn’t been able to reach before her train. As they hadn’t been able to talk personally in days because Max had been spending night and day investigating, and barely was home, and so they exchanged text messages but it wasn’t something she felt comfortable sharing, and now knowing what Grace was heading home to “I wish she wasn’t going home to what she’s facing…”
“Being a teen girl today sucks,” Serena commented.
“And I have two more of them at your place” Beth commented as she worried about Alexandra and Carrie. If this was an example of how they were going after Max. Who knows what they would pull on the twins, and on her although they had already tried once again with her, and to know what Michael and Maria were facing and then what Grace faced as she heard a text come through on her phone and she cursed when she saw it. “Damn it!”
“What?” Serena asked.
“Well it’s landed. Max just texted me and said the pictures leaked, and everything else” Beth murmured. “And Grace is flying back to this storm.”
“Whoa,” Serena asked. “What’s the fallout.”
“Too early,” Beth murmured as they saw the train station in their eyesight. “I’ll try to call him when I get to the hotel in New York.”
“This is serious Beth, and Max is dealing with this all on his own” Serena asked. “With everyone else being hit by some shrapnel or a fresh bullet”
“I know,” Beth nodded as she thought of Max and what was in New York awaiting her arrival. “I wish there was some way to help…”