Kayla wildly gathered the bedcovers up over her naked body and scrambled up against the head of the well-dressed canopy bed. The moment she’d arrived she knew something was off. She was thrown a bit, because she’d just left the act of making love to Steve. So when she arrived to the very same act, expecting it to be him yet feeling something different, she was caught completely off guard. Especially now – of all the times she could have jumped here. Now she sat curled up in a tight ball with the comforter drawn up to her chin as she began to shake. Her mind was racing, and guilt tore through her as she felt their combined fluid on her thighs. The smell of sex permeated her nostrils as it hovered in the air. She felt sick, and it wasn’t just the jump effect. She couldn’t breathe.
“Kay!” Shane repeated from his position naked on the floor. His tone was angry with the initial shock of being physically pushed out of her and on to the floor. But now that his coital stupor was dissipating and he took a good look at her, Kayla saw the look in his eyes turn from anger to terrible concern. He knew now that something had happened. Something very bad had just happened. He didn’t know what, because not ten seconds ago everything was fine. But, now she was somewhere completely different, and he didn’t have a clue as to why.
“Kayla?” he said far more gently. Kayla heard the distinct change in Shane’s tone, the gentle lilt of his voice reaching out to her … and it made her recoil even more. Please God, let me jump! Please get me out of here! Her eyes darted around the room to try to get her bearings. Without much thought she’d established that this was Shane’s house, and given what they’d just been doing, it must be late 1991 or maybe 1992.
This was not happening. This could not have been more cruel. Of all the places she could have jumped, it had to be not just to a date with Shane or kissing Shane, it had to be having sex with Shane? Underneath all the feelings that were causing her to go mute and feel shock and guilt, there was an underlying current of something … contrived. All their jumps had been random as far as they knew – certainly, as far as they felt. But this one? It felt a lot less random than the rest. The feeling was fleeting in the wake of the gravity of her situation, so it came and went for the moment.
“Kay, are you alright?” Shane tried again. “What’s happened?” He’d started to stand up, and she knew she had to get out of there. Right this very minute she had to get out of that room. Before he could make it to a standing position, Kayla bounded out of the bed and made a naked sprint to the bathroom. From the time her foot touched the floor to the moment the dark cherry wood door slammed behind her lasted no more than three seconds, but it felt like so many more. It felt like a lifetime of exposure.
It was pitch dark in the bathroom, but she found the light switch quickly. She flicked it on and gasped at the visage looking back at her from the full mirror above the sink. Kayla’s blonde hair was very short, spiky mess. If this were not so shocking a jump she would have been struck by how thin she was, her collarbone much more prominently displayed than in quite some time. She looked away from her breasts very quickly so that she wouldn’t have to look at the smattering of small red splotches on them. “Sh*t, sh*t,” she whispered to herself. “Why am I here? This isn’t fair. This just isn’t fair.” That’s when she startled at the insistent knock at the door.
“Kay, what is going on?” Shane asked with unequivocal concern in his voice. “Are you alright?” When she didn’t immediately answer Shane continued. “Did I hurt you? Please answer me, Kay, you’re scaring me!” She was frozen as she wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the door. “Kayla!” Now Shane’s voice was very insistent. “If you don’t answer me I’m going to break down this door!”
“Please don’t!” she finally answered.
“Are you hurt? Or sick?”
“N-No.” She heard him sigh in frustration on the other side of the bathroom door and forced herself to get a grip. Deep breaths, Kayla. Just calm down. Every instinct she had was to run, but the concept of where to run to was too big for her in these disturbing moments. Her first order of business was to get dressed. So, Kayla inhaled deeply and forced herself to focus. “Shane,” she began very softly and with a calm that belied the emotions roiling inside of her, “Can you give me something to put on?”
“So, you’re alright, then?”
“I’m fine.”
“Then please just tell me, Kay, what is it?”
“Shane. My clothes.”
“Yes … yes, of course.” Shane quickly slipped on a blue robe, then a moment later Kayla opened the door a crack so he could hand her hers. It was the black one with the white lace at the collar. The familiarity of it grounded her. She hugged it to her as a child would a stuffed animal, then tied it around herself. “Look, I just want to help you. If I did something, or didn’t do something, or-or touched you wrong—“
“You didn’t do anything, Shane. It’s not you. Please just give me a minute,” she replied from behind the door.” Kayla leaned straight arms on the sink, lowered her head, and said a prayer that Steve would arrive soon.
Kayla’s head shot up. Steve’s not here. “Oh my God!” The reality of it all hit her in the face. Her heart began racing again, and a cold shiver ran down her spine.
“What?! Kay what is it?” Shane was sounding very insistent on the other side of the door.
Kayla was now thinking very clearly. She could have trembled some more. She could have broken down and sobbed. But somehow the gravity of the situation her husband was now in focused her into one tightly driven purpose.
Steve would not be coming to find her, because Steve was currently an unwilling guest of Stefano Dimera somewhere in what she could only guess was Italy. She shuddered at the thought of what was happening to her husband right now. Was he being conditioned? Tortured? Forced to say things, do things … forget things … ? “Steve,” she said out loud as her heart sped up again. “I’m the one who’s going to find you.”
Suddenly, a spate of places Steve had rescued her from assaulted her memory. Orpheus, the Deveraux house, Harper on the plane, Victor’s in Miami; then if finally settled on an image of Steve’s soaking wet face as it looked at her with love and relief when he pulled her out of that Stockholm storm drain. It electrified her. Fired up her resolve. Kayla looked at herself in the mirror and saw that determination growing exponentially by the second. She had had enough. She had absolutely had enough of the constant pace of harrow. Of uncertainty since being ripped from her home. Of feeling like an actor trying to recreate her own story. Steve was going to be out there somewhere. He might already be out there somewhere. And she was tired of feeling like a victim in this whole insane, impossible whatever the hell it was. She knew what she had to do, she needed Shane to do it, and she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “Hang on, Steve. I’m going to find you, and we’re going to get out of this.”
It had gone quiet in the bedroom, which is why when Kayla came barreling out of the bathroom Shane had to jump back to avoid being run over. Kayla didn’t waste any time. She didn’t like where she’d jumped to, but it was time to get over it and get her husband.
“Shane! Shane, listen to me. I know this is going to sound completely crazy, but—but—it’s—something’s happened.”
“What?” he asked holding her by a shoulder and cupping her cheek with his other hand. “What’s wrong, are you ill?”
Kayla stiffened but kept calm while gently taking his hand from her face and holding it in her own two clutched out in front of her. “No, I’m not sick, just listen. Please listen very carefully.” She saw the look on his face change when she rejected his touch, but she couldn’t focus on that right now. Her only focus was on making Shane understand what they had to do, and she was so desperate to do it that it all came pouring out of her with barely a pause to breathe.
“This is going to sound crazy, I know that. But – and there’s no other way to say this – but Steve is alive.” She paused for only a moment to gauge his reaction, which wasn’t much more than a mask of confusion just yet – and quickly continued. “Lawrence Alamain faked his death, he never really died! He was awake in there the whole time, in his body, I mean. While the doctors worked on him, he could hear and feel everything.” By now Shane had dropped her hands, and she’d immediately begun using them in animated gestures meant to drive home her words and convince him they were true. “It’s just that he was drugged by Dr. Hopkins, he was working for Alamain and actually sold Steve to – I mean he IS working for him. And – wait, what day is this? We …” she quickly did the math in her head as she turned and paced with the sudden energy of a firecracker. “Summer’s over, right?” She combed her fingers through her hair again, even though she already knew what she’d find. “Right. So, Steve’s already been sold, Hopkins might not be working for Alamain anymore, but he’s still a lead! He set the whole thing up with the drugs – Steve woke up in the morgue the same day he died, then he escaped!” Kayla stopped there and swayed nervously. She tilted her head slightly and squinted in thought, correcting herself in short, clipped phrases. “Only—only he’s not going to escape, because – because he didn’t this time – because it didn’t stick – did it? None of it stuck, SO WE HAVE TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN! Shane, we can’t wait. He’s suffering! He wouldn’t let me suffer like that, and neither can I.”
The whole thing just came pouring out of her in a manic string of breathless verbosity. She looked at Shane and knew he had no clue what she was talking about. By now he was sitting on the bed and holding his chin between a bent knuckle and his thumb. The concern in his eyes didn’t escape her.
“I sound crazy. I know.”
Shane crossed his arms and pulsed the muscle beneath his temple, casting his very wary eyes upon her.
“Shane?” She crossed her own arms in front of her and stuck out her chin with a fortitude that was steadfast. “Would you please say something?” He blew out his breath. He didn’t say anything, because he wasn’t sure what to say. “Steve is out there!”
Shane finally found his voice. “Steve is dead, Kayla.”
“No, he isn’t. I know this is a shock, and I know it sounds crazy, but it’s not like Stefano hasn’t—“
“Stefano? Kayla, you just said it was Lawrence Alamain.”
“It was,” she whined, the breadth of the explaining she had ahead of her seemed daunting. “But by now Stefano has him.” Then for some reason she felt the need to confirm that the events of their jump to the pier had really reset. “Shane, do you remember rollerskating with me?”
Shane wondered what that had to do with anything but answered her. “Of course, I do. Why?”
“Was Steve there?”
Shane stood and grabbed Kayla by the shoulders. “Steve is gone, Kayla. He wasn’t any more alive then than he is now. Now I want you to snap out of this! I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I don’t mind telling you that you’ve got me terribly worried, here.”
How could she make him understand? She had to make him understand, because they were wasting time! She clasped her hands in front of her and plowed on. “Look, you have to trust me. You need to call the ISA.”
“Ok, now I know there’s something wrong with you if you want me to involve the ISA.”
“It’s the only way to find Stefano. I don’t know exactly where Steve is now, I only know that he was sold to Stefano when we were on the pier.”
“What pier?”
“Rollerskating.” Kayla wiggled out of Shane’s grasp and checked that her robe was still tied securely. Then she blew out her breath. “It doesn’t matter, look – well, maybe it does. I – I must have kept a calendar, right? I could look up the date. I …” then she backtracked. “Just listen to me! We need to go to the ISA and find Stefano, because if we find him we’ll find Steve. I know it, Shane. I know it.”
“You’re wrong, Kayla.”
“No, I’m—“
“Yes, Kay, are you listening to yourself? I don’t know where any of this is coming from. I—I don’t know if this is some form of delayed grief response or if you’re having second thoughts about us, or you’re just worried about Bo, but you know that Steve is dead. He died at University Hospital over a year ago!”
Bo? “What about Bo?”
“That he’s missing!”
Kayla’s mind worked like a whirlwind. There was a lot going on with Bo before she and Shane broke up, but she knew that ultimately Bo was fine. Steve was not. Even if Bo’s future ended up changing because they shifted their focus to Steve and did things differently, nothing was going to stay that way once they jumped, and the thought of Steve being tortured was too much for her.
“He’s alive, Shane. Stefano is hiding him right now. It’s not that far-fetched.”
“It’s not that far-fetched? Like hell it’s not! I mean, you can’t really believe what you’re saying.”
“I do, because it’s true. Look what he did to Roman and … wait, which Roman do you have right now, John or Roman?”
“What?”
“Dammit!” She realized her thoughts were starting to run away with her, so she took a breath. “I mean look at what Stefano is capable of, it’s not the first time he’s done this kind of thing.”
“This is about us, isn’t it? This is about Raffi Torres. Bo’s missing, and now you’re worried something’s going to happen to me like it did to Steve.” Then Shane gathered Kayla in his arms and held her closely. “Nothing’s going to happen, Kay, I promise you, I’ll come home to you, safe and sound. I’m not going to let this assignment or anything else come between us.” He felt her stiffen like a board as he assuaged the fears he was sure were driving this crazy story, but as she pulled away from him he decided that worrying for his safety didn’t really explain why she’d pushed him away in the middle of making love to her.
Kayla retreated to arms length and looked at him very solemnly as she slowly shook her head back and forth. “No,” she said. “This is not about us. This is about something that I know you don’t understand. I know you don’t understand it, and I know this is going to be very hard on you. But if you ever loved me, Shane … if you ever cared about me …”
“Of course, I care about you, Kay. I love you.”
Kayla would have cried for the broken heart she was about to inflict on him, but she just didn’t have time to feel anything at all other than desperation to free her husband from the hell he was, without a doubt, in the middle of right this very minute. “Ok, if you love me like you say you do,” she took a deep breath then said softly, “then I need you to take a leap of faith. In me. Because crazy as it sounds, I know how this all ends up. And the bottom line is that you belong with Kimberly, and I belong with Steve.” Shane blanched at the mention of Kimberly’s name. “You have a whole life you need to live with them. I was the wrong choice, Shane, and you need to go make that right. So, it’s not just for me, it’s for you, too.” Shane tore his eyes away from her and went to the bedroom door. “Shane!” He turned back toward her but did not meet her gaze. “Listen to me? Please? For me?”
“We were just making love, Kay. Everything was just fine. The next thing I know you’re calling me Steve, pushing me off of you, and running away like I’m the plague.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Shane looked positively baffled . “Hurt me? Pssh. Forget hurting me for just a moment, Kayla, and how about you tell me what brought this on? Why now, out of nowhere, while we’re making love? Did this epiphany just come to you at that very inopportune moment?”
“No …” Kayla didn’t realize when she came charging out of the bathroom with her adrenaline set to eleven that it would be this hard to make him understand. “Don’t make me explain that, I … I can’t explain that to you. Just trust me? Please? Please, Shane, I’m begging you.”
“You’re begging me. If I’m hearing you correctly, you’re begging me to what, go to whatever God-forsaken place Stefano’s got himself holed up and break Steve out of the captivity you say he’s in?”
“Yes,” Kayla replied without hesitation. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
“And that you and I are not supposed to be. That Steve is somehow alive and being held by Stefano Dimera? And that I’m supposed to be with Kimberly.”
The look on Shane’s face made Kayla understand for the first time how her husband must have felt when he was struggling with those damned Tarot cards. When he was in the sanitarium and seeing the faces of his friends and family. She never realized what it must have been like for him to see those faces look at him with a mixture of pity, wariness, and frustration. Until now. Because that’s the exact face that Shane was giving her.
“You want me to find Stefano Dimera.”
“Yes.”
“In the middle of the Raffi Torres business with, you want me to just drop everything and look for him like a damned needle in a haystack.”
“Yes!”
“And you don’t love me.”
Kayla wasn’t as quick to reply this time and was surprised at the amount of guilt she felt for him, on top of all that unnerving guilt she felt for Steve because of how she arrived here. She sat down next to Shane and let him lock eyes with her. She took his hand in hers and held it. “You … have been so good to me. So kind and compassionate. You were there for me and Stephanie when we needed help and protection, and …,” she looked down at their hands, then back up into his eyes; she owed him that. “… and when I needed to fill a void that I thought might swallow me whole.”
“I hear the ‘but’ coming, Kay.” He caressed her face with his free hand, and she forced herself not to hurt him more by reacting. “Please don’t say the ‘but,’ Kayla, please.”
Kayla squeezed the hand she was holding and then brought his other hand down to join the other. “The man I’m in love with is Steve. It always has been. I’m so sorry, I know this is hard on you, and I know you don’t understand any of this.”
“That’s because none of it makes any bloody sense.”
“But I know things I can’t explain and that you’re just going to have to trust me on. You and I are not supposed to be this way. Steve is supposed to be home with his family, and you’re supposed to be with Kimberly and your children. That’s how things are supposed to be.” Shane searched her eyes looking for something to make it all make sense to him. Kayla tried to let him see that truth as clearly as he could, because she had no idea when they were going to jump, and she couldn’t allow Steve to spend another moment of his life under Stefano’s control. “I do love you, Shane, but not in the way we’ve been. You’re my friend. You’re my brother-in-law. But I’m married to Steve. And we have to go get him.”
The certainty of Kayla’s words was powerful. Shane saw the complete and utter commitment she had to them and knew in his heart that they were over. In this moment, for reasons he would never understand, he knew with absolute certainty that his relationship with Kayla was over and that he’d lost her. That was bad enough. What was worse was that he didn’t find her to be completely mad. Somewhat out of her mind, definitely. But there was a ribbon of veracity running through her words that was so clear to him that he could practically see it. Her tone, her inflection, they weren’t quite right. Something about the way she spoke and the way she held her head, even; it was like a version of her he hadn’t met yet. There was a natural-born instinct that made Shane an excellent secret agent, and that instinct was telling him to do what Kayla asked of him. The fact that he loved her was telling him not to, but Shane Donovan was always an agent first; it was in his blood.
Shane gave her a last look with gentle eyes that Kayla recognized and was about to turn away from. Then he raised the wall around his heart and turned all business. He stood up and went for the door.
“Shane? Where are you going?!”
“To call Tarrington.” His voice was stoic. “Stefano Dimera’s been off-grid for years. I’m going to have to call in some favors if we want to find him.” Then without turning to look at her, he walked out the door.