"So, this Mr. Steele he wants you to scare the Harts?" Helen asked her son.

Josh nodded his head. "Yeah, and he says if I don’t help him he’ll keep hurting dad."

"What do you mean keep hurting him?" Helen asked confused.

"I don’t know, he says that he has Dad under his control, that as long as we do what he says everything will be okay."

"So, you mean…oh my goodness…you mean, your father, he, he isn’t in control of himself?" Helen asked, as tears got caught in her throat. "Thank God! Come on, your father’s at the hospital, I want to talk to him."

"No, mom! I can’t go, you go, but I can’t. I’m not alive anymore remember."

Helen nodded solemnly and got up to get her coat. She hugged Josh tightly and kissed him sweetly before heading out the door.

"There is an excess amount of Phenylalitate in your blood Mr. Eagland. Have you been noticing extreme mood swings?" Dr. Steele said as she read Danny’s chart. Jonathan and Jennifer were also in the room, per Danny’s request. He felt horrible for what had happened at the office and he wanted to make things okay again…for everyone.

Danny nodded his head. "Some."

"Have you been reacting to situations violently?"

Danny closed his eyes and choked out a "Yes."

"Mr. Eagland, I created Phenylalitate by accident and thought I had destroyed it all. It isn’t on the open market. No one can get to it. Except you appear to have overdosed on the stuff. Now, how is that possible?"

Danny just shrugged his shoulders.

"Dan, you have to tell us everything you know. We want to help you." Jonathan stood next to Danny’s hospital bed and touched his shoulder.

"I won’t tell her." Danny said indicating Laura.

"Me? Why ever not?" Dr. Steele asked.

Danny sat there with a stubborn look on her face. "Fine, Mr. Eagland, I have another patient I need to check on. I will be back in an hour and hopefully you’ll want to tell me what’s going on then." Laura said, offended as she walked out of the room. Laura closed the door behind her and jumped slightly when she saw her husband standing outside of the door.

"Jason? What are you doing here?" She laughed. "I seem to be saying that a lot today."

"You should have stayed out of it Laura."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"I’m sorry about this. I really do love you." Mr. Steele said as he pulled a chloroform soaked rag from his pocket and held it to his wife’s nose. She fell limply into his arms and he carried her away.

Helen jumped behind the corner when she saw a man and woman standing outside of her husband’s hospital room. "Oh my…Jay?" she gasped when she saw the woman fall unconscious into the man’s arms. She could only watch as the man carried the woman around the corner and out of her sight. She waited a few moments and then she walked to her husband’s room.

"Danny?" She said as she entered the room. "Oh, I’m sorry." She said when she saw Jonathan and Jennifer sitting in the room.

"Hey Baby." Danny said. "I, I didn’t think you’d come." He looked down at his hands, his eyes filled with guilt.

Helen sat down on the bed next to Danny. She took his hand into hers. "I love you Daniel Nathaniel Eagland. I know that you can’t control what you’ve been doing. I don’t blame you."

"But…how?" Danny looked up into his wife’s eyes.

"Josh…"

"Josh?" Danny was confused.

"Mmm, hmm." Helen smiled and kissed Danny’s lips.

Danny smiled. "Baby, this is my boss Jonathan Hart, and his wife, Jennifer."

"Hello Johnny." Helen smiled warmly.

"Hello Helen, it’s nice to see you again."

Mr. Steele returned to Danny’s room and stood outside the hospital room. He peaked in and was shocked at what he saw. "No…it can’t be!" he said to himself. "Helen?" Jason turned away from the door. No, Helen is dead. Jonathan Hart killed her. There was no doubt about that. Or was there? Jason Steele took one more peak into the room and turned to leave.

"You two know each other?" Jennifer asked, a little confused.

"Why, sure, we were great friends once upon a time, weren’t we Johnny?" Helen smiled.

"Yes, we were. A long time ago." Jonathan said.

"I had no idea." Danny said, a little uncomfortably.

"Oh it was nothing. It might have been more except for my brother…" Helen stopped herself quickly. She hadn’t mentioned her brother in years; she doubted Danny even knew she had a brother.

"You have a brother?"

"Umm, yeah. I haven’t seen him in years. Ever since…"

"Ever since he pushed you off that roof." Jonathan finished for her.

Jessica paced her bedroom floor anxiously. Freeway Jr. was following behind her moving across the room and back again. She turned around too quickly and smacked right into the little dog. Freeway yelped in protest and looked up at her sadly. Jessica sat down on the floor and pulled the dog into her lap. "Sorry, Jr." she said quietly. "Just didn’t see ya there." Both the teenager and the dog jumped when the doorbell rang. The Hart’s had never gotten around to hiring a full-time butler. They had a cleaning crew that came in three times a week and a cook, but no one had captured their hearts like Max had. So, Jessica got up to answer the doorbell. She ran down the stairs as the bell rang again. Perhaps the cook had forgotten her key; after all, someone needed to have let this person through the front gates. Assuming the person on the other side of the door to be friendly, Jessica swung the door open.

"Is this the Hart residence?" The man who stood before her asked.

"Yes, how did you get through the gates?"

"I let myself in." The man smiled a smile that sent shivers down Jessica’s young spine. "Now, how about you come with me?"

"What? Who are you?"

"The name’s Steele, Jason Steele. You can feel free to call me Mr. Steele."

"How about I call the police instead!"

"That wouldn’t be a very good idea." Mr. Steele said as he pulled a gun out of his jacket and aimed it at Jessica’s abdomen. "Now, how about you come with me."

"He threw you off a roof?" Danny exclaimed.

"Yeah, he was, he…oh, I don’t know. It was a long time ago and I haven’t heard from him since, until…"

"Until? Until what?" Jennifer asked.

"I, I thought I saw him out in the hall a little while ago. But, it couldn’t have been him…it just couldn’t." Helen looked to be on the verge of tears.

"Why did he throw you off a roof?" Danny asked.

"He didn’t really throw her. It was more like a push…a push that was meant for me." Jonathan answered.

"What?" Jennifer exclaimed. "Why would Helen’s brother want to push you off a roof and end up pushing his sister instead?"

"It’s a long story." Jonathan said.

"I have all day." Jennifer said defiantly.

"What do you want with me?" Jessica asked as she struggled to break free of the rope that now tied her hands together. She was sitting on cold hard cement and could hardly move.

"It’s not what I want with you my dear. Why must the younger generation be so egotistical?"

"You obviously want something with me or you wouldn’t have kidnapped me!"

"Oh stop being so insolent. I do so hate insolence. Just sit there and relax, Daddy will be here to save you soon enough." Mr. Steele patted Jessica on the head as he walked out of the room that was now Jessica’s cell.

When Mr. Steele left Jessica she dropped her head to her knees and cried. A hand suddenly touched her shoulder gently and caused to look up startled. "Josh!" she exclaimed.

(Ci)

"How did you- ?!"

"Never mind that, c-come with me." He said untying her hands.

"Come with you?" The room was locked off except for the window with bars on it.

"Josh," Tears still falling at their own will. "I'm scared."

"Don't be scared J-Jessica. Just have faith..." Josh tugged at her hand as they stood in front of the door to the room.

"It's going to take a miracle to open this door Josh."

"Exactly!" Josh looked at the door and without effort, turned the handle.   The door came open and Josh and Jessica made a run for the corridor. Josh held her hand all the while.

"I don't know! I found her lying here as I reached to get bed coverings for a patient. I called for help immediately!"

"Dr. Steele!" Dr. Johansen called. "Dr. Steele. If you can hear me, then nod." Laura could hear a voice calling out to her but the voice was so faint, she couldn't make it out. Her head ached and she couldn't open her eyes. "Nurse, get a Gurney in here right away. She's not responding."

"Sure doctor." The nurse ran to get help.

"Well, I know this sounds strange.  But he visited me."

"It sounds more than strange..."

"It doesn't sound strange to us at all."  Jennifer quips.  "He "visited" us also." "What do you mean?"  Helen says. Was her own story believable?

"The night of the party, there was someone in our house.  He whispered, 'Are you ready to die?' in my ear while we were playing the game Telephone."

"Then, later that night, we saw him in the house.  We ran after him into the kitchen and he was gone.  Yet there was no way in or out. Jennifer and I had the alarm system tested several times.  They found nothing wrong and no signs of intrusion."

"Jessica came home and told us she and the girl who had seen him at the party saw him again at their school...."

Danny slumped back onto his pillow.  How could this be?  Josh had been dead several years now.  He buried him! 

"Jonathan, Jennifer, are you sure?"

"Danny," Helen said, "We saw him.  He talked with me."

"But from the dead?!"

"No Dan."  Jonathan reached over and touched his arm, "The Josh we saw was very much alive..."

(Michelle)

"Not alive, not really…" Jennifer mused. Helen, Jonathan and Danny looked at her suspiciously. "Darling, do you remember that little old lady Max used to visit with Freeway? Umm…Delilah Darnez?"

"Yes…" Jonathan wasn’t sure where his wife was going with this.

"Well…she believed that sometimes people died too soon. That they had things they needed to finish. So, they came back…as ghosts."

Josh and Jessica walked out of the room quietly. They were not escaping un- noticed however as Mr. Steele was watching their every move. There was something wrong with that Eagland boy and he was determined to find out what it was. So, he’d followed him and was perturbed to find him helping Jessica Hart escape. Mr. Steele bounced out from his hiding place and stood ramrod straight in front of the teenagers.

"Well, well well…going somewhere?"

"Umm…uhh…I, I, I…" Josh stammered as Jessica saw a shadow pass behind her captor.

"Oh can the excuses. Just tell me how you got her out of that room."

"First…you have to answer some questions for us." Jessica straightened her back and looked directly into Mr. Steele’s eyes.

"Hah, hah, hah! You amuse me my dear, so I will agree to 3 questions."

"Is that sort of like three wishes and no wishing for more wishes?" Jessica asked.

"Call it what you like. I will answer your three questions and then Josh here will tell me how he got you out of that room. Deal?"

"Deal. First question. What’s the point?"

"I don’t think I understand."

"The point, Mr. Steele. Why are you doing all this to Josh’s dad, drugging him, hurting him and kidnapping me? I don’t understand it, what’s the point?"

"The point, small one is that I can. His father owes me money and I want it back. Besides, I needed a guinea pig for my little wife’s experiment."

"Why do you have a picture of Josh’s mom hanging on that wall over there?"

"His mother?"

Jessica nodded. Mr. Steele looked at Josh as if he were sizing him up. He went over to the boy and tried to touch him. Josh backed up quickly.

"You haven’t answered the question, Mr. Steele." A familiar woman’s voice came from the shadows.

"Laura, my dear, how did you get out of that little fix I put you in?" Mr. Steele said without turning around.

Laura walked around and stood in front of Mr. Steele. "Oh, it was pretty easy once Dr. Johansen found me. The hard part was figuring out why there was phenylalitate in Dan Eagland’s bloodstream. Thanks for solving that little problem."

Mr. Steele didn’t see the men come up behind him until it was too late. "Well, you’ve become quite the detective, eh Mrs. Steele?" He said as the men put his hands into a pair of handcuffs and led him away.

"Come on, I’ll take you home." Laura said to Jessica.

"What about…" Jessica’s words trailed off as she looked around the warehouse. Josh was nowhere to be seen. "Where’d he go? Did you see?"

"See who? I only saw you and Jason."

"But, Josh…he was here…he saved me."

"Maybe he’s shy?" Laura suggested. "Come on, if he got here on his own he must know how to get home. Tell me where you live and I’ll take ya there. I’m sure your folks must be wondering about you."

Jessica nodded as she walked out of the warehouse backwards. She stopped at the entrance and looked one last time for the boy who she knew she’d never see again.

"Now? How did you find Jessie?" Jennifer asked as she held her daughter in her arms tightly.

"I know my husband. We’ve been married for a long time. That warehouse was where he was planning to expand his offices. I didn’t know he was holding Jessica there. All I knew was that he was the only person who could have gotten a hold of the phenylalitate."

"So, when the doctors found you and you woke up you went to confront him…and saved our daughter in the process." Jennifer smiled. "Thank you, Dr. Steele, I don’t know how we’ll ever re-pay you."

"It’s not necessary, I’m just glad that stuff is gone. I stumbled across it accidentally, it was never intended to be used on humans."

Laura’s gaze shifted to the Eaglands who were sitting pensively on the couch. "I miss him." Helen whispered. Her face contorted and she began to cry. "It’s like losing him all over again." Daniel held his wife in his arms and stroked her hair.

"He loved you both." Jessica disengaged herself from her mother’s embrace and went to kneel in front of the Eaglands. "Everything he did, he did for you and now he can be at peace. He wouldn’t want you to be sad."

"You are a very smart girl, Jessica." Helen touched Jessica’s cheek. She pulled Jessica into a hug. "He wouldn’t want you to be sad either, you know."

Jessica nodded into Helen’s shoulders as she felt tears fall on her cheeks.

"I think it’s time we went home." Daniel announced. "Thank you all for everything. I…"

Jonathan stopped him before he could speak again. "It’s ok. See you at work on Monday Dan."

"Yeah, see ya." Dan smiled and shook Jonathan’s hand. He and his wife stood and left the house.

Dr. Steele stood to follow them out of the door. "It’s time I left as well. Goodbye."

"Bye, Laura and thanks again."

Laura waved away Jennifer’s thanks as they hugged and Laura headed to her own home.

After everyone was gone the house seemed very empty.

"Come on, it’s been a long day." Jennifer gestured for Jessica and Jonathan to follow her up the stairs.

"Do you think we’ll ever see Josh again?" Jessica asked as she headed for the light switch by the door.

"Maybe, but I hope not…I mean if we do, something’s probably wrong, right?" Jonathan grinned.

"Maybe, I kind of hope he comes back for the happy times too." Jessica sighed as she turned off the lights. The Harts proceeded up the stairs in the darkness as Freeway bounded behind them. The dog stopped in the middle of the landing to bark at the darkness before continuing up the stairs.