Never Tear Us Apart
Chapter
Twelve
Noah pointed down the hallway, motioning for Greta to follow him. She still held on to the gun, not planning on trusting him until she could see Brady and Chloe with her own eyes. Noah found the open door to the laboratory and led Greta inside. Brady was standing at one of the file cabinets and Chloe was at the computer. Chloe turned the chair around and stood, smiling widely at her rescued friend.
"Oh Greta... Thank God..."
Greta came forward and pulled Chloe into a tight hug. "Oh my God, Chloe, I'm so happy to see you... I can't believe you and Brady came all this way for me."
Chloe let go of her and kept smiling. "Well, it's uhm... a bit more complicated than that... We'll explain everything later."
Brady turned away from the file cabinet and grinned at Greta. "Hey Princess..."
"Hey Brady... Thanks for coming..."
"Not a problem..."
Greta walked over and gave him a tight hug before letting him go. "I'm glad you're both here... I didn't know if this guy was here to rescue me or if he worked for Stefano."
Chloe noticed the swelling and bruising that had already formed underneath Noah's eye. She walked over to inspect it closely and Noah winced in pain when her fingers ran lightly over the bruise. "Jesus, Noah... What happened to your eye?"
Noah frowned and pointed towards Greta. "Her Royal Highness over there has one hell of a right hook..."
Greta smiled proudly and nodded. "Well, I'm not like other princesses..."
"I can see that... So, Brady, what's the big find that you mentioned?"
Brady slid out the top drawer of the filing cabinet next to him, revealing that it was completely empty. "This is it... We found nothing."
Noah stared at him in surprise. "Nothing? You found nothing?"
"File cabinets are empty. The computer's hard drive is erased. Besides this equipment, there's no evidence that anybody is here or anybody has been here."
"So... No antidote..."
Greta interjected, her face contorted in confusion. "Antidote? Antidote for what?"
Chloe sighed softly, and looked at Greta with sadness. "John... He was poisoned... By Stefano..."
"I -- I remember. He collapsed... And, when everyone started rushing to come to his help... Well, that's the last thing I remember, until I woke up here last night. And last night... I was in this lab and it wasn't empty then... I saw it with my own eyes."
Noah walked around the room in a circle, obviously trying to figure out what was going on in his head. "So... Stefano kidnaps the Princess, takes her to Venice, practically puts up a flashing neon sign that says 'Hey, come save Greta! Right here!', and then empties the basement of all the evidence... Vanishes into thin air..."
Brady turned and looked at him skeptically. "You think Stefano's gone?"
"I think so. He knew we would come here to get Greta... He knew we would come after the antidote and him. So, he gave us one out of three... Figuratively speaking, he threw us a bone..."
"But why? Why would he even give us that much?"
Chloe was looking towards the floor, shaking her head slowly. "Because, it's another trap... a game... He's -- he's stalling us so he can get whatever it is he wants from us. He's got us right where he wants us..."
Brady walked towards Chloe and put his arm around her shoulder. "You may be right... Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to that man's demented plans... Greta, why were you down here in the lab?"
Greta frowned, trying to remember the still hazy events of the night before. "I -- I don't really remember. It's all kind of fuzzy... I know I was drugged... And -- I remember Stefano being here, and a few other faces, but that's about it..."
Chloe raised her eyebrows curiously. "Familiar faces?"
"I -- I don't know... I wish I could remember more."
Noah shrugged and shoved his hands in the pockets of his black jeans. "Well... I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to take a look around the rest of this place before we go. Maybe he accidentally left some clue behind..."
Brady nodded and the group that used to be three, but was now four, began walking out of the lab. Chloe and Greta stayed behind the men, and Chloe kept smiling at her friend.
"Are you sure you're okay, Greta?"
"I feel fine... I just wish I could understand all of this..."
Chloe chuckled softly and nodded in agreement. "I think we're all thinking that right now."
Greta crossed her arms over her chest and nodded towards Noah who was walking in front of her. "So... Are you ever going to explain to me who this guy is and why in the world he's hanging out with you two?"
Chloe threw her arm around Greta's shoulder and nodded. "I guess I better fill you in on everything... Wouldn't want you to give him another black eye..."
~*~
The group of four stepped off the elevator, as they were just finishing getting Greta caught up to the latest events.
"So, I think that's about it, really..."
Greta looked at Chloe with a nod and sighed softly. "Wow... I just... I wish I had paid more attention to what happened last night. Maybe I could give some clue of where Stefano went..."
Brady was walking ahead of them, but they all stopped when he froze suddenly in front of the door. Chloe laid her hand on his shoulder and looked at him curiously. "Brady, what is it?"
Brady bent down and picked up the envelope from the floor. It matched the envelope that Chloe had received earlier perfectly, except that it was not her name written on the front. It read "Greta" on the front instead with a different handwriting than before.
"Jesus Christ... This is getting ridiculous."
Chloe looked over his shoulder and saw what he was holding in his hand. "I can't believe it..."
Brady turned around and handed the envelope over to Greta. "It's for you..."
Greta's face dropped as she gripped the envelope in her hand. It seemed like it took forever for her to open it and slowly slide out the letter inside. The other three watched her reaction as she read the words, her eyes scanning over them slowly. A single tear began to drift down Greta's cheek as she looked back up from the letter.
"I -- I'm not allowed to leave Venice..."
Noah was the first to speak up, looking at her skeptically. "What? How can he stop you from leaving Venice?"
Greta folded the letter back up, her expression looked like she had just been given her death sentence. "Last night, when I was in the lab... It was because... Because..."
The dam broke loose and Greta began sobbing softly. Chloe immediately pulled Greta into her arms so she could cry on her shoulder, as Brady took the note from her hand and read it quietly. He crumpled it up into a ball and threw it down the hallway with a groan of anger.
"That sonofabitch..."
Chloe and Noah looked at him curiously; neither of them clued in on what was upsetting both Greta and Brady. Chloe looked at her husband uneasily, waiting for an explanation. "Well, Brady... What is it?"
"He put a chip in her head. Just like my dad and Hope used to have. If she leaves Italy, then he'll activate the chip... turn her into a *real* DiMera..."
Greta lifted her head from Chloe's shoulder and blinked a few more tears out. "But... Why didn't he just do it last night? Why let me go only to keep me here? I don't get it..."
Brady shrugged and unlocked the door to the hotel room to allow everyone to step inside. "I don't know, but I'm sick of these games. Notes and clues that mean nothing..."
Chloe let go of Greta and shook her head. "No, it means something... We just don't know what it is. There's something else that Stefano wants."
"Mice in a maze."
All heads turned to look at Noah, who seemed to be deep in thought, expressing his inner thoughts out loud suddenly. Greta raised her eyebrows and looked at him doubtfully. "Excuse me? Mice in a maze?"
Noah nodded enthusiastically and went on to explain. "Basically, yes, we're mice. It's like when you put mice in a maze, they just keep turning corners and running into walls, and then even when they get to the end they're just put back in their cages. They never really find their freedom..."
"And this relates to us how?"
"Isn't it obvious, Princess? This *IS* just a game... One that we're not supposed to win. Every time we think we've turned a corner, we really just find another dead end... or another cage... And you, finding you, was like getting thrown a piece of cheese. Something to keep us going... And Stefano, he's just watching from above and laughing... He knows what we're going to do before we do it..."
Brady nodded in agreement and threw the key to the room down on the living room coffee table. "Then we get out of here. He knows we're here so we're not safe. We can't go to Greta's apartment, and we probably can't go to Noah's hotel either. We have to find someplace else to use as our base... I'm going to go make some phone calls first..."
Chloe gave him a brief kiss and sighed softly. "I'll -- I'll start packing up our stuff."
Brady went into the other room and Chloe began picking up things around the living room to take with them. Noah sat down on the couch with a sigh and Greta stared at him with sympathy.
"I -- I am sorry about your eye."
"It's alright, Princess. I understand why you might mistrust a complete stranger waking you up in that kind of situation... I'm not exactly a knight riding up on my white horse."
Greta rolled her eyes and dug in the refrigerator for ice, wrapping it in one of the hotel's white towels. She sat on the couch close to Noah and laid the ice underneath his eye. She smiled slightly at him as she held the ice on the massive black eye she had given him.
"Well, thank you for doing it... It's a pretty amazing thing that you're doing, for Brady and Chloe, for me..."
Noah smiled back at her, revealing a softer side to his personality to Greta for the first time that night. "You're welcome, but I'm not just doing it for you... It's for Jake..."
Greta nodded in understanding as she could see the love and concern fill up Noah's blue eyes. "Right... your brother... So, how old is he? Are you younger or older?"
"He's twenty-eight, and I'm older by almost exactly a year."
"Wow, your parents didn't waste anytime having another one."
Noah chuckled and his fingers grazed over her hand for a moment as he took over holding the ice to his eye. Greta took her hand back and scooted away from him slightly as he replied to her.
"I'm adopted actually... Jake was a surprise, a miracle baby..."
Chloe was busy shoving things into a suitcase, but walked over towards them to interject. "Hey Noah, Greta used to live in Louisiana too..."
Greta looked back at Chloe as if that was the last thing she wanted her to mention. Noah smiled at her in surprise and questioned her. "Really? I didn't know that... Where did you live?"
"Uhm... New Orleans... Well, technically -- I lived in a swamp."
"You lived in a *swamp*?"
Greta frowned and rubbed her hands together nervously. "Yes, I lived in a swamp. It's a very long story, which you will never hear... So, Chloe, you need some help?"
Chloe shook her head as she went back to work and grinned at her friend. "Nope, I've got it all covered."
"So, Noah... Do you have a picture of your brother? I'd like to see him... Maybe I might recognize him. Maybe he was there last night..."
Noah dug for his wallet and showed her the same picture he had already shown Brady and Chloe. Greta stared at it for a moment and shrugged slightly. "I don't know... He looks sort of vaguely familiar, but I don't really remember. I'm sorry..."
Greta handed him the wallet back and Noah sighed sadly. He was looking for at least a faint glint of hope, a sign that his brother was alive. "It's alright, you said he looked familiar... so maybe you did see him, but you just don't remember."
Greta nodded and patted his knee sympathetically. "Maybe... I hope so..."
Chloe stopped her packing again and looked at Greta curiously. "Familiar? You said he looked familiar? Do you think you might have seen him? Or someone who looks a lot like him?"
"I don't know... Everything about last night is really fuzzy... But, there is something familiar about that picture. What did you mean by someone who looks a lot like him?"
"I guess --"
Chloe stopped in the middle of her sentence as Brady came back in from the other room. He looked at her curiously. "You guess what? What did I miss?"
Chloe bit her lower lip nervously and put one hand on her hip. It was probably not a good idea to bring Phillip up again, not in front of Brady anyway. She shrugged nonchalantly and smiled at him. "Nothing, you didn't miss anything. What did you find out?"
"I uhm -- I called my contact at the ISA. Nobody has a clue where Stefano went. But, it's safe to assume he didn't go far. He'd want to be near for whatever he's planning."
Noah looked over the back of the couch to question Brady. "So, what do we do next?"
"Find another place to stay... Get some sleep. And wait... Wait until he makes a move."
Greta frowned at him and sighed loudly. "And how long do we have to wait?"
Brady shrugged in confusion and ran his fingers through his hair. "I don't know. We're on Stefano's timetable now..."