An intense anger filled every part of Tom's body as he looked at John, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket and slamming him hard across the sheriff's cruiser behind them, as several startled deputies looked on in disbelief. "And YOU, Tom! You knew she was here! ... Where is she?!... I swear I'll kill you myself if she's hurt!" Tom screamed, his face contorted with a rage he had never felt before, and by the crazed look on Tom's face, John knew he meant every word he was saying.

"What the hell are you talking about?!" John asked, surprised by Tom's sudden attack on him. John couldn't believe the hatred he saw in his partner's and best friend's eyes. He had seen Tom in a lot of different situations and had watched him run the gamut of emotions many times before, but he had never before seen the insane rage that he saw now in Tom, and it scared him. Had Tom lost his mind? How could Tom even think that he had had something to do with Brenda's disappearance?

"I'm talking about you just showing up here today out of the blue, supposedly on a fact-finding mission for Sikes, and then just deciding that you wanted to stick around to do a little sightseeing, when you and I both know that you hate the outdoors! And now she's missing, and you're still here! And on top of that, you show up in a brand new sports car bought with Brenda's blood! I trusted you, dammit! You've been on Leone's payroll all along, you bastard!!!" Tom's manic rage increased as he pressed his left forearm tightly across John's windpipe, causing John to begin to choke and his face to turn a ghastly shade of crimson. Now, tell me where she is, or I swear to God I'll kill you now!!!" he spat out through clenched teeth.

John tried to protest his innocence to Tom, but the sound was strangled in his throat, as he was gasping just to breathe now.

"You're killing him!' one of the Charles County deputies yelled, as he and another deputy pulled a crazed Tom off the nearly-unconscious John.

"He took her!" Tom screamed, as he struggled to free himself from the deputies and to grab John once again to choke the truth out of him. "I tell you that son-of-a-bitch took her, and he's going to tell me where she is - one way or another!"

Another of the deputies helped John to stand and looked at his bruised neck, while John continued to gasp for air. "We need the paramedics here!" the deputy yelled, as he stepped inside the cruiser, on which John was still leaning, and called the station.

"He's gonna need a body bag if he doesn't tell me where she is!" Tom shouted, as one of the deputies that had been restraining him inadvertently let his grip on him loosen, and Tom once again lunged at the still incapacitated John. Both deputies regained their hold on him just before he reached John, and one of them slapped handcuffs on him. Tom struggled against the cold steel being snapped onto his wrists. "He's the kidnapper!" Tom yelled. "Cuff him! I'm FBI, you idiots!"

By now, John had recovered enough to be able to talk once again. "I'm FBI, too!" he said hoarsely, as the deputy, who had assisted him earlier, began to put handcuffs on him as well.

"What's going on over here?" Sheriff Phil Paully's booming voice caught everyone's attention. He walked over to the area and saw Tom in handcuffs. "What's with the cuffs?" he asked Deputy Vern Yoder, one of the young men holding Tom away from John.

"Agent Langan tried to kill that man, sir," Deputy Yoder explained to his boss, nodding his head toward John, who was now also cuffed. "It seems that Agent Langan feels that he's the prime suspect in the disappearance of Ms. Barrett, and he was trying to choke her whereabouts out of him."

Sheriff Paully looked at Tom and shook his head. "Some kind of new FBI technique for questioning a suspect, Tom?" Phil had known Tom for years, and he had never seen Tom lose control before. Sheriff Paully then turned his attention to John. "Who are you, and what do you know about Ms. Barrett's disappearance?"

"I'm FBI Special Agent John Michaels, and I'm his partner, dammit! My ID is in the inside pocket of my jacket." He motioned with his head for the sheriff to take out his badge to verify that for himself.

Sheriff Paully took out the ID and looked at it, then returned it to its berth inside John's jacket. "Well, you are who you say you are, but if you and Tom here are partners, then why the hell does he think you had anything to do with this kidnapping?" he asked, looking from John to Tom.

"Because he did!" Tom yelled. Then he proceeded to fill everyone in on John's sudden appearance earlier in the day, his intense interest in Brenda, his sudden "inheritance," and his being in the area now instead of three hours away, back in New York City, where he had said he was going when he had left the cabin earlier that afternoon.

"You're crazy!" John shouted back at Tom. "Everything I said is true. Sikes did send me down here to check on you, and I did get my new car with money I inherited from a relative! As for my interest in Brenda...well, dammit! Look at her! What man with eyes wouldn't be interested in her?" he asked, looking into Tom's eyes. His voice softened slightly, "Listen, I'll admit to being a jerk where she was concerned, but I'd never do anything to hurt her, you gotta know that! ... Tom, we've been partners a lotta years now, do you really think I could be capable of selling out to the mob at all, let alone working with them to hurt her?"

Tom had settled down considerably in the past several minutes, and he tried to listen to what John was saying with a clear head. On the one hand, the evidence against John was highly circumstantial, but it was still there, and it added up. On the other hand, he and John had been best friends since the early days at the academy and partners since graduation, and in all those years he had never known John to lie to him or to be deceptive with him in any way. How could this man, who had protected his back more times than he could count, do anything as heinous as kidnapping Brenda? The answer was he couldn't. John was right - he may have been a jerk with Brenda that day, but he would never do anything that would put her in any kind of danger, no matter what. John was as straight arrow as Tom in many respects. How had Tom lost sight of that? Because you're not being objective on this case, he answered himself. You're too emotional here because you're too personally involved. You need to get that professional edge back. Stop thinking like a man in love, and start thinking rationally.

Tom sighed loudly and then finally responded to John's pleas. "You're right. You couldn't be involved. It's not in you to be involved in something like this." He looked at the deputy who was holding John. "Release him," he said quietly.

The deputy looked at Sheriff Paully, who nodded his approval, then he unlocked the handcuffs from around John's wrists. John rubbed his wrists slightly, then moved his hands to his throat and rubbed it gingerly. "The paramedics are on their way to check you out," the deputy said. "That looks pretty bad!" he continued, pointing to the deep, purplish tint that had already begun to appear at the base of John's throat.

"I'm okay," John said, as he continued to rub his throat and look at Tom.

"You gonna press charges against Tom?" Sheriff Paully asked John.

John stared silently at Tom for several seconds before responding, "No, it's no big deal. Just a minor disagreement between friends. Let him go, and then we can all get back to the work at hand - finding Ms. Barrett."

"Smart man," Sheriff Paully grunted, as he motioned for Deputy Yoder to release Tom and for everyone else to get back to what they had been doing before all this insanity had erupted.

"God! I don't know what got into me!" Tom said, hanging his head and sagging back against the sheriff's cruiser, after everyone else had left them alone.

"I know what got into you," John answered, as Tom quickly looked up at him. "You're in love with her...I knew it that day last week when you told me about finding her and then taking her back to her fiancé. The look in your eyes told me that you were head-over-heels for her."

Tom sighed deeply. "Yeah, and that's why she's missing now. I wasn't thinking like a professional."

"No time for recriminations now," John said as he slapped Tom on the back. "We have to get to work, and fast! I don't know a lot about how Leone operates, but I do know that he's a ruthless son-of-a-bitch, and he won't hesitate to kill her once she's no longer useful to him."

"I know!" Tom replied. "Leone also likes to 'hide-in-plain-sight,' so to speak, so I'm betting he has her stashed somewhere near Port Charles. I planned to head up to Port Charles as soon as I was done briefing everyone here. Wanna join me?"

"Sure, but that's a good two-hour drive, according to the map. Is there any way we can find a chopper and a pilot to get us there faster?" John asked, realizing the precious time that he and Tom had already wasted by fighting.

Just then they saw the light and the sound of an approaching chopper as it began to set down on the deserted stretch of road just up from the cabin. "Ask and ye shall receive," Tom grinned, as the two of them ran toward the men who were exiting the chopper.

"Agents Smith, Roberts, Charles, and Lennon, Buffalo office, sir," FBI Special Agent Micah Smith shouted above the roar of the helicopter, introducing himself and his fellow agents to Tom and John, once they were safely clear of the chopper's rotors.

"Nice to meet all of you," Tom shouted back. "I'm Agent Tom Langan, and this is Agent John Michaels, and we're with the New York City office. We need to take this chopper now to Port Charles to follow some leads on this case. We'll return it when we're done. Sheriff Phil Paully has all the information you're gonna need on this case, as well as my cell phone number if you find anything. And, oh, by the way, I'm putting you personally in charge of that golden retriever by that car over there. His name is Charlie, and he's had a rough night. He's a material witness to this kidnapping, and if anything happens to him, it'll be your butt in the sling! Do you understand that?"

The young agent just nodded mutely, stunned by all of this, and watched as John and Tom jumped onto the chopper and it rapidly ascended back into the sky, before he ran to join his fellow agents who were already being briefed by Sheriff Paully.

While the men had paced in the living room, waiting for Agent Langan to arrive and the kidnappers to call, Jane had busied herself in the kitchen, cleaning up the remains of their dinner, and washing the dishes and putting them away - anything to keep her mind off this unthinkable thing that had happened to Brenda. Just a couple of hours before, Jax had finally let them all back into his life, and he had shared the joyful news that not only had Brenda survived the accident, but that she was also pregnant with their first grandchild. Jane's heart had been filled with prayers of thanksgiving for the bounty of blessings that she had at that moment. But now, as she stood at the sink filling the coffeepot with water to brew another pot of coffee, her heart was filled with prayers asking God to keep Brenda and the baby safe from harm. She didn't hear John Jacks's silent entrance into the kitchen, and was unaware of his presence until he touched her softly, causing her to jump. "John! I didn't hear you..."

John looked carefully into her tear-brimmed, pale blue eyes. "How are you doing, Mother?" he asked, but her trembling lips and the tears that then followed, were all the answers he needed. "There, there...she's going to be safe - they both will be. I promise," he said, pulling her gently into his arms and soothingly stroking up and down her back.

Jane pulled back slightly from her husband's grasp to gaze up into his faded hazel eyes. "You know very well that you can't promise that, John. You, more than anyone, know how ruthless Marco Leone can be if he's crossed...." She closed her eyes tightly against the memories this brought up. "Remember poor Bing and his family..." her voice trailed off, as her tears began to fall once again.

John closed his eyes as well, trying to tamp down the horrible memories of what had happened to Everett "Bing" Bingham and his family all those years ago... Like John, Bing had also been "recruited" by Marco Leone to invest Leone's money in legitimate enterprises, and it had been an extremely profitable relationship for both Bing and Leone over the years. But then, about ten years ago, Bing had tired of the whole thing and had threatened to go to the police with what he knew of Leone's businesses if Leone did not let him out altogether. That had not been a wise move on poor Bing's part, and it was less than a week later, while Bing and his family were all aboard their yacht in the Caribbean, that the boat had gone up in flames, and all five members of the Bingham family had tragically perished in the fire. Officials in the Caribbean had blamed modern day pirates for the tragedy, but John and Jane had known the truth - Leone had killed Bing as an example of how he dealt with those he felt were disloyal to him, and so John had never really tried to distance himself from Leone, out of fear of reprisals against his own loved ones. Now that the government was forcing his hand, John had no choice but to turn state's evidence - and look at the horrible consequences... Jane was right - he couldn't promise that Brenda and the baby would be safe because he knew very well what Leone was capable of - and that terrified him to the very bottom of his soul.

Jerry was worried as he paced the loving room watching Jax, who was sitting quietly on the couch, staring at the sonogram of his and Brenda's baby and fingering Brenda's ring as if it were a set of rosary beads. Jax had said very little since he had hung up the phone with Tom nearly an hour ago. Other than that brief flash of fury that he had shown to Tom on the phone, Jax had been strangely quiet, displaying very little emotion at all. Jerry, on the other hand, had been seething since they had gotten the news about Brenda's abduction. Someone had to pay, he reasoned - first Tom Langan, for his incompetence in watching her, and then Marco Leone, for tearing apart his family like this. If anything happened to Brenda - if she was hurt or lost the baby or if Leone killed her - he knew that his brother would be lost forever, and would never recover. He was worried that Jax was already slipping away; he just sat there, unblinking, barely moving, staring at the baby's image, and holding the symbol of his love for Brenda, her engagement ring. It was unnatural, Jerry thought, and he wanted to go over there and grab Jax by the shoulders and shake him into reacting to something - anything. But instead, Jerry left Jax to his own private world, while he continued to pace, waiting for the phone to ring or something to happen to bring Jax back into this sphere again.

Jax sat staring at the sonogram and touching Brenda's engagement ring, as a fantasy played over and over in his head. In it, he and Brenda were here in this very room. There was a fire blazing in the fireplace; the light from the fire and a couple of candles that were scattered about the room were the only illumination there was. He and Brenda were sitting here on the couch; he was leaning back against the arm of the couch, his legs stretching out the length of the couch, and Brenda was snugly settled within the V of his legs. He held her close, gently massaging her belly as she held his hands so that he could feel the movements of their baby within her. Outside, the wind howled and he could see snowflakes floating down from the heavens, but inside here, he and Brenda and their baby were safe and warm...they were all safe and warm...

He closed his eyes and said yet another prayer in the endless litany of prayers he had said since this whole nightmare had begun: Please, God, keep them safe, and bring them back to me, his mind pleaded. But for some reason, after this particular prayer, he felt a sense of serenity wash over him, just like what he had felt after Brenda's accident when he suddenly "knew" she was alive. And for the first time since he had gotten the note and the ring, Jax actually felt as calm inside as he appeared on the outside.

A knock at the door interrupted Jax's meditation.

"I'll get it," Jerry called, glancing back at Jax, relieved that the knocking had brought Jax back out of the trancelike state he had been in for so long. He ran to the foyer and opened the door to find a messenger with a package.

"Delivery for Jacks," the messenger said, handing Jerry the package. "I need a signature here, please," he continued, extending his clipboard out to Jerry and indicating which line Jerry needed to sign.

"Thanks," Jerry said, handing the man a tip and then closing the door behind him. He turned the package over and read the return address: Alexis Davis.

"What is it, Jerry?" Jax was standing by the stairs, an expectant look on his face.

Jerry looked up at Jax and handed him the package. "The settlement papers..." he said quietly. He saw the pained expression flash across Jax's face, and he thought about what a difference a couple of hours had made in the feeling about these very papers. Just a couple of hours ago, the arrival of these papers would have been cause for celebration, but now...Now they were just a painful reminder of the untenable situation they were all in.

Jax sighed and hung his head, his feeling of serenity washed away by the ugly reality of the situation. It was all too much. This package in his hands was supposed to be his ticket to heaven; signing it should have meant a future for him and Brenda and the baby, and for Jerry and his parents as well. But now it was a ticket to hell; signing it would be tantamount to signing Brenda's death warrant, and his own as well, because without her, he didn't want to live.

"I can't deal with this now," Jax said, as he walked over to the table behind the couch to place the package on the pile of unopened mail that was there. But before he tossed it on the pile, the large manila envelope on the top of the stack of unopened mail caught his attention. It was from Dr. Eckhart, the doctor who was doing Brenda's genetic tests. He picked it up and fingered it, looking up at Jerry. "Do you know what I have here?" he asked his brother, waving the letter from Eckhart in the air. Jerry nodded. Jax stood there a moment just staring silently at Jerry, Eckhart's letter in his one hand, the settlement papers in his other hand. "What I have here," he said, his voice quiet and full of irony, as he held the papers, one in each hand, like he was balancing them on a scale, "is Brenda's and my future. Both of these could mean a death sentence for us. This one," he held the messengered package up, "is a sure death sentence. This one, on the other hand," he nodded to Dr. Eckhart's letter, "is only a 50-50 chance of being a death sentence." He laughed ruefully as he placed both the package and the letter down on the table, "Either way, the odds stink, don't you think, Jer?"

Jerry was over by Jax's side in two strides. "That settlement is moot now, Jax. There's no way that any of us will be signing it - at least not until Brenda is back home safe... And we will get her home, safe and sound! ... As for the genetic results...well, there could be good news in that letter, little brother." And then Jerry said something that even he couldn't believe was coming out of his mouth, because, of all the Jacks family, Jerry had always been the most cynical and the least spiritual, "You just gotta keep the faith, Jax. You and Brenda seem to generate miracles, and I don't think you're done with those miracles yet."

Jax smiled at him and then the two brothers embraced, and once again Jax was empowered with a feeling that everything would be okay because Jerry was right: miracles were possible - you just had to stand firm in your faith.

There was another knock at the door, and Jerry and Jax broke apart. "That was good timing. Another few seconds and Mum and Dad could have come in to discover us in that warm and fuzzy fraternal moment, and then we would have never heard the end of it, now would we, little brother?" Jerry quipped, as he headed to answer the door.

Jax just chuckled and shook his head. Thank God he had Jerry back in his life to help him to laugh, especially now.

Jerry opened the door to find Tom and another man standing there. "Agent Langan..." Jerry said coolly, as he stepped aside to allow Tom and his companion to enter.

"Any contact yet?" Tom asked as he ignored Jerry's tone, walking past Jerry and over to Jax.

"Not yet," Jax shook his head and then looked past Tom to the man with him. "Who's this?"

"This is my partner, John Michaels. John, this is Brenda's fiancé, Jax," Tom said, referring to Jax, "And his brother, Jerry," Tom nodded coolly toward Jerry.

"Jax...Jerry..." John said as he shook hands with each of them. "I'm sorry that we had to meet under these circumstances."

"Yeah, well, you've got your partner there to thank for that," Jerry said angrily.

John and Jane walked into the room in time to hear the last snippets of the conversation. "Jerry, if we're placing blame about all of this, I think there's plenty to go around in this room! If we hadn't been so stupid as to have done business with Mr. Leone in the first place, none of this would be happening either!" Jane said angrily. "The time for pointing fingers and assigning blame is over! We have to concentrate on getting Brenda home safely now!" Jane sniffed back her tears and then walked over to Tom and John and extended her hand out to them. "I'm sorry for all of that...I'm Jane Jacks, Jax and Jerry's mother, and this is their father, John," she said, as she stepped aside so that John could shake hands with the agents as well.

"Hello," John Jacks said as he gripped both of their hands firmly.

"Nice to meet both of you," Tom said, as he shook their hands. "I'm Special Agent Tom Langan, and this is my partner, Special Agent John Michaels."

"You're the young man who saved our Brenda's life," Jane realized, as she impulsively grabbed Tom and gave him a hug. "We owe you so much!" she whispered to him.

Tom blushed at Jane's sudden display of affection, partly because the hug was unexpected and partly because he felt guilty about his feelings for Brenda. "It was nothing that anyone else wouldn't have done in my place," Tom answered modestly. "Now we have to concentrate on finding her again and bringing her safely back home."

Jerry watched impatiently as his mother made over Tom as if he were a hero, when Jerry knew he was really a cad who was after Brenda for himself. "I thought you were sending someone to put a tap on the phone and sit here and tape any calls that came in. Why hasn't anyone arrived to do that?" Jerry asked, needling Tom.

"They have," Tom said, simply. "There's a van hidden in the woods behind the house that's monitoring all incoming and outgoing calls from this phone line." He gave Jerry a slight smile, then turned his attention back to Jax. "When they call to give you instructions, try to keep them on the line as long as possible. Also, insist on speaking directly to Brenda, otherwise, tell them that there will be no deal."

"I understand," Jax replied, a knot forming in his stomach as he wondered why Leone hadn't called yet. Had something happened to Brenda already? What if she was too badly injured to talk to him - or worse - what if she was already dead? No! He pushed that thought to the back of his mind. He was borrowing trouble now, and he had enough to deal with without that. Besides, he would have known if she and the baby were really gone, and he still felt in his heart that they were both still okay. He just prayed that they would continue to be okay once things got in motion on this end.

She was so beautiful... Her skin was like porcelain and her hair was like silk... He couldn't get over how absolutely stunning she was in person, even with no makeup and wearing jeans and a tee shirt. Her pictures, though beautiful, certainly didn't do her justice. She really is exquisite, he thought, smiling as he remembered the words he had used in the note he had sent the Jacks family.

His instructions from Mr. Leone had been to grab her and take her to the secluded house that he had rented. Then he was to have her ring and the note delivered to Ms. Barrett's cottage where her fiancé had taken up residence since her accident a few weeks before. Then he was to let them sweat it out a few hours before calling the Jacks family and allowing them to talk to Ms. Barrett to verify that she was still alive and unharmed - and she was both of those things - at least, for the moment.

Mr. Leone had told him to keep her hidden and comfortable for the time being. But after they had gotten what they needed from her boyfriend's family, she was his to do with as he pleased - for as long as he pleased. He liked the thought of that. He felt the heat rush through him as he imagined what she would be like to make love to - the feel of her naked body beneath his as she begged him. He liked it when they begged, and he would make sure that she begged, if only to punish her for making him wait so long to have her.

He had been trying to find her for days, and Mr. Leone had been very upset with him when he had been unsuccessful in grabbing her before tonight. He had not anticipated that her boyfriend would be so clever as to try to hide her from them. But it was lucky that Mr. Leone's influence was so far-reaching that it even reached to the highest levels of law enforcement. It was satisfying to know that even someone in the FBI was not above selling their soul if the price were right - and Mr. Leone was very good at knowing the right price for all the souls that he bought.

He looked down at his watch, and decided that everyone had waited long enough to get what they wanted. He leaned down and grazed his lips slowly over hers, getting a feel for what he knew would be his very soon. "Time to wake up, Sleeping Beauty," Dan Wilkerson whispered, his hands slowly moving up Brenda's unconscious body as his fantasies went into overdrive. "It's time for the games to begin..."