Previously…
– Tori was furious after Matt admitted that he’d deleted a text that Zane had sent her in order to get her to sign the adoption papers.
– Two men tried to snatch Christian, thinking he was Caleb, but Molly and Brent interrupted.
– The men let Christian go in exchange for Brent, but when Molly tried to help Brent, they knocked her out, too.

The sound comes to Molly Taylor through the pitch-black thickness.

Thunk, thunk. Thunk, thunk.

The rhythm beats its way into her brain, and her thoughts assemble around it until they are in an order that makes some kind of sense. It’s dark… What’s that noise?… My head hurts…

Slowly it comes back to her. She recalls the scene in the driveway, how two men with a gun tried to take Christian, how Brent arrived in the nick of time and convinced the men to take him instead. She remembers the anguish she felt watching the men kick and beat Brent, knocking him to the ground as his prosthetic came loose. At least Christian safely escaped into the house.

But what happened to Brent? Fresh panic seizes her, almost — but not quite — overriding the aching in her head. And it only intensifies when something else occurs to her:

Where am I?

Wherever she is, it is absolutely dark, so dark that she cannot see even a few inches in front of herself. And she is definitely lying down. That much becomes clear as she orients herself. She attempts to sit up–

Bam!

She only makes it a few inches before she rams into something above her. What is this? A box?

“Molly,” a voice says out of nowhere as a hand grabs at her.

She lets out a bloodcurdling scream.

“Molly,” it says again, and now her brain has the opportunity to process that she knows the voice.

“Brent,” she says through a gasp, suddenly aware that he is very close to her. She still cannot see him, cannot see anything. “What’s going on? What are they doing to us?”

She hears a pounding noise and knows that he must be beating his shoulder or arms against whatever lid Molly just sat up into a moment ago.

“They’ve got us locked up,” he says, his voice not quite steady. “We’re in the trunk of a moving car.”

—–

Christian Taylor cannot stop his body from shaking as he paces through his mother’s house. He makes a loop through the kitchen, into the dining room, then to the living room, and back to the foyer before returning to the kitchen. The entire time, he keeps his iPhone clutched securely in his hand. It feels as if the routine goes on for hours, although whenever he checks the time on his phone, he sees that it has been mere minutes.

Finally, he hears the wail of police sirens and rushes to the front door. He looks through the glass as a squad car pulls into the circular driveway. Leaving the red and blue lights spinning to light up the night, two uniformed officers get out of the car and hurry toward the house.

“Hi,” Christian says as he whips open the door. “My parents–”

“Where’s Commander Taylor?” one of the officers, a black man in his 30s, asks as they step inside the foyer.

“They took him. They took him and my mom,” Christian says.

“Who took him?” asks the other officer, a woman whose short, blonde hair is mostly covered by her cap.

“I don’t know. These men. They…” Christian struggles to catch his breath. “They wanted my brother. Caleb.”

“Why?” the male officer asks.

“I don’t know. I…” He turns his back, feeling overwhelmed, as he sees another squad car pull into the driveway. “They put my parents in the car and drove off. I tried to read the license plate…”

“Let’s start with the car,” the female officer. “Maybe that’ll lead us to whoever has Commander Taylor and your mom.”

“I know who has them,” someone announces from the doorway, and Christian turns back to see his cousin’s ex-girlfriend standing there.

“Jimenez, we’ve got this,” the male officer says to Rosie with annoyance.

Rosie shakes her head and approaches Christian. “No. I heard it on the radio and had to come. Because Diego Barrera is the one who took Commander Taylor and Molly.”

—–

The headlights of Marcus Gray’s used Ford Fusion cut through the dark of night as he carefully drives the car down a long, evergreen-lined road. On the radio, an announcer trumpets his way through an ad for mattresses.

“I can’t believe he would do this,” Tori Gray says from the passenger seat. “My mom, maybe. But my dad?”

Marcus glances over at his cousin. The seatbelt stretches over her very pregnant midsection, and she stares through the windshield with watery eyes.

“He made a mistake,” Marcus says softly.

“A mistake?!”

“A huge mistake. But you know your dad loves you.”

“If he loves me so much, he wouldn’t have lied to get me to give up my baby!” she spits through gritted teeth. “Ugh!”

“You’ve gotta, like, stay as calm as you can,” Marcus tells her. “For the baby. Right?”

“This is as calm as I can get right now. I hate him!”

“You don’t hate your dad–”

“I do! And how can you say he loves me? If he did, he wouldn’t be trying to get me to give my baby to strangers just because he hates Zane so much.”

With a grunt, Tori reaches forward and shuts off the radio, silencing the excessively peppy announcer.

“They don’t just hate Zane because,” Marcus says. “He did some really messed-up stuff to your mom. And to you.”

“I know that. But that was before…” She sighs and rests both hands on top of her stomach. “You know what?”

He risks another quick look her way. “What?”

“Take me to his place,” Tori declares.

“What? Zane?”

“Yeah. I need to see him,” she says. “I’m gonna tell him everything that’s happened.”

—–

In the family room of his brother and sister-in-law’s home, Matt Gray stands with his head bowed. Shame stings him all over his body as his wife stares at him, her arms folded across her chest.

“I wasn’t thinking,” he says. “Not really. It just happened.”

“Just happened? This doesn’t just happen, Matt.” Sarah shakes her head, wagging her dark blonde hair back and forth.

At the edge of the room, Jake Gray shifts his weight awkwardly.

“I’ll give you guys some time,” he says quietly before booking it back down the hallway to find his wife.

“Matt,” Sarah says. “How could you…”

“I— I mean, I wasn’t really thinking,” Matt stammers. “It was all adrenaline.”

“After how pissed you got at me for paying Zane the blackmail money–”

“I know.”

“It is so insanely hypocritical that you’d turn around and manipulate Tori like this.”

All he can do is nod. “I got desperate. I knew she was already not wanting to do the adoption. And the way Zane was trying to sell her on them being together…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He practically does a double-take. “What? Tell you?”

“Even I would’ve told you that this was a stupid idea,” she goes on, “but once you did do it, the worst possible thing that could’ve happened was for Tori to find out.”

“Yeah, I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“Then why were you talking about it with Jake?!” Sarah throws up her hands in exasperation. “I would’ve made sure she never had any idea.”

“You’re mad at me for not pulling you in on the cover-up.”

“I’m mad at you for doing something so reckless and trying to play God with our daughter and grandchild’s lives. But I get why it happened.” She stops to swallow the lump that has formed in her throat. “But what are we going to do now?”

“We should’ve gone after her,” Matt says. “Before she does something crazy.”

“A car chase with our pregnant daughter and her teenage cousin doesn’t strike me as the best idea,” she says. “But yeah, I guess we should go home so we can try and talk to her now that she’s had a few minutes to vent.”

“Let’s get Billy and go.”

Matt makes a move for the hallway, but Sarah places a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Wait. Let’s leave Billy with Jake and Mia,” Sarah says.

“Why?”

“Because home isn’t where we’re going to catch Tori.”

—–

Brent pounds mercilessly on the closed trunk with whatever body parts he can get to move, to no avail. He manages to force the slightest crack in the opening, exposing a glint of light as well as a rush of cold and noise, but he is never able to free them.

After what seems to Molly to be at least half-an-hour — but she has no way of moving her arm to check the time, and as far as they can tell, both of their phones are nowhere to be found — the car slows to a crawl. With a final shudder, it comes to a stop, though the engine continues to hum.

“Do you think they’re going to let us out?” Molly asks, her voice shaky.

With her eyes finally adjusted to the dark, she is able to see enough to tell that Brent blinks and then flattens his lips into a tight line.

“We’re going to get out of this,” he whispers. “Somehow. Christian would’ve called the police the minute he went inside.”

“But how are they going to know where we are? We don’t even know where we are.”

Brent hesitates, and they can hear the slamming of car doors and then the conferring of several deep voices.

“Can you hear what they’re talking about?” Molly asks in a hushed tone.

“No. I’m trying.”

But the conversation never becomes any clearer. They can both make out movement and footsteps and the occasional crunching of leaves, but nothing specific.

Until a smell permeates Molly’s consciousness.

“What is that?” she asks with alarm, hoping that she is simply going crazy.

But Brent’s tone makes it clear that her concern is not misplaced: “It’s gasoline.”

“Is the car leaking?”

“I don’t know. I– I hope so.”

“You hope so?! Why?”

Instead of answering, he pounds frantically on the trunk again.

“Do that all you want!” a male voice shouts back. “It’s not gonna do any good!”

Molly peers at her ex through the dark. “What’s going on?”

“They’re spreading gas,” Brent says. “They’re going to set the car on fire.”

END OF EPISODE 972

Is there any chance of escape for Brent and Molly?
Could Rosie really know where they’ve been taken?
Will Sarah and Matt intercept Tori at Zane’s?
Talk about it all in the comments below!

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