A phone rang at the security desk during attempt of notification to Mr. Eastman. The security guard nodded his head, said "yes sir" and then looked up at Angie.

"Ma’am, you’re to go up to the Penthouse. You will meet Mr. Eastman up there today," the guard stated and Angie was impressed. The guard buzzed the private elevator door entrance and Angie smiled, stepping inside the ornate elevator. As the doors closed, she took a deep breath and looked at her reflection in the Deco Renaissance smoked glass walls. Her long, wavy blonde hair looked a bit in disarray as she smoothed it down and she decided she was going to cut it again, back to a short, layered look, the way she had it before Rollie and she were married. It was easy to care for and with Aidan now, she had no time to fool with the long hair. She whistled in nervous energy, running through her mind what she was going to say and do, anticipating Cy’s offer and Eastman’s responses. She just had to get Tyler F/X back in full throttle here.

The door opened as she took another deep breath and she stepped into a gorgeous Italian Renaissance foyer, red curtains with gold tasseled ties inviting her forward with gold gilded trim work at the ceiling level, tiny figures of ornate winged angels and designs of flowery petals everywhere. This certainly seemed flashy for a simple director, she thought. She stood there and cleared her throat, waiting.

Finally, she heard steps coming toward her, as she looked down at the marbled tile, a white and black square pattern reflecting back like a chessboard to her.

"Mr. Eastman?"

Mangela had a dreaming, a chessboard had appeared and the White Queen stood unprotected on all sides as a black Rook made side way advances toward her. He could see that she stood on a white square for the moment, the Rook, on black. He was jumbled from his dreaming by the cry of Aidan at his side in the F/X van.

"There, there, my little sonny boy, I felt it too! Your mother is in trouble!"

He picked up the baby and stepped out of the van. Seeing the F/X trailer, he walked over to it, hesitating ever so slightly as he entered, knowing that Rollie would get very upset at his premonition.

He found Rollie, sitting at the computer console, mixing something, looking like plaster.

"Mangela? Aidan hungry?" Rollie asked, sensing and actually making out the murky frame of his adopted father, holding his son. As he approached, he could see the outline of his son, moving, hands flailing out and indeed, not a happy camper even in Mangela’s arms.

"Somethin’s wrong!" Mangela told him, flatly.

"Yep, I’d say wet and hungry," Rollie replied, smiling as he reached out, Mangela placing Aidan in his arms.

"No, my boy! I had a dreaming- your Angie is in danger right now!"

"She’s in the fight of our lives here, Mangela for the business, she had to go meet with the director of this film and plead our case for continued contract."

"No, it isn’t no director! This is an evil man. This is what I felt in your loft. This is what I felt as I traveled here. Rollie, she is trapped!"

"Care there, Mangela- you’ve been dreaming a bit too much! I know that Tony is a bad egg, and we have alerted the police. But Angie went to a legit place and is probably giving them a piece of her mind. That’s what you are picking up on, mate!"

"No!" Mangela replied firmly, slapping his hand down on the counter by the console, his frustration and anger at Rollie apparent.

Rollie stood up, consoling Aidan who had reacted to the sound of Mangela’s blow to the table.

"Okay! Right, I’ll just give Bret Eastman a call and see if I can speak to Angela. Will that resolve this?"

"It’s a start!" Mangela responded in kind and tone and walked out in a huff as Rollie came out of the trailer and called out for some assistance in guiding him toward the F/X van. He heard Luce near the trailer talking with Rolph, immersed in deep conversation.

"Lucinda! Mind giving me a hand?"

"Oh! Here you go!" she said, guiding him toward the F/X Van. She took Aidan from him, the baby crying furiously as she tried to calm him. Rolph took over as guide and just before stepping into the van, Rollie heard Lucinda say;

"Well, Bret! Everything hunky-dory now! Tyler F/X is here to stay, right?"

Rollie smiled then, Angie had made a quick save of the situation and she and Bret were back on set.

"What? Of course Tyler F/X is here to stay! Why wouldn’t it be? Rollie! How are you?" he heard Bret exclaim and could barely make out the form of a man he had never met who shook his extended hand.

"Good!" Rollie replied, smiling, "I want to thank you for reconsidering us over Cy Berlain. We won’t let you down again. My wife can be very commanding, can’t she?"

"Uh, I’m afraid you have me at a loss, Mr. Tyler. I don’t know about Mr. Berlain being ever involved with us here. And as for your wife, I’ve heard about the both of you but have never really had the chance to meet you to form that opinion! Looking forward to it, though!" Eastman said, releasing Rollie’s hand from a firm shake.

Rollie frowned. Not only did Eastman’s voice sound different than the Eastman who had called on the phone, but also he was denying all knowledge of the meeting, Cy Berlain and even knowing Angie in person! His heart skipped a beat as Mangela’s words about a game of chess resounded in his mind.

Eastman moved off with his entourage and Rollie grabbed Lucinda by the shoulder tightly;

"Lucinda! Call Mira and Vanduran. Get them down here. Something is wrong! There was no meeting with Eastman. Angie didn’t go out to meet with Eastman! Oh my God- that bloody bastard! I bet it was Tony! He lured her out away from us!"

"What?" Lucinda exclaimed, as Rolph followed the intense exchange between them with confusion.

"Angie!" Rollie murmured, as Lucinda saw the gravity of the situation and handed Aidan to a very surprised Rolph. It was apparent that he had never held a baby before, much less a highly irate one!

Grabbing her cellphone, Lucinda paged Vanduran and then called the precinct as well. Vanduran, Sanchez, Gatti- they were all out of the office. She slammed the phone shut after having yelled at the desk sergeant to find them and have them call her back immediately.

"Oh Rollie! Look, maybe it’s not him! Maybe, well- I don’t know. I don’t think Tony or whatever his name is, resides at the Dakota, do you? We have to stay calm and think here…" Lucinda said, her voice terse and all serious.

"Dakota? You said the Dakota. Is that where she went?" Rollie asked, feeling helpless.

"Yeah, said Eastman lived there and was meeting him over at his apartment for the meeting with Cy Berlain," Luce replied, then jumped slightly as her phone rang in her hand.

"Oh Marvin," she whimpered slightly as she answered her phone, "Angie has disappeared! She was suppose to meet this director but he’s on the set and hasn’t seen her and we think it might be Tony! Oh please, come down here to the set!"

Rollie was pacing back and forth and damning himself! The more he tried to see, the worse the shadows became now. He was a useless as he could be! He felt helpless, without hope as he suddenly was stabbed with a course of brilliant white light and the feeling of the room, that room under Pollepel. It was his jail, his torture room; the walls were closing in on him. Not now! he cried out in his misery.

Before Luce had clicked her phone off, Vanduran, followed by Mira, entered the set by the front entrance. Luce saw them heading toward her and she remarked in surprise;

"That was quick! Way too quick!"

"Okay, now let’s get some information here!" Vanduran barked out, taking over as Mira came over to Rollie, touching him on the shoulder.

"Where were you, sitting outside the bloody door?" Rollie asked, in bewilderment.

"Actually, yes, as a matter of fact. We were on a stake-out, waiting for this Lamont character to show up for work today," replied Vanduran as Mira rolled her eyes and cringed. They had not informed Rollie or Angie of their discovery and she knew that this information now would only be taken badly by Rollie.

"Who’s Lamont?" Rollie asked, shaking his head, "We have to concentrate on Angie. She went for a meeting that wasn’t really happening out there. We think Tony set it up to lure her away from all of us!"

The captain swallowed hard as Lucinda could see some sort of awful truth getting ready to spill from him as the color rose in his face.

"Lamont IS Tony. Gregory Lamont is his real name and we did get some matching prints, Rollie. Sanchez had been working on several homicides and the last one, they got a print- it matched the print that Lucinda got for me from your loft from something that ‘Tony’ had touched."

"Homicide? What’s going on here?" Rollie demanded, his heart now in his throat as Lucinda began to cry, Aidan still wailing in Rolph’s arms.

"Lamont is wanted for the serial murders of women in this city for the past two years. Rollie, it’s not good, okay? He is a sick guy!" Mira added, as Rollie moved away from her, angered.

"You knew all of this and didn’t tell us?"

"That was my call," Vanduran said, his voice firm but apologetic at the same time, "I’m sorry, Tyler but we weren’t sure until the match came through just under eight hours ago. We didn’t want to alarm you and scare off this guy from returning to the set."

"You think I would have tracked him down and ruined your investigation?" Rollie roared back, "What? Like this?" he asked further, pointing to his less than useful eyes, "you put my wife in danger by not telling us the truth. She’s gone off to meet with this guy now! How’s that for keeping us safe and not alarmed!"

"What do you mean, Rollie?" Mira asked, not caring if he yelled at her or not.

"She went to meet whom she thought was our director at his apartment. I don’t know where that was, bloody hell!" he replied, running his hand through his hair and pushing her away as she tried to touch his arm again.

"Rollie, where? Did she say where?" Mira asked, still pushing him.

"The Dakota…" Rollie said, his voice losing its steam as he leaned against the side of the van, his eyes watering.

Lucinda noted immediately the alarm in Vanduran’s eyes. He pulled out his phone and was talking to Francis on the other end before she could blink.

Mira whispered the name of the building as Rollie had a waking dream, the rush of a chilled darkness closing in, the chessboard floor, red- blood red curtains and those incredible blue eyes so trusting was imaged. Mangela had been right!

"Mangela!" he yelled out to everyone’s surprised, agitated minds. There was no answer.

"Francis is on his way to the Dakota now, Rollie. We will get to the bottom of this now. We’re on our way now, Sanchez?" Vanduran said, snapping Mira’s name in an order and she turned to look at him, frowning.

"Yeah, I’m coming. I think Rollie should come too, Captain!"

"NO! He stays here. Not this time!" Vanduran replied, his voice thunderous and Lucinda stepped back, looking at Marvin as if she had never met him before.

Marvin Vanduran looked at the woman whom he thought now saw him for what he really was, a bastard who was out for the collar of the year. He walked past her, waiting for Mira.

"Rollie, we will get this guy. I promise!" she told him as he turned away from her, his anger and fear all balled up in side.

They left them standing there, rushing out, calling for backup to go down to the Dakota.

Rollie shook his head as he felt Lucinda come over and wrap herself around him, holding on to him.

He stood there, not returning her embrace for a moment, just absolutely in shock with his fear; "There’s something more than just this guy Gregory Lamont being a killer. I can feel it. It’s worse…it’s bloody awful!" he said, then he let her hold him, grasping her tightly as she tried her best to comfort him.

"Mangela is gone…probably going there…we’re going too!" Rollie said, stepping back from Lucinda, "Rolph, mind staying here with Aidan for us?…thanks!" Rollie finished, not really waiting for an answer as the very left out Rolph Mer stood there, watching as Lucinda Scott led Rollie Tyler over to the motor pool.

"I think I made a mistake coming here," Rolph said to the fussy baby in his arms as he stepped up into the van in complete and utter fear of caring for the child.

Angie looked toward the sounds of the footsteps. She smiled in anticipation but her face dropped in utter horror as she saw Tony walking toward her. He smiled at her in his usual manner as she backed up toward the door, reaching the knob with her hand behind her.

"Uh, there’s been a mistake, I think…" she managed to get out, as she fumbled with the door.

"No mistake, Angela. And the door is locked by remote from me," he added, softly as he held a small hand-held remote in his hand, slipping it then into his pocket.

"Where is Bret? Damn it, there’s no Bret, is there?" she asked, shaking her head and trying to stay calm.

"Nope, just wanted to get you here, without that pitiful excuse of a husband, and that harpy friend of yours. That bitch caused me such trouble while you were gone!" he added, stepping closer, his voice taking on a nasty edge similar to how he sounded on the video.

"Tony…" Angie began, trying to bargain and for what, she didn’t know as he got up within inches of her as she felt the back of the door against her back.

"Oh, the name’s really Gregory, you know. Tony Alvarez is a fruitcake at NYU. His credentials got me places, you know. Do you know how incredible you were, all swollen with child?"

Angie looked at him in horror, his body closing in on her as he pressed her tightly then against the door, his mouth closing over her opened, shocked one. He bit her lower lip as she cried out in pain, calling for Rollie, as tears spilled from her eyes.

"He can’t help you, never could! But I could help you. I did, in fact. I took care of you…helped you run the business, rubbed your back, carried you to your bed as you moaned about that spineless man. I did it all for you, Angie. I loved you completely and was then totally shut out when he came back. You know they don’t come back…ever…they leave you like this, all swollen up. Do their deed and leave you, right?"" Gregory told her as his hands began to probe her.

She trembled as the nausea took over but she had to stay in control. She wasn’t going to let him rape her. She would die first, she told herself. She didn’t care! After Loubar, she would never let that happen again…and instinctively, with that thought in her mind, she put the heel of her boot into the toe of his shoe and then lifted her knee up, into his groin sharply.

Immediately released, as Gregory crumpled backward, she tried to reach inside his pocket for the remote but he managed to pull it out and stepped on it, shattering it into millions of pieces as she stepped back from him, looking around for options. She ran. Down the long hallway, looking for a way out. She could hear him catching up to her as she tried to rationalize her escape route, where the rooms would normally have exit doors.

Seeing the kitchen, she also spied the door in the back and desperately tried to open it, finding it locked by the same remote. She had no PDA on her, no way to jam the signal, relay a new one to help her. She ducked into a passthrough room to the dining room as Gregory came into the kitchen. Running back through the large apartment, she saw a conservatory. She could see the hothouse room and she bolted for the door. That door miraculously opened and she found herself being sprayed by the mist as it came down from multiple sprinklers around the ceiling. There was no outside door, but there was a huge skylight opened above and she could see a small ladder going down the side of the glass encased hothouse for workmen who had been cleaning the outside of the glass.

Hearing his footsteps as he searched and got closer, she stood up on a step ladder and grabbed the pipes going across the ceiling. She was just about to let her arms take her full weight as she shimmied across when she saw the woman, lying in the foliage behind the footstool. She could see where Gregory apparently had been digging a hole in the soil and she realized it was deep enough to put a body in- this woman’s body and another, for that matter. Hers? What made her then, lose her breakfast and leave her heaving, was the condition of the woman’s body. She had never seen something so grotesque and vile! She could see now that what she thought was rusty water running into the drain pipe in the floor of the tile, was really blood, a tremendous amount of it as it mixed with the dirt and water from the mist. She shook, the water dripping off her face and her lips as her teeth chattered. She could hear Gregory calling her name, his voice encased in the dark, insane world he was totally living in now. She stepped back up on the footstool, grabbed the pipe and began to pull herself over, across the room, dangling there as the piping went upward across the ceiling of the room rising to a peak. She could feel the breeze from outside, the sun beating down as she inched her way up toward the skylight. Just a few more feet but her hands were slipping and her strength, it was leaving her as her chest heaved with exhaustion as the adrenaline pouring through her veins was now gone.

"What the hell are you doing?" Gregory screamed, as he stood below her and looked up. She kept moving and he looked over to where he had left his mother.

"I see you met mother…like what I did with her? She really did deserve it, in the end, just like all the rest. Angela- you deserve even better. I’m going to fix it so you never get pregnant again…no man will leave you like that again. I am personally going to help you with that, because that’s what I do. I only want to serve you!" he told her, in a strange, pleading voice.

Angie continued her hand over hand climb toward the skylight. She told herself, just like rock climbing near the falls. You can do it! She tried to keep all emotion out of it, concentrating on her freedom, and the light. She could see that Gregory was running out of the room and she wondered if he was giving it, no, that would be too simple. As her hand touched the edge of the skylight, she knew- she would have to hoist herself up on the pipe and propel herself out the window.

Rollie! She thought, crying out then as she curled up and went for it, her old days in highschool gymnastics not all gone for waste as she got herself to straddle the pipe. She took a breath then, exhausted, dripping with sweat- her perch precarious and painful. She looked down as Gregory reentered the room. He had a full ladder and was climbing up it, toward her. She looked up, thinking that the glass might break from her weight pressed against it once she resting outside the skylight once she got there. But then again, if it did break- she would crash down on top of Gregory. Either way, there was no going back.

Angie groaned in pain but gripped the edge of the lead around the skylight and with a last ditched effort of strength pulled herself up and out the window. She lay against the glass, her body pressed against the ceiling of the hothouse, feeling the cool breeze, the air …the freedom! She looked down then, panting heavily and saw that Gregory was reaching through the skylight, standing on the top of the ladder.

He just didn’t quit! she told herself as she moved over slightly, looking for the workman’s ladder about five feet from her. As she inched her way over, waiting for the collapse of glass at any moment, she saw that Gregory had also made it out and was sitting on the edge of the skylight. His face was a mask of insanity, hideous and tortured as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

"You’re so much work, Angela! Whew! I have to catch my breath!"

Lucinda sped like a maniac as she and Rollie reached the Dakota not a minute behind Mira and Vanduran who had already entered the building. Francis’s car was already there and as Lucinda helped Rollie inside, she saw the flurry of activity going on- and knew they wouldn’t be allowed up the normal way.

Vanduran glared at them but Lucinda ignored him. Vanduran and Mira entered the elevator, as the guard blocked Lucinda and Rollie from joining them. As the doors slammed shut, Rollie’s mind came to a grinding halt as well. He was feeling something so strange. The walls to that room in his mind, his torture, the light all swam around him as his knees buckled and he crumpled in a chair as Lucinda grabbed his shoulders.

Strangely enough, the guard looked at Rollie and said in a strange voice; "He said you’d be coming. You need to go up the service elevator, to the roof. He went there!"

Lucinda frowned at the guard but Rollie smiled. Mangela had come here. He had worked the People’s magic over this guard…somehow, here the man was inviting him to take an alternative route. It was perhaps, the quickest and most direct route to Angie!

"You okay, Rollie?" Lucinda asked, as Rollie looked up at the light that was filtering in over his friend’s head. It shone like a halo over her head as he grasped her face in his hands.

"Yes! Get me up there, now- Luce!" he told her as he made out her lips turning into a determined smile.

They took the service elevator reaching the top floor, then took the stairs to the roof. They could hear the police ramming the entrance of the penthouse door down the hall but they ignored it. Once they stood out on the roof of the Dakota, Lucinda stopped in her tracks, pulling Rollie beside her in a jerking motion.

"What?" he asked, frantic.

"Uh, Mangela is here, Rol. He’s a bit busy at the moment though…"

Rollie could see the light, the halos of light on the surfaces surrounding them but people, objects at a distance remained shadows, colors unclear and ill-defined.

"Angie!" he said, his breathless cry only made it worse as Lucinda used both hands to hold him now.

"She’s there, Rol. She’s uh, needing to be concentrating on what she’s doing…okay? Don’t yell out at her!" Lucinda told him, her voice for once, commanding him and deathly serious.

She nudged him forward, slowly and he didn’t understand. He wanted Angie, safe in his arms. What the hell was Lucinda telling him?

They could hear shouting now, coming from someplace down inside the building. Rollie thought he heard Mira and then Francis’s voice shouting "here!"

"I want to see, God- help me, please!" he pleaded as Lucinda grasped his hand tighter and Rollie could make out and feel the image of Mangela, lying prostrate against the air, it seemed, reaching out toward….the light, the light around her was brilliant, glowing as he closed his eyes for a moment and opened them back up, tearing at the burn of exposure to the sun.

"Come to me, Angie. Give me your hand, love!" Mangela was shouting as Angie cried out, for Gregory had grabbed her leg. His own body was inching out against the glass roof of the hothouse as he went for his reward. He had to have her!

Mangela could see the police below them, standing with mouths agape, knowing that if they fired their weapons, they would send everyone crashing to the floor inside the hothouse, twenty feet below.

"I won’t let you go, Angie! Give me your hand, love!" Mangela told her again and she moved again, trying to shake Gregory’s hold on her leg, as he gained some ground, reaching her thigh and then her waist.

"NO!" she screamed, kicking suddenly and Rollie’s heart and soul joined her there, felt her heart, matched her pulse- one mind, one heart.

"The heart is the soul, the soul is the heart," he muttered as Mangela turned away and saw him standing there below him, by the serviceman’s ladder.

"Let go, boy! Release it, let it soar! There are no walls here! The light is good! Give into it!" he yelled at Rollie.

Rollie grabbed the ladder and began to climb. Angie saw the top of his head as he made it up to the ceiling of the hothouse and cried out to him;

"No Rollie, don’t!"

"Yes, Rollie- do come and see this, you miserable piece of shit!" yelled Gregory, "She’s mine. You left her like that, swollen with your child. You made her that way and left her. I took over and now, you’re not worthy. Do you hear me?"

"You’re wrong, Gregory. She’s not yours to have! We gave ourselves to each other a long time ago…you can’t take that from us. You’ll never have her. Her soul and mine are one. You’ll have to take both of us, you hear?"

Rollie had made it to Mangela’s side and he touched the top of his boy’s head in gracious acknowledgement. He had barely been hanging on, for he knew what was going to happen next, and he did it for his sonny boy. He could hear the chorus and Rollie could hear them as well.

"Be seeing you in a bit, Rol. You’ve broken those walls down, grab on to her and don’t let go!" Mangela told him as Rollie could see finally, his old, smiling face before him.

"Mangela?" Rollie asked, but before he could react, his father moved like a snake, taking Gregory off guard as Rollie reached out, flinging his hand toward Angie who had already fought off Gregory’s hold to extend her hand toward him.

Mira, Francis and Vanduran waited below, their hearts stopped in unison as they moved almost in a single unit back, hitting the wall of the hothouse, shielding their faces as the sound of crashing glass filled the room.