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We’re probably all aware that the thing about bad behavior is that it almost always comes back around to bite you in the… well, you know. EJ’s finding this out the hard way on Days of Our Lives as Arnold’s burst back into his life, over a decade after his first round pretending to be Rafe. Now the fake is not only demanding a bigger payday, he’s also attacked Rafe and forced EJ to kidnap him and hide the former cop in the not-so-secret tunnels.

For one brief moment on Monday, it looked like EJ might have a way out when Rafe offered a team-up to take down Arnold. They’d clean up the mess together and no one had to know what EJ did. But, unsurprisingly, EJ turned him down. He’s got his own plan and has faith only in himself.

But we all know that the chances of things working out exactly like EJ wants are slim to none. Jada’s already suspecting that the person she’s talking to on Rafe’s phone isn’t even Rafe. And Arnold, as EJ pointed out to Rafe, is a loose cannon who can’t be trusted. Rafe’s deal may have been the only possible way for EJ to come out of this unscathed. Without it, he’s guaranteed to have just backed himself into a corner.

And that would mean there’s only one way out: Death. It would be a trick right out of his father’s playbook. They didn’t, after all, call that man The Phoenix for nothing. Do a bunch of bad stuff, then, when the heat gets too much, play dead for a while until things die back down.

We’ve all been bracing for EJ’s shooting that Days of Our Lives teased in the season preview, assuming we’d be getting a whodunit mystery. And while we may, indeed, get that mystery, the answer to it could be staring us right in the face the whole time.

Seeing no way out of this mess after it blows up in his face, EJ may fake his own shooting and subsequent death and skip town for a bit. And why not? It looks like Johnny’s going to be very upset to learn about how he was conceived, Paulina’s replaced EJ as DA, Kristen’s running DiMera — EJ doesn’t have a whole lot going for him right now, and it’s only going to get worse.