Lucky gently closed the door to the bedroom behind him as he made his way into the living room of the WSB safehouse.
“How is she?” Luke asked as he brought Lucky a cup of coffee. Both men had been been up all night and looked like hell.
Lucky shook his head. “Finally asleep thank God. The tranquilizer the doctor gave her kicked in. She needs her sleep after everything Helena put her through at the compound and if Jonathan,” Lucky stops, refusing to voice his thoughts. “Any luck with the WSB?”
Luke shakes his head. “They’ve searched the area thoroughly and still no sign of Jonathan. Nothing to indicate what happened to him.”
It had been over 12 hours since the four of them had escaped from Helena’s compound and returned to find Sean Donnelly dead and Jonathan gone. Luke had been devastated by Sean’s death. He had been the one to contact Tiffany in Boston and then the WSB. The WSB had dispatched some agents to take care of the body and help in the search for Jonathan. Luke had spent most of the night helping the agents in the search. And on the phone offering his condolensces to Tiffany. He had even made a phone call to Laura in Port Charles and, without telling her any of the details, informed her of Sean’s death. Laura had made arrangements for Lu and Ruby to stay with Nikolas and gone to Boston to stay with Tiffany. Jason, uncomfortable with so many WSB agents around, had taken off to go look for his nephew on his own and no one had heard from him for hours,
That had left Lucky with the job of staying behind and looking after, and guarding, Emily. He wasn’t complaining. As much as he wanted to help in the search of Jonathan, Emily’s collapse when they had found Sean’s dead body had scared him. He couldn’t forget that just a few weeks ago she had almost died. And although the doctor had assured him that her collapse was more from emotional and physical exhaustion than her injuries, Lucky wouldn’t feel better, couldn’t feel better actually, until she was herself again. Plus no one knew where Helena was or if she had survived the collapse of her compound, which explained the WSB agent posted at their door.
“What about Helena’s compound? Any chance she could have him there?” Lucky voices the fear that has been gnawing at him all day. Had he rescued Emily only to lose her son? Did Helena have the boy?
“No way to tell for sure but the WSB experts tend to think no and I tend to agree with him. If she has him it isn’t at her compound. Most of the activity there has been centered around recuperating from Jason’s little experiment...lots of running around but so far no communications have been intercepted regarding either Helena or the boy. Satellite imaging hasn’t picked up any sign of a young child at the compound.”
“There’s a part of me that almost wishes she did have him. At least we’d know he was safe.”
“Come on Cowboy, think positively. From everything you’ve told me that kid sounds a lot like you at that age. And if I remember right you got yourself into some pretty tight spots that you managed to get yourself out of.”
“I was a Spencer. It’s almost in the blood. Jonathan doesn’t have the genetic make up.”
“It’s not like Emily didn’t have to learn a thing or two about survival growing up in the Quartermaine household like throwing a guppy into a thankful of sharks but she managed. She also managed pretty well on her own hiding out from Helena all these years. I bet you that kid picked up some street smarts from his mom. Besides,” Here Luke pauses casting a sideways glance at his son, “I’ve always considered Emily an honorary Spencer.”
Lucky says nothing, reluctant to discuss his feelings for Emily with his dad before he can discuss them with her.
“You forgot to mention that Jonathan is also Mom’s grandson.” Lucky pointed out trying to divert the topic of the conversation.
“Bingo!” Luke said. “Now that we’ve determined the kid’s a wonder, let’s see if we can’t figure out where he is”
“Okay,” Lucky sat at the dining room table and grabbed a pad of paper. “We have two choices. We can assume Jonathan was taken when Sean was killed or we can assume Jonathan escaped.”
There is silence a moment while each thinks. “I vote he escaped,” Lucky said after a moment. “I don’t think the shooting had anything to do with Jonathan. If they thought their precious Cassadine heir was in that room they wouldn’t have fired a single bullet much less torn the place to pieces.”
“Makes sense,” Luke agreed. “So we can assume he somehow made it out unnoticed from the hotel room. He’s either hiding some place or “
“He ran into some of Helena’s men and they grabbed him.”
“Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire,” Lucky glanced at the door to the bedroom. “If something has happened to Jonathan, I don’t know if she’s strong enough to survive it.”
“She’ll have you to help her through it.” Luke said softly.
“Always,” Lucky’s answer requires no thought. “But will it be enough?”
Silence reigns as both men ponder the question.
In the bedroom, Emily is not sleeping. She knows she should be, she feels drowsy and unconnected from the tranquilizers, but her mind won’t stop thinking. Or feeling. Her body craved sleep but her mind refused. She pretended to sleep long enough to get Lucky to leave the room. She can’t stand being near him right now. The guilt and self-loathing she feels is eating her up. She wants to crawl into a corner and hide. Her mind craves some kind of release. She remembers at the hospital when she was a kid and things became too much and she retreated into her mind. She so badly wants to do that now. Or she wants to get high. Anything so that she can forget that her son is missing. Her son could be dead. Her son could be hurt. And it was all her fault. Her fault for not protecting him better. Her fault for making him vulnerable to Helena. All of it was her fault. Sean’s death. This is another path her mind keeps taking, thinking about Sean. He had been her mother’s lover once. She had hated him. And now he had died protecting her son. Didn’t she hear that he and his wife had a couple of daughters. More children without a father. Oh God, what had she done that had been so terrible that she deserved this. And why did God insist on punishing the innocent people. That young boy in Seattle. Sean. Jonathan. All of them hurt because they got caught up in something that they couldn’t understand.
Emily springs up from the bed and reaches for the backpack she and Lucky had retrieved from the hotel room. Jonathan’s backpack. He had been carrying a backpack around with him since he was three. He never unpacked it, understood without her saying anything that settling in one place was not for them. How many times had she moved from a place before he could call it home? How many times in the name of saving his life had she destroyed it?
Emily unzipped the backpack. With a light relevant touch, she carefully removed its contents. A teddy bear named Huggables that they had bought at the circus years ago. A crumpled felt pennant from the St. Louis Cardinals. Extra clothing just in case. A worn down copy of The Runaway Bunny that she had read outloud to him almost every night since she could remember. Lovingly she turned the pages and look at the illustrations of the little bunny who keeps running away and the mother bunny who keeps finding him. Tears fall down her cheeks. Emily reaches further into the backpack. There are the glass marbles that fascinated Jonathan so much in San Francisco. Stones from a beach in Oregon. She pulled out the last thing from the backpack and stopped, her heart freezing. It was a picture of her and Jonathan taken in one of those photo machines. Emily touches her son’s pictures as she remembers the day they took it. They had been living in a town called Ventura just north of LA. Emily had gotten a job waitressing at the local Carrows. They had stayed there for two months, one of the longest times they had ever stayed anywhere. For Jonathan’s birthday she had taken him to the local miniature golf center. They had ridden bumper cars and played video games for hours. Sometime that night they had taken this photo. Emily looked at her son’s smiling face, his brown eyes beaming. He looked so young. So innocent.
“Emily,” She feels the arms come around her and hold her tight. She is vaguely aware of the fact that she is crying. She wants to bury herself in his shoulder and let him take care of her, but she knows that the last thing she deserves is sympathy. She pulls away from him. But Lucky refuses to let her go. “We’ll find him Em” He makes the words a vow as he he pulls her hair back from her face. “I promise you that.”
Emily shakes her head. “You can’t promise that.”
“With Luke and Jason and the WSB looking for her not even Amelia Earheart could stay missing. We will find him.”
“It’s my fault,” The words are the barest whisper but he hears the pain they contain. “All I wanted to do was say goodbye to my grandmother and everything falls apart. I’ve lost my son”
“Listen to me,” Lucky’s voice is strong and deep. “This isn’t your fault. It’s Helena’s. All of it. You are not to blame yourself for any of it.”
“I know,” Emily says but they are just words.
“I’m glad you came back to Port Charles. Until you came back I was so caught up in feeling sorry for myself since Liz died that I was practically dead. Emily seeing you again was the first time I’ve felt anything except for sorrow in three years. I want to tell you how...”
Lucky begins but is interrupted by Luke opening the door.
“Jason just called. He thinks he found something.”
It was a thirty minute ride in the WSB sedan from the safehouse to Jason’s location just east of Helena’s compound. Luke and Lucky rode in the front and Emily rode in the back. No one spoke. Luke pulled the sedan over when he spotted Jason standing on the side of the road waiting for them.
Jason immediately went over to his sister. “I’ve found something but I don’t think you are going to like it.”
Lucky’s hand went around Emily’s waist for support, but Emily pushed it down and moved slightly away.
“Show me,” she implored Jason, “I need to know what happened to my son.”
Lucky followed behind Jason and Emily trying to figure out what was going on in Emily’s head. She loved him. He knew that. And although he hadn’t told her yet, she had to know how he felt. Why was she pushing him away? And how hard or how far would she try to push him?
Emily and Jason stopped at the edge of a ravine, the remains of car could be seen still smoldering at the bottom.
“The WSB ran the plates for me while I was waiting for you. It was registered to Helena’s compound.” Jason paused. “There were no signs of survivors.”
Emily’s face grew paler. “Do you think?” she began and then stopped.
“It’s a possibility, “ Jason doesn’t know how to ease her pain. “The tracks indicate it was heading back to the compound”
“I want to go down there,” Emily begins to head down, but Lucky grabs her from behind and holds her back.
“No way,” he shakes his head. “Even if you were completely healthy and not shot full of tranquilizers there would be no way I’d let you climb down that steep ravine on your own. You want someone to check it out. I’ll go down.”
“Not without some rope,” Luke retorts. He grabs some rope from the trunk of the WSB sedan and ties one onto the bumper and the other to Lucky.
Five minutes later, Lucky has maneuvered his way down most of the ravine until he has neared the car. Anxiously he looks around for any sign of survivors but fails to find any. He is about to signal Jason and Luke to pull him back up, when he spots a flash of white about 500 yards away from the wreck. He doesn’t have enough rope to make it there, so he unties the rope from around his waist and leaves it. Moving cautiously and slowly, Lucky makes his way through the tangled bush to where he saw the flash of white.
Jonathan! Lucky drops down next to the boy. He checks for a pulse and finds it strong and steady. He’s cold from having spent the night outdoors. He’s about to grab him and head back up, when Jonathan’s eyes flutter open.
“Am I dead? You make a funny looking angel Lucky.,” Jonathan whispers in bemusement.
“Thank god you’re okay,” Lucky grabbed his hand, “You’re mother and I have been scared to death”
“Mom? Mom’s alive,” Jonathan’s eyes fly open and he tries to sit up. “But the guy with the gun said she was dead. He said you were both dead. He said he was taking me to someone.”
“What man with a gun?” Lucky asks as he continues to check Jonathan, so far lots of cuts and bruises but no apparent broked bones.
“The bad guy who killed the hotel manager. I tried to run away from him and hide but he caught me.” Jonathan is beginning to shake and Lucky grabs him in his arms and holds him tight. “I killed him.” Jonathan’s eyes are downcast.
Lucky looks at him in astonishment. “What happened?”
“He said that mom was dead and I got so mad I wanted something bad to happen to him. So I grabbed the keys and made the car go off the side of the road. Do I have to go to prison now?”
Lucky shook his head, unsure if all of this guilt came from the Quartermaine side or the Cassadine side. Judging from Emily’s mood earlier, it all came from the Quartermaine side. “No one is sending you to prison. Quite the opposite. You were a very brave little boy. And I am so glad that you rescued yourself because I was so busy rescuing your mom that I might not have gotten here in time. I don’t want you to think about that man anymore.” Lucky picked up Jonathan and carried him in his arms. “Let’s get you back to your mom.”
Up by the side of the road, Emily leaned against the car. Lucky had been gone for 30 minutes now. Thirty minutes to come to terms with the fact that Jonathan was dead. Thirty minutes to work up the courage to not throw herself at Lucky when he came back up. Thirty minutes to make sure that she masked her feelings from Lucky. She had to go back to when she had been aloof and reserved. She couldn’t let him know how she felt. Let him think that her confession in the compound had been the result of fear. She could still walk away from this as long as he didn’t try to stop her.
“Mom?”
Emily looked up into brown eyes that mirrored her own and the face that she loved most in the world. She didn’t say anything for the moment, knowing that she was hallucinating and not wanting Luke or Jason to think she had gone off the deep end again.
“Mom?” The voice sounded real. Emily could see Jason and Luke and Lucky standing behind him. They didn’t look like they thought she was crazy. In fact, they looked like they saw the same thing she had seen She dared to hope.
“Jonathan?” Her voice broke. Jonathan smiled, then ran into her arms.
Emily held her son close to her and for the first time in a long time her world was complete.
