He had never felt this tired, this exhausted, this scared, or this alone he thought as he used his key to enter the empty loft. He had seen the look in Robin’s eyes as he slipped away from the command post they had established at Wyndemere, but she hadn’t tried to stop him. She knew how much he needed to be near her. Even if it was just spending a few hours in the place she called home.

Lucky grinned as he looked around the flat, seeing flashes of Emily here and there that made him smile. He touched the stuffed Mickey Mouse that sat on the shelf and he remembered her indecision that day on Disneyland. It had been near the closing of the amusement park and Emily had decided, in typical Quartermaine fashion, at the very last minute that she wanted a stuffed Mickey Mouse. Then of course had come the big decision- which Mickey? Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey? Tuxedo Mickey? Original Mickey? She’d finally settled on the original Mickey but had cast so many longing glances back at Sorcerer’s Mickey that he had slipped back and bought it for her. And then he had surprised her with a behind the scenes visit to Disney Studios the next day escorted by the CEO himself because he owed Lucky a favor for helping to find and defuse a bomb that had been planted at Tokyo Disney last summer. Of course that hadn’t stopped Eisner from spending a good part of the day trying to convince Emily that Disney was a good investment for ELQ.

Lucky smiled as he looked over the videos Em had. There in a row were all of the Disney animated films ever made, even the not so good ones like The Black Cauldron or Hercules. Em hadn’t been that hard to sell on getting ELQ to buy out a small percentage of Disney.

God please let her be okay. Let her be all right. Don’t let him hurt her because of me.

He walked into the bedroom and sat down on the bed, fingering the softness of her sheets. They’d made love in this bed many times and sometimes they had just held each other all night long. Though most of their times together these last six months had been spent at his place in California or in hotel rooms where his latest WSB assignment coincided with a business trip for ELQ, he could remember in vivid details the Sunday mornings he had quietly let himself in so not to wake her on the one morning he knew she slept in and slipped into bed next to her. She would sense his presence almost immediately but she never quite bothered to wake up, instead she would just cuddle next to his warmth and fall back asleep in his arms.

He loved the feeling of her sleeping in his arms almost as much as he loved the feeling of making love to her.

How had she come to mean the world to him? He’d sworn after the debacle his first return to Port Charles had been that he would never let himself love another person or let someone get close to him again. He’d blown the second statement when he hooked up with Robin and Frisco and joined the WSB. The two of them had become his family. He’d even found himself smiling when Frisco called him Junior. Then had come the case he hadn’t wanted to accept, the one his instinct told him to run from.

The one he would never be able to forget. Even now when he closed his eyes he could see it. Feel it. Holding Emily down while gunshots filled the air at the Outback. Watching a devastated Emily face the press after her grandfather’s murder and dare the killer to come after her. And then the moment he would remember most of all, that moment in the parking garage when he watched those bullets strike Emily and he saw her fall, the sickening fear that he had failed and she was dead. The awakening realization of how much she meant to him.

He picked up the photo by her bed and smiled at the sight of the two of them. He tried to imagine where she was at this moment. Someplace cold and dark knowing Faison. She was probably terrified, although he knew she would try to mask that terror with anger and outrage. She’d try to be brave. Hell knowing her she was probably even worrying about him.

He wasn’t even going to start thinking about where Lulu was and what was happening to her.

He fell back against the cushions and found himself closing his eyes, letting the essence of her drive away the worries and the fear for just a little while. He could feel a sense of peace settle over him for just a moment.

It was shattered a second later by the ringing of his cell phone.

Swearing inwardly, he flipped it open. “Spencer.”

“Lucky.” He bolted upright when he heard Robin’s voice. “What’s wrong?” What had that bastard done now?

“I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Just get back to Wyndemere as soon as you can.”

“I’m on my way.”

Wyndemere

Robin hung up the phone and looked at Frisco. “He’s coming.”

Frisco nodded turning to Sonny. “Thank you for bringing the tape.” He said reluctantly.

Sonny smiled at the WSB agent’s reluctance. “I didn’t do it for you, I did it for Emily. She doesn’t deserve anything bad happening to her after the hell of this last year.”

“You almost sound like you care?” Robin’s voice was tinged with sadness as she stared at the man whose opinion had once meant the world to her.

“About Emily. I do. A lot. Which is why when the videotape arrived for me at he restaurant I brought it here, just like the note attached said.” Sonny looked around the room. “Now will somebody tell me what in the hell is going on?”

“Only if we have to,” Frisco began but stopped when Robin glared at him. He relented. He might not like Corinthos after the number he pulled on Robin, but the man, even if he was out of the game, still had connections. And obviously Faison considered him part of THIS game if he had the tape delivered to him. “Emily was kidnapped earlier today while she and Lucky were shopping in New York. We have reason to believe that Cesar Faison was behind it as well as the kidnapping of Lulu Spencer from Wyndemere a little while later.”

“Faison? As in the lunatic who kidnapped Lucky?” He turned to Robin. “The one who killed your parents?” Robin nodded, biting her lip.

“And he has Emily? Oh God,” Sonny felt his legs begin to buckle and tried to keep his wits about him. “What does he want with Lulu and Emily?”

Robin hesitated looking around her. “He’s playing a game. Lulu and Emily are just his pawns. His real target is...”

“My son,” Luke interrupted her. “The bastard wants another go at my son and he’s using my daughter and my son’s girlfriend to get it.” Luke clenched his fist. “And all we can do is sit around and wait.”

“I don’t understand why we are waiting for Lucky. If that tape holds a clue to where that madman has taken Lulu or Miss. Quartermaine.....”

“Then Lucky will know it. Or Robin or I will.” Frisco interrupted Stefan’s tirade for the fifth time in the last ten minutes. “ The note said that Lucky had to watch that tape first. I’m assuming that Faison has us under surveillance, especially since he told Corinthos to bring the tape here. We follow the directions on that note. For now at least.” Frisco paused. “Not to mention that we don’t know what will happen when we play that tape. I’m not taking any chances that that tape isn’t some kind of trap.”

“I thought you said that your men scanned it?” Laura Cassadine asked softly from the corner of the room where she had sat quietly for the last few hours, at a loss for how to help find her daughter but unwilling to leave the room and face the emptiness of the rest of the house.

“They did. But as crazy a bastard as Faison is he’s also crazy like a fox. There are no absolutes where he is concerned.” Robin shivered slightly drawing a concerned look from Frisco. “None at all.”

Frisco handed Robin the cup of coffee that Mrs. Lansbury had given him. “Here you look like you need this more than I do.” He gently brushed back the strands of long brown hair and looked into her huge eyes. “You okay?”

“Are you here?” she whispered and he nodded. “Do you still love me?” she questioned and this time he smiled as he nodded. “Then I’m fine,” she said with a smile. “I just wish the last few hours had turned up something concrete to move on.”

While outwardly he simply shrugged, inwardly Frisco nodded in agreement. They’d spent the long hours since they arrived in Port Charles combing both Spoon Island and the cottage where Faison had stayed for any kind of clue as to where Faison could have taken Lulu and Emily, but had found nothing. Which was not to say that he was without hope that something would turn up, Sean had arranged for the WSB’s best crime scene experts to go over both locations with a fine tooth comb. Something was bound to turn up. Not even Faison was that good that he could be someplace and not leave a trace.

Frisco just wished that this whole thing wasn’t tearing Robin up inside. If the name Faison ate away at him like acid sometimes, what was it doing to the woman he loved. He remembered that day in Faison’s compound like it was yesterday. He could see a physically broken Lucky, pale, dirty, badly emancipated from starvation but his eyes still burning with that anger, that spirit, that awareness that no matter how badly Faison broke his body he would never break his spirit.

And the look in Robin’s eyes as she held that gun on the man who had killed her parents, who had tortured an innocent boy. It was the first time he really understood Robin’s strength and determination.

“Let him go.” Robin cocked the gun as she spoke and held it firmly aimed at Faison. “Let him go or I will blow you to hell and enjoy every minute of the experience.”

“My sweet Robin has grown fangs, has she? Somehow I never imagined that that sweet little girl I used to watch from afar would grow up to be a WSB agent. I guess that’s what happens when the man you love breaks your heart. Poor little Robin. First her precious Stone dies. And then that brain damaged fool Morgan drops you for that white trash Carly. The one guy you always thought would put you first. The one guy who you always put first. How your mother’s heart aches to comfort you.”

“My mother is dead. You should remember that. You killed her and my father.”

“Did I? Some would say that young Mr. Spencer here is dead too. I guess dead is just a relative term after all.”

“You bastard. I should just kill you and do the world a favor.”

“Or let me live and do yourself a favor. You want your parents back, don’t you? Haven’t you secretly wished since you heard they were dead that somehow it was all a mistake? What if I told you it was? What if I told you they were alive? What if I told you where they are?”

“You’d be lying. If my parents were alive they would have come back to me by now. Nothing could have stopped them.”

“Are you sure?”

“What kind of game are you playing Faison? What do you want?”

“A simple game. A simple deal. I have found myself growing quite ....”attached” to young Mr. Spencer. I would hate to lose my ....”toy”. Just as you would hate to lose your parents.....again. You let me keep my toy and I give you back your parents.” Faison smiled. “ I think its a fair trade.”

“I think you’re even crazier than usual.” Robin shook her head. “A stark raving lunatic if you think I’m falling for it.”

“Look at him. The world thinks he’s dead. The boy wishes he were dead. You barely know him. Is he worth losing your parents over? No one ever needs to know that you found him. I promise I won’t kill him.....for a while at least.”

“My parents are dead.”

“Are you sure?” Faison smiled as Robin’s gun wavered slightly. “Are you really sure?”

A hand on his shoulder shook Frisco from the past and back into the present. “We’re set up to play the tape. We’ll also be able to make a second copy automatically as it plays in case the tape is wired with something.”

“Thanks Murphy.” Frisco said trying to focus on the present and the case in front of them. He looked around the room for minute. Robin was talking to Laura quietly. Luke stood silently staring out the window. He really didn’t want to know what Luke was thinking although he thought he could take a pretty good guess. As for Stefan, he held himself aloof in the corner, his eyes constantly going to his wife but something, Frisco imagined it was his own guilt, kept him from going to her and offering her comfort. Nikolas had followed Elizabeth out of the room an hour or so ago.

What a mess. How many more lives would Faison destroy this time before they caught him?

At that moment Lucky raced in. “What happened?” He looked around the room until his eyes spotted Robin’s. “I got here as fast as I could. Did you find something?”

“No, but something was delivered.” Robin placed the unmarked video tape in his hands. “The directions are for you to watch it. Faison had delivered to Sonny who brought it here.”

Lucky’s hands were shaking as he accepted the tape. His mind flashed with a thousand possibilities of what the tape could be.

He didn’t like any of them. Nodding resolutely he slipped into his professional role. “Mass market tape. It will be hard to trace. I suppose you had the boys in the lab check it for prints and all that.”

“It was clean.” Frisco said softly.

“Then lets play it.” With a casualness that didn’t really fool anyone in the room, Lucky inserted the tape into the player and sat down to view it. He was aware of Robin sitting next to him, her hand linking in his and he smiled at her gratefully.

The screen was dark for a few minutes and then the picture came on. There was no sound. The room was nondescript and empty except for the lone occupant, who sat on a stool, her hands and feet tied, a large bruise on her face. Lucky could feel the anger growing in him.

Emily faced the camera, her eyes blazing with anger and her chin straight.

“You bastard. I won’t do this.” she said the words to the person who was holding the camera.

“Yes you will. Because if you don’t, that pretty face of yours will be more than bruised. Cuts don’t heal as nicely as bruises do.” Robin shuddered as she recognized the voice as Faison’s.

“You don’t scare me.”

Don’t provoke him Em Lucky found himself praying silently. Just do what he tells you to do.

“No but I bet I can scare that little girl you were trying so hard to protect.”

Lucky heard his father swear but his attention was on Emily, who swallowed hard and then nodded.

“Read it. Word for word.”

Emily hesitated and then began. “This message is for Lucky. It’s time for round two. I have your little sister. By the time you get this, I will have her stored someplace safe where you won’t find her. You know how good I am at that. I also have your precious Emily as you can see. Here’s the game. It’s called Live or Die. The rules are quite simple. In six days I will kill either Emily Quartermaine or Lulu Spencer. It doesn’t matter to me. But it might to you Lucky so out of my affection for you I’m going to let you choose. Emily or Lulu. (Emily’s voice cracked) Who lives? Who dies? In six days I will send you an email. You will have ten minutes to send a reply. Just a name. The name of the one you want me to kill. The other one will be returned to you safely after that. You have my word. And if you decide not to play the game, then I’ll simply kill them both.”

As Emily finished reading her message, tears streamed down her face. “It’s okay Lucky,” she said the words softly. “I love you and I know what you have to do. It’s what I would do. Please don’t hate yourself. Please.”

The screen went dark and a heavy silence fell on the room as they all stared in horror at the now dark television screen. Some eyes drifted in various states of pity to Lucky who sat silently.

Frisco broke the silence and moved forward to pop both the original tape out and the copy. He handed both to the technician standing nearby. “I want these checked for background sound or noises, visual detail, anything that will give us a clue to move on. If you don’t find something the first time, check it again and again until you find something.”

As the technician nodded, Frisco turned to Robin. “Check the teams at both crime scenes. Put some pressure on them. Use Sean’s name, Hell tell them you’re personal friends with the President if it makes them move faster. Faison has given us six days. I intend to see to it that both Emily and Lulu are safe and sound long before that sixth day is up.”

“What can I do to help?” Stefan asked, shaken by the twistedness of what he had just witnessed.

“Actually there is something. You still have your mother’s records and all that?” At Stefan’s nod he continued. “Go through them. See if anywhere you can find something on Faison.” Frisco turned to Luke. “Spencer you can help him. The two of you know Helena better than anyone. We know that she was helping Faison before. Let’s see if she dug up something on him that will help us.”

As Luke and Stefan left the room, Sonny whistled softly. “Do you realize you just got a Cassadine and a Spencer to work together without one word of argument?”

“To save that Spencer from having to make that decision, I’d get the Pope to square dance with the Devil.” Frisco muttered as he watched Lucky with concern.

Lucky stared in silence at the screen. “She thinks I’ll chose Lulu.” He closed his eyes to keep the tears from falling. “She was trying to tell me that it was okay. That she understood.” His took a deep breath and fought for control. “We can’t let him win. Not this time. We have to save them. Both of them.”

“We will Lucky,” Robin whispered softly. Maybe if she said the words out loud she’d begin to believe them herself. “We will.”