Chapter 12

"Tikki, I want to find out what scared my mom so much that she moved us all here and away from somebody she loves. And I need two heads to put a plan together. And since you're older than me, you can probably think of things I'd never think of, so will you help me?"

Kristina and TK were sprawled across his bed whispering back and forth so that Gale wouldn't over hear them. TK smiled indulgently at Kristina. He was glad for the 4 years that separated their ages. Kristina could be quite a handful when she wanted something, but he always seemed to be able to settle her down when she went over the top about something. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for Kristina Davis. She was his sounding board as much as he was hers and she was more mature at 10 than any of the other girls he knew at school. It meant a great deal to him that she always stood on his side no matter what he was facing. From the moment she began to walk she championed him in everything he did. He was always the 'hero' in her eyes and it always encouraged him… made him want to be the best he could be.

"I take it your mom has no clue that you're even curious about her past, right?"

"Well, she knows I'm curious about my father but nothing else. Tikki, please help me do this. I want my mom to be happy like she always made me and I can't do it without your help. Please Tikki, will you help me?"

"What if what you find out… that whatever it is, it's something so bad that you stir it up all over again and bring it to the island? That wouldn't make your mom very happy, now would it? What are you really up to, K?"

"No, she wouldn't be very happy at all so we're going to have to be extra careful. How do we go about starting?"

"Not so fast, K? You didn't answer my question."

"Ok. Ok. My mom loves a man named Cameron. He is not my father. So I think it would be smart to find out why she moved away before I tried to find him."

"That's a good idea. Okay, I think the first thing we need to do is contact the library in the town where she lived. Do you know where that was?"

"All I know is the name of the town is Port Charles and I know that my mom used to be a big time lawyer there. I don't know anymore than that though."

"Not a lot to go on, K. Grab the keyboard and we'll look up all the towns named Port Charles in the United States and see what we come up with."

TK quickly set up an online search on his computer then sat back and waited until the search provided an answer.

"Well, that's good news. There's only one. Let's see where it is. Look, K. It's outside New York. Okay, first thing we do is search every part of the site for anything that could clue us in to its history and anything that might look weird."

After an hour of reading through the site, the two were no closer to any answers than when they started.

"Let's try another search, K. How about searching for the most important people of Port Charles? If your mom was a big time lawyer then maybe she'll show up in that kind of search. Well do a search of the best lawyers of New York. If she was really good then she should show up there and it'll reference where she lived just in case somebody needed her for a certain type of service. But, there's another word I should use in the search…" Muttering to himself he reached for his Thesaurus. "It's a bigger word than important. Here it is, K. We want to see who the most 'influential' people are."

Hitting the search button… they waited a minute and the screen suddenly popped up a group of photos. Kristina suddenly shrieked excitedly.

"LOOK TIKKI. It's mom…"

"Shhhhh, K. My mother will hear you and be still you're killing my leg. Wait a minute… something's wrong. Look at this date, K. This site hasn't been updated in a long time. Whoa… I've seen this icon before. Oh hell."

"What's wrong, Tikki."

"Someone's put an identity trap on this site. If I click on any of these pictures someone will be able to tap into my location. Kristina, I have to get out of this site."

With that TK shut his system down all the time trying to calm his friend who was getting quite angry with him.

"Listen Kristina. Someone who set that site up was either paid to set a trap on it or they did it themselves. With your mom's picture in the middle of all those others… what if whoever did it is looking for your mother? If I hit that picture they could find her, is that what you want?"

"But what if it was Cameron, Tikki?"

"And what if it wasn't? Are you willing to take a chance and set your mother up to some kind of danger maybe?"

Kristina closed her eyes and let go of an exaggerated sigh before answering.

"No, I don't want mom in danger. But, what are we going to do now?"

"K, don't you think your mom did what she did for a reason? Can't you let this go?"

"No, Tikki. I can't. I want to know now more than ever."

"Why, K? There's something else going on here, tell me what you're really up to."

Leaning toward TK, Kristina lay her head against his shoulder.

"I have to know if my father did something bad to my mom, Tikki."

"And what if he did? What can you do about it? That was over nine years ago?"

"I don't know what I'll do. But I just have to know."

TK looked down at Kristina and knew he wouldn't be able to talk her out of trying to get the information she wanted.

"Okay, but if we are going to do this… we have to do it my way and you have to be patient. First thing we need to do is make sure no one traced me and the only way to do that is by sitting tight and not make any more searches for a while. I think it would be best to wait at least 6 months and then we'll start again."

Seeing the unhappiness cross his friend's face, he dropped his arm down across her shoulder and pulled her closer.

"Kristina, we can't take a chance of bringing what's in Port Charles here. If we're not careful then you and your mom could end up having to move again. I don't want you to move. I kinda like having you around."

Kristina looked up quickly at TK to see if he was teasing her. She was familiar with the look on his face. It was the one he always wore just before he set off to take care of someone that was being mean to her. TK wasn't playing, he was worried.

"Okay, Tikki. I'll do what you say. But, what do we do next when we're sure no body saw us looking at mom's picture?"

"We go about it the hard way. We start with the newspaper and start requesting archived issues. I'll ask for random papers; just pick certain days out of a year and we'll see what happens. Hopefully we'll find articles where your mom made the news and maybe that will give us enough to go on. I can't decide though if we should start at the library or not. The newspaper could be too public. But, we have time to think about it and decide what to do. Now don't worry, K. We'll find the answers you're looking for. You just make sure that you keep your eyes and ears open for anything that looks weird at your house."

"Okay, Tikki. I better go before mom comes looking for me. See ya later."

***************

Nine months later

"Kristina, TK's on the phone."

"Thanks mom."

Kristina ran into the living room and took the receiver from her mom.

"Don't be too long, Kristina. Lunch is almost ready."

"I'll be right there, mom. Hi TK… what's up?"

"Meet me at the cave in a couple of hours."

"How come?"

"Just meet me there, K."

"Okay, see you in a couple of hours.

************

"Here sit down, K."

TK placed a blanket down on the sand to keep them from getting wet from the dampness of the cave floor.

"You sounded serious on the phone, TK. Are you in trouble of some kind?"

"No, I'm not in trouble. Look, are you sure you want to keep up with this thing we started about your dad?"

"You know I do, TK. Why? Did you find something? You haven't said anything in a long time about it. Did you find out anything about my father?"

"Remember that vacation I took a couple of months ago with my Uncle Kale?"

"Yeah, you were gone a long time."

"That's because we did a bit of traveling. Remember when I told you that my uncle was going to take me to visit a few colleges."

"Yes. And I don't want to talk about that. It makes me sad that you are going to leave me."

"Ok, we won't talk about it after today. Anyway we went to New York to check in on a couple of colleges and since we were so close… I talked him into taking me to see PCU. That stands for Port Charles University. I told him that I would like to check out a university that wasn't in the middle of a large city and see if I like it more. He bought it. So we went to Port Charles."

Kristina's eyes were wide as she listened to TK. When Thomas Kale reached the age of 15 he suddenly found being called 'Tikki' a bit too uncomfortable around his friends so from then on he asked Kristina to call him TK.

"Did you find anything, TK? Did you find out who my father is?"

"No, but I did find out some stuff. K, I think you need to stop with all the questions. Just leave it alone until your mom thinks you're old enough to explain things to you."

Kristina stood up abruptly putting her hands on her hips and stared at TK as if he had lost his mind.

"You're kidding me, right?"

"No, I'm not kidding K. I think you need to stop with the questions."

"You're trying to protect me from something. That's why you're backing out on me, isn't it?"

"I'm not backing out on you, K. I just don't want you to get hurt."

"What are you keeping from me, TK? I have a right to know if it's about my mom. You told me you wouldn't ever keep secrets from me. Remember?"

"I remember, K, but I think this is a bit too much for you."

"You don't have the right to tell me what's too much. Now spill it, TK. Tell me what you found out."

TK dropped his head and reached behind him pulling from behind his back a handful of paper with copied articles on them.

"I made all these copies at the library in Port Charles while my uncle was looking the university over. Never mind how I accomplished that one, I thought I was a goner for sure a couple of times over that one. Anyway, most of these stories are about your mother and a guy named Sonny Corinthos. She was his lawyer for a few years and some pretty bad stuff happened during that time. For about two years, just about every time you see him in the paper, you see her. There's an article about them being shot at and there's one about a bomb going off destroying their apartments. Then there's one about a debate when she ran for public office and he showed up. The paper said there was something about a rumor that she was more than just his lawyer. You know, like they were a couple for a while or something. But, in comes this Corinthos guy and denies it all. K, if he and your mom did get together then it wasn't a very smart thing for your mom to do."

Kristina immediately became angry.

"What do you mean? My mom is the smartest person I know. What are you getting at, TK?"

"I'm just saying he's a bad guy to be around, K. Here look at this article it tells a lot about who the guy is and what he does."

Kristina took the paper from TK and began to read. There was a lot she didn't understand, but definitely enough for her to see why TK was so concerned.

"TK, you don't think he's my…"

"I don't know, K. But, there's something else I brought back. I also checked things out over the last year to see if this guy cleaned his act up any and this is what I found."

Kristina took the second page from him and began to read it as well. The more she read the more frightened and horrified she became. Finally looking up, she met her friend's eyes. It couldn't be. Surely her mom didn't have anything to do with this guy. She suddenly shoved the pages toward TK.

"Throw it all away, TK. Make sure it's all gone. I… I don't want to ever talk about it again."

TK reached for the pages she still held and stopped as she jerked away from him separating the two pages and giving him only one back.

"No, I want to keep this one."

"Why, K? Why do you have to keep that one?"

"To remind me how dumb it is to go messing with stuff I shouldn't mess with."

"Are you okay, Kristina? That's an awful lot I just dumped on you."

"I'm fine, TK. I'm just fine. Let's get out of here. I want to go home."

As Kristina turned to go, TK reached out and caught her arm pulling one more page from behind him.

"K, I found out something else while I was in Port Charles."

"I don't want to know anymore, TK. Just leave me alone, okay."

"Okay, but I think you'll regret not looking at this."

Kristina looked back over her shoulder at the page TK was holding out to her. She looked at him suspiciously.


"Is it more bad stuff, TK?"

"No, K. This is the rest of what you wanted to know."

Kristina walked back toward him and slowly reached toward the paper. Drawing it back to her she looked down into a kind and familiar face.

"It's him. It's Cameron Lewis. Where did you get this?"

TK listened to the sadness in her voice and knew that all the stuff about Sonny Corinthos was overshadowing the fact that he was able to accomplish for her what originally started the whole mess.

"Turn it over, K."

Turning it over, she found an address printed at the top of the page in TK's writing.

"What's this?"

"His address. He still lives in Port Charles and he works at 'General Hospital' as a psychiatrist."

Kristina nodded and folded the paper then stuffed it into the back pocket of her jeans before turning back toward the entrance to the cave.

"Kristina, wait a minute. Don't go yet."

TK stood up and walked over to his friend and put his arm around her.

"You don't look too good, little bit. Talk to me, Kristina. Tell me what you're thinking about."

It had been a long time since TK called her 'little bit'. Hearing that particular nickname told her that he was more than a little worried about her. And because she didn't want him to worry, she told him what she was thinking.

"I'm scared that I started something that's going to someday hurt all of us. And I'm mad at myself for asking you to help me in the first place, but most of all… I think I'm scared that he is my father and if he is then I have to stop wishing that my father will come find me some day. If he is my father… then I know why mom left Port Charles. You know, all this makes me understand why mom lost it so bad when she caught you and me with those water pistols. I can't ever let her know what I know now. It will hurt her too much. I messed up big time, Tikki."

And he understood how hurt and afraid she was by the way she reverted back to calling him 'Tikki', the name she gave him as a baby. TK put both arms around Kristina and hugged her tight.

"We didn't know what we were going to get, K. This is all my fault, not yours. I'm the oldest; I should have put a stop to it a long time ago. I shouldn't have told you any of this and I can just imagine what your mom will do to me if she ever finds out it was me that brought all this stuff home. But, don't worry. We'll get through all this. It's always been you and me standing together, K. You've got me and I've got you. No matter what happens, that's not going to change."

He felt her arms go around his waist as a shudder passed through her small body and at that moment he suddenly felt the weight of responsibility hit him with a force that would have sent him to his knees if he hadn't been holding on to Kristina. He did this to her and he had to find a way to make it better for her. Never in his life had he regretted anything he'd done before as he did now in bringing her news that an almost 12 year old was just too young for. He bent his head to the side of hers and whispered.

"I'm so sorry, K. I'm sorry for putting all of this on you."

"It's okay, TK. Neither one of us would be in this mess if I had just listened to my mom when she asked me to wait. It's my fault too."

Stepping away from him, she forced a smile to hopefully take the frown off his face then turned toward the cave entrance again.

"I think I'm going to go find mom. I just want to tell her I love her and hug her. Can we come back here, tomorrow? Maybe talk things over some after I have time to think. You have to promise me none of this will every leave the cave, TK. Promise me you will never say anything about any of this to my mom."

"Whatever you say, K. If you need me, just call."

"Thanks, TK. For everything you did for me. You really are my best friend."

Watching her walk away, TK grunted in disgust.

"Yeah right. Great best friend I am. You are such an idiot Thomas Kale Redmond. And just how in the hell are you going to fix this one?"