Chapter Six: A Journey is Planned

Simon exited the elevator as a full sprint, leaving Chelsea to catch up. He'd managed to gracefully exit the podium, keeping a smile on his face the entire time as he walked with Tracy's assistant to the elevator. She didn't give him the details until the doors were safely closed, so as not to spook the investors.

She said it was exhaustion, probably, and on one level Simon figured she was right. Tracy had been pushing herself so hard it was only a matter of time till her body pushed back. But it wasn't the fear that she might have over-extended herself that had him running through the Freedom offices after dark.

Annabeth had gotten her to the couch by the time he arrived and was seated next to Tracy, holding the younger woman against her and rocking her gently. Annabeth looked up when he entered, and nodded gratefully for him to join them.

"What happened?"

"She took a little tumble, that's all," Annabeth said gently. "Nothing to worry about." It was very clear from the expression on her face, which she carefully concealed from Tracy, that she was incredibly worried. Tracy, for her part, was nestled into Annabeth like a child, knees pulled up, arms around the older woman, her head buried in her shoulders. Simon looked around the office, searching for clues as to what has caused Tracy's attack. Her desk was clean; she hadn't even begun to work on anything. The news was playing on the stereo, as always, reporting on the stock values for the close of today's business.

Nothing out of the ordinary, except that Annabeth had found Tracy on the floor of her office in practically a fetal position.

"Hey, kiddo," he said softly, brushing Tracy's hair from her forehead. "How's tricks?"

"I'm sorry," she whispered, not moving even slightly out of Annabeth's firm grip. "I have no idea…" She sighed, shivering, and closed her eyes. "I'm sorry…"

Chelsea appeared at the door of the office. "I told Carrie that she got an international call she couldn't miss, and that she'd be late for the wrap-up." The admin cast an appraising glance at her boss, a flash of worry darkening her thin features. "Should I call somebody?"

"No!" Tracy said, shaking her head fiercely. "I'm fine, I'm just…tired…"

"Yeah," Chelsea noted, but didn't have time to add anything.

The radio blared with music, special report, and Tracy stiffened, sitting up to listen. Simon caught Annabeth's eyes, and they paid equal attention to the news report and Tracy's reaction.

"We're live from the scene of the Port Charles Hotel fire. Our New York Regional Correspondent Nina Rodriguez is there with the latest updates. Nina?"

"Thank you. As we mentioned earlier, a series of small explosions rocked the historic Port Charles Hotel this evening, setting off a four-alarm fire and trapping many of the town's most prominent citizens at a gala reception on the upper floors. High winds are hampering rescue attempts, but so far, we have no reports of fatalities."

Simon watched Tracy's face—she looked like she was staring at a ghost, like she was seeing the flames right in front of her. "What's going on, honey," he whispered. "Do you know this place?"

"We're getting some updated information, Tim. I just spoke to a representative of the Port Charles Police Department, who informed me that a warrant has been issued for the arrest of the hotel's owner, Edward Quartermaine, on charges of fire code violations and criminal neglect."

"Daddy!" It was the smallest of whispers, and anybody might have missed it. Anybody but Simon and Annabeth, who exchanged a quick, stunned glance, but said nothing. Tracy seemed even smaller than before, tiny in Annabeth's arms, although the older woman was shorter by at least two inches. Her breath was ragged, and she looked terrified.

The shoe's dropped, Simon thought solemnly as he pulled away, standing to cross the office to Chelsea, who was also listening intently to the news report. "I need you to do some quick research for me," he said in a low voice. "Use my University passwords—they should be on file. Go to LexisNexis and search everything you can find about Edward Quartermaine…" He paused, turning around to look at the two women on the couch. "And Tracy Quartermaine."

She nodded without another word, and was gone.

The special report had ended, and the radio was back to stock information and daily wrap-ups. Tracy was crying softly now, and Annabeth was holding her.

Simon sat at Tracy's desk, watching them helplessly. Now all he could do was wait.

It was several minutes—it seemed like hours—before Chelsea returned, motioning him out to the outer office, to where her computer was already up and running. She waited until the office door was shut behind them before talking in low voice. "Edward Quartermaine was easy enough," she started without preamble. "The guy's loaded—has his finger in everything, and he's been doing business in the New York area for longer than we've been alive." She let him sit at her desk, leaning over his shoulder to scroll through several open browser windows.

Simon did a quick scan—the guy's Hoover profile showed an impressive resume. The picture, on the other hand, sent a chill through him. The older man was smiling for the camera, but there was a steeliness to his eyes, a hardness about him that set his teeth on edge. He looked like the kind of man who could crush a competitor at ten-thirty and go out for lunch without a hint of indigestion to show for it.

Chelsea continued her non-stop monologue. "The guy's got investments everywhere, some of them really good, some of them more risky. If you ask me, he's overextended himself."

"What about Tracy Quartermaine?"

"That's what took me so long. There was nothing about her in Lexis, but that makes sense. They only go back so many years, and if Tracy's been here since the early 80s…"

"She'd have missed the Internet completely," Simon said glumly.

"Fortunately, I have a friend at the New York Times…" At Simon's surprised look, she added, "From a former life. Anyway, he owed me a favor, so I called him up and got him to search their archives. He sent me a few .pdfs from their morgue."

She opened another browser window, and there was Tracy—maybe 18 years old. The article was from the Society page, announcing her debut. Her hair was piled high atop her head, and she wore a simple white dress, gloves, and pearls. She was smiling widely, the picture of youth and privilege and hope. "The daughter of Edward and Lila Quartermaine…" he read aloud.

"Here's another one." Chelsea alt-tabbed through the screens until she came to another .pdf of a wedding announcement. It showed Tracy, not much older, in a wedding dress, preparing to be married to Lord Lawrence Ashton. The bride would wear organdy and carry white rose buds from her mother's garden….

Simon turned to Chelsea, puzzled. "I don't get it."

"There's a few more of these—she was in the papers pretty frequently, the society pages mainly, attending this function or that affair. She apparently was quite the social butterfly. There's another marriage in there, to some politician named Williams." Chelsea rolled her eyes. "He looked like slime to me, but that's not my business. Anyway, the significant thing here is that the pictures, the references—everything—stops like a train wreck in 1981."

"The year Tracy moved to Seattle."

"Think about it," Chelsea said. "These idiot reporters considered it newsworthy if she ate rumaki at a fundraiser for New England Clam Preservation, but the daughter of a wealthy industrialist moves west to start her own company---" She paused, her face incredulous. "And nothing?"

"Nothing," Simon said quietly, still staring at the picture of Tracy in her wedding gown. She looked so different from the woman he knew as Tracy Walker. She had the same good features, the same beauty…but there was something more there. A light, a buoyancy that his Tracy lacked. She seemed hopeful, positive, radiant. "Why did she leave?" he murmured.

"I did a quick check on her social." She flashed him a sharp look when he raised a questioning eyebrow. "Usually our background checks only go back seven years, but I went back further. There were a few minor incidents, a couple of DUIs, some speeding tickets, but nothing serious." Chelsea nodded pointedly. "She filed for legal name change in 1981."

"She won't let any pictures be published of her," he murmured.

"Oh, and there's one more thing. I took a look at Hoover's list of officers for ELQ—that's the family business—and check out this name." She opened up a profile, and a picture of a young man, handsome and healthy, with a flip of dark brown hair hanging recklessly over his forehead. "Edward "Ned" Ashton. Grandson of the CEO."

Simon stared at the picture, seeing the resemblance. "She has a son…."

"It's easy to find this stuff, once you know which haystack the needle's in."

"Simon, get in here!" Annabeth's voice was high and nervous, and he cast a concerned look at Chelsea.

"Keep digging. Try to find out why she left." He was in the office in no time, Annabeth holding Tracy fiercely. Ms. Quartermaine was hyperventilating, her breath heavy, gasping, choked.

"Quartermaine had a heart attack when they were arresting him, and Tracy freaked."

"He's faking! He's faking, he's faking," Tracy's voice was on the verge of hysterics; she kept shaking her head to the negative, rocking back and forth. "He's faking it."

"Tracy, honey," Simon said, taking a seat next to her on the couch. It was tight, but that might work to their advantage. Tracy was sandwiched between them, each holding her from their own angle, struggling to calm her with their physical presence.

"He wants me to think it's a real heart attack," she continued, mostly to herself, her voice high and almost child-like as a hint of laughter, eerie and unexpected, crept into her words. "He does, but I know better. He can't trick me. He can't trick me. He's faking it."

"Okay, um, Annabeth?" Simon looked over Tracy, and Annabeth shot him a confused look back. Then he turned back to Tracy, reaching out to cup her chin in his palm, forcing her to make eye contact, trying to get through the hysterics to the woman he knew and loved. "Tracy, honey, look at me. Look at me."

"Simon?" She hesitated, as if she'd had to travel a long way to get to her words. "Simon, he's faking it. He's doing it to get out of the charges. Daddy's smart. He won't go to jail for this. Daddy's smart."

"There were ambulances on the scene," Annabeth said softly, more to him than to Tracy. "He was taken to the local hospital."

"My family practically owns that damned hospital!" Tracy's voice was harsh and shrill. "Of course they'd take him there. It's all part of his plan. Get one of the doctors to say he's sick, divert their attention, figure out a plan…."

"Chelsea!" Simon waited until Chelsea was at the door. "Get the main hospital in Port Charles, New York, on the phone. We need information on Edward Quartermaine's condition." She was gone in a flash. Tracy looked as if she hadn't even heard him. "Annabeth, do you have anything that can calm her down?"

"I don't need to calm down," Tracy argued. "There's nothing to calm down about. Daddy's got everything under control. Daddy's going to handle everything."

"I've got a couple of bags of chamomile tea in my purse," she said, ignoring the younger woman's tirade.

"I hate chamomile tea."

"Well, you're going to hate a nervous breakdown even more, if you don't do something to calm yourself," Annabeth snapped. Tracy shot her a peevish look, but didn't argue with her. "Now, we're going to find out about your father's condition, and we're going to make a plan."

"Ha!" Tracy had calmed some, wriggling back into Annabeth's arms for support, still child-like and wild-eyed as the news report continued to drone on in the background. "He fooled you. He fooled them all. He's brilliant."

"I'm sure he is, darling." She nodded to Simon, who'd gotten up to find her purse and the tea bags.

There was a coffee maker in Tracy's office with a hot water spigot, and he took her favorite mug—a Mariner's logo mug he'd bought her during an ill-fated but ultimately hilarious attempt years early to get her into Major League Baseball—and filled it to the brim. Dropping the bag in, he let it steep as he listened to the news reports. Apparently, since he'd been gone, there was one fatality—a local lawyer named Scott Baldwin. He wondered if Tracy new him, if they'd been friends.

As he waited for the tea to steep, it hit Simon that he knew absolutely nothing about this woman he thought he loved. That an entire lifetime, two marriages, a son, had occurred before he'd ever seen her face, and that he barely knew anything, barring a few names, dates, and pictures, about her past. What had driven her from her home? What drove her to protect her privacy so fiercely that she hadn't let allowed a single photograph to be published of her in all that time?

What did Edward Quartermaine have to do with it, and why did the mere mention of his name send this strong, intelligent woman into a fit of panic?

Chelsea was back at the door by the time he handed the mug to Annabeth, who was quietly insisting that Tracy drink it. She motioned to him to join her and spoke sotto voce at the door. "They wouldn't give me anything at first. Apparently the place is a madhouse, and there are reporters calling non-stop. The person answering was an older lady, so I took a chance and dropped the name Tracy Quartermaine."

Simon raised an eyebrow, then asked, "And…"

"Dead. Silence. For almost thirty seconds. And then the woman transferred me to a Dr. Monica Quartermaine."

"Any luck there?" He was almost afraid to hear the answer.

"She seemed pretty stiff, but answered my questions. It seemed like she had more questions than I did, but didn't want to ask them. I could tell she was busy, so I didn't keep her on long." Chelsea hesitated. "She asked for Tracy's contact information, but I didn't give it to her. If Tracy wants to be invisible, it isn't my place to out her."

"Invisibility is what's gotten her into this state," Simon said darkly. "How's the old ogre, anyway?"

"He sure isn't faking it. Massive coronary. They're trying to get a surgeon in."

"The doctor's a Quartermaine. Could she be lying to protect the old man?"

"She wasn't lying. I could tell. It didn't sound rehearsed, and she had too many details. Besides, she sounded too exhausted to be reading from a script."

"Okay, thank, Chelsea. Good work."

The admin nodded towards Tracy, who looked nothing in the world like the CEO of a world-class company as she sipped her chamomile tea. "What are we going to do about her?"

Simon grimaced. There were times when he loved being the one who could answer all questions Tracy. He loved the intimacy and history they shared, loved the notoriety of his closeness to the famously elusive Ms. Walker. And then there were times like this. "Check the airlines. Book two flights on the next plane out to New York."

"She should be in a hospital," Chelsea raised an eyebrow. "Not on a cross-country flight."

"Then isn't it convenient that we're headed straight for a hospital. I'll make sure she's examined for exhaustion the minute we get there." Simon knew he was pushing it, knew he was severely testing the limits of both his friendship with Tracy and his position at Freedom. "Listen, the last thing Tracy is going to want is to check into a hospital just weeks before the IPO. This way, we can get her looked at, and we can get to the bottom of this Quartermaine thing before it blows up in our faces.

"Are you sure about that?" It translated roughly into, 'Are you sure you're willing to risk Tracy firing us both and never speaking to us again?'

"We can't have her like this." He looked over his shoulders. Tracy was in no condition to shoulder the burden of Freedom Energies at the moment, and they both knew how much of the IPO's success was dependent on the force of her reputation. "We'll tell people there was a family emergency back east, and that we took a few days off to take care of business."

"And what are you going to tell Tracy?"

"That it's time to clear this mess up once and for all." He shrugged, casting a helpless eye to Chelsea. "Whatever the hell 'this mess' is…."

Coming in Chapter Seven: Homeward Bound