At the Jax household, Lulu sat on the sofa with a dazed look on her face. She felt numb. How had everything suddenly shifted on its axis? How had her world turned upside down?
She hadn't seen Dante in almost two days. Hadn't heard from him at all. Didn't know where he was or where his search for Morgan had taken him. Lulu briefly wondered if his search had taken him out of the country.
Then there was Carly.
Lulu's forearm hair stood as she remembered that morning in the hotel.
She had woken up with Dante's arms around her and as she nuzzled him, he quickly flipped her over to bite her shoulder.
"Someone's feeling sassy this morning," Lulu said in between giggles.
"Actually, I'm ravenous." Dante said in a low growl.
"Oooh SAT word," Lulu said turning to face him. "What are you hungry for?"
It was a completely innocent question, but coming out of her lips, it was honey pouring all over his body.
He began kissing down her stomach, making her breath catch in her throat, and then began the sweetest attack on her senses. As she thrashed in the bed, Dante wondered if it would always be like this. If he could fall further into somebody, feel such happiness and intensity all at once. His stomach kept flipping in a spontaneous dance he never knew it could do and at once he knew he could live all the days of his life and never find another woman like her.
****
How blissful she'd been one second, only to notice the blinking light on her cell phone the next. Then, she spotted the endless number of missed calls that sent an immediate pit to the bottom of her stomach, followed by the bile rising in her throat as she heard Jax's description of what they had found in Morgan's bed.
Dante had stayed in the shower and with a towel wrapped around his hips, his hair distributing droplets everywhere as he walked out with a huge grin on his face. Then cut to a look of confusion and fear as he saw Lulu's pale face and shaking hands.
The coffee she had made for them minutes earlier sat aside unremembered as Lulu uttered the words that made Dante's heart race.
"Morgan's missing."
Dante had warned Lulu he would probably stay out of touch because he needed to focus all of his attention on finding Morgan. At first, Lulu resisted. This was her cousin they were talking about, and she wanted to help find him in any way possible. But Dante insisted that Lulu should be helping Carly instead and eventually, Lulu agreed that it was best for her to stay and try to keep Carly calm.
The toll and stress of the last day had aged Carly. The bags under her eyes showed her complete state of exhaustion, but like always, the blonde's fighting spirit shone through her eyes. She'd be dead before she gave into the idea that her youngest son would be anything but okay.
Lulu stayed over at the Jax household to offer Carly her support and to help take care of baby Jocelyn. The house felt empty though. It was a feeling that Lulu had only felt one time before, at Shadybrook. Those were days that she seemed to never think about before but the situation at hand was beginning to remind her of the nightmare she had gone through only a year and a half earlier.
She stood in the kitchen waiting for the teapot to go off, and again worried about Dante. Her last conversation with him had been after they had found out how Carly had found Morgan's hair on his pillow in his bedroom. How moments later, he had called Sonny and Jason--who were in the midst of finding leads that would lead them to Morgan's whereabouts.
They had few clues as to who would be after Morgan, they later told Dante. With the annihilation of Joey Limbo, the last threat to the Corinthos organization had been wiped out so this kidnapping had been plotted by some new enemy. A new adversary meant a virtual unknown sphere of what motive, if any this person had against Sonny or Jason.
Jason visited Zacharra at the prison within hours of Morgan's disappearance but found that the old man had been under heavy watch for the last couple of weeks by the guards. He had gotten no mail and no phone calls since Johnny's last recorded visit. That ruled out the Zacharras.
To make things worse, the police became involved when a security alarm was triggered after whoever had broken in had bypassed the alarm and set so it would go off after one hour. When they arrived, they took all the evidence they could but had no solid leads. They issued an amber alert for Morgan and within minutes his picture was splattered all over the TV.
Lulu sighed as she thought all of this over, and then realized the water in the tea pot was beginning to boil over. She quickly took the teapot off the burner and poured the hot water in delicate, flower-covered tea cups. As she put the chamomile bags into the water, the aroma of the liquid somewhat stilled her jumping nerves. She had to focus on how to help Carly and not what Dante could be facing. That was her role right now, to ensure Carly remained strong throughout this whole thing because if Carly couldn't, the rest of them were doomed to fail.
She walked into the living room where Carly had finally fallen asleep. Lulu's cousin had not slept the night before, waiting to hear news from Jax, Sonny, Jason, or Lucky. It seemed half of Port Charles was searching for her young son. Jocelyn was upstairs asleep and Michael was staying quiet in his room, an unusual move for the rebellious 17 year old.
The front door suddenly opened and Lucky walked in. With wide eyes, Carly awoke from her brief slumber.
"Hey sis," Lucky said quietly walking through the front door and foyer. "Carly, we have a development you should know about."
Morgan Corinthos had never felt frightened for himself, had never felt alone before, so this was a first for the ten year old.
He wasn't sure where he was or how he had gotten there. He looked around him and realized the van looked like Mrs. Curothers' except without chairs in the back. He knew right away he would much rather have been in Mrs. Curothers' smelly old van on the way to Karate with his friends than here where he was. He looked to the front and saw that a strange man he didn't know was driving the car.
"S-s-sir, where are we going?" Morgan asked with concerned lacing his voice.
The man in the front seat cleared his throat, but remained silent.
"I don't understand, I saw what that monster left behind, Lucky!" Carly said, her voice hoarse from crying and desperation.
"Carly, this might be a great breakthrough in the case," Lucky reiterated. "The hair you found in Morgan's bed did not match other samples we found on his pillow."
"Then whose hair...?" Lulu said, feeling bile rise up in her throat for the millionth time since yesterday.
"The hair matched the DNA of the missing Claudia Corinthos."