Sorry it took so long. My mom was finally released from the hospital this week after having major abdominal surgery two weeks ago and I've been assisting with her care. I've also been handling things with my sister's care and at the house so I've been crazy busy these past few weeks. Here's the next installment. I think I'll get to work on the next chapter of CaC next. Enjoy.

Chapter 2

Carly Jacks walked into her best friend's apartment and her anger that had been lowering on her way over spiked once again when she saw that he was sitting down on the couch with Spinelli and boiled over when he looked over at her and smiled.

"Hello," Jason acknowledged her presence with a nod.

She narrowed her eyes and slammed the door shut with a thud. "That's all you have to say to me?" she demanded angrily.

Spinelli, sensing that she was mad, gathered his things, told Jason that he would report back to him once he found something and high-tailed it up the stairs to his bedroom so he wouldn't be a victim of her wrath towards Jason.

Jason stared at her in confusion. "Isn't that better than telling you to leave after you barged into my apartment again?"

"You made me a promise, Jason," she said, ignoring his comment about her not knocking before she entered. There were bigger things going on than his precious privacy.

"What happened?"

"I found Jax on the docks," she began to tell him about finding her husband on the docks near the boat explosion that claimed his brother's life and she saw something flicker in Jason's eyes; guilt.

"Look, Carly," he began to speak but she wasn't going to hear it.

"You promised me, Jason!" Carly exclaimed in outrage. "You swore that you wouldn't kill Jerry for my husband's sake. This morning, I learned that Jerry was killed in a boat explosion and that you were spotted fleeing the scene."

She walked further into the penthouse and wiped tears from her eyes. "I was finally making progress with Jax until you went and killed his brother for no reason."

Jason rolled his eyes at her ability to turn almost every situation and make it about her. "I didn't break my promise." Her head snapped up and she was looking at him incredulously.

"You were there, and then the boat exploded," she reminded him.

"I was there but I didn't kill Jerry." He decided that he would tell her the truth about the situation so she wouldn't go off again. "Sam did."

"Sam?" Carly echoed in disbelief. "Why would she kill Jerry?"

"To keep him from killing her," he said and began to tell her the whole story.

Dazed and confused with the information overload that had just been given to her, Carly leaned back on the couch and exhaled loudly. "I need a drink," she muttered and watched as Jason smirked in amusement at her as she rubbed her temple.

"Sam is in way over her head," he added as an afterthought. "I'm afraid Karpov's going to retaliate and she'll end up dead."

"I don't even know where to begin to help you with this situation, Jase," Carly admitted sadly. While she loved helping Jason solve the mysteries that had loomed over Port Charles in the past, she was never his partner the way Sam had been. "This is so far out of my area of expertise."

"I don't know what to do, either," Jason said and she could hear the frustration in his voice. "If Sam would let me help her, I'm sure I'd be fine since she probably has some plan of action in mind, but she won't. She doesn't want anything to do with me."

"Then that's where you need to start."

"What?" Jason was desperate for advice and when Spinelli didn't have any to offer, he was almost at a loss because his roommate almost always had something to contribute.

"Get Sam to let you in," Carly told him.

Jason winced at the notion and shook his head at her. "It'll never happen. She doesn't trust me," he said.

"So you need to prove that she can trust you."

"She has made it clear that she will never forgive me," Jason said miserably as he finally realized what covering up Elizabeth's crime had cost him.

Carly stared at him, utter confusion in her eyes as she looked at him questioningly. "What did you do that was so horrible?"

He took a breath as he prepared for his best friend's anger to hit a new level. "Elizabeth hit Sam and I destroyed all the evidence."

Carly's eyes were set ablaze as she digested the information. "You did WHAT?" She instantly slapped him across the face and bolted off the couch, pacing back and forth angrily.

Jason began to tell her what Sam had refused to hear. "When I had Elizabeth's car fixed, there were three other people who might have hit Sam driving on that road around the time of the accident."

Carly nodded at the information. She had been one of the people he had been suspicious about.

"I remember," she told him, feeling renewed anger at the accusations he had thrown at her when he had come to her house to interrogate her. "I also remember wondering why you were so interested in whom the driver was but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you were spitting in the face of so many people again to be Elizabeth's hero."

Jason ignored the dig. "When I talked to Sam, she told me that she hadn't seen who hit her, only the headlights and by the time she realized what was going on, it was too late."

"Nikolas was cleared the next day so the only two possibilities were Elizabeth and Monica."

"Yeah," Jason nodded as he remembered confronting his mother about her recklessness. It had turned out that Monica truly had reamed into a pole and that experience had been enough of a wake-up call for her. "When Monica finally told me the truth about everything, I realized that Elizabeth had been the one that hit Sam."

"And what did you do with that information?" Carly wondered, fearing she already knew the answer.

"I told Elizabeth who came up with the plan to go to Lucky for help," he replied and explained that Lucky had decided it was best for everyone involved was to close the case and leave it unsolved.

"That stupid bastard!" Carly's outburst surprised even her. She had never been a big fan of her cousin's but even she didn't think that he would so easily betray the woman he had been dating. "He did that to Sam after he had already thrown her out of his house and practically fed her to Diego Alcazar."

"His reasoning was that if Sam found out the truth, she would wreak havoc on Elizabeth's life."

"Were any of you thinking what Sam was going through then?" Carly demanded angrily. She disliked Sam most of the time, but the woman had been going through hell at the time. She had been dumped, broken and battered, terrorized by Diego and then to top it off, was fired from her job.

"Not really," Jason admitted shamefully. "I was focused on how her revenge against Elizabeth would affect my son."

"So if you went to so much trouble to hide the truth, how does Sam know about everything?"

"We never thought that she would remember seeing Elizabeth behind the wheel," Jason merely shrugged at the irony. "Elizabeth told her about what I did when Sam confronted her."

"She actually threw that in Sam's face when she was the one that hit Sam and left her lying in the street like a broken ragdoll?" Carly asked incredulously.

"It slipped out," Jason said.

"I'm sure," Carly muttered disbelievingly.

Sam turned the corner at the end of the hall that led to her apartment and nearly jumped out of her skin when she found Maxie Jones sitting down out side her door.

Maxie looked at her and relief flooded her eyes. "Thank God! Spinelli told me that you were able to turn the tables on Jerry and saved yourself two hours ago. I thought one of the Russians had already gotten to you."

Sam was about to tell her that she had just been out walking around, trying to lose two of Karpov's men that were tailing her before she came home but was caught off guard when Maxie sprang forward and hugged her.

"I'm glad you're okay," the small blond girl whispered shakily.

After the two friends pulled away, Sam dug out her keys. "Yes, I'm fine. I was just doing some recon." She decided she would spare Maxie the truth since it was clear her friend had been terrified for her so she didn't need to hear any details.

But Maxie's curiosity was already lit. "What's your next move?" she asked loudly as Sam walked into her apartment.

Maxie pulled off her jacket and took a seat on Sam's comfortable couch, stretching out her muscles. "Earth to Sam," she said when Sam didn't answer.

A chill ran down Sam's back as she took two more steps in her house. Something was off. "Shh," she told Maxie and looked around for any noticeable changes.

"What is it?" Maxie whispered.

Sam looked around for a fourth time and figured she was just being paranoid. "I don't know. Something just feels weird to me," she replied.

"You were with Jerry for far too long," Maxie commented.

"Yeah I guess so." Sam chuckled along with her friend at the joke but then something on the mantle caught her attention. She didn't remember buying that clock and as she neared it to get a better look, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

It was a bomb, she realized and whirled around. "We've got to get out of here," she said when she saw that the clock had a mere six seconds left.

Maxie looked at her as if she were crazy. "Why?" she asked.

Sam grabbed her hand and pulled her off the couch so far that Maxie slammed into hers and she nearly lost her balance.

"Because that clock is rigged to explode in less than four seconds." The two of them ran as far away as they could but had just crossed the threshold of the apartment when the bomb went off.

Just as Sam realized that the impact of the explosion was what had thrown her into the wall, everything started going dark.