Jason Morgan stood at his penthouse window and looked out at the dark Port Charles Skyline. It was a clear night and dark, with no moon to speak of, just like the night he had held Robin in his arms after the explosion outside Luke's. The whole scene was too reminiscent of the night Sonny's first wife had died. He thought that was what had made him run for her moments before the limo exploded. His instincts had saved her life, yet it was his life that had put it all in danger in the first place. He had cradled her head in his arms while Ned called 911 and Brenda screamed in Jax's arms. He had pleaded, and prayed, for her to open her eyes. But, even when she had, he had known that things were over.

Robin's injuries had been relatively minor - a mild concussion, and a few abrasions on her forehead. It wasn't what had happened as much as what could have happened. Finally, he understood how Sonny could walk away from Brenda, and why he needed to walk away from Robin. He had taken her back to Connecticut on Sunday afternoon. After a final bittersweet kiss, she went off to study anatomy or whatever first year medical students did. He had come home to find Carly Roberts waiting outside his door.

Her last name should have surprised him. She had told him about how she and Tony were getting married on some beach in Miami. Except they hadn't, because Tony had decided he didn't love Carly, and maybe he never had. Apparently, he did love his child, or at least that had been how Carly had explained why he was determined to take her baby away.

Jason hadn't really understood that. Of course, he didn't understand much when it came to family relationships. Or at least not the family relationships the Quartermaines thought he should understand. He didn't remember his parents they had died in the same accident that had wiped out his memories and most of the time he wished most of the Quartermaines would just go away. Lila was ok. She was his great aunt, but his cousin AJ had informed him repeatedly that he had always called her grandmother because his father had come to live with the Quartermaines after his own father, Harold Morgan's, death. AJ's younger sisters Allison and Emily were ok too they were fourteen and thirteen and his aunt and uncle had a few more even younger children but he couldn't keep their names straight. He had been thinking maybe the youngest one was Kathy but that didn't sound right when Carly's shrieks had brought him back to the reality that she was still standing in his penthouse with a problem she expected him to solve.

September 21, 1997

"You have to help me, Jase! Tony is going to take my baby, our baby," Carly said as she paced around the long table in the penthouse.

"Does Dr. Jones know he isn't really the baby's father?" Jason asked. Another question ran through his mind. Did Carly expect him to acknowledge that he was the baby's father? He had just walked away from Robin to keep her safe, how could he bring an innocent and defenseless child into his world?

Carly shook her head.

Jason recognized the familiar look in her brown eyes. She was working out another one of her wacky plans and, honestly, he was a little afraid to ask. He knew he would though, because there was something about her that always drew him back in. "Carly," he finally said.

Carly stopped circling the table, looked up, and met his eyes. "I may have just found a way out. Don't look at me like that, Jase! You made your point a few months ago, your world isn't safe for a child and the best thing you could do for your child was get out of the way. But Tony scares me, you know our relationship has been volatile at best. I seduced him to get revenge on my mother, how messed up is that? I can't make up with Tony and try to raise this baby with him and who is a judge going to give a baby to, a neurosurgeon or me an unemployed physical therapy tech who just failed out of nursing school?"

"If you need money, or an attorney, or something like that," Jason offered.

Carly cut him off. "I need Tony out of the picture."

Jason blinked a few times and realized what she was asking.

Carly laughed. "I don't mean I want you to kill him. Lucas would miss him, and I guess I've already screwed over his life enough by breaking up his parents' marriage. I just need to show that someone other than Tony is the father. I guess it doesn't have to be you."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, what about your cousin?"

"Are you trying to tell me that you had sex with AJ?"

Carly rolled her eyes. "No, I did not have sex with AJ! I wasn't even thinking of him. If I have to be in a loveless marriage for the sake of my child there needs to be at least a little excitement. That will never happen with AJ. I'm not Keesha who gets excited by watching paint dry."

Jason cracked half of a smile. Keesha Ward had once been the woman he had at least told AJ he intended to marry. Yet he still couldn't quite understand what the attraction had been. "So, what are you planning here?" he finally asked.

"Try to keep up, Jase. It's simple, I need to marry Ned," Carly said.

Jason could only shake his head.

Yet, as before, Carly had drawn him in enough that he had made the trip to ELQ. Ned had laughed, then refused, and then a few days later he had agreed. Exactly why Ned had changed his mind Jason didn't understand. He hadn't asked though.

XXXXXXXX

Amy Elizabeth Morgan pulled into the attached garage of her townhouse in Candlewick Park. The gated condominium and town home community, on the Southern outskirts of Port Charles, was an ELQ Enterprises Real Estate venture. When she had first moved to Port Charles, her cousin, Ned, had offered her the townhouse he had purchased after his first divorce. She had taken him up on the offer because it was the easiest way to get out of moving into the guest house on the grounds of the Quartermaine Mansion.

"You must be exhausted. Isn't it already morning in Milan?" Amy asked as she parked and then pulled her keys from the ignition.

"Milan is six hours ahead, so, it would be almost five AM there but after a week in Toronto I've basically adapted to Eastern Daylight time. Next week back in Italy will be painful but first I have a weekend with my favorite little sister," Chloe said.

"I'm your only little sister. Anyway, Craig reserved a court for 7:30, so I really need to get some sleep myself," Amy said as she led her sister back into her home. She saw the disappointment on her sister's face. In the past their long sister weekends had consisted of late nights with good chocolate while they sketched and talked about anything and everything. It was the latter that inspired her avoidance tactics. For twenty-two years she had shared everything with her older sister but her experiences in LA had shifted that balance and she didn't have the strength or courage to go there.

"I thought you hated tennis?" Chloe asked.

"Hate is a strong word," Amy said. It was. She tended to reserve it for rapists.

"Strongly disliked?" Chloe suggested.

"Ned has helped me with my backhand which has really decreased my frustration for the game I suppose," Amy revealed the partial truth. Ned had given her a few cousin to cousin lessons. He had also shared that hitting a few buckets worth of balls was a great way to relieve frustration.

Chloe smiled. "Or maybe you really like Dr. Everett?" she suggested.

"He isn't Dr. Everett yet. He still has another year of dental school and then he is planning on an oral surgery residency," Amy said. She knew that she was sidestepping her sister's question. She had no idea if she liked Craig. He was attractive, endearing, and could be quite sweet. He was also busy with his education and thus was quite comfortable with their relationship moving at a glacial pace. Sadly, the latter aspect was the most important to her in the moment.

XXXXXXXX

Sarah Webber cursed under her breath as her heel caught on something and she lurched forward unsteadily eventually landing sprawled across the lawn. Spike heels in a pitch-black night were hardly hiking conditions but Ali had insisted that Jamal drop them off a few houses up Lilac Drive from the Barrington Mansion so Ali's grandmother wouldn't hear the car in case she was already home from the Quartermaine party.

"Shhh!" Ali whispered. "We don't want to wake my grandmother!"

Amanda Barrington's rest was hardly Sarah's concern. However, since she was friends with Sarah's grandmother, Sarah had her own reasons for not waking the woman. For that reason, she scraped herself up off the Barrington lawn and followed her friend into the house. They made their way up to Ali's room without detection, changed from their heels and miniskirts into pajamas, and removed several layers of makeup.

"I'm starving!" Sarah said.

Ali giggled. "That is the downside of Ecstasy. Come on Cook is off for the weekend, so we can actually raid our own kitchen," she said as she led the way out of her bedroom.

"You have your own personal chef?" Sarah asked as they started back down the front stairs.

"Malcolm would challenge that idea. He's always complaining that her culinary skills are lacking. We have Cook, that is both her last name and her title, I guess. She used to work for Edward Quartermaine but when they moved in with Alan and Monica they had to get rid of the servants. Apparently, Monica feels they interfere with family harmony or something."

Sarah laughed. "Because the family that scrubs the bathroom together stays together?" she asked.

"Who knows? I'm pretty sure neither of the Doctors Quartermaine are scrubbing toilets. I think they have a contract with a cleaning service, I guess that is more practical and less ostentatious. Or at least that is Aunt Lorena's perspective. Supposedly she did scrub a few toilets in her day."

Sarah instinctively wrinkled her nose. "Eww! So nasty!"

"I know, but Aunt Lorena is all about the simple life. She arranges mission trips to third world countries. You know, the kind that don't even have toilets to scrub," Ali said as she opened the refrigerator and peered inside.

Ali closed the refrigerator with a frown. "There is like nothing worth eating. We should just order pizza. I think Pizza Shack is open until midnight," she said.

"Pizza Shack? That hardly sounds sanitary!"

"It's a pizza place down by the Elm Street Pier. Jamal introduced me to it. I'll just call his cellular and ask him to bring us a few slices."

"Oh, and I'm sure your parents will be thrilled when Jamal shows up here after midnight! That will definitely wake your grandmother!"

"Elizabeth is probably meeting her lover at the Port Charles Hotel and Malcolm probably took the last train into the city for some bogus Saturday meeting which is really just a good cover for meeting his own lover at the Waldorf Astoria."

Ali's awareness, and honesty, shocked Sarah. She had no illusions that her parents still loved each other, if they ever had in the first place, but it wasn't anything they had ever discussed with her and it certainly wouldn't be something they would want her sharing with her friends. "Your mother is having an affair?" she asked.

"Don't shriek! That will wake my grandmother and then we'll get a whole lecture on how it is unladylike. Let's just say that Elizabeth has never been deterred by the boundaries, or constraints, of marriage whether that is her own or anyone else's."

"She discusses this with you?" Sarah asked.

"Hardly! When I was eight Elizabeth was in a car accident. She has some rare foreign sounding blood type, so they couldn't transfuse her with regular blood. Eventually some poor student nurse who had grown up in a convent came forward. She had that blasted Bombay phenotype and her blood donation saved Elizabeth's life. I guess some of the other tests made it look like they were closely related. It turned out Dawn was the child Elizabeth had with fashion designer Eric Forrester in 1970 and then abandoned on a convent doorstep on her way out of town with his wealthy wife's hush money."

"I thought your sister's name was Ashley?"

"Ashley is her daughter with Malcolm. We're full sisters which is probably why she has always hated me so completely."

Sarah wondered for a moment if that was why she and Liz had never gotten along. Then she wondered for another moment if she and Liz were truly full sisters. For years she had just accepted that Liz was the family scapegoat and that the easiest way to get out of trouble was to implicate her sister, even if it was nearly obvious that Liz couldn't have possibly been the guilty party. Their mother had always gone along with Sarah's version and added in an extra side of spiteful nastiness when determining the suitable punishment.

Their father had worked long hours as an internist. He was rarely home but, when he was, he refused to rehash or undermine his wife's parenting. Or at least that was what he said, at least when she or Liz were listening. At night, after they were supposed to be in bed, he said more and accused his wife of being unfair to their younger daughter. But by then he was unsteady, and his words were slurred and Sarah had always ignored his words as nothing more than a drunken rant.

"So, are you closer to your other sister?" Sarah asked. She thought she was closer to her half-brother, Steven. He was the child her father had with his insane first wife, Heather Webber. He was a medical student in Colorado.

"I was. Dawn died when I was ten. Her fiancé selected the wrong investors for his club and she got caught in the crossfire I suppose you could say."

"I'm sorry," Sarah said. She tossed the words out readily even though she wasn't sure she really felt them.

"She and Decker were really in love. He left town right after the funeral."

Sarah wondered if Ali had a thing for unusual names. JR…Decker…Jamal… "What kind of a name is Decker?" she asked.

"Actually, I think it's kind of cool. It suited him. I'm going to call Jamal about that pizza before it gets any later," Ali said.

Sarah supposed Ali's reply almost proved her point. She didn't verbalize that though. Instead she just silently followed her friend back upstairs to order pizza.

XXXXXXXX

The Port Charles Police Department was less than a block away from Port Charles General Hospital. That could be handy, in the event of a hostage crisis at the hospital, or a shootout at the PCPD, and Detective Alex Garcia knew that both had happened in the past. Then there were the times when he just really needed a little more "car time" to prepare for what he had to do. That was the sentiment that enveloped him as he pulled into one of the law enforcement spots behind the Emergency Department.

Alex shifted down into park, exhaled deeply, and then turned to his partner. "You are planning on running point on this, right?" he asked.

"Do I have a choice?" Allison asked as she started to get out of the car.

"Well, now that you mention it, umm, no!" Alex said as they made their way into the Emergency Department through the ambulance bay.

Allison flashed a quick not amused roll of her eyes and then shook her head. "Did dispatch give us a name of the physician who filed the report?" she asked.

Alex flipped open his notebook and studied it for a moment. "Dr. Matt Harmon," he read.

"Someone rang?" a voice seemed to emanate up from the floor.

Alex looked down and saw a man in wheelchair dressed in scrubs and a white coat wheeling towards him. "I'm guessing you're Dr. Harmon. I'm Detective Alejandro Garcia and this is Detective Allison Jordan," he said as he extended his hand down to shake.

"Yes, I'm Dr. Harmon. I presume you're here regarding Tiffany Perkins, we can go into the conference room," Dr. Hunter said.

"What can you tell us?" Allison asked once they were inside the conference room.

"The nurses say someone must have dropped her off in the ambulance bay. One of the paramedics saw her wandering around out there when he went back out to move his truck. She's not fully oriented but her blood alcohol is .12 and urine toxicology was also positive for ecstasy and cocaine so that might explain it. Head CT was negative. Once she woke up a little, she started screaming she had been raped so we did a rape kit. We found traces of semen on the labia and in the vaginal vault so she definitely had sexual intercourse tonight. We've sent samples for DNA so maybe you'll get a hit off the DNA or maybe when she wakes up more, she can give you some history. She's in room 22 on the back hall, let me know if you need anything else."

"Have you notified her parents yet?" Alex asked.

"Someone tried the phone number on her driver's license, but no one answered."

Allison took a deep breath and exhaled. "Ok, thank you, Dr. Harmon, I'll go see if she can give me anything more," she said as she got up from the table.

Alex followed her back out into the Emergency Department. "I'll go get the rape kit logged into evidence and see if the lab can get started on that," he offered.

"Thanks! I have a feeling this statement may take a while, considering her blood alcohol level."

"Then breakfast will be on me when we're done," Alex said. He knew he owed her a lot more than breakfast, but he supposed it was a start.