Written in 55 minutes.

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Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Port Charles Airport: Departures

Cameron turned to face his mother, his bag slung over his shoulder. “I told you Jason didn’t have to stay in the car. I’m not mad at him anymore.”

“He wanted to give us a little privacy.” Elizabeth brushed at an invisible piece of lint, forcing herself to smile. “I hate why you’re coming home so much, but I do love to see you. I like having all my boys at home.”

“I miss it sometimes,” Cameron admitted. “Even sharing with Jake—and don’t apologize for that. Danny needs his own space, and it’s not fair to move him when I’m in and out — and when I’m gonna get my own place when I get back in May,” he told his mother.

“I’ll just be happy to have you back in the same zip code.” Elizabeth lifted herself on her toes and kissed Cameron’s cheek, before hugging him tightly. “I love you, honey. So much.”

“I love you, too.” Cameron didn’t immediately release her, and she saved one more minute with her firstborn. It was so hard saying goodbye to him, even knowing it was temporary.

She watched until he checked in at the desk, then disappeared into the terminal. And then just one minute before leaving the terminal and sending Jason a text to stop circling the terminal and pick her up.

“Everything go okay?” he asked after she’d slid into her seat and buckled herself in. She sighed, leaned back.

“Yeah. I just wish it would stop raining. I hate the idea of them taking off in this weather—” She glanced up uneasily at the gray skies. “I’m not sure I remember what the sun looks like at this point.”

“He’ll be okay.” Jason reached over for her hand, squeezed it. “They won’t take off if it’s not safe.”

“I know.” But Elizabeth would be tracking the flight all the same, unable to rest until her baby boy wasn’t thousands of feet above them in the skies.

Port Charles High: Lobby

Danny hunched his shoulders, his fingers gripping the backpack tightly. “It’s like they all know,” he muttered, looking at the other students with narrowed eyes.

“No one knows anything.” Jake switched off his phone, shoved it back in his pocket. “Stay out of trouble, okay? And both of you -” He jabbed a finger at the school’s trophy case. “Wait right here after school for me.”

Without waiting for an answer, he headed down the senior hall way, and Aiden rolled his eyes. “They’re never going to let us take the bus again, are they?” he complained following Danny towards the freshman wing.

“Not in this life time.” Danny passed the bank of lockers where he’d usually find Rocco and forced himself to look away. Rocco was still suspended until the following Monday, and it was weird being here without him.

It would be even weirder when Rocco came back and was in a different first period class.

The warning bell for homeroom sounded, and Aiden jolted. “Oh man, Devers is gonna make my life miserable if I’m late again. See you at lunch.”

“Yeah, see you later.”

And Danny needed to haul ass too — he couldn’t get in trouble. Not again. There was too much on the line.

Quartermaine Estate: Parlor

“Man, did you  have to get suspended at the same time as me?” Rocco grumbled, flipping open a textbook on the coffee table and opening his school computer. “You’re not gonna sit there all day and watch me, are you?”

“Don’t tempt me,” Dante said with a scowl, then turned at the sound of footsteps. When he saw Chase in the foyer, he turned back to Rocco. “Stay here.”

Without waiting for Rocco’s agreement, Dante hurried to catch his partner. “Chase. Hey. Hey.”

“Oh—” Chase stopped, his hand on the door. “Hey. I was gonna try to set something up with you. We need to have a conversation.” He angled his head around to see Rocco watching the from the sofa. “Without an audience,” he said to Dante in a quieter tone.

“I figured. I guess you talked to Molly,” Dante said.

“Molly?” Chase furrowed his brow. “No, not since she recused herself. Why?”

“I just figured—” Dante stopped, turned to see Rocco at the entrance of the parlor. “Didn’t I tell you to stay there?”

“I am there.” The teen pointed down at the threshold, indicating that technically he was still in the other room. “You guys are acting like you’re talking government secrets. Is this about what Grandma and Ned were yelling about last night?”

“No—wait, what were they saying—” Dante held up a hand. “And why were you listening?”

“Dude, Canada could hear Grandma when she gets on a roll.” Rocco shrugged. “I guess someone is trying to blame Aunt Liz for what we did a few weeks ago or something, right?”

Dante grimaced. “No.”

“Yes,” Chase said, at the same time then winced when Dante sent him a dirty look. “He was there, Dante. And look — we’re trying to track the source — we got reason to believe that whoever tipped off Reynolds has a bigger role to play—”

“I don’t understand.”

“I can’t get into it,” Chase said with a shake of his head. “You know that, not the specifics. But we need to know who else knew all the details. You know, that Elizabeth and Aiden were involved.”

Dante hesitated. It would be so easy to turn this over to Chase, to just tell him about Kristina’s possible involvement. But he didn’t know for sure, did he? Talking about it with Molly was one thing — but bringing it to Chase was something else.

“Well, Aunt Kristina could probably help you.”

Dante whipped his head back to Rocco. “What?”

“Yeah,” Rocco said. “You were gonna pick her up, remember? That’s why me and Danny could just…get out without you checking with Aunt Liz. And she stayed over. I bet Aunt Kristina told someone. She sucks at secrets. Especially good ones.” He looked at Chase. “You should ask her.”

Dante exhaled slowly, then looked at Chase. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “You should probably check with Kristina.”

Miller & Davis: Spinelli’s Office

Diane paced the short length of the office, tapping a pen against her hand. “Sonny Corinthos finally grows a conscience and, of course, the information is unusable.”

“Not in a court of law—” Spinelli ignored Diane’s scoff. “But it closes out a hole in our theory, doesn’t it? Where does Kristina get an unregistered gun? ”

“The real question is why Sonny is handing this information over—” Diane pursed her lips. “Do we think he knows anything?”

“If he knew something, Kristina would already be out of the country,” Spinelli answered immediately. “He’s always regretted not doing more to keep Michael out of jail. If he thinks there’s a good chance you’ll win the case just on the merits—”

“And I will, but I’d rather not put everyone through a damn trial—” Diane nodded. “But I tend to agree with you. Maybe Sonny has a theory, but he doesn’t have any proof. Or maybe he really thinks one of his guys tried to do something and isn’t coming forward because it backfired.”

“Or maybe one of his guys is going after Jason for playing informant,” Spinelli said.

“None of which, again, I can do anything with.” Diane turned to face him, gestured at his desk. “You were expecting a data dump. Where are we?”

Spinelli sat down, flipped open his computer, tapped a few keys. “Car data came in raw, and I’ve already sent it to the analyst you want to use for trial. I’m gonna do my own run through and hope it matches something. I was hoping to find just the trunk pops, but it’s buried in all the data.”

“Can’t ever get a break, can we?” Diane made a face. “Security footage?”

“We got the neighbors on either side and one person across the street. I’m still waiting on two more neighbors to come through. Security company says by Friday, but I’ve got enough to start looking.” Spinelli looked at her.  “I already looked at the time stamps that match Kristina’s trip to Elizabeth’s, and all I have is her car. That doesn’t mean we won’t get more—”

“But it also just might mean she didn’t end up on tape. The neighbors we’re waiting on — any of them worth waiting for?”

“McCormick’s camera looks directly at the spot where Elizabeth’s car was parked that day, or at least where Elizabeth remembers it being parked.” Spinelli checked his notes. “He didn’t get back to his company right away, and it delayed the files a few days. Friday morning.”

“Well, let’s see if we can get those trunk pops. You make that your priority today. Jason and Elizabeth are coming by later today to talk about the bail hearing, and why don’t you let them go through the video? They’ll feel better doing something for a chance.”

“Are we ready to tell them about Kristina?” Spinelli wanted to know.

Diane stopped at the door, looked back at him, and hesitated, tapping her fingers against the door’s edge. “We find a trunk pop for the time she was at the house, yes. I think we tell them what we think is going on. But right now, it’s just theory. And I don’t know if I want to tell Jason that we suspect his son’s aunt, Sonny’s daughter, someone he’s protected for his whole life—well, once we put that thought in his head, I don’t know he puts it away. Let’s get something just a little more solid before we do that.”

Davis House: Front Entrance

Alexis sighed, stepped back to allow Sam entrance. “If you’re here to ask me to fix this for you—”

Sam scowled, whirled around to face her mother. “No, there’s no point in wasting my breath. No one is going to just believe me — not you, Dante, Jason, and probably not Danny. You all think I’m Satan—”

“Sam—”

“Don’t—” Sam pointed at her mother. “The only way to fix this is to find out who the hell did this because it was not me. I had nothing to do with it.”

Alexis didn’t speak for a moment, then nodded. “All right. I had a theory that perhaps Kristina pushed you into this because I know she’s been very supportive of you —”

“You make that sound like a crime. Kristina’s just listened to me, okay? Maybe she gave me bad advice—” Sam held up both hands. “I’m not getting sidetracked, okay? I think you’re on to something with Kristina. Because she was being supportive. And she definitely…well, she was encouraging me to attack Elizabeth in my therapy session. I can believe she might think getting Elizabeth out of the picture might have made a difference. I just don’t understand how she’d know to do—” Sam stopped. “Mom, why do you have that look on your face? What did you do?”

“I might have…in passing…mentioned that Diane was concerned about Elizabeth’s bail,” Alexis said with a wince, and Sam’s scowl deepened. “Well, I’m sorry! I never thought she’d do something like this! This hurts Danny—”

“Oh, but it’s absolutely something I would do, right, Mom?” Sam demanded. “Do you even know how insulting you sound right now?”

Alexis pressed her lips together. “You have been known to become so angry at Elizabeth that you were unable to hear your son in the same room begging you to stop. Let’s not pretend that you’re innocent in this situation, Sam. If Danny  believes you did this, it’s because you have made it very clear to him that what he wants doesn’t matter if it involves Elizabeth. And that is the same message Kristina obviously received if she had anything to do with this. Why do you think it was her in the first place?”

“We’re going to ignore everything else because I can’t—I can’t deal with that right now.  Because I have to find my idiot sister and make sure she didn’t do this — and if she did, then I have to get her to confess to about a thousand people so I can get my son back in my life. I do not have time to litigate my issues with you.”

“Well, you had better find the time, Sam, because maybe it’s natural for your ex-husband to think you did this first, but your current boyfriend, your mother, and your son also thought you were the most natural suspect. That’s not thing something you can overlook.”

Sam jerked the door open and threw her mother one last furious look. “No, it’s not. But believe me, we’ll deal with that after I clear my name.”