Maxie looked around the suite as she entered, noting the tastefully luxurious decorations that gave the room a large and airy feeling. Being here, in New York City again, was bringing back a lot of memories that she preferred stayed locked and hidden away. Shaking her head and telling herself she needed to focus on their mission, Maxie went automatically to the windows and pulled the blinds. She then removed from her bag a small electronic device that they used in El Paso to sweep rooms for bugs. She nodded at Emily as the other woman entered.

“It’s clean,” Maxie said, looking at Emily with concern. “Are you okay? You look pale.”

“It’s this medicine,” Emily expels a shaky voice. “It makes me tired and sometimes light headed and dizzy. A case of the cure almost being worse than the disease.”

Maxie bit her lip. “We can still call this off. Spend the afternoon shopping, maybe catch a show, and then head back to Port Charles.” She sighed at Emily’s look. “It was just a suggestion.” Maxie walked over to the window and peeked through the blinds.

“So that’s where the old hag is. Are you sure?”

Emily nodded. “Lucky had it all in his lap top. Her schedule and everything. Something tells me that he and Jason had something planned.”

Maxie kept her eyes focused on the building. “All right. I know you have this idea that you can just walk in there, kill her, and walk out but I don’t believe in miracles so I need some solid information. I need blueprints of that building and I need to do some scouting around of the block and figure out some escape routes in case, no when, we get in trouble.”

“We don’t have time.”

“Yes we do.” Maxie smiled almost apologetically. “It’s genetic and environmental with me so don’t fight it. This Scorpio/Jones hybrid has learned the power of advanced planning. Trust me. I’ve been a detective long enough to know that Elvis was absolutely right when he said only fools rush in.”

“Elvis was talking about love, not murder.”

“Well he was right on both counts,” Maxie said firmly. “It won’t take me long. I’ll scout it out, see if I can discover some information that will help turn the tide just a little in our direction.”

“I should go with you. Two pairs of eyes are better than one.”

“Not this time. My bet is that every single one of Helena’s men has your face memorized. You stay here, take a nap, get some sleep. I’ll be back and then we can plan our next step.”

“I don’t like it. It’s too dangerous.”

“Now you start to worry about the danger.” Maxie playfully hits her forehead with her hand. “And mom says I have a tendency to leap before I look.”

“Really? I thought that was Georgie.”

“Georgie leaps without ever looking. There is a difference.” Maxie grins. “Now take a nap or something. Do you want me to order some juice or milk or something from room service.”

“I suppose raiding the honor bar for chocolate and coke is out of the question?” Emily suggests hopefully. “I thought not. No I’m fine. I’ll just lie down for a moment while you’re gone.”

“Sounds good,” Maxie makes her way to the door and then stops. Heading back to her bag, she pulls out a small radio an microphone, her sunglasses, and hat. “Here keep this. It has a two way radio that is picked up by a receiver in the sunglasses. If there’s a problem, I’ll yell or say something really stupid or just babble like an idiot.” She puts on the sunglasses and pulls the hat over her long blonde hair.

“You do realize that its cold and gray outside, don’t you? Won’t you stand out just a little with the sunglasses.”

“This is New York,” Maxie replies with a grin. “Anything goes.”

If I had to run, if I had to crawl
If I had to swim a hundred rivers, just to climb a thousand walls,
Always know that I will find a way, to get to where you are,
There's no place that far


Wyndemere

Ruby and Michael are sitting on the opposite side of Nikolas’s desk.

Nikolas looks at the two of them. “Why don’t you tell me what you think you found?”

“We don’t think we found anything, we know we found something,” Ruby replies her nervous fear evaporating under her irritation at her brother’s condescending tone. Michael’s idea of using Sly to break the news to the world is looking better and better.

“Ruby,” Michael rebuked her and Ruby flushed and went silent. Michael turned to Nikolas and put on his best imitation of his father dealing ELQ business. Or maybe it was his uncle dealing with Mafia business. In his opinion , the two men had more in common than they sometimes wanted to admit.

Michael reaches into his pocket and withdraws a disk. “When Lucky and Emily first came home,” Michael begins. “Ruby and I started doing some digging around for some information on Helena to help my aunt and her brother. “We found this warehouse that Katherine Bell owns and we decided to check it out. The place was mostly deserted but we found this. The information is encoded, but Jonathan was able to decode it and read it.”

“Jonathan? Jonathan was helping you track down Helena?” Nikolas was shocked. His sister had killed his ex-lover and his son was working against his dangerous grandmother? Had the world gone crazy or was he just now noticing?

“Did Lucky and Emily know?” The thought that either Lucky or Emily would condone a child going after Helena Cassadine made him sick.

Ruby shook her head. “No. And neither do mom or dad. Or Michael’s family. No one besides the three of us know anything about this, except for Stephanie because she helped me sneak into that locked room that Jonathan found in your basement.”

Michael groaned as Nikolas’s temper increased at the realization that his young daughter was also involved in this escapade. “Let me do the talking, okay?” Michael tells his cousin.

Michael looks back at Nikolas. “There was no danger to anyone. We were just doing some investigating. Jonathan looked for things on his computer and around Wyndemere when he was here. Ruby and I did some looking around the warehouse Katherine Bell owned.”

“No danger? Then why did Ruby have to kill Katherine?”

“Because she was a bitch and I really hope your taste in girlfriends has changed over the years,” Ruby remarked sarcastically, extremely tired of Nikolas’s tirade. Mothers and fathers were allowed to lecture and she was prepared for one hell of a lecture when they found out what she had been up to. But in her opinion, big brothers were not allowed to lecture. Period. “And maybe you could stop berating us long enough to hear what we have to say.”

Someplace there had to be a town where no one by the name of Spencer or Cassadine or Quartermaine lived. Michael vowed to find that town someday and buy it for his own. He’d put up a fence, plaster it with Don’t Enter signs, and proceed to live the rest of his life in peace. “Shut up,” He says firmly to Ruby who looks shocked at her mild mannered cousin’s actions. “You’re just making it worse.” He turned to Nikolas and stood up. “I may not agree with Ruby’s methods, but she has a point. You are obviously more concerned with lecturing us than you are in hearing what we found. Since neither of us are your concern to lecture, why don’t we leave and if you change your mind you can give us a call.”

“Sit.” Nikolas says and with a look at each other, Ruby and Michael sit. “All right. I apologize for the high handedness. I just care about you Ruby, you are my sister. And even you too Michael. My grandmother is very dangerous and getting involved with her could get you hurt.”

“We are Spencers,” Michael says softly. “We do know how to take care of ourselves.” Ruby looks at Michael in shock. It’s one of the few times she’s ever heard him admit to being a Spencer.

Nikolas almost groans at the old familiar mantra, but lets it pass. “All right. Tell me what you know.”

“It’s a long story,” Michael begins. “And kind of hard to believe. But it’s true and we can prove it. So could Katherine Bell which is why she was blackmailing your grandmother all these years.”

“Blackmail? Katherine?”

Ruby nodded. “It’s all there on the disk. At first, she just worked for Helena because she was a creepy kind of person. I mean she had to be a creepy kind of person if she was dating you when she was what forty and you were 18? 19?”

“Go on with your story Ruby.”

“Right. Anyway the best that we can tell from the disk is that Katherine has been blackmailing Helena for the last decade or so.”

“Which would explain Katherine’s rapid rise in my grandmother’s company?”

“Right,” Michael picks up the story. “It’s all on the disk. Apparently Katherine made the disk, had it encrypted and encoded, and then used it as a safeguard against Helena. She mentions a dozen different disks sent out to friends and relatives.”

“Katherine blackmailing Helena makes a perverted twisted kind of logic. I always wondered what kept the two of them together.’

“Dad always thought the two of them were lovers,” Ruby inserted. “But then my dad is kind of biased when it comes to your family Nikky.”

“Back to the story,” Michael said irritably. “How much do you know about your grandmother’s past?”

Nikolas tried to think. “She was raised in a convent in Greece until she was fifteen or sixteen when she wed my grandfather Mikkos a year or two after World War II.”

“A convent? Not home?”

“No,” Nikolas says slowly. “but there’s nothing strange about that. Cassadines have a tradition of boarding schools and in the 1930’s a convent school would have been the ideal place for a Cassadine bride. Especially one who had been betrothed to my grandfather from the time she was three and who, except for being a distant cousin of the Cassadine family, had no family of her own.”

Ruby shuddered. “That’s positively medieval. I almost feel sorry for Helena.”

“Let’s just say that it’s been a battle dragging the Cassadine family into the 21st century. And I wouldn’t waste my breath feeling sorry for Helena Cassadine.”

“ I would,” Michael spoke up. “I feel very sorry for Helena Cassadine. The real Helena Cassadine that is”

“The real Helena Cassadine,” Nikolas sputtered. “There is only one Helena Cassadine.”

“You’re right,” Michael says. “There WAS only one Helena Cassadine. And the woman you call grandmother is not her. The best we can figure it out according to Katherine’s disk is that Helena must have become friends at the convent with another student, Maria Kanekedes. Maria was poor and the nuns took her in as a charity case. She and Helena became friends and Helena told her everything about being a Cassadine and of the plans for her upcoming marriage. Maria wanted Helena’s life almost from the first moment they met.”

“So, when the war ended and plans for the wedding started happening and Helena was called to the Cassadine island to prepare for her marriage, Maria killed Helena and took her place. From the moment she stepped off the boat and onto the Cassadine island, Maria Kanekedes became Helena Cassadine. She not only killed Helena, but she took her life too. Married Mikkos, became the Cassadine patriarch, gave birth to Stavros and Stefan, all of it. She’s a fraud Nikolas,” Ruby concluded. “Helena Cassadine is a fraud.”

“This is too fantastic. It sounds like a badly written soap opera. Do you honestly expect me to believe it?”

“Not really,” Ruby shakes her head. “We didn’t believe it either even though Katherine wrote the whole story down on the disk we found. So we had to find proof, something that would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Katherine’s story wasn’t a story but the truth.” Ruby took a deep breath. “And we found it. Jonathan found this room in your cellar that was locked. This morning, I unlocked it.” Nik looks up at her and she shakes her head. “Don’t ask. You really don’t want to know. You’ll sleep better at night if you don’t know.” Ruby continues. “ Anyway, I guess this room has pretty much been left alone since Stefan moved you here from Greece because it was covered with dust and cobwebs. It was full of boxes with old family photos and letters.”

She removes a photo from the envelope.

“It also had this.”

The picture was black and white, old, faded, and yellowed. It was of two girls in a garden, with a chapel in the background. The girls were wore two dresses and had their hair long with a bow in the back.

“Which one is your grandmother?” Ruby asks softly.

Nikolas looks at the two girls for a moment and then smiles. “This is my grandmother.” He points to the girl that is a younger version of his grandmother and shudders when he realizes that even then there was a cold look in her eyes. The other girl is very similar in looks, but there is a gentleness in her eyes.

Ruby turns the picture around and Nikolas sees a message scribbled on the back. “I think the nuns took pictures of Helena regularly and sent them to your family so they would know what kind of progress she was making. I guess not even Mikkos Cassadine wanted to marry a girl sight unseen. The pictures probably weren’t even looked at that closely.” Nikolas read the inscription on the back. “Helena Cassadine, age 12.” The nuns had written and below that someone had added a little note, “The flowers on her dress aren’t half as lovely as she is.” He read out loud and looked up at Ruby. “So?”

Ruby turns the picture around again so that Nik can see both girls. “Who’s wearing the flowers on her dress Nikolas?”

Nikolas pales as he looks at the picture. “She isn’t...Oh my god....”

Michael nods. “Like we said. Helena Cassadine is a fraud.”

“And a murderer,” Ruby adds thinking of Lucky and the Stewarts and everyone else Helena no make that Maria has hurt. She looks at the picture of Helena and Maria. Helena, the real Helena, looked like someone she could have been friends with. Don’t worry Helena, Ruby says silently to the girl in the photo who is only a few years younger than herself. We know the truth now and she will pay.

New York

Maxie walks into the lobby of the apartment building. The building, despite what she noticed during her exploration of the perimeter and the surrounding buildings are some very high tech security devices, has an old-fashioned feel to it and comes complete with a concierge desk that is manned by a man in an uniform complete with tassels.

“I’m sorry Miss,” The man says sternly as she walks through the revolving glass doors and heads to the brass elevator. “This is a private apartment building. I’m only allowed to allow residents or guests on the elevators.

Maxie looks at the man. he is roughly the same age as Jason but without Jason’s blatantly masculine appeal. She groaned inwardly. She had to stop comparing every man she met to Jason. She smiled sweetly at the guard. “I’m sorry,” she made her voice sound breathless, apologetic, and weak at the same time. She supposed all those appearances in GH’s Nurses Ball were suddenly paying off. “My name is Jillian. Jillian Kincaid. I’m not usually in the habit of walking into strange buildings and I’ve never been the forward kind, but I’m visiting my parents a few blocks over for a few weeks and I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the architectural details of this building. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m not usually this scatterbrained. I should have explained. I’m a graduate student at USC’s Architecture and Design School and my doctorate thesis is on buildings like this so I just had to come inside and look. You don’t mind, do you? I brought my sketch pad and maybe when I’m done looking around and making notes I can come back down here and you can tell me all about the history of this building.”

Maxie paused from her rapid fire explanation and gave the guard a moment to catch his breath. “Please,” she added with a smile that was deliberately seductive.

The guard hedged. “The owner of the building is very strict about her privacy. She occupies the top three floors.” Maxie took her sunglasses off and stared at the man with the full force of her green eyes. “I guess I can check with the owner. “ The man smiled at her back and slipped back into his office.”

Maxie shrugged and turned away as soon as he entered his office. “Isn’t that just like a ......Jason?” Maxie took a step back against the counter in shock as her eyes locked with Jason’s blue ones. She felt a familiar flutter in her stomach at his closeness, especially at the blazing look in his eyes.

“Nice to see you again, Jillian.” Jason grinned casually, looking for all the world like the cat that swallowed the canary. “Although I do have to wonder what you are doing so far from home.”

Just then the elevator opened and a young couple got off. Quickly before the elevator door could shut, Jason pulled Maxie onto the elevator and let the doors slide close behind him.

“I can explain,” Maxie began nervously, backing up into a corner. “I was going to call you, really I was, but Emily was determined to do this with or without me and I thought that as long as I was here I could at least try to help her so I didn’t but I know it was wrong because its too dangerous and..”

“Maxie,” Jason pushed the stop button on the elevator and it came to a halting stop. Maxie couldn’t look away from Jason’s gaze and she nervously licked her lips. “Maxie,” He repeated the words as he closed the distance between the two of them, her name came out like a rough caress. “Shut up and kiss me.”

Then without waiting for her to respond, Jason lowered his mouth to hers and claimed her, heart and soul, for one long spell binding moment.

When he tore himself away a few minutes later and pressed the button for the elevator to continue, he was pleased to note the dazed look on her face.

“All right,” He said casually, his eyes never leaving her. “Tell me what you have planned.”

“Planned?” Maxie queried her mind still fixated on the possibilities of lovemaking in an elevator.

“I’m assuming you and Emily have a plan to get Helena.” Jason says with a smile.

“Oh, that plan,” Maxie says as she desperately tries to stop blushing under his gaze. Taking a deep breath, she proceeds to tell Jason about their plan.

If I had to run, if I had to crawl
If I had to swim a hundred rivers, just to climb a thousand walls,
Always know that I will find a way, to get to where you are,
There's no place that far

Emily is dreaming. In her dream, she and Lucky and Jonathan are on a boat sailing across the ocean. She is lying back against Lucky in a chaise lounge, sunglasses and a broad hat on as she watches with a smile as an older version of Jonathan teaches his little sister how to steer the boat. The air is warm and musical as the notes from the CD Lucky has in the stereo reach her. She can feel Lucky’s strong arms encircling her and leans back against him, letting him hold her up. She smiles softly when she feels his lips began to nuzzle the side of her neck.

“I love you Lucky,” she whispers to him as his embrace tightens. “Don’t let go. Ever.”

“I won’t,” he replies. “I promise. I’ll hold you forever. I love you Em.”

She smiles, feeling blissfully happy and at peace. Then a shadow falls over her and she looks up to see Helena Cassadine there, staring at her malevolently.

She backs away from Helena, seeking shelter in Lucky’s arm but he isn’t there. She looks back to Helena and sees Jonathan at her side more puppet and pawn then little boy. Her daughter, her sweet and beautiful daughter, is gone. As she watches in horror, Helena leads Jonathan away. Suddenly that picture is gone and replaced by an image of the launch with Lucky on it, waving goodbye and then exploding in front of her. Only this time Lucky is not alone. Jonathan is on the launch too.

“No! No!. Jonathan! No! Lucky! No!”

“Emily.” A gentle shaking. “Emily. Come on love. Wake up. Open your eyes its just a dream. Open your eyes and see that there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Somewhere within her Emily recognized that voice. Those words. They were the same words that Lucky had always used when she had nightmares about Helena. God, she was hurting so much for Lucky that she was conjuring him in her mind. She’d finally done it- she’d lost her mind.

“Emily, Please,” his voice sounded heartbreakingly real and full of tears. “Emily babe just open your eyes and look at me. I’m not a dream. You’re not going crazy. I’m real. I’m not dead. Just open your eyes for a moment.”

Something about that voice sounded more real than her dreams and Emily carefully, cautiously, opened her eyes. And then they widened with shock.

The light filtered through the blinds was hazy and shadowy, but she knew that face, knew those eyes. She slowly reached up with a finger to trace a silent tear and her breath caught as she realized that the cheek she was touching was real, not a dream or a hallucination or even a visit from an angel. But real and warm and solid.

“Lucky?” Her voice cracked as her finger left his cheek to touch his shoulder in wonderment.

“You were expecting someone else,” Lucky tried to be light hearted, but the attempt failed. Seeing her here, in front of him, pale and tired but so beautiful robbed him of speech. Of thought.

‘I saw you die,” Emily’s eyes filled with tears as she said the words slowly. “I saw the launch explode.”

“I didn’t die,” Lucky’s voice was husky. “I survived.”

“I saw you die,” Emily closes her eyes and sees the launch explode again.

“I know,” Lucky pulled her closed and buried her head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry you were hurt like that. I’m sorry you had to go through that ordeal.”

Emily looks up at him dazed and bewildered. “But how? Why?”

Lucky shakes his head. “I’ll tell you all about it in a few minutes. Right now I just want to hold you in my arms again and think about how much I love you. Everything else can wait.”

Emily closed her eyes. If this was a dream she prayed that she would never wake up. If this was a fantasy, she wanted it to go on forever. If this was a sign that she had gone crazy, she hoped that she would never to be sane again. She smelled his scent, felt his breath on her hair, touched his warmth, heard his heartbeat, and gloried in the strength of the arms that held her. He was right. Everything else could wait.

Thirty minutes later, Jason and Maxie left the apartment building, her notebook filled with notes of entrances, exits, security devices, and anything else she could think of. Jason watched her as they crossed the street, she was good at this. Very thorough and very competent. It was obvious to him that she loved her job. She loved being a cop. The thought dimmed the feeling of euphoria that had lingered since their kiss in the elevator.

“So Lucky is alive?” Maxie shook her head in disbelief.

Jason nodded. “I guess that means that you and Emily can go back to Port Charles tonight and let Lucky and I use the information you gathered to take down Helena.”

Maxie stopped in front of him, forcing Jason to stop. She was about to read him the riot act for the sexist attitude, when her heart dropped and she let off a small string of curses. “I don’t think any of us are headed back to Port Charles tonight.”

Jason turned around him and looked back at the entrance to Helena’s apartment building where Maxie was pointing. “That’s Helena Cassadine getting out of that limo. And if I’m not mistaken she has your nephew Jonathan with her.” Maxie said.

Jason and Maxie could only watch as Jonathan, flanked by Helena and several guards entered the apartment building and disappeared from sight.

Baby there's no place that far