Heart of Darkness
Chapter One

Spring, 2001

She felt the gun along her side and didn’t flinch. Indeed, except for a half smile that played along her face and an almost reflexive tightening of muscles, she didn’t shift her attention from the scene being played out in front of her.

Her blue eyes are haughty and almost disdainful as she finally, nonchalantly, turns to the man who’s gun is pressed against her side.

“If you think your little toy scares me,” she says the words softly but clearly. “Then think again. I’m sure you can do better if you put your mind to it. In the meantime, I’d prefer to be left alone.”

When the man doesn’t move, she contemplates how bad a sin it would be to kill someone in the balcony of a church. She shrugs mentally, however bad a sin it would be in the eyes of God it would be a worse sin in the eyes of her superiors. Blowing her cover hours into a new assignment was not her style.

She can feel the man next to her grow tense and angry. That’s his weakness, the quickness of his temper. The lack of control. It wasn’t hers.

She turns her attention back to the wedding taking place at the front of the church. She sees the petite brunette looking absolutely beautiful and radiant standing next to the dark haired young man. She searches her heart for any sign of jealously and not unexpectedly finds none. Only an aching fondness for the person she used to be and the life she once thought she would lead.

It’s a universe removed from where she is now.

“Who are you?” The man by her side demands impatiently. He is not used to being ignored and it leaves him feeling uncomfortable. He is pretty sure that she is not a threat to the young couple getting married, but she is an unknown and in his world unknowns are not acceptable.

She is not surprised that he doesn’t recognize her. Most days she doesn’t recognize herself.

She turns to face him and her long honey blonde ponytail swings around to.

He looks into her eyes and for just a moment, he cannot look away. Her eyes are a brilliant blue, shadowed in the corners by a hint of something darker than even he has seen. He is used to people looking at him with fear or respect or sometimes a combination of both.

Not the open contempt visible on her beautiful face.

It’s a paradox she stopped trying to explain long ago. The world she lives in is riddled by violence. She doesn’t want to think about the men and women she has killed for survival and sometimes for vengeance. But someone like this man, who chooses to make his living by the most violent of means and the pretend otherwise with designer suits and fancy penthouses, she feels nothing but contempt for and no desire to pretend otherwise.

She looks down and sees the young couple kiss. She ignores the momentary need to be there, to celebrate that moment with them. It will pass. It always does.

He is unprepared for the momentary flicker of sadness that lights her eyes before it disappears, to be replaced by cool disdain.

“Who am I? Just an old friend Mr. Morgan. Just an old friend.”

She says the words quietly and moves, uncaring of the fact that his gun is still trained on her, to the balcony exit and out of the church and away from her past.

Jason Morgan stares in disbelief. One shot. The gun is a silencer. None of the guests below would ever know. His men are expert on covering up. She has to know that if she knows who he is. But she strolls casually away from him without once looking back.

He wants to follow her, but he can’t. He’s already been gone longer than he should have and the last thing he needs to deal with his wife’s ongoing jealousy.

Still, he finds himself lingering long enough to catch the scent of lilac and know instinctively that it belonged to her.


A town can change a lot in four years. But not this one, she thinks to herself ruefully as she makes her way on foot through some back alleys.

It’s like Port Charles is caught in some kind of weird time warp and the rest of the world hurries into the still new millennium and it hangs back, determined to cling to the 20th century as long as it can.

She enters the back door of a slightly run down hotel (there are no really run down hotels in Port Charles- even the seediest motels in the seediest parts of towns have nothing on some of the places she has stayed over the last four years) and climbs the long staircase easily, muscles harder and more defined than they were when she belonged to that other universe.

She opens the door at the end of the corridor closest to the stairs and shuts it behind her, leaning against it.

“Tough day huh?” The voice is sympathetic in that “I told you so” style that had began to grow on her nerves in the two years they had been together.

She frowns at him. “Not now Cates.”

Jagger Cates pauses. He is not use to the cool and remote facade ever slipping and it is definitely askew at the moment. He reaches across the bed for the automatic rifle he had been assembling when she came in. He pretends to give it his attention.

“How do you do it?” She surprises herself with the question and him even more.

He shifts uneasily. “I just do.” His dark eyes look into hers. “Every time I’m in Port Charles I want to see her. Just to hear her voice. I want to tell her the truth, tell her how I feel. Or I want to see my brother’s grave or go see how my sister is doing at college.” The anguish is clear in his voice and it draws her closer. “But we both know that pulling the people we love into our world just puts them in danger. Karen. Your sister. Do we really want them to know the truth? Karen sleeps at night. It’s with another guy and sometimes that tears me up inside, but she sleeps at night. She’s not afraid. She’s not sickened by what I’ve done or what I’ve allowed others to do. And above everything else she’s safe in her little world. She can get married, have kids, live a life of stability and peace. Things I can’t give her. “ He breathes heavily. “I saw her once a few years ago at the hospital. She had what she has always wanted. I can’t take that away from her. I won’t. So I stay away.”

She crawls onto the bed next to him and he lowers the rifle to the floor at the side of the bed. “Do you ever think someday?”

He shakes his head. “I stopped believing in someday a long time ago. You should too.”

She knew he was right. She stared into his dark eyes and saw the awakening passion in them and knew he was right. But still this stubborn streak in her, the same one that had kept her alive these last four years, refused to let the dream of someday, when the job was done, when it was over, die. And as she found herself staring into Jagger’s dark brown eyes, it was a pair of brilliant blue eyes that flashed through her mind.

She closed her eyes as he leaned over, skillfully applying his lips to hers, as the passion between them ignited easily.

Twenty minutes later she slipped, tall and naked, from the bed and dressed again. Funny how she had once sworn that she would only make love where she felt love. That had changed too. She didn’t love Jagger. But he had been the closest thing to family or to the illusion of a family that she had had in two years. She trusted him with her life. She trusted him with her body. If she never trusted him with her soul that didn’t seem to matter that much these days anyway.

In a life filled with death, she needed all the reminders she could get that she was still alive.

She picked up the manila folder on the dresser and opened it. She flinched for a moment as she stared at the middle aged man who’s picture was in it. Her eyes pretended to glance over his dossier, although she had memorized it long ago.

War crimes. What a gentle way of saying the man was responsible for a reign of terror that had killed, maimed, brutalized, and destroyed too many people for the world to keep count of.

She looked again at the man she had come to Port Charles to kill. And for the first time that day, Sarah Webber smiled.