“I want to know where my sister is,” Jason Morgan looked at the blonde sitting across from him in the with a deep anger in his eyes. “And my wife’s body.”

“All these demands,” Sarah Webber sighed as she sipped her diet Pepsi, she’d ordered it in a can because she didn’t trust a dive like this to dispense soda pop without screwing it up. “I thought I told you that I was the one calling the shots.”

“I want to know where my sister is. And Carly.” Jason repeated evenly.

Sarah looked him over carefully. She could understand why some people would nickname him the Borg. Here he was asking for his only sister and the body of his supposedly beloved wife and his face was an emotionless mask. Only his eyes reflected any feeling whatsoever.

And the anger in them burned.

“Your sister is safe.”

“How the hell am I supposed to know that?”

“You’re not.” Sarah shrugged. “You can believe it or not. I’ve learned a lot about you in the last few weeks. I know you have a hang up about trust. You broke up with your first girlfriend because you thought she betrayed your trust. Personally I think you were the idiot for thinking that your girlfriend and the supposed mother of your child who was doing everything she could to make her way back into your bed could ever live under the same roof.” Again a quiet shrug. “But maybe you are the kind of guy who likes the idea of two girls fighting over you?”

“What the hell do you know about me?”

Sarah’s voice lowered. “Do not raise your voice to me. Ever. You are not in the final analysis crucial to my plans Morgan. Convenient maybe, but not crucial. As for what I do or do not know about you, I think that would surprise you. There isn’t anything that I don’t know about you. I told you I’m very good at what I do.”

“And what is that?”

“Like I said. I kill people. Some of them deserved to die, others just got in my way. You Morgan might very well be the first one I kill for both reasons.”

“I....” Jason hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. He was the one used to being in control, of calling the shots. It was hard for him to accept that she was the one holding the cards in this game. He swallowed. “My wife? Her body? There was no sign. How the hell do I even know she’s dead?”

A dark shadow crossed her blue eyes. “I kill Mr. Morgan. I don’t lie. Others do it so much better than I do.” Her gaze flickered in his direction knowingly.

“Your wife’s body has been removed somewhere for safe keeping. Your son will have a place to mourn his mother.”

Jason nodded, feeling a fierce pain envelop him when he thought of Carly. He hadn’t loved her, not in the way that she needed to be loved. But she was Michael’s mother. And she had been a friend, a good friend for a long time. The thought of never seeing her again left him with an unfamiliar ache.

Sarah smiled. “And Sonny Corinthos will have a place to mourn his lover.”

Jason stared at her in shock.

Sarah shrugged almost absentmindedly. “I told you that I know everything. I meant everything.” She took a sip of the Diet Pepsi. “Besides they really weren’t as discreet as they thought they were being.”

A hooded expression covered Jason’s features. “What about Emily?”

A small smile played around her features. “Emily is ...okay.”

“What do you mean okay?” Jason growled.

“Let’s just say that in a few hours she’ll be better and leave it at that.”

“You bitch. If you’ve hurt Emily I’ll....”

“You’ll what? You forget who I am and who or what I’m connected to. Not only you want to know what will happen to you if you kill me. Or what will happen to a certain red-headed little boy.” She looked up from her Diet Pepsi. “Besides, according to all the tabloids and most of my sources, you threw your sister out on the street about nine months ago. Although considering that Em is a Quartermaine and there is that small matter of her trust fund, I don’t suppose you really threw her out on the streets. I’m sure Emily will be relieved to know that you still care. Not that your caring has ever been good for anybody before.”

“What do you want me to do?” Jason’s words were abrupt and clipped.

“Now that’s a question I like to hear.” Sarah stood up. “Let me put another quarter in the jukebox and I’ll come back and tell you what the next step is.”

Sarah made her way to the jukebox that stood in the corner of the diner. The selections were totally not to her taste, but she the music was loud enough and they were sitting close enough that it would drown out any words just in case Morgan had managed a wire she hadn’t found yet.

She had just just put about three dollars worth of quarters in when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She froze, her body tensing. She looked over at the hand. Old and wrinkly.

“Hey baby, why don’t you play something we can dance to.” The voice was slurred and heavy with alcohol and stupidity.

Sarah forced herself not to shoot the guy.

“No thank you.”

She turned to move away. His hand tightened on her shoulder. “You uppity bitch. Nobody turns me down.”

Sarah counted to ten. “I could have sworn hundreds have turned you down.”

“You bitch. You’ll pay for that.”

His hand gripped her breast in a painful squeeze and something in Sarah froze and went numb. “Like that, do you?” He leered suggestively.

Before Sarah could react, the man was lifted from her and flung hard against the wall.

“Leave her alone.”

“Are you going to make me?” The man approached Jason threateningly. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Jason Morgan.”

A look of fear crossed the man’s face.

“I....”

“Get the hell out.” Jason ordered.

Nodding furiously, the man did.

Jason looked at Sarah, pale and strangely vulnerable she looked more like the high school student she had been than the hired killer she was.

“Are you okay?”

No was her first response. Her second what did it matter anyway. Her third she said out loud. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Your gratitude overwhelms me.”

“I could have handled him myself.”

“I could tell.”

Sarah swore. Not a ladylike swear but a deep heartfelt swear. Jason blinked.

Sarah turned away from Jason trying to regain her composure.

Don’t think about it.

How could she not? < /i>

She was never really not thinking about it. Spring 1995

Sarah huddled in the corner of the small wired pen. It had been three weeks since she had eaten anything of substance. Or slept more than a few minutes at a time.

Three weeks since they had been captured after they had fled the village they had been hiding in, leaving her father’s bullet riddled body where it had fallen that morning.

They hadn’t gotten far.

Sarah looked up at her mother. Her normally strong and brave mother, a woman who had willingly followed her husband into the most dangerous parts of this world, was an obviously broken woman. Her clothes were dirty and stinking. But then so were Sarah’s. The twenty or so women kept in the pen were given no water to attend to their personal needs and there was no sewage to dispose of the human waste.

Sometimes she thought she would never be clean again.

Today she was sure of it.

Even though the ground was slowly thawing and summer beckoned, the nights were still cold and the wire pen brutally exposed to the elements. She had a slight cough and she knew she was somewhat feverish.

Her mother’s condition was one hundred times worse. She had managed to eat a little of the broth they were fed. Her mother hadn’t. It was only when Sarah forced her to drink water by dribbling it in her mouth that she drank anything.

But what worried Sarah most was her mental state. Since that morning, her mother hadn’t spoken a word. Not one.

Sarah shivered. If her mother was going crazy it only made since since her whole world had gone crazy.

There were no rules in this prison camp. No treaties. No Geneva conference to make sure prisoners of war were treated humanely. There was no U.N. No rescue. Just the bleakness of each day and her own instinctual need to survive.

A noise at the front of the pen got her attention. She recognized one of the soldiers as one of the more brutal of the men guarding them.

Her heart beginning to beat faster, she felt a sense of relief when the man’s gaze shifted past her.

And a sudden panicky alarm when it settled on her mother. The man nodded to his fellow soldiers and they grabbed her mother, dragging her almost inert body with them.

“No!” Sarah cried moving to stand. “You can’t. She isn’t well.”

“She’ll do.” The man leered, his accent thick, his English mostly broken.

“Please.” Sarah could feel the tears running down her cheek.

The man looked at the older women. She was attractive enough, but the younger girl..... Still he had heard stories about the younger girl that made him leery. He debated for a minute, his lust fighting with his common sense.

“You take her place?” The man gestured.

Sarah swallowed, taking one look at her mother. She nodded.

“You no fight. You fight I kill her.”

Sarah nodded.

The man grinned. He’d done what most of the soldiers in camp were afraid to do. Now he’d have the young girl in his bed. He quickly calculated how much he could get from his friends for the pleasure of f**king that body. More than the measly amount of money he got paid each month.

As the man grabbed her by the arm, his lewd smile and that of his companions letting her know without words what was in store for her, Sarah took one look back at her mother.

It was the last time she saw her alive.

Sarah Webber turned back to face Jason Morgan, the cool look of the person she had become firmly back in place. Looking around the diner, she knew that she had to get out of there. With a detachment she didn’t feel, she turned to Morgan. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”

She offered no explanation and he didn’t demand any, he simply followed her into the descending night.