By Audra Beberman
Chapter One
Jax looked across the bed at his sleeping sister-in-law. Bobbie was curled up in what looked like a terribly uncomfortable position. Her head was propped at an awkward angle and her legs were tucked underneath her small frame. Through the window, the backdrop of the desert mountain sunrise enflamed her red hair and Jax frowned when he thought of the previous night. An image rushed unwanted to his mind: the blackest of black desert nights lit up by flames engulfing his twin engine Cessna. Another snapshot in his memory: him lying over Bobbie to protect her after the initial blast. Jax saw himself scramble to his feet, only to stand helpless -- rooted to the spot on the runway. He had barely gotten the luggage and Bobbie off of the plane in time. Luckily they’d caught a tail wind and landed fifteen minutes ahead of his flight plan’s scheduled arrival time. Someone had tried to kill him and Bobbie, too. Yes, someone. Clearly this was an attempt to continue the death and fire scenario this unknown enemy was playing out. An unknown and mysterious monster who Jerry had been feverishly working to stop. Because of the investigating he had done, now Jerry too had suffered the consequences.
Ten months earlier, an uncharacteristically irate pique over the "accidental" death of Brenda, Lucky Spencer and other, more distant, members of both the Jacks and Spencer clans had pushed Jerry down a trail that led him to where he was at that moment.
Jax’ gaze dropped to Bobbie’s left hand where his brother had placed a rare blue diamond solitaire and a platinum wedding band only eighteen months before. At the wedding, Jax, as best man, had toasted the couple by saying, "
May the best of your past be the worst of your future." It had been exactly that way until yesterday. Jax smiled ruefully at the assault of memories that played in his mind like a montage from a movie. It had been an incredibly happy time for the combined Jacks/Spencer family. The baby that Jerry and Bobbie had adopted was a cherubic little girl with fiery hair like her mama and an easy smile like her daddy. It was as if she had been born to be half Spencer, half Jacks. For Jerry and Bobbie, not to mention Lucas, Jax, Lady Jane and John, it was love at first sight. Jax’ new step-nephew, Lucas, doted on his little sister, whom Jerry and Bobbie named Candace. To Jax it was almost as though he could see the future of his family in little Candy’s eyes. He had been amazed at the change that falling in love, being a husband and becoming a father had made in Jerry. His roguish, adventurer’s heart had found a new place to dwell… in a brownstone on Elm Street in Port Charles.But it was his loving heart and the soul of a fearless adventurer that had led Jerry here to the blazing New Mexican desert. It was Jerry’s intrepid need to right the wrongs done to their families that had led Jax and Bobbie to be sitting across from each other in a hospital nearly twenty-five hundred miles from home. Sitting an uncomfortable vigil over the man they both loved. Jax knew the basic outline of what Jerry suspected, but as usual Jerry only gave half the story when questioned. It wasn’t as though he had a relapse into his previous penchant for outright lying, but concealing the truth still worked its way into his life when he was trying to protect his family. It exasperated Jax to no end. The facts indicated that the perpetrator of the crimes had an affinity for the diametric opposites: fire and ice. Brenda had "drowned" in icy water off of a cliff, Lucky had died in a fire that burned hot and fast. Both deaths had been ruled accidental, but Jerry had doubts that niggled in the back of his mind. He tried to forget it, and avoided mentioning it to Jax for nearly six months after Lucky’s death. But other coincidental accidents of the same nature forced Jerry’s hand and he confided to Jax that he had been discreetly making inquiries with the WSB, the FBI and even his contacts at the DVX to see what he could find out about crimes of these types. Someone locked in a cold storage room at a fur salon; someone whose chauffeured Mercedes had caught fire on the Auto Bahn at 80 miles an hour, another drowning – this one in the icy waters near Alaska’s shoreline. It was as if the person was systematically wiping out both families. Like a game. A game where the game-master had the reach of an octopus that stretched across the globe. Finally there was a name. Jerry’s contacts – the good and the bad -- had all come back with the same pronouncement. Only one person could make these types of crime a reality…. But who that one person was, Jax had no way of knowing. Jerry hadn’t shared the information with him before he left Port Charles for Albuquerque. Now Jerry couldn’t say anything. Comatose, the victim of another type of burning, the kind that came from a chemical accident, and clinging to life, Jerry Jacks was fighting the fight of his life just in order to breathe in and out.
Jerry’s pale face practically blended into the sheets. The pallor of the perpetually tan and smiling face that Jax had loved his whole life was quite nearly as frightening as the assortment of machines and tubes that were attached to his brother in various places. He looked up from Jerry’s face to find Bobbie blinking the sleep from her eyes. It took a moment, but the anguish and the pain came back to her in a sudden rush and Jax could see the despair deepen her frown. But in what he had come to think of as typical "Bobbie-style," she visibly steeled herself and silently stood up. Quickly, she stretched with feline grace, kissed her husband’s beard-rough cheek and patted Jax on the shoulder as she headed straight for the chart on the foot of Jerry’s hospital bed. Her eyebrows lifted in surprise at something she read. As footsteps approached, she hurriedly put the chart back in its place… nurse or not, family members were not supposed to look at the medical charts of patients.
