By Audra Beberman

 

Chapter Fourteen

           

          Lorenzo Spencer, known of late as the Keeper, stood at the entrance to his vault of collected people. He scanned the horizon for his henchman's nondescript Ford Taurus. He had been expected to return more than three hours before. If he did not return in one hour, Lorenzo would assume he'd either been unable to complete his assigned task, thus deserted -- fearing the wrath of his master, or he'd been captured and returned to the army. If the former was the case, the Jacks children will be dealt with later. In his own way. What was that old adage? Why send a mouse to do the work of a man? The Keeper bared his teeth in another of his awful, self-amused sneers.

          Four days passed and more people from Port Charles took rooms at the Angel Fire Resort. Jerry had relented in his adamant need for secrecy. First Mac and V were told about Bobbie and Chloe and then Jerry himself placed the call to his stepdaughter, Carly. Jax informed Alexis and Ned about Chloe and Brenda. Jerry, Bobbie, Jax and Chloe had friends who would cross a much further distance than twenty-five hundred miles to help them. They came because each of the people that flew in commercially or on their private jets owed the Jacks Brothers and their families something; loyalty, money, appreciation, gratitude, love or in some cases, a favor.

          V was the first to arrive, with her husband, Simon Prentiss at her side. V was a loyal friend to Jax, and she owed the Jacks brothers, Chloe and Bobbie for convincing her to give Simon a chance. If not for the four of them and Ned and Alexis, she'd still be a lonely record company executive. Now she was happily married, madly in love and quietly three months pregnant. She and Simon would not tell anyone the happy news until after this crisis passed.

          Next to arrive was the Port Charles Police Commissioner, Mac Scorpio with his part-time detective, part-time writer wife, Felicia. Mac owed nothing to either brother, but Bobbie was more than a friend -- she was family to Mac and Felicia. Years before, Bobbie's daughter BJ's death allowed their daughter Maxie to live via a donated heart. Aside from the fact that Bobbie had been Felicia's best friend for the past fifteen years, Felicia's newest friend, Chloe was also in trouble. Mac thought he'd have more influence over the local police as a fellow lawman than Luke, Jax, John or Jerry would.

          Ned and Alexis flew in on the L&B Records' jet from the last leg of "Eddie Maine's" concert tour in San Francisco. They were as close to Chloe and Jax as they were to V and Simon. The six of them had been through an awful lot together. Monte Carlo, then Las Vegas where a marriage of convenience bound four of the six of them together in a very odd way. Not to mention the time Jerry, John and Jax were in jail for violating RICOH statutes and Alexis became Jax' lawyer, and Ned lent him money for bail. At the moment, Ned was on his cell phone in a corner of Jerry's hospital room trying to track down Julia Barrett to see if she'd be available for a meeting in New Mexico. Ned didn't want to give away the fact that Brenda might still be alive, it wasn't fair to get Julia's hopes up until they found her sister alive.

          Alexis herself still owed Jerry and Jax a debt of gratitude for getting her safely home from the failed attempt to chase her stepmother, Helena, halfway across the Middle East. She and Jax had crashed in the Sahara, and Jerry rescued them three days later. If not for Jax' humor and calm and Jerry's heroic behavior, she'd be either insane or dead.

          Lastly, Jason, Carly and five-year-old Michael flew from their home on Grand Cayman Island. Carly wanted to see Jerry, her brother Lucas and her sister Candace. To be there if they needed her, as they always were for her. In her heart of hearts, she knew that her family loved her, and she loved them. Unfortunately, she was unable to adequately express that love; she always found a way to destroy a happy moment. But mostly, Carly was there to do whatever was possible to get her mother away from her monstrous grandfather. Whether or not they fought, Carly and Bobbie were bonded more tightly than a mother and daughter who lived in the same house their whole lives.

          It secretly thrilled Carly that her mother was so happy with Jerry. It assuaged the guilt she felt over breaking up Bobbie and Tony's marriage. She once asked the question, "Does anyone have a mother more beautiful than mine?" She had been delighted when Jerry responded by saying, "It's my pleasure to say no." It was in that moment, in the look that passed between Bobbie and Jerry, that Carly knew what she wanted - a love like theirs. It took some doing to extricate herself from her marriage to AJ Quartermaine, but with that done, she was finally living her dream too. Now she wanted to try and do one good thing to help her mother live to enjoy her dream.

          Now all the players had gathered. The local police had been left out of the loop - purposefully. Jerry, Jax, John and Luke trusted their friends and relatives, as Luke so charmingly phrased it, "a damn sight more than any local law enforcement." The army had come to collect the Keeper's sidekick, one William Conroy. They had been overjoyed to have him in custody and promised to aid the Jacks and Spencer family with any information or help they could possibly provide. The Jacks family thanked them profusely and ushered them out the door.

          "Army intelligence being what it is," said Luke, "they'd end up rescuing the bad guy!" So, the Army was also left out of the big picture for the meantime.

          Jerry knew that the army couldn't help them anyway. It was up to each individual to play his or her assigned part and wait. He only hoped Bobbie could hold out for as long as they needed her to. The trap was set.

          A week in captivity was enough to make Bobbie a little stir crazy and very agitated. She believed that Jerry and the rest of the family realized she was missing and where she had been taken. She was worried that Lucas and Candy would be afraid without her. She sighed; she knew there was nothing she could do about that particular problem at the moment.

          Much worse than the amount of physical pain her father had inflicted on her in the past week, were the sheer boredom and the worry about Jerry and their children. Now she wandered around the sterile little chamber with only a simple silk slip on. Her skin hurt if she wore anything else. Lorenzo had hurt her enough to weaken her physically, but her iron will was intact. Bobbie crossed to the mirror on the bathroom door and she examined the bruises on her cheeks and the marks across her back and upper arms. She had no viable first aid available, so the bruises would have to heal without ice and the slashes would hopefully heal without infection or scarring. She had blocked the lash that her father wielded with such ferocity by holding up her arms, in order to spare her eyes and her face. Six days of hellish torture. Why he didn't just kill her was still a puzzle, what else could he want?

          He hadn't touched her since the day before last, he was obviously otherwise occupied. A large man with some sort of stun gun had delivered Bobbie's last few meals. Bobbie Jacks would never have known that the stick he carried was a stun gun. Unfortunately, she'd felt the receiving end of that stun as she tried to run when the Keeper opened the door on the second day. She learned quickly. Now, tired and in pain, yet not entirely without hope, Bobbie sat alone in her suite surveying the contents of her purse.

          The Keeper had left her alone, purposefully, allowing her time for her mind to reel from the information he told her and to maybe allow her to become angry enough to provoke him into another attack. Two days before, he'd shown her several cleverly edited videos of a funeral - supposedly Jerry's. But Bobbie was on the ball. She looked at Jane's attire and recognized the dress she had worn to a funeral for someone else months before. It turned out that the dress had been ruined at the cleaners and never worn again. Jax' hair was also cut much shorter now than it was in the video. Her clever and observant mind had earned her a black eye. Bobbie reached up to the tender skin and smiled. He would not best her in the mind game department, although physically she was worn and she was afraid the time was coming that she'd be unable to fend him off at all.

          She shook her head to clear the fearful "what ifs" that kept nagging at her and turned her attention to the task at hand. She'd been captured with her purse slung over her shoulder, and that's where it had remained when she was transported to the dungeon. She had placed it in the drawer nearest the bed so her father wouldn't see it. Now she laid out the contents of her shoulder bag on the bed, with her back to the door.

          A mother was always prepared. Her bag was heavy, but she was used to the weight. She found a hairbrush, Candy's pacifier, some mints, her wallet, a plastic container with the Cheerios that Candy loved, a lipstick, tissues, a pen, a card reminding her of a dental appointment, Lucas' watch, and something large and heavy. It was a metal box. Peculiar, it wasn't hers and she didn't remember putting it in there. When she looked at the monogram it said "JJ" on a metal plate. Well that could mean John, Jane, Jasper or Jerry Jacks. Bobbie imagined one of them had put it into her bag for safekeeping. The latch on the box was stubborn. Finally she used the end of the hairbrush to pry open the box and what lay inside astonished her. Now she knew for whom the "JJ" stood. For on the red velvet lining lay one of John's beloved Smith and Wessons, fully loaded, ready for action.