Strange Bedfellows
Fourteen
His cell phone trilled a saucy
Latin beat, waking Alejandro Garcia from a deep slumber.
It was the first day in nearly four years that he had slept past six a.m.
“Si?”
“Detective Garcia?”
The caller was hesitant and wary. “You
gave me this number to call… I work at the courthouse building.”
Alex sat bolt upright.
He was suddenly wide-awake. “Yes,
I remember you,” the detective said. “Do
you have something for me?”
The young clerk hesitated.
“I am not sure,” he hedged. “I
was visiting another clerk in the records department yesterday.
She was filing some papers and I think I saw Miss Jensen’s name on one
of them. I couldn’t really take
the time to look too closely.”
“Did you see anything else?
What kind of document was it?”
“I didn’t get a good look.
But…”
Alex stifled his impatience
with the young man. “But, what?
Did you see something else that might help me locate Miss Jensen?”
“Maybe,” he finally
replied. “I saw the name
Cassadine.”
Alex was speechless with
confusion. Of all the things the
clerk could have said, the name ‘Cassadine’ never entered the detective’s
thoughts. “Cassadine?” Alex
mused. “Which one?
Nikolas? Stefan?”
A horrifying possibility
occurred to him. “Helena?”
He had heard more horror stories from his partner Marcus Taggert
about Helena Cassadine than he cared to recall.
And with Dara missing…
Alex put a halt to his runaway
thoughts. There was no reason to
jump to conclusions merely because the clerk had seen the name Cassadine on an
official document with Dara’s name on it as well. But why would such a document even exist?
Dara’s contact with the strange imports to Port Charles was limited to
court battles against Alexis Davis.
“That’s all I saw,” the
clerk apologized. “Will it
help?”
“I don’t know,” Alex
admitted truthfully. “But it is a
start.” He climbed from the bed.
“And if it leads me to Miss Jensen, I promise that I will remember the
part you played.”
Alex bounded into the bathroom
and started the shower going. He
wasn’t much of a breakfast person normally, so a glass of orange juice before
he showered would suit him just fine.
Automatically the detective
glanced toward the window before entering the kitchen.
Alex was careful to keep the kitchen blinds closed after receiving a
Christmas card from his sixty-year-old neighbor.
In it she thanked Alex for the lovely view of his naked body that she had
enjoyed every morning that past year.
Just thinking about it brought
another blush to his dusky skin. Dara,
on the other hand, found it all very amusing.
“I can’t blame her,” she laughed and ran a teasing hand along his
thigh. “I enjoy looking at you
myself.”
They’d made love with
abandon there on Garcia’s kitchen floor.
The room echoed with the sounds of their mutual pleasure.
There was no way Alex would
believe that what he had shared with Dara that night and others was merely sex.
She may have never said the words, but for Alex it was clear.
All he needed to do was find Dara and confront her face to face.
No matter what her mouth might say, Alex knew that her eyes would tell
the truth.
He was counting on that.
