Prompt: Cardboard juice boxes
 

“It was an inside party; we know that much.” Jason’s large hands fell on his jean-clad hips as he leaned against the leather couch in his best friend’s penthouse. “Did we get a run on how much money was actually stolen?”

Sonny nodded, sifting through a disorganized pile of loose papers on his desk before finding the memo with Benny’s hastily scrawled numbers on it. “A little over five-twenty – most of it in unmarked C notes.”

Jason nodded and rubbed his hand over his mouth, thinking. Five hundred and twenty thousand wasn’t going to send them to the poorhouse; it was chump change in comparison to their actual holdings. But the money wasn’t important in this situation. The only thing that truly mattered was finding out who was responsible for the theft. “We’ll know the instant the person tries to spend it.”

“Within the tri-state area?” Sonny repeated, reaching for his bourbon. “Definitely.”

“What else was in that file from Benny?”

The moblord walked toward the desk, pausing as he glanced over his shoulder at his old friend. “Something else…It’s a lot bigger than the money, Jason.” The enforcer stared back, his arms crossed over his chest, and Sonny sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Benny and boys have every reason to believe that whoever took the money also took the copy of the shipment files that disappeared yesterday.”

His right-hand-man’s eyes turned to stone, but Sonny didn’t see any flicker of surprise or disbelief there. “I was hoping that wasn’t the case.”

The kingpin shrugged, the movement tight and forced. He and the rest of the men in the inner circle had been struggling to stay level-headed and rational after the files disappeared, but they knew the situation was combustible. Whoever was responsible for the theft was playing for keeps; the rules of engagement had been abandoned, and for the first time in several years, Sonny was unsure of how to proceed. “The money is the least of our problems if that’s true – and if the file gets into the wrong hands.”

“It was an inside job – it had to be,” Jason responded, raking one hand through his golden spikes. “The timing, the execution – it was definitely someone who knew our schedule, our routine.”

“I’ve got Max and Francis working the guards,” Sonny replied wearily. “But I don’t think that it’s any one of them.”

Jason snorted in agreement. “Yeah, we don’t tell any one of them enough to enable them to figure out what’s going on – each guy knows his own piece, that’s it. This person saw the bigger picture, knew the whole process.”

“Durante’s been getting restless,” Sonny murmured, sinking down slowly into his favorite desk chair and absently tossing Michael’s empty juice box into the wastepaper basket. “He and Ric are doing their best to close in on us. If anything happens…”

Jason shook his head, unwilling to entertain that thought. “Have you…Have you heard anything from Lucky?”

The moblord barely glanced up at the mention of Jason’s least favorite person; some grudges died hard. “No. He’s got his hands full trying to keep Luke free after his stunt at Laura’s clinic, but the kid’s been doing his best to get Durante off our case. Luke’s loyal that way, and he passed it on.”

The enforcer remained silent, and a muscle in his jaw ticked as he thought. Lucky Spencer had stunned the whole town a couple years ago by joining the Police Academy and allegedly trying to break free of his family’s shady past. Sonny, however, had known better than to fall for it and Luke had laughingly confessed to his old friend once over a couple shots of gin that his boy was going to be working the system from the inside; once a con, always a con. The younger Spencer had proved mildly useful in the past year; Jason had to begrudgingly allow that. But if the wrong files turned up to the wrong people, he doubted that the little punk would be of any service keeping him and Sonny out of court – or possibly jail.

The shrill ring of the telephone on Sonny’s desk interrupted his train of thought, and Jason watched his best friend reach for it and bark out an irritable greeting. The mobster’s brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of the garbled speech on the other end of the line. “Hello?…Who…Yeah, I can…What? A car? Why would…Okay, it’ll be there in seven minutes. What the hell-“

But the caller had hung up, leaving Sonny to stare at the receiver in bewilderment before setting it down in the cradle. Jason, too, watched the scene unfold, nonplussed. “Who was that?”

The Cuban turned around slowly on the heel of his calfskin shoes, a puzzled expression contorting his features. “Lucky Spencer…just asked me to send a protected car down to General Hospital.”

Jason balked at the unexpected news, standing up straighter. “What the hell for?”

Sonny shrugged, throwing his hands in the air. “How should I know? He calls up, tells me to send a protected car, and hangs up. He should know better – I’ve got more important things to do than send fucking lim-“

His frustrated tirade was interrupted when the heavy oak door to PH 2 was thrown open to reveal a grim-faced Max, soon followed by his younger brother, Milo. “Boss.”

Sonny scowled and made his way to the wet bar to freshen his drink. “What?”

Max let out a controlled breath as his younger brother quickly made his way to the remote control lying on the coffee table. “We just got word that Sam McCall was shot in the street about ten minutes ago.”

Sonny and Jason both froze, and the room was entirely silent until Milo hit the Power button on the television remote. The local female news anchor appeared instantly, grimly presenting the details of a late-night shoot-out between an unknown band of armed men and a small off-duty police squad led by none other than Officer Lucky Spencer.

“They say she was caught in the cross-fire,” Max supplied quietly, shifting his weight as Jason and Sonny both stared at the television, stunned. “A TV crew arrived shortly after the last shots were fired; the men escaped and Officer Spencer’s men brought Miss McCall to GH.”

“We’ve got our guys dispatched to the scene, and we’ve contacted our boys in the PCPD,” Milo interjected, turning the volume down slightly. “We’ll know the details shortly, and we’ll be ready to proceed from there on out, Boss.”

Sonny nodded numbly, still watching the footage flash across the street. “What’s her condition?”

Milo glanced at Jason, and wasn’t surprised to find that a mask of granite had descended over the enforcer’s face. He and Miss McCall had broken up two weeks ago, and that was putting it nicely. The young woman had done her best to get Jason to be the man he was during the memory loss escapade, and her constant attempts to smother and protect him – not to mention, manipulate him – had finally caused his employer to snap and throw her out. And he dared to say, things had been a lot more peaceful at Harborview Towers ever since.

“We’re waiting for word, Sir.”

Sonny nodded, bowing his head as he struggled to think this through. “Max, ask Benny-“

“I’m on it, Boss,” the older Italian guard answered quickly without even needing to hear the rest of the order. He nudged his younger brother and the two guards quickly departed, leaving Sonny and Jason alone in the penthouse.

It was a long moment before one of them spoke.

“I thought she left town a week ago.”

Jason’s icy blue eyes met his best friend’s obsidian ones directly. “So did I.”

Sonny swore under his breath and scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “I sent her down to stay with Danny myself – on the jet.”

“She came back.”

Slowly, the two men turned toward the silent television screen again as a witness described the ordeal. Sonny hesitantly looked over at the younger man, his hand still covering his mouth. “You don’t think…”

A knock on the door interrupted him, and both men glanced up as Enzo opened the door. “Boss, Miss Webber is here to see you.”

The young woman in question entered almost instantly, causing both Sonny and Jason to blink with surprise. Elizabeth Webber was the last woman in the world either one had expected to see at the moment, but there she was, standing not two feet away from them with a large black duffel bag tucked against her side.

The brunette’s sapphire blue eyes, normally so vibrant and expressive, were solemn and dull, and Jason swallowed as he took her in. The past two years had not been kind to them; he had barely seen Elizabeth around town and when he had, she certainly hadn’t stopped to talk. The only things he knew about her were what he had learned from his little sister – Elizabeth was now a nurse at the hospital, working alongside her grandmother, Bobbie, and even Robin. She had helped save his life during the aftermath of Robin’s treatment, but had never spoken of it after the fact.

As far as he and Sonny had been concerned, Elizabeth had all but dropped off the face of the planet. She never came by the No Name; she had long since quit her shift at Kelly’s and only stopped there for coffee at dawn and chili occasionally at dusk; she never sat out on the docks any more; she hadn’t been sighted at Jake’s in years. The young woman had made absolutely no attempt to seek either of them out at all, and yet here she was, in the middle of a frigid, snowy winter night, standing in the middle of their penthouse dressed in nothing but a pair of baby pink hospital scrubs.

The penthouse was very warm – Sonny always kept the heat turned up high in winter – and Elizabeth seemed extremely grateful for that. Her pale cheeks were red, her nose raw from the cold and her teeth were still chattering slightly as her body acclimated to the warmer indoor temperature.

Jason could hear Sonny’s sharp intake of breath as their gaze drifted to her scrubs at the same time. The baby pink material lent a youthful glow to her pale skin, making her look several years younger than her age, but the pants were ripped slightly at the side and her shirt bore splotches and specks of dark crimson -- blood.

His gaze drifted to the thick black strap of the duffel bag that sat on her shoulder, and Jason’s mouth went dry when he saw her small hands. Delicate and of the purest alabaster, her long fingers were now stained with blood. She had done her best to wipe it off earlier, but the stains were still very much visible. Dried crusts of the dark liquid clung to her slender forearms, a stark contrast against the pale flesh, and he even detected a soft smear of it on her cheek, a little in her hair that she had carelessly thrown back in a messy ponytail.

“Elizabeth…” Sonny’s voice was low and rough as his own gaze lingered on the bag she held safely against her side.

The moblord’s voice made the young woman blink, and she slowly loosened her death grip on the duffel bag. “Sonny, Jason…” Her gaze strayed toward him before she deliberately and coolly brought it back to his boss. “I’m sorry to barge into your home so late, but I have something that belongs to you.”

Without any further explanation, she carefully removed the heavy bag from her shoulder and slung it down onto the floor. Sonny stared first at her then the bag, and finally crouched down next to it. The zipper rumbled like thunder in the quiet room as he opened it, and underneath he immediately saw the missing money.

Jason let out a sigh of relief at the same time that Sonny did, and Elizabeth awkwardly shuffled her feet, crossing her arms over her chest and obliviously earning an impressed look from Enzo. Finally, she spoke. “It’s all there. At least, whatever was brought in is all there.”

Sonny looked up at her, still crouching on the floor, and his voice was soft with restrained awe. “Elizabeth, how…?”

The brunette shrugged uncomfortably, shifting under Jason’s gaze but trying not to show it. “You know about Sam.”

It was a statement rather than a question, but Sonny nodded anyway and Elizabeth continued. “Then you also know that it was Manny Ruiz’s men who ambushed her in the street.”

Jason’s eyes widened; that, they hadn’t known. At least, not until that moment.

Sonny’s expression revealed nothing, and he nodded slightly to get her to continue.

Elizabeth sighed and glanced at the silent television before quickly looking away. “Fortunately, Lucky got his men to keep quiet about what really happened. Sam was supposed to be meeting a contact on Elm street – one of Ruiz’s men. She had a bag with her that she was presumably going to give to the contact, but the police burst in just as the deal was going down. One of the officers fired by mistake, and Manny’s men retaliated. Sam was shot in the street – two bullets near the coccygeal vertebrae – and the police closed in.”

Jason was watching the scene before him unfold with a feeling of remarkable detachment. It was almost as if it were one of the movies Michael so often conned him into watching with him – he couldn’t honestly accept the fact that Elizabeth Webber, looking all of nineteen years old in those ridiculous, blood-spattered scrubs that she hadn’t even bothered to hide or cover up, was standing in Sonny’s penthouse giving them the details of a business-related incident that they had only just found out about. It was disconcerting and conflicted with everything he had ever known regarding Elizabeth and the life.

“That ended it on the street,” Elizabeth continued, brushing an errant lock of dark brown hair out of her eyes. “Lucky knew what was in the bag but he couldn’t afford to bring attention to it. He called me from Elm Street and I was on the ambulance dock when Sam was brought in.”

The brunette’s dark eyes were hard, her voice neutral, and Jason didn’t like it one bit. She was too calm, too composed. He remembered a younger Elizabeth after she thought someone was trying to break into her studio shortly after the crypt incident – that Elizabeth was scared, panicked, on the verge of hysterics, and nothing had really happened. This Elizabeth wasn’t anything like that. She didn’t even seem…surprised by any of this.

“I managed to get the bag out of sight as she was being prepped.” Her dark eyes dropped to the duffel in question. “Lucky wouldn’t let me leave on my own, so I waited for one of your cars and…that’s it. Here I am.”

Sonny had been listening to all of this patiently, but his expression was identical to Jason – stunned, amazed, and looking as if the world had just tipped on its axis, the moblord simply stared up at her from his position on the floor. Enzo, who had been present for all of this, was smirking softly in the brunette’s direction with a very appreciative glow in his dark eyes. Elizabeth sighed softly and blew her bangs out of her eyes like a bored schoolgirl.

“By the way – there’s a manila folder in there, too, with some mighty important-looking documents in it.”

This time, Enzo failed to suppress a chuckle and had to turn around in order to compose himself. Elizabeth’s dark eyes glittered, following Sonny’s movements as he dug further into the bag and safely removed the incriminating schedules, handing them off to Jason. It was a moment before he could speak; he didn’t quite know what to say when a situation like this presented itself.

“Thank you.”

The words seemed sorely lacking, but they had tumbled out anyway. The corner of Elizabeth’s mouth hooked upward. “You’re welcome. But…” Sonny quirked a dark brow at her, prompting the brunette to grin. “You do realize that Luke owns you now.”

The kingpin laughed, showing off his trademark dimples. “And what about you, Elizabeth? Do you own us now?”

The joke – which cloaked a more serious underlying question – caused the smile to drop off of Elizabeth’s face, replaced with a more serious, if not grim, look. “I have nothing to do with the two of you.”

Jason didn’t know why, but the words – or maybe the cavalier manner with which the little brunette spoke them – made him wince. Sonny didn’t appear comfortable with them, either.

“But you and Lucky handled the situation,” he pressed, standing up to his full height in front of her. “You helped us, Elizabeth.”

Her brows were slightly furrowed, as if to emphasize the fact that one thing had little to do with the other in her mind. “I helped my family, Sonny – I helped the Spencers.”

Again, Jason cringed as Sonny dropped his hands to his hips and tried to make sense of the situation. But Elizabeth was quicker, and she chuckled humorlessly to herself as Enzo watched her unabashedly with rapt fascination. “You think I don’t know that Luke is almost as deep in this…shipping business as you are?”

The question stunned both Sonny and Jason, neither of whom had ever assumed that Elizabeth knew anything more about their business except the broadest details – namely that it was illegal and that it wasn’t supposed to be spoken of. She wasn’t supposed to know what it was that they were shipping or who was involved.

The young woman stepped closer, her voice lower, softer, and slightly amused. “You think I don’t know that Luke was the one that helped…eliminate the man that ‘passed on’ his territory and valuable shipping routes to you? That you make one-hundred-and-twenty-percent of a profit on each case of…on each case that goes through undetected?” Jason and Sonny were growing increasingly uncomfortable under the veritable barrage of the details of their illegal dealings, but Elizabeth wasn’t done yet. “You think that I don’t know that if you two go down, Luke goes down, too?”

Her sapphire eyes had regained their warmth and tenderness as the little brunette shook her head. “I’m a Spencer, Sonny, in case you’ve forgotten. Not by birth, but in every way that matters. I will always protect Luke and his family just as I know that they’ll always protect me, and if that means that I have to protect you, too, well…you’ll just get lucky occasionally, I guess.”

She tugged at the sleeves of her scrubs, preparing to meet the bitter night temperatures once more. “I have to get back to-“ A soft buzzing noise cut her off, and Elizabeth cursed under her breath and scrounged around in her pocket for her pager. One look at the number had her cursing again and looking around for a telephone, which a stunned Sonny numbly pointed out to her.

“Thanks,” she mumbled in reply, hurriedly punching in the numbers. “Bobbie? What is it? Oh, shit. Yeah, Dr. Quartermaine saw me when we brought her in…I don’t know. Okay, okay, I’m coming right now. Thanks, Bobbie.”

She hung up hurriedly and looked about herself for a moment before remembering that she hadn’t brought anything else with her. Sonny, who had finally regained the presence of mind to speak, finally did. “Is everything okay?”

Jason watched as she snorted. “No – I’m supposed to be in the OR with Dr. Quartermaine. I have to go.” She tugged her sleeves down again, not looking forward to rushing out into the night again but knowing that she had no choice. Bobbie was covering for her and she had to do her best to get to the hospital, like, five minutes ago. Enzo quickly obliged her by reaching for the door, but Sonny’s voice stopped the young guard before he had it open.

“Elizabeth – can I ask you one more question?”

She turned around and stared at him through big doe eyes. “What?”

“Sam…what’s her condition?”

The brunette tried not to read too much into the fact that it was Sonny inquiring about Sam’s well-being and not Jason, who still had yet to say a word, and she couldn’t keep her lips from curling into an unforgiving smirk. “Well, I don’t know, but judging by what the two of you are going to do to her, my best advice to her would be to make a break for that white light.”

Sonny’s eyes widened and even Jason froze. Of all the possible outcomes of this evening, this had been the least probable: Elizabeth Webber coming to their rescue with an attitude so detached and indifferent that Luke Spencer would have been damn proud of her. Sonny had known that Jason had broken up with Elizabeth because she couldn’t handle the life they led, and he couldn’t come to terms with the fact that not only was the brunette capable of maintaining her composure in these situations and thinking with a cool head, but she was already part of the life. Lucas Lorenzo Spencer, Senior, had seen to that. And he found himself wondering, for the first time, why he himself hadn’t seen it.

“Goodnight,” Elizabeth nodded as Enzo held the door for her. “And Sonny? Try to be a bit more careful with your money in the future.” Her eyes darted to the flashing footage of Sam McCall’s wounded body lying in the dirty snow on the corner of Elm and Rivercourt before drifting back to Jason’s. “Not to mention, your women.”