Disclaimer:
This is the introduction and part one of the serial fanfic Icarus Falling. This fanfic contains characters from the NBC television show, The Pretender. This is story purely the product of my all too vivid imagination and is not intended to convey anything other than the fact I may need psychiatric care. I do not lay any claim to the characters nor do I seek to perform any copyright infringement by writing about these characters. No small animals or egos were injured during the writing of this fanfic. I hope you enjoy this first edition of my fanfic that shall continue until I finish the story or the voices in my head decide I am no longer worthy. New editions should be available each week. I hope you like it, please send comments, hate mail and other forms of non-monetary re-embursement to me at Pretender7@geocities.com.
Without further ado, I bring you…

The Winds of Change, Part One of Icarus Falling

Chapter 1 (rating PG)

Introduction

The Centre, SL-17, August, 1969
 
"Jarod, I need you to pay attention," the precise, accented voice of Jarod’s mentor, Sydney, anchored his mind and he was able to return to reality.
"Sydney, I -- I can’t do it." The young Pretender stammered, his wild eyes pleading for some explanation. Sydney had no answer to give him. "The numbers just don’t make sense."

"Jarod, you must do it. Thousands of people are counting on you, their lives and their homes are in danger and we need to know. Look at the computer models again. Analyze the data. I know you can do it." The stoic glare on Sydney’s companion, Dr. William Raines, told quite another story.
The Brainchild super-computer was furiously calculating sheet after sheet of numbers, each time coming up with wildly different answers. Both doctors knew this should not be happening, mathematics had never lied before, but somehow now it was. The two Program Directors had agreed to bring in a Pretender to analyze the situation. Jarod was the natural choice.

"Sydney, the numbers don’t add up. There is no flaw with the program algorithm and I can’t see where the data is incomplete, but the answers. . . ." Jarod was as unaccustomed to failure as he was to sunlight, something he had not seen since entering this place.

Raines had seen enough. "It’s hopeless. Put him back in his room," the two large men near the only door to the simulation lab practically leapt to Jarod on Raines’ gravelly command. "You will answer for this failure, Sydney." He couldn’t help twisting the knife. Kyle was proceeding as planned but no one seemed to recognize the brilliance of his work. They only seemed to care about Sydney and his little wunderkind Jarod. Raines relished moments like these.

"Wait!" The insistence of Jarod’s young voice stopped the much bigger men in their tracks. "I think I’ve got something. Sydney, do you have any more of these things?" Jarod said looking at the Brainchild. Only seven were known to be in existence.

"Perhaps, Jarod. Why?"

"I just wondered what would happen if we ran two sets of data and then overlaid them to dampen out the differences."

Sydney’s inquiring glance towards Raines threw him over the edge. Raines had absolutely no intention of helping the miscreant out of this one. Besides, only a handful of people, Sydney not included, knew about Raines’ Brainchild in SL-27. Very few more knew about SL-27 itself. There were no other such machines at the Centre and Raines had no qualm about keeping Sydney in the dark that he had one too. No matter how may lives were at stake. "You know the answer to that question, Sydney. You were the only one with the Department’s approval to obtain a Brainchild. Pity that we couldn’t have proven Jarod wrong in this case as well."

Sydney, unfazed, turned quickly away from his colleague and towards the young Pretender. "Jarod, try to use the methods we have been working on. Close your eyes and expand yourself. See the data in a new way. Don’t just look at the data, feel the data." Sydney knew this was a risk. The Centre did not approve of his dabbling in extra-sensory perception. Sydney just couldn’t dismiss the many successes he had achieved with Jarod using these controversial methods. Sydney was sure Raines had a Brainchild. His ego was not too large to blind him to Raines and his antagonism towards Jarod and Sydney’s other Pretenders. Sydney knew that this incident would be immediately reported to the Tower. Jarod’s ESP sims and training had been continuing despite the Tower Directive to the contrary, but he had the data and the successes to back up his research. He just might win this one, and maybe Raines knew it.

"Okay, Sydney, I’ll try." Jarod closed his eyes and his hands instinctively grabbed for the data sheets. His breathing began to slow. Soon the shallow breaths of air began to worry Sydney. Jarod had never been this deep before. Raines, on the other hand, began to fear Jarod had lapsed into a hypnotic state. His recent use of hypnosis as a way to control the Pretenders and eliminate any bad experiences and ill feelings from them was going full force now. Sydney had deliberately been kept out of this program. His moral stance would undoubtedly have been destructive. "East. The storm will move east and make landfall somewhere east of Mobile, or right at Mobile Bay. That’s where it will go."
Jarod collapsed.

"Take him to the Infirmary, now!" Now it was Sydney’s turn to bark the orders and cause the men to jump. Privately he mused that they would jump and move like that for anyone who commanded them to. The Centre bred them for that. "Raines, let the Tower know about Jarod’s prediction. I will notify the local authorities."

"Sydney," Jarod’s weak voice nearly pleaded.

Sydney jerked around, concerned, "Yes?"

"It was just a sim, right? There is no Hurricane Camille, is there?"

"Yes, Jarod," said Sydney, feigning the tone of the concerned parent. Somehow, though, it always came out more condescending than caring. "It was just a sim, just like they all are." It was not the first, and would not be the last time Sydney would lie to Jarod. That didn’t mean he liked it, but he did agree with the Tower Confidentiality Directive regarding the Pretenders. If they knew how many of the sims were not re-enactment’s of past events but experiments in future or current events, they may not be able to take the pressure. Most of the Pretenders were still under twenty and still needed protection. Sydney believed this.

As the room cleared, Raines took careful note of the outcome of this ‘sim.’ Kyle had no idea what to do with the data, while Jarod’s idea had some merit. He recognized the tangible benefits of this information. He would continue to not only watch Jarod’s progress in person, but would begin to monitor Sydney’s files as well. What Sydney never knew was that Raines’ position at the Centre allowed him to.

* * * * *

Part One
Parker, Arizona
August 5, 1997 1600 PST

The sun drew a hot bead across the sandy desert floor. Falling at nearly 120 miles per hour, Jarod hardly noticed. The skyboard he had been riding for the last eight thousand feet felt like an extension of his body. His lean, acutely muscled frame twisted and turned with the board displaying the grace of a figure skater. He was currently doing a move he called the ‘Twister.’ Similar to ‘Helicoptering,’ this move would have been impossible on a normally configured skyboard. Jarod’s board, however, was hardly normal. He had carefully taken both ends of the board and first ‘cooked’ them flat then twisted the blades on the end into a twist pattern. The resultant torsional forces were incredible. If not for the g-suit, he may have blacked out.

Ted was no slouch at filming, but Jarod’s erratic movements were very difficult to track. The insane movement of Jarod, combined with his skyboard’s extra drag and lift made station-keeping all but impossible for Ted, who had to rely on a spread-eagle position and years of practice. The extra ‘wind-pockets’ Jarod had sewed into Ted’s jumpsuit did help a little, but it still took all his years of jumping to stay with his partner. Practice had, though, nearly proven perfect.

Ted figured that Jarod was practicing for competition, because this was the only move he did anymore. Even then, it was strange activity to only practice one move on a jump. Skysurfing routines were seamless dances of choreographed move after choreographed move, each one filmed by a highly trained partner. A competition jumper should have had his filming partner here practicing camera angles and station keeping. That bothered Ted. Of course, a lot of things bothered Ted about Jarod. Hell, anyone who spun, upside-down, time and time again was definitely a strange fish. Work was work, however, and Ted hadn’t been having a particularly good year at the airfield. After movies like Navy Seals and Drop Zone, the skydiving industry had been the place to be. With national coverage of SkySurfing championships and other ‘Xtreme’ sports Ted had enough business to keep the bills paid, but he wasn’t raking in the money he had counted on.

Normally, the ex-Green Beret would have dismissed Jarod’s request to rent the plane, pilot and a filming partner for an entire month as either the random desire of a spoiled rich kid or the fantasy of some nut, but now he knew it was neither. Anyway, the $25,000 cash in advance plus Jarod’s insistence on covering all incurred expenses for unlimited jumps convinced Ted that money talked and Jarod jumped. This was the one-hundredth jump they had made in the last month, a pace that Ted was beginning to find tiresome. For Jarod, he thought, it must have been hell.

Having worked some black bag operations both pre- and post-Desert Storm, Ted had a very keen sense of observation. In his heart, he just couldn’t bring himself to believe that Jarod was a competitor. Anyone with his bankroll should have a private plane and a sponsor. Besides, Ted kept up with the competitors and he had never heard of Jarod Bravo before. He didn’t know everyone, but Jarod’s talent wouldn’t go unnoticed for long. His equipment had too many military characteristics for a true pure civilian jumper, and Jarod’s mannerisms were strictly military. Jarod was probably an Army-brat, second or third generation.

Of course, it didn’t take a brain surgeon to notice the two inch diameter black cylinder fiberglassed to Jarod’s skyboard. What piqued Ted’s interest was Jarod’s quick dismissal of the object. He explained it was a homing beacon in case they became lost. Ted knew from the quality of the other equipment Jarod used that that was too large for a homing beacon.

Initially, their jump schedule had been fairly easy. They would jump at dawn, hike back to the camp and jump again right at dusk. Jarod was insistent they jumped at a specific location each time. Not the same specific location, but a specific location each time none the less. Initially written off as foolishness by Ted, this insistence on the exact jump point was religious. Jarod had the pilot install a state of the art GPS system and he re-calibrated the altimeter daily. He gave exact three-dimensional coordinates and double-checked each of the pilot’s jump commands with his own equipment. Twice he had jumped early because his instruments had differed from the pilots.

Like most ex-Rangers, Jarod wore no reserve chute. Jarod wore the conventional fully articulating parachute, but never adjusted his path of fall. Most skydivers, Ted included, relished spending each moment in the air and wore the articulating chutes to enable them to steer their flight and in most cases prolong the flight by catching updrafts or winds. Jarod never adjusted his flight, and seemed genuinely upset one jump after having to flare for a cactus. By the time Ted reached the ground, Jarod had invariably landed, secured his chute and was making notes in the red notebook he always carried.

Over the course of the month, they had gradually increased the jump schedule to three and sometimes four jumps per day. Jarod demanded they make four jumps during one severe windstorm. Ted and the pilot had grounded Jarod after two insane jumps nearly killed everyone involved and Jarod reluctantly agreed to postpone jumping only to promptly wander off into the desert until the storm was done. Jarod never seemed to tire. The light in his trailer was on after Ted went to sleep and Jarod usually had the coffee ready in the morning as well. One thing Ted could not complain about, though: his coffee maker had never run so well.

The assigned break-off point was two thousand feet and upon reaching it Ted waved to Jarod and deployed his main canopy. The satisfying snap of the nylon chute above him and the familiar jerk of instantaneous deceleration let Ted know, even before he looked, that he had a good opening. Jarod, however, continued to plunge at an incredible rate.

Ted began a slow right turn with heavy flare in order to make sure that Jarod had achieved a similar good opening. No matter how many times you jumped, the first priority is always to check the opening, Ted reminded himself, but the sight below would afford him no more time for concern for self.

Jarod had continued to plunge through one thousand feet and was coming dangerously close to the minimum height for the chute to deploy. Ted watched in horror as Jarod plummeted to five hundred feet, still inverted in his Twister move. Ted began to fear Jarod had blacked out and would soon be crushed on the rocks below.

At four hundred feet, Jarod jerked himself upright and deployed his chute. At that altitude, the three seconds that the chute required to deploy would eat up all but one hundred feet. Jarod estimated his ground impact speed would be a stout 35 miles per hour, roughly equivalent to sprinting headlong into a wall. Unfortunately, the g-suit did not help much with this and he couldn’t afford to break his fall in any way.

Ted was surprised that Jarod was even moving when he reached the ground. To be sure, Jarod had only managed to pull himself up and start to dust himself off, despite the large lead he had obtained. Somehow, Ted wasn’t surprised by the goofy smile across Jarod’s face: this guy wasn’t bothered by anything. "Are you all right?"

"Scary, wasn’t it?" Jarod had a way of saying exactly the wrong thing to Ted.

"What the hell kind of stunt was that? You could have been killed!"

"Killed? No, I could have survived the impact with this sand about fifteen miles an hour faster without any permanent injuries. I had ten more feet. You’re right, though, I really shouldn’t have waited any longer." Jarod said this in a manner that Ted filed away as very dry sarcasm. It just wasn’t possible that Jarod could have planned it that close. "Oh, I guess I dropped something," Jarod added as he reached for the Tasmanian Devil Pez container, wrapped in a plastic bag, half buried in the sand at his feet. "Wouldn’t want to lose this now."

Ted’s mind couldn’t keep up with its surroundings. For one of the first times in his professional career, he made the wrong judgment about the events occurring around him. His conscious mind struggled to believe that Jarod had dropped a small plastic Pez dispenser, filled with candy, upon crashing into the ground -- no -- crashing into the one patch of loose sand for a hundred yards in any direction. His mind skimmed over the meaningless detail that the candy dispenser should have been crushed in the fall. His mind came up with absolutely no reason why the container should be wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag. His mind just simply could not accept the only possible truth: Jarod had placed it there prior to the jump. What he couldn’t accept is that Jarod, without making a single correction in his fall, had pinpointed his landing point to within a meter. He didn’t accept it because it should have been impossible.

* * *

Following the hike back to base camp, Jarod was in unusually good spirits. Ted was much more quiet and subdued because he couldn’t get it out of his head that something about Jarod just didn’t make any sense. His background story turned out to be legitimate, although Ted believed that Jarod had probably done his share of black bag operations as well. No one has that little background information unless it is fabricated. The CIA covered its tracks well, but they didn’t have the heart (or the real desire) to add all of the real things people had: a bad check here, a jealous lover there, a pet iguana, etc. CIA backgrounds were carefully written to avoid the ‘falling from the sky’ syndrome, but once you read a few of them (including Ted’s own background) you spotted them as surely as a dime-store romance sticks out from "Moby Dick." Ted was never afraid of the ex-Ops guys because he knew dozens of them. Jarod was just different.

After each jump Jarod would get on the laptop that he carried everywhere, except to jump, and spend about two hours uploading information into a spreadsheet program. The data was uploaded and then Jarod would set the computer calculating for another hour. During this time Jarod usually showered and this gave Ted the time to examine Jarod’s equipment a little. Ted never really felt bad about breaking into Jarod’s room to check out his stuff, because Ted always figured that Jarod knew what he was doing and didn’t care. Jarod’s password program and firewall were beyond Ted’s limited computer skills (MS DOS was beyond Ted’s skills most of the time) and Ted saw, and replaced, three ‘triggers’ set in the room to detect entry. He figured that Jarod had five actually set.

After the data had been analyzed, Jarod would interpret the results and then, most amazingly to Ted, he would delete the results. All that data down the drain. Ted wasn’t dumb enough, though, to ask him why. Jarod might have known about the very high tech surveillance equipment in the trailer, but then again maybe not. Ted wasn’t dangerous, but as a former intelligence operative, he was incessantly curious. Besides, it was his trailer and he didn’t want anyone trashing it. That was how the rationalized it anyway. After the data dump, Jarod would start entering information for the second jump of the day, review the video of the last jump, and the cycle would repeat.

Today, Ted knew it was different. Instead of showering, Jarod impatiently paced the room waiting for the computer to give the results. As he paced he kept time with a small hand-held football game that until last week had been a relic from Ted’s childhood. Jarod had seen the game and asked if he could fix it. Ted reluctantly agreed because he suspected the obvious: Jarod had also had one of these when he was a kid and wanted to play it. The only thing that seemed to stop him now was the end zone.

Once the data produced an answer, Jarod clapped his hands together, smiled and jumped into the shower. After a brief shower, he re-entered the room, clad only in a towel, and began to pack.

* * *

Ted tried to feign surprise when Jarod announced his departure an hour later, but he realized it was a futile gesture. "I’ll be sorry to see you go, I’ve had a good time filming you. You really know what the hell you are doing up there."

"I used to be an instructor."

"Yeah? Well, I hope you enjoyed your time here. You still have a couple of days rental on the plane."

"That’s okay. Maybe you can take my friends up. They should be here tomorrow or the next day. I’ve got what I need and I really should be going. After all, it looks like it’s going to be a busy season."

"Busy season?" The fact that Jarod had mentioned friends was not lost on Ted, but he was trying to be polite and not jump for joy at the thought of more paying customers like Jarod. He may have a good year after all.

"Yes, the prevailing climate conditions should produce a lot of storms this season."

"Storms? What like hurricanes and such?"

"Uh huh."

"Are you some kind of storm junkie or something?" Ted had encountered this type before. Once the thrill of life from man-made danger had begun to pale, the next step was natural disasters. The number of ex-SF guys who ran around the country looking for tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, etc. was hard to believe. Still, he’d never have guessed that about Jarod.

"Something like that. I’m more of a meteorologist."

"Oh." That fit even less.

"My friends should be here soon and I’d like you to give them this." Jarod handed Ted a small briefcase. "They should be able to figure out the combination."

"Okay," said Ted.

"Ask the witchy one to show you her scar."

"Her scar. Right."

"Got it?"

"Yeah."

"Oh yeah, I erased the data so that each previous jump wouldn’t effect the jump we were making."

"Huh?" Stammered Ted, knowing full well what Jarod was implying. Ted may not have understood what Jarod meant, but he did know this man was someone to watch. Someone Ted wasn’t so sorry to see go. Ted was becoming a little more leery of these friends of his. "Ah, do you need a ride to town?"

"Let’s fly." The look on Jarod’s face told Ted that Jarod would be traveling light when he left. Ted noted that the skyboard Jarod displayed now had none of its predecessor’s modifications.

This time, Jarod was doing it for fun.

The Winds of Change

Chapter 2 (rating PG)

The Centre, Blue Cove, Delaware
Infirmary Building, Level 3
August 7, 1997 2000 EST

Sydney felt both pity and contempt for the silent figure lying before him. Not long ago, this gnarled, bandaged form had been the at least animate body of his colleague, and one time friend, Dr. William Raines. The Centre had the best medical facilities available. Even that might not be enough. With severe burns over sixty percent of his already frail, damaged body and severe tissue damage and scarring inside his lungs, the doctors were not optimistic about Raines’ chance for regaining consciousness.

Sydney did not hold the illusion that had the roles been reversed Raines would be here visiting him now. Raines had lost the capacity to feel years ago. He lost that ability about the same time he lost the ability to breathe unaided by the oxygen tank which was his undoing. Sydney quietly noted the bitter irony of the situation. Even now, the steady infusion of oxygen keeping Raines alive under the burn tent mirrored the labored breathing which for years had been his dark trademark. How bitterly similar and yet tragically different were these two extensions of Raines’ existence.

In 1982, Raines had disappeared for three months. When he returned, he was chained to the portable oxygen bottle he carried since. Raines reportedly had undergone surgery for lung and throat cancer. It was after this that Sydney noticed the changes in him. He lost his humanity. Something in Raines died on the operating table that day. Maybe it was his soul. Never a personable man, Raines deteriorated over the years to a skulking ghoul, haunting the Centre and terrorizing the Pretenders, young and old alike. Even to this day, he evoked far greater amounts of fear than respect from co-workers and students alike.

It had not always been that way, Sydney recalled. Sydney, his brother Jacob and Raines had been hired in the early sixties for the Centre’s Pretender Projects. They had been a dynamic team of young idealists in those early days. The world was theirs and the Centre provided the avenues for research and advancement impossible to reach outside these walls. Jacob held a Doctorate in Biology and a Masters in Organic Chemistry. Today, they would call Jacob a micro-biologist, but even then he understood more about DNA replication and gene splicing than Sydney suspected most scientists knew to this day. Raines had been a medical doctor. A pioneer in micro-surgery and unequaled in radiographic medicine, Sydney knew that current medical researchers would greatly benefit from Raines’ extensive research in chemical and radiation therapies.
Modern science was only now beginning to approach his work in the early sixties. Sydney was a certified Psychologist, a Behaviorist and the designer of the simulation projects. Sydney suspected that both his brother and Raines had underestimated his contribution to the program. Jacob had perhaps known, or was beginning to know before his accident. God knows, Jacob knew far more than Sydney ever suspected. Neither man treated him with the professional respect he felt he earned. The Centre always recruited the best talent. Money was no object to their needs. It had been an honor and a privilege to work with the Centre, or was it? Sydney was no longer so sure.

Their names were not likely to appear in any history books despite the brilliance of their many innovations. Neither would the names of Jarod, Kyle, Daniel, Bridgett, Samantha, Julie, Marc nor any of the other Pretenders ever achieve the recognition they deserved. The Centre held patents on many advances which had been created by its minions. Some of the more common of these included the microprocessor (under the name of Intel), laser technologies (under the name of Spectra-Physics), a new engine design (manufactured under license by Mazda Engineering – Rotary Engine Division), the Windows software programs (managed by first generation Pretender Billy), Doppler and Aegis radar systems (under the name of Sperry) and many other products in frighteningly common use. The Centre would not disclose the true originators of these products because exposure was death for corporations such as them. Their business was anonymity. They were paid well for it. So was Sydney.

The Centre coupled a number of the most successful Mutual Funds (managed by two first generation Pretenders) with a hard currency depository greater than most independent nations. Sydney knew the Centre would not soon run short of funding. The Centre was either exempt from or simply above scrutiny. Sydney could never decide which. The Centre never wanted for anything. Except Jarod, Sydney mused. They wanted him badly enough. Sydney knew that they would not be able to retrieve him though. Jarod had out-survived the rest of the second-generation Pretenders through intellect and sheer will. Sydney knew of no man to match him.

Jarod was the most intelligent Pretender to pass through the program but Jarod was never a true Pretender. Throughout his sims and exercises he always retained some part of himself, just with a filter, so to speak. He never truly let himself go and completely absorb the object of the sim. Sydney had been unable to break him of the habit, despite many attempts. This habit made Jarod less effective for sims of past situations. He was consequently shuttled off for the more important planning or future sims and the current event sims. In these, Jarod was unequaled. Often, Jarod’s solutions to scenarios had been real-time sent to field operatives and been implemented with outstanding results. The other Pretenders had much greater problems with these. Sydney suspected that Jarod’s insistence in maintaining self in the sim environment allowed him to use his own intellect while absorbing the surrounding conditions. Sydney recognized this talent and stopped trying to break Jarod of the habit, despite Tower directives to the contrary.

Jarod, Angelo and Julie had been Sydney’s Pretender projects for the second generation group. As was the custom, Sydney’s Pretenders never saw each other. Each one was a separate experiment. Sydney honored this command of the Tower with the same dedication as he observed each rule at the Centre, with few exceptions. Each second generation Pretender had an assigned counterpart for sims: Jarod had Kyle, Samantha had Julie, Daniel had Angelo, and Bridgett had Marc. Occasionally, the counterparts had contact with each other and performed sims together. The Centre allowed no contact between Pretenders within each generation excepting between sim partners. Samantha, Daniel and Marc had been Jacob’s second generation Pretenders. Kyle and Bridgett had been Raines' Gen-2 Pretenders. After the accident which put Jacob in a coma, Sydney took over Samantha and Raines was given Daniel and Marc. Samantha and Julie were used together in sims and had previous exposure to each other. The Tower allowed Sydney to maintain the contact between Julie and Samantha after Jacob’s accident. Sydney fostered this relationship. It seemed to help the girls.

Samantha and Julie disappeared from the Centre in 1969, which Sydney now suspected was part of Catherine Parker’s attempt to "rescue" the children. Maybe she helped, but at the time Sydney did not think so. Samantha, Julie and most of the other "rescued" children were recently found dead. Most had suffered deaths from random accidents. Sydney found this proliferation of random incidents disturbingly precise.

Daniel died in a sim accident in 1971. The simulation DSA showed Daniel trapped in an air deprivation bubble. The purpose of the sim was to study the effects of asphyxiation. As the air began to run out, Daniel had pleaded with Raines. He called his safe word, Sanctuary, repeatedly, but Raines sat unmoved. Immediately after the boy’s collapse, Raines removed him from the chamber and attempted to revive him but was unsuccessful. Daniel’s death had been a severe blow for Raines’ credibility. Sydney used both this incident and another involving the use of real hydrochloric acid during a Jarod and Kyle interrogation sim to demonstrate that Raines was pushing things too far. After the Tower reprimanded Raines, things were never the same between them. This occurred shortly before the unscheduled release of Bridgett and Marc.

Marc and Bridgett were the first Gen-2 Pretenders to be officially released. They had shown remarkable talents and potential. Although not up to Jarod’s pure intellect, their motor skills and ability to adapt and blend with their surroundings were unsurpassed by the others. Both Pretenders displayed incredible skills at mimicking during sims of past situations. Although he did not work with either Pretender, Sydney had reviewed may reports extolling the work Raines and Jacob had done with these two. Jacob raved constantly about the remarkable progress Marc was making right up until the accident. Raines took over Marc’s training after Jacob’s incapacitation. Marc and Bridgett were released in 1972 much to the surprise of everyone in the Pretender program group. They spent scarcely nine years at the Centre.

The release also coincided with the hiring of a new Program Director, Dimitri Klashinov, a distant relation to the Klashinov family of Russia. Dimitri defected to the Centre during the 1972 Olympics. He received amnesty with no publicity or fanfare by direction of both the Centre and the US Government. He brought his mechanical genius and electrical background to the Centre. He had posed as a gymnastics coach for the Russian women’s team. Sydney enjoyed the memory that he defected moments before a medal ceremony. Due to his sudden absence, the other Russian coaches had been forced to leave the gym or face some hard explanations. Sydney never suspected the Israeli athletes had lost their lives creating a diversion for this very defection.

Sydney never knew what happened to Dimitri, because like so many at the Centre, he disappeared as quickly as he appeared. He had most likely been transferred either to a language or code-breaking section. Sydney knew upon meeting him that his background had limited use to either of Sydney’s projects: the Pretender project and the Twins Research project. Apart from these two aspects of the Centre’s operations, Sydney knew few of the thousands employed at the Centre. Kyle was reportedly released in 1972 due to stagnation in his growth curve. This left only two second generation Pretenders at the Centre: Jarod and Angelo. Since both remaining Gen-2 Pretenders were Sydney’s responsibility, the Tower re-assigned Angelo to Raines following Kyle’s release.

Normally, eight to twelve Pretenders were admitted in each generation. Past experience had shown that of that number, only two or three would be suitable for the needs of the Centre. New generations of Pretenders were admitted every five years. They were currently recruiting for the next generation of Pretenders, Gen-9, scheduled for admission in 1998. They had already taken in two children for this generation, Rebecca and Marie. Sydney had now reached the level of Program Director and no longer had daily workings with the new Pretenders. He hired a very capable staff for those duties. He did however conduct a great deal of the recruitment himself. Congress had his proposed standardized tests in their possession and a vote was scheduled for next month. Standardized testing in public and private schools would make recruitment for the Centre much easier and much less random. Millions had been spent in the lobbying effort. Billions were at stake.

Sydney could not help wondering, with everything he had learned over the last year, how much he really knew about the Centre. Hard questions posed by Jacob and Jarod had forced him to turn a critical eye towards himself and his employer. Sydney knew the questions by rote but had precious few answers:

Kyle had been kept ten years after his supposed release. Why was he kept out of that decision? Why Kyle? How many more decisions had been made without his input?

Samantha and Julie had been ‘rescued’ then killed under very suspicious circumstances. Julie had been a doctor, a pediatrician. Samantha had been an actress. Each had lived for years without exposing the Centre. Why were they dead?
Jarod had seemed happy, or at least content to be at the Centre. Certainly life at the Centre was the best Jarod could have hoped for, was it not? Clearly, though, Jarod was held here for years against his will. Why?

Jarod had always displayed short and long term memory lapses, but Sydney believed that to be in the nature of the Pretenders. They all experienced it. He hypothesized that in changing persona, Pretenders shed memories as well as psyche. Since his escape, Jarod had developed a nearly photographic memory. Why?

Who was trying to retrieve Jarod? Sydney knew in his heart and his mind that Jarod was no danger to the Centre or to himself. The only way to cause Jarod to go over the edge was to pursue him as they were. All they really needed were the DSAs to reconstruct Jarod’s contributions to the program. Didn’t he deserve the freedom?

Why was Raines ready to shoot Jarod down in the street when the Tower Directive was to bring him back alive? Even Raines could not blatantly disobey a Tower Directive, could he?
What did Jacob know that he still did not?

Questions, always questions and he still had precious few answers. Precious few. Sydney knew the answer to these, and many other questions lay dormant in the broken, comatose body before him. It made him sad to be this close to so many answers and yet be so far from the knowledge contained in them. The irony did not escape him. The Centre’s primary force for good (Jacob) and for evil (Raines) were now effectively neutralized. All that remained was the Centre’s conscience, Sydney.

"Don’t tell me you forgot." The ice cold tear of Miss Parker’s voice would have startled any man alive. Sydney, unimpressed, began to wonder if he was really alive or if he was just starting to wake up from a coma of his own. He had been in such deep thought that he had not heard the hollow shell of a person he once loved as a daughter approach.
"Miss Parker," his level, hushed voice was stark contrast to hers in the intensive care ward, "how could I have forgotten about our meeting. Shall we go to the conference room or do you want to have the meeting here." The sly smirk on Sydney’s face belied his amusement at her impending answer.

"No thanks, Syd. Frankenstein’s even creepier now than he was alive." Her beligerant tone belied a contempt beyond expression.

With her usual disdain for regulation, Miss Parker deliberately exhaled a lung-full of smoke in the direction of the oxygen tent. Sydney found her total disregard for regulations astonishing, especially coming from her background in the Special Investigations Service, the police of the Centre. He correctly guessed that most people assumed it was much safer leaving her to her own devices. "Besides, we’re moving the meeting to the Lear. We have reason to believe Jarod’s in Arizona. We’re leaving immediately. I hope you packed your toothbrush this morning." Her look was a challenge, one Sydney knew enough to avoid.

"As always," he replied calmly. His research would have to wait. Again.

Sydney noticed the hard, cold eyes of Miss Parker glance towards the respirator. He did not need his years of training to deduce the workings of her mind. The SIS had done the investigation of the Raines shooting, and no one really knew who had shot the oxygen tank. Sydney could not help wonder if perhaps she had used her contacts and garnished the favor of an inconclusive investigation. No one at the Centre, excepting the highest echelons of power, would miss Raines, and the shooter would garner more praise than contempt from the staff. Did she really have that much power? Her father certainly did. Maybe that was enough. She lingered just a moment too long at the power strip feeding the life support equipment. Perhaps she was contemplating finishing a job she started only two months ago. Sydney wished he had the courage.

As they turned to walk away, the heavily bandaged head of Dr. Raines rolled slightly towards them. Although neither took notice of this, Raines had taken notice of them.

*****

Little Rock, Arkansas
August 7, 1997 1915 CST

Jarod arrived at the Little Rock airport fifteen minutes behind schedule. Despite the sheer volume of people moved by airlines each day, he was still amazed at their lackadaisical approach to scheduling. Furthermore, the small, twin engine SAAB airplane he had taken from Dallas-Fort Worth was the height of discomfort. Quietly he mused that someone had obviously done extensive calculations to determine the seating arrangement of this plane. They did not want to promote bodily harm, but still needed transit the maximum number of people possible. It reinforced his hatred of commercial airlines.

Jarod made it a habit to not use commercial aircraft to travel around the country. Certainly this was not out of a fear of flying. It was due mostly to the knowledge that should he be tracked to a specific flight, Miss Parker would be the happiest person in the arrival terminal. Not that Jarod would mind being met at the gate. Air travel was a constant reminder of the loss of home and family to him. Getting off the plane and entering the terminal he was bombarded with scenes of homecoming: kids running to greet parents; lovers embracing with the passion of completed separation; old friends laughing off the years. In all this Jarod felt the sorrow of the lone man with no expectant faces; no welcoming party, as the slang went. The Centre had seen to it that his one chance at this was ruined. At times like this, the loneliness was crushing. As with anything, though, habit gets you caught. If he never used the airlines it would free the Centre up to search for him more easily in other areas. Maybe the Centre already stopped watching the airlines knowing his disdain for them. He doubted it.

The pleasant woman at the rental counter handed Jarod the keys to a Chevy Lumina. Her charming smile tried to say something more, but Jarod was blind to it. He had begun to completely enter the new arena. His new persona was taking hold. The drivers license he showed her took him ten minutes to create. Updating the Massachusetts State Patrol records took less than two. His degree from the University of Illinois took slightly longer, but he figured someone in the admissions department was accustomed to hackers. They had installed the latest in protective software. Jarod found it dreadfully inadequate.

The white Lumina positively sparkled in the mid-afternoon sun. Jarod quickly scanned the car for damage, in order to appear normal. He had no doubt that the rental agency would never see this car again. The Centre would undoubtedly tear it apart, bolt by bolt. This was the usual fate of his rental cars. He was unconcerned about the insurance or deposit, either. Miss Parker had just opened a new Gold Card account with Citibank and remarkably a duplicate card, authorized to her boyfriend Jarod Stewart, arrived at his PO Box. The card would be handy, but he did feel a slight pang of remorse about what he was doing to her credit rating. On some level, though, he knew it kept them close. Anyway, Jarod always figured she placed these expenditures on her Centre expense report. She never did.

He popped the hood and made a show of checking the oil and the other vital fluids of the car. Everything was as he expected. Before leaving the engine compartment, he replaced the standard GM computer control chip with his own ‘Jarod Special’ chip. The chip upped the performance of the 3.4 liter engine to nearly 300 horsepower. Of course the engine was only good for about ten thousand miles but he wasn’t concerned.

The next stop was to a Goodyear tire center. The extremely surprised salesman sold him four brand-new Eagle Aquatreds to replace the Michelin tires currently on the car. Jarod expected to spend quite a bit of driving time in the rain, and he knew these were the best tires for hard driving in the rain. Despite his initial shock, the gold card convinced the salesman quickly, and Jarod was on his way in a matter of twenty minutes.

Finally, Jarod stopped by the local WalMart to stock up on some of the supplies he would need for the next two weeks. Toiletries, clothes, underwear, Pez, a small traveling bag, a Magellan GPS unit and a 100 foot measuring tape completed the list. On the way out the store, he picked up a few magazines, crumpled them up and placed them on the driver's seat. He then proceeded to sit on them and drive off, with the traveling bag tied to the rear bumper support for the Lumina. Four miles down the road he pulled off, retrieved the dilapidated bag and packed his small assortment of goods into it. Jarod Stewart was ready to begin.

*****

Carthage, Missouri
Sunset Mobile Home Park, near Route 96 East
August 8, 1997 1347 CST

If Jarod had children, he would have understood the scene before him. What had only minutes before been a quiet, nice community of manicured lawns and skirted mobile homes was now a scene of mass destruction. It was as if a giant child had thrown a temper tantrum and had strewn its toys about with reckless abandon. Five ton trailers lay tossed about like matchsticks. Others had roofs and siding peeled off like string cheese. Jarod had seen the aftermath of war and it paled in comparison to this. For once in his life, Jarod was utterly speechless.

Families began to emerge from the hollowed out shelters they had dug into the ground and surveyed the damage. The wail of numerous sirens filled the air as EMS and police units converged on a community unaccustomed to attention. The tears of children and adults alike filled Jarod with a sense of burning and loss he struggled to fight back. He had to act or face being swallowed whole by the scene. He quickly set up a triage station and organized the rescue of two families trapped in trailers that had suddenly discovered an affinity for flight. The carnage was sickening.

A group of tourists were found fifteen minutes later in a full sized van that the twister tossed from Route 96 into the Kellogg Lake, nearly two hundred yards away. Their driver, a freelance photographer had panicked when the F-4 tornado turned on them. Not realizing the storm would follow the road, he attempted to outrun the twister. In his vain attempt to outrun the wind, he misjudged a corner and ran the van headlong into an oak tree. The tornado was on them before anyone had a chance to regain consciousness from the accident. Another amateur storm chaser out for a good picture unknowingly putting his own life and the life of six others in the balance. The odds always came through. Jarod could not understand the impulse that drove a man to intentionally witness this carnage. He could not understand how another human could thrive on the suffering of others. Maybe he should have asked himself that same question.

Jarod maintained the field triage unit as best he could until the EMS arrived. The tornado had cut a wide swath through the area, devastating twenty-seven homes, a small twelve unit apartment complex and this trailer park. It really could have been worse, though. The tornado had passed between two busy hotels where it crossed Route 96. The Circle W truck stop had not been so lucky.

With top winds estimated at 225 miles per hour and a funnel width of 75 yards at the base, it was one of the most devastating storms of this lengthening season. It was late for storms of this magnitude. By now, most long-time residents began to watch the gulf coast for hurricanes. This area of the country faced many of Nature’s forces. They dealt with each as best they could. This was hard for even them to understand.

Jarod spent seven hours walking the five miles of the storm's path. He traced the storm along gully, hill, road and river. He took careful, painstaking measurements and continually monitored his progress and position with the Magellan GPS unit he had recently purchased. Although less accurate than his own GPS, this unit drew much less attention. With the proliferation of hunters in this area, the locals were no stranger to GPS systems. They would notice if his was different. Every few feet, he noted measurements and position in his notebook and on a DMA topographical chart he had downloaded ten hours before and then continued.

Despite the late hour, slipping away from the trailer park had turned out to be harder than he suspected. The media had shown up in full force along with the usual gaggle of storm junkies and disaster freaks. Many of the locals sighted him as he tracked the storm’s path through the trailer park and directed the media towards their ‘angel of mercy.’ Jarod narrowly avoided the glare of the camera lights and had to beat a hasty retreat to avoid being spotted and filmed. Jarod knew from his experience as a camera-man that after editing the hours of film being shot would amount to only a few seconds on the evening news, but he could not take the chance. This was too important.

Finally, out of the glare of the lights he tracked the storm to its end in an open field. Jarod was not surprised to find he was not the first to arrive here. Four people stood in the shallow circle of torn grass that marked the end of the storm’s path. He had been expecting them, although they knew nothing of him. As he approached, he took note of the three men and one woman standing in a circle, talking about the twister. He knew them all by reputation, all except the woman. She was a recent addition to the team, added three months ago. Her camera equipment identified her as the photographer.
"Hello, my name is Jarod. Jarod Stewart."

His abrupt introduction clearly startled the group who quickly abandoned their conversation and wheeled to face Jarod as an adversary. They incorrectly assumed he was with the media. "What are you doing here?" the eldest one, perhaps fifty, challenged.

"Oh," said Jarod, casually strolling up to the group, "just taking a walk. Say, are you guys hiring?"

The Winds of Change

Chapter 3 (rating PG)

Springdale, Arkansas
August 7, 1997 2300 CST

The enveloping aroma of barbecued meat welcomed the group back to the home that was their temporary
command post. Money had been unusually tight this year and Kevin had been unable to maintain the
office space he had rented in years past. The timely death of his mother-in-law had provided the group
with an ample field headquarters and bunking area. The four bedroom home had been more than he had
ever needed. With the new guy, though, it was going to be tight.

Although Kevin hated to admit to it in public, he was a Storm Chaser. Kevin felt lost in the Hollywood
inspired hype surrounding the release of “Twister” and the constant bombardment of tornado footage
available on the Internet and the Weather Channel. Suddenly what had once been the domain of a small
group of dedicated meteorologists and a few dozen crazed Viet Nam vets had become the mainstream.
Tornado sightings seemed to create as much traffic going towards the funnel as away from it. They were
fools who played with death. It was nearly impossible for him to believe that the hysteria for storms rivaled
that of UFO and Elvis sightings. Tornadoes were nothing to play with, as he knew from experience.

Kevin had started chasing in the late sixties after his mother and father were killed by a tornado. They had
lived in a nice trailer park, very similar to the one today, he had noticed immediately. Tornadoes were
crushing monsters which fed as much upon the souls of the living as those of the dead. Kevin understood
firemen when they talked about seeing the beast in the fire. The tornado which killed his parents threw him
a hundred and fifty yards into a stand of oak trees. Three broken ribs and a fractured skull later he hit the
ground with enough force to break both of his legs. Neither leg had correctly healed and he walked with a
pronounced limp. He knew they called him Duckman behind his back. He was glad they at least
respected him enough to do it quietly.

As he lay, broken and alone in the Fayetteville Shriners Hospital, Kevin vowed to avenge the death of his
parents. He swore his life to the pursuit of Mother Nature and to conquering her. He wanted to provide
some means to protect others from the horror that he and his family had faced. He wanted some form of
revenge.

‘Strangely enough, they didn’t portray that part in the movie,’ he bitterly complained to anyone who would
listen. ‘No, too many Hollywood bodies and poster boy faces for Reality’s sake.’ Kevin and his team
were part of the inspiration for ‘Twister,’ which drove him even crazier. The ‘DOROTHY’ device used in the
film had been developed by Kevin years prior. The original concept had been so revolutionary, so
promising that he had created a stir in the meteorological field to rival Newton. Unfortunately, the data
which DOROTHY was capable of obtaining had proven next to useless. Unless of course you count
helping a computer to generate an animated tornado. Kevin didn’t.

Somehow, all that data just didn’t correlate to any real knowledge about the makings of a tornado.
Somehow all that information never made one damn bit of difference when it came down to actually
predicting where the monster would strike next. He knew it should, but he had long since given up that pipe
dream. Many brilliant scientists were working on the formulas now, many people with higher IQ’s than his
checking balance. None were having any more luck than he had.

Not surprisingly, as more and more of his colleagues began to suspect the minimal benefits of
DOROTHY, his notoriety and prestige suffered. Once a highly sought after expert he had now sunk to the
level of an intruder or perhaps a prodigal son returning the day after his father’s funeral. The pain he felt
stretched much further than his pocketbook. He had lost his pride.

After years of seclusion, he discovered that a competitor sold the movie rights and pirated information
relating to the initial testing of DOROTHY. The legal battle was still being fought in the courts, but the only
winners in that battle, Kevin knew, were the sharks fighting it. His principle would not allow him to sell out
and begin to guide “Storm Chasing Tours.” Tours of tornado ‘hot spots,’ promising to sight ‘at least one
real tornado per week.’ It sickened him. How could some of his contemporaries, some of his colleagues
consent to bring civilians into harms way like that? I was unconscionable.

The Smithsonian purchased the original DOROTHY for a reasonable sum and with his mother-in-law’s
death, Kevin and his wife Dorothy (for whom the device was named, not the fantasy character of a warped
children’s book) suddenly found a way to keep their creditors at bay. After selling their small home in
Birmingham, they moved to Spring Valley and Kevin began to arrange the old team for the upcoming
storm season. Situated in Tornado Alley, they could stage out of this home for the season. Kevin hoped
that by returning to the chase he could find some of the heart he had lost. Dorothy hoped he’d just find his
smile.

The season had been long, but profitable. Kevin had managed to sell a number of good storm pictures to
local magazines, newspapers and even two to ‘New Yorker’ magazine for a story on ‘real-life Storm
Chasers.’ The proceeds from the picture sales would help carry them through the next year. Most
importantly, Kevin found that he had not lost his ability to feel the storms. He retained an uncanny ability to
predict the storm’s path. Simply put, he had observed so many storms that he recognized the patterns and
the landscape and could anticipate storms well. He was responsible for saving dozens of lives this
season alone.

The storm today had taken them by surprise. Essentially in his backyard (about two hours away), Kevin
had to scramble to make the sight before all the evidence had been lost. So much could be learned about
the storms after they were gone. Kevin spent hours studying every storm path he could find. He fashioned
himself the Sherlock Holmes of Natural Disasters. He knew enough, anyway, to know how little he still
knew.

The team he had assembled this season had jelled well over the last few months. Jeff Carlson, the radar
operator was a genius with electronics. He had taken the low output Doppler radar Kevin had managed to
obtain and had converted it somehow to something the military might be interested in. Jeff’s MIT
background showed and his gadgets continually had better storm information than the National Weather
Service (NWS, called ‘the NeWS’). Marty Donovan had been a television weatherman when he decided
his life was in neutral. He left his wife and began a tour group for disaster junkies. In spite of this, Kevin had
hired him because of his nose for storms and his incredible driving abilities. One thing Kevin had not
counted on was the intensive traffic and the sheer number of storm chasers now. He needed a capable
driver and he found one.

The biggest risk of the group turned out to be his greatest coup. On a whim and a prayer, Kevin had
decided to hire a woman photographer to assist him with filming storms and taking still shots during the
season. She had been with the team for three months and was the sole reason they were profitable. She
had an uncanny knack for shooting incredible pictures and would regularly return from a storm with only
twenty pictures taken, three of them worthy of sale. Her capability with the camera had greatly freed Kevin
up to observe and react to the storm, while still allowing the team some chance for profit. Kevin was not so
blind as to disdain money. Bridgett was a trained journalistic photographer with Desert Storm and City
Desk experience on the ‘New York Times.’ She was not some fly-by-night destined to be part of the
picture instead of taking it. She was the one he worried about the least.

He remembered meeting her for the first time. She had strode up to him with the confidence of woman who
thinks equal rights are a stepping stone for men. “Bridgett. Bridgett Emm. No relation,” she had said, her
firm, callused hand extended to him almost in challenge.

Although a bit confused at the initial introduction, he quickly deduced that with her current string of tornado
pictures she was getting tired of the Auntie Em references. Auntie Em she was not. Her grip bespoke a
power uncommon in any woman and surprising in one 5’ 5” tall. Her shoulder length black hair was pulled
back away from her face with a style that was all function. Kevin pegged her for about 115 pounds but with
loose fitting shorts and a casual denim shirt effectively hiding anything particular about her figure, he was
not sure. He would have been genuinely surprised to find she topped 130. Not a particularly thin woman,
Kevin mistook the slight stockiness for fat. He was unaccustomed to the proportions of a well muscled
woman.

During the last few months he had rarely seen her wear anything feminine. The Timberland hiking boots
and hiking shorts she wore seemed permanently attached to her and he didn’t think she knew what
makeup was. Unlike most of the women he met, Bridgett maintained a very small wardrobe. Her lack of
clothing and insistence to carry more than her weight with the chores and duties around the house meant
that some weeks she was forced to wash clothes three and four times to stay clean. When in the field, she
rarely changed clothes.

The most remarkable thing about Bridgett was that Kevin had encountered absolutely no problems with
the other two men regarding her. Even Dorothy, who had a notoriously jealous streak, seemed indifferent
to Bridgett. Bridgett didn’t have any particular aspect of her beauty which stood out and caused attention,
rather she had a sense of inner beauty derived from confidence and authority. Her deep blue eyes were
so open and so innocent that it was often hard to imagine her having lived the life she had. She came with
excellent references and was already a vital member of the team. Kevin fell in love immediately.

As he strode back out of the house onto the large front porch, Jarod Stewart, the rather strange, boyish guy
they had met in Missouri, pulled up. Jarod was another gamble this late in the season. With his current
string of successes, though, Kevin felt he couldn’t lose. Jarod claimed to be a meteorologist with a degree
from the University of Illinois, a fact Kevin could easily verify. He was having a little trouble finding
challenging work and his wife had just left him, so he had no ties and no requirements for pay. Best of all,
he offered to work solely for room, board and experience. Kevin noticed he had been tracking the
tornado’s path and had made some very detailed notes. Kevin was impressed and he was looking
forward to having another meteorologist on the team.

Jeff had decided to ride back with Jarod. Kevin supposed he couldn’t blame him. Jarod had air
conditioning in his Lumina. Kevin was surprised Bridgett had decided to ride home with him. Kevin was not
blind to the way Bridgett had looked at Jarod. Kevin knew she never looked at him in that way. Her eyes
were on fire, burning a hole in Jarod two yards across. Kevin was not a jealous man and he didn’t hold it
against the newcomer. With Jarod’s looks, attention from women was undoubtedly his norm rather than
Kevin’s exception. Kevin loved Dorothy and was a happily married man, anyway. He did notice that Jarod
seemed oblivious to it, thankfully.

Well Jeff must have liked him, Kevin remarked to himself. The two of them were laughing up a storm.

*****
Springdale, Arkansas
August 8, 1997 0235 CST

The hardest part of any pretend was the first twenty-four hours. Although his research was impeccable,
Jarod never held the illusion that he could know everything. Questions came with much greater speed and
covered a much broader spectrum during the initial meeting between him and his targets. This was
always the case and the more technical the pretend, the more precise his answers had to be. In a close
knit group like this, whose members knew each others sleeping habits better than their own children’s
Jarod had to be braced for close scrutiny.

Despite anything else done to him at the Centre, they had taught him well the art of Pretending. For some
of the Pretenders, like Angelo, pretending was natural. Close contact or interaction with another person
opened a floodgate of emotions, thoughts, perceptions and beliefs, each one more alien than the last.
Jarod often wondered if schizophrenia was somehow related to a Pretending ability gone horribly out of
control. The process was both horrible and wonderful and it terrified him. He often pondered what Isaac
had said to him many months before: “You can’t just go around pretending to be something you aren’t.
After a while, you just forget who you really were.” That simple statement, offered by the transvestite cab-
driver he had spared from a humiliating six months in jail, haunted him to this day.

For the true Pretenders, their own thoughts and life had little meaning. Over the years they lost the contact
with their real selves in the sea of personalities which floated into and out of their consciousness.
Occasionally, old pretends would muddle up through the depths of his mind to threaten to take over.
Domineering personalities rarely evaporated when the pretend was over. These warring factions of the
mind had driven more than one Pretender insane and Jarod had fought it with every fiber of his body. He
resolved long ago to never lose himself because it was the only thing he really had.

Today had gone smoothly enough, though. The tornado dominated the conversation and allowed him
one night’s peace. The late hour of their arrival also promoted little in the way of conversation. Jarod was
thankful for the years of training at the Centre for preparing him to exist on less than four hours of sleep a
night. Although it had been after midnight, he wasn’t tired and the others were exhausted. After a quick
meal of barbecued venison, which had tasted much better than the beef he was used to, Jarod was shown
where the couch in the living room was and the rest of the team disbursed for the night. Two hours later,
Jarod was still wide awake, his laptop humming steadily.

Rarely did he ever enter a pretend without every piece of the puzzle in place. This allayed any chance of
discovery. In the beginning, this had not always been the case and he was caught once by an EMT
dispatcher. After that embarrassment, each detail of the pretend was analyzed and he often tried for days
to break his own identity prior to entering the arena. This time was different. The background he required
needed a masters degree, and he wanted it to be from MIT. The easiest part of this was convincing Jeff
that he was an alum. Jeff had done graduate work at UC Berkeley and would have been six years ahead
Jarod’s stay at MIT. Jarod had the faculty, course curriculum and campus layouts, together with local
establishments and favorite places for student to go, memorized for twelve college campuses. As he
often required technical background information, MIT was a natural choice. So far, though, he had been
unable to make his hacked MIT records stick.

MIT had one of the most effective firewalls Jarod had ever encountered. He doubted anyone but him and
maybe Broots could hack into their systems. The strangest thing for him was that every time he would
hack a record at MIT, the next day it would be gone. No matter what steps he took, the records would
always be erased. He had altered the clock counter thinking that the protect was a time sensitive write-
erase, eliminating all data stored after or before a specific time. That didn’t work. After six attempts, he
had begun to give up until Jeff had mentioned something in the car. They had been discussing computer
viruses and Jeff was telling him about the new one called Tall Mocha-Raspberry Java. The virus would
attach itself to a Java Applet and keep an internal counter. After 666 runs of the Java Applet, it would
delete the Applet and would send a spike through the hard drive, deleting any programs open at the time.

Tonight, Jarod had spent two hours writing a Java locator algorithm in the hope to discover a similar
Applet running in the MIT admissions computer system. Jarod could have simply transferred his attention
to any one of a dozen other schools, but he enjoyed the challenge. It was so rare for him these days. The
MIT system was accessed, bypassed and violated by the state of the art machine at Jarod’s fingertips.
Once inside, Jarod knew he had twenty minutes before the access sensor noticed his feed. Apparently no
one in admissions telecommuted, he mused.

Bingo! The algorithm picked up a Java Applet run in the system. After fifteen minutes of scanning the
hundreds of attached HTML’s and other library files, he found a counter. He exited then regained access,
buying him another twenty minutes. Quickly back to the timer he actually laughed out loud. The timer was
one number bigger. He had been foiled by the simplest trick in computing. Apparently, the network
administrator would record the counter number each night. If the number did not match in the morning, the
files were backed up from the tape back-ups created each night. Some of the best hacking protection in
the world and he had been foiled time and time again by a simple counter. He laughed and popped
another Pez from the Chewbacca dispenser he had picked up yesterday.

Pez was one of the few outlets Jarod had. As the sweet, slightly tart sensation began to spread throughout
his mouth, the rest of his body began to respond in kind. Although he never understood Miss Parker’s
smoking habits, he believed the comfort and almost sexual pleasure he derived from the tart wash of Pez
was something akin to what she got from cigarettes. He did not envy her. He could always brush his teeth,
while she couldn’t just brush her lungs clean. The ulcer she had recently opened startled him as well.
Maybe he was pushing her too hard.

He knew the degree in Meteorology would not directly translate to a Masters in Computer Science, so he
added some remedial undergraduate classes to his transcript. The algorithm he programmed into the
Java counter now allowed him trouble free access between two and three o’clock in the morning, eastern
time. Satisfied that this ended the last hurdle to the pretend, he exited the MIT mainframe.

“You Have Mail Waiting” circulated around the computer generated mailbox in the upper corner of the
screen. Figuring that Sydney was trying to contact him again, Jarod began his tracer program. Jarod and
Broots had developed a tacit friendship over the last year. Jarod had begun to truly respect Broots’ ability
to make a computer sing. His abilities were nearly as good as Jarod’s own. As sworn adversaries they
fought their public battles, but they often carried out a private truce. Jarod never underestimated Broots’
ability to send traces and attach mail send traces to received mail. If he ever had, Broots would have
caught him in a heartbeat. Jarod often left Broots just enough of an opening to catch him, and Broots
always left Jarod just enough of an opening to escape. The day he found Jarod unaided, Jarod would
have no such advantage.

The mail message turned out to be clean, less than 1K bytes. Not even Broots could fool with a message
that short. Besides, the modem Jarod had installed had send block functions, which he routinely activated
and the satellite link Jarod was using would takes Broots five seconds to trace. The message took two to
download.

The body was more cryptic than Jarod was used to: “http://www.geocities.com/televisioncity/set/3658. FYI
– P7/G2”

Jarod contemplated seeing what this address would bring up when he heard the soft footsteps coming up
the basement stairs and into the kitchen. He quickly deleted the message and clicked his bookmark to
the homepage of Nine Inch Nails. The refrigerator door opened and closed. Fortunately this page was
stored in his Cache folder and the graphics heavy page sprang onto the screen in a heartbeat.

“I thought I heard someone up here,” the calm, steady voice of Bridgett carried across the living room like a
sweet fragrance. Jarod cursed the placement of the two staircases not allowing him to face both.
Deciding the main staircase more apt to yield a midnight snacker, he had been forced to place his back to
the kitchen door, though which Bridgett now approached. In her hand she carried a plate with two slices of
apple pie and two glasses of milk. Clearly, she anticipated his presence here.

Jarod made no attempt to answer her and instead commenced shutting down his laptop in such a way as
to not seem conspicuous.

“I’m having a little trouble sleeping too. Care for some company?” Although she had not come fully around
into his field of vision, Jarod could feel her presence in the room. She brought an airy quality to the room,
as if a spring breeze had somehow found a way penetrate a prison wall. The room began to heat up and
Jarod began to feel slightly uneasy. The headphones he was wearing were plugged into a portable CD
player, but the CD had ended an hour ago. He used the excuse of the headphones to feign ignorance of
her presence. He knew that he could feel her enter a concert hall. She radiated.

“Oh!” Jarod started, feigning surprise at her suddenly entering his field of vision.

“Oh, jeeze, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” she apologized, clearly surprised at his ignorance of her
presence. “I didn’t see your headphones. I was having trouble sleeping and I figured you’d like to share a
piece of pie with me. I made it myself.”

Pulling his headphones off and hitting the stop button on his CD player, Jarod stood quickly to help her with
the plate. “Sure, I mean, I’d love to eat your pie.” Bridgett’s embarrassed laughter signaled to Jarod that
once again he had said something really stupid. Suddenly figuring it out, he began to laugh too. “I, umm,
that’s not what I meant.”

“Don’t ever take back something unless you are told to,” Bridgett chimed in as a challenge to the
staggering Jarod. His mind just wasn’t working as fast as he knew it should be. Was it getting hotter in
here? “Anyway, I asked for it. Come on over here and sit down.”

The full sized couch seemed suddenly far too small for the two of them. Jarod felt the presence of Bridgett
like an electric field surrounding her. This was so vastly different from anything he had ever felt while
pretending. This was alien to him. Alien and frightening. Frightening and exciting. Bridgett, for her part, sat
on the far corner of the couch with one leg tucked up under the other. The flannel pajamas she wore clung
loosely to her body in a way that somehow stimulated Jarod to imagine the difference between the parts
touching her body and the parts which did not. He had seen lingerie before, but somehow this complete
masking of Bridgett’s body was even more exciting. He was awestruck.

Bridgett had her hair in a loose french braid tied with a single black elastic band. Pulled completely back
from her face, the hairstyle revealed two simple silver stud earrings. Jarod found the examination of her
ears fascinating as he lingeringly counted the six pierce holes in her main lobe and up the side of her ear.
The top piercing was at the apex of her ear, Jarod lingered on it for hours, so it seemed.

Her hands were the rough, callused hands of worker, undoubtedly made harsh by the variety of chemicals
used to turn film into pictures. Her years of City Desk experience and wartime photography undoubtedly
had left their mark as well. Jarod had studied her work over the last two weeks and found her eye for
camera angles superb. Thinking along these lines, Jarod naturally followed is train of thought to her eyes.
It was there he lost his will to escape. Bordered by the slightest line of sun-freckles and bracketing a
compact, linear nose, Bridgett’s eyes were simply the most captivating eyes of anyone he had ever
encountered.

As he continued to stare, the ocean blue depths of Bridgett’s eyes captured Jarod in the rapture of the
Assumption. He could feel his entire body grow lighter and could literally sense the change in the air
around them. An electric, no magnetic impulse began to surround him. Suddenly, the air had become too
heavy to breath. Jarod had made mixed gas dives to four hundred feet and spent time in space but
nothing came close to the feeling of suffocation he began to feel now. He knew that he should not be
counting Bridgett’s eyelashes and memorizing the small black lines radiating from her iris to her cornea,
but he couldn’t help himself.

“Don’t you like my pie?” the altogether too sensual voice of Bridgett returned him to reality. Her voice
dripped with innuendo. She was nearly done with her slice of pie, he hadn’t even touched his. The last
fifteen minutes he had only sat and stared. She was intoxicating. Jarod felt trapped by her charms and for
the first time he began to surrender to the feeling.

“I guess I wasn’t very hungry.” Jarod was surprised he managed to convince his mouth and tongue to co-
operate. No other part of his body seemed willing to undertake a task that did not involve Bridgett in some
way.

Jarod had known many women, Nia, Miss Parker and many others. Something was incredibly different
here. Never before had he felt so powerless and so out of control as he did now. He began to convince
the usually overwhelming part of his mind to return to decision-making. He began to analyze these new
sensations and emotions. Climbing slowly out of the Bridgett inspired stupor, he began to slowly eat the
pie. What was this he was feeling?

He knew that what he felt for Nia was not healthy for either of them. The love that they shared stemmed
from mutual need, from a mutual weakness. The passion and the love were present, but the true bonding
was absent. She could never be truly his because he would never give up his life for hers. Mutual need
was not love.

What he felt for Miss Parker was altogether different. They shared the camaraderie of two spirits too
powerful to be contained, too alone not to be loved. The incredible degree of passion and devotion which
had stemmed from this relationship was borne out of respect and understanding, rather than from true love.
They could never be together because they were, at heart, two very different, fiercely independent people.
Passion was not love.

This new enveloping presence before him defied explanation. Miss Parker was dangerous and exciting,
Bridgett was, well, complimentary. This was it, he finally decided. Bridgett felt like the missing half of some
puzzle that had been his life. She seemed to flow with him. He could sense her incredibly soothing
presence filling some need in him even more basic than sex, the need for acceptance.

As the last bite of arguably the best food he had ever eaten slid un-tasted down his throat, he could no
longer concentrate on anything other that the incredible woman next to him. Jarod knew Bridgett would
never make any top ten lists, but a natural beauty resonated from her and blocked out any conscious
thoughts he tried to make. The couch continued to shrink and the room temperature had far surpassed
any heat endurance sim Sydney had subjected him to. Bridgett sat through it all, chattering away about a
hundred meaningless details that Jarod should have been paying attention to, he guessed. Without even
touching her he felt closer to her than he did to anyone else in the world.

*****

When Kevin came down at six, Jarod and Bridgett were still sitting on the couch having a great
conversation. Jarod was still wearing the clothes he arrived in, so Kevin correctly guessed he hadn’t been
to sleep yet. As the others came down, Jarod managed to pull himself together and begin his first day as
part of the new team.

But only after Bridgett had gone back downstairs to shower and dress.

The Winds of Change

Chapter 4 (rating PG-13, Violence, Adult Situations)

Parker, Arizona
August 8, 1997 0700 PST

The helicopter was undoubtedly intended to create the most awe on impact. Perhaps it was also used
to provide the best field of vision while making the entrance. Maybe it was just fast. In any case, Ted
was not impressed by the show. The Bell B-Model helicopter came in low and fast. The pilot,
obviously ex-military, slid the helicopter quickly into the center of the small tarmac surrounding the
airplane hanger. It seemed as if Jarod’s friends had arrived. Ted wondered if he’d ever see this airstrip
again.

The skids of the helicopter barely touched the asphalt tarmac when three well-dressed spooks jumped
out of the helicopter. The tallest one, a stunning brunette in form fitting rayon business suit with an
incredibly short skirt and ridiculously high heels strode to him oblivious to the whirling main rotor merely
two feet above her head. She obviously traveled by helicopter often and the micro-skirt showed no
promise of blowing up any higher in the rotor wash. Too damn tight, Ted chuckled. Maybe that’s why
she wore the thing. If she was FBI, he just might re-consider Bureau’s standing offer.

“Where is he?” Her husky threat of a voice sliced through the roar of the decelerating rotor system.
Behind her, two linebackers in Brooks Brothers suits were fanning out and establishing fields of fire.
They were very professional, too professional for the FBI. As the rotor slowed to an idle, an older
gentleman and a scrawny nemish of a man let themselves out of the helicopter. The older guy was
packing, although beneath the tweed suit jacket. The little geek was unarmed.

Xena was on him in a flash. “Are you deaf or mute? Let’s find out.” She reached down with the speed
of a panther and grabbed Ted’s crotch. No stranger to pain, the merciless twist coupled with the
complete shock at the encounter caused him to yelp. “Oh, just deaf.”

Trying to maintain some level of dignity Ted stepped back, more slowly than he would have liked.
“Jesus, bitch, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Where is Jarod?” The 10mm SIG Sauer pointed to his head convinced Ted that she would rather
shoot him and look herself, but she felt obliged to ask.

“Gone, damn it, he left about two days ago. He said you’d be coming, ya know.” By now the older
fellow had come up behind the Amazon interrogating him.

“Miss Parker, your condition.” The look ‘Miss Parker’ gave the old guy with the Belgian accent
convinced Ted he either had a death wish or balls of steel.

“Shut up, Syd. Broots,” the balding man involuntarily jumped at the sound of her mentioning his name.
Apparently he dealt with her on a day-to-day basis. “Go find this pencil-dick’s computer and do your
thing.” The little guy darted off towards Ted’s office.

Ted turned to tell him to wait but any chance he had was quelled by Miss Parker. The aikido move she
threw put him flat on his back, gasping for breath. What the hell was this woman on?

“I’m not done with you yet, little man. Tell me what you and Jarod were playing this week.”

Ted related to her the basic details about Jarod’s stay and the jumps. He left out a lot of the details,
figuring she would never know what he did or didn’t say. As long as he stuck to the basics he knew
he’d survive. The old man would see to that. Fifteen minutes later, Broots came out with a printout
from Ted’s computer. It was the jump log and bookings list for the last twelve months.

“Miss Parker!”

“Yes.” The cold hatred in her voice made Ted more respectful of this Broots. He was a strong man to
continue to accept this abuse and continue to help her.

“I, ah, found this. Um, well, that’s pretty much all there is in his machine. Except the really cool
Victoria’s Secret screen saver…”

“Broots, what would Delilah think?” Broots shied from her mocking retort. Help her? Ted wasn’t so
sure any more. There was other information in that computer. Jarod had left it intentionally. The game
was getting more interesting by the minute. “Syd, look at this. Jarod Dorothy rented the plane for one
month starting on July 9 for unlimited jumps. Seems like your little nature boy wanted to get high.”

“Yeah,” Ted volunteered, getting braver now that he basically understood the situation. “We jumped
100 times over twenty nine days. He still has one day’s rental left and he told me to take you up.
Wanna jump, Miss Parker?” This time, he was ready. He dodged the straight fist to his solar plexus
easily as he guided her fist past him giving him an open shot to her kidneys. He took it.

Before Miss Parker hit the ground in obvious, sudden pain, the two linebackers were on him. Two on
one wasn’t very good odds. Before either could lay a hand on him they were lying on the ground,
unconscious. “You must be Sydney,” he said to the older man, extending his hand in greeting.

Sydney had taken one step back and Broots cringed from his hand. “Yes, I am,” Sydney replied,
steadying himself. His firm grip was a surprise to Ted; most Europeans shook hands like girls. Ted was
safely back in the driver’s seat.

“I have something for you.” Ted turned and went into his room to retrieve the briefcase.

When he returned with the briefcase, Miss Parker was standing, dusting the Arizona landscape off the
expensive suit. She lit a cigarette and began to puff on it as if she was competing with something. “I can
get some ice for you to chew on or something.” Ted couldn’t resist the jab. She glared at him as if he
was the anti-Christ. He couldn’t help laughing out loud. Jarod had certainly pegged this one.

“Jarod told me to give you this. He said that you should be able to figure out the combination easily
enough. Anyway, he’s long gone now.” Ted was comfortable again. He didn’t understand Jarod. He
understood these people.

“How did he leave?” Sydney asked, taking the briefcase from him.

“He jumped about ten miles north of Flagstaff. I flew him out there and he jumped. I don’t know
where he went after that. In case you care, he didn’t leave anything in his trailer, either.”

Miss Parker immediately perked up at the prospect of dismantling the trailer but Sydney, re-establishing
a dominance he rarely exercised but always maintained, stopped her. “Miss Parker, we won’t learn
anything else here. Jarod knew we were approaching and we are better served to depart now to study
this briefcase.” Her lack of argument was acceptance enough and Sydney turned to leave.

The helicopter started its main rotor again and Miss Parker prodded her two goons back to life. They
all turned to leave.

“Oh yeah, Miss Parker,” despite Ted’s yelling after her, Miss Parker did not turn to respond. Clearly
she was not interested in anything he had to say. Ted had to come up behind her to be heard over the
rotor wash. “Jarod told me to ask to see your scar.”

Miss Parker struck like a cobra. Ted had been expecting the reflexive slap but he could never have
anticipated the speed of the attack. She caught him clean across the cheekbone and caused the big man
to stagger. Despite the trickle of blood he could feel running down his face, he chuckled to himself. He
was in love.

*****

“Randy, give me the radio.” Miss Parker re-established any loss of dignity within seconds of take-off.
There was no way any man would make a fool of her; let alone that cactus humping cowboy. She
didn’t care if he was damn cute and had the others not been there she didn’t know where the encounter
would have gone. The loss of face in front of her men was unacceptable to a Parker.

“Dispatch. The target area is hot. Erase that grease spot. Eliminate all alpha and bravo targets on the
range. Repeat, all alpha and bravo targets on the range. My command, authentication Jaguar. Out.”
Let the testosterone loaded macho freak deal with that. She popped another cigarette into her mouth.

*****

Ted had fortunately opened the briefcase before Jarod’s friends arrived. Inside he found two notes
from Jarod. One was addressed to him, immediately making Ted feel both guilty and vindicated for
opening the case, and the second had been addressed to Sydney. Also in the case were Ted’s football
game, a red notebook, three travel brochures and a bottle of pills. Rifling though the notebook, Ted
had found a New York Times clipping from 1968 showing the devastation caused by Hurricane
Camille, an article on El Nino and another on global warming. Ted still wasn’t convinced of Jarod’s
claim to be a meteorologist, but he could find no other explanation for the articles.

The note Jarod had left told Ted to clean out all of his important equipment and move to another
location. Unable to resist the temptation of the confrontation, Ted had humped everything of value into
the hills and left enough stuff to survive in his plane. He told his pilot, Dave, the school was closing and
hooked him up with another jump school in Texas, at Jarod’s prompting. Ted figured with the program
Jarod had given him for playing the stock market, he didn’t need the jump school anymore, so he
decided a simple plane crash would eliminate any problems with Jarod’s friends. Ted had the contacts
in Vegas and the $25,000 from Jarod to get himself lost.

As the small plane lifted off the runway Ted began to realize the small miscalculation he had made. He
began to regret not listening to Jarod. The unmistakable silhouette of two flat black F/A 18 Hornets
were coming directly at him, low and fast. They came loaded for bear and Ted couldn’t bring himself to
believe they were outside their operations area. China Lake was nowhere near this place. He set the
autopilot on a steady climb and raced to the back of the plane for his parachute. He knew he stood a
much better chance on the ground.

******

“Dispatch to Parker, over.” The smooth, feminine voice coming over the radio brought a smile to Miss
Parker’s face.

“This is Parker.”

“Mission complete. Alpha and bravo targets eliminated.”

“Excellent,” she hissed. “Out.” She turned towards Sydney who had watched in horror as she had
wiped out a man’s life because he dared to oppose her. Was she that far gone?

“That’s the way I like it.” The toothy, sadistic smile she gave him told Sydney the answer to that
question.

Broots shivered.

*****

Springdale, Arkansas
August 8, 1997, 0900 CST

Jarod, not normally a breakfast eater, sat back and surveyed the damage. Two hot-cakes, four fried
eggs (one sunny side up, one over easy, one over medium and one over hard – he decided he liked
over easy best), three slices of toast, grits and a healthy portion of ‘home-fries’ completed his first
Southern country breakfast. Everyone at the table was impressed. Jarod was actually full. Perhaps this
feeling was what they called stuffed. He almost felt like letting his belt out a little but Bridgett’s presence
precluded any such liberty.

“Get enough, darlin’?” Dorothy asked, partially in fun, partially in disbelief. Did that boy ever eat! If
this was his normal breakfast, how did he ever stay so trim? The places this line of thought took her
made her blush.

“Why yes, it was wonderful,” Jarod chimed in, immensely pleased with himself. The questions they had
been asking him for the last few hours were perfunctory at best, but he knew this was just the warm-up.
The real questions would come later. Probably they would come this afternoon. Right now he had
plenty of time to soak in the hospitality and wonder if this was what it felt like to have a home.

Jarod decided, as the meal wore down, that it was time to both establish his place in the hierarchy of the
group and impress Bridgett a little. “Dorothy, don’t forget to take your blood pressure medicine.”

“How – how on earth do you know I am taking high blood pressure medicine?” Dorothy stammered.
Privately she wondered if she was really that fat that he would naturally assume she needed the
medicine. It didn’t matter if he was right or not, damn it.

The blank shock from Bridgett, Jim and Marty was exactly what Jarod had planned on.

“Elementary, my dear Watson” chimed in Kevin. It was Jarod’s turn to show surprise. “Shall I?” he
politely asked Jarod.

Wheeling and more than a little curious, Jarod simply nodded his head.

“Dorothy, our guest has simply noticed your slightly baggy clothing, deliberate reduction of salt added to
the food, longing stare at the salt shaker used by everyone else seated and your clearly measured
portions. All of these things would indicated that you are clearly watching your weight, losing weight –
and you do look very good – and limiting your salt intake. Hence, you must be under doctor’s orders
to do such, and the most logical condition to warrant such precautions is high blood pressure. Did I
miss anything?”

“Only that she looked at her watch to decide if it had been too long after eating for the medicine,
but…,” Jarod let the question hang. He was dumbfounded.

“Keen observation, my friend. I am the Sherlock Holmes of storms and I don’t miss much in the other
aspects of my life either.” Kevin was clearly pleased with himself. The hierarchy of the group had been
set, all right.

Jarod became increasingly defensive. How much more did this guy already know? “Who is Watson?”
Jarod asked, clearly taken aback by Kevin.

“Come now, you know: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, England, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” the
blank stare on Jarod’s face told Kevin all he needed to know. “Didn’t you read as a kid, or even as an
adult? Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Sherlock Holmes!”

“Ah, no. I led a pretty sheltered childhood.”

“What, did you grow up on the ‘Dukes of Hazzard?’” Jeff chimed in this time. Sensing the newcomer
was on the ropes, he homed in for the kill.

“What? Ah, no. I didn’t follow the royal family much.”

“No, Bo and Luke Duke? Daisy Duke? The General Lee?” Jarod kept shaking his head, almost in a
state of delirium. Too many names, too fast. General who? “Sheesh. Did you even have a TV?”

This he could answer. “No. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV.” The almost stifling pressure in the room
began to vent. This simple explanation seemed to satisfy them all.

Bridgett thankfully came to his rescue. “Hey, guys, stop picking on him.” Then she turned her angelic
face to Jarod. “Come on, Jarod, let’s walk down to the Seven-Eleven, I need some toothpaste.” Jarod
quickly agreed and they both headed down the street towards the convenience store about three
quarters of a mile down the street.

As they left the two-story home, Jarod was able to make out some of the details hidden by the darkness
last night. Situated on a corner, the house and lot covered the better part of the block. The Victorian
two-story was painted gray, but was in desperate need of a fresh paint job. The garage was a separate
stone building about ten yards from the house and had no doubt been converted from a carriage house
in the twenties. In the back, the stables were still standing along with the small fenced in area which until
recently had housed two horses. Dorothy’s mother had raised horses, but they had sold them after her
death. A dilapidated rusting carriage stood testament to the heritage of the yard.

The house stood in stark contrast to the relatively modern subdivision behind it. In the mid sixties an F-
3 tornado passed through the town demolishing hundreds of homes. Every home surrounding this one
had been destroyed, and yet this monolith had stood the test of nature. Perhaps it’s proximity to the
local Episcopal Church and the frequency of its owner’s attendance guided the tornado to seek another
target. As further testament, the oak tree on the side lawn suffered a lightning strike in 1987, yet the
house stood firm.

As they began to walk down the street, Jarod could feel the fragrance of Bridgett’s presence on him.
Walking with her intoxicated him. He felt as if he could run a marathon in her shadow and scarcely
notice he was winded. The birds sang with an inhuman clarity and Jarod could somehow track the
sway of each blade of grass as they proceeded down the street. For Jarod, the walk took hours to
complete. Despite having to pass both a ‘Total’ and a ‘Conoco’ convenience store, Jarod didn’t mind
one bit. Had he seen another store farther down the road, he would have directed them towards it.

*****

The friendly girl behind the counter welcomed them into the store. Secretly she mused they were here
for something she knew she’d need if that guy was with her. It genuinely disappointed her when they
started looking for toothpaste. She knew she’d find something to brush her teeth with if that dyke with
him would back off. Her fantasy continued as Jarod walked over to the candy aisle.

After a long look up and down the aisle, Jarod spied several small squares wrapped in brightly colored
wax paper. “What are these?” He asked to Jennie, the altogether too eager clerk.

“Laffy Taffy,” she replied, straightening the few straggling hairs from her pony tail.

“Laffy Taffy?” returned Jarod. He baffled was by the name she had used but intrigued by her hair toss.

“Yeah. It’s like taffy in different flavors. It’s good.” Jennie tried to straighten up a bit to accentuate her
ample figure. She wished she’d worn her push-up bra today, but she thought she could compensate
with posture. Maybe he wasn’t with that bull dyke after all.

“Why do they call it ‘Laffy Taffy’?”

“Because there’s jokes written on the wrapper of each one,” called Bridgett from across the store.
Jennie recognized the signal and deflated her chest. Damn, why are all the good ones taken?

“Jokes?” Jarod replied, opening one of the little squares.

“Yeah, and real corny ones, too.” Bridgett returned.

“Hmm,” said Jarod, reading the first wrapper. “Bridgett, what kind of jokes are like popcorn?”

“I don’t know.” Jarod should have seen she was losing her patience.

“The corny ones!” Jarod smiled, quite pleased with himself. Jennie thought to politely laugh in order to
draw Jarod’s attention again, but Bridgett’s look stopped her. This girl was damn possessive. “This is
funny. How many do you have?”

It was Jennie’s turn to be surprised. “Well, what’s there on the shelf and one more case in the back.”

“I’ll take them.”

Bridgett’s look of exasperation gave Jennie a perceived glimpse into this relationship. Quietly she
mused that at heart all guys were the same. No matter how big they were, they were just bigger kids.
Maybe her boyfriend wasn’t so bad after all. The nod Bridgett gave her told Jennie that Jarod was
indeed serious and mommy had approved. She retired to the back to get the remaining inventory of
taffy.

Jennie believed Jarod’s count of 4365 taffy squares and rang up the total. He insisted on paying for
Bridgett’s toothpaste and the total came out to $235.58 which Jarod paid for with three one-hundred
dollar bills. Jennie had never seen that much money in one place at one time. Jarod had more money in
his wallet than she made in two weeks at this dump. He may be eccentric, but the dude could afford it.
She noted the comical combination of purchases and decided she’d have to call her friend Melissa
immediately to let her know. Mel would never believe this.

*****

Jarod and Bridgett left and headed back to the house. Much to the surprise of everyone on the street,
each of whom watched intently through their windows, the man who had been obviously doting over the
woman next to him was now fully engrossed in the contents of his paper grocery sacks. He kept tearing
open taffy wrappers and devouring the taffy, taking time only to recite the jokes on the underside of the
wrapper to his exasperated companion. The woman was extremely tolerant, the locals noted.

Springdale was a small town, especially the historic district. Everyone knew the woman as the
photographer staying at Maybell’s old place. Maybell had died of a heart-attack about six months ago,
which had been a surprise to everyone. She always walked in the morning and she had been taking her
medication for years. Rumor was her daughter had even started taking medication for her blood
pressure. Maybell was a trim woman who watched every calorie she ate and policed her salt like an
alcoholic at a New Years Party. When she died it had been a shock to the community. Her only
daughter, Dorothy was nice enough though, even if her husband was a storm chaser. Strange couple,
but they were quiet.

The rumors had been flying that Kevin was having an affair with this new girl, but now with this big guy
showing up, most of those rumors would die quickly. This was obviously her boyfriend. Cute enough,
they figured. Today it would circulate that he had been polite in refusing the advances of little Jennie
Daniels, who was not such a good girl. Most of the women in town did not let their husbands or sons
into that store unattended while Jennie was there. Anyway, this guy had escaped unscathed. Obviously
he was the boyfriend of that photographer girl. Betty Cornell, who had been inside the Seven-Eleven,
had verified no rings.

*****

When Jarod returned to the house, Kevin had a little surprise waiting for him. “What are these?” Jarod
asked regarding the two thick books on the coffee table.

“They’re for you. That’s the ‘Complete Sherlock Holmes Volumes 1 and 2’ and I do expect you to
read them by tomorrow,” Kevin joked. “I thought you’d like to read them, since you’re now the third
best investigator I’ve met.”

“Third?” Jarod asked with an expression of disbelief.

“Yeah, Sherlock, me then you. Get to work.” Jarod picked up the first book, about 1100 pages. He
should have this finished by supper. “By the way, do you know anything about engines?”

“I was a mechanic once, why?”

“Come on then, let’s get the tractor up and running. We’ve got a lawn to mow.”

“Okay,” Jarod answered. They left to go out to the back workshop to try to restore the 1938 Ford
tractor to a running condition.

*****

After lunch the two of them went back to the shed. Jarod was busy rewinding the starter motor, which
had burned out, while Kevin began to re-machine the choke linkages. The main linkage for the choke
had snapped and the motor flooded, burning up the starter motor when Kevin tried to start it last week.
Parts for the tractor were impossible to find and besides, both Kevin and Jarod took pride in machining
their own parts anyway. Jarod continued to impress Kevin, even though Kevin thought the young guy
tried to show off too much. With age comes patience, Kevin thought. Besides, isn’t it common for the
young buck to test the teacher. Kevin already loved Jarod like a son.

The two women made lemonade for the men that afternoon. Bridgett, who was normally off re-
shingling the roof or replacing the transmission in the truck stuck close by Dorothy. Dorothy beamed
under the light of her attention. Dorothy was eager to help Bridgett out in any way that she could. She
was delighted that finally Bridgett had found someone she was interested in. She was not blind to
Kevin’s feelings for Bridgett but she trusted Kevin. After all these years, she knew him better than he
knew himself. Bridgett was a rather homely looking girl, but beneath that she had a heart of gold and
Dorothy loved her like a daughter. Seeing Jarod and Kevin work together, she couldn’t help fantasizing
about the family she never had. Maybe she would get one after all.

Dorothy had paid special attention to Jarod’s surprise and delight at the lemonade. She doubted he
tasted a single drop as he drank it with Bridgett hovering so close. Bridgett even feigned interest in what
Jarod was doing and listened to a twenty minute lecture on winding a motor, even though Dorothy knew
Bridgett could have done it in her sleep. Bridgett had it for Jarod all right. They were perfect for each
other and Dorothy would be damned if anything would come between them. Jarod positively
worshipped Bridgett’s every move, and Dorothy had only seen that one other time in a man. That man
she had married before he got away.

Although her mother had passed away recently, she was now beginning to feel a little more at home
here. At home, she chuckled to herself; she had grown up in this home. It was still confusing not to
walk into her old bedroom, which Jeff was sleeping in, instead of the master bedroom. A man in her
room; what would mother think! Anyway, mother was with God now, and the hurting was beginning to
heal. She and Kevin were never so happy as they were now. Kevin's run-in with the tornado had
caused impotence. They could never have children of their own. Maybe now they would get to adopt
two….

Bridgett positively glowed when the two of them returned to the kitchen after spending an hour in the
shed. Kevin had made more than one remark to Dorothy indicating his similar line of thinking. Jarod
and Bridgett had been completely unaware of their presence, however. Dorothy was so happy.
Maybe she’d show Bridgett how to make a Rhubarb Crunch this afternoon. She’d been picking up
cooking exceptionally quickly over the last two days. Dorothy had even begun to suspect the joke
she’d made about being a gourmet chief in New York to be the truth. No, silly, she scolded herself,
Bridgett was just a fast learner. The way to a man’s heart was still his stomach and Jarod had proven
himself a prolific eater. Yes, a good crunch would do the trick.

Jarod would like that.

The Winds of Change

Chapter 5 (rating PG-13 Adult Situation, mild language)

Springdale, Arkansas
August 15, 1997 1530 CST

The last week had flown past in a blur of long walks and longer evenings. Even Dorothy had begun to
worry that Bridgett and Jarod would need to sleep much more than they were. The two of them were
up talking long hours after the others had gone to bed and rarely had they been asleep when Kevin
came down in the morning. Once, Kevin went down at four, just to check if they ever slept. Jarod was
just lying down after having walked Bridgett to the basement stairs. Returning to sleep, Kevin found
Jarod up at six looking rested as always. Love can work strange miracles.

Jeff and Marty had long since given up their bet on how long Jarod and Bridgett could abstain. They
convinced each other that this event had come and passed but Jarod was strangely tightlipped about his
nightly activities. Unable to pinpoint the date, they called the bet a draw. Dorothy was thankfully sure
that Jarod and Bridgett were still sleeping in separate places. She could never bring herself to accept
this modern lifestyle that so many young people seemed to enjoy. She had never been with another man
and she knew it made her relationship with Kevin special. She didn’t think Bridgett was a virgin, but
was glad they didn’t rush into anything: Jarod just might be.

Throughout the week, Bridgett and Dorothy had baked a new dessert for Jarod each night. The two of
them had become inseparable and Dorothy had completely forgotten the nights she sat up wondering
why Bridgett never took to her. She had begun to teach Bridgett needle-point and crocheting, too.
Bridgett had too much boy in her for her own good, Dorothy thought. Maybe tomorrow she could get
Bridgett to wear a skirt or a dress for God’s sake. Nothing got a man’s mind moving like a good fitting
dress. Shorts and pants always blocked the mind's path towards the promised land, her mother had
told her. Keep a path open and the road ahead would be smooth. Her mother had been drinking
Scotch that night and the comment shocked Dorothy. She did remember the lesson, though.

Dorothy had begun to wonder about Bridgett’s deliberate use of baggy clothing. Although she wasn’t
emaciated like most young women wanted to be these days (didn’t they call it the wafer look or
something like that?), she had a truly beautiful figure. Dorothy couldn’t help notice as she moved
around the kitchen and they sat and drank their afternoon tea how loose the clothes really were.
Dorothy had once accidentally walked in on Bridgett removing her shirt and shorts in the laundry room
for washing. Bridgett had her robe nearby, but hadn’t had a chance to put it on yet. She was truly an
exquisite woman. Her figure seemed carved from pure marble and sculpted by the hands of a true
master. Except for the strange looking tattoo on her left shoulder blade, partially covered by the tan,
tight-fitting sports bra she was wearing, her skin was perfect. Why did such a pretty girl want to ruin
her skin by getting a tattoo on it? Bridgett had whirled around in surprise and quickly slid on her robe.

Dorothy still cringed at the thought of how tightly the sports bra contained her surprisingly large breasts.
Dorothy had always assumed Bridgett was small chested. How did she handle the pain? Why would
anyone want to intentionally hide breasts that a lot of women paid money to imitate? Maybe Bridgett
was just shy. Of course she was, Dorothy scolded herself. When men saw breasts like that, they rarely
saw anything else. She was probably just embarrassed by them. Dorothy started to tell Bridgett that
she didn’t need to worry about how she looked, but when Bridgett started to cry, relating the story of a
particularly rough ex-boyfriend, Dorothy was shocked and very sorry to have brought up the topic.
Obviously Bridgett had some very traumatic experiences relating to her beauty. Jarod would just have
to wait to find out what a lucky man he was.

Jarod seemed content to wait. He began to explore every avenue of this new sensation of Romance.
Regularly he would spend hours combing the neighborhood looking for wildflowers to bring to Bridgett.
The two of them took long walks in the afternoon and sat on the porch nearly every night to watch the
sunset. At first the mosquitoes had been bad, but Jarod had again amazed them all by whipping up
three of the most effective mosquito candles Dorothy had ever seen. He was truly an amazing man.
Each day brought new surprises in him.

He had finished the two Sherlock Holmes books and even Dorothy, who had grown quite accustomed
her husband’s recital of Holmes, had become quite fed up with Jarod. He had taken to smoking this
infernal pipe and carried a large magnifying glass around with him everywhere. He would often spend
hours studying a trail of footprints through the grass or go through a spell of tipping over flower pots just
to see how they broke when they landed. He even went out and bought seventy different perfumes for
Bridgett and then told her to wear a different one each time he saw her. He was very good at guessing
first the specific fragrance and then the multiple fragrances Bridgett used to try and trick him.
Throughout it all, bless her heart, Bridgett remained utterly fascinated with Jarod. He was like a ten-
year-old boy with an overactive imagination. Dorothy had found herself a son.

*****

The Centre
Blue Cove, Delaware
August 15, 1997 1830 EST

“So, Broots, is this the big weekend?” Miss Parker’s abrupt entrance violated the sanctity of the
elaborate fantasy Broots had been working on for the last fifteen minutes. The start she gave him
caused him to topple over his chair.

“Uh, Miss Parker,” Broots stammered as he fought to regain his feet. “I, ah, didn’t hear you come in.”

“Did I catch you at a bad time?” Her mocking tone belied her wish that this was true. “You haven’t
been downloading your pictures again, have you?” The one time she had caught him showing Sam
some Jenny McCarthy pictures on the Internet would live forever in her memory. That’s okay, he
thought to himself, I have a pretty good memory, too.

“Ah, well, no. Actually I was, um, just about to leave.”

“Meeting Delilah for the first time? Did you bring your rain gear, Broots, or does mommy have to have
that little talk with you?” The mocking contempt in her voice made him feel like a ten-year-old again.
Damn her, who the hell did she think she was?

Broots shook his head in disbelief, wishing she would get to the real subject of this intrusion. Miss
Parker never paid a social visit, as much as he may have wished she would. Truthfully, he was glad she
wasn’t a Pretender and didn’t know what he thought around her. Too often, she startled him not
because of her intimidation, but due to his complete lack of ability to concentrate while around her.
Something primal in her awakened that part of him beaten and bruised by years as a punching bag. The
Sam’s of the world had long since stopped beating him up for being small, but Miss Parker never did.

As a child, physical abuse from peers was a kind of acceptance for him. If they beat him up, at least
they noticed him. On some level he still felt this way about Miss Parker. She cared enough to think up
ways to pound on him. She cared enough to remember Delilah’s name, his daughter’s name and the
important dates in his life. He doubted Sydney did. She had even given him his daughter’s birthday off,
though she claimed it was because he needed a shower and she was sick of seeing him at the Centre.
Broots knew it was no coincidence. She cared enough to show she cared, in the only way she knew
how. Broots was just sick enough to recognize it.

Miss Parker moved in close to him. The fragrance she wore, he thought it was Obsession, began to
wash over him and he could feel the bitter surrender of arousal sweeping over him like a tide. She had
to know what this did to him. “Brootsie,” her breath blew hot in his face, her finger found a home
poised on his chest. Damn her, who did she think she was? “I need you to check on something before
you leave for the weekend. It should only take a minute, and then you can go. In fact, take Monday
off, too.” Broots had submitted the leave chit for Monday a month ago and it was still unsigned. He
didn’t hold the illusion that she meant for him to take off Monday. She just meant she wouldn’t call him
in until Monday.

“I, ah, really have to go. I’ve got to ride back home, finish packing and then take a cab to the airport. I
don’t know….” Time to up the stakes a little.

“Broots, I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important.” Her heels put her a good two inches taller than
him, a fact of which he was increasingly aware. The threat of physical and mental violence was plain in
her voice. The game was progressing right on schedule.

Broots looked at her and then sheepishly looked at his watch.

“All right, I’ll swing you by home and then take you to the airport. Now will you help me?” Broots
knew she spent weekends at the Parker’s summer house in Jersey and the airport was on her way. He
just liked to hear how much of an inconvenience it would be for her. He had subconsciously stayed late
to see if something like this didn’t develop.

With an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders, Broots slumped down at his terminal. “Okay, what is it?”

Miss Parker leaned back in deliberately close to him. This was definitely getting interesting. “Jarod
Stewart just popped up on the records of MIT showing a Master’s Degree in Computer Science with
remedial classes to fill the gaps between this degree and his undergraduate work at the University of
Illinois in Meteorology.”

Broots whirled to face her. Their faces were two inches apart. She didn’t budge and Broots felt the
incredible tension building. He fought back his intense desire to kiss her. “Y-you don’t think this is our
Jarod?”

“No, you moron, I’m checking up on Martha Stewart’s husband so I can blackmail her into redoing this
dungeon you call an office. Who the hell do you think it is?” Pure hatred, pure emotion, pure violence.
Miss Parker was all woman and she left it all out on the table. Broots was unusually impressed.

“If you know it’s Jarod, what do you want me to do?” Broots was still confused by her motive but
intrigued by her information.

“Jesus Christ! What the hell do you think I want!” Miss Parker’s rages were famous around the
Centre. They were reputed to have three stages: Anger, Full Rage and Dead Calm. Broots knew he
had just passed into Full Rage and was on a collision course with Dead Calm. This was very serious
indeed. “I want you to find where he accessed these records from, how he changed them and where
the hell he is! Is that clear?”

Time to elevate the stakes one more time. “This is going to take hours! I, um, well, what about my
weekend?”

“The jet is fueled and Sam and I picked out your clothes. Have you even entered a store since the early
eighties or do you buy your clothes from the Nerd’s Warehouse?” She paused only long enough for
Broots to register this as an insult. “You can still make your rendezvous, but only if you hurry. Delilah
will be in Charleston in fourteen hours and the jet takes three to get there. That gives you eleven.
Understood?” The cocked eyebrows and sharp stance she had assumed told him he had hit critical
mass. Fortunately he could track the information down in five hours if he had to. As he turned back
towards the computer, she turned to walk out.

“Oh, Broots,” Miss Parker turned for one last jab. “If you don’t find him in time, I can always get Sam
or Willie to go down to Charleston and comfort her in your absence. You will let me know the minute
you find something.”

“Yeah,” Broots mumbled, completely unaware she was still in the room.

*****

Broots settled in behind his terminal and began to use his contacts and Centre access codes to make the
computer dance before him. The information Jarod had left him in Arizona would help him zero in on
Jarod’s new location, but Broots figured he’d try to do it unaided for a few hours. If he could just nail
that guy once without help, then he wouldn’t feel so bad about letting the Centre know. As long as
Jarod helped him look good, though, he would continue to allow Jarod to make him look good and
make Miss Parker look like a heel.

Of course, maybe Jarod was pushing her too hard. That ulcer wasn’t doing any better and she chain
smoked like an English dock worker. Broots couldn’t help laughing about the ulcer medicine Jarod had
left for them in Arizona. It almost made up for what she had done to that guy, Ted, wasn’t it? Oh well,
Broots just figured that was a lesson learned about opposing her. It was one he took to heart.

*****

Springdale, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 0245 CST

Even Jarod was beginning to tire. The incredible pace he and Bridgett had been maintaining for the last
week was actually starting to get to him. He knew it had to be killing her, but she seemed as fresh as a
rose each time he saw her. She did sleep much later than he did, sometimes not rising until seven or
eight o’clock. So he figured she was getting at least a few decent hours of sleep, something he was not.
Most nights he was lucky to get three. Tonight, though, they had said goodnight a little early. He still
had barely enough energy to check the on-line information he needed.

Jarod chuckled as he booted up his laptop. He had never spent this much time away from the Internet.
He actually hadn’t been on-line since that first night a week ago. Tonight, he had barely enough energy
to check the NWS information he needed and then go to bed.

Jarod accessed the NWS server using the Centre access codes he had used for years. He never used
these during times when the Centre could be monitoring due to the possibility of placing a cross-feed
trace on the similar command code structure. Jarod had designed this capability for the computers at
the Centre himself. He regretted it every day since his escape. Any computer using a Centre access
code could be traced by another computer using the same Centre code on the same sight at any given
time. At just after three in the morning on a Saturday, Jarod felt very sure that no one at the Centre was
accessing the NWS sight. The random sweeps of Centre access code use, he knew, were performed
at six minutes past every hour. Jarod knew they would never detect him in the thirty-five seconds it
took him to download the weather and barometric charts for the next day.

Downloading was always the most dangerous time. Any computer he was using opened itself up to the
host computer during a download. Given the talents of some of the people at the Centre, especially
Broots, Jarod was vulnerable for those few precious seconds. The cellular - land - satellite - cellular
modem connection would take at least thirty seconds to cross-feed trace. Broots would have to be
lying in wait for him in order to get a positive trace. Broots had round-trip tickets for Charleston and
would be no where near the Centre this weekend. Jarod felt as safe as he could have.

As the weather service charts slowly filled the small screen of his laptop, Jarod smiled. Good, he
thought, a warm air mass from the Gulf was coming towards them. When that front combined with the
cold air mass speeding towards them from the Dakotas, sparks would fly. Yes, after a week of nothing,
maybe tomorrow they’d get some action.

*****
Parker Summer Residence
Spring Lake, New Jersey 0352 EST

“What.” The sleep-heavy voice of Miss Parker dared the person on the other end of the phone-line to
sign their own death certificate.

“I’ve got him.” Broots was beaming. Even through the phone she could hear it. The little geek finally
nailed him. Damn.

“Broots,” she was instantly awake, “are you just going to breathe heavy or do you want to tell me
what you know.”

Broots was gushing, “Damn! I mean, I can’t believe he actually did it! I had a trace on the NWS sight
for Centre access codes with one terminal locked on the sight to make sure I wouldn’t have any
problems getting in after him. I mean, damn! He just waltzed right in bigger than, damn! Oh yeah, I got
him. DAMN!”

“Broots, do you need a napkin?” The cool violence of her voice sliced through his jubilation like an
early returning parent.

“What? Ah, no, I mean….”

“One word at a time Broots, I want to catch him while I’m still young and you’re still breathing.”

“Okay, okay. Jarod’s in a little town called Springdale, Arkansas. I don’t have a phone number or an
address, but the satellites triangulated the cellular signal to a one square block area and there’s only one
house on the block. The streets are Westwood and Huntsville. I’m sending over the satellite photo of
the house.”

The fax machine on the desk beside her bed fired up to life. How did Broots know that number? The
quaint little shack Jarod was hiding in came out in remarkable detail. What did we ever do before
satellites? The hot flush or excitement began to waif over her body, starting between her legs and
spreading slowly over her body. The chase was on, Jarod. Too long has the fox been allowed to roam
free in the henhouse. I was time to let the dogs out. Oh yes, it was time to end this.

She hung up on Broots without another word, barely managing to push the off button on the handset
before it slipped from her hands to clatter to the floor. She never heard it hit.

She quickly rose and began to select her wardrobe for this momentous day. Although accustomed to
false leads and dead ends she could sense this break was different. Broots had wet himself gushing
over this lead. Jarod never slipped up like this. The smart ones always did do something stupid. Was
is hot in here? She went to open the window, only to find it wide open. She tingled with anticipation.
She had to call Daddy.

*****
Springdale, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 0254 CST

Jarod turned off the laptop and settled down on the couch for another short night's rest. Three hours of
sleep was pretty good, though, recently. Jarod had never been comfortable with other people awake in
a house while he slept. After Nia had found the DSA’s he swore that no one would catch him unaware.
He always woke to Kevin flushing the toilet at six.

As he started to drift off to his normally dreamless sleep, two things began to gnaw at his normally very
precise memory. He knew that there was something he needed to do on-line, but he could not
remember just what it was. It had something to do with the night he and Bridgett had first talked, but he
couldn’t remember what about her had prompted him to want to search the Web. He just wasn’t sure.
He knew that something she said made him want to look up a specific web sight, maybe one she had set
up showing off her photos. No, it was something else. Why couldn’t he remember?

This feeling was so much like his childhood. He could never seem to remember the specifics of his
childhood. In watching the DSA’s he marveled at their scope and depth. He was also more than
slightly disturbed that he featured prominently in them yet he remembered little of actually performing the
sims. He found that the specific skills he had learned from the sims had stuck with him – flying, surgery,
linguistics, chemistry, and many others, yet the specific details of the sims were a mystery to him until he
watched them. Maybe he had just repressed the memories.

Sydney had always thought that the Pretenders shed memories along with psyche, but Jarod now knew
that wasn’t the truth. He no longer had any problems with maintaining memories from one Pretend to
another. Maybe he should discuss this further with Sydney. He made a mental note to do this the next
time they talked.

The other thing that had begun to trouble him was his uncertainty regarding Bridgett. Normally, casual
contact with any other person allowed him to absorb and utilize their abilities, thoughts and memories.
Not quite reading their minds, it was more like just getting strong enough impressions to approximate
their actual thoughts. He had no trouble picking up Kevin and Dorothy’s paternal love for him and
Bridgett. He knew that even now Dorothy’s maternal side was awakening, wishing to bring Bridgett
and Jarod into her fold. It hurt Jarod to think that this Pretend, like all the others, must end. It would be
painful for them. Kevin’s impending financial success and notoriety should ease that, though.

What troubled him was that he got absolutely no reading from Bridgett. He could gain no external
impressions of her and her mind was a blank slate to him. At first, this fascinated him. He relished the
thought of a real relationship without his Pretending ability giving him unfair advantages. Now, he wasn’t
so sure. Some deep part of him kept tugging at the one string of doubt any running man must maintain
to stay alive.

He needed to feel something from her besides the intoxicating, overwhelming joy he felt just sitting near
her. They had taken to sitting on the porch, Bridgett curled up against his chest, until late in the evening.
They would then come in and she would present the daily dessert, which they would devour on the
couch. After the first night, they had slowly crept towards each other and the last two nights, Bridgett
had jumped on the couch next to him and actually laid down against him. The smell of her hair in his
face was overwhelming. He wanted her very badly but strangely he knew the time was not right. He
could feel the moment building but knew it had not reached its crescendo. Maybe tomorrow night.

Tonight, at the top of the basement stairs, they had kissed for the first time. He had gone to open the
basement door for her and she had turned to tell him something at the same time. Their faces ended up
less than two inches apart. Jarod could feel his will stripped from him and an involuntary, irresistible
force drew him forward towards her.

Their lips touched once, softly. He could taste the panting, tentative breath from her lips and as the two
of them parted she slowly backed to the door jam. Jarod reached up with one hand and cupped the
back of her head drawing it back up towards his. Their lips touched again, firmer. Jarod felt her soft
pressure up against him and he moved his second hand to the refrigerator behind her. He leaned closer
pushing still more firmly against her lips.

Jarod felt her back off pressure slightly and as he began to release her lips he was pleasantly surprised
to feel her hand slowly move to his side and then caress its way up towards his shoulder. With a
surprisingly firm grip she drew him back to her, her mouth slightly parted for the impending kiss. Parting
his lips with slight pressure from her tongue, she drew him in closer for a deeper kiss. Jarod felt some
incredibly resistant part of his mind curse the towering height that precluded his chest from exploring
hers.

Unexpectedly, her hand had continued down from his shoulder and ended up in the center of his chest.
She slowly pushed him away with her hand, maintaining contact with his lips much past the natural
breaking point. Finally, unable to hold the kiss any longer, she released him and breathed a long deep
sigh. “Whoa.”

Jarod was having far too much trouble convincing his legs they were strong enough to support him to
respond.

“I’ve gotta go downstairs,” Bridgett sighed. “See you tomorrow?”

“Uh, yeah.” Jarod was still unable to move. His one hand remained on Bridgett’s face as the other
maintained a firm position on the refrigerator which was keeping him upright. As he watched her
movements down the stairs, he was pleasantly surprised to see that she need both hands to negotiate the
stairs.

Now, fifteen minutes later, his lips still tingled and he had far too little blood in the vital areas of his body
to allow for proper thinking. As he began to fade off to sleep, Jarod had already forgotten the things
that nagged him earlier. Remembering the kiss had completely wiped anything bad from his memory.
He fell asleep with a grin normally reserved for skydiving.

*****
The Centre
Blue Cove, Delaware
August 16, 1997 0635 EST

Miss Parker had driven the two hours to the Centre herself. Her driver had been asleep and she
decided the twenty minutes it would take her to get him up and ready to go weren’t worth the trouble.
Besides, she hadn’t taken the new Porsche out for a real test run yet. She had just taken delivery of a
bright red Porsche boxer. Although not as fast as her slant nose 911 Turbo, it was much less common
and it drew the attention she craved. She knew she looked good in the car, hell, she could make a
Yugo look good, she thought, laughing. Not that she would ever test that theory.

Despite not recognizing the car, the gate guards knew who the only one person who would attempt to
clear the six foot gap in the security fence at ninety was. They opened the gate and logged Miss Parker
in at 0630.

She was in her office by 6:45. A discrete call by the front hall security guard woke her two assistants
and sent them scrambling for clothes and mouthwash. She didn’t normally come in on a Saturday unless
it was important. When she did, she was always pissed.

She strode into her office and went immediately to her phone. “Daddy, sorry to wake you. Oh, you’re
already up. I have Jarod. I’m taking the jet down to Arkansas to pick him up. No, I didn’t call
Sydney yet. Sydney works for me, not vice versa.” Temper, temper she began to warn herself. He
may be her father, but he was also the Chairman. What was he hemming and hawing about.

“WHAT! Daddy, no offense, but I thought catching Jarod was more important than some golf game! I
understand he’s the President, but daddy, this is our best chance. Yes, I know that if he doesn’t know
we’re coming then he’ll be there tomorrow. Yes, daddy, I understand. I’ll get Sydney, brief him and
schedule us on the next flight. Excuse me? No daddy. I understand. We will use the jet tomorrow. I
understand, daddy.” The phone never made it back to the receiver. With every ounce of strength in
her five-foot-ten body, she hurled the phone into the wall severing the cord at the outlet. The receiver
and handset fell to the marble floor in far more than two pieces.

“Get Sydney,” she growled to the assistant she knew would be standing behind her.

On impulse, she glanced at her watch. Damn him! She was not going to wait until tomorrow to bring in
Jarod. The Porsche could get her there in twelve hours if she didn’t have to spend too much time
dealing with the local kangaroo cops. Damn him!

Sydney strode into her office, pleased he had planned to spend his Saturday doing research. He loved
being there when she least wanted him. “You wanted to see me?”

Miss Parker wheeled, completely surprised at the entrance. How the hell did he get here so fast?
“Let’s go. Do you drive stick?”

The Winds of Change

Chapter 6 (rating PG)

Springdale, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 0620 CST

Kevin came down, a few minutes later than normal. He was not surprised to find Jarod munching away
on the tub of taffy in front of him. Jarod was smiling from ear to ear and he looked better rested than
Kevin had seen him for days. Hmm, Kevin thought, maybe he got lucky.

“Good morning, Kevin!” Jarod was unusually happy this morning. Kevin hated morning people. As
long as Jarod didn’t tell him another stupid joke before Kevin made it to the coffee pot maybe he’d be
all right. “Say, Kevin, what kind of house is the easiest to lift?”

Damn. Just one morning he’d like to make it to the coffee pot unmolested. He had spent years training
Dorothy to leave him alone until after the second cup of coffee. Jarod showed no signs of learning this
particular habit of the household. He secretly thought Jarod was doing it on purpose. Kevin didn’t
even look in Jarod’s direction.

Jarod, who did experience a great deal of joy in irritating Kevin in the morning, continued despite the
lack of an attentive audience. “A lighthouse.” Jarod peeled off a burst of laughter that actually
convinced Kevin that the joke was a little funny.

“Real funny, Jarod. Where’s the coffee?”

“Oh, I already poured you a cup. I thought you might like to take a look at this.” Jarod pushed the
morning forecast towards Kevin.

Grabbing the coffee first, Kevin slowly began to look over the NeWS cast for the morning. How Jarod
got these direct feeds always puzzled Kevin. He figured Jarod had an NWS password or a friend in the
loop who fed them to him. Anyway, the isobars in the morning chart woke Kevin up much faster than
the coffee ever could. Damn, today would be a boomer.

A cold front had stalled over the Osarks and was just sitting still waiting for the remnants of Tropical
Storm Erika. Although downgraded long before to a simple high pressure system, Erika had pressure
readings over 1035 milibars. When that combined with the cold air mass sitting at about 995 milibars
the resultant pressure gradient would produce winds of incredible magnitude. Further, the warm air of
Erika would cause a turbulent mixing with the cold front already high in the mountains. Today the
question would not be whether they would have a tornado or not. The question would be where they
wouldn’t have a tornado.

“Jarod, do you know what this means?”

“Yeah, pretty cool, huh?” Jarod was far too glib about the turn of events for Kevin’s liking.

“We’ve got to get everyone up and get the gear together.”

“In a minute, I’ve got something I want to show you.” Jarod picked up a small backpack from
underneath his chair and laid its contents on the table. Twenty small cylindrical objects, smooth on
every edge, about two inches in diameter and six inches long rolled out onto the table. Kevin
involuntarily grabbed one and picked it up. They weighed less than one pound each.

“What are these?”

Jarod had been anticipating this moment for weeks. He always loved this part of the Pretend. Now it
was time to take over the situation, right the injustice and complete the mission. The adrenaline rush
was sexual. He could feel the high building. “Oh, that’s just a little something I threw together. They
are three-dimensional position indicators. Very similar to your design for the DOROTHY spheres. The
only major difference is that they have satellite referencing capability through the global positioning
network, laser height positioning and a one thousand square mile map memory. This morning I
downloaded local topographical defense maps from the DMA for this region of Arkansas.

“The devices will constantly orientate themselves to within one meter on satellite information alone. The
laser height system can measure the height above ground to within one hundredth of an inch. By
comparison between the DMA topographical maps, satellite fixes and laser height measurements over
four successive readings, these units can locate themselves three dimensionally to within one tenth of one
inch over the stored one thousand square mile area in their memory. They also have a small transmitter
which will transmit this data to any receiver within line of sight, including satellites.”

“Okay, Jarod, so it’s accurate. DOROTHY didn’t do anything for us. I’m very impressed at what
you’ve done here but it’s hopeless: ‘If you want to understand nature, your scope must be as broad as
nature.’ Holmes was right, nature produced man, therefore he can never understand nature.”

The high was intense now. Jarod had planned this conversation to every detail. The predictability of
people always amazed him. He was in rapture. “ ‘My dear Watson, endeavor not to make your facts fit
your solution, but instead make your solution fit your facts.’ If you cannot make your facts support any
conclusive solution, Kevin, you can’t just assume that no solution exists. Holmes put it another way:
‘The process starts with the supposition that once you have eliminated that which is impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’” Jarod glowed.

Kevin sat dumbfounded. “I must say, you have me at a loss, Mr. Holmes.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson,” Jarod continued, pulling out the pipe he had taken to smoking lately.
“The data which you have obtained has been run through countless binary real number equations and
computer models to try and predict the future based on past model data. Instead, the data should have
been run through the complex model of a chaos system, enabling the reciprocating data to produce the
bifurial constant and allow us to predict future system behavior. To say it another way, you never used
the right equation.

“Edward Lorenz discovered that organic systems often defied the mathematical models which
supposedly defined their existence. He found through experimental methods of overlaying data for
multiple experimental runs that there always existed a common thread. He also found that every organic
system, that’s right, every organic system, had the same common thread. By simplifying the
mathematical models for each system to a seemingly unrelated, common equation, incidentally the one
for a water wheel, Lorenz discovered that the same common thread existed in the overlaid results. This
self-similarity was documented and called the Lorenz Attractor. Lorenz also noticed that if he deleted
the data which he experimentally obtained, his Lorenz Attractor would effectively produce predicable
results from experimentation.”

Kevin was floored. “Delete the data?”

“Yes, Watson, he found that in order to achieve an effective prediction of results, the experimental data
had to be deleted. The prediction of future results was the only piece of information retained from the
experiment. Consequently, this was another fault with your DOROTHY experiments. In keeping the
data, you only allow yourself to replicate the event, not predict future action. I only need one set of
tornado data to create a deletion database to produce for you a real tornado predictor program, much
in the same way one fractal equation can predict the growth of a forest.

“Tomorrow you will have the first real method of exactly predicting the location, strength, direction, path
and final stopping point of any tornado.”

*****

Beltway 495 East, Maryland
August 16, 1997 0745 EST

“Miss Parker, you still haven’t told me why we aren’t taking the jet.” With the top down on the
Porsche, Sydney had to yell his question across to his driving companion. The incredible volume of the
Chemical Brothers CD was further intended to dissuade conversation. Sydney, as usual, completely
ignored these outward symptoms of her foul temper. One day she would learn that her displays of
aggression and intimidation only prodded him on further.

“Syd, at ninety-five miles an hour, I think I should be paying attention to the road, and not to your stupid
questions. Shut up or I’ll test my theory regarding pain thresholds and consciousness.” Miss Parker
was all business and all woman. Sydney respected her for it.

“I see you have your Police Sentry in place. What is so important to warrant its use and not the use of
the jet?” The Police Sentry was a small device similar to a radar detector. Instead of warning the
occupants of the presence of police radar, it sent a signal to radar units indicating that the vehicle being
monitored was authorized for safe passage. The device had been created by the Centre and was
currently in use by the FBI, DEA, Secret Service and ATF units engaged in deep cover operations.
Occasionally, a random aircraft or silent pacing patrol unit would attempt a stop but this unit virtually
eliminated any chance of interference.

Use of a Sentry device had to be authorized through SIS. No doubt Miss Parker had little trouble
obtaining blanket approval for this. The Centre maintained four units that were usually reserved for
personnel transfers and special operations. Sweeper Teams could obtain permission from the Tower,
but rarely received it. All Sentry units were monitored via satellite by the FBI and the Centre did not
allow anyone to track the position of their Sweeper Teams. The real question was why the Centre
allowed the use of a Sentry to apprehend Jarod. Occasionally the use of a Sentry resulted in surprise
back-up from the FBI, who always wanted to ensure Sentries were not used for joy riding. The Centre
would not allow the possibility of the FBI interfering with the capture of Jarod, would they?

Sydney didn’t know that Miss Parker had intimidated Broots into crossing the satellite feed relays, thus
eliminating this particular problem on her personal Sentry.

The normal Sunday flow of traffic around the Capitol seemed to stand still around the darting Porsche.
Sydney noticed Miss Parker’s rather lax attention to detail as she passed 115 miles per hour. Although
the Porsche screamed by the surrounding traffic, Sydney couldn’t help notice they were merely churning
out 3400 RPM in fifth gear. With a red-line of over six thousand RPM, he knew that they would be
exploring the far side of 150 if they could ever escape the urban sprawl.

Sydney enjoyed a spirited ride as much as the next man, but this ride brought him too close to the last
ride he and Jacob ever made. Jacob had worn the same dogged determination prominently displayed
on the woman next to him. Despite the incredible late summer weather and the obvious differences in
circumstance, Sydney could not help feeling he was on a collision course with destiny.

Miss Parker just looked over and laughed as she shot horizontally across four lanes of traffic to barely
make the I-66 East exit. “Come on, Syd, lighten up. You look like you just saw a ghost!”

*****

Springdale, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 0800 CST

As the team scurried about the house to make final preparations for the impending day of chasing, Jarod
casually strolled out the garage to complete his second order of business. He had noticed a card from
Marty’s old tour group in the pocket of the dead photographer in Carthage. A quick check of Marty’s
bank records showed random deposits of five hundred dollars that roughly coincided with each tornado
site the team had responded to. Jarod had needed this last tornado to prove is fears. Marty had used
the information obtained through Kevin and Jeff to tell his supposedly old tour group where to find
today’s tornadoes. Apparently the tour paid him a bounty of five hundred dollars per tornado he
directed them to.

Contempt somehow didn’t cover the feelings in Jarod. How could this man lead innocent civilians, with
no training and no chance into the mouth of a tornado? What was his price for human life? Five
hundred dollars? Jarod was actually sick this morning when he discovered Marty had actually cashed
the check that sent seven people to their graves. Those lives were worth less than eighty dollars a piece
to him. Jarod knew he had to come up with something to strike a little fear in this man. No, Jarod
would have to teach him a lesson in fear: a very strong lesson.

Under the dash, Jarod found the ignition wires with little effort. The remotely actuated ignition block
was designed to be installed in seconds. Carefully surveying the dash, Jarod knew Marty would never
know the difference. With the new remotes for DOROTHY, the team would take two vehicles today:
the panel van, which was their mobile command center, and the extended cab Chevy Z-71 pickup,
which served as their recon vehicle. Kevin and Jarod had already discussed that Jarod and Marty
would drive up to the tornado in the truck, set DOROTHY and run. They had chosen to stake out the
Fort Smith as tornado activity looked strongest in the vicinity. Jarod had a new rental car in place
parked outside the Varsity Sports Bar in Fort Smith, where he and Bridgett had gone to eat a few nights
before. Yesterday, he had run down to the car and put his DSA reader in the trunk, positioned for a
hasty retreat.

He really didn’t like to leave this way. He had no quarrel with Kevin and Dorothy and he knew they’d
figure he’d died in the tornado. Marty would tell them the truth, maybe. Marty would never make it out
of the state, regardless. Already, FedEx was delivering the incriminating documents to the county
prosecutor. Marty was an accessory to wrongful death, maybe even manslaughter. No doubt they’d
have Marty in custody by dark. He also hoped that his abrupt disappearance would turn the Centre
investigation away from Kevin and his group.

Perhaps this wasn’t the whole truth, through. Jarod never really liked to say good-bye and he knew
that this would be good-bye for him and Bridgett. He could never ask anyone to assume the life he led
even though he knew she would if he asked her. He had to just disappear and never see her again. It
was really better that way, he kept telling himself. This would be the easiest way for both of them. One
day, when the Centre lay in ruins at his feet, he would find her again, but not until that day. She gave
him hope and he knew he’d need that ray of hope to survive the coming months.

Jarod finished in the truck and started to load the team’s equipment into the back. After the
DOROTHY unit was loaded and Jarod’s special position indicators were loaded into DOROTHY’s
cargo bay, he backed the truck out of the garage and killed the motor. Convinced the truck worked
perfectly he pushed the small transmitter in his pocket and tried to start the motor again. Nothing.
Perfect, as usual.

Jarod didn’t notice the small set of blue eyes standing in a deep shadow next to the water heater in the
garage. Despite being less than six feet from her the entire time he was in the garage, Jarod never knew
that the woman he thought he could feel enter a crowded concert hall watched every move he made.
As he closed the garage door she went to work.

*****

Knoxville, Tennessee
August 16, 1300 EST

“Miss Parker, please let me drive for a while.” The constant strain of running at over one hundred thirty
miles per hour had to be getting to her. He knew it was getting to him and he was only the passenger.

“Can it, Syd,” she barked back. “I let you drive once before, remember? If I wanted to sight-see I’d
have taken Greyhound.” Sydney had taken a driving shift after stopping for gas in Bristol, Virginia.
Miss Parker had vehemently ordered him to the shoulder when he refused to run at more than one-
twenty.

“Listen to me, Jarod will still be there when we arrive. We must arrive in one piece, though, if we plan
on bringing him back.” Maybe reason would work where persuasion had not.

“I said can it, Syd. I’m not in the mood.” Truthfully she was never more in the mood. Her hormones
and endorphins were charging through her body and she never felt more alive. She could see every leaf
on every tree, every blade of grass and she could even see every startled glance thrown her way as she
flew by the Sunday traffic. Her raven hair blew strait back in the rush of wind over the short windshield.
Secretly she knew Sydney was going to have one hell of a sunburn on the top of his balding head, and
she positively giggled at the thought of it peeling over the next two weeks. She offered Sydney that
she’d tell her father that she had left without him, but the damn fool decided to join in. She loved
torturing him like this. Alone, she wouldn’t have broken 110. At least that’s what she told herself.

This was almost, no it was actually better than sex. Didn’t young Jarod once say that the anticipation of
pain was more effective than pain itself? Somehow, maybe that applied to sex as well. This impending
rush, the thrill of the chase in all its sexual glory could never match the final result. How could it?
Similarly to her fencing, she felt that the anticipation of the encounter and the thrill of obtaining the upper
hand in the battle was far superior to actually winning. The adrenaline rush at the moment where the tide
turned ebbed to an almost hollow joy once the final gasping victory was achieved.

She couldn’t help wondering if maybe this is what Jarod learned long ago. Maybe in performing his
sims he realized that the anticipation of the result could be as fulfilling as the actual achievement. By
simulating space missions, for instance, could he actually achieve the rush of take-off and the high of
achievement? Certainly reality was a pitiful substitute for the fantasies that we set up. Maybe through
sims, Jarod never encountered this reality let-down. Maybe he learned that reality could be as fantastic
and wondrous as our imagination tells us it should be. Maybe he doesn’t even realize that most people
allow reality to dim their hopes and achievements into mediocrity. Maybe he really was having as much
fun as he tried to make her believe he was. If he was, she would kill him for that secret.

Sydney saw her rapt concentration and set face and decided that he was relegated to the passenger’s
seat for the rest of the trip. He had attempted to put his bowler on earlier only to have it nearly torn
from his grip by the ferocious wind coming over the pathetically short windshield of the Porsche. He
knew he’d be burnt for weeks after this. Damn her, he silently cursed. Deciding he had best make the
best of a bad situation, he struggled to find a comfortable position for his large frame.

Miss Parker looked over and was amazed to find her overly concerned partner fast asleep.

*****

Springdale, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1520 CST

Jarod and Kevin had held the team back from three large tornadoes in lower Missouri. The NWS
alerts had been received too late for them to intercept the tornadoes. Despite the prompting of Marty
and Jeff, Kevin would not let them reposition to Joplin. He did not tell them about Jarod’s prediction of
a larger tornado in their own backyard. He could not take the risk Jarod was wrong. Little of what
Jarod had said made any sense to Kevin but he was smart enough to know it made sense to Jarod. In
Kevin’s book, that was ninety percent of the battle. If Jarod was right, today would be truly the first
day of the rest of his life. If he was wrong, no one could blame Kevin for trusting the young man.
Kevin had been wrong before. Only the dedication and belief of his mentors enabled him to succeed
after so many failures.

As they impatiently waited, the team members each undertook a separate ritual. Although none
probably consciously set out to perform these rituals, Kevin knew them by rote. Jeff grabbed his Rubix
Cube and endlessly spun the tiles. Occasionally he would perk up from an apparent trance and solve
the mess he had made of the puzzle. Once solved, he would lapse into the trance again and mix up the
squares. Marty poured over topographical and road maps for the areas of highest activity.
Occasionally he would call friends who chased in order to get local conditions. Through it all, Marty
chain smoked like an alcoholic one day dry. Kevin could almost hear the adrenaline rushing through his
veins.

Bridgett had taken to the habit of putting on her Walkman and just sitting quietly. When Kevin asked
her what she was doing, she had replied that she was meditating. She was a strange contrast to the
nervous energy of the other two. Today, though, Jarod would not leave her alone. He was devouring
his taffy at an alarming rate, stopping only to spit out the very poor jokes on the back of the wrappers to
no one in particular. Dorothy comforted Kevin and usually rubbed his shoulders or talked to him while
he waited.

Jarod went over to Bridgett and asked her what she was listening to. “A Walkman,” she replied.

“Yes, I know, a personal portable stereo. I find them remarkable. I really meant can I listen to what
you’re listening to.”

Bridgett laughed like the sound of wind-chimes in a summer breeze, “Of course, Jerry.” She handed
Jarod the headset. Jeff had attempted to call Jarod ‘Jerry’ a couple of days ago. The arm bar Jarod
put on him convinced him that only one person in the household was allowed to use that name, besides
Dorothy.

“Hmm. This is really good,” Jarod exclaimed much too loudly. He obviously was unaccustomed to
regulating his voice while wearing headphones. “Who is it?”

Bridgett pulled one headphone away from his ears so she wouldn’t have to compete with the music as
well. “Jane’s Addiction.”

“Oh, what is Jane’s addiction?”

“The band, silly,” she abruptly released the headphone and it crashed into Jarod’s head jarring him back
to the music. He sheepishly smiled at his rather poor attempt at humor.

The music was slow and methodical. A guy with a high pitched voice was singing about a girl named
Jane over the driving acoustic guitar line:

“Jane says: I aint never been in love,
I don’t know what it means,
I only know when someone wants me
I wonder if they want me
Everybody wants me”

Bridgett removed the headphones from Jarod and explained that if he wanted to listen, he would have to
get his own Walkman. Seeing Jarod’s hurt expression, Dorothy went upstairs to get the Walkman she
used for her walking. She presented it to Jarod, much to his joy. He asked Bridgett to let him borrow
a cassette. She handed him the first one she came to: Alice In Chains, “Dirt”.

Jarod had a moment’s trouble opening the Walkman and inserting the tape the right way. He explained
that he had never operated a Walkman before, which everyone by now accepted. He shrugged any
difficulty off on a supposed lack of exposure. They had long ago accepted this as some character flaw
in him and wished he’d just admit he was absent minded. He had no problem finding the volume knob,
however. Before the third bar of the first song was completed, he had the volume turned up to
maximum and was searching the unit for some auxiliary volume control. Dorothy winced at the thought
of the damage Jarod had to be doing both to his hearing and her Walkman. Across the room, she could
plainly hear the music coming out of the headphones.

*****

It was just after five when the NWS bulletin came over the fax. Sebastian and Washington counties had
been upgraded to a Tornado Warning. Funnel clouds were spotted near Fort Smith. Jarod’s
prediction was perfect. If they hurried they could make Fort Smith in about one hour.

Kevin rounded up the troops and the five of them piled into the two vehicles and sped off towards their
destiny.

Dorothy waved to them as they sped off into the rapidly darkening sky. She turned and went inside to
perform a ritual of her own. She always baked bread whenever Kevin went out to chase a storm. The
baking relaxed her and besides, Kevin loved the fresh made bread when he got home.

As long as she made bread, she always knew he was coming home.

*****

Little Rock, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1700 CST

Slowing to 115 within the city limits of Little Rock felt like crawling compared to the 150 they had been
running for the last hour. Miss Parker looked at the gas gauge and decided they would fill up in the next
big town. She didn’t feel like stopping in this poor excuse for a city.

Sydney had drifted in and out of sleep, something she envied him for. Even her resolve was beginning
to wear thin, though she could smell Jarod now. She could smell the impending fear. She knew he did
not expect her. Looking at the Alpine in-dash Navigator, she noticed that the next town was called Fort
Smith. It was about 128 miles away. With any luck, she could be there in about an hour.

The Winds of Change

Chapter 7 (rating R Violence, Non-related Character Death, Mild Language)

Part Seven

Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1720 CST

The scratched and dented panel van tried to keep pace with the newer truck but Jeff, driving a much
less powerful vehicle and possessing somewhat inferior driving skills, had his hands full doing it. Marty,
meanwhile, impressed even Jarod with his handling of the large, four wheel drive truck as he darted in
and out of the traffic with a skill Jarod knew few possessed. It was a pity that his confidence would be
shaken today to the point where Jarod knew he would never drive like this again. Pity that such a
talented person possessed an extremely limited conscience. Jarod always felt some sorrow at the
thought of a life which had wasted limitless potential. The man would never know how truly blessed he
was, at least not until Jarod took it all away from him.

As they passed through Fayetteville at better than seventy miles per hour, it was fortunate that Kevin
knew most of the local police. Despite running through two speed traps at almost double the posted
speed limit, they weren’t hassled by the local police. Usually, the local law enforcement not only let
Kevin pass unmolested, but they turned and sped as fast as practical in the opposite direction. The
yellow truck and dilapidated panel van were well known throughout Tornado Alley and they were
regularly greeted with a welcome usually reserved for the Grim Reaper. Where Kevin went, tornadoes
followed.

Jarod decided to make a little light conversation with Marty. “So, where’d you learn to drive like this?”

“I was in the military,” Marty replied. “I was assigned embassy duty in the Corps and they sent me to
the CIA’s advanced driving school. You know, escape and evasion techniques. The training wasn’t
much use in the civilian world, but hell, it sure keeps me out of harm’s way now.”

In fact, Jarod had accessed Marty’s service record two weeks ago. Marty was a Marine (even Jarod
knew you never really left the Marine Corps) with an infantry background. Marty had shown promise
and was sent to Meteorological training within the Corps and worked in the headquarters company of
the 3rd Amphibious Brigade. He had been responsible for reporting on weather conditions for the
Grenada invasion and for numerous Desert Storm sorties. Between combat tours, Marty had been
assigned to the prestigious Embassy Guard and was assigned to the United States Embassy in both
Costa Rica and Columbia. These are still hot spots for American diplomats and assignment for these
posts was a special honor. Jarod knew Marty had received a great deal of escape and evasion training
as well as the usual weapons, survival, intelligence and security training requisite for a duty assignment to
the Embassy Guard.

Marty mistook Jarod’s silence as an invitation to continue the conversation. “So, how did you end up in
this line of work?”

Jarod never really understood the concept of small talk but he endured it the best he could. “Oh, I got
bored jumping out of airplanes.”

“Airborne, huh?”

“You might say that. I do a lot of things.” Jarod was being intentionally curt, hoping to end a
conversation he was beginning to regret starting.

“Yeah, well I guess you’re doing Bridgett now, too. She’s a little vixen, huh?”

Jarod couldn’t believe the infatuation that Jeff and Marty had with Bridgett. She told him they never
even talked to her about him but they couldn’t seem to keep her out of their conversations with him.
Strange. “Do Bridgett?” Jarod was confused by this particular slang.

“You know, bump uglies?” Jarod shrugged his continued confusion. “Slippin’ the salami, dipping the
dolphin, laying pipe? Jesus Christ, Jarod, don’t you know anything?”

Jarod was beginning to believe he understood what Marty was getting at but he still didn’t understand
the phrases. “You mean have I had sex with her?”

Marty rolled his eyes in disgust. If they had been in a locker room, Marty would have snapped Jarod
with a towel. “Yes, Jarod. I mean you’re screwing her, aren’t ya?”

Screwing is for carpenters, Jarod thought. “No, actually we aren’t ‘bumping uglies’ but we are great
friends. We even kissed last night.” Jarod’s far off expression belied his reminiscence of this
experience.

Marty blankly stared at the overgrown twelve year old next to him. Kissed? The guy was spacing out
like he was remembering the best sex of his life. Was this guy a virgin? Marty positively tingled at the
possibilities of teasing this know it all about being a virgin.

Jarod looked at Marty. Despite the tough exterior, Jarod could feel the inner conflicts within the man.
On impulse, Jarod continued. “Tell me, Marty, what do you miss most about being married?”

Marty felt the sting of a question which struck like a bayonet. Where the hell did that question come
from? “What do I miss most about being married? I guess the nagging.” Marty tried to laugh off the
comment but the noise was hollow coming from him.

“No, really.”

“Okay. Really, I miss my wife. Sure, the divorce was my fault. I was a crappy husband. I figured I
could have my cake and eat it too. Was I ever wrong. What I miss most is the sheer presence of
another person. With everything I accomplished since the divorce, I had no one to share it with. That’s
what killed me the most. I hated to come home to an empty place. I just wanted someone to be there
with me. Hell, I know it sounds lame. You wouldn’t understand it though.”

Jarod felt the crush of loneliness grab his internal organs in a vice and press them to some sort of burning
black hole inside him. His glance, not directly at anything in particular, told Marty that Jarod not only
understood, but he could write a book on the subject. Marty fell silent while Jarod’s mind raced off
along the downward spiral of his own existence.

No one to share it with, Jarod thought. Yes, I can understand this perfectly. Suddenly the entire picture
became clear, just like the computer modified pictures he had helped create for the Centre to use in
hidden message traffic. The full ramifications of his life became crystal clear through the previous static
of his subconscious. He had always wondered at his primal, dangerous obsession with Miss Parker.
Their history not withstanding, Miss Parker was a dangerous enemy and his continual baiting of her was
self destructive. But, without her closely following his trail, who would really know what he had done?
Who would have believed what he was capable of? Miss Parker chronicled his adventures and without
her, none of it mattered.

Who better than he could know the difference. Just a month ago he had come across a DSA where he
had been placed in a chamber and withdrawn from all human contact. After seventeen days, he had
begged to be released and Sydney complied. Another sim showed him in the same depravation
chamber, only this time he was allowed one visitor, whom he had never previously met, for ten minutes
per day. Each day, the visitor was a different person. During that sim, he had lasted only ten days
without begging that the sim be stopped. It came down to a fairly simple point, but a point which to this
point had eluded him. Without Miss Parker and Sydney, none of it mattered. Without these two
people who would know everything he was capable of, he could not have gone on. They were more
important to him than anything else in his life.

Jarod knew that at all times, Miss Parker and Sydney were concerned about him. They cared.
Perhaps not in the loving and nurturing way that he craved, but they cared none the less. If they
followed him, the cared. If they tried to trap him, they cared. If they tried to kill him, they cared. They
cared whether he lived or died and no one else in his world could stake that claim. Miss Parker has
risked her life in Florida to get him. I was these unconscious displays of concern and caring that
motivated Jarod to continue.

Nia cared about him like a kindred soul. They shared pain and suffering and they shared a similar
history, but they did not specifically care about each other in this way.

Bridgett cared. She made Jarod feel whole, but in a way that he knew was destructive to his lifestyle.
Bridgett was the other half to his perfect partnership. Bridgett represented to him the ideal of perfection
and love that he had never experienced before. Bridgett was an equal who cared and possibly loved
him not for what he could do, who he could be or what he had done in the past. Bridgett did not want
anything from him, except his caring in return. Bridgett was a fiercely independent, beautiful, confident
woman who could stand on her own with or without him. Her decision to care about him was not
based on need but on mutual respect and understanding. Jarod loved her like no other.

Bridgett was everything that he missed in life. Everyone else who loved or cared about him, with the
possible exception of his family, loved him because of what he could do, not who he was. That would
make parting with Bridgett even harder. He was thankful that he had thought to bring his laptop with
him today. He would slip off in the aftermath of the tornado and never be seen by these people again.
This morning he had seen Bridgett for the last time.

And he didn’t even say good bye.

*****
Springdale, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1730 CST

The fire trucks pulled up to the corner of Westwood and Huntsdale only to find the seventy-year-old
home burning out of control. Instead of fighting the fire directly, the volunteers began to spray the
nearby trees and grass to keep the fire from spreading. The steady winds had whipped the flames
through the house before the first of the firefighters arrived.

The call had come from the Pastor of the church across the street. The firemen noticed that the Chevy
truck and van were gone, yet a number vehicles remained in the yard. As they started to form a rescue
party to enter the home to search for people, the roof, weakened with age, crashed down through the
structure. The volunteer fire chief arrived less than a minute later and gave the order: Kevin and
Dorothy Schmidt’s home was NWS (not worth saving). They would let it burn to the ground.

In the Episcopal church across the street, a tall muscular man lit a single candle.

*****

Russellville, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1730 CST

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience, ma’am,” the strapping State Patrol officer apologized to the irate Miss
Parker. “My radar gun is not working and I visually observed you traveling at well above the posted
speed.”

Having memorized his name and badge number, Miss Parker was ten minutes past Full Rage. “Are you
finished?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Have a good day.”

Cretin, she thought to herself as she slid back into the drivers seat of the idling Porsche. The smug grin
on Sydney’s face clearly indicated his mirth at her misfortune. “Shut up, Syd.”

The small Porsche sprayed rocks at the police car as Miss Parker attempted to regain her cruising
speed in record time.

In the squad car, the policeman radioed ahead to a couple of friends patrolling I-40 near Clarksville. A
woman like that was meant to be shared. Too bad she went for older men, he thought, or he might
have even dragged her in to the station and checked her story out. He would be thinking about that
possibility all night.

*****

Fort Smith, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1750 CST

It wasn’t often that the team arrived in time to actually see the formation of a tornado. Usually they
arrived in the path of the beast or spotted a formed tornado in the distance and chased towards it.
Today was a remarkable exception.

They parked the van in the parking lot of the small Englander Motel. A small, run-down, single floor
disappointment, the Englander Motel had a pool with brackish black water and a penchant for missing
the tourist market, despite lying on the major North - South thoroughfare through Ft. Smith, U.S. Route
71. The Englander had the look of a place where maid service was not the only service which could be
obtained for a price. It reminded Marty of many places he had stayed over the years. Kevin knew
he’d rather spring for a Motel 6. The sloped parking lot, pool with less than a quarter of the required
water and the multiple wide accesses to the parking lot made the dingy hotel the perfect command post
area. Also, situated two blocks off of Rogers Avenue, the main east-west street in Ft. Smith, they
would have an unobstructed but safe place to view the twister from. Any residents the Englander may
have once had were apparently out for the day.

Bridgett pulled a step ladder from out of the van and used it to gain the van’s roof. From there it was an
easy jump to the roof of the low roach motel to set up her video equipment. Already the team could
see the counter-clockwise spin of the cumulus clouds indicating the very real possibility of a large
tornado. They had little time to set up before the event.

Kevin gained the roof immediately after Bridgett and surveyed the weather conditions. The heavy rain
had given way to hail, and he was glad for the safety glasses he wore. Bridgett wore a pair of mirrored
Oakley wrap-around sunglasses to ward off the pebble sized hail. Fortunately, there was little moisture
left in Erika. The golf-ball sized hail sometimes associated with tornadic storms made this kind of
observing impossible. Today, real research would be possible, although exposure to the elements
would be painful. Bridgett didn’t seem to notice, though, as she worked with the speed and assurance
of a twenty year veteran.

Kevin climbed back to the ground and gave Jarod the signal to take the truck up to main street. The
tornado was indeed forming near the city center and they needed to be in position. Tornadoes in cities
were notoriously short lived as they had little room to really develop. The problem with them, though,
was the incredible potential for loss of life. Kevin figured this tornado would clock in at about a force
two or three and maybe run for about a mile and a half. Unfortunately, that mile and a half would be
straight down the center of Ft. Smith.

Jeff was busily getting the links set up for the DOROTHY beacons. He wasn’t sure exactly why they
were dragging that old failure back out again, but Kevin insisted and Jeff wasn’t one to argue. The feed
had to be set up before the truck left for placement because if the link couldn’t be set up, it was no use
placing the spheres in harm’s way. The monetary considerations not withstanding, placing the
DOROTHY spheres in the path of a tornado had resulted in a number of lawsuits from people claiming
their windows or cars had been damaged by the spheres when they returned to the ground, often miles
away. Not that any of these sue happy parasites had won a case, but Kevin realized his exposure on
the issue. Besides, he hated to pay for the lawyer’s fees.

Jeff completed the link-ups and gave Marty the traditional carrier deck salute to signify all was a go with
the mission. Marty left black tire prints from the tall off-road tires forty yards up Rt. 71.

*****
Ft. Smith, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1755 CST

“Ma’am, I don’t mean to alarm you…,” the stammering gas station attendant began as he ran up to the
shiny red Porsche at the full service island.

“Just fill it up, Pedro. I’m in a hurry.” Miss Parker was at the end of her rope. Patrolman Williams
would pay dearly for showing her off to his corn-fed, testosterone excessive, mindless circle-jerk club.
She had been stopped three times since Williams first pulled her over. President or not, daddy would
give the native of this pitiful excuse for a state an earful when he heard about this.

“B - but ma’am. There’s a tornado heading this way.”

Lightning flashed both in the distance behind Miss Parker and in the depths of her mind. Of course!
The red notebook had contained some historical references to Hurricane Camille and certainly there
were no hurricanes in Arkansas. Didn’t Broots say Jarod logged into the National Weather Service?
Damn! Jarod had led them here after all! Racing as hard as she could for hours to be one step ahead
for once and Jarod knew all along that she’d be here. Every damn time she thought she was one up on
him, he remained two more ahead of her. Damn!

Miss Parker fired the Porsche engine to life in a roar and released the parking break and clutch at the
same time. The rear of the Porsche kicked sharply two feet to the right and struck the attendant,
knocking him back into a display of oil cans. Sydney, who had been busily making preparations to exit
the car and head for shelter, was thrown around and struck his head on the windshield support, drawing
a thin trickle of blood and an instant headache. Miss Parker did not let up at all on the gas pedal until
they had spun around 180 degrees and were speeding towards the now quickly forming funnel cloud.

“Miss Parker,” Sydney began, trying to clear the already dangerous throbbing in his head. She didn’t
acknowledge him except to shift from third to fourth gear. “Damn it, Miss Parker! What are you
doing?”

“Sydney, don’t you see? Jarod’s here, at the tornado. That’s what he’s doing here!”

Although Sydney did not really see, he buckled back up his seat belt and reached for his Polo
sunglasses from the bag underneath his legs. The rain had started and more than an occasional drop
was coming low enough over the windshield to catch him in the face. He knew the hail would be
coming next and he didn’t want to damage his eyes.

As Miss Parker blew through an intersection at ninety-five, the little car became airborne for a few
seconds. At just over twenty four hundred pounds, though, that was far too long for a small car to be
airborne in a steadily increasing forty knot cross wind. The car landed unevenly on the two passenger
wheels, weighed down both by the cross-wind and by Sydney’s substantially heavier weight. On a
good road, this would have merely been an inconvenience, but on a road pock marked with pot-holes
and uneven black-top patches, it caused a critical change in the tenuous equilibrium of the car.

Miss Parker fought the hard right veer of the car and countered by turning the wheel and releasing the
gas. The line of cars parked on the far side of the road suddenly loomed large as the Porsche crossed
the centerline and Miss Parker began to fight to recover the car back to the right. Finally starting to
panic, she touched the brake first lightly and then harder as she fought the vicious oversteer of the rack
and pinion steering system which had been jarred loose by the uneven impact. Despite all of this,
though, Miss Parker could have recovered the Porsche. That is until the drivers side front tire
disappeared into a four inch deep pothole. The tire, blistering hot after a day of one-hundred thirty-plus
mile-per-hour running, was in no condition to survive impact with an abrupt edge at seventy miles an
hour. The tire exploded on impact and sent the Porsche straight over the curb and into the brick
storefront of “Betty’s Hair and Nails” a small beauty shop located in the old post-office. Point of
impact for the Porsche was the passenger side headlamp.

*****

Fort Smith, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1800 CST

The funnel touched down two hundred yards west of the Cathedral. It began to work its way steadily
up main street tossing anything in its path immediately into the buildings which lined this industrial center
of Ft. Smith. Long time residents and tourists alike had long since either evacuated the area or had
headed for shelter inside the basements or lower levels of the buildings. The deafening roar of the funnel
was punctuated only by the staccato bursts of automobiles crashing through storefronts, plate glass
breaking and light poles being ripped from their foundations.

Marty had positioned the truck along the center of the street and the two of them were waiting for the
final touchdown of the funnel before dropping DOROTHY into the path of the tornado. Seeing the
funnel touch down, the two of them pushed the DOROTHY unit out of the back of the truck, released
the tie downs and raced back around to get in the truck. Marty was surprised to find the truck engine
had died. He turned the key and nothing happened. Except that the driver’s door locked.

“Scary, isn’t it?”

*****

Ft. Smith, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1801 CST

Miss Parker fought her way through the deployed airbag. Finding that her door would no longer open,
she climbed out of the car and began to stagger down 10th Street, moving steadily towards the tornado
cleaving its way up the Rogers Avenue, only two blocks in front of her. She was moving on pure
instinct. She never turned to see the unconscious, bleeding form of Sydney lying in the car. The
passenger airbag had deployed and spared Sydney from any real harm, but the small car had folded
around his long legs, breaking one in two places. Thankfully, the violence and shock of the accident
rendered him unconscious to the pain.

Miss Parker drew her gun and continued to move in the direction of the noise. Her vision was foggy
and a trickle of blood began to obscure her left eye. She made no effort to clear the blood away and
continued to stagger down the road. As she approached the road, she couldn’t help but wonder why
two men were parked in a yellow truck in the middle of the path of the tornado.

*****

Ft. Smith, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1802 CST

“What the hell is wrong with the truck.”

Jarod felt the rush of adrenaline coursing through his body like a drug. “I’ll bet your feeling a little
helpless now, aren’t you Marty.” In his pocket, Jarod clicked on the small tape recorder he carried
with him for just such occasions.

“Jesus, Jarod, what have you done?”

“Oh, I’ve just disabled the ignition system and relayed the door locks to the starter circuit.” Glancing
over his shoulder at the rapidly approaching tornado, Jarod added, “I’d better get going. That thing’s
getting close.”

To give Marty credit, he didn’t lose his cool. Marines never did, Jarod knew. “Okay, what is this
about?”

Jarod withdrew a stack of canceled checks from his inside jacket pocket and threw them at Marty.
“Five hundred dollars? Do you know how many people have died because of information you leaked?
At least twenty people are dead because of you. Now, it’s your turn to be helpless in the path of a
tornado. It’s your turn to pay them back for your services.” Jarod turned, opened his door and
climbed out of the truck, hitting the lock mechanism, whose unlock relays were disconnected, and
started to close the door behind himself.

“Jarod, wait! I did it! Okay, I’m sorry! I was trying to get extra money for my sister. She’s on
dialysis and insurance doesn’t cover it all. I was just trying to help her! Please, you gotta believe me!”

Jarod felt the very unfamiliar tugs of doubt in his mind. The rush of this Pretend had not allowed him to
properly research where the money was going. Could Marty really have some excuse for his actions?
No, twenty people’s lives weren’t so unimportant that he couldn’t have found another way to make the
money. Jarod turned back towards Marty. “Tell it to the judge.”

Jarod slammed the door shut, turned and ran down the street. Behind him, Marty began to scream and
frantically beat at the windows of the truck. Jarod turned and hit the remote to enable the ignition
system. The tornado was right behind the truck and he could start to see the DOROTHY unit begin to
shake violently from the winds.

He watched as Marty again tried to start the truck, to no avail. Jarod began to panic as he frantically hit
the disable button only to see Marty try repeatedly to start the completely dead truck. Marty broke the
driver’s side window just as the tornado picked the truck up and began to carry it upwards into the sky.

Jarod screamed.

*****
Ft. Smith, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1804 CST

Miss Parker began to feel light and the buffeting winds of the storm began to pelt her with all manner of
debris and junk. As she came down the last block towards the yellow truck, she saw a tall man climb
out of the truck and begin to run down the street. The driver of the truck did not leave and instead
continued to try and either start the truck or just beat his way out of the truck. Perhaps it was shock
from the accident or perhaps even she could not believe the scene played out in front of her.
Whichever, it wasn’t until he screamed that she realized the man she was looking at was Jarod.

“JAROD!” Even through the roar of the tornado, she could see him turn to face her directly.

Jarod felt fear. Pure, naked, encompassing fear. Incredibly, Miss Parker had somehow found him and
now he had just killed Marty because something went wrong with his ignition disabler. His mind was
racing, trying desperately to come up with some possible answer which would satisfy Reason. He had
almost forgotten the tornado bearing down on him, fifty yards back.

Miss Parker dropped to one knee and leveled the SIG Sauer 10mm pistol she was carrying. The
ripples of shock made her hand increasingly unsteady, but she was not about to let Jarod go this time.
Had some part of her rational mind been functioning, she would no doubt have either run for shelter or
advised Jarod to do the same. If she shot Jarod, even just to wound him, the tornado would sweep him
up and finish the job. She didn’t want Jarod dead anymore than Sydney did. Truthfully, much less than
Sydney ever would.

It was the two bullets ripping past him, one tearing a part of the jacket he was wearing, that jarred Jarod
back to reality. He ran.

*****

Ft. Smith, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1805 CST

From her vantage on top of the hotel roof, Bridgett watched the truck as it was picked up off the
ground and thrown two blocks into a small grocery store. She placed the small key chain with remote
actuator transmitter into the pocket of her shorts. She also saw Miss Parker advancing on Jarod.
Bridgett couldn’t believe her eyes when Miss Parker started inexplicably shooting at him. Damn her,
how did she get here? The Tower had assured her that there would be absolutely no interference.
Jarod did not need to be killed. What was that bitchy little daddy’s girl thinking?

In one swift motion, Bridgett leaped off the roof of the hotel and landed next to the open door of the
van. Jeff was marveling over the stacks of data coming in and rapidly being deleted by the computer in
front of him. The DOROTHY spheres only fed information for a few seconds and then were destroyed
by the tornado. Immediately after the data stopped loading, the screen flashed dialog box asking if data
was complete. Jeff clicked yes and a map popped onto the screen with a few dozen small triangular
symbols scattered throughout the coverage area. Each triangle symbol had a date, F rating and a
danger rating of 1 to 10. Jeff was amazed to see that all of the dates were in the future.

Kevin was ecstatic. He saw the screen fill up with dates, locations, strengths and paths of projected
tornadoes. This was what he always said that DOROTHY could do. He was right! This little device
would save thousands of lives. He would make Jarod a very famous man.

Kevin was still staring at the screen when it was hit by a red spray obscuring half of the viewing area.
Baffled by the source of the jelly-like spray, he turned towards Jeff, only to see a four inch hole were
Jeff’s right eye had once been. The last thing he saw was Bridgett holding a very large handgun with a
strangely small barrel leveled at him.

“It’s just business,” she told him as she pulled the trigger.

*****

Ft. Smith, Arkansas
August 16, 1997 1806 CST

Jarod dove through the cracked plate window of the Downtown Book Store as the tornado passed,
pulling books and any loose object into its hungering belly. Jarod rolled up to the wall under the remains
of the plate window and found an eddy in the wind flow to protect himself. His arms and legs were cut
dozens of times both from the glass he was laying in and the glass flying around the store. When he felt
the tornado pass, Jarod jumped back out into the street and began to follow the tornado up the street.
Already he could feel the power of the storm beginning to dissipate.

The predictor had indicated that the storm would end three blocks before the Varsity Sports Bar. He
turned and looked back towards the direction Miss Parker had shot at him from, but he couldn’t see
her. He continued to keep pace with the tornado. A few hundred yards further down the road the
storm lost contact with the road and the funnel retracted into the clouds. Jarod picked up to a run to get
to the rental car.

Miss Parker rounded the corner just as the funnel retracted itself and she headed down main street after
Jarod. She cursed the wind and her rapidly narrowing field of vision which she knew indicated an
impending loss of consciousness. She was running on pure adrenaline and pure emotion and her tank
was running on fumes. She didn’t even have the energy to yell or raise her weapon.

Jarod reached the car and jumped inside. The Dodge Stratus fired immediately to life and Jarod peeled
his way out of the parking lot. In the rear view mirror, he could see Miss Parker slumping lifelessly to
the ground.

*****
Epilogue
Lafayette, LA
August 23, 1997 2300 CST

The smoke filled room was sparsely populated with heavy drinkers and bar flies. Bob’s Pub had a
regular open mike Blues Jam every Wednesday and Thursday night and the crowd of regulars were
used to the mixed bag of musicians which showed up. Many small label recording artists, local talents
and a few local wanna bees showcased their talents, or lack thereof, in front of the often hostile
audience each Wednesday and Thursday night. The regulars noticed the tall boyish man who had been
first on the sign in list, arriving at five o’clock for the honor, stride up to the microphone. His guitar was
a brand-new Ibanez 470 RG, a common guitar among the younger alternative and heavy metal bands.
The regulars prepared to level the onslaught of catcalls for the apparent beginner.

The bartender stopped the pre-recorded music and the house drummer and bassist stepped back up to
the stage to the cheers of the regulars. From the back of the room, the announcer made the traditional
announcement of the play order. Jarod Guy was first.

As Jarod stepped up to the microphone, he felt the familiar impending embarrassment of the initial
stages of any Pretend. In order to master anything, he needed exposure. In order to become a
musician, he needed to play with musicians. With four open mike Blues Jams a week, Lafayette was a
perfect city to play with all types of musicians and learn the skills he would need for his next mission.
The salesman at Vince’s Backstage Music this morning gave him enough to get him started, and now he
would perfect this skill like he had perfected many others before it.

Jarod stepped to the mic and opened the night’s entertainment with “Johnny B. Goode.”