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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Part 6
by N.R. Levy
Broots was vaguely aware of his environment and of the people around him. He knew they were still on the plane, an hour away from Blue Cove. He knew that Miss Parker and Sydney were comparing notes on what might be happening with Jarod - and he knew that Damon was alive.
His mind traveled back to that day in the church as he sought some kind of clarity. They had been sure, hadn't they? He was dead. They had all been sure. Now, however, in retrospect, he wondered why.
Jarod had fired, and the bullet had hit Damon, throwing him backwards to the ground. Broots remembered standing frozen in place for a moment before a brief glance down at Damon's "body" made him move away. All too clearly, he saw the twisted mass that had been Damon's head - his face was ripped open and there had been blood everywhere. He had to have been dead.
Then Jarod had begun to shake, and he dropped the gun on the floor and ran out of the room. Broots had not tried to stop him or called out to the Pretender. Somehow, he knew that Jarod needed to be alone at that moment in order to deal with what had just happened. Frightened and alone, Broots had moved to the front of the church and phoned Miss Parker, only to learn that she was on her way to him.
He remembered glancing back over his shoulder at least a half a dozen times, Damon's legs remaining in the same position each time. Thankfully, he could not see the rest of the body from his vantage point, but he had simply accepted the fact that the horrible man was dead. Then Miss Parker had arrived, and after taking one glance at the wreckage in the church, she had called a cleaner team in to handle things. Then she'd guided him to her car, and she and Sydney had gotten him back home.
So was it possible that none of them had ever actually confirmed Damon's death? Had they all really just assumed that the precision of Jarod's aim had ended the reign of terror that was Damon?
Broots nearly jumped out of his skin as he felt Miss Parker's hand drop down on his shoulder. He looked up at her, his eyes a little distant and wild, and he had to admit that he felt a bit of surprise by what he saw in her eyes. She was worried - more than that, she was worried about him.
"Broots, Sam goes with you, and he stays until I say otherwise. No arguments." Miss Parker moved away from him quickly as her words finished, and it was only as she headed out of the plane door that Broots realized they were on the ground. Soon, he felt the imposing presence of Sam by his side.
"You ready to go, Brootsie."
"Sam, I've asked you not to call me that."
"And?"
Broots saw the playful look in Sam's eyes, and he knew that there was nothing he could do to stop the sweeper from doing whatever he damn well pleased. Besides, he wanted Sam around. If Miss Parker was worried about him and Debbie, then there must be reason to worry.
"And nothing, let's go."
Emily paced anxiously, uncertain of what her next move should be. Jarod had locked himself in the bedroom after ending his phone call with Sydney, and he refused to answer her attempts at contacting him. She had even kicked the door, howling in pain as her foot made far too hard of contact with the immobile piece of wood.
That had been two hours ago, and still no sounds came from the bedroom. She wanted desperately to help him, but she realized that she barely knew her brother. Loved him yes, but she knew it was far too soon for her to have any real insight into who he was or what he was feeling. Still, it didn't sit well with her that he was in there all alone.
Unable to think of anything else constructive she could do, Emily wandered over to Jarod's workstation, and pushed the play button on the silver case. A black and white movie appeared in front of her, and she saw Jarod sitting at a table with a man he called Kenny. Then two more men came in, and Emily brought her hands to her mouth to cover a scream of horror when they proceeded to kill the other man in front of Jarod.
Quickly, Emily reached out and shut off the disc. God, she'd always tried to imagine the place that had taken her brothers away from her. She knew without knowing that they were evil men, and that they must have been willing to do almost anything to get what they wanted if they had resorted to stealing two little boys away from their home. But now, to see this, to know just how far they had gone to control Jarod, it chilled her soul.
Emily looked up as she heard the knob on the bedroom door finally click. Jarod, looking weary and a little bit ill, emerged, heading straight to the kitchen where he grabbed a full bottle of water. She watched as he nearly drained the bottle dry, his body obviously suffering from serious dehydration. Finishing, Jarod placed the bottle on the counter, then walked to the table and sat down in the chair beside her.
"I'm sorry, Emily. I know this isn't what you were expecting to have to deal with."
"I didn't expect anything, Jarod. I just want to help. Will you do that? Will you let me help you?"
"I don't know if I can," Jarod admitted, more than a little sad. He could see the genuine concern in his sister's eyes, and he hated that he had caused that. "This is all going to get very ugly, and I don't want you to be a part of it."
"I'm already a part of it, Jarod. Whatever is going on, I'm here, and you should at least talk to me about it. Maybe if you get it all out, maybe then you'll find the answers easier."
Thinking about her words, Jarod let his eyes scan the room, and he saw that the DSA image of Damon looming over Kenny's body was frozen on the screen of the silver case.
"That man, his name is Damon. He is a monster, one of the worst in a place that breeds them. I thought he was dead. I thought that I had killed him."
"But, I can't imagine you..." Emily's words trailed off. Again, she knew her statement was built on her image of Jarod rather than on real knowledge of him. She just couldn't see him as capable of killing anyone.
"He had a friend of mine, and he was going to kill him. As you saw, I had good reason to believe that he would do it. So for the first time in my life, I pulled a trigger, and I took a human life. At least, I thought I had."
"But he's alive? You're sure?"
Jarod nodded, then continued, really beginning to feel an ease to the tightness in his chest as he laid out the story to Emily.
"These attacks, the ones I told you I was investigating. Something about them was bothering me. I couldn't get a handle on the attacker. That's what I do when I pretend. I use what I know about someone, about what they've done, and I try to get inside their heads, but for some reason, I couldn't. Now I see that it was because Damon is that man. He was playing a game with me, trying to lure me into a trap of his making."
"But why, Jarod? Why would he do this? He's hurt so many people."
"Because he enjoys hurting people, Emily. That's who he is. Life has no meaning to him. Getting to me, setting me up was his goal, but believe me, he's enjoyed everything he's done to these women. And now I have to live with that, too. He hurt them all - Stephanie -- all of them, just to get to me."
Sadness filled Jarod's eyes, and Emily quickly left her seat and knelt beside her brother, pulling him into her arms. She felt him resist at first, but then he let go, bringing his head to rest on her shoulder as she held him tightly.
"You listen to me, Jarod. You did not do this. This isn't your fault. Don't let him do that to you, do you understand me?"
Jarod pulled away from her, and looked at her face. Then, miraculously, he smiled. That surprised Emily, and she looked at him with confused eyes.
"What?"
"You just remind me a lot of someone I know, that's all." And with that Jarod stood, needing to move again. Emily stood then, taking her seat again, waiting for Jarod to make the next step forward.
"Emily, I need to take care of this. Maybe you should go -"
"Don't even suggest it. It's taken me five years to find you, and that's not counting the years I spent running from place to place with Mom hoping we'd find you or Kyle or Dad."
"I know, but this could be dangerous, and -"
"And that's exactly why I'm staying, Jarod. I couldn't do anything to help Kyle, and I have no idea where Mom or Dad is, but I have you back and I'm not letting you go, so you can just push that thought out of your head."
Jarod wanted to argue more, but he realized suddenly how tired he was of being alone, of having no one to stand by his side and fight with him. Fight him, well, there was always Parker for that, but to have someone on his side...
"All right, but I mean what I say. This could get very, very dangerous. And I'm not just talking about Damon."
Emily stood now, curious as to what was coming next.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning," Jarod began, "that now that I know who the attacker is, I can SIM him, and as much as I hate the thought of doing it, I'm going to have to get inside his head in order to figure out how to stop him. That means, Emily, that I'm going to have to become him for a little while."
"So what do you want me to do?"
"I want you to come with me to a place I have. Then I want you to lock the door behind you, and not come back until I call you and tell you to do so."
Emily felt her stomach knotting up with a mixture of fear and worry. Clearly, this was something Jarod had to do, at least, that he felt compelled to do, but she could sense the danger in it. Her first impulse was to refuse to go along with this request, but then she realized that he would just go on without her, and she didn't want that either.
"All right, Jarod. Let's go."
Miss Parker's head pounded as she looked up from the files on her desk at the clock. It was nearly 2 a.m., and she was still at the office, trying to get some idea of just who in the Centre had helped that bastard Damon. The thought that anyone had done so made her cringe, and the fact that she suspected the culprit might have been her father made her sick to her stomach. She had been right all those months ago, when she'd seen Jarod's clone for the first time - there was no depth to which the Centre was unwilling to sink - even protecting a psychotic killer like Damon.
Of course, she thought, that applies to Lyle, too, and he could just as easily be behind this.
Tired, Parker stood and stretched, walking quickly to her sofa where she laid down for a few minutes of rest. Her mind, of course, didn't feel like cooperating. It wasn't like she had nothing to think about.
For now, Broots and Debbie were safely under Sam's care, and though she didn't think Damon would really waste time coming after her friend, she wasn't about to risk it.
Then there was her brother, who still was missing thanks to her pseudo-brother's machinations. Broots had already begun a search of Centre facilities to try and figure out where Angelo had been transferred, but so far, he had found nothing, and that meant that Lyle was working overtime to keep her twin out of her reach.
And then there was Jarod. She was worried about him, more than she would've liked to admit. Sydney had tried to downplay the younger man's reaction to the news of Damon's survival, but she knew Jarod well enough to know that he was walking a fine line between being angry and being vengeful, and that could get him into trouble.
Not for the first time, she wondered why she cared. Hadn't Jarod been a source of nothing but embarrassment and irritation for her for four years now? So why in the hell...
Parker stood, knowing she couldn't get any rest with her mind whirling as it was. She walked back to her desk and reached into her briefcase, pulling out the photo Angelo had left behind for her. Elizabeth - who was she? Did her mother have a twin as well? A cousin who shared a remarkable similarity of appearance? Somehow, she had to find out.
Putting the picture away, Parker returned to the task in front of her. At present, she knew that she had to get to the bottom of the Damon mystery once and for all.
Emily paced nervously in the apartment, waiting for Jarod's call. He had taken her to a storage facility near the area surrounding Qualcomm Stadium, and he had directed her to lock him in one of the garage-style units. He had given her a cell phone, instructing her not to try and call him, but instead to wait for his call. Then he had told her that in case of emergency, she could use the buttons at speed dial two or three in order to get help.
After locking him inside, Emily had done as Jarod asked and returned to the apartment. He had been gone for nearly five hours, and her worry was growing with every passing minute. She looked at the cell phone in her hand for the hundredth time, making certain that it was still active. Then, her curiosity got the better of her, and she pressed the button marked speed dial two.
When she heard a man's voice answer, she quickly hung up. The voice did not sound familiar to her, and it had an accent, possibly European.
Then, she wondered, who is at speed dial three?
Pushing the button, Emily waited, ready to hang up again quickly if another strange voice answered, but this voice sounded very familiar.
"What?"
"Parker?" There was a long pause, and Emily knew Miss Parker was trying to figure out if she recognized the voice speaking to her.
"Who is this?"
"It's Emily."
"So, you ready to turn yourself in?" Emily felt immediate confusion at Parker's words, but then she realized how foolish she'd been. She had called Miss Parker at the Centre - and she could not speak freely to her there.
"I just wanted to tell you that it's a shame we didn't get to meet. My brother sends you his regards."
"Yeah, well, tell him next time, oh, like maybe an hour from now, Monty Hall will be waiting behind door number four."
With that, Parker disconnected the call, and then she grabbed her things, hurrying home, and hoping that Emily had picked up on her clue.
An hour later, exactly, Parker's phone rang at her house, and she let out a deep sigh as she answered. Thankfully, she had just had her house swept for bugs, and Emily was smart enough to try the speed dial buttons until she'd found the one Jarod programmed with her home number.
"What?"
"It's me again. I'm sorry about earlier. I wasn't sure whose number it was."
"Emily, it's okay. Is everything all right?" The silence that came back at Parker made her start to worry, and that made her ulcer twinge. That had been happening a lot lately. She reached for her pain medication as she waited for Emily to respond.
"I don't know, Parker. I think - you know about this Damon person?"
"Unfortunately. Jarod's going after him?"
"Yeah. He's, um, he's trying to figure out what Damon's plan is so he can stop him."
"You mean he's simming Damon?"
"Yeah. He went away from me until it was over. I guess he was afraid he'd do something."
"Emily, listen to me. You've got to keep Jarod away from Damon."
"But..."
"No, listen. Your brother doesn't have it in him to kill in cold blood, and that's what it's going to take to stop Damon. Tell him I'll handle it."
Emily knew that her face registered shock at that statement. Parker knew her brother, so she accepted her assessment of his nature, but did that mean Parker really thought herself capable of such an act?
"Parker, I don't think I can stop him."
"Then I will. Emily, tell me where you are."
Broots sat in his office, his nerves on edge as he continued searching the archive files for information on Damon. Simultaneously, and under cover of a new cloaking program he'd designed, he was searching for information on Angelo.
And he was very, very worried about Miss Parker.
Something was happening with her, something that he wasn't sure she even realized. Ever since Angelo's illness, she had been acting strangely, and, more to the point, she'd been acting like herself - her real self. She was changing, and for the better as far as Broots was concerned.
Still, she had looked so tired this morning when she'd come to the Centre, telling him only that she was going to follow up a lead on Damon, and to cover for her if Lyle asked where she had gone. He had fought down the urge to react when he saw her hand move to her stomach, holding it the way she did when her ulcer was bothering her. That did nothing to alleviate his worry.
Before she left, She gave him an old photograph of two little girls, standing together in front of a church. She told him it was taken, she believed, somewhere on the east coast nearly 60 years ago. She also told him the girls in the photo were named Catherine and Elizabeth, and asked him to find out what he could. He knew without asking who Catherine was, and he decided he would work on this project from home in order to keep Miss Parker's private life private.
His computer beeped, and Broots moved to see which of his searches had born fruit. Though he was anxious to solve the mystery of Damon's return from the dead, he was happy to see that what he'd found was a list of three possible locations on Angelo. Quickly he downloaded the information, then used a mild virus to eat away at the file, making it impossible for anyone else in the Centre to determine who had searched for it.
He thought about calling Miss Parker, but decided against it. She would call him soon enough, and he would tell her then. Besides, he needed to plant a false itinerary for her in the travel logs in case Lyle got suspicious.
He was typing in that information, plotting a course from Delaware to Vancouver, Canada when he suddenly remembered one of those odd conversations he'd had with Miss Parker.
"Broots, when I ask you to take things to the lab, who do you have run the tests?"
"W-well, I like dealing with one person, so Gus has been doing our stuff for, like, the last two years."
"Everything?"
The conversation flashed through his mind, and now, it made a connection that he hadn't computed before. Everything included the test that he had run on the DNA from Miss Parker, Lyle and Angelo.
"Oh, God. Oh, no." Broots spoke the words out loud, although he didn't hear them. Quickly, he grabbed the information he had found on Angelo and headed to Sydney's office. He found the shrink watching the infamous DSA of Damon and Jarod, and he felt a chill run down his spine as he came face to face with the image of the man who had almost become his executioner.
"Broots, is everything okay?"
"Uh, no, Syd, it's anything but okay. I think - Syd, we need to talk."
"About?"
"About Angelo."
Emily jumped up into a sitting position when the cell phone rang, the device still clutched in her hands. She wasn't sure when she had fallen asleep on the couch, only that she felt like she hadn't slept at all.
"Hello?"
"Emily, you can come and get me."
"Are you - Jarod, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Emily. We have a lot to do. Hurry."
Jarod disconnected the call, and Emily stood, anxious to get to him. She was halfway to the car before she realized that she had not told him Parker was on her way.
Damon stood, stretching after a long night of watching his prey. The woman he'd selected was perfect. Her resemblance to Miss Parker was not absolute, but it would be enough to send Jarod into a tailspin, and then, Damon knew, he would be vulnerable.
Now it was time to go check on Jarod. He had hacked into the records of the police department and found the address Jarod had listed as his place of residence. Of course, it had been a fake, so Damon had had to wait until Jarod returned to town, the sensor he'd placed on Jarod's police issue vehicle giving him the exact location of the Pretender's lair.
And since he was probably at the police station, hard at work on catching him, now was the perfect time to head over and check out the place where he and Jarod would play out the final part of his plan.
