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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Part I
by Victoria Rivers ©1997
Stiletto heels clicking down the marble hallway, Miss Parker did not look left or right, did not meet the eyes of anyone she passed on the way to the penthouse office. Her palms were sweating, her stomach queasy, and she couldn't remember if she had taken her ulcer medication that morning. Mr. Raines had called her, and as she took the doorknob in hand, she felt a pain in her gut, knife-sharp and cold as ice. It wasn't the ulcer. It was fear.
She strode in with the appearance of more confidence than she felt, and stood at attention on the far side of the huge mahogany desk. "You wanted to see me, Mr. Raines?"
He was sitting in his tan leather chair, which rumor had it was upholstered with human skin, facing the tall arched windows that looked out over the rocky Delaware coast. Oxygen tank nearby and plugged into his nostrils to help him breathe, he rasped, "You were supposed to be the best, Miss Parker. I'm disappointed in your track record on this case."
Her fingers twitched at her sides, and she stilled them quickly. "I have every resource the Centre can spare working on it, but we can't predict where he'll be," she explained. Her voice sounded weak in her own ears, and she hated it. "Even the handful of paranormals we have don't seem to be able to--"
"Able and willing are two different things," Raines interrupted. "And it seems to me that the operatives you have working on Jarod's case feel a certain... sympathy toward him. Therefore, I think it's time we looked in another direction, to someone who is less predisposed toward kindness, to help you track him down." He turned just his head, fixing her with his watery blue eyes meaningfully. "Jarod will be caught, Miss Parker. At all costs."
She trembled beneath his skeletal gaze and couldn't stop herself. "Yes sir, Mr. Raines."
"I want you to pay a visit to Damon Winterbourne and enlist his aid."
Miss Parker flinched as if she had been struck.
Mr. Raines smiled. "Give him whatever he wants, as long as he agrees to help us catch our runaway."
She swallowed twice before she could manage to get her heart out of her mouth. Words took a little longer to force out. "D-Damon? But Mr. Raines--"
"Anything he wants, regardless of the cost," said the man in the leather chair. "Even you."
Her heel caught in a crack in the marble floor as she stepped backward and she almost stumbled. Without another word she turned and left the office, her stomach on fire, struggling to keep tears out of her eyes. Once she had cleared the door and closed it behind her, she leaned against it, covering her face with her hands.
"Not Damon," she whispered to herself.
Her hands were shaking. It took her several minutes to pull herself together enough to continue down the hallway toward the elevator, force herself into it, and key in the descent code to Maximum Security at the bottom of the Centre complex. When the doors slid open she glanced at the receptionist, a burly security guard with a long, ugly scar across his face and a cold gleam in his eyes.
"Miss Parker," he said formally. "We've been expecting you."
She remembered the last time she was with Damon before his imprisonment, the screams of the man he had gleefully disemboweled in the lab, and what he had done to her as well. Suddenly she punched the ascent code and watched the doors close smoothly, fidgeting as the car traveled upward to Corridor 15. Down another hall she strode, wishing she had a cigarette. They were forbidden in Mr. Raines office, so she had left them behind in her own, several floors up. Into Sydney's office she stormed, flinging the door closed behind her. Broots sat in the guest chair across the desk and glanced up at her, cringing inwardly at the look on her face.
"Out!" she commanded him.
Broots dropped his stack of papers on the floor and bolted.
When the door had closed again she turned to Sydney and said dispassionately, "Mr. Raines wants to use Damon."
The man's curious smile broke in pieces and alarm flared in his eyes. "Oh, my God! Does he realize what he's doing? Doesn't he know what that will entail?"
Miss Parker examined the cuticle of one of her elegantly painted fingernails in detail. "Oh, he knows," she said casually. "He just doesn't care." When she looked the man at the desk in the eye at last, she was aware that he could see her fear and didn't try to hide it from him at all. When she spoke her voice was barely a whisper. "He wants me to ask for Damon's help... I... I don't think I can."
Sydney tore his eyes from hers and scanned the top of his desk so he wouldn't have to look at her. Seeing vulnerability in that face was too much pain to bear, but there was nothing he could do to help her. If Raines gave her the order directly, then he would expect her to carry it out without question. He was feeding the lion a lamb, and knew it.
"Does your father know?" Sydney asked softly.
She quivered and crossed her arms over her chest, trying to look nonchalant and failing miserably. "Does it matter?" she shot back.
He sighed. "What do you want me to do?"
"Damon is your creature, Sydney. Tell me how to deal with him. What can't he resist? How do I play him?"
"All I did was add fuel to the fire that was already burning, Miss Parker," Sydney corrected sadly. "He was already the monster he is when he came here. I just... sharpened the blade a little."
She glared at him morosely, and said nothing.
The fact that she did not fling a verbal barb at him was frightening in itself. "He'll take the case, Miss Parker. The one thing he can't resist is challenging someone as smart as he is to a game, and there aren't many as brilliant on the whole planet. He'll be happy to play chase with Jarod. But he won't want you to think he's that easy. You know what he's going to ask for, don't you?"
Her gaze fell to the toes of her shoes. "He was always fond of me," she answered meekly. "But what he'll want is out. Freedom will be his price."
Sydney shook his head. "Freedom will be his means of playing the game," he told her. "You will be his price." He rose from the desk and crossed the room to stand before her. "I can help you through it, if you want. And if you're lucky, you won't remember a thing."
Green eyes met stormy brown ones, and a silent agreement was made.
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Man and woman stood side by side before the steel wall that sealed off the cell at the end of the hallway. This was the last cell in Maximum, at the far end of the corridor, cut off from the elevator by a series of mechanically controlled doors. No expense had been spared to make sure that the man behind that final door would be locked in forever, but the couple standing before the thick steel barrier were watching it swing open for the first time in three years.
Damon Winterbourne stood in a tiny steel cage in the back corner of the cell, his hands clasped lightly in front of him. He was twenty-five, slight of build and blessed with a boyishly innocent face with clear, guileless blue eyes, rounded cheeks and a dimple in his chin. His straight sandy brown hair hung nearly down to his waist, since no one had cut it in a decade. He did not like to wear his hair long, but it wasn't safe for anyone to come close enough to him with cutting implements to do the job, for Damon Winterbourne had a taste for blood, and enjoyed watching it flow. He was allowed a depilatory cream to remove his facial hair, but that was a once weekly concession to his tidy grooming habits.
He smiled warmly at Miss Parker as she approached, noting that she stopped well away from the containment cage in his room. "I've missed you," he said smoothly. "Give us a kiss?"
"In your dreams," she snarled. A lit cigarette burned between her fingers. She had refused to come down the hallway without one.
"As a matter of fact," he chuckled darkly, "you star in them quite often."
Miss Parker shuddered, and looked away.
"You want me for something," he stated certainly. There was a pleasant, deceptively musical quality to his voice that was soothing to those who didn't know what he was. "What is it this time?"
Sydney cocked his head, studying the young man's casually contained facade. "The game's afoot," he said with false brightness. "Are you up for it?"
Damon didn't take his eyes off the redhead, ignoring the man completely. "What do you want, pretty lady?"
She dragged her eyes up to his and flicked her cigarette, knocking a column of ash onto the floor. "One of our Pretenders has escaped," she said flatly, watching his eyes follow the debris as it fell onto his clean tile floor and then skim slowly up her legs and over her body until they met hers again. She suddenly wanted a bath. "Mr. Raines wants you to find him. If you can."
He licked his lips and smiled. "Which one?"
"Does it matter?" asked Sydney.
Damon's eyes slid over to acknowledge the man at last. "Of course it matters, Sydney. Which one?"
"The best. Jarod."
A quickly indrawn breath and brilliant flash of perfect white teeth signaled Damon's pleased surprise. "Tall, dark and handsome?" he asked. A flare of excitement flickered in his eyes and then was quickly reined in. He leaned forward and placed his hands on the bars, his smile darkening. "The one who did the ebola simulation?"
"I didn't think you'd remember him," Parker commented. "You only saw him for a moment on the other side of the observation glass. That must have been... what ten, twelve years ago? He must've made quite an impression on you."
Damon smiled, and Parker looked away again.
"So will you consider hunting our runaway?" Sydney asked. "Mr. Raines would like it very much."
"And what kind of perks do you think I'm going to get in here?" Damon demanded harshly, the innocence of a moment before replaced with bright rage. He gripped the bars until his knuckles turned white. "What do I care about your problems? Your Pretender can do as he pleases now. Maybe he'll open Pandora's box and unleash his little project on the world. Wouldn't that be fun?"
An ironic grin slid over Miss Parker's lips briefly. "He's pretending to be Dudley Do-Right, Damon. Trying to right all the world's wrongs wearing a thousand different hats. And in the meantime, he's playing games with us, showing off how smart he is." Under her breath, she cursed him. "Think you can beat him at his own game?"
The man in the cage relaxed again, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the polished steel wall backing his temporary prison. "You want me to second guess a man who can be anything? I take it you haven't had any success doing it yourselves. How long has he been out?"
Sydney lifted his chin. "A little over ten months."
Damon cocked his head, studying his visitors. "But there's more to it than that. Isn't there?"
"Details later, if you agree," Parker snapped. "Do you?"
"I'll let you know," he smiled, once again deceptively calm, charmingly boyish. "Maybe you could persuade me, Miss Parker. I can smell your perfume from here."
"I'm not wearing any perfume."
He chuckled delightedly. "I said your perfume, siren. Not Chanel. The scent of that lingers in your clothes beneath the haze of cigarette smoke." He took a deep breath, inhaling her, eyes closing in pleasure. "You're ready, aren't you? You've been thinking about me, remembering how I felt inside you--"
"Get over yourself, Damon," she snarled, and pivoted on her heel to leave.
"Entice me," he called.
"I wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire," she growled.
Sydney straightened, scratched briefly at his temple. "She hasn't forgiven you for what you did to her before we locked you up," he mused. "And I think she had the scar removed with a little plastic surgery."
Damon rubbed a hand over his chest and grinned. "Ah, but the memory will always be there," he said brightly, immensely pleased with himself. "It was good to see you again, Syd. You should visit more often. We could talk about psychology. I keep updated on the latest in the field, you know."
"So will you help us?"
"I always thought Jarod was just short of spectacular," Damon mused. "Will I get to have him before you lock me up again?" The young man encircled one of the bars on his holding cage with finger and thumb without touching the cold metal, and ran his hand slowly up and down the column of steel suggestively. He was sure Sydney wouldn't commit to anything once Jarod was in custody again. "You knew the answer to that before you came down here," he said softly. "And you have a pretty good idea what I'll want to ensure my cooperation."
"How will you go about it?" Sydney felt the skin on the back of his neck and shoulders rise up in gooseflesh as he watched the monster's innocent-looking movements. He knew, all right.
"I'll send Jarod an invitation," said Damon with a gentle smile.
"How can you, when no one knows where he is, or where he'll be next?"
Damon laughed, leaned his head back and caressed Sydney with a coquettish gaze. "All I have to do is write his name on it, Syd. He'll get the message, though I doubt he'll know who it's from. I saw him, but he never knew about me, did he? It isn't Centre policy to discuss the other creatures in this zoo."
Something cold and heavy congealed in the pit of Sydney's stomach. He could see the outer charm of the sociopath and felt himself attracted to the pleasant exterior, the desire to warm up to him as a friend, but he knew what lay beneath the handsome package and the full force of the camouflaged menace hit him hard. He started to perspire, and knew that Damon could see it forming on his upper lip and forehead.
"You'll have to be kept on a short leash, you know." The Centre would be implanting a tracking device in Damon's wrist, before they released him so they wouldn't have the same problem catching him if he managed to elude their grasp once the job was done. Sydney wanted an ironclad guarantee that Damon would return with them when Jarod was in custody again.
"You can be my audience, if you want," Damon offered generously. "I always envisioned being a performance artist, you know."
Sydney lifted his chin and glanced down his nose at the young man. "I think I'll pass, Damon, but thank you for the invitation. I'm sure this will be some of your best work."
Damon winked at his visitor. "You can count on it. I'll need a US map, six compasses -- wait. Do you spell Jarod with one 'r' or two?"
"J-A-R-O-D."
"Then make that five compasses, first class accommodations in the cities I select, and a bed to share with Miss Parker before we leave. I want to spend one night with her. In Jarod's room. And I want all the material you have on him to study."
The older man took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and felt his heart sinking into his shoes. "Done," he agreed flatly. Without another word he turned and left the room, listened for the foot-thick cell door to lock into place, and watched on the monitor suspended in the corridor as the cage door opened and Damon stepped out of his temporary holding cell and into his more spacious quarters. He looked directly up at the camera focused on him, and smiled with his angel's face. With a dreamy look he hugged himself, danced a pirouette and said softly to the empty room, "Here I come, Jarod, baby. You're about to be mine at last!"
"My God," Sydney breathed. "What have we done?"
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Jarod sat on a stool before the bay window dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts, paintbrush in his right hand and wooden palette in the other. Smears of oil colors dotted the oval board and he had a swash of ultramarine blue on the knuckle of his left thumb where it emerged from the hole that provided a grip. The painting before him was taking shape, and he smiled as he added a highlight to Athena's left eye. He always enjoyed painting, though he rarely had time or opportunity to indulge in it, but now the front bedroom of the mobile home they shared was filled with canvases of all shapes and sizes to reflect his efforts in the different media. There were charcoal drawings of Athena, water-color paintings of the desolate country surrounding them, pastels of desert vegetation, acrylic character studies of the handful of people he had known, and now an oil portrait of himself and his lady love in the throes of a passionate embrace.
The pose had been Athena's idea, to cover the romance novel she had written and hoped to publish one day. Jarod hadn't allowed her to see it yet, and knew he would have to repaint it when he had it done, since they had no clothes on and her belly was round as a ripe watermelon. It was wishful thinking on his part, but he couldn't keep from smiling as he worked on it. Just that morning she had felt the unborn twins move for the first time, and he couldn't wait to experience that miracle for himself.
She was in the kitchen, humming as she sliced tomatoes for a salad, glowing from within. Jarod had been home for almost a week and a half, and had decided to stay the last few months until the babies were born and Athena was settled in a rhythm of motherhood before he would venture out into the world again. For the first time in his life he was lazy, sleeping late in the mornings and napping with Athena in the afternoons when the late summer days were hottest. He still read voraciously, but chose books for pure pleasure rather than education, and between them they were collecting a large quantity of children's stories which they read faithfully to her slightly bulging belly. At five and a half months she was still barely showing, just starting to wear maternity fashions, and keeping up with a regular regimen of exercise to make sure she stayed in good shape.
They were happy together. No one knew where they were and no one would know as long as they stayed in the desert and had Ernie Two Feathers and a handful of his friends do their shopping for them. But sometimes they were restless and took up projects to fill their time and siphon off their creative energies, and lately for Jarod that became art. He was good at it, probably better than at most things he had tried, and it was satisfying to watch the paintings take shape under his hands. He even considered taking it up as a second career, if he could find an agent who would be discreet with his identity.
He studied Athena for a moment, watching the way she moved and how the late afternoon sunlight made a golden halo around her head. She was beautiful, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and she was in love with him. She was carrying his babies, and he felt a sense of completeness unfolding within him, filling him up until there was no room left for sadness or worry. She was a large part of what he had been searching for, and at last he felt he could spend the rest of his life in one place, doing one thing, with one person. The only other piece missing was the mother and father he had lost decades earlier.
She glanced at him, and smiled. "Penny for your thoughts?" she asked softly.
"Just wondering when you were going to let me read your novel," he returned easily.
Her gaze lingered on his face for a moment. "God, I love that dimple of yours," she swore, and shook her head at her rising desire. "You could get anything you wanted from me with nothing more than that, Jarod. You're a dangerous man."
"You didn't give me an answer." He wiped his brushes on a rag and started cleaning them in a small pot of turpentine. He knew that look she had given him, and his body responded without hesitation. By the time she had dinner on the table, he wanted to be ready for a little romantic interlude.
"Which version?" she teased. "The one I intend to publish, or the X-rated version you inspired?" Athena set the salad on the tiny kitchen table and went to fetch dishes and utensils.
"The good one," he chuckled. "But we have to act it out."
"We already have." She froze in mid-stride, curling inward and staring at her belly. "It's moving! Come feel, honey."
He rushed to her and placed his paint-stained hands where she indicated. For a moment there was nothing, and then suddenly something rounded pressed against his palm, jerked and was still.
"Oh, my God." He was smiling so broadly his cheeks hurt, and he could hardly breathe.
They made it as far as the sofa before passion got the best of them. Dinner was forgotten, and they celebrated the first stirrings of life that their love had created.
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Miss Parker lay quietly in the bed, reluctant to open her eyes to morning. She had been awake for some time, drifting in and out of cognizance, trying to figure out what she was supposed to be doing. She felt the residual effects of medication, but couldn't recall what she had taken that would cause such disorientation. The bed was hard and unfamiliar, but she was accustomed to waking up in strange beds and thought nothing of it, until she opened her eyes.
The bed was in the far end of the room, and the bland white walls were instantly familiar. There were bookshelves in the bedroom filled with technical manuals on all sorts of intellectual subjects, and a collection of chess pieces from a variety of different sets standing on the edges of the shelves as if they were stationed in a multi-level game. She had been in that room before, and recognized it instantly as Jarod's. She sat up quickly and started to fling off the sheet, but gasped as the first wave of pain hit her. Glancing down at her body where the sheet had fallen away to bare her skin, she saw bruises, teeth marks and dark scratches that had drawn blood. Her whole body was marked, and as she moved gingerly toward the edge of the bed, she knew that the surface was not all that had been damaged. When she stood up she looked at the sheets and took note of the bloodstains on them, drying to a crispy brown. She didn't remember who she had slept with the night before, but whoever it was treated her much worse than usual.
She hobbled into the bathroom to shower and try to assess the damage, and found her clothes on the counter, neatly folded. Once she was dressed and medicated, she strolled carefully into the den of the tiny apartment to see if she could find her way out of the prison cell.
"Well, good morning," said Damon Winterbourne from the sofa. "I see you're finally awake. It was unfair of you to take drugs before letting me fuck you. I'll have to make up for that somewhere along the way."
The redhead stared at him in horror, wondering how he could possibly have gotten out of his cage and into Jarod's room. But a moment later she remembered the deal Mr. Raines had made, and that Sydney had promised to give her medication to take during the course of her evening with the sociopathic Pretender. She couldn't recall much after that, and suddenly was thankful. She didn't want to remember what he had done to her.
"You got me once," she snarled. "You didn't specify I had to be conscious."
He flashed her a bemused smile and picked up the origami figure that Jarod had left on his desk, the bent-winged god of retribution that signaled his intent. Damon admired the neat folds, the attention to detail, and the fact that there was not a single pencil mark or errant crease to aid in designing the piece. "I learned a great deal after you passed out last night, Miss Parker," he announced casually. "I think I can get inside Jarod's head and read him properly now. But before we get started, you should probably get to the infirmary. You'll need a few stitches before we leave."
She nodded numbly and went to the door, which buzzed open to allow her to exit.
Sydney was waiting for her outside, pacing the floor. He smiled in relief to see that she was still alive, then frowned when he saw the bruises on her jaw and neck and the red swelling on her left cheekbone. "Nothing broken, I hope?" he asked solicitously.
"Not that I know of," Miss Parker replied sourly. "Your creature is ready to leave, but I need to stop by the infirmary first. Get the plane tickets and have Broots meet us in the lobby. Damon's all yours." She winced as she took a step away, then halted. "What did you give me last night, Syd?"
"It's called Rohipnal," he answered gently. "It's a favorite for date rapists. They drop it into a woman's drink, take her home, and when she wakes in the morning she doesn't remember a thing."
For a moment the question of whether Sydney had ever used it in such a fashion hovered on her tongue as a barbed insult, but she also knew that he was familiar with the uses of many tranquilizers in his line of work, and she was grateful for his assistance. "Thanks, Syd," she said quickly, and hurried into the elevator as quickly as her damaged body would take her.
Sydney stepped into the apartment and slipped his hands into his pockets, aware of how vulnerable he was. He observed the young man reading through the red casebooks they had collected in Jarod's pursuit, saw him smile and chuckle softly to himself, and wished to have him locked safely away again. Instead he cleared his throat, unwilling to get any closer to Damon, and asked if his new partner was ready to go.
Damon scratched at the cast covering his left forearm, laid the book neatly on top of the stack on the coffee table, and rose. His movements were elegantly graceful, and he looked fresh and clean, newly shaven, hair fashionably trimmed, dressed in the latest style. His shirt was royal blue, high collared and tieless, beneath a dark gray tweed jacket that matched his smartly creased trousers. He looked like a GQ model except for his slightly less than average height, and his presence conveyed an air of affluent upbringing that had been a part of his early heritage. But there was more to Damon Winterbourne than met the eye, and few learned what lay beneath the pleasantly deceptive surface until it was too late.
"You know, this was completely unnecessary," he mentioned to Sydney, knocking on the cast covering the incision where a transmitter was implanted early that morning. "I much prefer my cozy cell down below to being executed in the gas chamber, so rest assured I'll always come back."
"We can't take that risk, Damon," said Sydney disbelievingly. "At least this way, we'll always know where you are."
The young man glanced up at him with merry blue eyes and said nothing.
"We should be heading upstairs now," Sydney told him, and Damon began to hum Wagner's Ride of the Valkyrie as they exited the room and strolled casually down the hall. "This is going to be fun!" the Pretender smiled exultantly as he stepped into the elevator beside his former trainer.
Sydney did not take his eyes off the man beside him. He would have to be ready for anything, since predictability was not one of the young man's strong points. And he definitely wanted to end this manhunt still breathing, rather than in a box six feet underground.
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Jarod put away his paints and studied the finished portrait, pleased with the results.
"I'm done with it, Athena," he called into the living room.
There was no answer, and she did not come to see his painting as he expected. She was watching television on the sofa, so he rose from the kitchen stool and wandered into the next room to share her company. She sat upright on the couch, her attention riveted to the newscast, remote control in hand and raising the level of the volume so he could hear it, too.
"Listen," she commanded abruptly.
"...The murders have had few similarities, except for the compass found on each of the victims' bodies," the television anchor noted. "The method of killing has been different each time; the victims themselves are completely dissimilar and discovered in widely separated areas of the country, one as far away as Alaska. The police are completely baffled. The Compass Killer, as he has been dubbed, seems to be an unusually creative murderer, using methods as simple as asphyxiation and as exotic as poisoning with blowfish liver, which contains a deadly nerve toxin..."
"What is it?" he asked her gently as he sat down beside her on the cushions. "You look pale. Are you feeling all right? No contractions? It's still too early for that."
"I'm fine," she answered brusquely. She didn't take her eyes off the television until the report was finished and then hit the "mute" button on the remote, turning her full attention to the man she loved. Concern was etched deeply into her face, and there was fear in her eyes. "Just listen, and tell me what you hear in this list. James Johnston in Juneau. Alice Andrews in Aspen. Robert Reyes in Ruidoso. Orville Oakes in Oklahoma City. David Dean in Detroit. What did you notice about the list?"
His brown eyes met her blue ones and he took her hand in his. "I heard my name," he said softly. "Someone is spelling my name with murder."
She nodded. "I know it wasn't you, because you've been here with me the whole time. But who else--"
"I have to find out more about this," he told her quickly. "I'm going into town for a newspaper."
"No. Get online and search the news services," she suggested. "It'll be faster and you won't risk being seen that way."
Both of them went to the desk in the front bedroom. Jarod sat down and turned on the computer with Athena watching over his shoulder, and after connecting to the Web he checked his e-mail in the various places he had it stored. There was a message from the Centre Underground, and he read that first.
Watch your back. Damon is free.
"I wonder what that means?" he mused aloud. Jarod did not see Athena's face grow paler still behind him, nor did he feel her hands tighten on the back of his chair until her knuckles turned white. He initiated a search for news articles containing information on the Compass Killer, and discovered that the murders occurred every other day for ten days, and then suddenly stopped. There was no apparent pattern or logic to the killings except to him, and he understood all too clearly. Someone was trying to get his attention, and they had done it. Someone who knew his name. Someone who wanted something from him.
Athena was forgotten as the wheels began to turn, and he hit upon the idea to scan the newsgroups in the cities where he had been for familiar names. In Chicago, a nurse who worked at the Queen of Angels Hospital had been found dead in her car of an apparent drug overdose. In Las Vegas a casino owner was the victim of a gangland-style hit. A mechanic formerly employed by Skyvionics died in a fire at his home, assumed to have been started by a cigarette catching his sheets afire as he slept.
Everywhere Jarod had been since he escaped, someone had trod in his footsteps and brought death to those he had helped. He knew the names, every one of them, and could feel the grief and sadness of those lives he touched so briefly with his own. And the only place that information could have come from was the casebooks he left behind for Miss Parker to find and return to the Centre.
Someone was hunting him, and soon they would be where he was now, hidden away in the desert with Athena.
"You have to leave," he told her huskily. "You have to go someplace where not even I know where you are."
"Why?"
"Because the Compass Killer is on the way here, and I don't want you hurt," he answered truthfully.
She stared into his eyes, reading his fear and concern accurately, and something else as well. "You intend to be here where he can find you, don't you, Jarod?" she asked softly.
"You don't know the killer is male," he returned, glancing away and shutting down the computer.
"I even know his name," Athena told him, turning his head with a light touch of her fingertips against his jaw. "It's Damon Winterbourne." She swallowed hard. "He's my half brother
