She watched him walked down the gangway, smoking a cigarette. Funny, she couldn’t ever remember a time that he had smoked before. Just another useless fact that she now filed away. She matched him when he stopped onto the main walkway and then asked him if he was out on a midnight stroll.

He actually looked bored when he sighed and said, “How'd you find me?”

“I hit redial.”

He grinned in amusement. “It is always the simplest thing, isn't it?”

“The chip.” She held out her hand, silently warning him not to test her. And he still tried to bribe her.

“You know, 20 million dollars split two ways is...” she cocked her gun in final warning and he apparently got the message when he said, “…apparently out of the question.” He handed over the chip.

“Why follow Jarod if this is what you wanted?”

“That was to pay off a debt. Jarod is to... win friends, and influence people. I bring him back and all is forgiven.”

“The Centre welcome mat's been yanked for you, cowboy,” she replied with disdain.

“We'll see,” Lyle said, “So they sent you to clean up.” Then he asked, looking bored out of his mind, “You really gonna kill me?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Then why are you still talking about it?”

Her finger tightened noticeably around the trigger, but she held off, not really prepared for it yet. Lyle sniffed and said, “Not as easy as it looks, is it? You know why you don't want to kill me? Because you are me. It's a natural desire for people like us to dominate and define.”

“You and I have nothing in common.”

“We…” Lyle took a step closer and she immediately raised her gun. He stopped and then continued, “We both recognize that this notion of human equality just perpetuates mediocrity. But we're not mediocre, are we Miss Parker? We're independent. And independence, it's a privilege of the strong.” He paused, allowing the words to sink in. “Tell me Miss Parker, how strong are you?”

“Strong enough.” She put determination behind the words, willing herself to belief it.

“How strong are you?”

“Test me.”

The silence stretched and she could see Lyle mulling over her words until he gave a half smile and said, “Nice working with you.”

He turned away from her, flicking his cigarette over the water. She followed it involuntarily until she became aware of the danger he posed when he continued his turn, pulling a gun out of his jacket. Confronted by the danger, she pulled her trigger and watched his body jerk as the bullet hit home before he fell into the water.

She had done what her father had asked. Lyle’s body was floating in the water and it left her with no feeling at all.

Ben's place

“Hello Ben.”

Lyle smiled and then proceeded to circle the older man sitting in the chair in the middle of the room.

“Who are you?”

Lyle pulled up a chair so he was seated across from Ben. Leaning back, he continued his silent scrutiny of the man.

“You can’t do this,” Ben said, starting to rise from his seat. A sweeper hand clamped onto his shoulder, forcing him back down.

“Do what?” Lyle asked, his voice smooth and urbane and to those who knew him, very dangerous. Ben said nothing, but his body language couldn’t quite hide his fear or the fact that he knew exactly who he was dealing with. Lyle continued his stare until one of the sweepers stepped from Catherine’s old room, holding a picture of them seated on his porch. Lyle took it from him, turning it over and then said, “Nice. Not that it matters, but were you two lovers?”

Ben’s lips tightened and Lyle could see anger replacing fear as an explosive negative left his lips. Lyle turned and draped an arm over the chair. “I’ve always wondered what type of man would make my mother happy. Not that I ever knew her but my sister could never understand that my mother was not the angel she had made her up to be.”

Understanding dawned in Ben’s eyes. “You’re the boy that she lost at birth.”

Lyle stopped smiling and said, “And now you’ll tell me how devastated she was that she had thought me dead.”

Ben leaned forward and looked at Lyle before drifting down to the photo he held. “A parent always remembers the loss of any child.”

Lyle’s eyes narrowed. “So you did sleep together.”

Ben sighed. “No. We were friends, nothing more. I loved her but…she….had always been loyal to your father.”

Lyle laughed. “That’s funny.” Lyle rose and threw the photo onto Ben’s lap.

“I have an offer to make, one that I’m sure you’ll not be able to resist,” Lyle said. “I want the location of my sister and I want the name of the doctor that had treated her new lover.”

“No.”

Lyle’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t make this ugly, Ben. All I want is a location and a name. No one will ever know that you were the one that told.”

Determination settled and Ben took a deep breath. “I can’t tell you.”

Lyle leaned in, hands on the armrests of the chair. “And why is that?”

“Because I don’t know,” Ben said.

Lyle straightened and stepped away. He looked at the sweeper standing behind Ben. “Get me the information I need.”

Mason County

She couldn’t get through to Ben. Turning her cell phone, she glanced at the signal bars on the left side of her phone. It didn’t help that they were in the middle of nowhere with almost no signal towers. Groaning in frustration, she closed her phone. Fences flashed by, surrounding fields white with snow.

“I’m sure he’s fine, Parker.” She gave Jarod a look and he sighed, “We’ll try at the house. There’s bound to be a landline.”

“We shouldn’t have left Ben alone. We should’ve taken him with us. I don’t trust my brother not to hurt him.”

Jarod glanced at her. “It was his choice and Ben has survived the Centre thus far.”

“Jarod, my father is not in charge anymore. Lyle is.”

Jarod shifted in his seat. “I’m fully aware of what Lyle is capable off.” Giving her a longer glance, long enough that he could see her grow uncomfortable, he turned his eyes back on the road. “Ben doesn’t know enough for Lyle to be interested in him.”

“Are you saying that to placate your own guilt?”

Jarod jerked the steering wheel when the car slipped on a piece of black ice. A breathless moment later he had the car straight again.

“Ben knows what he’s doing.”

Miss Parker looked at Jarod with enough emotion to allow a sinking feeling to settle in his stomach. It opened up all the doubt he had stored away that this will work. That they can disappear from the Centre and that everyone would be safe. He didn’t want to think about losing her.

Couldn’t think about it.

Taking a deep breath to cleanse his mind of backlash images of what Lyle had done to the women he had murdered, he glanced at her again, and gave her a smile of reassurance. Or tried to anyway.

He could see she wasn’t convinced.

“Everything will work out, just….trust me, ok. I’ve been doing this for a while now and the Centre has yet to catch me.”

She raised one eyebrow at his statement. “Did you forget the time Lyle kept me dosed up in a hospital when I got shot while you enjoyed his company for three weeks?”

Jarod closed his eyes briefly, not wanting to be reminded of how close he had come to losing her. And what he had given up to save her.

“That was different.”

“Ok, fine. But as soon as we’re at the Major’s place, I’m phoning Ben.”

He had no choice to agree even thought his mind was telling him that it was a bad idea. And it occurred to him as he turned into the rutted farm track that led to the house his father and the boy rented that maybe, just maybe he was afraid that for once, he had underestimated Lyle.