Title:  Requiem II: Ghosts and Strangers

Author:  Eva Parker


Disclaimer: Concepts, characters, scenery, and psychotic corporations from the television show The Pretender are protected trademarks of MTM Television, Pretender Productions, and NBC.  I lay no claim to them; I’m just taking them out for a little spin.  All escaped characters will be returned immediately to the Centre.  All other characters, scenery, etc. belong to me.  Please note that fanfiction is covered under the “Free Use” clause of the copyright law.

Rating:  PG-13


---

Wait by Sarah McLachlan

Under a blackened sky
Far beyond the glaring streetlights
Sleeping on empty dreams
The vultures lie in wait
You lay down beside me then
You were with me every waking hour
So close I could feel your breath

Chorus:
When all we wanted was the dream
To have and to hold that precious little thing
Like every generation yields
A newborn hope unjaded by the years

Pressed up against the glass
I found myself wanting sympathy
But to be consumed again
Oh, I know would be the death of me
And there is a love that’s inherently given
A kind of blindness offered to deceive
And in that light of forbidden joy
Oh, I know I won’t receive it

Chorus

You know if I leave you now
It doesn’t mean I love you any less
It’s just the state I’m in
I can’t be good to anyone else like this

Chorus

---

   Her gun clattered to the ground, a noise as sure to alert the team as a shot would have been.  The adrenaline pumping through her body made her feel like she was dancing on electrical wire—and reminded her that she’d probably die for this.  This was a stupid risk.  Worst of all, it would make the last half-decade of her life meaningless.
   Jarod was so close she could feel him, a line of warmth down the front of her body.  He stared at her with tired, brown eyes, drowning in sadness, calling up all sorts of strange emotions—guilt—which she didn’t understand and didn’t want to listen to.  Mostly, she decided, she was pissed, because anger was an easy emotion to call up.  Parker had plenty of reserves.
   The furrow between her quarry’s brow showed his confusion at her action.  Good.  Satisfying to know that she could still surprise wonder boy now and then.  She stared at him for a long moment, drinking in his taut form, committing the road map of his soul to memory, because this was the last time she was ever going to see him.  “Get out of here, Jarod.”
   He looked like he might say something.  Thank you, maybe.  And then he was gone, down the hall.
   Something like satisfaction tugged at her shoulders.  Her mother had taken a lot of stupid risks.  Maybe this was good enough to make up for some of the Centre’s sins.  She bent down, picked up her weapon, and tucked it back into its holster.
   Hernandez, the new sweeper, clattered into the small anteroom.  He glanced left and right, searching for the man she’d freed.  He was out of breath.  “I got here as fast as I could…where’d he go?”
   “Flew the coop.”  She said it with no anger and no regret.
   Comprehension dawned on Hernandez’s face.  He was no Einstein—no Jarod—but he was smart enough, for the hired muscle that made up the bulk of a sweeper team.  He formed his face into a suspicious Que?
   “We’re getting out of here,” she ordered.  She tossed him her phone.  “Call the rest of the Jarod team.”  She’d only dispatched a few to this particular area. 
   “What should I tell them?”
   “That they’re going to have to find something else to do.”
   The sweeper’s eyes widened.  He was cute, she’d first noticed when they hired him.  Like a puppy.  Or a kid.  Except most kids didn’t have two confirmed kills.  “But Mr. Parker said—”
   “It’s not my father’s decision.”  She turned around and walked out of the building, toward the black Lincoln, Blue Cove, and home.
   As she walked, her satisfaction evaporated.  She was alone now, as much as ever, and there was a hollow feeling in her soul.  Well, at least one of us won’t have to live with this. This would have ended, she told herself, at one point or another.  She just hoped she’d made the right decision.

A man’s voice reached Miss Parker, his breath warm-cool-warm-cool against her cheek.  “No,” he murmured, a tremble in his voice like a child’s.  “Please…I can’t…”  He’d fallen asleep on the plane, and Parker couldn’t blame him.  It was a long flight from Montreal to the small airport in Moose Jaw;  even Parker, who had never been completely at ease thousands of feet in the air, had nearly drifted off.
   He’d always slept fitfully.  She was just sorry that the last fourteen years of his life hadn’t brought him the release it had brought her.
   Her mind taken from her reminiscing, she looked down at her sleeping comrade.  Funny, how the people from your past always caught up with you at the strangest times.  Had she been braver, she would have covered the trembling hand that lay on his armrest with her own.  But she didn’t know how to act, now.  Jarod was a stranger to her.
   Which brought her back to why the hell she’d agreed to go to Moose Jaw—actually, some secret destination in Hellhole, Canada, north of here.  She could only be here a couple of days at least.  Parker tried to figure out, again, how he’d convinced her to come along.  She had a Centre headquarters to run.
   Actually…she had to unsnap her seatbelt and lift her ass into the air to pull her phone from her suit pants.  In the heat of the moment, she’d almost forgotten to appoint somebody to look after things while she was gone.  An oversight that made her wonder if she belonged in the hospital with Daddy—which was a cruel and terrible joke.  Watching Jarod, a habit she hadn’t been able to break, was a full-time job.  She flipped open the plastic mouthpiece and checked the battery life.  Fifteen minutes, and this cheapo plastic phone was out of a charge.  She’d have to buy a new one in  Moose Jaw.
   If they carried the disposable cells in Moose Jaw.  Canada still had the lowest population count in the world, and Canadians generally went in for what worked, not what was hot.  Most of the people those wilderness cabins probably still thought of CB radios as a viable communications device.
Sometimes she missed her old phone, which she hadn’t had to toss for years.  But she knew the little secret of these disposables:  they may be only ten bucks each, but they brought in five percent more than their longer-life counterparts of the nineties and the early millennium.  The Centre held the patent.
She spoke the name into the receiver.
  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  She waited.  It usually took him a while to answer his phone.  He was busy.    “You’ve reached the Centre Tec—”
  “Miss Parker!”  It was seven-fifteen Blue Cove time, and her sweet little hacker was already at work.  His voice was bright.  Broots was one of the few of the old guard who’d chosen to stay on, even when she’d given him the option of fully paid retirement, as she’d given Sydney.  He had been a fiercely loyal friend when they were chasing Jarod together, and it warmed her to hear his voice.  Made her feel like she wasn’t in a parallel universe.  “Will said you left like the sky was about to fall down on us.  How are you!”
  “Still breathing.”  They’d greeted each other like that for years.  Sometimes it seemed like a joke.    Others, a relief.  “And the sky isn’t falling.  At the moment.”
  “Where are you?”
  “Give it up, Broots.”
  “Okay, okay.  Air Canada.  Flight 3459, Montreal to Moose Jaw.”
  Impressive, she was about to interrupt.  She’d bought the ticket under a moniker, but it was one they both knew.  But he beat her to the punch.
  “But there’s nothing in Moose Jaw that would interest the Centre.  There’s another Air Canada flight to Chicago in an hour, and the flight you’re on gets a tank full of gas and goes back east toward Calgary.  If you were going to either of those places, though, you’d tell me, so you know what I think?”  He paused for a minute, and she heard the clicks that meant he was typing into his machine; he had her on speaker phone.  “I think you’re taking the only for-hire plane service in Moose Jaw.  Small.  Private.  And very secret.  Miss Parker—”
  “What?”  She tried to sound annoyed at the intrusion, and couldn’t.
  “Twenty bucks says you’ll pay in cash.  Another twenty says a certain someone is footing your bills.”
   Nosy little…she’d taught him too well.  In the early days, he wouldn’t have dared to check up on her.  Or if he had, he wouldn’t have said anything.  But as head of technology, she’d made it his business to keep an eye on everything.  He didn’t know it, but in her safe she had paper instructions that would ensure that he was made Director if anything happened to her.  She didn’t trust anyone else living more than she trusted Broots except Sydney, and Syd would turn down a directorship.  “You’re good, Broots.  You get a Scooby Snack when I get home.”
  “Thank you, MP, ma’am.”  He was in a jovial mood, now wasn’t he?  “Why did you call me, anyway?  Jarod can take care of everything there, can’t he?  I mean, I’m not bad, Miss Parker, but Jarod can kick my butt in the hacking business any day.”
  She sighed.  Disappointing.  “You got all that information from Jarod?”
  “Of course not.  He just emailed me to say you’d be out for a couple of days, maybe a week…oh.  He didn’t tell you.  Well, I’ve got everything under control here.  I’m letting Keating take your office for now, unless you want me to do it.”  He said the last part quietly, because he would hate her job.  Heaven for Broots was to peck away at his computer all day, and management be damned.  He would do it, if she asked him to, but he’d hold a grudge for days at least.
   “Just check up on Keating.  Make sure he doesn’t get too comfy in that director’s chair.”  Keating was twenty-five, a manager from Centre Corporate, where Parker had had her own unorthodox business education.  He was also too arrogant to realize how naïve and foolish he was, and was a die-hard, power-hungry, slash-and-burn Centre executive.  In the rare conversations she’d had with him, he reminded her of Lyle, albeit not as crazy and more reliable.
   Broots’ relief was palpable.  “Thanks, Miss Parker.  I will.”
  “And occupy that mind of yours with something more interesting than my itinerary.”
  “Any examples?”
  “Find out what they’re doing with our consoles in Australia.  Exactly what they’re doing.  I don’t want what nearly happened with the phones to even get started over there.”

“Okay.  What am I supposed to do with the rest of my day?”
  “Find something, Broots.  Or call Debbie.  Or take the rest of the day off.  I don’t care.”  She hoped he could imagine her rolling her eyes, even though she wasn’t there.  And then she turned off the phone.
   There was still an hour before they reached Moose Jaw.  Months ago, she had thrown a book haphazardly into the travel bag she kept on the chopper reserved for her.  Unfortunately, she thought it was The Saddest Little Valentine, a romance book Jarod had written for her—about her, actually—as a little joke.  She’d have to find her reserve pair of reading glasses, somewhere in the bottom of the bag, to read it, though.  Besides, by the middle of the book, she always got pissed that the beautiful “Tiffany” Parker had more great sex in a day than she’d had in the last twenty years.
  And she wouldn’t give Jarod the satisfaction of learning how dog-eared the pages were.
  She shifted in her chair until she was as comfortable as she was going to get.
  So? she thought at herself, it wasn’t a bad book.  Who cares if Jarod kicks Danielle Steele’s ass? And then, the low hiss of air gliding across the wings lulled her eyelids over her tired gray eyes.
  The plane’s wheels screeched as the 747 bounced onto the runway, jolting her from a cozy nap.  Jarod was watching her as she wiped gunk from her eyes and stretched as well as she could in her seat, her shoulders aching. 
  He was smiling, but he balanced two cups of coffee in his hands.  She could smell a mixture of hazelnut and French vanilla; flying commercially had become more expensive, but a lot more pleasant when they began building cappuccino machines into the airplanes.  As far as she was concerned, the stranger who had once been the bane of her existence was, at the moment, a Godsend.  She reached up sleepily, and Jarod plopped the French vanilla cup into her hand.  It was just warm enough, and good.
She stared at him over the Styrofoam cup.  She was not going to let him lull her into a false sense of intimacy.  “How long have you been watching me sleep?”
  “About twenty minutes.”
  “I want to remind you that I haven’t agreed to that little—”
  The voice of the pilot interrupted her.  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Moose Jaw.  The temperature here is seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit and skies are clear.   I would like to thank the crew of Air Canada Flight 3459 for a successful flight.  For those of you staying with us to Calgary, the crew will be serving refreshments after all other passengers are released.  We ask you to remain seated until the aircraft has come to a complete stop.  Thank you for flying Air Canada.”  The pilot repeated her message in French, and then a member of the flight crew came over the intercom to announce the destinations and gates of the other flights.
  A moment later, they were at the gate.  She unsnapped her seatbelt—and realized with a start that she hadn’t snapped it back on before she slept.  “Jarod—”
  He’d gotten out of his seat on the aisle.  He had a black leather backpack slung over his shoulder.  “The baggage claim is one floor down.  Go out the staff door, take a left.  It’s the only freestanding building.  The sign is hand-lettered.  Dream Flights.” He smirked at her.  “Ask for Ron.  Or Kevin.  They’ll know where to take you.”
  He turned, and she jumped up and grabbed him on the arm.  There was no tenderness to the gesture.     “Where, exactly, do you think you’re going?”
  His expression was bland.  “Away, Director.  Assuming that you’re giving me a choice.”
  “Jarod, you’re not leaving me alone here.  Not if this is some wild goose chase.”
  “I’m sure you can find something to do at my house, Miss Parker, while I take care of a little business.  And I can promise you, you’ll see me again.  I can’t stay away for long.”  His tone was light and a bit too sarcastic for her taste—though she probably couldn’t point fingers.
  He was gone.
  Again.  She didn’t know where he was going or how long he was going to be there.  Frankly, she didn’t care that much.  This was starting to smell like one of his old games.
  And it was pissing her off.
  She grabbed the woven black bag from underneath the seat and wriggled between a girl with nose rings and an old woman with a cane.  Far in front of her, she spotted  gray-at-the-temples, fifty year old Jarod, conversing with a smiling young flight attendant before vanishing out the door.  Good riddance, she thought, and wondered when she’d see him again.
  As she walked down the isle, she tossed the used cell and the half-empty cup into a wastebasket.  She would buy another phone at the little depot, one of the only airport stores in Moose Jaw.  At least she could look forward to her flight.

  Parker had ridden the Centre’s corporate jet many times in fifty years of life.  It was plush and had six rows of seats.  It had a mini-bar, an incredible surround sound system, a small but pleasant bathroom, good food, skilled security, and she could bring her gun.  It beat the hell out of flying commercial.
Somehow, she had expected a private plane to be equally as pleasant, or at least as good as a commercial flight.
  She almost passed out when she saw the three Cessnas in Dream Flights’ small hangar.  Any one of the airplanes could have fit in her office.  Well, diagonally, anyway.  Of course, she had seen private planes before.  She’d just never thought she’d have to get in one.
  Parker was not afraid of heights, not any more than a rational person would be.  Nor was she afraid of being in an airplane crash; that was unlikely, and besides, there were worse ways to die. However, she was, ever so slightly, claustrophobic.
  Ron, who was American but had a rangy Midwestern accent, had let her pick.  Not that there was a difference.  “So you’re Miss Parker,” he’d said when he saw her, and looked her up and down, though not with the sense of appraisal that men his age had once given her.  He stared like he was trying to see if she had guts.  Like she was a man.  Like he didn’t believe his next phrase.  “Jarod says you’re nuts about these things.”
  “Oh, absolutely crazy about them,” she’d replied.
  The damn plane bounced with every change in the wind.  She was just glad she didn’t get airsick.  She clutched the armrest in the copilot’s seat until her knuckles turned white.  Next to her feet was an oxygen tank, just in case.
  One.
  The headset was a little too big.  “How long have you known Jarod?”
  Longer than you have. “We’re old friends.  But I knew him for years,” she answered honestly.
  “What, did you go to school together or something?  Date?”
  “Something like that.  You?”
  “Going on five years now.  He comes down to the hangar once a week for a soda if he’s not flying.  Flies a lot, though.  Sometimes, he pilots the planes himself.  You know, he’s crazy as hell.  Has the freakiest stories.”
  “I can imagine.”

“Smart, though.”  Ron lit a cigarette.  Miss Parker had quit smoking years ago, but now she was dying for a smoke herself.  Good for nerves.  “Nice piece of ass like you musta been…he had to be smart.” 
  “Thanks, Ron.”  These were the kind of people the Centre should be assassinating, if she still permitted assassinations.  Ron wasn’t exactly the best conversationalist.  Or the world’s smartest pilot.  She took a deep breath of the smoke that was clogging this sardine can imitation of an aircraft.  “I don’t think you should be doing that.”
  “What?”
  “There’s oxygen in here.  You know…there could be an explosion...”
  He stared at the burning end of his cigarette.  “Oh.”  He took another drag and glanced out the window.  “I think we’re almost there.”
  “You think?”
  “Damn odometer’s been dead for a month.  But this looks like the place.  Yeah, there’s his roof.” 
Parker glanced out.  All she could see was the tops of trees, a long way down.  Maybe it was one of those places you had to be looking for.
   “Listen—unbuckle your seatbelt,” Ron continued.
  She stared at him.
  “Trust me.”
  She didn’t, but she slid her fingers underneath the release and snapped it open.  Like a car seatbelt, it withdrew into the wall.
  “Now reach behind you and pull those straps over your shoulders.  Buckle it across the front.”  She snapped the plastic buckle together and instinctively pulled down the straps at her sides until they were taut. 
  “What’s this all about?” she said, though she was close to figuring out the answer.  She simply didn’t like it.
  “It’s your parachute.”
  She stared at him, then peeked out the window at the ground.  “You’re kidding.”
  “It’s the only way to get down there.  Unless you take a dogsled.  Or, I guess, a Jeep, but Jarod doesn’t have a Jeep and neither do I.”
  “Well, how the hell does he get to your airport, then!”
  “I think he walks.  It probably takes him three days.  That guy’s more fit than I am.”  She stared at his beer gut.  A lot of people were more fit than Ron Stalwart.  “You probably shouldn’t have a problem with this—I busted my kneecap doing this jump once, but Jarod got it on the first try and he said you were better at parachuting than he is.  Count ten and then let fly.  Tell Jarod I said hi.”
  “Oh, don’t worry, I will.”  She smiled tightly, hoping he understood the threat associated with that promise.
  He winked.  “Have fun, honey.”
  “Bye, bye, Ron.  It’s been an absolute dream.”
  Now she was dying to jump out of the airplane.  At least she wouldn’t have to live with the indignity of him slapping her on the butt as she wrestled open the Cessna’s door and squatted, almost pulled out by the wind, to jump.  She had the feeling that if she was twenty years younger, or even ten, he would have.
  I’m going to kill him, she thought.  Then she took a deep breath and stared at the trees, which looked like moss this far away from her.  One, she counted.  And then she jumped.
   Ron hit the jerry-rigged—Jarod-rigged—button that closed the door.  He stared as his plane drifted away, until her chute snapped open and jolted her back up into the air.  He had to admit, that was kind of fun.  He lit another smoke, banked his plane, and headed back toward his job.  Jarod.  He snorted good-naturedly.  Crazy as hell, the old bastard.  But better with women.

   The note in the kitchen read, Make yourself at home—J. 
   The drop had been hell, but she had to admit, she’d survived, and the log cabin was beautiful, homey.  The floors were all polished, golden wood.  The table, which was in the kitchen/dining room, was small, but Jarod lived alone here.  Everything was neat and glowing as if this were a model home in Architectural Digest. 
   His worn, black leather jacket hung on a peg next to the door.
   Lifting the wrought iron latch had triggered the coffee maker, and as soon as she had a steaming cup—she was a raging caffeine addict—she explored his home, first like a person, and then like a cleaner.
   The living room was cozy, with a thick red throw rug on the floor, a tired, but soft-looking. brown sofa and matching loveseat, a fireplace, a few tables, and enough books to keep someone busy for years.  A large oil painting of a group of white wolves, hunched from falling snow in an evergreen forest, decorated the wall over the couch.
  No TV, but the controls for a MD player were embedded discreetly in the wall, so modern that she’d had trouble figuring out what it was.  The yellow Post-it taped there read, Play me!
   He’d always had a thing for notes.
   Her fingertips brushed PLAY.  It was George Winston’s Plains album, with no funky projections, or altered sounds.  It was one of her favorite MD’s at home.  She remembered what she’d said when the first three-dee music video DVD’s came out.  I want to hear the music.  I don’t want the whole damn band in my house.
   George Winston had always made her want to cry.  Or laugh.  She loved piano music.
   His room was around the corner, past a bathroom and at the end of a small hallway.  Wrought-iron double bed.  A tall and comfortable-looking chair pushed up in the corner, next to the window, which looked out over close trees and a path.  She could see a lake flashing in the distance.  More books.  She scanned some of the titles.  Ender’s Game.  Chasm.  Prisoners of War and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: A Psychological Analysis, by Dr. J. Rueller.  An Overview of Neurosurgery.  Practical Applications of the Quantum Sciences.  Photography in Surveillance.  Criminal and Abnormal Psychology. Some of the titles, she couldn’t even pronounce.  All of them looked read, from science-fiction novels to classics to elevated political analysis.
   One level of his bookshelf was reserved for photographs.
   There was one of Jarod with his elderly parents and younger sister.  They all looked happy.  No one hiding, dour, cutting themselves off like in her photographs of her family.  A second one of his sister, each of her hands on the shoulder of one child.  Jarod had a niece and a nephew.
  One with the other guy she’d seen at Dream Flights, who must’ve been Kevin.  They were grinning, looking for all the world like best buddies out for a good time.
  In the last one, he was standing with Kara and Nathan, Kara’s son and Parker’s nephew.

“Miss Parker.  If you’re playing this tape, it means you’ve found your room.  I hope you like it.  I made a few additions that should make your stay more… homey.  If I’m not there now—if I am, you can just turn off the tape—then I’ll be there shortly.  I just had to pick up some groceries and a few other supplies.  Typing oh-four-seven into your wall console will play Plains in here; typing one will get you to a main menu, for security, entertainment, temperature adjustments, and communications features.  You can have the patent, if you want it.  If you’ve been exploring, like I know you have, then I probably have a few explanations to make.  But don’t worry, Miss Parker.  I would never harm your family or get them involved with the Centre.  Or involved with me.”
   The tape hissed for a moment, then clicked and rewound.
   The guest room was smaller than Jarod’s bedroom, but just as comfortable.  And there were little touches, but they didn’t set her more at ease.  Actually, they made her uncomfortable, not because it was difficult to scan and print a photograph, but because one had to have the original to do so.
   The magazines, lined up on the oak bookshelf, were eerie, too.  All the ones Centre projects had appeared in since she’d taken the directorship, including exclusive periodicals reserved for the kind of extremely private think-tanks like the Centre.  One of them, Connections, showed her and Broots standing together in front of a busy Tech Room on the front cover, with the headline A DECADE OF CHANGE: PARKER’S TENTH YEAR.  Look at us, she thought, smiling.  Victors in the corporate wars.  She remembered that year.   A good one.
   There were brand-new copies of old classics, all the familiar ones she had at home, and a few interesting-looking new ones, too.  A line of Michael Crichton’s, and a few by Dean Koontz.  Even a couple by that new author, Jamie Chains.  She hated science fiction, because she felt like she was living a science-fiction movie half the time, but she loved thrillers, when she had time to read anything at all.
   In the closet were clothes in her size, mostly jeans and sweaters, but a few nice business suits, too.  There was also an anorak and a pair of boots.  Jarod had chosen well.
   She opened the large window and let air breathe into the room.  She sat down on the double bed with the patchwork quilt which took up most of the bedroom, leaned back, and sighed.  She didn’t know how she would greet Jarod whenever he got here, with anger or with gratitude.  Probably with curiosity, mixed with a little annoyance. 
   Right now, Parker was exhausted, and lonely.  Jarod’s home was empty, dead, without anyone inside but her.  She took her new plastic phone from her pocket and spoke Broots’ name, glad she had invested in one of the small PhoneDiscs which held her phone number and saved names from phone to phone.  Ring—click. “You’ve reached the Centre Tech Room.  I’m not here right now, um, you can try to reach me on the computer.  Or you can leave a message.”
   “Broots, it’s me.  I guess you took the day off like I said.  It’s all right, though; this isn’t an emergency.  I just wanted to talk.  Well, say hello to Debbie for me, if you go to the hospital, and my father.  And call me when you get back to work.”  She hung up.
   There were a few other people she could call.  Her father, but he probably wouldn’t remember her voice.  Sydney would certainly be interested in what Jarod’s place looked like after all these years, and he would be glad to hear her voice.  But there was someone else she had the wickedest temptation to call—Kara Depp, the woman whom Lyle had screwed over, but hadn’t killed.  She’d be at work right now, and Nate, if he knew what was good for him, would be at school.  She said the name anyway.  “The Depps.”
   Nate’s childish voice—he was fourteen—was the one on the answering machine.  “You’ve reached the Depps at 894-3093.  We’re not available to come to the phone right now, but leave a message after the beep, and we’ll return your call as soon as possible.”  At first, Kara hadn’t wanted a thing to do with her, or any of Lyle’s family, and Parker couldn’t blame her.  But years had taught them to trust each other, and though Kara and Parker might not be the best of friends, Nate adored her.  She’d told him she was CEO of a big company, which was close enough to the truth.
   She’d also said, quite frankly, when he asked, that his father had been an asshole, which didn’t go over well with Kara, but did go much better than it would’ve with any other mom; Kara had known Lyle.  She didn’t speak.  Suddenly, she didn’t know what to say.  She just hung up, and pondered calling again just to hear her nephew’s innocent voice.  If Jarod had touched him—of course, he wouldn’t, but if he’d told Nate anything about his life, about his aunt, than Parker might well kill him.  She would definitely refuse the scheme he’d outlined to her vaguely in the coffee shop.  And she’d leave.  Even if she had to walk.
   After a while, she slept, the sound of piano music chasing her into darkness.

   A dog chuffed and slobbered on her face.  She blinked and tried to remember where she was.  Jarod’s house.  It was twilight.
   She groaned and rolled over.  A yellow Labrador jumped on her bed, wagging its tail, license tags clinking.  She pushed it away.  “Get out of here.  Shoo,” she mumbled sleepily.  The dog jumped from the bed and dashed out of the room.  Its claws clicked on the wooden floor.  Miss Parker preferred cats. 
   She rolled out of bed and examined herself in the full-length mirror.  Her nice red suit was wrinkled all to hell, and she needed a shower.  Her eyes were still half-lidded with sleep, there was a terrible taste in her mouth, and her hands hurt.  She needed a shower.  She was confused, angry, and a little scared.    It was a crappy way to spend an evening.
   She found a brush and fixed her hair, without bothering to flip it.  Parker thought for a moment, then removed her phone and put it on the bedside table.  It was flashing ONE INTERNET MESSAGE—CLYDE@CENTRENET.COM—SUBJ:  HOW’S BONNIE?
   Parker smiled wearily.  Broots.  Sometimes, he worried about her too much.  She would call him at home.  Later.  Now, she took off her suit and pulled on a pair of jeans, a maroon turtleneck, and a loose-woven black sweater.  She smiled at herself.  Loose the crow’s feet and the smile lines, ditch the gray—she’d look like a college student.  Ha!
  Maybe ten years ago.  She yawned and interlocked her fingers, stretching them high over her head.
  Jarod was clanking around in the kitchen.
Such a pretty little domestic scene.  The kind of thing she’d dreamed about for them when she was eleven, with a couple of little kids running around in the backyard.  But neither of them were destined for the picket fence kind of life.  No children, no marriage… from an evolutionary standpoint, they were complete failures.

There had been times when she longed to have her own children.  But she wasn’t sure she’d make a great mom.  Catherine Parker had been wonderful, but she hadn’t been with her daughter for very long—a perfect example of loving too much.  Parker was her father’s daughter, cool, not too good with kids.  She was no Sydney; she sucked at nurturing.  Even the potted plants in her house died after a couple of months of neglect.
   She put her hair into a pony tail and walked out to find Jarod.
   “Evening.”  He was humming that German folk song… kree kraw, toad’s foot, geese walk barefoot, while he sauteed fish, onions, green peppers, and mushrooms in a saucepan.  Her mouth watered.  She hadn’t eaten anything since the peanuts on the airplane, not really anything since the delicious apple muffin she’d had in New York.
   He’d taught the song to her when they were kids, and now she remembered the words every time she listened to the NPR theme song during the commute to work.  “I see you met Carson.”  The dog was lying behind Jarod in the kitchen, staring up at his master with adoring golden eyes.  His otter tail swished slowly against the wooden floor when his name was mentioned.  “He’s a good dog.  He’s really what I had to go pick up.  I left him with a friend.”
   She’d never figured him for a pet person, but Carson looked happy enough.  She noticed off-white plastic grocery bags on the table.  There was also a very large and heavy-looking bag which read RADIO SHACK.  She wondered how the dog had managed the parachute jump.
   However, there were more pressing issues.  “Jarod, how come there’s a picture of you with my sister and my nephew?”  Though Lyle had never married her, Parker had admitted Kara into the family, anyway.
  Kree kraw, toad’s foot, he hummed, dinner sizzling and emitting a delicious aroma, geese walk “Lay-ter,” he said, filling in the last two syllables.
   “Dammit, Jarod.”  She stomped her foot.  She hated to have to wait, for anything.  “You know, you haven’t changed at all.  It’s going to drive me up the wall staying here tonight.”
   “Oh, I don’t know, Miss Parker.  It’s not so bad.  You can lock the door.  And Carson is good company, if you need someone to talk to.”
   She was not going to tolerate this.  She had been up all night.  She had been dragged to a foreign country, on the whim of an escaped lab rat she’d known fourteen years ago.  She’d been locked in a flying tin can with a jerk-off pilot, and she’d been forced to jump from an airplane to a cabin in the middle of fucking nowhere, where genius boy had been inventing home control panels and writing psychology books and messing around with her family and spying on her.  She was sick and tired of the bullshit.  And she wanted to go home.  “Jarod, if you don’t tell me everything right now, including what the hell you were trying to pull with Kara and Nate, I’m walking out your front door and I’m never coming back, not even if it starts snowing.  Not even if I starve to death.  Screw your stupid plan, Jarod, screw Africa, and most of all, screw you.”
   The dog had gotten to its feet, its hackles raised.  Jarod had frozen, his wooden spoon stuck in their sizzling dinner.  His eyes were burning, and she couldn’t tell if it was from hurt feelings or plain old anger.  The moment hung there, Parker with her hands on her hips, Jarod staring back, a tense expression on his face.  And then it was gone.
   “Easy, Car,” he murmured gently.  He reached down to scratch the yellow dog behind his ears, but she guessed that the comfort was as much for him.
  He scooped the food onto two plates, portions slightly smaller than she was used to, but then, Jarod probably hadn’t cooked for two lately.  A loaf of bread was already on the kitchen table.  Frosted glasses of iced water had been set out for both of them.  “Miss Parker,” he said, after he’d set both plates on the table, kitty-corner from each other.  “I want us to have dinner, okay?  I want a quiet evening without thinking about any of the problems we’re going to have to deal with tomorrow.  I want to know how Sydney’s doing.  I want to ask you about your sister and nephew—I haven’t had a chance to see them in a while.  And I’m very curious about what you’ve been up to for the past fourteen years.  And then we can sit down in my living room, light a fire, make some hot tea—though you’ll probably want a shot of liquor in yours—and discuss what I’ve been up to, to your heart’s content.  Is that all right with you?”  He said it all in a calm tone usually reserved for the mentally unstable, or if you were unsure if the person nearby spoke English properly.  She was trembling with anger, or the release of it.
   Breathe.  “Fine.  Jarod— fine.”
  She drew back the high-backed wooded chair.  It squeaked across the wood floor.  She drew it close, and then she picked up a silver fork and took a bite of her dinner.  The fish was fresh, and the veggies released a warm sweetness as she bit into them.  Her meals were the pop-in-the-microwave kind.  She’d never been much for stove-jockeying.  But Jarod…of course, a Pretender could cook like Julia Child.  A Pretender could be Julia Child.  Still, involuntarily, she released a muffled, “Mmm,” as she chewed.  It didn’t even need salt or pepper.
  Jarod was watching her with a ghost of a smile.  When she swallowed, savoring every last taste, he asked her, “So, anything going on with business that he hasn’t told me?”
  She sipped her water.  Surprisingly, it was exactly appropriate.  Bitingly cold.  Refreshing.  “Who?”
He chuckled.  “Oh, come on.  Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”
  “Know what?” She wracked her brain for some indication of the “he” Jarod was talking about.
Jarod was trying very hard not to laugh.  “You mean…you mean…he didn’t tell you?  I mean, I asked him not to but I’d always thought… he likes you so much…”
  She was giggling, too, now, though she had a feeling she should be irritated.  It felt good.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed.  “Who are you talking about, Jarod?”
  “Well, Broots.”
  He waited for comprehension to dawn on her face.  His brown eyes were glowing, paler in the light which hung over the kitchen table.
  “Broots?”
  “Wow, he really didn’t say anything.  Parker, do you know that place just off the Centre’s driveway?  Across the street, a half-block down?”
  “Moe’s.”  She still didn’t have a clue what Jarod meant by Broots.  She had lunch at Moe’s once or twice a week.  They had great sandwiches.  The best French fries in Blue Cove, too.
  He took a bite of food and chewed it, messing up his words.  “We meet there on the second Tuesday of every month.  At seven p.m. We’ve been exchanging information for almost ten years…you’re serious…he didn’t tell you anything about it?”  Jarod swallowed and lifted his eyebrows at her.
  That little shit.  Now she’d have to kick his ass when she got back.  Clyde, shmyde; loyal Broots, best friend and techie extraordinaire, had turned traitor.  But she couldn’t think it with any malice.  It was actually kind of sweet, in a weird sort of way, that he expected Jarod to look after her.
  She'd still have to kick his ass.

Parker took another bite of her dinner and reached out for a warm piece of sourdough.  Underneath the table, Jarod’s dog laid its heavy muzzle on top of her foot.

  She waited until the light left his eyes.  They’d had vanilla ice cream with hot chocolate syrup after dinner, chuckling about their grown-up lives and dodging their worst memories.  It was hard not to dredge up all the things she’d forgotten, with such an integral piece of her past sitting next to her and acting like he’d always acted.  She was sure there were some pretty terrible experiences Jarod didn’t want relive, either.
  “Why do you live here, Jarod?” she asked after a while.  “It’s nice.  Cool vacation house.  But for goodness sake, it’s completely empty here.  There’s nothing to do.  You must be going nuts.”
  He lifted an eyebrow at the word cool, unsure of its usage, probably.  He hadn’t exactly grown up with a thorough knowledge of slang. 
  “I’m hiding.”  His eyes trailed to the large window which let starlight into his kitchen.  He’d tapped the control panel in the wall and dimmed the kitchen lights an hour ago.  He peered at it as if he thought someone might jump up behind it.
  Or shoot through it.
  For a hideaway, this place had pretty lousy security, Miss Parker thought suddenly.  She wished she’d been allowed to bring her Smith and Wesson, but the checking-weapons policy only applied to U.S flights. Canada had very strict anti-gun laws.  Not that that would matter to a criminal.
  “Jarod, I stopped hunting you when I let you out of that house.  I know my father pushed for the search to continue, but you don’t have to worry…”
  “You think the Centre was the only corporation interested?  Or the only organization involved?  You may have been able to stop running from your past, Miss Parker, but mine is still haunting me.  Every day.”  The look on his face now was definitely pain.  Pain and battle-weariness, feelings she’d worn like banners for most of her life.
   She could still read him, if not as well.
  There was only one organization she could think of.  Other groups would be interested, but not as daring, not as cruel.  Nobody had the big brass ones or the money to capture and imprison a fleeing genius like Jarod except her Centre, which had given up, and… “The Triumvirate,” she breathed.   They were still so terrifying, and still had so many eyes and tentacles in the corporation that to whisper them felt like a sin.  There hadn’t been any official contact with them for years.  Parker had likened the atrocities they committed to those of concentration camps.  The Triumvirate.  Bigger than international law.  Bigger than the Centre.  Bigger than Jarod.
  His expression was raw.  He stared at the floor.  “Mostly,” he murmured.  There were still traces of the precocious and abused boy in him.
  “We should go to the living room,” he said.
  After a moment, she nodded carefully.  She felt like she was standing at some kind of precipice, and the wrong move would send her plunging to her death.  Jarod could have asked nearly anything of her now, and she would’ve said yes, her guilt weighing her down.  “All right,” she agreed, gently.    She got to her feet and walked through the open door.  After a moment, without looking behind her, she felt Jarod get up and follow.  She sat down on the couch and watched as he moved across the room, slowly, as if carrying a great weight on his shoulders.
  Jarod sighed heavily, and sat on the loveseat, within touching distance.  He turned away from her and pressed his thumb against what was ostensibly a wrought iron keyhole in the drawer of an oak side table, the kind of drawer most people kept coasters with wry comments on them and old copies of Reader’s Digest in. It beeped, and when he lifted his hand, a small light glowed green from within.    It made her want to retract her earlier thought about security.  This place was wired pretty creatively, and Jarod had a lot of time on his hands here…no telling what he could have worked into this place.
  Like drawers that had thumb scanners.
  He pulled open the drawer, lifted a thin manila file folder from it, and closed it.  “We can save this until tomorrow.  Maybe you should get some sleep.”  He thought for a moment, resting his hand on top of the file.  “Because you are never going to sleep the same again after seeing what’s in here.”
  He should know what he could do with his sleep.  She couldn’t wait.  Not anymore.  His words had only strengthened her curiosity, and her determination to get to the bottom of this before she returned to her job and her life.  She almost snatched the file from him, but something in Jarod’s tense form and seriousness stopped her.  This man, this portion of his personality, was different from any part of Jarod she’d seen before.
  “At the Triumvirate facility in Africa, Miss Parker, there are approximately one hundred and fifty children.  Stolen from their parents.  Growing up miles from civilization, in dormitories.  Apparently, they all have above-average intelligence.  Gifted children.”  His words dripped with scorn.  He might as well have been talking about himself.  “They live in squalor.  They’ve been harmed.  But worst of all, these children…”  He froze, as if he couldn’t speak.  There were no words for that kind of evil.
One hundred and fifty children.  Prisoners.  They’ve been harmed. Parker felt sick with horror, dizzy with anger.  Violated.  She’d worked so hard, to end the presence of children at the Centre, Jarod’s legacy… and they were still committing atrocities.
  Jarod had comforted her in the coffee shop that morning—had it only been that morning?—now, she did what she never expected she’d do.  She rested a manicured hand on top of Jarod’s, feeling a flood of warmth that came from contact with another human being as much as Jarod’s slightly-higher-than-normal temperature.
  Jarod jumped like he’d been shot.  But he didn’t pull away, and it was enough of a prompt for him to go on.  “These children…they’ve been brainwashed, by someone we both knew a long time ago.  They’re sociopaths.  All of them.  I’ve seen these children, Miss Parker.  I took the photographs in this file.  And their eyes… Maybe, some of the younger ones can be deprogrammed, if we can get them out.  But the reason I invited you here was because you know the man in these pictures.  You, as well as anyone.”
  With his spare hand, he reached across his chest and held out the file, daring her to take it.  I had the guts to look at these, Miss Parker.  Do you?  They’d competed when they were eleven, with Syd’s medical textbooks of human brains and eyes and mottled livers, and somehow, this had the feel of the same kind of game, taken to a new, morbid level.
  When she lifted her hand from his to take it, he turned away.  He didn’t want to see what these pictures would do to her.  He clicked his tongue, calling Carson to him in a shaky voice. 
  He really loves the goddamn dog.
  She took a breath and opened the file.

The pictures were black and white glossies, and they were all close shots.  They looked like they’d been taken by a pro.
  Suddenly, her heart throbbed in her ears, and her hands began to tremble violently.  She felt a touch of vertigo.  No…
  He was older than she remembered.  Like her, he was going gray.  Like her, he bore the lines and scars associated with the wear and tear of fourteen years—actually, thirteen, since she’d last seen him.  His eyes seemed dimmer, but maybe that was just the photography.  In some of the photographs, he wore stylish, oval-shaped, wire-rimmed glasses.
  In some shots, he pointed, his face harsh as he directed a dead-eyed, stoic-faced child.  In others he stood laughing, suave, with a group of black men.  He dressed the same.  He looked, essentially, the same.
  It was the man who had been introduced to her as Mr. Lyle.  Her brother.  The father of her nephew, the man who’d screwed Kara and dumped her like she was nothing, had left her pregnant and alone with the ashes of a too-young marriage to someone who wasn’t Lyle.  Assassin.  Murderer.  The Triumvirate’s whipping boy. 
  The man Parker had shot to death on the Centre’s roof one year after she’d been made director.  She’d done a public service, and yet, she’d still borne that guilt every day for thirteen years.  She’d cried for the tainting of her soul and the grief of her father at his funeral.  She’d accepted that evil as part of herself, and gotten over it, and had also sworn that she would never kill anyone again.  She carried a gun because it was an excellent threat, but since that day with Lyle, she’d never even pulled off a shot except on the range, and then every one jolted her body with emotion.
  “Jarod, no,” she whispered, the words choking in her throat.  “I killed this man.  I shot his face off.”
  “Did you see him die?” Jarod didn’t turn to look at her.  “Miss Parker?”
  “I—It was the roof.  He fell from the roof.  But I saw the body.”
  “You saw a blond man of medium build…”
  “…with no face.  Holy hell, Jarod.”  She was trembling so violently that she was afraid she might pass out.  Lyle had been a serial killer.  He preyed on Oriental women.  He was supposed to be a ghost.  He was supposed to torture her for the rest of her life in dreams and never touch anyone else ever again.  And they had given him children.  It took her a long moment to understand all the implications.
  Her first thought was that she was going to have to get Nate out of Cincinnati.
  Her second…what was Lyle doing with those kids?
  Jarod answered her as if she’d spoken the words.  “He’s turning them into his own, private army.”  He stared.  His expression was painful to look at.  Their pleasant meal seemed worlds away.  His eyes were drowning in despair, and he stared at her like she could draw him out.  He didn’t just need her to go to Africa to get the kids and stop Lyle, she realized.  He needed someone to pull him out of the hole when he needed it.  Someone to lean on.  She wondered if his simulations had somehow taken a part in this.
  Jarod had taken these shots himself, she remembered.
  If I’d taken these pictures, I’d want to live out the rest of my life in a cozy, quiet place in BFE, Canada, too.  She didn’t want to go.  She didn’t know if she was up to going.  This kind of business, which she’d thought was done with when she cleaned out the Centre years and years ago, was the sort of thing quiet middle-aged women, even tough and healthy ones, didn’t do.
  But it all came down to who had the guts, and she had them.  She knew she did.  She would have to go back to the Centre and explain things to Broots, get him started on the hacking end, ensure that everything was in order if she didn’t return.  She would have to find some way to get her hands on a bigger gun.  She would have to put Sydney and his family, and Kara, and Nathan, and Debbie, and her father, out of Lyle’s reach, and do the same for Jarod’s family if he couldn’t do it himself.
  “Parker,” Jarod croaked,  “will you come with me?”
  She wiped the tears from her cheeks, though more flowed to replace them.  She tried to wink.  She’d be on risky emotional ground for the next few days.  When she spoke, however, her voice was strong.  “Lock and load, Jarod.  Let’s go to Africa.”
  He struggled to smile, his curiosity betraying his desperation.  “What the hell does that mean?”
  She very nearly laughed.
  When she glanced back at the images her brother’s face, though, her confidence waned.  It stung to think that this might be the last, best memory of her life.  She closed the folder almost reverently.  If this was going to be the last week or month of her life, then she was going to take the longest, most luxurious hot shower she possibly could.  And then she was going to take two Tylenol P.M.’s from her duffel, come back here, and look at these pictures until she could see them without wanting to vomit, or until she fell asleep.
  Whichever came first.