Title: Requiem III: Sacred Ground

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.


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  It was the last morning of the last day at Jarod’s house in the wilderness, and Parker was glad.  She’d been on edge since she’d seen his file, barely able to sleep, pacing his small cabin.
She wanted to go.  Now.  She had waited a week while Jarod prepared—something, she guessed, that at one point she could never have managed.  But during that week she had tried to stuff down her anxiety, ignore it, endure it only as a tangential problem, and now it threatened to explode inside of her.   She was decent at managing matters of some delicacy.  She could never have risen to this position of she wasn’t.  But this was different.  This involved the Parker family.  Their continued existence, in all their twisted and bizarre glory.
   Her father was dying.  She had often, in some strange way, hoped for the closure of that telephone call or alarm of a heart monitor.  But at the same time, she couldn’t let him go.  It hurt her to think of him dying without understanding or dignity, two things a terrible disease they could not yet cure had stolen from both of them.  And it terrified her to think that Lyle’s face was quite possibly the very last thing their father might see before…
   There was a small chance that after his initial frustration, Lyle had forgotten Jarod even existed.  Jarod certainly hadn’t gone out of his way to make himself noticeable.  But Miss Parker had made herself a thorn in the Triumvirate’s side ever since she’d shot—and, she’d assumed, killed—her brother.  It was Miss Parker that had cut all the strings, Miss Parker who’d stopped taking orders, Miss Parker who’d told them they could take their representatives and cronies and put them where the sun don’t shine.
   And Lyle had wormed his way back into a job there.  If she knew him, then he was probably running the place by now.  Even if he wasn’t he was in charge of something that was, in Triumvirate parlance, big.
   A psychopath.  A killer.  A man with more than one reason to hate her and, after thirteen years of working for the Triumvirate, more than a dozen to be concerned about his position.  And all he would have to do to kill anyone she was close to was say the word, reach out with a metaphorical hand, and they would die.  For all her efforts, the Triumvirate still had plenty of sway in the Centre.  Enough to put Broots at the most immediate risk, and Sydney close behind.  Of course, he might prefer to reach out to his son and Nate’s mother, Kara.  Or his father.
  To him, she guessed, it would be so much more gratifying to destroy the people who knew most intimately his secrets.
   She sipped her hot black tea and looked out over Jarod’s lake.  The porch was one of those places she felt had been built specifically for her.  It was peaceful, and quiet.  And she could pretend that her hands weren’t trembling, that she wasn’t sickened with fear and doubt, and that she didn’t want to march back inside and tell Jarod to move his little lab rat ass, or she’d kill him.
   Pretending.  What a crock.  Parker had never been that good at masking her emotions.  No; that wasn’t true.  A long time ago, she’d realized she had the best poker face of everyone who worked for the Centre.  She had, after all, learned deceit from her father.  What she wasn’t good at, really, was not feeling her emotions.  Despite her every effort to remain as cool and distanced as…as Daddy, her feelings were as real and overpowering as her mother’s.
   Perhaps it would have been easier if Jarod didn’t try to do everything for her.  It had been presumptuous for him to choose clothing for her, even though she liked what he had chosen.  That, she told herself, made it worse.  She liked everything he had done for her:  her room, the homemade food, the entertainment—and the security.  He had given her a replica of her own weapon, good enough that it felt like part of her hand when she held it.  He had also made a few modifications, along the lines of what she’d been thinking herself.  Anything she wanted, he could get.  Anything she needed, he probably already had.
  For a woman who’d spent every day since her mother was killed taking care of herself, it was absolutely infuriating.  She didn’t have a thing to do, and it was driving her crazy.
   Maybe if she kept thinking about what was wrong with this delightful little journey into Pretenderland, Parker told herself, she wouldn’t have to worry about what Lyle was doing to those kids right now.  She wrapped her hand more tightly around the warm mug with the image of a Labrador on it—interesting, eh, Miss Parker?  I wonder why they make these things. It's kind of funny, don't you think? —brought it to her lips, and let its sweet liquid warmth run down her throat.  She closed her eyes.  The stuff almost, almost beat coffee.
  She swept an errant piece of hair behind her ear.  She was a little hungry, this morning, though she hardly ever ate breakfast.
   She could smile at that.  The world kept turning, whether you were miserable, depressed, grieving, angry, scared, or horrified.  Nature still worked generally the way it was supposed to.  Pump it in, pump it out.  That was life.
   She turned away from Jarod’s sparkling blue lake and the chill outdoors.  Autumn may only have been beginning in Blue Cove, but winter was almost here in Canada.  The screen door slammed behind her.  The calming heat inside Jarod’s house made her skin feel like it was burning.  Parker waited for the feeling to leave her, then picked a bright red apple from the green bowl on the kitchen table.  She preferred the tart taste of the green apples to the sweet Red Delicious.

That was an imperfection.
   There was a clatter from below her.  Jarod.  The room she’d originally had pegged for a pantry was actually a concealment for the small trap door which led to Jarod’s private cellar.
   He kept it locked.  He wasn’t nearly as trusting as he seemed to be.
   “The Granny Smiths are in the fridge,” he shouted, his voice muffled by the wooden floor. 
   Son of a bitch.
   “Stop nurturing, Jarod,” she called back.  She’d said the same thing to Sydney almost twenty years ago.  He hadn’t stopped, either.
   She took a bite of the red apple, just for spite, then threw it into the sink and turned on the disposal.    There was a sucking sound as the apple was chomped away, then a growl as the thing tackled the core.  She turned it off.
   Jarod peeked out from the pantry door.  “Well?”
   She shot him a scathing look, ignoring the excitement that leapt into her chest.  This was it.  They were going now.  “Well what, brain boy?”
   He smiled.  “Are you coming?”
   She fought to keep the dour look on her face.  Of course she was going.  She was already there, practically.  She dumped the tea into the sink and walked into the pantry. He took a graceful step out of the way, so she could walk down.
   “And they say women take longer,” she sniped, and then she trotted down.  She was going to get a look at Jarod’s secret room before they left.
   She stood in awe.  He had built an exact replica of a fully-furnished simlab.  She remembered, because she had been part of a few of his simulations as a child, and they had, of course, utilized the Centre’s simulation laboratory as the headquarters for the Jarod search.  She had selected this area for the new cancer research the Centre was doing, but this…this place was right out of the seventies.
   For a short moment, she forgot her emotions. “Christ, Jarod,” she breathed.  “How long have you been building this place?”  She’d gotten the impression that it was fairly new.
   The question was supposed to be a rhetorical one, but suddenly, he was right behind her, his breath warm on her face as he leaned over her shoulder and spoke in her ear.  “The underground structure was here already.  Part of some kind of population rescue program from the Cold War.  All I really had to do was get some equipment in here.  I built the cabin over it a few years ago, because I could no longer conceal the work I was doing.  And I needed a place to sleep.”
   “This is a bomb shelter?”
   “It was.  Once.  It’s the door on your right.”
   She took a breath of the damp air and walked toward the door Jarod indicated.  Let’s see, she thought, in the old Centre layout, this would lead to…Sydney’s office.  She opened the door.  If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine the bookcases, the small and simple desk, lit dimly by a lamp and covered with mementos of Sydney’s family and his past.  The comfortable sofa which had been one of the last things her mother had seen before…
   Was there something you wanted to talk about, Miss Parker?
   No, thanks.  The last thing my mother did before she killed herself was have a session with you, remember?
   Jarod’s flirtations with Memory Lane, however, left off at the simlab behind her.  He’d felt no need to recreate Sydney’s office, or the structure of the cellar simply hadn’t lent itself to that.  She made her way down the cement-lined hallway, aware of the functional track lighting and the slight, almost imperceptible decline of the floor.  They were traveling further and further underground.  She had no doubts that this place could survive a nuclear blast.
   She wondered if it might have to someday.
   If only to fill the eerie emptiness—and remind herself that she was not alone—she spoke.  “You know, if I were you, Jarod, I’d never want to do a simulation again.”
  “I don’t ever want to do one again.  For the Centre.”
  “But you do them?  In that place?”  Involuntarily, she shivered.  She had many vivid memories of the torturous experiments Jarod had survived in the original simlab.  He had told her about most of them, when they were still friends.  Some, in her training as a cleaner and in her powerful position as Mr. Parker’s daughter, she’d observed herself.
  There was no reply.
  She halted, turned, and looked at him.  The hall was narrow enough that he couldn’t pass around her.  His expression was harsh, almost angry.
  He had been kind, caring, even welcoming to her.  He had made her a place here, a place where she felt safe enough, even if the walls closed around her a bit.  He had not opened up to her in any way, shape, or form.  They were not friends.  They were strangers who had lived in the same house for a week.  Those were boundaries Jarod had set on their new relationship.
   Frankly, she had come to the café in New York, where this whole business had started, expecting, even desiring, something different than chase-and-tease.  She’d had no delusions about being whisked away for a brilliant-hero, ass-kicking-heroine wedding; any romantic feelings she had for Jarod were old and dusty, buried in the annals of her memory and focused on a bright-eyed and innocent eleven-year-old boy.  A child’s fantasies, channeled into a familiarity, an intimacy, which even Miss Parker’s chilly façade couldn’t fake into nothingness.
   She’d been prepared for friendship, even for an unlikely tearful reunion.  She’d been ready for hostility and bitterness, too; Miss Parker wasn’t much for compassion when it came to Jarod, but she could imagine that he had a few things to say to her.  She’d even braced herself for some sort of twisted, “I’ve always loved you,” testimony, which she would have walked away from, first because it was bullshit, and second, because trying to resurrect that mushy-stuff kid relationship would make them both miserable and angry at each other.
   She had not wanted this.  She had come to Jarod looking for a final bit of closure on the last part of her life that had been left hanging.  “Talk to me, Jarod.”
   “Miss Parker—”
   “Talk.”
   His eyes darted away, his expression hurt.  “You want to know, Miss Parker?  Really?  Remember when you used to cry at your mother’s grave?”
   Every year, on the anniversary of her death.  She still went, every year, though she hardly ever cried anymore.  She sighed.  “Yes.”  The word breathed from her mouth, gentle.
  “That’s what this place is to me.  Refuge.  Where I go to remember.  To fix all the things that went wrong.”  He didn’t look at her.  What did psycho-quacks call it?  Dodging?  Distancing?  Make it easy, and call it pain.
   Feel better, now, Parker?  You’ve hurt another person you care about. You can’t escape everything, Jarod.  You can’t just say some magic incantation and fix it.  Some wounds you can’t even heal by undoing the crime.  The words burned in her throat.

He was close, temptingly close.  She could comfort him, like the friends they were trying to be, and he wouldn’t push her away.  She could sense it.  But she made no move, and neither did he.  Jarod was the touchy-feely person, given to spontaneous embraces, reaching out to the people he trusted like touchstones, even as a little boy.
   Miss Parker had never learned to trust as freely.  The gestures of love between her and her father had all been practiced, planned, like they were reading out of a TV script for a show called This is What a Real Family Would Do Now.  In the Parker family, they were all pretenders, liars.
   By pressuring him, she had refused to let Jarod pretend himself out of this pseudo-relationship.  She would not pretend them into it.  Instead, she would remind him that she was the woman who had chased him for five years, who swore to kill him.  Who had shot and, she thought, killed her own brother and walked away.  She turned and continued walking.
   After a moment, she heard Jarod take a slow breath and follow her.
   The hollow ache in her chest clawed at her, less satisfying and more painful than the familiar pain in her knees.  Who’s pretending now?
   They passed by an open door which led into a small, neat office.  There were two filing cabinets pressed up against a wall, another bookcase filled mostly with how-to books, college and graduate school texts, and technical journals.  Quite a few of them were about identity disorders.
  The bottom shelf was stuffed with thin red notebooks, those infuriating gifts he left her at the end of every Pretend he did while they were chasing him.  She had hundreds of them herself, stored away in the old simlab.  There were also newspaper articles tacked to a bulletin board.  She lingered long enough to read a few of them.
   RETIRED MILITARY POLICEMAN SAVES MISSING BOY.  “GUARDIAN ANGEL” LAWER FREES INNOCENT MAN FROM DEATH ROW.  SURGEON REMOVES “IMPOSSIBLE” BRAIN TUMOR—THEN DISAPPEARS.  MYSTERY HACKER CRACKS STOCK FRAUD PLOT  And, more intriguingly, JAROD: THE SEARCH FOR THE VANISHING GOOD SAMARITAN.  There was a black-and-white silhouette of a man’s head and shoulders in the center of the article.  It had a big, white question mark printed over the face.  Jarod had scribbled a mustache and a halo on it.
  The subhead was NBC TO CREATE SHOW BASED ON MYSTERIOUS, REAL-LIFE HERO.
  That almost made her laugh.  They could call it The Pretender.  The only difficulty would be figuring out who the show was actually about.  Ha!  If the program was anything like their lives, it would be a flop.  No one wanted to watch a dozen wounded people hurt each other.  It was bad enough enduring it herself. 
  She hoped the actors would be better.
  Jarod reached around her and closed the door.  “Let’s keep going,” he said.  There was no trace of pain in his voice.
  And then they were at the end of the hall.  The door was surprisingly innocuous, for such a long trek.  It felt like they had walked a mile.  She opened it.  Within were floor-to-ceiling stocks of food, water, equipment.
  Someone could hide for years in a place like this.
There was also a vehicle, under a worn, tan tarp that looked like a refugee from Desert Storm.  Jarod removed it without ceremony.
  It was a vehicle, dwindled by the incredible size of the room, but still a massive specimen of auto mechanics.  She could not have been more surprised if she tried.  Her initial reaction was:  Bastard.  That airplane pilot told me Jarod didn’t have a Jeep.  Her second was: Oh, my God.
  “A Hummer?” she said, cocking an eyebrow.  The machine was covered in mud.  It looked like it had just been in Desert Storm.  Except most of the American vehicles had come back from that war as fresh as when they’d left for it.
  She’d loved Hummers as a teenager.  They were almost as cool as red convertible Corvettes.
  Jarod shrugged.  “At one point or another.”
  She wondered what Jarod could do to a poor innocent Hummer to make it any tougher.  Laser-sight headlights?  “Don’t tell me it spits oil and smoke out the back to halt your pursuers.”
  Jarod winked.  “Only tacks,” he said, but the joke lacked luster.
  He reached into the glove compartment and brought out a silver whistle.  He blew it, and it didn’t make a sound.
  A human-audible sound.
  Carson, Jarod’s dog, emerged from underneath one of the shelves and hopped into the backseat, making a spot for himself between a box of military-issue, freeze-dried meals and another labeled POWDERED MILK.  She also noticed that the Radio Shack bags he’d brought with him to the cabin were there. 
  “Jarod, we are not taking your dog to Africa.”
  “We’re not driving to Africa,” he pointed out.  “And I can’t leave him alone here.”
  What?  Would the dog run out of his thousand pounds of freeze-dried Purina? However, she couldn’t bring herself to speak those words, either.  Something about the way Jarod hopped in the driver’s seat and ruffled the yellow Lab’s short hair, his exaggerated movements and forced jokes, because he was trying very hard to show Miss Parker that her words and her unconcern hadn’t affected him at all.  Carson drew back his black lips and let his tongue hang out in what could only be a doggie smile.
  She got in the seat, beside Jarod, promising herself that she would be driving the next time they stopped.  She hated being a passenger.
  Jarod pressed his thumb to the ignition button, another thumbprint-scanner, she guessed, though that wasn’t too unusual with most new cars.  She noticed that the vehicle didn’t have any switch to turn the car over to auto-drive, which meant they’d have to stay off the major highways that led into the larger cities. 
  That was all right, though; the auto-drive systems had only been implemented in New York, San  Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angles, as a kind of experiment.  They wouldn’t be going through any of those cities, she guessed, and the excision of “features” like auto-drive, On-Star, and Global Positioning would only make the Hummer that much more difficult to track.
  “This is an awfully expensive car to be dragging through the mud.”
  They were going up at a high angle.  She wondered how they could have gotten this low.  Their walk hadn’t been that far, nor the decline that deep.
  “I wouldn’t have bought it if I wasn’t going to use it.  Don’t worry, Miss Parker, we’ll take it through a car wash before we leave Canada.”
  There was only a detached moment, in the garage’s dark exit, for her to wonder where Jarod got all the money to build the cabin, and buy the Hummer, not to mention pay for the equipment and supplies and upgrades of this bizarre underground hideaway.  Certainly, he was capable of playing the stock market, probably with more skill than anyone else alive.  Of course, there were groups that investigated those types of winnings, and not just the SEC.  The Centre, which ran a few projects for the SEC, took a quick look at all the big stock winners, for example.

The only thing she was reasonably sure of was that no money had disappeared from Centre accounts, so unless Jarod had somehow, covertly, put himself on the payroll…of course, with Broots taking care of computer security, that was almost impossible.
  Broots, who’d been feeding Jarod information for years.  She reminded herself to have an independent company come out and investigate computer security, not because she thought her compatriot was selling Centre secrets, but because Jarod was smart enough to pick up on unspoken clues Broots had accidentally left for him.
  Then they passed through an oblong opening so closely that Parker instinctively crouched in her seat.  The moss hanging from the opening brushed against the top of the car.  She glanced back and saw a cave, squat and easy-to-miss.  She wondered how many secret exits Jarod had from his hermit cabin.
  Was the paranoia residual, from his few short years as a fugitive, or were there still enough people gunning for a runaway Pretender to necessitate these kinds of precautions?  She half-expected gunshots to ring out over the forest, or a squad of security men in ghillie suits to jump from the forest floor and salute as Jarod drove by.
  The Hummer bumped and weaved through the forest, finding spaces between trees that were big enough for the car to slither between but so strangely-spaced that no one but Jarod could ever have linked them up in his mind in a long enough pattern to mark a road.  They went up a hill, and she could see the cabin in the distance.  She thought she saw smoke rising from the chimney, even though there was no one there to tend a fire and therefore, no reason for warmth.
  And then it was gone, for good, the house and the way to it forgotten as they took the long way through an unnamed forest to the small and well-kempt city of Moose Jaw.
  It had been a long time since she’d lived the nomadic life.  Her last long car trip had taken her to Cincinnati, to see the woman she called her sister and her fourteen-year-old nephew who had his father’s eyes and smile.  All the ones before that had led, in one roundabout way or another, to a piece of Jarod’s past.
  Jarod reached out and flipped on the radio, turning the band button to ST.
  “—elcome to QRK Radio, “The Quark,” the world’s best satellite radio forum for scientific discussion and those classic oldies from the seventies and eighties.  Shortly we’ll be hearing from Nobel Laureate Dr. Jennie Becket, but first, to warm you up for that cold fusion, here’s Hot Chocolate, with one of my favorite oldies, ‘You Sexy Thing.’”
  To each his own, thought Miss Parker.  Broots listened to QRK, too.  You could find anything these days if you were looking for sat-dat on the radio.  She rolled down the window and let the cold bite her face, glad for the warmth of her anorak, and upset that she hadn’t remembered to collect a few good books before taking a trip into the Jarod-Cave.
  I believe in miracles…
  Carson curled up, heaved a resigned sigh, and went to sleep.
  Bright maple trees whispered their discontent as the Hummer rumbled through the forest, and leaves drifted gently toward the ground.  After a while, Miss Parker let the thrum of the engine lull her eyes closed.  The first snowflakes of the season drifted from the sky and brushed her eyelashes before melting away.
  …where you from, you sexy thing, you sexy thing, you…

They were in Maryland, and Miss Parker had a map spread across the steering wheel, trying to figure out the best way to get through the District of Columbia to Delaware.  The digital clock on the dash read 0539, and they were fast approaching their thirty-third hour on the road.  They’d made great time out of Moose Jaw.
She’d slept longer than she expected, on the first day, waking only for a late lunch at a burger dive about midpoint in the journey, where they’d switched off.  For dinner, they’d had two Cokes from chilled, real glass bottles—which were the best kind—and Publix chicken salad sandwiches.  The rest of their meals had been on the road, sandwiches and chips fumbled from the two rustling brown supermarket bags which were stuffed in the backseat.
Carson had had the leftover chicken salad. 
Despite her intentions and her anxiety, she had relished their time on the road.  They’d rolled down the windows and let the wind fly through the car, pushing her hair away from her face.  They wore sunglasses, and made bad jokes, and listened to the oldies Jarod had never heard, and got to know each other a bit again.  There wasn’t as much positioning, as much cynicism.
So easy, with the yellow lines and the sunrise leading them, to forget the wounds of the past and the risks of the near future.  So difficult, to remember that he was the most infuriating human being alive and that hadn’t really changed.
  Jarod pawned the dog off on Broots, forgoing her phone and making a pay phone call at a gas station.  She had been surprised at the lengths Jarod would go for his pet, but, she guessed, alone in that cabin, far from his newfound family, Carson would start looking like a good pal.  Even Miss Parker shared a few words with the animal, pulling over to let him do his business and murmuring to him while Jarod napped.
  It was like talking to yourself, only less crazy, and it made the drive less lonely.  She wondered if she should look into getting a dog.  “What do you think, Car,” she said, rustling the map at him. “Should we take the interstate, or go through the city and see the monuments?”
   The dog snorted, then went back to sleep.
   “Yeah.  Me, too,” she sighed drowsily.  “Interstate it is.”
  Or perhaps a therapist would be a better choice after all.
  She folded the map and pulled from the side of the road, back out into the relatively nonexistent traffic.   Few people were stupid enough to be driving this late, and those that were, at least, this close to a big city, were drunk or high on something.  Miss Parker was half-asleep herself, and wondered if she should wake Jarod, or settle for fake French Vanilla coffee at a twenty-four hour gas station somewhere, or just muddle through for the next two hours to Blue Cove.
  To home—soon, she’d start seeing familiar landmarks—and bed.  Of course, they wouldn’t be going to the stone-and-wood house which was once the Parker family summer home.  They were going straight to the Centre, where Broots was waiting, where they could order supplies and ensure that there was another private plane waiting discreetly for them in Nairobi, which Jarod would pilot.

Then they’d get a few hours sleep in one of the sweeper barracks on SL-5, buy the supplies they wouldn’t pick up in Africa, and then catch a commercial flight from Dover to Atlanta, Atlanta to New York, and the twenty-three hour flight from New York to Nairobi, under the names Mr. and Mrs. Jamison, a retired couple out to live their thirty-year anniversary fantasy on an incredible African safari, which Jarod had ever-so-intelligently registered the Jamisons for.  They’d buy souvenirs, send postcards, eat at five-star restaurants and stay in the best and stay in most extravagant hotels, too, all of it immortalized on Jarod and Samantha Jamison’s Smart Chip Visa account.
   Miss Parker was just glad that the imaginary Jamisons were reasonably wealthy and not to cautious about throwing away that money.  It meant they would ride first class.  At the moment, she was too tired and too worried to regret that she wouldn’t actually be going on the African safari.
  At the same time, the private jet reserved for the transportation of the Director would bounce around the country a bit, and Miss Parker would conduct some very smart, and very obvious, business deals through her laptop, and maybe even have a few teleconferences, a technology trick carefully arranged by Broots.  In the meantime, Keating, who’d turned out to be a pretty good kid despite his ambitions, would ensure that business at the Centre went on as usual.  The real Jarod and Miss Parker would disappear, for six weeks at best—if Lyle had kept a mediocre hacker on her trail—or two weeks, if there was someone with the same skill level as Broots doing the electronic detective work.
  This, Miss Parker and Jarod had worked out on cell and pay phones during their journey, though she was not surprised to hear that all the pieces for this little shindig, which were from Broots’ and Jarod’s ends, had already fallen into place.  All that was necessary was for Jarod to say the word.
  It was a good plan, and it sounded like an infallible one.  However, Miss Parker knew how easily even the best of plans could be foiled; Jarod himself had proven that, time and time again.  And she was still stuck with the same painful problems: how to get Broots, Sydney, Daddy, Kara, and Nathan to safety.  Oh, and Broots’ daughter, Debbie, too.  Miss Parker had only spoken to the young doctor a few times, first when Debbie was a child—she’d had rescued Debbie from the more…malicious interests in the Centre once—and, infrequently, as an adult. 
   Debbie had made it onto Miss Parker’s short list of people she’d protect because her survival meant something big to Broots, and therefore, something big to Miss Parker.
  Their trip was fraught with danger, and Parker wasn’t undertaking all of that danger herself.  That was the price she paid for allowing herself to care, and make that care obvious to the world.  She’d often told herself that she had learned from her mistake with Jarod:  you try to stop needing a person enough, you stuff down those feelings and hide them and pretend they don’t exist, and eventually, they stop existing.   Eternal love was a sweet story, but unless encouraged, fueled with constant contact and communication, that fire burned out for almost everyone.
  She bit her lip.  She would hightail it to Blue Cove.  She had to find some way to protect her blood and surrogate families, and there were only a few short hours to do it in.  She focused her stinging gray eyes on the yellow line and switched back to her high-beams.

  Morning had dawned, and so had two McBreakfasts, with greasy hash browns and eggs which had evolved from a carton.  Technology certainly hadn’t changed the food service industry very much, except that now you could take the short line and have your meal dispensed in thirty seconds by a talking computer.
  Parker, in the end, had forgone the McBreakfast and made do with a McCoffee, which was plastered with warnings about how the beverage was very hot, and could cause severe scalds if poured on the delicate areas of one’s anatomy.  Though, Miss Parker thought, anyone who didn’t know that was too stupid to read or drink from a cup, anyway.
Jarod, who’d woken from his coma, ate hers.
They were in Blue Cove proper now, and Parker, who was in a giddy and uninhibited mood from lack of sleep and too much caffeine, recognized everything.  Her stomach clenched when she passed the road which would have led her home and turned onto the street which would take her to work.
“You’re quiet, Jarod,” she commented acerbically.  “Feeling nervous?  You don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.”  She cursed herself for not paying attention to what she was saying.  She was being cruel.
“I remember the first time I went down this road,” he murmured, clenching his hand into a fist.  “It was darker.  And I was going the other way.”
“Jarod,” she said, struggling to be comforting, “I gave you your truce fourteen years ago.  I’m giving it to you now, and you can have it when this is all over, if only,” she smiled, “because you’re too damn annoying to chase.  I promise you that a sweeper team isn’t going to swoop onto your souped-up Hummer as soon as we drive through the entrance.  I’m in charge, remember?”
“‘Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly’,” Jarod retorted.  “Maybe I should drive.”
  It has to be frightening, for him to come back after so many years, a more aware part of herself said.  However, even without sleep, those deeper feelings would never come to the surface.  Perhaps they weren’t dead, but they were buried, and it would take more than a shovel to dig them up.  “Take it easy, Jar,” she said instead.  “You wouldn’t remember the way, and it’s only fifteen minutes.”
  Of course, he would remember the way.  It would be etched, larger-than-life, into that clever photographic memory of his.  And, of course, he’d come back here as an adult, twice, once seeking refuge, and a second time, to make a deal with the old-time “family” he’d left behind.  She remembered that day vividly.  He was smiling coolly, teasingly, every sweeper’s gun in the place trained on his head, including, if she recalled correctly, her own. 
  He’d been glib and nonchalant, and though Miss Parker knew, even then, the reason the prisoner always made sarcastic jokes, in movies and in real life—because he was terrified—she had been impressed.  The deal was simple:  her father, who Jarod held hostage, for the young Jarod clone.
  Simpler, in fact, then the plan before them.  She had come away from that particular encounter with a bullet in her back from her own people, a bullet she had taken for her father, another spontaneous risk she’d assumed without thought for someone that she loved.  She’d always thought that was strange, not because she ever would have stood by and watched as her father was killed, but because she’d always though natural survival instincts would always overpower something as human as love.
  What does that mean, Sydney? Jarod had asked that question when they were doing a simulation regarding the positioning of Secret Service personnel in order to protect the President.  It was one of the first simulations she’d been allowed to watch.  Sydney had just told him that any one of those men would willingly get shot, get killed, in order to protect someone he probably hadn’t ever known before.  The questions in his mind were the same ones that lingered in hers, while she struggled to recover in the Centre medical ward.
  The simulation was over; Sydney could help, and he smiled paternally, at his prize project’s naivety.  “It means, Jarod, that rational instinct doesn’t always overpower emotions.  That’s what makes us all human.  Secret Service agents protect the President because they care about him and the greatness that he represents.”

Jarod had seen the parallels right away.  “Like parents for their children?”
  “Yes.  And, sometimes, children for their parents.”
  “Would you do that for me?” His young eyes were hungry for reassurance, for the confirmation that some adult, somewhere, cared about him.
  Sydney paused a long time before answering.  “God forbid I’d ever have to, Jarod, but yes.  Yes, I think I would.”
  Jarod smiled.  “You’ll never have to, Sydney, I promise.”   As if it were in his limited power to promise anything like that.  But for Jarod it didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that Sydney would, if it came right down to it.  He still would today.
  Thinking back, that day, when they made the deal, was one of the last days she had really allowed herself to care about Jarod, to think about him, until now.  To see him again, so suddenly, in the brave and daring position of coming back to the Centre under his own volition, had awakened a compassion in her that was disorienting in its intensity.  If she hadn’t been so concerned about her father, and herself—if she had been Catherine Parker—she would have gone to him that day, before the deal, and told him she would go where he said and do as he asked, until she died.  They could take little Jarod, little J2, and go find the white picket fence and the three car garage, and pretend they were all normal and that there was nothing but love between them.
  Of course it was foolish and suicidal; the young Miss Parker didn’t do feelings any other way.  The course of sensations she had endured that day left her less than able to make a rational decision and drunk on anger and passion.  She ignored those emotions and acted as bitchy as ever.  Maybe Sydney noticed that things were different, but if he had, he didn’t say anything.
  At any rate, it was all torn up and overwhelmed when she was shot, anyway.
  Even if she had been the same woman then that she was now, she would have made the same decisions.  Well, she wasn’t sure she’d get shot for her father again.  It hadn’t been so very long, since then, that his mind had begun to fade.  It would have been a cleaner death for him and a less emotional one for her.
  And she might have kissed Jarod goodbye before forgetting about him.
  She glided the Hummer gently into the parking space next to hers, glad to see the sleek, new red Saturn safe and sound.  She dropped the keys into Jarod’s open hand, then pulled open the door and shuffled into the building, past the security guard—a sweeper named Ashford, who grinned at her and glared at Jarod and the dog, who trailed her.  Ashford wasn’t old enough to remember the days when the Jarod hunt had been a Centre priority.  He would have been twelve, thirteen, when she dispatched with the Jarod matter once and for all, but perhaps Sam had told him about it; he seemed to recognize the Pretender.
  Sam.  Another person whose security she’d have to ensure.  Oh, he was nobody important to her and probably wasn’t a target, but her long-time sweeper and bodyguard deserved to be informed that someone was probably interested in killing his boss, and he might not want to be around when it happened.  She planned to transfer an amount of money into the sweeper working budget anyway, and she would ensure that Sam could have full use of that to find a nice hole to crawl into and a big rock to pull over his head.
  There.  One down, six to go.  Not counting Jarod and herself.
  She was exhausted, and she was bothered with everything.  She made her way across the marble floor, and pressed the T button, for Tower, then punched in her authorization code.  Jarod was fully awake, almost alarmed, drawn up with a pinched look to his face, petting his dog between its shoulder blades, which was something, she’d recently realized, that he did when he was nervous or upset.  She wondered if he was planning to make a run for it.
  Involuntarily, she wondered how far he would get if she called out the sweeper teams on him.      Probably about two feet, on a Tower floor.  Maybe further, if he decided to fight or went through the ventilation system.  Not so very long ago, she would have done it.  Regardless of how she felt about him, Jarod was, had been, a valuable asset.  I mean, right now he’s doing simulations anyway, right?
  Those were feelings she would have to ignore, too.  The old huntress instinct.  She hadn’t chased Jarod for so long that it had become a habit to think about his capture, had she?
  “Here’s my office,” she said brightly, nodding toward the door.  But they passed by it, as good as it would have been to see it again.  The next door down belonged to Broots.  His office was not as large or lush, but it was more homey; you’d think the dad from Leave it to Beaver worked there.
  She rapped lightly on the door with her knuckles.  Jarod hung back, the tense expression melting from his face, though his body was still stiff and alert.
  “Just a second,” came the voice from behind the door.  She smiled and leaned into the retinal scanner.  ‘Just a second’ for Broots was just an hour, or just twenty-four, depending on how deeply involved with cyberspace he actually was.
  There was a quiet click as the door unlocked, and then it slid silently open.  Broots was tapping furiously on his computer—he preferred the keyboard to the voice-command system he’d engineered for her.  He looked tired.
  “Don’t tell me you’ve been in here all night.”  She walked in and surveyed his office, staring out at the familiar view of Blue Cove Woods, and crossed her arms over her chest.  There was always tension here, not between herself and Broots—or even herself and Jarod.  It was the Centre.  It was an ambiance.  A vibe.
  It was comfortable and it felt like home.  She moved here with the same familiarity that Jarod had moved through his cabin.  After all, wasn’t each place a retreat, a haven, in one way or another?  Terrible things had happened here, but Miss Parker had also grown up here.  For her, it was safe.
  For Jarod, she supposed, it was hell all over again.
  “Hi, Miss Parker,” Broots sighed.
  “You didn’t answer my question.”
  “Well, actually, Miss Parker, it wasn’t a question.  More of a statement.”
  “Broots.”
  “It’s not like I could do the kinds of things you two ordered in a couple of hours.  This takes time, and care, if you don’t want people to find you.  Perhaps if Jarod could help me out…” 
Miss Parker turned to look at her longtime friend.  She’d called him idiot and worse before.  Often, he’d been a frustration.  Broots wasn’t the kind of guy that went in guns blazing.  It had made him another person to protect, a hindrance rather than a help when it came to the actual, physical chase.  And he’d never known Jarod, which made it difficult for him to have any powerful feelings to pressure him forward. 
  Parker had her anger, and those unresolved feelings which alternately confused and frustrated her.  Sydney had his “emotional umbilical,” his “unique relationship,” his father-son bond with the wayward Pretender, not to mention his fears that the real world was far too overwhelming for a man raised in captivity and isolation, even if it was resilient and adaptable Jarod he was talking about.

Broots had…well, Broots had Debbie.  And, of course, the career; the Centre paid well, even if the simple act of obtaining a job here then put your life, to one degree or another, at risk. 
  He was smart, and reasonable, and good, in both senses of the word, qualities she had come to value and admire in a treacherous place like the Centre.  He’d been a better friend, and closer to a brother, than Lyle had ever been.  Despite herself, she cared about him then, and gave him hell about it, and she still cared about him now.
  And she still gave him hell.
  He smiled wearily at her.  He looked sharp enough, for pulling an all-nighter.  Probably better than she did. 
  Parker glanced around, looking for Jarod.  He was examining Broots’ only potted plant with scientific concentration, a furrow between his eyebrows.  If they were children, she would have been able to guess what he was doing, what he was thinking, or would have been brave enough to ask him.  “You can do some things with your security,” he murmured.
  “What are you talking about?” This from Parker.  Broots had gone back to work and wasn’t paying attention—at least, not seeming to.  Parker knew that Broots’ ears were some of the best in the Centre.  It was always the invisible employee who heard the most. “As far as I’m concerned, we have better security than the NSA.”
  “The retinal scan isn’t really a recommended security feature.  It serves a theatrical function but other than that…anybody who can obtain a retinal picture, or, for that matter, get you, can get in here.”
  She glanced at Broots, looking for some kind of support.  He was in techno-oblivion.  “I don’t let people take pictures of my retinas,” she stated.
  “Unless they’re overwhelmingly…convincing,” Jarod replied ominously.  “Now, what you could do is set up a keypad code system where the code—twelve-digit numerical—changed, say, every four minutes.  You would hold onto a digital card which displayed the code.”
  Silly.  “Then all they’d have to do was steal the card.”
  “No.  I made a card, once, which was able to pick up minor chemical changes in the bloodstream through the skin.  If it wasn't you, or your heart wasn’t beating—or your adrenaline was too high—the card wouldn’t work.”  
  Why do you care, Jarod?  Want a challenge? What neat trick had he worked out to overcome the card system?
  “How would we work that into our system?”  Broots didn’t look up, and his voice was distant.
  “Well…you’d have to do an overhaul of course…”
  “A total overhaul would take years.”
  There was a light tone in Jarod’s words.  “It’ll give us something to do.”
  “Us?” Miss Parker said.  “Where, exactly, does us fit into the equation?”  Especially, she appended silently, in the context of years?  But neither of the men in her life was listening.  They were firing jargon at a hundred miles an hour.  It was dizzying.
  Whatever.  She had work to do anyway.  She turned and walked out the door, around the corner, into her own office.
  The air tasted familiar.  She took a breath and looked around.  It took a moment for the lights to sense her body heat and turn on.  Us.  Years.  She pursed her lips.  Jarod knew exactly what he was doing, the smart little bastard, but even now she couldn’t think the words without some fondness.  What was wrong with her, anyway?  This was her life.  Her refuge.  And Jarod was—dammit, part of that life, in his own, twisted little way.  She sat down on her black leather swivel chair and cradled the picture of her family.
  I hated you Jarod.  Understand me? I hated you and I still don’t like you very much, though sometimes you use that brilliant mind of yours to trick me into thinking I do…
  But…but part of her had always thought his face was missing in the only photograph of the Parkers that was of value to her which did not include her mother.  It would have clicked, if only because of the brutal irony.  She had loved Jarod once and cared about him still.
  God, she was exhausted.  She could use a drink, too.
  She lifted the headset from its small hangar on the desk and called up Sam’s voice mailbox, left him a cryptic message, transferred half a million into the sweeper expense account.  Though it would be obvious if money from that account was used, it would be quite difficult for even the most skilled computer hacker to determine exactly how it was used, especially if the sum was transferred into cash.
  Broots had made sure of that, and Sam would make sure to transfer it into cash dollars.  You didn’t cling on in the Centre for years and years unless you had at least half a brain. 
  She should go to the little reception parlor that connected to this office and try to get some sleep on the couch.  In just a little over twenty-four hours, they’d be walking right into enemy territory, and she had the sneaking suspicion that she wouldn’t sleep the same or as well as long as she thought that Lyle might be actively hunting her.
  Of course, he was probably already actively hunting her anyway.  She hadn’t exactly concealed her short leave from the Centre to go meet Jarod in New York.  She ran the Centre and was the most powerful person she knew—what reason was there to think she had to?  She hadn’t taken a day off of work since her father had been diagnosed; such an erratic and sudden trip would certainly be a huge red flag for anyone keeping tabs on Director Parker.
  And an even bigger one if they hadn’t been able to discover where she’d gone.  An innocuous business trip might have been ignored.  But dropping off the face of the planet certainly would not.
Stupid, stupid, stupid! And far stupider that the thought hadn’t even occurred to her until now.  She may very well have already gotten all of them killed.  Right now, they could be breaking her security system, or worse, Lyle would just send his armies through; windows shattering, the clatter of gunfire, the horrible noise as people were killed and all the things she’d built were destroyed, all unheard because of the beautiful soundproof structure they’d put in when this place was built.
  Then, they would stomp up the stairs, into the elevators, killing everyone in their way, bang, bang, bang.  The gentle click as a faked retinal scan unlocked her office door, or the sharp crack of an explosives, or the terrible sound of the door simply shattering.  They wouldn’t care about Broots.  He’d be dead before they ever touched her.  But they’d want to kill Jarod in front of her, drag him in kicking and begging and--Bang!  My fault, she’d realize.  And then they’d kill her.

Or they wouldn’t.  No, Lyle would keep her right here, with her influence and her incredible guilt, a silent gun to the head of anyone she cared about.  He would love that, love it, to use her like a puppet.  He’d be laughing and teasing the whole way through.
  “Let’s keep this in the family, shall we, Parker?”
  Click.
  She jumped, gasped, gulped for air.  What the hell had that been?  Okay, okay, Parker, just a dream.  Just a waking nightmare.  Your imagination running away from you.  Your exhaustion getting the better of you.  Just…take…it…easy.
  There.  Her pounding pulse faded, and slowly, she caught her breath.  Everyone’s still breathing, she whispered, so quietly that the sound didn’t even reach her ears.  I haven’t killed Jarod or Broots or anyone.
  Her eyes settled on the photograph of the blue-scrubbed boy, her only picture of Jarod, in it’s hidden little cove on the other side of the office.  His grin, strangely, calmed her heart, until her quiet office felt almost as real as her dream.  Is this what its like for you all the time, Jarod, Pretender?  Feeling other people’s feelings?  Does it ever get away from you like my self-control gets away from me? Oh, the questions I wanted to ask you when I was a little girl.
  She waited until she was sure her voice would be steady, and then she spoke another name into the microphone.  She needed to hear another human voice right now, and there was only one she wanted to hear.  “Kara Depp, please.”
  For security reasons, the Depps number had never been programmed into Miss Parker’s business phone numbers.  It had to be called up each time by the main Centre telephone operator, and it was wiped from the machine as quickly as it had been dialed.  She was not stupid with the Depps the way she was stupid with her own life.  The name could easily be found in the telephone books, of course, but their association with the Centre and the Parker family would never be noted, if she had influence anywhere.   And, of course, when Lyle knew Kara, her name was not Depp.
  There were two, three rings.  Then, “Hi, you’ve reached the Depps…”
  Parker cursed under her breath.
  “Oh God, is that you?”  Kara’s tone was desperate.  She sounded near tears.
  “Kara.  What’s wrong?”
  “Miss Parker…oh, God…Miss Parker, the police are here…Nate…he didn’t come home from school yesterday.  The police…for some reason they think I have something to do with this… I’m being investigated…oh, God….oh, God!”  She was crying now, low, terrified sobs.
  Parker felt dizzy, felt the blood drain from her face.  She wrapped her fingers around the chair's armrests until her knuckles turned white.  “Why didn’t you call me earlier?”  her voice sounded tense, more snappish than she meant. 
  “I didn’t…I didn’t know…”

She didn’t know if Lyle had finally wrested control of the Centre.  She didn’t know if Parker was part of the plan.
  “You have to help us, Miss Parker.  Please.  Do whatever it takes.  And if you’ve seen him, if you’ve talked to him…tell him to give my boy back or I’ll kill him myself.  I'll dig his eyes out with my fingernails.  And this time he’ll stay dead.”  Her tone rang hollow in Miss Parker's ears.
  She would blame Parker.   If not now, then later, when she calmed down.  How could she not?  Miss Parker was supposed to keep them safe, she was supposed to have kept Lyle from them once and for all, thirteen years ago.  Miss Parker had even spoken those words, promised over and over again that Lyle would remain a nightmare and nothing more.  Kara was a smart woman and damned vengeful; if she didn’t have Lyle’s body dumped on her doorstep, this would be the end of any friendship or chance of it they ever had.
  Though that was the least of her worries.  Her own fears aside, the thought of Lyle taking Nate, manipulating him, controlling him…
  “I’ll do everything I can,” Parker breathed.
  Kara hung up so softly that Parker didn’t even hear the click.
  This was how he got to her.  This was how he controlled her.  This was how he would start a game of chase bloodier and more dangerous then any she could possibly conceive.  Not by breaking down doors and dirtying his hands.  By stealing children, taking them from their mothers, daring them to come to Africa and take him back.  A game that was rigged destroy her and Jarod both. 
   And they’d probably still end up dead at the end.
   He could imagine Lyle, touching Nate, embracing him like a father.  They could have caught Jarod that way.  Such a lonely little boy, so desperate to understand; before long he would forget everything Parker had ever said, or dismiss her words as jealous lies.  Growing up, soon enough, just like the old man. 
  She ran through the door, shoved past Jarod and dashed into the luxurious corporate bathroom.  For the first time in many, many years, she was physically sick at the thought of her brother.  And it had nothing to do with her feelings about his murder.
  “Miss Parker!”  Broots shouted after her, only a few steps behind Jarod.  “Are you all right?”
  He followed her, oblivious of the silhouette of a woman in a dress on the bathroom door.
  Alone in the hallway, Jarod—who understood instinctively that Miss Parker needed solitude, time to regroup with the new facts she’d just learned—could only look on forlornly and guess what had happened.