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"Walking is refreshing," suggested Jarod amiably. "If your feet are aching I'll carry you."

"Ha," retorted Parker crisply. "Don't overestimate yourself, Jarod."

He seized her elbow, advised delicately. "Don't do this."

"Mm," Parker hummed, acknowledging his sympathetic countenance with a long, contemptuous look. "She wasn't murdered in an elevator, Jarod."

"You didn't always know that," he reminded, grimacing when Parker defiantly stepped into the carriage.
 
Jarod, predictably, rather dramatically thrust out his hand at the last possible moment to prevent the doors from closing.

"Elevators aren't faster," he announced irritably, accompanying her and tucking an index finger between his neck and shirt collar. "People are lazy."

"I'm not."

"You're worse. You're stubborn, always trying to prove something."

She offered no rebuttal. Instead, she willed the lift to ascend quickly. The parking garage level two indicator continued to glow brightly.

"We've stopped," observed Jarod.

"Yes, Mister Obvious," she began sardonically and then yelped at the explosion of light and metal that accompanied the carriage's sudden drop.

Jarod propelled himself forward— into the shower of sparks and burning debris—and pressed Parker to the wall. He shielded her body with his, braced himself for impact.

When the car screeched to an abrupt halt, he withdrew fractionally, met her stunned gaze.

"Are you all right?" He asked softly, examining the contusion on her cheek.

"I think s—" She gasped and directed a murmured, "ow" at the fingertips palpating her face.

"I know," he whispered, wincing and sucking in a sharp breath. "I'm sorry," he added softly when Parker, apparently amused with his violent, genuine reaction to her discomfort, offered him a suggestion of a fleeting smile. Jarod delivered his diagnosis: "it's superficial."

"Is it?"

"Hmm," he affirmed softly, plucking debris from her shoulders. "It's going to look worse than it feels."

She arched a brow. "You could be wrong."

"I'm never wrong," he assured her smugly, dropping his gaze, briefly, to her lips.

"There's a first time for everything," she challenged.

"I suppose." He was inexplicably reluctant to be contrary. "Is," he asked softly, unconsciously stroking a lock of her hair, "this permitted?"

"Is what permitted?" She asked.

"This," he answered softly, drawing closer, deliberately and unhurried, eliminating any doubt regarding intentions.

Jarod's lips, gentle and tentative against Parker's, merely tendered an inquiry. There was nothing, however, tentative in her response.
Her mouth tasted of fruit and lip balm and a piquancy that was, indubitably, as unique as it was tantalizing.

She intended only to merely dance along the shore, moisten her feet; complete immersion, she opined, would precipitate devastating repercussions, turmoil.

Ergo, the kiss was calculated and executed with open eyes; Jarod, therefore, experienced the pleasure of witnessing the precise instant that judiciousness evaporated and internal conflict subsided. She ceased to consider her father's condemnation and what an entanglement with Jarod might look like to Sydney.

Fuck appearances. This feels phenomenal. 
 
They kissed deeply with a fierceness that stole their breaths. She tugged at his sportcoat and then quite suddenly seized his tie in her fist— it was a Ted Baker, silk blend, and Jarod couldn't be certain whether she wanted to strangle him with it or simply remove it.
Neither? Both?
She was struggling to maintain control.

"No," she panted and repeated resolutely, albeit with a quaver in her voice and her palms pressed to his chest.

He had anticipated incertitude, denial. Evolution is a process. He had not anticipated the reasons she presented; he hadn't anticipated a reason. She didn't ever need a reason to say no.

"We shouldn't do this," she said. "If Raines sees us he'll tell Daddy."

"Wait," Jarod said with a disbelieving laugh and a crumpled brow, "What? Oh," he groaned when her eyes hardened and ignored the tense twitch in his intestines. "Oh, God, I am so incredibly sorry that I," he began contritely, feeling like a scoundrel, and yet feeling no remorse; he regretted only the circumstances: "You're concussed."

"You're partly correct," she said lightly, twisting out of his embrace and segueing into an exquisite counter-clockwise triple pirouette that unwound the clock, the years.

She spun herself through the wall of the carriage and into one of the Centre's tenebrous corridors and smoothed down the skirt of her school uniform— until that moment he believed he couldn't feel more abominable.

School uniform?
Great holy hell.

"Are my ribbons straight? Last time they weren't," she informed him tartly.

The ribbons were. Jarod might have assured her.

He, however, was trying to recall when he might have dropped acid or taken ecstasy. Jarod longed for assurance of his own; the assurance, for instance, that he hadn't committed a felony and wasn't depraved.

He renounced the integrity of each convoluted inference his mind offered and, consequently, was precluded from reaching any ineluctable and discernible truth with, perhaps, the exception of insanity.

"Oh, my God," he declared twice, terror-stricken. "You're—no. No."

"Fascinating," she said dully. "This is what a nervous breakdown looks like. You're hyperventilating and sweating profusely," she observed disinterestedly. "Are you experiencing chest pain?"

"I've been drugged." Jarod gestured wildly, announced animatedly, "You're a child."

"You think you're an adult?"

"Aren't I?"

The lower back pain indicated he was, indeed, a bona fide adult. He couldn't identify the precise moment Parker ceased to be one and he found the transformation rather disconcerting.

Incontrovertible evidence, however, proved advantageous, mitigated his distress considerably: the anachronistic creature scrutinizing him couldn't comfortably reach his lips. Thank God and optimized nutritional supplements for that.

He offered the girl a fulsome smile, said, "We're inside the Centre."

"Ooh, you are a genius."
 
Jarod bristled. "You've always been a smartas-" stammered Jarod indignantly, "smart person."

"Didn't you just have your hand on my smartass, Old Guy," she argued, advancing predatorily. Little Miss Parker perceived his consternation and hasty retreat with a cursory smile and at length, discontinued her pursuit, issuing a colorful colloquialism whose meaning transcended Jarod's imagination.

He averted his eyes from the withering expression that was, he opined, patently superfluous. The intrepid girl was afflicted, in spades, with existential angst and adult pretensions.

Jarod didn't have the strength or patience to endure her and yet already imagined himself transitioning into someone dull and avuncular, entirely hands-off.
 
"That wasn't you," he answered shirtily with a spasm of self-reproach that penetrated bone. "Was it?" He asked, dubiously, recalling the absence of ribbons prior to stepping onto the decrepit lift.

"Me in thirty years. It's stifling in here."

"What does that mean?"

"Relax, Jar," she said sullenly, "before you have a myocardial infarction. Old people are revolting and adults, typically, are obtuse. Nevermind she was sixteen before-"

"Don't say it," he interrupted, tetchily, tugging at the tie and contemplating strangling himself with the damn thing.

"I've read Lolita," she offered with a sly grin, gratuitously flaunting her carnal erudition. "Does candid discourse frighten you, Jarod?"

He lifted a hand, gestured dismissively. "You're trying to annoy me."

She giggled— the melody was blithe, ethereal, plaintive and its frailty was distressing; Jarod felt something inside him fracture, burst.

"You're more afraid of me," Little Miss Parker said, overtly antagonistic and the cold, broken smile returned, marring her otherwise pleasant features, "than you've ever been of her."

"Stop it," pleaded Jarod. "Tell me what has happened?"

"Mhn," she murmured with a fierce headshake.

"Why not?"

"I abhor shouting," she answered, studying her glitter-coated fingernails indifferently.

"I remember. I won't shout."

"You're irascible and overwrought."

He drew a fortifying breath and gently assured her. "I promise."

"Mm-kay," she returned hesitantly. "What do you remember?"

"The adult Miss Parker and I were on our way to visit Magdelena."

"In retrospect, you'll deem that a mistake."

"Why?" He asked.

"It wasn't. There are no mistakes, Jarod."

"You say that now," he rejoined.

"It's the truth."

"You'll change your mind. Trust me."

"You're wrong," she countered impassively. "But I do trust you. I always have."

"That's going to change, too," he said, bitterly.

"Stop confusing me and her. She's gone."

"Gone?" He asked, incredulously. "Where?"

"Like you care. You painted my face, you returned to me when you nearly died of hypothermia. You want my heart in her body- I know how these things are. Girls mature much faster-"

"This is inappropriate," he interrupted brusquely.

"Inappropriate? That's cute. Aw, stop sulking. It wasn't my intention to make you uncomfortable."

"Tell me," he said with an impatient flourish, "where she has gone? Is she here inside the Centre?"

"She's not here. Neither are we," she answered softly and gazed skyward.

Puzzled, Jarod watched her face expectantly.
Shafts of pallid light alternated rapidly with pitch blackness and were accompanied by a low thrum. Bizarre shadows and lambent hues of indeterminate origin kaleidoscoped across her features.

"The elevator is ascending," Jarod said.

"Wrong again, Genius," she informed Jarod haughtily, circling him and chanting a forgotten lullaby.

He observed as she knelt in the sand and began constructing a castle.

"I said I'd bring you here one day."

"I remember." He smiled warmly.

"I like it here. Isn't it beautiful?"

"It is. I've already seen the sea. All seven of them, in fact."

"They weren't lies," she said and added absently, "There were no lies."

"Like there aren't any mistakes?" He challenged.

"Give me a break, Jarod. I'm eleven. And my Daddy—"
She fell silent, studied the sand castle, and worried her lower lip.

"What," Jarod said thickly. "What did he do to you?"

"You aren't allowed to ask questions," she said darkly, embracing those injurious precepts her father had, diligently, inculcated in her. She was suspicious of his solicitude, of even benign and generic inquiries.

"Look," he began softly, sitting opposite her and gathering sand because when in Rome— "you can trust me."

"Stop saying that," she said irritably, rising suddenly and brushing sand from her legs. "You don't fully comprehend what you're asking. And anyway she'll kill me if I tell you."

"She cannot kill you."

"Fuck you, Jarod," returned Little Miss Parker equably; she fashioned a self-satisfied grin when Jarod's jaw unhinged. "She drowns me, buries me. You always exhume me. The two of you are at cross-purposes in a decades-old emotional tug-of-war; I'm caught in between. It's not fair!"

"Where is she?"

"If you don't wake up soon you'll never find out."

"Wake up," he repeated with a knitted brow.

"That's right, Silly," she said, shouting over the cries of seagulls and shoving him onto his back. With appalling rapidity, he plunged over a steep declivity. He cried out and reached into the darkness; efforts to break the fall were futile. With a grunt of agony, he skidded to a halt on a street crowded with cars and pedestrians.

He squinted beneath the sun, groaned. Someone screamed in the distance and someone else—someone closer—nudged Jarod's knee with a size sixteen cleat.

"Don't move him. You're not supposed to move someone who's been in an accident. Ugh, dude, that's, like, a lot of blood."

A door slammed and two medics shuffled through the gathering throng and knelt at Jarod's side. The lulling rhythm, deceptively comforting, had been traffic, not waves. The cries sirens, not seagulls.

Jarod cried a name that no one recognized, a name he wasn't supposed to know and was not allowed to utter.

"Where is she," Jarod demanded.

"Anyone see a body," the female medic shouted at onlookers who shook their heads in unison and steadied their mobile devices.

"Cha-ching!  Live stream heaven."

"Folks, listen up. Did anyone see what happened here," said a plain-clothes officer who identified himself as Sergeant Alvarez.

"I did," a young woman said, advancing and adjusting her knapsack. "I was on the roof," she said, careful to omit she'd been purchasing pot and an eightball of blow, "and this guy came running down the middle of the street," she thrust a finger at the horizon. "He would have caught the car but an SUV clipped him and volleyed him onto the roof of a Mercedes. He bounced, landed right there. Ew," she groaned, screwing up her face in disgust, "is that brain matter?"

"Was there a woman with him?"

"That's a stupid question. There may have been and she couldn't keep up. 'Did I see a woman' is what you should have asked. No, I didn't. He was running alone like his life depended on it. He would have chased that car to the end of the earth."

"It's dried gum," the amateur videographer shouted, gravely disappointed by the absence of brain matter.

"Says here you're FBI," the medic said to Jarod with an affable nod.
Jarod tried to sit, observed the world tumble onto its side. "I am concussed."

"Why else would I be here," Little Miss Parker injected dryly.

"You're still here," Jarod said to her, ignoring the coterie of emergency personnel accessing his injuries and their queries.

"You are concussed. And obsessed. Which is kinda creepy. Oh, and FYI: if you continue to speak to me these clowns will lock you in a padded cell. Tell them you are wearing a wire and communicating with the mothership or whatever."

"I'm wired. I must have lost communication."

"It was probably damaged in the accident," the medic said. "Any neck pain?"

"I'm fine," he groused, pushing away the hands—suddenly there were dozens—and trying to stand. It wasn't his intention to become combative; he refused, however, to be pinioned.

"You lost consciousness," the officer informed Jarod, adopting a distinctly minatory tone. "Let the medics get you onto a board and into a cervical collar."

"I didn't lose consciousness," Jarod insisted, piqued.
 
"You're rather disingenuous," observed Little Miss Parker with a moue of discontent. "I'm disappointed, Jar."

His brow crumpled. The prescient and rather intractable child had the audacity to impugn his motives. Her words were sharp imprecations with jagged teeth. He recalled disparaging Parker's career and family, her loyalties, mistakes. That must have hurt her.

Jarod apologized to her and addressed the officer. "I was pursuing a—"
The officer lifted a concerned brow.

"Begins with a p," Little Miss Parker cooed. "E," she added helpfully. 

"Perpetrator," Jarod said, still quite incapable of accurately delineating the significance of the chase or the particulars of his injuries. 

"Plural," the girl sang. "Also tell them about the victim if you want her back."

He swung his gaze at Little Miss Parker. "Oh, my God, no," he said with a sharp gasp and features twisted in despair. He observed the girl's forlorn sigh and helpless shrug.

"What," the officer asked.

"They have my partner. Call it in," he bellowed, hastily. "Now," he shouted eagerly, impassioned. "Now."

"That's what I'm doing," he was impatiently assured.

"Female, 5'10, approximately one hundred twenty-five pounds, early forties, brunette, blue eyes." Jarod retrieved his mobile phone with a bloody hand and dialed Agent Kirkland's personal number. "She was wearing-" Jarod fell silent, observed the street rotate rapidly, violently.

"Black slacks, blue blouse. She was carrying—'
 
"She wasn't carrying anything, Jarod. Don't you remember?"
"I'm certain there was a large tote—"
"Was," his young friend sang. "Think, Jarod."
"I'm trying to think," he said.

"You were inside the apartment. You gave the fruit to the old lady."

"Get a team to Coral Gardens right now. You'll want to question a Magdelena Swanson in 7C."

Again, the girl shook her head. "They won't be questioning the old lady. You should know that," she added gravely. "Also: the mobile is dead."

Jarod was certain the elderly woman was dead as well. "She dialed the tip line," he continued. "She was just trying to-"

"Help," supplied Little Miss Parker. "Oh, she was invaluable. Who do you think was driving the getaway car, Genius? Look at your foot; the inimical old beldame ran over it before you chased her two miles."

Jarod didn't appear to be perplexed by the absence of pain; he supposed furor and unease occluded the pain. Anesthetized by adrenaline and determination, he staggered to his feet and whispered conspiratorially to the child: Is Miss Parker running from me? Was this an escape attempt or an abduction?"

The child narrowed her eyes and said, "You know the answer."

Jarod shook his head, blinked away tears. "Oh, no," he murmured.

Escape implied she was in control and safe. An escape attempt, even a successful one, was preferable to an abduction. "Okay," he exclaimed raggedly, pushing his hands over his battered face and through his hair.

"I need a car," he said to no one in particular and jogged to a police cruiser.

"Hey, pal, that's my car," said Alvarez. "You are in no condition to drive."

Jarod opened his mouth to disagree.

And collapsed.

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