Chapter 10

                A sudden commotion in the hallway outside his cell put Jarod on high alert.  He stayed reclining on his cot, but the relaxed pose he maintained was just a pretense.  He was ever vigilant, waiting for any opportunity to escape.  A tiny spark of hope ignited inside him as he wondered if the disturbance just outside his door could be a rescue attempt.

            That flare of optimism quickly faded when logic took over.  The only people in the Centre who could possibly want to save him – Sydney, Angelo, and, if coerced, Broots – were not exactly big, strapping heroes who could emerge victorious from hand-to-hand combat with a team of Sweepers.  No, a physical confrontation was not their style.

            But it was the style of the person who was suddenly thrust into his room.  When push came to shove (literally), she could definitely hold her own.  But she wasn’t here to rescue him; of that, he had no doubt.

            Tony the Sweeper, a hulking shadow in the doorway, intoned, “Mr. Lyle says you have ten minutes.”  Then the door slammed shut.

            “What the -?”  The rest of the exclamation was mercifully muffled by the hood she was wearing.

            Momentarily stunned by the appearance of the last person he’d expected to see, Jarod could only watch in silence as Miss Parker tore the black cloth bag off her head and flung it to the floor.  Then she spun towards the door and shouted, “Tell Mr. Lyle a time limit was not part of our deal!”  She slammed a fist against the door to punctuate her complaint.

            There was no response.  The guards outside had learned not to react to anything they heard coming from within this room.

With a heavy sigh, Miss Parker braced herself against the doorframe, head bowed, arms outstretched.  He could almost hear her furiously counting to ten in her head as she tried to regain control.

“Making deals with the devil, Miss Parker?” he inquired in that affected tone he often used.  “Just so you could see little old me?”

She turned back around but barely glanced his way before staring down at the discarded hood in disgust.  “Couldn’t see anything wearing this damn thing.”  She nudged it with the toe of her high-heeled boot.

Jarod didn’t try to hide his amusement as he asked, “Who had the honor of putting it on you?”

“That new Sweeper, Tony, tried, but I convinced him that I could do it myself.”  The glimmer of a satisfied smile played on her features.

Jarod could only imagine how she’d “convinced” Tony to back off, and he felt the corners of his own mouth curving upwards.

Then Miss Parker frowned.  “After being dragged through what seemed like every twisting corridor, stairwell, and elevator in this place, I’d finally had enough and decided it was time to remove the hood.  My ‘escorts’ objected.”  She paused then added smugly, “Good thing we had arrived at our destination or someone might have gotten hurt.”

Ah.  That explained the scuffle he’d heard coming from the hall.  Her tone implied that she would not have been the one injured if the struggle had continued.  He didn’t doubt it.

Miss Parker finally looked up from the offensive piece of cloth and seemed to really see him for the first time.  “Sorry if I disturbed your nap,” she said dryly.

He stayed in his reclining position, cuffed hands resting on his stomach.  “Forgive me for not getting up,” he said.  “As you can see,” he rattled his chains, “my movement is slightly limited.”

Something flickered in the depths of her dark blue eyes, but he was too far away to read the emotion.

“They did remove the leg shackles this morning, which was a nice surprise,” he went on with artificial cheer.  “Don’t know what I did to deserve that reprieve.”

“You’ve been chained hand and foot even when you’re in here?  All this time?” Miss Parker asked, a strange catch in her voice.  “Sydney will want to know,” she tacked on briskly.

Jarod sighed inwardly.  He didn’t want anyone’s pity.  “It’s alright,” he said.  “It gave me a chance to rest after all those years on the run.”

She’d told him once that she hated false bravado, so he was surprised when she didn’t make some snide remark about his pathetic attempt at levity.  Instead, impatiently pushing back a lock of hair that had fallen into her face when she’d yanked off the hood, she looked away from him and cast an appraising glance around the room.  When she noticed the camera in the corner to the left of the door, her gaze lingered for a few seconds before she turned her back on it and continued her critical survey of her surroundings.

Jarod supplied what he knew she was thinking. “It may not look like much but it does the job.”

“Mm, I guess that’s true since it’s kept you contained for almost two weeks,” Miss Parker begrudged.  Her searching glance swept towards the far right corner, and she moved that way, her attention suddenly focused high up on the wall.

“Don’t touch that!” Jarod was on his feet in an instant, ignoring the pain in his wrists when the chain attached to the handcuffs went taut.  As Miss Parker looked back at him, startled, he explained hurriedly, “Lyle’s electrified the ducts at random junctures.  I’m sure the one in here is wired.”

“I know,” she said, returning to her study of the metal grate but backing up a step.  “Angelo got zapped last week.  He’s recovered physically, but he’s too spooked to crawl around in the conduits again anytime soon.”

Seeing Miss Parker a safe distance away from the booby-trapped hatch, Jarod relaxed slightly and the chain went slack.  “I’m sorry he got hurt,” he said, absently wiggling his fingers to chase away the pins and needles.

She turned her attention back to him.  “It’s not your fault, Jarod.  Sure, Angelo may have been looking for you when he was crawling through the air vents, or he could have just been out for his daily ‘stroll’ through the ducts.  Don’t waste energy feeling guilty about it.”

She knew him better than he’d realized if she’d sensed that he was blaming himself.

“You need to worry about your own skin,” she continued.  “I know you’ve taken a few volts yourself.”

“How-?”

“I was in Lyle’s office when you tried to escape.  The alarms were going off, but he was cool as a cucumber as he pulled up the security camera feed on his laptop.”  She paused then added quietly. “I saw what happened when you went outside the building.”

“Hit me like a lightning bolt.”  Feeling slightly shaky at the memory, Jarod sank down onto the edge of his cot.  “When there was only Willie guarding me as we went past the east entrance, I saw my chance and had to take it.”

“Well, I think Lyle set you up.  He needed to test his invisible fence, so-”

“So he set a trap for me and I walked right into it,” Jarod finished glumly.

“Even if you’d sensed a trap, you still would have tried to escape.”

Was that a touch of admiration he heard in her voice?  He wished he could share the sentiment, but he just felt foolish.  Since he’d been back at the Centre, there’d always been at least two Sweepers guarding him.  To suddenly have only one escort should have been a red flag, but all he’d seen was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.

While he’d been silently berating himself, Miss Parker had moved closer until she stood directly in front of him, her body angled slightly so her back was to the surveillance camera.  “Sydney told me about your implant,” she said in a low voice.

Jarod wondered why she was trying not to be overheard; Lyle didn’t care if she knew about his fancy new torture device.  On the contrary, he’d seemed proud that Sydney and the others had discovered the surgery Dr. Archer had been contracted to do.  “Yes, Lyle’s upgraded from jumper cables,” Jarod acknowledged in a cavalier tone.

Again, she didn’t take the bait and issue a caustic comeback.  Instead, she looked uncertain, like she was having some kind of internal debate.  After a long moment, she asked diffidently, “May I…?”

He instantly realized she wanted to look at the surgical site on the back of his neck.  Her hesitation confused him; he was used to people in this place pretty much doing what they wanted to him.  He nodded, silently giving his permission.

She stood to his side and leaned over his right shoulder.  As the faint fragrance of her perfume wafted over him, he felt the fingers of her other hand gently brush across his incision. Although the area was still partially numb from the surgery, her touch went directly to his core.  The tingling was nothing like the electric shocks he’d received in recent days; this feeling was warm and pleasant, similar to the sensation he’d experienced six months ago when she’d tended his wound.  Now, as then, he attributed the feeling to hyper-sensitive nerves.

He cleared his throat.  “I’m told Dr. Archer does excellent work, and there shouldn’t be a scar,” he said in as casual a tone as he could muster.  “I suppose that’s good news.”

“Mm, I suppose.”  Her mind was clearly elsewhere.  She straightened abruptly and backed away from the cot.  “Take my advice, Jarod.  No more walks outside.”

“Darn, it’s such a nice time of year.”

“Well, they’re predicting on and off rain for the next week, so you’re not missing anything.”

Were they actually discussing the weather?  Miss Parker was clearly distracted as she started to pace in front of the door.  Was she experiencing a touch of claustrophobia?  In her customary all-black ensemble – long-sleeved, low-cut dress that ended at mid-thigh, dark leggings, and shiny leather boots – she reminded him of a caged panther.  He’d always admired the way she moved – like a lethal ballet dancer – even when she was using her cat-like grace to chase him or do an arcing sweep of a room with her gun in her hand.

But today, her movements, though still fluid, had an undercurrent of agitation to them.  She cast a baleful glance at the surveillance camera and came to a sudden stop directly in front of him.  “Look, Jarod, the last thing you want to do is piss off Lyle.  So why don’t you just do the sim and make everyone happy?”

And there it was.  The real reason for her visit today.  He didn’t know why he felt disappointed; did he actually think she’d come here just for a chat?  Or to see if he was okay?  He gave himself a mental head shake to clear such foolish thoughts from his brain.  Miss Parker was, and always would be, a representative of the Centre.  He had to treat her as such.

“I can’t do the sim,” he told her, his voice hard.  “To find a cure, I have to make more of the virus.  There’s too much risk of it falling into the wrong hands.”

She met his unyielding gaze.  “Do you remember Faith?” she asked.

He blinked at the unexpected question.  “Of course,” he replied in confusion.  He’d never forgotten the little blonde girl that he, Miss Parker, and Angelo had discovered all those years ago deep in the bowels of the Centre.  She’d died from an incurable disease shortly after they’d met her, but he and Miss Parker both believed Faith’s spirit or ghost had visited them when they were near death a few years ago, he on top of a frigid mountain after a plane crash, she in a hospital bed after emergency surgery on a perforated ulcer.  But what Jarod remembered most about Faith was Miss Parker’s reaction to her death; she’d sobbed in his arms and let him comfort her.  It was one of his most precious childhood memories.

“Well, my father told me that he and my mother brought her to the Centre to hopefully find a cure for her illness,” Miss Parker went on.  “The doctors here couldn’t help her, but what they learned from treating her did save many others in the future.”

“Your father told you this?  And you believe him?”

Her face tightened, and Jarod instantly regretted his words.  Mr. Parker’s dysfunctional relationship with his daughter was a sore subject between them.  For years Jarod had been trying to get Miss Parker to realize she couldn’t trust her father, and for years, she’d been ignoring his advice.  Her father was the only family she had left (a psychotic twin brother didn’t count), and she desperately clung to any love or kindness he showed her, blind to his manipulations, no matter how many times Jarod pointed them out to her.

Right now she surprised him by not taking the bait and defending her father for the umpteenth time.  “The point is that the Centre has often undertaken altruistic projects,” she said firmly.  “You did a lot of good here, Jarod.  You certainly helped a hell of a lot more people here than since you’ve been on the run.”

He grunted.  “You sound like Sydney.”

She leaned forward and thrust her face close to his, her eyes the murky blue of storm-tossed seas.  “Then let me sound like myself and be perfectly clear,” she snapped.  “Time to stop pretending, Jarod, and face reality.  You’re not some damn superhero willing to risk everything to make sure his powers are used only for good.  You’re a genius, sure, but a genius with a job.  The Centre discovered you, the Centre raised you, and the Centre owns you!  So stop playing the martyr, do the sim, and save some lives!”  She jabbed a finger against his chest as final punctuation.

No pleasant tingles in that touch.  Caught off guard, Jarod started to topple backwards before quickly righting himself.

Miss Parker straightened and let out a frustrated sigh, raking both hands through hair that had fallen into her face again.   “You could certainly make everyone’s lives around here a lot easier if you’d just cooperate,” she concluded with a touch of weariness, as if her own outburst had tired her.

It had been an impressive speech, and he had no doubt she meant every word of it, but he wondered if the delivery would have been different if there wasn’t a camera recording the whole performance.  He almost felt like he should applaud, but he knew the seriousness of the situation demanded a serious response.  Unfortunately, the only one he could give was the one she didn’t want to hear.

The door to his cell swung open.  “Time’s up,” Tony announced in his deep baritone and stepped inside.  Willie remained in the doorway, his gun drawn but held down at his side. 

After Miss Parker made no move to pick up the discarded hood, Tony bent over and retrieved it himself.

She looked at the piece of cloth with disgust but snatched it from his hand and put it over her head.  “Let’s go, boys,” she said and marched straight out of the room, not needing anyone to guide her.  Willie had to dodge out of her way and Tony had to hurry to catch up.

As the door shut behind them, Jarod lay back down on his cot and turned on his side, facing away from the camera.  He had a lot to think about, and he didn’t need that lens aimed at his face while he did so.

Lyle leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile stretching across his face.

Brigitte moved from her position behind him and took one of the seats facing his desk.  She pulled the red lollipop out of her mouth and said, “Don’t know why you look so happy.  I just watched the same surveillance footage you did.  Letting Miss Parker visit Jarod looked like a complete waste of time to me.”

“On the contrary, my dear Brigitte, that meeting accomplished exactly what I hoped it would.”

“Which was what?”

Lyle meditatively smoothed out his tie while he studied the petite blonde across from him.  She was a handy sounding board on the occasions when he needed a little reassurance that his plans were brilliant, but at this critical juncture, he needed to keep his next move a complete secret.  He had no intention of filling her in, but he let the silence stretch out between them as if he were considering confiding in her.  She was sucking on the lollipop again, watching him and waiting.  He wondered idly why she was always eating lollipops; did she have an unquenchable craving for sweets or did she know that the candy made her lips shiny and sticky and oh, so kissable.

Focus, Lyle!  Reluctantly, he dragged his thoughts away from the other kissable parts of Brigitte.  There’d be time for a pleasant diversion later – after the successful conclusion of his plan. 

Right now he averted his gaze from what Brigitte’s tongue was doing to the lollipop and said, “Don’t you have some packing to do?  I believe you and my father leave on your cruise tomorrow.”

She pulled the candy out of her mouth and pursed her juicy lips in a sexy pout.  “I’d rather stay here,” she said.

He stifled a sigh.  Really, her petulant child routine was getting old.  If she wasn’t so proficient in other areas, he would have broken ties with her long ago.  “This is a perfect time to get out of town.  You heard what my sister said; late April showers are in the forecast,” he said lightly, purposely ignoring what he knew her true complaint was.

The sensual slant to her mouth vanished, and her lips set in a thin, stubborn line.  “Two whole weeks,” she grumbled.

“Yes, two whole weeks of glorious Caribbean sunshine!”  Good grief, he sounded like a cheesy travel agent.

“With your father.”  She made it sound like a prison sentence.

She was decidedly unattractive when she was disagreeable.  He much preferred her playful persona.  “We’ve already talked about this, Brigitte.  I need you to distract my father for the next couple of weeks; that’s crucial to my plan.”

“A plan you won’t tell me about.”

His cheeks ached with the effort of keeping a pleasant smile on his face.  In his lap his right hand curled into a fist as he thought about what he wanted to do to stop her whining.  “Secrecy is also critical to the success of my plan.” 

She opened her mouth to continue the argument, but then, as if sensing his growing annoyance, she shut it again.  “Fine,” she muttered, getting up and heading for the door – slowly, with maximum wiggle to her leather-clad hips, no doubt as a reminder to him about what he’d be missing for the next two weeks.  She pulled open the double doors but paused before exiting.  “I’ll expect a full report on the tremendous success of your top-secret plan when I get back from my vacation,” she tossed over her shoulder.  Then she sashayed out, closing the doors behind her.

“Oh, you’ll get one,” Lyle murmured, already envisioning how he would celebrate his success with the energetic blonde.

Like Brigitte, he had no doubt that his plan would be successful.  What he’d seen today confirmed that his next step, while risky, was the correct choice.  He tapped a few keys on his laptop and pulled up the surveillance footage from Miss Parker’s visit to Jarod’s cell.  Thankful that he’d abandoned his earlier distrust of computers and gotten one of the Centre’s IT guys to give him a crash course in using the latest technology, he hit a few more keys and paused the video at the one moment that had most interested him.

Not even a moment, more like a few seconds, but a few seconds loaded with significance.  Miss Parker was leaning over Jarod, looking at the surgical site on the back of his neck.  Her hair fell forward and hid her face, but the camera clearly caught Jarod’s expression.  Even if Lyle hadn’t seen Miss Parker’s hand reaching out, he’d still have known the precise moment she’d touched Jarod from the look on his face.  Jarod’s reaction to her touch was evident and probably much more than he’d ever wanted captured on film.  He’d covered quickly with that stupid comment about the surgery not leaving a scar, but Lyle had seen enough to know that his planned course of action was the right one.

“Gotcha,” Lyle said.

“Did we get it, Broots?”

Sydney heard the agitation in his own voice and silently cursed his inability to keep his emotions in check.  He was a psychiatrist with years’ experience of maintaining an even keel, yet he’d struggled to find that calm in recent days.  He’d worried when Jarod was on the run - not knowing where he was and whether he was safe had weighed heavily on his mind.  But since Jarod had been back at the Centre, Sydney felt even worse – he knew he wasn’t safe but so far had been powerless to do anything to help.

That’s why what Broots was doing right now was so important; if successful, it could provide a way for him to assist Jarod in some small measure.  They were in Sydney’s office, Broots at the desk working on his own laptop he’d brought from home so that his actions couldn’t be detected through the Centre’s network.  Sydney’s job was to be the “look-out” and alert Broots if any uninvited visitors approached.  He’d stationed himself by the glass-front wall of his office where he could keep an eye on the sim lab below and the catwalk across the way; he’d be able to supply ample warning if anyone emerged from the shadowy corridor. 

He’d stayed quiet, letting Broots work.  But almost thirty minutes had passed, and Sydney thought that the time had come for an update.

Broots didn’t reply to his question at once.  He tapped a few keys on the computer, frowned slightly, then said, “Well, um, that depends on what you mean by ‘it.’”

“I mean Jarod’s location, of course!”  To hell with it, he needed to know if their plan had worked.  Not caring if he was crowding his colleague, Sydney quickly crossed his office and moved to stand behind his desk where he could look at the computer screen over Broots’ shoulder.

The techie gave him a quick glance then returned his attention to his laptop.  “Well, the tracking device appears to be working perfectly.”

“We’re fortunate Willie and Tony didn’t suspect Miss Parker had it on her,” Sydney murmured, staring intently at the computer display, trying to decipher the strange grid he was seeing.

“I don’t think they would have found it where she, um, hid it,” Broots said uncomfortably, one hand moving to nervously rub the back of his reddening neck.

Sydney could well imagine.  Since he’d been privy to Broots’ feverish fantasies about Miss Parker, he thought it prudent to get his friend’s mind back on the matter at hand as quickly as possible. “Broots, what are we looking at here?” he asked sharply, indicating the computer screen.

“Oh!  Well, this is the signal from the GPS tracker overlaid by blueprints of the Centre.  See this?” He pointed to a flashing green dot.  “That’s Miss Parker.  Looks like she’s on the main concourse level, probably heading back to her office.”

“But where did she come from?  Where is Jarod?”

“Um, well, that’s sort of hard to say.”

“Broots, you just told me that the tracking device worked perfectly, and Miss Parker’s location is clearly indicated on your screen right now.  So didn’t that flashing dot lead to and return from a specific place within the Centre?”

“Well…yes and no,” Broots said slowly.  He tapped some keys on his laptop and the images on the screen began to change rapidly.  “Like Jarod told you, the Sweepers take a very circuitous route to his cell.  First, they took Miss Parker down in the elevator to SL-15, then they took the stairs up to SL-8, then they walked all the way to the other end of that level and took a different elevator to SL-17, then they went down another stairwell and came out on SL-20.  After that, they walked back and forth, going in and out of some rooms – this is the level with a lot of storage rooms – before getting back in the elevator…”

“Broots!”  Sydney felt as disoriented as if he had been the one led through the maze; he didn’t know how Miss Parker had put up with it.  Staring at the shifting images on the computer screen as Broots offered his explanation was also giving him a headache, so he retreated to his sentry post overlooking the sim lab.  “Did Miss Parker ever reach her destination?”

“Yes, her signal stopped and remained stationary for approximately ten minutes on SL-22.”

Finally a straight answer.  “So Jarod must be on that level.”

“Not according to the Centre blueprints.”  Broots frowned at his computer.

“What do you mean?”

“According to the GPS, Miss Parker walked through a wall to get to Jarod’s location.”

“Excuse me?”

“The corridor ended before her blip stopped moving.  There shouldn’t be anything there.  It doesn’t make sense!”  Broots looked stricken, as if feeling betrayed by his technology.

“So…what?  A secret room?”

Sydney could practically see the light bulb go off above Broots’ head.  “Yes!”  He did some furious typing.  “But more like a secret wing.  She traveled a good distance off the grid, as it were, before she came to a stop.”  He glanced up from his laptop and stared across at Sydney.  “Could Lyle have built a whole new section without anyone knowing?”  His voice was hushed by the enormity of what he was saying.

“Well, Raines did it with SL-27.” Sydney felt suddenly weary.  How many more secrets did this infernal complex hold?

Broots still looked awed.  “But the amount of workers and equipment...”

“Night shifts when there’d be less chance of anyone noticing,” Sydney surmised.

“It must have taken months to complete!  He had to have started construction long before he ever caught Jarod,” Broots pointed out.  “How could he know he’d need this new wing?”

“Lyle’s always been overconfident,” Sydney said dryly.   Unfortunately for Jarod, this time Lyle’s best-laid plans had actually come to fruition.

“And the expense!  I mean, Cindy showed me some of the receipts for the extra security measures and Dr. Archer’s fee, but to build a whole new underground section… That’s, that’s a lot of Centre funds,” he finished weakly as the enormity of the finances involved seemed to suddenly hit him.

“Which means Lyle will be in a lot of trouble if Jarod refuses to do the sim.”  Sydney dreaded to think what measures the psychotic Parker would take to ensure Jarod’s compliance.

“Do you think Miss Parker managed to convince him to create an antidote for the virus?”  Broots was aware of the stated reason for her visit to Jarod’s cell.

“I think it highly unlikely,” Sydney responded truthfully.  Jarod was adamant about not doing anything that could hurt innocent people; he doubted Miss Parker could offer any argument that would change his moral convictions.  And, despite the danger those convictions put Jarod in, Sydney had to admire his protégé for sticking to them.

“Oh.”  It was a mournful sound.  Broots often had a nervous look on his face, but his current anxious expression was more than justified.  He knew what Lyle was capable of, so he knew what hell could be unleashed in the next few days if Jarod didn’t cooperate.  “So…what, what do we do now?” he asked.

“We take the information we learned today and figure out how to use it to our advantage,” Sydney said briskly.  “There may come a time when I need to talk to Jarod without our conversation being recorded.  Your job, Broots, is to figure out a more direct route to his cell and a way to neutralize the surveillance camera in there, as well as the ones along the way.”

“Oh, is that all?  Sure, no problem,” Broots said weakly with a sound halfway between a laugh and a cough.

“Well, I plan on asking Miss Parker to solve the problem of the guards.”

“Do you really think she’d do that?”

“I believe so.  She’ll do it for the same reason she helped us today find out where Jarod’s being kept: she can’t stand Lyle knowing something she doesn’t.  She’ll welcome any opportunity to mess with his plans.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Broots allowed.  Then he shut his laptop and stood up abruptly, tucking the computer under his arm.  “Speaking of Miss Parker, I’d better get up to her office and retrieve the tracking device from her.”

Sydney nodded and started to cross back to his desk, no longer needing to stand watch.  Passing him on the way to the door, Broots suddenly stopped.  He looked worried, of course, but there was another emotion playing across his features that Sydney couldn’t quite identify.

“What is it, Broots?” he prompted.

“Well, Sydney, I, I understand your need to talk to Jarod alone, but-” He leaned close and lowered his voice.  “You’re not thinking of helping him to escape, are you?”  His last words came out in a rush.

Ah, guilt.  He felt bad for doubting his friend.  Sydney sought to set his mind at ease when he said, “While I don’t want to see Jarod harmed, I still believe his unique abilities can be put to the best use here at the Centre.  This is where he belongs.” 

Broots looked relieved.  “Right.  That’s, that’s what I thought.”  He nodded in farewell and left.

Sydney remained standing in the middle of his office, his automatic reply to Broots’ question echoing in his head.  It was an answer he’d given many times before – to Miss Parker, to Mr. Raines, to the T-Board, to anyone who’d questioned his dedication to catching Jarod.  But this time – for the first time – he found himself questioning the veracity of his own words.