AN - Do you remember when Parker and Jarod had a little conversation about how someone needed to handle the Lyle situation? Yeah, someone dropped the ball there.

Miss Parker, Jarod

Disclaimer: The Pretender is not mine.

I Thought You Were Handling It

She was pacing. It was a "tell" behavior, but it was never one that she had eradicated from her repertoire the way she had dismantled the other habits from her childhood and adolescence that gave away more than she was comfortable letting other people see (more than it was safe for her to let other people see). She was, most definitely, not about to put a halt to her behavior now. It was soothing - in a it was really keeping her blood pressure further elevated than it should be even though it was nice to burn off some of the restless energy kind of a way. She needed soothing. Besides, there was no one else around to see that she was pacing like some sort of a caged animal while she waited for him to make an appearance. It was entirely possible (and even likely) that he could see her - having some sort of surveillance up and running so that he could view her at his leisure before he actually made himself known would be such a him sort of a thing to do. He was a twitchy little lab rat after all.

As if there was any way that this was some sort of a trap from her side what with all of the hoops and last minutes changes and relocations that he had made her go through in order to make their little meet and greet happen. She was not sure whether to be insulted or flattered that he found her that much of a threat. This had nothing to do with the standard relationship of predator and prey that the two of them engaged in and nothing to do with the internal affairs of the Centre. What it had everything to do with was her misbegotten excuse for a brother and the fact that Jarod (Mr. High and Mighty I Have the Moral High Ground himself) seemingly could not be bothered to handle the situation.

Quite frankly, he was probably right to be a little cautious of her, but it was not for any of the reasons that would have occurred to him - he was incredibly short sighted for someone who owed his continued freedom to keeping one step ahead of those who were dedicated to finding him. He should be cautious about meeting her not because it might be some sort of a trap to bring him back to the Centre but because she was aggravated enough with his lack of definitive action that she might be willing to see whether losing a toe or two might provide proper motivation for him to actually get something done. She could not fantasize about her fall back threat of knee cap shooting as she had left her firearm behind, but she was still wearing heels that could be put to imaginative use.

Her pacing increased its speed and she found her hand resting against her abdomen applying pressure against the unease that was building up there. That was just what she needed - to have ulcers acting up when she needed to be focused on giving Jarod at the minimum a tongue lashing and possibly some pain induced motivation.

"The floor should be structurally sound enough for our purposes, but I'm not willing to make guarantees if you continue to attempt to wear a groove into the . . .," his voice trailed off as she spun hands going out of years of habit to draw her weapon before she remembered that she was not carrying one (as per the convoluted instructions that she had agreed to follow) and that aiming at him was not something that she was supposed to be doing right now even if she did have the means to do so.

"Jumpy?" He asked with one of those vaguely amused looks that never ceased to infuriate her - one would think that he had spent enough time out in the real world to know that his attitude issues were not something that the vast majority of the population would appreciate.

"Agitated," she replied giving him a glare that actually caused the hint of amusement in his expression to fade.

"You're the one who insisted this was necessary," he told her with a small shrug. "So, why don't you enlighten me about what was so important. If you think that sweepers are going to be able to sneak up on me just because . . .," the words disappeared as he caught sight of the expression on her face. That was good. She was not going to vouch for her temper if he continued with his flippancy. She was not actually going to vouch for her temper in any case, but an attempt at civility was going to be made.

"This is about Lyle," the expression on his face was suddenly mirroring the angry one that she could feel on her own. "We need to talk about . . .," he cut her off before she could elaborate.

"Why you haven't done anything?" He sneered crossing his arms and somehow managing to settle into an aggressive stance even as he leaned back against the wall. His eyes narrowed and his lip curled.

"Excuse me?" She demanded slipping into an aggressive posture of her own (so much for attempts at keeping this meeting civil).

"You heard me," he told her with that sneer in his voice still clearly present. "How long do you intend to dawdle over this before you do something?"

"Before I do something?" She questioned feeling a modicum of confusion creeping in on top of her knee jerk reaction of anger. He looked serious. He sounded serious, but he could not possibly be serious.

"We agreed that he had to be stopped," Jarod insisted. "You were supposed to handle it, yet he is still out there treating women as if they are a buffet waiting to be sampled." His hands flew out to his sides in an expressive gesture (an agitated one), and Parker pushed back a shudder at the mental image that his words conjured. She did not need to have that stuck in her head. She had far too many Lyle related images that would not leave her alone stuck in her head already.

"Back up there, genius," she bit back her desire to start yelling in the interest of trying to get the conversation turned around to a constructive end. If it were a question of any other topic, she would just let her irritation flow. That was not an option in this case. "What would possess you to think that I was handling it?" She might have managed to cover her irritation, but she had not been able to completely tap down the tone of disbelief.

"We said," he started in that petulant child tone he got sometimes when he was about to whine about something that he insisted was unfair. She was in no mood to listen to that.

"We said that someone had to stop him," she stated making it clear that he was not the only one with a solid recollection of their previous conversation. "Obviously, someone means you."

"Me?" He asked her as if she were making no sense.

"Yes, you," she answered (biting back the sarcasm that was begging to be unleashed).

"Why would you assume that someone meant me?" He sounded genuinely confused. Sometimes, she found herself wondering how he had managed to survive in the outside world. His lack of sense made itself glaringly apparent at the most inconvenient of times.

"Hello?" She could practically feel the derision (she simply did not have adequate motivation to hold it back any longer) dripping off the word but clueless still standing up against the wall might very well miss it completely with how dense he was being. "What are you scrambling around out here doing every day, Jarod?" A sudden craving for a cigarette hit her so hard that she nearly gasped out loud at the sensation. Reappearances of laid to rest addictions and an acting up ulcer - this was so not her day. "This is your life. This is what you do. Things like stopping Lyle are practically your bread and butter."

"Bread and butter?" He was doing the clueless thing again. She had never had any patience for that - not even when they had been children. The people around her were always telling her how utterly brilliant he was. Why could not utterly brilliant manage to engage enough of his brain to use context clues? "Why would I look at stopping Lyle as a dinner addition?"

"Don't go there!" She ordered. "Find a bookstore and buy an origin of phrases book - later, after you take care of Lyle."

"Why are you not taking care of Lyle?" He insisted sounding like a child who had become fixated on something and would not let it go.

"Jarod!"

"You're right there!" He yelled back. "You have open access! It only makes sense that you would be the one to handle things since you are the one who is already on site."

"You're the one with the saving people complex!" She growled back.

"You have to have a saving people complex to stop a serial killer who eats people?" His voice climbed up another few notches on the volume scale as he came off the wall and started stalking in her direction.

"The point is that you are the one who does these things!" She countered as her own volume increased in response. "Why aren't you doing it now?"

"I don't know," he said with his voice suddenly dropping to little more than a whisper as he came to a halt just a couple of steps away from her.

"What?" She asked fighting the sudden urge she had to take a step backwards. When the man in front of her had been loud and aggressive, she had been ready to meet him step for step and posturing for posturing. Now that he had gone quiet, she found her own impulse for confrontation bleeding out of her.

"I said I don't know," he repeated. "I don't have an answer for your question. When we said that one of us would have to stop him, I just assumed that it meant you would be the one doing the stopping."

"Well, I assumed, based on prior experience I will add, that that meant you."

"Interesting," he observed as an expression she could not quantify crossed his eyes.

"It isn't interesting!" She insisted feeling the agitation that was just under the surface for the entirety of their interaction bubbling up again. "Lyle being Lyle is not interesting." A flash of some of the things that she had seen that she was never going to be able to unsee made her next breath stutter as she exhaled.

"I was actually referring to . . .," Jarod began.

"I know what you were referring to," she brought his sentence to a halt.

"Then, why did you . . .," he sounded genuinely confused.

"Not the time for your social ineptness!" She did not want to hear it. She did not want to be in this broken down old warehouse that should have seen a wrecking ball a couple of decades ago. She did not want to be remembering pictures and police reports and the fact that that man had shared a womb with her. "Are we done here? You'll actually handle it this time?"

"When did we decide that?" He was pouting. He was actually standing in front of her pouting. How was it that he had not had more people threatening to kill him over the years than he had?

"Why are you being so difficult?" She took a step into his personal space and noted (pleased to do so) that his eyes shifted to the side as if making certain of his escape route. That was how it should be. There should always be a healthy dose of fear when people dealt with her. That way they would actually get the things done that they needed to get done instead of standing in the middle of some sort of B movie trapped in a crumbling building movie scene about to happen whining over whose turn it was to handle the situation at hand. "Don't answer that. You're always difficult. Just stop him." She ordered poking a finger into his chest. His eyes actually crossed as she pulled the poking finger up to point it directly between his eyes in a moment of threat before she dropped her hand back to her side.

"You know," he piped up as she turned to head for the door (how he had ended up standing there on the side of the room that the door was not on was not a question that she was going to bother to try to answer). "I could give you the same directive. Command. Whatever you want to call it."

"Dead people," she stated in the calmest, most detached voice she could muster as she slowly turned around to face him again.

"What?"

"There are dead people - I would say dead bodies, but we both know that there is not much in the way of a body left when Lyle is finished with someone," she elaborated. "There are people. Dead ones. And you want to get your nose out of joint because you don't like my tone?" She questioned with an eyebrow that she was certain had risen so far that it had disappeared into her hairline. "Newsflash. You never like my tone; I never like your tone. It does not matter. Lyle matters. Stopping Lyle matters. Are we on the same page?" She held up a hand to stop him before he could even try. She was half convinced that he could not possibly be as far out of it as he tried to appear. If she ever found out for certain that he did it on purpose to mess with her, she was going to find that precious case of DSAs of his and melt it down. "Don't. Are we clear that stopping Lyle needs to happen?"

She waited for his nod.

"Are we clear that you will be the one doing the stopping?" She prompted. There was going to be no more of this confusion over who was responsible for what.

"I have an idea." He said suddenly.

"Of course you do." She let the eye roll happen. Civil had not gotten her anywhere. There was no reason to keep up any pretense.

"We both want to stop Lyle." That, she found, required another eye roll.

"Have you been here for the rest of this conversation?" She snapped at him. Then, she looked at him - really looked at him and took a step back while shaking her head emphatically in the direction that signified that her answer was no. "I know that look," she told him with a sudden flash from their childhood superimposing itself over the grown up face in front of her. "I really hate that look. It's your I have a plan that I believe is stunningly brilliant because I'm Jarod and it never occurs to me that my plans are anything other than stunningly brilliant look. I do not want to see that look. I do not want anything to do with that look."

He always tried to throw it back at her that the trouble they had gotten into as children had been mostly instigated via her, but that was not the way that she remembered it. Syd could take his rose colored memories and shove them - Jarod had started his fair share of things as well.

"I do not have a look." He told her looking at her as if she had starting spouting some sort of crazy nonsense.

A memory hit her so hard that she could actually smell it (not that the smell had been remotely forgettable in the first place). There had been yelling and angry sweepers. There had been so many angry sweepers, and there had been the smell (and the fact that they would not let her go home and take a shower until after her father had gotten out of a late meeting in the tower). She shuddered. There was a reason that wheat grass was not allowed anywhere within her vicinity.

"Please," she shot at him. "You have the exact same look on your face that you did right before the nutritional supplement in the . . .," it was his turn to hold up a hand to stop her.

"You remember that?" He was looking at her strangely - sort of disbelieving and a little pleased and something else that she was not going to give a name.

"Focus!" She ordered instead shaking off memories that it would serve no purpose to revisit.

"We both know that Lyle needs to be stopped," he told her giving a small inclination of his head to demonstrate that he was acceding to her demand that they get the conversation back on track. "So, why don't we stop him together?"

Whatever response that he was expecting to get from her, she would be willing to wager that he had not expected her to laugh.