DISCLAIMER
I love Ethan, you're going to see much of him hereafter. He's a nice character, I think he deserved being much more developed during the real show. I'm doing that for all of you!
As always, comments are really appreciated. And please, forgive my lack of English!
Thanks to Antoinette for the usual help in the translation, Luv ya!
Thanks a lot Virginie59 for your reviews.
And I'll try to answer all your questions.
Baby Parker IS a part of the story and yes, he's in the hands of Raines and Lyle (at the moment). You'll understand how he us linked to MP and J soon, because no, he's definitely not Mr. Parker and Brigitte's son.
Chapter 7: Michael
Jarod and Ethan had spent the last half an hour talking. Ethan had listened to everything Jarod was telling him, because he felt that his big brother needed to confess to someone his feelings towards his sister. If they were a normal family, it would have been absurd to explain to your own brother how can you feel something for the woman who's also his sister, but they were no normal family. And would never be.
Ethan internalized everything with great serenity. He was a very good listener, and he had felt every emotion Jarod was feeling while blurting out the last month's events. At first the panic when he had found Miss Parker on the island with him, then the rage for losing his mother again. The growing feeling of affection for the woman who had been chasing him for years, but who was the only one who actually knew him. Affection that soon had become desire and, slowly, declared itself to be love, a love born years before.
Ethan had laughed when he had found out how Jarod had conquered Miss Parker, in practice making her kiss him by force. He had rejoiced when he found out that she had let herself go in the end and had admitted her true feelings; and he had shared Jarod's feelings when he talked about Catherine's house and the DSAs they had found in the attic.
"Your mother…she wanted us to find them…And she wanted us to join you again, little brother."
"I know…that's what she had told me everyday in the last couple of months…" Ethan explained, closing his eyes and trying to listen to her.
Jarod understood it was time to reverse the roles. Now it was the boy who had to tell him what happened to him and where he had been all that time.
"Why did you escape, Ethan? We were so worried about you, your sister was getting crazy at the idea that anything would ever happen to you…"
Ethan opened his eyes slowly and looked at his older brother seriously. It wouldn't be easy to make him understand his point of view.
"Jarod…When we heard each other the last time, I understood you would have protected my sister with your life, if necessary…But I knew you were also looking for your mother desperately, and I knew you needed to see her again…I understood that because of me, that search had suffered a setback and you'd had to change your plans…"
Jarod shook his head "It's not different from any other day of my life: everytime we find a piece of truth, every time your sister and I succeed in answering to one question…ten others come out, at The Centre!"
Ethan knew what he meant. He also was looking for answers and rarely found them.
"You were one of those secrets, but you were the nicest surprise. You hadn't known my brother, Kyle, I didn't actually know him too. But I loved him and I missed him very much. It was a gift to find out that I had another brother. A gift from your mother, who was a wonderful woman…"
"This is why I left…You know, Jarod…It wasn't easy for me to live without knowing who I really was. I wrote two lines to my sister, but I wasn't that wordy. I wanted to leave, I had questions that needed answers. And I felt I had to disappear for a while, to let things…evolve."
Jarod was looking at him a bit uncertain "What do you mean, evolve?"
Ethan smiled "Since you and Miss Parker found out about my existence, your relationship changed. She understood that our mother trusted you and loved you as her son. She found out that she knew your mother and she started to look at you with a different attitude. To save me, you joined forces and got closer. The voices told me: I felt that something was growing between you two, something important…"
"Actually it wasn't growing, it was…turning up again…" Jarod pointed out.
"Precisely! But it had to happen in that moment, not sooner, nor later. After years of chases, you found again your relationship and it's no coincidence if those DSAs you told me about came out just these last days. My sister is expanding her inner sense, mostly because of you, you encouraged her, otherwise she'd never had accepted it!"
"You should have stayed, to help her to understand it and improve it!"
"She didn't need me to, she just had to listen to our mother's voice…"
Jarod remembered when he had told Miss Parker the very same thing, years before. "Her voice is inside you", he wrote on a note. Back then, besides, he couldn't actually know how much those words were true.
"What did you do all this time?"
"I hid and thought a lot. I tried to follow my mother's will, she encouraged me to reconcile with my past to face the future. I cannot change what has been, Mr. Raines kept me as a hostage all my life. But I'm different, because of you. I can use my gift to help others and I'd love to do it with you, big bro…"
Jarod smiled "We will, Ethan!" he said, patting him dearly "But now we have an important duty to fulfill, and we can finish it only together…"
"My mother's plan…" Ethan continued, while Jarod nodded. Obviously the boy already knew what he was talking about, he didn't need any explanation.
"Miss Parker and I will work together to destroy The Centre, once and for all. There will be neither more secrets, nor terror, nor prophecies…"
To the sound of that word, Ethan had a moment of disorientation and put a hand to his temple, hearing the voices increasing in intensity and he started to moan with the pain.
"Ethan!"
"It's nothing…"
Actually the boy was shivering, and when Jarod touched his forehead he felt it was burning, just as Miss Parker's was the night before. Those were just effects of their inner sense, or was it something else, something more dangerous?
"I'll take you away from here…" Jarod whispered, noticing that somebody not far was starting to look their way. "Can you walk?"
Ethan nodded, without stopping to touch his head. Jarod headed in the direction of his car, hoping that the boy would make it until there not to have to drag him.
Sydney braced up and got inside the office of the man who had most hampered him all those years. He had never had a great relation with Mr. Parker, but Raines had always been his antagonist. Raines hated him because he was Jarod's trainer, and most of all because he always put a spoke in his wheel. Sydney was the cause of Gemini's escape and Raines suspected that he had helped Jarod to make run Ethan too, the most precious project he had. But this time he couldn't interfere, there was no more Mr. Parker to act as a mediator. He had the power in his hands. If Sydney still was at his place, it was just not to lose the connection between Jarod and the Centre, in the hope that one day they actually succeed in catching him.
Raines sat at his desk and contemplated Sydney's theatrical entry amazed, he hadn't even knocked.
"What brings you to my door, Sydney?" he asked him with his hoarse voice which makes him look like a cartoon-villain.
"I know you and Lyle are up to something, Raines, but I'm here for something different. Something about my children."
Raines smiled "Your children?" he asked, starting to laugh. "And when did you start considering yourself as a mother hen, Sydney? What about the professional detachment?"
Sydney replied "You and I never stood each other, but you know how much I care about Jarod and Miss Parker, it's useless to go on and pretend."
Raines would have loved to answer in kind, but he could not show his hand. It wasn't the moment yet.
"What do you want?"
"I want to know everything about Project Mind Rain."
To Raines it was like a ice water bucket thrown over his back. How could Sydney possibly have found out about that project? And why was he dragging it in after all those years?
"I want to make things simple to you, Raines." Syd remarked through clenched teeth and bending on his desk. "Tell me what it was and who authorized it…And I'll avoid convincing Miss Parker to finish the work she started when she wanted to avenge her mother's death…"
Raines didn't fear his threats and he knew that Miss Parker would have never killed him, she didn't have it in her eyes. But in the end it was something he couldn't repair, a project created years before. It couldn't hurt anyone if he spoke about it. And most of all it would have engaged the three stooges in a new research of the past, instead of the future.
I In the same moment, Miss Parker was outside the corridor that she had been watching before through the surveillance video. Broots was at her side and, as usual, he was shivering from head to toe.
"Broots, don't be a chicken." she jeered at him.
"If they find us it's the end, Miss Parker!"
"Then try not to chatter your teeth, or they'll hear you…"
Hidden behind a wall, they were waiting for their chance to get through the armored door. Broots had created a loop for the cameras and they had almost ten minutes. Sydney was in Raines's office and had to distract him to allow them to see what they were doing to the baby. Miss Parker couldn't accept the idea they were exploiting her brother, who wasn't even two years old yet. Every time she had seen him, before that isolation, she felt a strong attachment towards him. Actually, since she took him from Brigitte's uterus, she couldn't help but loving him. The last time she had visited him, she had made him play and realized he had two beautiful brown eyes, that reminded her vaguely of Jarod's ones, maybe because he also had that lost-puppy look.
A technician came out of one room and he got his way to the door, giving Miss Parker the opportunity she was waiting for. She and Broots flattened themselves against the wall, waiting for the man to come out of the corridor. As soon as he opened the door, Parker and Broots took the time it stayed opened to infiltrate inside the corridor in silence, trying not to be noticed. When the door closed behind them, Broots dried the sweat from his forehead and sighed in relief, while she dragged him behind her.
"I don't understand why you want to raise again questions buried years ago, Sydney."
"Make me happy…" he answered, ironically.
"In the end it was a thing born also because of you, Sydney. I told you since the beginning that you were too much indulgent, with those children. You always let Miss Parker wander freely inside The Centre to make friends with Jarod, you even allowed them to play together!"
"I wasn't the one to let the girl in here!" he replied, furious.
"A mistake made by the weak woman Catherine Parker was, and carried out by her husband…But I saw what was happening: two children that often escaped our control, sometimes they also discovered secrets they weren't authorized to know…"
"Here you're up to Faith…" Sydney interrupted him.
"If it were for me, Miss Parker would have never set foot inside The Centre anymore, after the first simulation with Jarod…We wanted to find out the effects a girl would have had on him, but the thing got much too serious just a few years later…"
"It was the only possibility we had to persuade Jarod to go ahead with his simulations…And we always kept an eye on them, there were cameras…"
"Yeah…" Raines continued "And the videos regarding them were catalogued and sent all to the Triumvirate!"
"They were just kids, Raines! Jarod worked much better, after spending some time in Miss Parker's company."
"You have no idea." Raines said, standing up. "What happened between those kids…during Christmas holidays you were never there, you always had something else to do, didn't you?"
Sydney refrained from speaking. To go and visit Jacob was the only freedom he took during the golden years of The Centre, when he had to think about Jarod's training.
"You've never seen those videos. But I did, and Mr. Parker did also…"
"And what should I have seen, exactly?" Sydney asked.
Raines was smiling, almost naughtily. "Two young teenagers having kiss and a cuddle as a couple of sweethearts! They had to be stopped before the thing got too serious. The Triumvirate didn't look with favor on the relationship between the kids, and neither did I. Mr. Parker, on the other hand, had different projects for his daughter, and the more he tried to get her far from The Centre, the less he succeeded. She was too close to our Jarod, and the thing was getting almost embarrassing."
Miss Parker and Broots walked through the corridor, confident that the cameras couldn't see them. They went over the first two doors, but beyond the glasses they didn't see anything but empty rooms. They were lucky with the third try. Behind a huge window, similar to a hospital one, there was what could be considered as the nursery of Baby Parker, who was inside a crib and sit, playing with some cubes.
His sister got excited when she saw him, because she realized he had grown. The baby didn't seem to have been mistreated, anyway. On the contrary, he was smiling.
"Broots, stand guard…" Miss Parker said, opening the door.
As soon as she was inside, her little brother noticed her presence and turned towards her. She smiled and took him in her arms, discovering again those brown eyes that had struck her and she realized her instinct was leading her to smell a baby's head. She was definitely getting spineless…
"Hello!" she told the baby.
"Hi!" he answered. Miss Parker was surprised for his answer, but she actually knew that by two years babies start talking and say simple sentences. That baby in particular was almost eighteen months. He had grown so much, since the last time she took him in her arms.
"I realize you don't have a name yet, little boy…Would you mind if I call you Michael?" she asked the baby, wondering where the hell that name came from. Maybe she had always liked it and, unconsciously, she would have always wanted to call her son that, that is she'd ever had one.
"Yes!" the baby answered, smiling. Parker didn't understand where that lovely and striking smile came from. How could he be Brigitte's son, since he didn't look like her at all? The more she looked at him, the less she saw her tracks any resemblance of Brigitte, in that baby.
"I won't allow them to hurt you, boy…" she whispered, putting her face next to his soft and hot little head "You're my brother, and I'm going to save you…even if it is the last thing I do!"
"Miss Parker, we gotta go!" Broots intervened, realizing that the looping time of the cameras was almost over.
"I'm coming back to take you" she said, giving a kiss to the baby that from then on would always be Michael, to her, and she put him back to his crib.
Then she ran out the room and gave a last glance at her brother, setting out with Broots towards the exit of SL-19.
"The Triumvirate gave precise orders." Raines spat out. "We had to carry on Project Mind Rain and erase the relationship between Jarod and Miss Parker!"
Sydney thought about the mail that Broots had found.
"But what was it? Why didn't you inform me?"
Raines smiled "And when exactly have we ever revealed our projects for Jarod to you, since we knew that you wouldn't agree?"
Sydney felt his hands itching and had to tighten them not to jump over Raines and punch him.
"You erased their memories, didn't you?"
Raines wondered how the hell he found out, so he was silent for a while. Then he continued. "It was one of the best experiments in the whole Centre history. That was a mixture of hypnosis, hallucinogens, and mental reconstruction interventions. The day before they were two kids, friends for life, the day after Miss Parker was removed of her squalid memories connected to her relationship with Jarod. We couldn't go too deep because the more intense moments, the ones linked to childhood, had to remain. We would have risked wrecking Jarod's brain, and none of us wanted to…"
"Why?" Sydney shouted "Why did you take those memories away from them?"
"At that time we weren't authorized to discuss orders…The Triumvirate had its good reasons to separate them.. In those videos, Miss Parker was talking more often about escape and freedom, unacceptable concept if we're talking about Jarod. She was convincing him that they would run away together and they were getting older. Their bond was a risk for Jarod's safety and most of all for The Centre! We had to destroy it!"
Sydney didn't waste another second. "You've always been a psychopath, Raines…You took the only light Jarod ever had in those years at The Centre from him."
"I thought it was your pseudo-paternal relationship with him that gave him strength, wasn't it Sydney?" he replied, with a malice that would have destroyed almost anyone, but not Sydney. He was indeed taking strength from his connection with Jarod, nobody could break it, not even Dr. Raines's terrible manipulations.
"Anyway Project Mind Rain had such a positive outcome that many governments bought it and used it to erase memories from political prisoners, soldiers, troublesome persons…I must admit it was our little masterpiece!"
Sydney wanted to spit in his face that Jarod and Miss Parker were now remembering everything, and they had found the disks stolen from The Centre, but obviously he couldn't betray his pupils' trust like that. He would have found another time to get vengeance on Raines. He went towards the door.
"Why are you so interested in discovering things that happened almost thirty years ago?" Raines asked him. He couldn't understand that man's will to hurt himself like that.
"As you said, Raines…I've always had a flaw in my character, to be too much indulgent, with those kids. I won't lie to Jarod, and if he's ever going to ask me I'll tell him the truth…He's got the right to know what you did to him. Not only you took him from him his childhood, his family, his identity…You even took the memories of the only friend he had ever had!"
Raines seemed satisfied. "Miss Parker became a skillful huntress, after the training, and she never gave any sign of remembering anything. She always hated Jarod, and as far as we know she still hates him. Mind Rain is portentous!"
Sydney smiled. "So is Jarod's intelligence. What are you going to do when he finds out?"
"It won't be necessary for him to know." Lyle voice intervened, as he had just got inside the office.
"You knew about this?" Sydney asked.
"This is not the right moment to complain about the past, we just had a tip. Somebody saw Jarod in a park in Blue Cove. We're going right now, where's Miss Parker?"
"Somebody asked for me?" she said, making her entrance in that very moment, followed by Broots. Her glance made Sydney understand that her mission had gone as expected.
"Your prey is waiting, let's go!"
"What do you mean?" she asked, starting to sweat.
"Jarod was seen in a park not far from here…they say he wasn't alone, we're going to make an inspection, if we're lucky enough he's still around there …"
Lyle was reaching the door, but his three colleagues were still stuck. Parker couldn't keep her strong nausea and felt like she was fainting. Jarod had been identified. He was in danger! Recognizing her symptoms, Sydney helped her. "You go ahead, I've got some other business here…"
Parker understood that Sydney would take the chance to contact Jarod with his new mobile phone, so she regained control of herself. "Broots, let's go, our lab rat is not likely to waste time as our Dr. Freud!"
While the group went out of Raines's office, Sydney turned again towards him, looking at him full of hate.
"As you see." he said through clenched teeth. "Miss Parker seem to be still completely subjugated. Don't you think the truth would destroy her and make her lose that bit of trust she has in you?"
Sydney wanted to scream that Miss Parker already knew everything, he wanted to say that fantastic and strong woman had changed her life and was now staying with the man they had taken her away from against her will. But he couldn't do that. He could just feel glad to realize that Raines was convinced that Mind Rain had been a success. Actually, it was becoming his greatest failure.
Sydney pretended to be pondering about his colleague's words, then answered. "I won't tell her anything. But should she one day start to remember, I won't be the one who lies to her. Not to her, nor even Jarod!"
So said, he went out the office. He couldn't know that Raines was growing up a new foolish desire. The desire to kill him and get rid of him once and for all.
Jarod was still in the car and was reaching hastily Miss Parker's house. Ethan lay on the passenger seat and was leaning his head to the window, holding it with both his hands to moderate the ache.
"Hold on, Ethan, we're not far!"
"Where…are…we going?" he asked him, within a moan and the other.
"Your sister's home. We'll be safe, there!"
In that moment Jarod's phone rang and he took it in a hurry, answering with no frills "What?!"
"Jarod, thank God I found you! Miss Parker is coming to the park with Lyle and a sweeper team, somebody spotted you…You found Ethan?"
"Yes." he answered, giving his brother a glance. "He's not well, I'm taking him home…he needs some rest!"
"I'm telling Parker you're safe. In the meantime don't go out and keep checking the streets, they could see you!"
"Thanks, Sydney."
In that very moment Miss Parker was in the car with Lyle, who was driving at a frenetic speed. He hoped to reach the park before Jarod could disappear, as usual.
Her phone rang, the official one. Miss Parker took it and answered "What?!"
Sydney realized in that precise moment that Jarod and her were really made one for other, if in emergency situations they answered the phone in an identical way.
"It's me. The situation is under control." he said.
"All right, Sydney. We're taking care of Jarod. I just hope he's still there, when we arrive. I'm just so tired of his Houdini-styled disappearances!"
Sydney smiled to himself, thinking that those years spent at The Centre had transformed that woman in a liar beyond suspicion, but at least for once she was using that talent in the right way.
Miss Parker ended the call and heard her twin brother saying. "Well said, sis!"
Broots gnashed his teeth. Maybe, after all, Miss Parker could handle the situation much better than he thought.
MISS PARKER'S HOUSE
7.45 p.m.
Ethan had been sleeping for a couple of hours now. His fever had come down, and Jarod was actually relieved. For a few seconds he had feared that it would got so worse that he would need to take him to the hospital, but Ethan explained him that was normal. That always happened to him when his inner sense had to do with something very important. Jarod was now worried about Miss Parker. It was late and she hadn't come back yet. He hadn't got news from her, nor Sydney. But maybe it was better, because they were taking the risk to be caught in the act by Lyle. Around the house there were no movements, and Jarod shut the windows and took the lights off.
He was checking Ethan's temperature, when the entrance door opened and a breathless Miss Parker entered the living room. Jarod moved towards her without uttering a word, checking if they could go ahead. She locked the door behind her, so he understood he could get closer without problems. He ran to hold her and she hugged him tight, as she had never done in her all life. That afternoon she had been really worried for him. A new and intense emotion.
"Did you have any problems with Lyle?" He asked, stroking her face rapidly, almost to check that she hadn't got anything.
"No, he doesn't suspect at all…Broots and I were good, Lyle was furious when we got there and we didn't find you…By the way, where is he?" She asked, impatient to see her brother.
Jarod indicated the couch and Parker reached it, bending close to Ethan.
"What's the matter with him?"
"I don't know exactly…He has the same symptoms you had last night, just more intense…Very high fever and headaches…"
"Nausea?" she asked.
"Not that I know…"
Parker wondered why it also happened to her to vomit, but that wasn't the time to think about her sickness. Now it was Ethan who needed cures.
"We talked for a while." Jarod explained. "Then he suddenly started to feel sick, his voice became insistent…"
"What were you talking about?" Parker asked, knowing that even a word could stimulate a certain status of trance.
"I was telling him about our plan…We were talking about future, The Centre…"
Jarod thought again about the conversation and then stared at her "The Scrolls…" He whispered. Parker looked at him worried. So Ethan had gone away when Jarod had mentioned the Scrolls. Surely that was no coincidence.
"Miss Parker…" Ethan whispered.
She smiled and stroke his face, a teardrop coming from her wonderful eyes. "Ethan…I missed you so much!" she revealed honestly.
"You too, big sister…It's good to see you, you look very beautiful, but I feel you're also happy now…"
She smiled and turned her glance to Jarod. "I reckon you guys talked behind my back like two silly girls gossiping in a hair salon!"
Jarod giggled and so did Ethan. "I missed your humor, Miss Parker…It's so good to hear a voice so similar to mama's…Mostly because it's not in my head, but it comes from my ears…"
"Ethan, did Jarod tell you that mama…"
"Yes, he told me about the videos…Do you reckon mama is still alive?"
"I'd love to know…what you think…" she whispered, hoping in a positive answer. Ethan closed his eyes and listened to the voices, that now were calm and quiet.
"It's so difficult to understand…Her voice guided me since I was young, but I've never posed myself the question. Now everything is different…and her voice seems clearer. I don't know if that's only suggestion…"
Jarod was listening in silence to that important conversation. He couldn't interfere because he didn't know what was that inner sense that the two siblings shared. But he trusted it much more than any other thing in the world.
"It's not just suggestion…I hear it too, now…" She explained. "I hear it better, I mean."
Ethan nodded and squeezed his sister's hand.
"Rest again for a while, will you?" She asked him, with all the affection she had. Ethan smiled and closed again his eyes. Jarod and Miss Parker moved discreetly towards the kitchen, where she hugged him again.
Since she needed desperately to feel his lips on hers, she kissed him.
"Mmm…you taste salty." He whispered, making her laugh. Apparently her tears had streamed down to her lips, making them more salty.
"I like it!" He said, smiling at her.
"Jarod we need to talk…I've got some important things to tell you!"
"I'm listening…"
"Broots and I made a visit to SL-19, where they keep my brother…We found out that Raines and Lyle have plans for him, the same they always had for you…"
"Simulations…traning…exploitation …" Jarod said, while a fit of anger went through his spine. Every time The Centre tried to hurt a kid, he felt those kind of sensations through his body. It was resentment and his will to get vengeance.
"Fortunately he's still too young, Michael is not even two years old…"
"Michael?" Jarod asked "That's what they named him?"
Parker was now a bit embarrassed "No…I thought it would be nice for him to have a name…"
Jarod smiled at her fit of tenderness. "After all, you're his sister…who better than you could choose his name?"
"I was wondering if there is some…legal way to stop all of this. His mother is dead, his father is lost, I'm apparently his only surviving relative…I could adopt him, ask for his custody. You know the law, do I have any right as his older sister?"
Jarod was touched by her sense of responsibility. But he knew that the problem was not the law, but The Centre.
"Lyle, Raines, the Triumvirate…they know one only law, theirs. The Centre doesn't have to subject itself to official rules, Parker…"
She nodded. "Then we're doing this the old fashioned way: we kidnap him and rescue him, as we've already done…in the past." She concluded, glancing at her other brother, the one who was sleeping on her couch.
Jarod nodded much more determined. "This means a declaration of war to The Centre, once and for all.."
"We found Ethan, another step forward to the end…Do you remember what my mother said?"
"That with him, we can survive…That he's helping us to find them…" Jarod recited, remembering the video by heart.
"Ethan knows much more than he wants us to believe, Jarod…He might have discovered something while he was away…"
"What should we do, Parker?" He asked her. It was the first time in his all life he didn't know how to move.
How could they end The Centre domination, if they didn't even know what those damn Scrolls were saying, seeing that everybody thought they kept the secrets to their future?
"Do you still have contacts inside the F.B.I., Jarod?"
"Yes…I know many agents I can trust…People I've worked with…"
"Fine. It's time to show our hand. The Centre has powerful friends, but its strength comes from the Triumvirate. And apparently the Triumvirate power comes from the Scrolls, or at least that's what they believe…"
"It seems a vicious circle: how can some scrolls written hundreds of years ago control our destiny?" He asked her, in rage.
"Do you remember what my father said? The important thing is that they believe…If they found them, as I think, and if they found my father…Well, then they were read and interpreted…"
Jarod shook his head. "I don't think we're still talking about Scrolls and prophecies, but of real life and the suspicious trafficking financing The Centre. Do you know how many projects are paid directly from the Government or the Army? We can't expose the ones behind them, I've been trying for years!"
"In fact the only way we have to destroy it is to make it from the inside, with persons we can trust."
Jarod was very proud of that speech from Parker. After all those years spent as a chess piece of The Centre, manipulated as they loved to, she finally had realized what a terrible place it was.
"They destroyed our lives and those of dozens of families, Jarod. But they made the mistake to underestimate us. We still have proof of their misdeeds, it's all in your videos. Now we only have to get to the Triumvirate, to take them uncovered. The F.B.I. can help in one way only: they must be in the right place at the right time, when we bring everything to light…"
Jarod got more serious. "Did you ever think…that those videos could lead to Sydney's involvement? Without counting all the laws Broots has broken to find me all these years…"
Parker was wordless. She never considered the thing from that point of view.
"Why do you think I've never spoken about The Centre to the authorities? Why do you think I never gave those DSAs to the police? I couldn't allow Syd, Broots, or you…to get hurt! You're victims of The Centre as much as I am, but the police wouldn't understand that…"
Parker nodded imperceptibly. "Well, we're going to think about it when it's time, Boy Wonder. Now I need some rest, because my head is exploding…"
Suddenly Jarod remembered that she wasn't feeling well the night before. "Did you have any other nausea attacks, today?"
"A bit, but it happens to me every time I see Raines walking across The Centre corridors…"
Jarod stopped her, ignoring her irony and taking her chin with his right hand. "Don't neglect yourself, Parker…"
"I'm fine, Jarod…And now let's go to bed…But you must be aware that I have no intention to give you any attention, not with my brother sleeping under the same roof…"
Jarod smiled "Our brother…" He specified "Who is a grown-up…" He continued, kissing her neck and holding her. "As well as deeply asleep thanks to the gentle sedative I gave him to make his rest better…"
Parker smiled. "You're an evil genius, then…" She whispered, letting him kiss her.
"Well, everybody has a dark side…And mine always turns up, when it's up to you…"
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