A Dance We Do

By: Dee

Beta read by Dianne

The Centre

The huge man sat in the small cell; his chest and arms were a patchwork with pieces of flesh missing where it had been pared off. He sat motionless except for the movement of his chest rising and falling; pictures of Parker and Jarod were laid out before him. The stench of infection filled the small room as Lyle and Raines entered and Lyle pulled out a handkerchief and placed it over his nose and mouth, this was one time he envied Raines with his oxygen tank. The thing in front of him was monstrous and looked like something from a horror show instead of a man, he had to admit that even at his worst, Raines truly outranked him. Lyle broke the silence to get things started so that he could get out of the room faster.

"How do you know he's excited, he looks vulgar and deceased to me and that stench," Lyle managed to choke out, but even through the handkerchief, he could almost taste it.

"He's not responding the way I want him to, his movements are too slow. I must have taken too much skin from him for my grafts. He has an infection of the underlying tissue." Raines said clinically as he peered closer at the man's condition.

"Well, at least he has hair." Lyle found humor in thinking of the old man trying to figure out where he could take more skin from.

Evil sunken eyes bored into Lyle before Raines answered, "You've been hanging around your sister too long. I'm going to fill him up with some more antibiotics to kill the infection, it should keep him going until our problems are solved, afterwards we'll stop the antibiotics and let him die; he'll have served his purpose."

"You're right, there's not too much skin left to pilfer from him. So we'll give them the two extra days?" Lyle spoke fast for the stench seemed to now permeate everything including himself.

Raines peered up at him. "For the antibiotics to take, but as soon as she contacts you to say she has Jarod, we go. I don't want this experiment to die before we get them all."

"I always thought that we needed Jarod." Lyle commented, puzzled.

"We have the baby," was Raines reply as he wheeled himself over to a small table with syringes on it.

"What about Sidney and Broots?" queried Lyle.

"What about them? We can dispose of them any time." Was his response, "They don't pose any jeopardy to us, but Parker and Jarod will if they learned of our little project." answered Raines.

Lyle just shrugged and wondered which little project; they had so many secrets, so many little projects. He wanted to know the answers, but right then the smell was so overpowering and pungent that Lyle had to get out of there and get a fresh breath of air in his lungs. Even as Lyle made his way back to his office, every breath he took smelled of rancid infection. He wondered if it would ever go away.

Unknown to them sitting in a ventilation shaft to the side of them was Angelo; in front of him was a computer with a video camera, which was downloading the whole conversation to Jarod. After finishing the download, Angelo smiled to himself and sat back.

Carnival

Somerset Pa

Parker awoke to find herself alone; the aroma of coffee waffled down to her, making her smile. She'd had a wonderful dream about strong, protective arms surrounding her last night. Finally, her mind clicked on the fact that Jarod was gone; her heart skipped a beat as panic set in. Where in the hell was he? She forced herself up and noticed that a pair of handcuffs sat on the table along with a cup of hot coffee and a note with her first name scribbled on it.

She picked it up, unfolded it and started to read:

My dearest,

I hope you are enjoying your morning coffee, there's also a peanut butter sandwich in the fridge. I left an outfit for you hanging up in the bathroom, also some mascara and lipstick. You wear too much make up, Miss Parker, and that's quite bad for the complexion. Sydney and Broots are already up and fed and are down with their pretends. Yours, my dear, is Bonnie Williams, the sister of the deceased. Check the red notebook. I told them that the ice queen was my fiancée –Bonnie Williams. I'm in the middle of my magic act, meet you at the shooting gallery in an hour and I'll give you the rest of your pretend. Maybe we can play normal people, at least for a while. If anyone asks about your brother, tell them that you know he was murdered while chasing the dragon. Knowing you, you already know what I want; you chased me long enough.

Jarod

P. S. Last night was wonderful, it proves that you have a heart and your heart is still mine.

"Last night? What in the hell happened last night? I swear to God, Jarod, I'm not going to let you play me." Parker took two steadying breaths and as she looked over the last sentence of his note, she grinned wickedly. "Well Jarod, you can't be so great in the sack if I can't even remember it." Tossing the note back down, she dismissed it as another of his lame attempts to harass her.

Parker shook her head, the only thought in her mind now was coffee and then a nice shower and some new clothes. She wondered if the 1920's dress she was wearing was just a pre-set for his little pretend. A bell went off in her mind; no, it was a test to see if they would go along, he could have chosen any clothes; the rest had gone along with Jarod's little joke, but she hadn't, maybe that's why she was getting her gun back. The others had nothing to bargain with. She gave herself a satisfactory smile. She'd won that battle. Parker finished the rest of her coffee and read over the report on Ted Williams. God, the local M.E. here was an imbecile, the petical hemorrhage alone told of death by smothering or strangulation. Jarod's notes were wonderful, easily read and straight to the point. She wondered briefly if Jarod could teach Frick and Frack to do their reports in such a neat manner.

She glanced at the first photo; there was nothing unusual, it show the outside of a trailer and not just any trailer, but the same one she was standing in. Parker felt a chill; great, from one murder house to another, no wonder she was beginning to feel at home. She tossed the first photo to the very back of the report. The second photo was labeled 'Deceased' and showed Ted Williams lying on the same small bed she'd slept on; in the photo, his head was tilted towards the window. Parker noted no blood, but his pajamas were buttoned wrong and his arms where laid across his chest. The body was resting on its back and one word came to her mind—posed---amateur.

Another thing about the photo was the cleanliness, for a guy who had introduced all those drugs to his system, she wonder why there wasn't vomit, usually the body always tried to detoxify itself and his body wouldn't be laid out nice and clean if it had. It peaked Parker's curiosity as she fingered through the rest of the photos. There was one with a clear shot of his face. He seemed so young; his clean-shaven face was a pasty white, lips tinged in blue, a dark bruise outlining his left jaw and slight discoloring around his mouth. His eyes were colored over in light milky white, but tiny little pinpoints of blood showed in the white of the dead blue eyes.

Parker placed the photos behind the report. The rest of the documents where done by experts and within the margins were elegant handwriting, Jarod's handwriting. Parker would know his script anywhere. Parker took a sip of coffee as she read each report from autopsy to scene investigation, she mostly noted from the detective writings, "From the kitchen, which has a vinyl floor, I noticed a number of dried drops of what appeared to be gastric content-like fluid on the carpet of the living quarters. The drops were in a line, stopping in the area beside the bed where the body was found." Also this little tidbit, "In addition, a number of dead ants were noted in the cabinet below the sink in the kitchen." The next page was another examination and tests ordered on the body. Standard toxicological profile including alprazolam.

Vitreous chemistry profile. Cyanide. Arsenic. Strychnine. Sodium monofluoroacetate (rodenticide). Lung tissue opiates.

In basic breakdown, it was a combination of drugs from Heroin to Zanex. She skipped down the page to MICROSCOPIC EXAMINATION.

She read it all and then turned to the next page only to find another medical report. Parker glanced over Jarod's notes then took another sip of coffee. The next few pages were loaded with copies of official detective notes and interviews. 'Well, Jarod, I see you played G-man again," she said to herself. After reading all the notes, she could pretty much conclude what had happened. It's seemed that one Tracy Reed liked pretty boys, drugs and money so she'd latched on to Ted Williams, a likable young man, but stupid. He was into chasing the dragon, which she learned through reading, was a combination of drugs that were smoked, according his friends, he never shot up or ingested drugs because he had witnessed the death of a college friend from an OD and needles scared him.

He became involved with Tracy, who, in three months had sucked him dry and had decided to move on until his grandmother died and left him a little bit of money. Unfortunately, she'd already left him and he didn't want her back, but she had other ideas, she wanted the money. By then, she had a new beau, nitwit number two, who had helped her kill Ted for his money.

Since Jarod was here doing a pretend, that meant the two idiots had killed Ted for nothing because they couldn't get to the money or even find it. He needed her because Tracy had never met Bonnie.

After finishing the report, Parker got up and took a nice warm shower, washed her hair and use Jarod's tooth brush. After drying off, she looked over the clothes he had left her, blue jeans and a plaid top. "Great, little

Orphan Annie." She spoke to herself, she had no other makeup than the mascara and lipstick, do she did her lashes and lips then pulled her hair back into a ponytail. God, she felt like she was 14 again. She practically tore through his trailer looking for her shoes, her gun or the DSA, but could not find any of items. The only shoes she could find were high-heeled cowboy boots, which of course, were in her size.

She had to admit that lately her chasing Jarod was just a pretense to find out more about her mother and about the rest of her relatives. Some of it had shocked her and shaken her down to her mortal soul, if she had any left. All the revelations confused her; each safety net Jarod destroyed, altered her world forever. She realized that Jarod had, in his own way, forced her to have a change of heart. She had changed when she helped JJ and when she saw her mother's death as heroic instead of stupid and weak. So many things had changed, even Jarod, he had become a man and a man with confidence, instead of the little boy exploring the world filled with games and play. He had become more focused, more mature and understanding; there was now an undercurrent of danger, he was a man not to be messed with.

They had both changed, but every time he asked her to leave the Centre, she couldn't, it was her home, the only thing from her past that was real. She was the little girl who had sneaked through the air vents with her few friends. When she was at boarding school, it had been the Centre she wanted to go home to and now it was the new little Parker that she had to protect and like it or not, Sydney and Broots, plus an added bonus was that with her as the hunter, she could guarantee Jarod's safety. She no longer cared if she brought Jarod back, deep inside her, she was glad that he was free to find his family. There were times that she loved Jarod and hated him at the same time. A tear slipped down her cheek, she quickly brushed it away and took one last look in the bathroom mirror. A version of herself that she hadn't seen for a long time stared back. She smashed her hand into it, shattering the bathroom mirror. She peered into the shattered fragments, he wanted Bonnie Williams and he'd get Bonnie Williams then they could go back to their own survival. The Centre had taught her how to play the game, a game of survival from hunter to pretender. One thing Parker wondered about was why Jarod always took the hard way; it would have been easier and faster interviewing people with her gun instead of pretense, but she had given Jarod her word. It did help a little that he still had her gun. The lab rat was always complicating her life.

Parker couldn't help but feel a certain kinship to Bonnie, here was a woman who had been told that her only brother had killed himself, instead he had been murdered and no one believed her. She was fighting an uphill battle with the authorities, which didn't want the case reopened. God, Jarod was turning her into a freaking little Miss Goody Two Shoes. At least she'd get her gun back. She checked Jarod's notes on Bonnie; she seemed easygoing, very warm, intelligent and obsessed with her brother's death. Parker took a deep breath as she exited the trailer as Bonnie Williams. She slowly made her way though the throngs of people, some dressed in elaborate costumes and some in just regular clothes. Parker thought of her mother as she walked, knowing that Bonnie's mind would be on her brother. As she passed one of the stalls, she saw Broots dressed in jeans with a bright Hawaiian shirt. He seemed preoccupied with tossing balls at coke bottles and doing a rather shoddy job at it. 'Typical geek,' she thought to herself.

Nearing the shooting gallery, Parker saw Jarod leaning against the post, but he wasn't alone, a tall, leggy blonde wearing nothing but a swimsuit was with him, one hand swinging in the breeze and the other clinging to Jarod's forearm in an almost death grip. Parker knew instantly that it was Tracy Reed. The photograph had been kind; cheap, blonde, floozy fit her to a tee. Parker plastered on a phony smile as she approached them.

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your little arm bracelet?" Parker asked as she ran her hand up Jarod's chest, liking the reaction she got; it was between shock and embarrassment. Parker smiled seductively at him.

When he finally composed himself, he said. "Hmmm… This is Tracy Reed."

"Jarod has told me so much about you, Tracy. It's so nice to meet the girl my fiancée," Parker gave him a killer glance, "tells me has a single digit IQ."

Jarod winced at that last statement then smiled. 'She's jealous.' He realized and grinned even wider.

"Jarod is sweet like that, isn't he?" The blonde giggled.

"Oh yes, Jarod is, since he doesn't have the capability to introduce us, I'm Bonnie Williams, Ted's sister. It's nice to see that," Parker glanced at Tracy's arm, which was wrapped tightly around Jarod's, "you've move on after my brother's murder."