Balancing The Scales - Part 18
The Winds of Change
by MMB
Sydney looked up as Kevin and Debbie walked slowly from the elevator to the hospital lobby. Debbie looked as if she'd been crying - but while Kevin looked distressed as well, he seemed to have a handle on himself well enough that he was able to offer her some support. Sydney rose to his feet slowly, then let his granddaughter have the hug from him that she immediately came in search of. "How is your father, ma petite?"
"Still unconscious," she told him with a sniffle. "Two broken legs, a crushed pelvis, serious blood loss. The doctor says he's in serious condition. He's just out of surgery, has a contraption holding his hips together, pins holding his leg together..." Sydney winced, as much from the very idea of what Broots was going to be facing in terms of recovery as from the dull ache in his side that was starting to wear through the medication again.
Sam's face showed his own sympathy with the young woman. "I'm sorry to hear about your Dad, Deb," the ex-sweeper said from his wheelchair.
Deb lifted her head from her grandfather's shoulder long enough to shoot her family friend a sad smile. "Thanks, Sam. I'm glad you're OK - aren't you?" she asked, giving the wheelchair a second look.
"Oh, I'm only in this contraption because of hospital rules," he reassured her gruffly. "I've got a headache, and my neck and back feel a little scoured, but otherwise..."
"I told him we could take him back to Blue Cove with us, when you're ready to leave," Sydney added with a careful look at Deb's face. "You OK?"
She nodded. "Kevin's been with me, and that's helped. Dad just lies there, so quiet..." Her voice broke, and then she straightened after taking a deep breath. "I asked the nurses to call me at your place if he started to wake up later today, so I could drive in again and be here for him. Otherwise, I'll just drive back over tomorrow morning." She snuggled back into her grandfather's arms again. "You don't mind if I stay with you another night, do you, Grandpa? I really don't want to be alone..."
"Of course I don't mind, cheri," Sydney soothed, tightening his arms around her carefully again. He could feel the tension in her body and wished that there was something he could do to help her - and knew the only thing that would help would be for her father to regain consciousness. "Are you ready to go now, or do you want to stay here for a while longer?"
"Do you think we can go get some lunch and then stop back for a little while before heading home?" Debbie asked carefully. She could feel the tension in her grandfather's touch as well, and knew that he probably still was hurting himself. "Are you going to be alright, or do you feel like you need to get home and rest again?"
Sydney kissed Debbie gently, then let her go. "I can take some more Tylenol while at lunch, and that should keep me until I get home..."
Kevin stepped forward. He hadn't missed Sydney's wince earlier. "Maybe you should take them now - give them that much more time to work. And," now the young Pretender turned to Debbie, "maybe we could just have our lunch here, so he doesn't have to walk all the way out to the car until it's necessary?"
"I'm not an invalid," Sydney grumbled, not at all happy to be the center of concern.
"Face it, Doc, you're in a lot worse shape than I am, overall," Sam commented with a dry humor from his perch in the wheelchair. "I'm still not sure how you managed to talk Jarod into letting you be this active today. You'd better pull in your horns a bit, or you'll have Miss Parker and the Lab-rat all over you for doing too much again."
"And me," Kevin piped up quietly but firmly.
"And me," Debbie contributed leaning back against her grandfather fondly with an arm still wrapped gently around his middle. "I appreciate you bringing me here, Grandpa, but I don't want you making yourself bad again..."
"Hush!" Sydney hugged Debbie tightly. "Alright, alright! Hospital food for lunch it will be." He looked down into her face. "Happy?"
Debbie nodded, and Kevin moved behind Sam's wheelchair. "After you, Doc," Sam waved his hand toward the hallway and the cafeteria somewhere down its length.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Randy waited for Ikeda to collect his soft bag from the overhead compartment and start moving down the aisle toward the huge jet's exit before standing in his seat and reaching for his own travel bag. How he'd lucked out and gotten the window seat on the trans-Pacific flight, he didn't know - but he had enjoyed a real rush of homesickness and relief as he watched the Tokyo runway appear below him.
He was tired, but happy. Ikeda had had him make several stops along the way to New York City so that, one by one, pieces of the weapon that had been stored in that fancy briefcase could be disposed of. By the time the two had arrived at La Guardia, the briefcase had been stripped of its foam packing material and was back to being just a regular case filled with various office supplies.
Randy shouldered the strap from his travel bag and made his way down the retractable tunnel from the jet and into the terminal - then stopped short. Ikeda-san had been met by and was now talking to several of Tanaka-sama's top organizational officers, and the group looked positively grim. He took a deep breath, not having been directly ordered to return to Japan after all, and walked resolutely up to the group and then bowed deeply.
"Obayashi-san," the oldest said dryly with a much less deep bow of his own. "Ikeda-san here says that he deemed it wise that you both return here from Delaware. Considering the sequence of recent events, I agree with his estimation. I am Ueda Kyoshi, second attaché of Tanaka-sama."
"Ueda-sama," Randy bowed again. "It is my honor to serve you and Tanaka-sama."
Ueda turned and exchanged glances with his other as-yet-unnamed associates with raised black eyebrows. "Then you haven't heard?" he asked both of the new arrivals.
"Heard what, Ueda-san?" Ikeda asked with just the proper amount of deference for a relative equal within the Yakuza organization.
"Tanaka-sama was at the Centre in Delaware yesterday morning, where he'd gone to keep an appointment with the Triumverate shogun Ngawe-sama. There was an explosion there - it has been on all the US news stations. We are still waiting to hear news of Tanaka-sama and his associates on that trip."
Randy and Ikeda exchanged startled looks. Ikeda bowed slightly. "I saw the explosion, Ueda-san. I was there outside the Centre under Tanaka-sama's orders to take care of two separate hits. And with all due respect, surviving what happened there would take a miracle. I would be very surprised indeed if Tanaka-sama is still breathing air."
Ueda turned and looked at his associates again. "That is indeed unfortunate! Akido-san, you'll have to go check and see whether there were contingency plans set up by Tanaka-sama in case of his death to see the Yakuza through a change in administration." He turned back to the new arrivals. "Let's go get your luggage, gentlemen. I'm sure you both will be glad to get home, neh?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Kevin had been keeping a very close eye on Sydney all through lunch after watching him pop three Tylenol tablets, and he finally nudged Debbie. "Maybe you'd better head back upstairs to check on your Dad. I don't know that Sydney's going to last much longer."
Deb looked over at her grandfather and saw what had triggered Kevin's comment. Sydney's face had become quite pale, and he had a slight sheen of perspiration on his brow. "I think I'll go up and check on Dad now, and then I think I'LL drive home," she announced as she rose. "Kevin, why don't you get Sam and Grandpa out to the car - I'll come out and meet you there."
"Nonsense, Kevin. I'm fine..." the psychiatrist began to complain.
"No you're not," Sam spoke up firmly. Sympathetic dark eyes met stubborn chestnut. "You're not fooling any of us with your tough talk, Sydney - right now you look like death warmed over and on the verge of collapse." The ex-sweeper looked over at Kevin. "Have you figured out how to drive yet, kiddo?"
"Not really," Kevin shook his head. "I have a rough idea, but there's been so much else going on..."
"Just let me go up and check on Dad, and then I'll fetch the car to the lobby door," Debbie inserted firmly. "If Dad's not awake yet, and he probably isn't, I wouldn't be staying very long anyway. You two get Sydney into the lobby, and I'll take care of getting the car close to the entrance and then driving home once I'm back down..."
"The seatbelt..." Sydney tried once more to complain.
"...in the back seat, on the driver's side, won't hit you any worse than it does when you're driving," Sam interrupted him again, finishing the sentence in a far different manner than the older man had intended. "Face it, you're outvoted, Doc. Might as well relax and enjoy getting chauffeured around for the rest of the day - and then make plans to spend the next few flat on your back again, once Jarod finds out how much you overdid again."
"Sam's right - Jarod's going to be really upset that you've made yourself worse yet again. AND he's going to be all over ME for not making you take it easy more," Kevin agreed. "Now that everybody's at least accounted for, and the pressure to get Deb to Dover to find out how her Dad is has let up some, let some of us help you too. You know very well that you're hurt at least as badly as Sam, if not worse."
Debbie bent over her grandfather and gave him a quick hug. "I won't be long, Grandpa, I promise."
"Now you listen to me, cheri - I want you to take as long as you need," Sydney told her vehemently and then kissed her cheek. "Don't worry about me. I'll take it easy in the lobby until you get back, I promise."
"You'd better," she warned him, then nodded at Kevin and Sam and turned toward the cafeteria entrance and the elevator that was a ways down the hallway.
Kevin rose from his chair and collected the trash from the table. "I'll take Sam back to the lobby," he told Sydney, "and then I'll be back for you. You wait for me, so you can lean on me."
Sydney nodded in calm acquiescence. If he were honest with himself, he'd have to admit that he really DIDN'T feel all that well, and having Sam and the kids take control of the situation away from him in this manner was almost a relief.
And that worried him. He'd felt so much better earlier that morning - and he really hadn't done THAT much... had he?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Is that coffee I smell?" Miss Parker asked drowsily, opening her eyes and beginning to roll over, and then she groaned loudly. "Oh God! You didn't happen to get the license number of that semi that flattened me, did you?" She pushed herself into a half-sitting position and tipped her head back carefully on a very stiff neck. "I can hardly move!"
"Here," Jarod handed her the steaming mug of coffee. "I figured you could use this at least as much as I."
"Thanks." She buried her nose in the fragrant steam for a bit after taking a first, necessary sip. "What's going on in the rest of the house?"
"Davy's still on the video game downstairs, Syd and the kids have taken off for Dover to see about Broots." Jarod answered, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to her.
"You found him in the Sim Lab?" she asked quickly, and he nodded. She closed her eyes with self-blame - she HAD walked right past him. "How was he when you saw him last?" was the next anxious question.
"Pretty badly beat up," he replied. "Compound fracture of his left leg made him lose a lot of blood. I don't know that he would have lasted much longer if he hadn't been found when he was."
"Damn," she muttered to herself, having to swallow hard against the guilt welling up in her throat, threatening to choke her. She looked up at him with wide eyes. "I feel so ... I could have..."
"Don't beat yourself up over this," Jarod soothed, a hand coming out to smooth her dark hair back a bit. "Your reasoning was completely sound that if Syd was at home, the Sim Lab would be shut up tight. You've worked at the Centre all these years - that's SOP. You had no way of knowing that Syd had called and sent Broots down there looking for files for him. The important thing is that I got back down to him in time - he was alive and fairly stable when they loaded him into the ambulance." He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. "And if something had happened to him after that, we would have heard."
Miss Parker could hear Sydney making basically the same argument the night before - but she knew it would be a very long time before she could ever forgive herself for inadvertently leaving her old friend behind. "I know that," she reasoned after another long sip of coffee, "but it doesn't help, you know?"
Jarod's dark eyes were understanding. "Yeah," he nodded slowly. "I know." His hand smoothed her hair yet again. "You probably won't forgive yourself until Broots himself lets you off the hook, will you?"
The grey eyes narrowed for a moment. "You know me a little too well sometimes," she said dryly.
"Yeah, well I also know that if you want to get those muscles of yours moving again, you should probably head out for a nice, long, HOT shower," he told her, relieving her of her coffee mug and ignoring her grumble of complaint. "Or I could give you a massage first," he suggested, his eyebrows yo-yoing up and down lecherously.
She swatted at his nearest thigh. "You're impossible," she retorted.
"I am not - I'm just trying to be motivational," he countered, getting to his feet and pulling the covers away. "Maybe it would work better if I threw in a nice lunch as well as enticement?"
"Now you're talkin'," she smiled up at him, then let him help her to her feet. "First the shower, though," she patted him on the stomach as he hugged her gently, then pushed him away. "Go on. A nice lunch takes work."
Jarod shook his head and chuckled at her. "What a slave-driver," he commented and then scooted out the bedroom door before she could swat at him again. "Whenever you're ready," he tempted from the top of the stairs. His tread down the staircase, however, was no more spry that hers would be.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The sleek, new Nissan limousine slipped into the underground garage of the high-rise building in the middle of Tokyo that housed, on the upper 15 floors, the central offices of the Tanaka Yakuza. Randy - he still thought of himself that way, despite his being home and entitled to reclaim his original name for daily use - looked about him appreciatively. He hadn't been in this building since long before his assignment to the States.
And when the elevator stopped on the residential floor, he let out another appreciative sigh. When summoned to the penthouse suite after his contact had turned out to be a police mole, he hadn't really had a chance to see the quality of the accommodations - and he'd been in far too much pain from the loss of his pinky to notice anything after that. He'd then been exiled back to his hometown of Osaka to be a runner for the local boss when his hand healed, and reassigned to the States from there.
"You will find your new accommodations here. Wait patiently, and you will be summoned for debriefing." Ueda-san handed him a key card and pointed him down the corridor in the proper direction from the elevator, then restrained Ikeda from getting off on that floor and let the elevator door slip closed.
The room the keycard made available was very traditional - smooth tatami invited him to shed his shoes immediately by the door. There was a comfortable-looking futon already arranged near the center of the room, a cleaned and crisply folded yukata [kimono-like robe] sitting on top of the covers and a fresh pair of zori waiting for when he was ready to head off for the bath. An aesthetically sparse tokonomo with calligraphy of an obscure quote from "The Five Rings", complete with a small ikebana arrangement beneath it, was located close to the floor to ceiling window. Near the window sat the low table surrounded by four pillows at each seat at the proper distance from the tokonomo.
Randy took a deep breath and smelled in the very essence of being HOME. It was a nearly intoxicating experience to go from such exotic climes as very-American Delaware to very-Japanese downtown Tokyo within the space of twenty-four hours. He had to admit that it was a helluva lot more comfortable adjustment on the return trip. If he had his way, he'd never leave Japan for long again.
He set his travel bag down next to the black lacquered cabinet into which he would unpack eventually and walked over to finger aside the sheer curtains and look down at the Tokyo street scene below. As he raised his eyes and studied the skyline, there was a low knock on the door. When he opened the door, it was to admit a deeply-bowing kimono-clad maid carrying a tray of tea and small morsels to slack his late-afternoon hunger. She silently carried her burden to the center of the table, then bowed her way out again.
Randy shrugged himself out of his sports jacket and hung it in the narrow little closet close to the door. The tea smelled wonderful, and taking the proper time to appreciate this little luxury would fill the time between now and when he was summoned.
And give him a chance to really relax in a more familiar environment.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ueda moved surely behind his desk and motioned to Ikeda to take a seat in the comfortable chair in front of it. "There has been considerable discussion about the mental state of Tanaka-sama in the last few days before his trip to the States. What do you have to add to what we already know?"
"Not much," the assassin shrugged casually. "As you know, my services are contracted - I am brought into the organization only when I'm needed and then given only such information as will make my job easier. Tanaka-sama was adamant that I dispatch Raines-san for having wasted Yakuza time and money with a eugenics project that went nowhere ultimately. I was sent to Delaware originally for just the one hit. Only later was I called and then given an additional target - with no explanation, just a picture of another haku-jin."
"And you say you fulfilled your orders?" Ueda asked, gesturing to an assistant to approach.
"Hai." Ikeda bowed in his seat. "It was as I dispatched that nameless haku-jin that I witnessed the explosion and demolition of the Centre Tower." He shuddered. "I made sure I left no evidence traceable back to me or the Yakuza, and then made the decision to extricate Obayashi-san with myself to avoid possible questions with American authorities."
"So you weren't aware that it was Tanaka-sama himself who ordered that arrangements be made to bomb the Centre?"
Ikeda's jaw dropped to the floor. "Tanaka-sama did that? But... I thought you said... he was in the Tower..."
"One of Tanaka-sama's closest associates was a schoolmate of mine - and had grown increasingly disturbed over the past few years of the close ties that the Yakuza was growing with the Centre," Ueda explained obliquely. "He had expressed this distress to me and several other of his equals in the other branches several times. When Tanaka-sama ordered that an American haku-jin be found to do the demolition job, and then almost immediately took off to America to try to put a halt on the job, I was contacted by the Nagasaki and Okinawa branches for a summit meeting." Ueda's eyes sparkled coldly. "At that meeting, it was decided that the Tanaka family had done sufficient damage to the face of Yakuza in the world that their authority over the Tokyo branch could no longer be tolerated."
The assassin's face stayed very carefully neutral, but inside he was squirming. "Indeed. I take it that you were placed in charge?"
"Provisionally," Ueda nodded very slightly. "And it is my job to try to clean up the mess left by Tanaka through his short-sighted scheme for revenge having the bad karma to harm the head of the Triumverate itself in the process. With the Centre crippled and reeling from this act of aggression, and the Triumverate looking in all directions for the guilty in the harming of Ngawe-sama - whom the gods have favored by keeping alive, although harmed - the entire Yakuza will have to prepare for serious repercussions."
Ikeda bowed deeply from his seated position. "It is my honor to serve the Yakuza to the best of my abilities."
"What does Obayashi Ryoshi-san know about the Delaware situation?"
"Obayashi-san's information was what give Tanaka-sama the ability to pinpoint MY assignment as far as Raines-san was concerned. It is my belief that his information about the removal of Raines-san as Chairman of the Centre that triggered the trip to the States to try to stop the demolition job." Ikeda looked at his Yakuza boss levelly. "It is well known that Tanaka-sama had at one time been close to Chairman Parker-san's daughter - I believe that Obayashi found out that Ngawe-sama was intending on appointing HER Chairman, and wanted to stop the bombing before she was hurt."
"By the gods, all those Tanakas ever did think with was their gonads!" Ueda exploded. "Putting personal agendas before Yakuza face is unforgivable. If Tanaka-san were alive, I'd be ordering you to take him out myself."
"Both Sonny-sama and Tommy-sama were very headstrong," Ikeda agreed very cautiously. This could all be a ploy to determine loyalty by inviting treachery. "But while they were in charge here, I was honor-bound to carry out their requests - as were all under their command."
Ueda nodded. "Understood." He pushed a key card across the desk at the assassin. "Here. I've had your luggage taken to your room. Please tell Obayashi-san that I would like to see him immediately, and then please relax. We will have some time to try to come up with a contingency plan for handling Triumverate repercussions - I will be needing your input. Tomorrow, though, when you're rested."
Ikeda rose and bowed deeply. "Domo arigato, Ueda-sama," he said with the proper tone of deference, and then turned to leave.
At the bottom of that now-innocuous briefcase was a cell phone. Somehow, somewhere, he knew he was going to want to get to a private place and use it - and see just how bad things were going to get.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Sir? Sir?"
Slowly the soft calling broke through the fog that had filled Ngawe's brain as his body had been freed from its prison of fallen Tower rubble. It took several attempts, however, for him to finally convince his heavy eyes to blink open - and then a few more moments for them to focus on the face that hovered over his. "S..s...iskele?"
"Yes, sir!" The round dark face split into a wide grin. "Good to have you back with us, sir!"
Ngawe blinked slowly against the fog in his mind that would have made it ever so easy to just float away again, and he slowly moved his head from side to side, taking in the hospital sights. "Where...?"
"In Dover, sir. They transported all the injured survivors here - not that there were very many of them from the Tower itself..."
"Who..." His mind searched desperately through his last memories. "The Yakuza! Did any of them..."
Siskele shrugged his massive shoulders. "I haven't checked, sir. Do you want me to?"
The elderly African nodded his head weakly against his pillow. "Contact Nairobi and tell them we will be wanting a meeting of the entire Triumverate assembly very soon. We cannot let this affront to global interests go unanswered."
"No, sir." Siskele found himself grateful that his grand-uncle seemed to be regaining his power even as he lay there with a broken back. Too many of his associates from home had perished the day before - and apparently Uncle Otamo knew the ones responsible.
"What about the Centre? Miss Parker? Did she...?"
"She survived, sir. She was underground at the time."
Ngawe nodded. "Then we will need to speak to her too, as soon as possible. We imagine the Centre will be wanting to take part in whatever we decide against the Yakuza..."
"Do you want me to call her, sir?" Siskele asked, not entirely sure how to get a hold of a Centre Chairman newly deprived of an office at which she could be reached.
"Not yet." The elderly African shook his head carefully - just moving invited new adventures in pain. "She has an organization in complete chaos at the moment. Give her a day or so to begin reorganization, THEN call her." The dark eyes finally focused on the round face sharply. "And make arrangements for a guard at our door. The Yakuza must know by now that they have made a grievous mistake in attacking the Centre while it was in Triumverate control - and we cannot put it past them to try a pre-emptive move to correct that blunder. See to it personally that Miss Parker is sufficiently guarded as well - by her own people or by ours, we really don't care which. Call in all the reinforcements from home you feel necessary."
"Yes, sir." The young African had drawn out a small notebook from his breast pocket and was taking notes. "Immediately, sir."
Ngawe tried to move his legs, but suddenly discovered that he couldn't even feel them, much less move them. "And find us our doctor. We need to know what we are to expect by way of recovery. We have far too much work to do to be tied down to a hospital bed for any longer than necessary."
"Yes, sir!"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Davy turned around when movement on the edge of his vision caught his attention, and then he was up - headphones flying - and running. "Mommy!"
"Hey there!" Miss Parker bent and caught her son in a tight embrace. "Thanks for letting me sleep, little man."
"You OK?" Davy asked anxiously. "I mean, I know you're OK, but..." His eyes got wide. "You didn't fall when the building came down, did you?"
"No, baby. I was downstairs. The Centre has a very big basement, and I was down there when things came down." She kissed the top of his head. She should have known - he'd have seen the TV reports, and no doubt the picture had been anything but encouraging. "And nothing fell on me either." She straightened, but it was with an involuntary groan that made his eyes widen just a bit more. "Oh, I'm not really hurt, Davy, I'm just really stiff and sore. I've just walked up and down way more stairs than I EVER want to again!" She sniffed the air appreciatively in order to distract her boy from his fears. "Smells like your Dad's cooking something good for lunch."
"Grilled cheese sandwiches," Davy nodded with a smile. "He knows I like them."
"I like 'em too, you know," Miss Parker ruffled her son's hair and retraced her steps to the kitchen. "Grilled cheese sandwiches are not a bad enticement," she commented as she moved up behind Jarod and wrapped her arms around his waist. "The massage can wait until later - but is definitely motivating..."
"Oh yeah," Jarod quipped, turning his head so that he could share a quick kiss.
Davy stood back in the door between the kitchen and den with a very pleased smile on his face. NOW his Mom and Dad were beginning to act like a Mom and Dad - not only toward him, but towards each other. The more he thought about it, the more he like that. A lot.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Debbie walked through the door and made her way to where she had moved the chair next to her father's hospital bed when she and Kevin had left for lunch. She quietly moved it closer to his head and seated herself after dropping a fond kiss on his forehead. "I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to stay with you today, Dad. Grandpa Sydney drove us in this morning, and right now he isn't doing too good. Besides, Sam was just released, and Grandpa said that he could ride home with us."
She took her seat and reclaimed the hand she'd been holding earlier, again being careful not to dislodge IV connections. "I know that Miss Parker made it home last night, in case you were wondering. That means we know where everybody is. Now all we need is for you to decide the time's come to wake up."
She sighed. "You're in the hospital in Dover, in case you were wondering. Jarod found you early this morning and brought you out. When I saw him this morning, he was really tired and out of it. We left him at Grandpa's to get some more sleep. And Miss Parker was still asleep when we left too - in with Davy. I guess it isn't so easy to climb stairs from the Sim Lab after all."
"Boy, you should see the TV reports from the Centre! The place is a mess - and a zoo! The whole Tower came down, you know. They're talking about quite a number of dead folks being dug out of the wreckage. I'm just so glad you weren't up in the Tower when it went, Daddy. You OR Miss Parker." Debbie caught her breath and held it a bit to steady herself again. "C'mon Dad. You don't want to sleep your life away like this..."
She wiped a stubborn tear from her cheek. "Well, I suppose I had better think about getting back down and driving Grandpa home, so Uncle Jarod can chew him out again for doing too much." She rose and moved her chair back so that it would be out of the way of the nurses. "I'll be back in the morning, or sooner, if you decide to actually make an appearance. I'm staying with Grandpa for at least one more night - I really don't want to be alone right now."
She bent over him again and kissed his cheek gently, then smoothed her hand over his bald pate. "I love you, Daddy. I miss you." Another stubborn tear managed the leap from eyelash to cheek. "Wake up. Come back to me soon. Please?"
She paused from the doorway again. "I'll see you again tomorrow, Daddy," she told him in a half-broken voice, then turned to the corridor and the elevator.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"They're home, Jarod!" Miss Parker's call echoed back into the den where he was giving Davy a run for his money at that video game now that the kitchen was cleaned up again.
Jarod dropped the controller and rose to his feet as he heard the garage door opener rattle and clang, then went to the garage door and opened it. "Hey! Sam!" he called with a wave at the sight of the burly ex-sweeper in the front passenger seat. "Good to see you're not too badly damaged..."
"Nah, I've had a lot worse than this," Sam said, motioning to the goose-egg on his forehead that promised to turn a hideous purple-green before it disappeared entirely. He climbed carefully from the seat, then moved with determination around the back of the car and opened the door for the passenger behind the driver. "But I think I could use a hand here. Sydney's overdone again..."
"Damn!" Jarod swore and hurried to his old mentor's side. Sydney's face was pale and pinched with pain. "I thought you were going to pop Tylenol when things got bad. What happened?"
"The Tylenol didn't do him a bit of good," Kevin answered for the psychiatrist, climbing out of the car and opening the kitchen door for Jarod and Sam, who had Sydney carefully supported between them.
Sydney simply shook his head. "I don't get it. I didn't do all that much - and I felt fine this morning..."
"Syd...ney?" Miss Parker's smile of greeting broke into a worried grimace. "What's wrong?"
"What is this anyway - getting back at me for all the bad times I gave you in the Centre?" Jarod scolded the older man in fond frustration.
"Training you for parenthood," Sydney quipped back with a tight voice as he leaned heavily on both men, just as frustrated and earnestly looking forward to being deposited back on his day bed.
"Uh-huh," Jarod sounded distinctly under-impressed. "Kevin, go get the medical bag. Let's see just what Houdini's done to himself this time."
Miss Parker, however, had hung back, seeing that the men were handling Sydney quite capably without her, so that she could greet Debbie. "How's your Dad?" she asked in a quiet, anxious tone.
Debbie moved into a hug that she desperately needed. "Two legs broken, a crushed pelvis - and he's still unconscious from surgery and all the blood loss." She sighed. "The doctor seems hopeful - he thinks that he'll be OK eventually, provided he begins to wake up pretty soon..."
"Oh, Deb, I'm so sorry..." Miss Parker started, not exactly knowing how to say what was in her heart. "I swear to you that I didn't know he was in the Sim Lab... If I had..."
Debbie's arms tightened around the woman who had been more of a mother to her than her own ever had been. "It's OK - I know that. Dad knows that too."
"But... how did he get so badly hurt?" Miss Parker up and over the top of Deb's head at Jarod. "I was meaning to ask you earlier, then got distracted. How on earth..."
"The file cabinet he was looking through fell on him - hard," Jarod answered. "From the looks of things, he had the top drawer all the way open when the explosion made the floor dance, and when he fell it just slammed into him and pinned him underneath."
"That's my fault," Sydney's voice came from the den, where Kevin was helping him out of his shirt so that his dressings could be checked. "I sent him for some of my old files on you, Jarod."
"It's nobody's fault!" Jarod raised his voice. "Syd, you didn't know that there was going to be a bomb go off; and Parker, you didn't know Syd had called him." He stood in the doorway, put his hands on his hips and looked back and forth between Miss Parker and Sydney. "It was an ACCIDENT, people. Accidents happen."
"Jarod's right," Sam piped up from where he had found a seat at the kitchen table after depositing Sydney in the den. "Nobody could have known this was going to happen, anymore than I knew I was going to have a close encounter with a door edge." He pointed to his goose-egg.
"So... Do you need a ride back in later?" Miss Parker directed her words to Debbie again.
The young woman shook her head. "I think I'll wait until tomorrow morning, and I can drive myself in," she responded, "Thanks anyway. The doctor said that if he hadn't started to wake up by then, they were going to run a whole bunch of tests to see what was going on. By then, I'll know how that's going."
"In that case, if nobody minds," Miss Parker looked over at the rest of her little 'family', "I'm going to need to drive over to the Centre for a while - talk to the firemen there. I left one of them taking down some information that I'm going to need fairly soon about the folks who came up out of the underground facility." She took a deep breath and breathed it out noisily. "I AM the Chairman after all - and my organization is in a helluva mess at the moment. I need to get back to work."
"Miss Parker, if you can stop by my place on the way," Sam suggested firmly, "I'll go with you. I just need to get some decent clothing on..."
"You really should take it easy for a day or so," Jarod cautioned him. "Concussions aren't anything to mess around with. We don't need you pulling a 'Sydney' on us..."
"I resemble that remark," came the tired-sounding riposte from the den, only to be followed immediately by a loud shush from the young Pretender in the process of tending him.
"We noticed," Jarod replied loudly enough for his voice to carry. "Do you want me to go in with you too?" he asked Miss Parker.
"Not if Sam's going with me," she responded, turning to Debbie, "What I DO need, however, is to know if your Dad still had Centre files on his home computer?"
Debbie's eyes widened, and she shrugged. "I don't know what he did or didn't have on there," she admitted. "I tried never to pay too much attention to what he was doing when he was working from home."
"Wise move, Deb," Sam commented dryly.
"How about you and Sam take my car to the Centre and do whatever it is you have to there," Jarod suggested evenly, "while I run Deb home and check out Broots' PC. I'll call you when I have an idea of what he's got. It also leaves the town car here in case we need to transport Syd anywhere - like to a hospital..."
Miss Parker nodded. "Sounds like a plan to me..."
Jarod looked into the den. "Well, Kevin, what's the damages?"
"Nothing obvious. He hasn't pulled any stitches or broken anything open," the young Pretender answered. "He just really needs to stay down and QUIET for a while."
"Think you can handle both Davy and Sydney for the afternoon?"
"I can referee the video game," Sydney spoke up before Kevin could answer. "You folks go on. I'll keep the boys occupied."
"'The boys'?" Miss Parker's eyebrows flew northward.
"Jarod..." Kevin's voice had gone soft. "I think he's running a fever, though..."
The older Pretender was through the den door in a flash and bending over his old mentor with a hand to his forehead and then cheeks. "You ARE a bit warmish, Syd." The dark chocolate eyes looked sharply at the younger man. "I think we're going to have to add in some stiff antibiotics, Kevin. We don't need Sydney coming down with a case of peritonitis on top of everything else..."
"Peritonitis?" Now even Sydney sounded worried.
"It's possible that the bullet could have nicked an ascending corner of the transverse colon on the way through," Jarod told him. "I didn't do all-out surgery to assess the damage when I didn't detect any perforations at the time. But without knowing one way or the other, all this activity for you has got to stop, as of right now." Jarod's face folded into a frown. "Trips to the bathroom and to get up and sit at the table at mealtimes are going to be the limits of your exercise regimen for the next week at least. The rest of the time, you will be lying down, in here on this couch so that you don't have to climb those stairs to lay down either."
"I'm not a child, Jarod," the psychiatrist frowned back.
"And I don't mean to treat you like one, Sydney. I know that all that you've been doing before now has been necessary at the time, but we're reaching the end of what you can be expected to do while this badly hurt. You were shot only a week ago, for God's sake!" Jarod bent so that he could examine the wound Kevin had uncovered. "You're not a young man, and you're not healing as fast as you used to either. You need to give yourself some time, and be patient - and WE need to stop putting you in a position where you CAN'T do either."
"I keep trying," Sydney retorted sharply.
"I know you have been," Jarod soothed, "and recent events haven't exactly been kind to any of us in giving you the time to recoup either. But we're going to have to be a whole more diligent and proactive in keeping you quiet for the time being, or else you're never going to heal properly. The rest of us are going to have to take responsibility for seeing to it that you DO continue to rest and recoup, instead of expecting you to step in and shoulder a load."
"Fair enough," Sydney agreed finally. "Frankly, I don't have either the heart or the energy to argue with you. I'm getting damned sick and tired of feeling like hell."
"All the better." Jarod glanced at Kevin. "Have you got a handle on things here?"
The young pretender nodded. "I'll just re-bandage things and then give him some of his regular pain meds." Kevin looked into Sydney's face. "No more of those useless Tylenols."
"OK. And I'll pick up some antibiotics on my way back from the Broots' house, then." Jarod looked over at Debbie. "You ready?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The mess that had been the Centre Tower looked no less horrific by daylight than it had beneath the halogen floodlights the night before. Miss Parker pulled Jarod's sports car to a halt in an area that had temporarily been set aside for parking and just stared for a while. She glanced over at Sam, who was also staring - even though he'd seen it the day before, it was still a sobering and chilling sight. "It's a miracle any of us came out of that alive," she commented quietly.
"Amen to that!" Sam agreed whole-heartedly.
"C'mon. We've got our work cut out for us," she spurred herself into action, climbing out of the sports car and waiting for Sam to join her before walking toward the command tent. "Who's in charge here?" she asked the nearest fireman, who pointed toward the back of the tent, nearest the table with communications equipment. She thanked the man, then walked purposefully over to the area pointed out to her. "Who's in charge here?" she asked again.
"I'm Chief Simpson," a bulking man with grey hair and steel-grey eyes answered her, looking up from a sheaf of paperwork in his hands at the woman in the smart grey silk pantsuit in front of him. "Who wants to know?"
"I'm Miss Parker, Chairman of the Centre..." she began and extended her hand to him.
"I thought the Chairman was named Raines, although the Chairman before that was named Parker..."
"He was my... father." There was no way in Hell that she'd ever admit to having been related to Raines - not to a complete outsider. Having to admit to a relationship with Mr. Parker was bad enough.
"That explains it, then," the Chief replied, taking her hand firmly in his. She was a cool customer, this new Chairman; her hand in his was firm and steady, and she had as regal a bearing as he had ever seen. "There was a recent change of administration - or you got promoted because of this?" he gestured around him.
"The transfer of authority happened just a little while before this... happened," Miss Parker replied dryly. "This is Sam Atlee, my new Chief of Security," she introduced Sam.
"Mr. Atlee," the Chief shook hands with a man even bigger and huskier than he was with a rather nasty lump on his forehead that spoke of where he had been recently. "Now, what can I do for you?"
"After all my people were out of the underground areas last night, I had them sign out so that I'd have some record of who was here and made it out safely. As you can imagine," she waved her hand at the pile of rubble, some of which was still smoldering, "most of the employment records were in the Tower - and thus are gone. I was wondering if you had that set of papers for me...?"
The Chief was nodding and already sifting through the folders piled in an in-box on the table until he found the one he was looking for. "Here it is." He handed it to her. "For what it's worth, Miss Parker, we have at least a body count for you for those we've recovered from the scene so far." His eyes were grave, with the distance needed for him to deal effectively with this large a tragedy. "Fifty-four positively identified - we're still working on some of the rest of what has been found. We're still not sure just how many more bodies they indicate."
Miss Parker closed her eyes. "How many survivors?" she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer to that one.
"Five, so far. Two women, three men. All were transferred to the hospital in Dover for treatment." The Chief's voice was carefully neutral. "All five were hurt pretty badly - I doubt any have been released from the hospital as yet. All had ID on them. I have a list..." He dug through his folders again. "Yeah, here we are. The names I got were Jenkins and Warren for the women, Ngawe, Fujimori and Hansen for the men."
"Did you say Ngawe?" Miss Parker's eyes widened.
"Yes, ma'am."
She turned and thwacked Sam gently in the chest with the back of her hand. "Get on the horn with the hospital. Make sure they know that the Centre is picking up the tab on his treatment - and make sure that Nairobi is notified immediately that Mr. Ngawe has survived the explosion."
"Uh... what phone?" Sam asked, looking about him and seeing nothing but twisted metal and tumbled concrete.
Miss Parker made a wry face and handed him her cell. "Don't wander too far away with that." As he moved away and started pushing buttons, she turned back to the Chief. "What about the outlying buildings - are they still sound?"
The Chief shrugged. "As far as I can tell - although the closer to the center of the explosion, the more damage they sustained."
"How's the underground facility holding up?"
Now he was shaking his head firmly. "We've already had a couple of minor fall-ins - mostly where we've had heavy equipment sitting and/or working over partially damaged sections." He pointed to a spot about thirty yards from the edge of the Tower debris field, where it was obvious the ground had given way. "It isn't pancaking down to the very bottom, like it could if the whole place were going to give; but I sure as hell wouldn't want to have to try to go down there again until you have some structural engineers do a complete analysis."
"Neither would I, Chief," Miss Parker assured him appreciatively. "Thanks for all your time."
"Before you go, do you have a number you can be reached at, in case we need to confer again?" the Chief asked just as she turned to walk away.
Miss Parker quickly listed her home and cell numbers for him, then went off in search of Sam and her cell phone. She met him at the edge of the command center tent, walking in her direction and holding the cell out to her. "It's Jarod for you," he announced, thrusting the little instrument at her.
She put the phone to her ear. "What?"
"Broots has the complete employee records on his system," Jarod announced with no preamble. "God only knows what he was looking through them FOR, but at least they're there..."
"Good. That gives us a place to start in figuring out who's alive, who's dead, and who's still missing." She pulled her hair back from her face and sniffed. The dust in the air was still plenty thick.
"How are things there?"
"Fifty-four known dead so far," she informed him back. "And guess what? Ngawe's still alive - in the hospital in Dover. There's a Japanese man still alive too - I wonder if he is Yakuza?"
"Did you get the list of survivors you were wanting?"
"Yup." She flipped through the pages with names, addresses and phone numbers on them. "We'll have to compare these names against what Broots has, then begin to see who's missing from those that are left over. I would imagine that there will be plenty who maybe were in the outlying buildings like Sam - they were taken in for treatment and then released later."
"That's going to be a big job, Parker."
She nodded, although he couldn't see her. "I know. And I know just the person to call to help us sort through this mess." His name was on the paper that was now at the top of her list. "Oh, and Jarod? Do me a favor when you're done at Broots'?"
"What's that?"
"Make arrangements for two new cell phones - one in Sam's name and another in mine for the time being. The Centre is going to have to go wireless until we have something resembling an office building again to work out of."
"Anything else?"
She looked over at Sam and then turned her back and walked away a few paces. "Is that offer you made me this morning for a massage still good?"
On the other end of the line, Jarod's eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead, and then lowered over chocolate eyes that twinkled merrily. "Well, because it's you," he purred into her ear, "I suppose I can keep the offer open for another evening."
"Good," she purred back at him, "because I intend to take you up on it."
"I'll meet you at Syd's later then," Jarod chuckled in a low voice full of promise, "and we can discuss this further once we get home. Oh yeah - Deb wants to stay at Syd's tonight again, though - doesn't want to be over here all by herself right now."
"I don't blame her," Miss Parker nodded, moving back toward Sam. "Why don't you also stop and pick up some pizza and salad makings for dinner, then? It'll save Syd from getting up and cooking, not to mention saving him from having to wonder if Kevin can cook at all. Deb doesn't need to be cooking right now either, and I'll probably be too tired to. We'll meet there at... what... six-thirty?"
"Agreed. I'll see you then," Jarod responded airily and then disconnected.
Miss Parker let her eyes wander down the list to the name 'Cody Tyler', and then dialed the number. The phone rang several times, then hit an answering machine. She waited through the outbound message, figuring that he was probably still asleep - just as she would prefer to be. She heard the beep that indicated the time had come for her to start talking. "Tyler, this is Miss Parker. When you get this message please call..." she rattled off her cell phone number. "I have that something challenging for you I was telling you about last night - all I need to know now is if you're still interested."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Chief Harrison looked down at the preliminary report his officers had filed with him with a frown. His department had a mystery on its hands - two of them, actually - and if there was one thing a small-town police department DIDN'T need, it was a mystery.
Of the two bodies found at the edge of Centre property, only one had had any identification - and he was a landscape custodian for the Centre itself. The other had had no indication on the body of who that man had been or what his business had been in the area. Both men had been murdered - the Centre employee with a broken neck, the John Doe with a single gunshot wound to the head execution-style. They had been found only yards from each other.
Subsequent investigation had yielded a rental car hidden in some shrubbery near the road, but it seemed as if whoever had rented the car had used fictitious identification to acquire the car and left no real evidence behind to lead the police anywhere else.
Then there was the fact that the unidentified man had been found with an electronic transmitter - a high-powered detonator. Was this man the bomber who had destroyed a good portion of the Centre - and if so, who had killed him?
All of this put Harrison in a very uncomfortable position of having to call in outside help with the investigation. He simply didn't have the forensics resources to analyze what little evidence had been collected properly, nor access to any of the larger law enforcement databases that might have some of the answers he needed. The situation with the national media breathing down his throat and the reporter corps camped on his police station steps waiting for a hint of word about any of the incredible events of the past day wasn't helping any. Like it or not, he was feeling heavy pressure to make a decision as to whom he was going to call.
He took a deep breath and exhaled in frustration, then lifted the receiver on his phone. "Judy, get me the FBI office in Dover, will you?"
If he was going to need outside help, he might as well go for the best he could get...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Fujimori raised his head and looked around his room calmly. The doctor had been with him only a few moments earlier, and he knew he had been extraordinarily lucky to have come away from such a potentially lethal situation with only four broken ribs and a crushed ankle. The part of his mind that had been trained for a long time to constantly consider the welfare of the Yakuza found itself wondering if Tanaka-sama had similarly survived. The other part of his mind, that part of him that had grown steadily more and more disenchanted with what the Yakuza considered 'life', spoke equally loudly in declaring that it really didn't matter.
Still, if he were to get himself back to Japan, he would have to make use of his position within the Yakuza at least one more time. He had vowed to enter the monastery once he got home. It was possible that Buddha would have to wait until he had completely discharged his duties to those who would be able to see him home.
Moving very carefully, he tried to twist around in his bed and reach for the telephone that sat on the small stand to his right. But just as his hand was almost at the receiver, a huge black hand grabbed it and held on tightly while the other moved the telephone completely out of reach. He stared up into a very serious, very tight African face. "Excuse me?" he began in heavily accented English.
"Mr. Ngawe has ordered that you have no contact with your people for the time being," he was informed in a musical form of English that was difficult to understand. "And no contact is exactly what you'll have until I have orders confirming the change in status."
Fujimori blinked, then settled back into his hospital bed with a fatalistic sigh. Perhaps it was to be his Karma never to see Japan again, much less enter the monastery. At the moment, it certainly was his Karma to be under the control of a Triumverate strongman while in no shape to challenge the man. Besides, he knew that he couldn't even hobble half as fast as this man could walk.
He quietly began his chanting again, finding it a soothing alternative to apprehensive speculation on his immediate future.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Tyler walked stiffly from his bathroom back into his bedroom with nothing but a towel wrapped around his middle. His shower had drained all the hot water from his water heater, and still his legs felt like every muscle in them was knotted and cramped, and his lower back ached. He'd taken a hefty dose of analgesics the moment he'd talked himself into actually moving - but they hadn't had a chance to take effect as yet, he imagined. Much as he would have preferred to just climb into bed again, he knew that getting up and moving around was going to be the only way to work those kinks and knots out with any efficiency.
His head had hit the pillow at about four that morning, and until about half an hour ago, the world could have fallen in without his knowledge or concern. Now it was mid-afternoon, and he was firmly on his way to getting his days and nights thoroughly confused if he wasn't careful. He pulled open a drawer and took out a fresh pair of boxers and a tee shirt to toss on the bed, then closed that drawer and opened another to pull out a pair of faded jeans. He groaned as he discarded the towel and slowly donned the underwear and then bent with difficulty to pull on the jeans.
With a sigh, he sat himself back down on the bed and ran his fingers through his damp, dark hair, giving it some semblance of order - and then noticed that the answering machine near his bed was blinking with a message that must have come in while he was bathing. He punched the play button and listened:
"Tyler, this is Miss Parker. When you get this message please call..."
Tyler moved quickly and grabbed up a pencil and a piece of scrap paper and jotted down the phone number his boss had given him. Somehow, he wasn't surprised that she was already up and working - and he guessed that the chances were that she wasn't half as stiff as he was. But she had remembered - both him and her offer to him.
He groaned as he stretched just that little bit further to grasp the handset of his cordless phone and bring it to him so he could punch in the number he'd been given. His chance to climb out of a morgue would NOT get past him without his reaching for it. He held the instrument to his ear and waited.
"What?"
He blinked. It wasn't a normal way for someone to answer a phone, but then, this WAS Miss Parker...
"Miss Parker, this is Tyler - I'm returning your call..."
"Ah." Her voice relaxed a bit. "How are you feeling this afternoon? Did you get to rest at all?"
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am. I'm stiff, but I'm alive."
He heard her low chuckle. "That sounds familiar. Well, are you interested?"
His eyes widened - boy, she didn't beat around the bush at all. "Yes, ma'am!"
"Are you in any shape to move at all today, or do you want another day to take it easy first?"
"Frankly, ma'am, I think I'd feel better if I got myself moving," he replied. "You said you had something for me?"
"Get your ass over here to the Centre, 'Tyler-ma'am' - and make tracks to the fire department command tent. I'll be waiting for you there and we can talk more once you get here." She paused, obviously considering. "Oh, and stop and pick up some coffee for three on your way in - and some donuts. You're probably hungry, and I could use something myself."
"I'll be there as soon as I can, Miss Parker," he assured her, groaning as he stood.
"And take some pain pills. Sounds like you could use them."
He smiled. "Already have, ma'am, but thank you. See you in a few."
He disconnected with a smile on his face. Something told him that with that call, his life had just taken a very interesting turn.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"'Tyler-ma'am'?" Sam's voice sounded distinctly concerned and confused.
Miss Parker took one look at her new Security Chief's face and burst out laughing. "I wish I had a camera," she teased him, then let him off the hook. "Tyler's a very interesting fellow who attached himself at my elbow while I was 'down below' trying to get everybody out of there. For a morgue assistant, he made a much better personal assistant - and that's exactly what I'm going to have him doing from now on."
"You're going to want a new personal sweeper assigned to you as well, right?" Sam asked quickly.
"Well," she hedged, "I'm not entirely convinced that walking around as if I needed protection is the way I want to live my life from now on. For one thing, the Centre is out of the industrial espionage and strong-arming business - as of right now. We'll need a team of security officers, obviously, but not so much to control those who work for us as to make sure none of our new research sprouts legs and walks away."
"That was a lot of our work before," Sam complained half-heartedly.
"I know that, but it was control through intimidation - and I intend to remove intimidation as a major motivating force at the Centre. The level of corporate paranoia is going to take a decided down turn. I'm going to want you to put together a retraining program for your sweeper corps that reflects this change."
"That's sweepers. What about cleaners?"
Miss Parker's face grew cautious. "We're not going to be using their services any longer. That's a criminal element of the previous administrations here that will no longer be tolerated. Either the cleaners agree to return to being sweepers or they can have two months' severance pay to look for another job elsewhere."
Sam gazed at his boss appreciatively. "You ARE going to be changing things around here, aren't you?"
She nodded firmly, her face folded into an expression of determination. "Absolutely. I predict that in a year's time, you won't recognize the place."
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com
The Winds of Change
by MMB
Sydney looked up as Kevin and Debbie walked slowly from the elevator to the hospital lobby. Debbie looked as if she'd been crying - but while Kevin looked distressed as well, he seemed to have a handle on himself well enough that he was able to offer her some support. Sydney rose to his feet slowly, then let his granddaughter have the hug from him that she immediately came in search of. "How is your father, ma petite?"
"Still unconscious," she told him with a sniffle. "Two broken legs, a crushed pelvis, serious blood loss. The doctor says he's in serious condition. He's just out of surgery, has a contraption holding his hips together, pins holding his leg together..." Sydney winced, as much from the very idea of what Broots was going to be facing in terms of recovery as from the dull ache in his side that was starting to wear through the medication again.
Sam's face showed his own sympathy with the young woman. "I'm sorry to hear about your Dad, Deb," the ex-sweeper said from his wheelchair.
Deb lifted her head from her grandfather's shoulder long enough to shoot her family friend a sad smile. "Thanks, Sam. I'm glad you're OK - aren't you?" she asked, giving the wheelchair a second look.
"Oh, I'm only in this contraption because of hospital rules," he reassured her gruffly. "I've got a headache, and my neck and back feel a little scoured, but otherwise..."
"I told him we could take him back to Blue Cove with us, when you're ready to leave," Sydney added with a careful look at Deb's face. "You OK?"
She nodded. "Kevin's been with me, and that's helped. Dad just lies there, so quiet..." Her voice broke, and then she straightened after taking a deep breath. "I asked the nurses to call me at your place if he started to wake up later today, so I could drive in again and be here for him. Otherwise, I'll just drive back over tomorrow morning." She snuggled back into her grandfather's arms again. "You don't mind if I stay with you another night, do you, Grandpa? I really don't want to be alone..."
"Of course I don't mind, cheri," Sydney soothed, tightening his arms around her carefully again. He could feel the tension in her body and wished that there was something he could do to help her - and knew the only thing that would help would be for her father to regain consciousness. "Are you ready to go now, or do you want to stay here for a while longer?"
"Do you think we can go get some lunch and then stop back for a little while before heading home?" Debbie asked carefully. She could feel the tension in her grandfather's touch as well, and knew that he probably still was hurting himself. "Are you going to be alright, or do you feel like you need to get home and rest again?"
Sydney kissed Debbie gently, then let her go. "I can take some more Tylenol while at lunch, and that should keep me until I get home..."
Kevin stepped forward. He hadn't missed Sydney's wince earlier. "Maybe you should take them now - give them that much more time to work. And," now the young Pretender turned to Debbie, "maybe we could just have our lunch here, so he doesn't have to walk all the way out to the car until it's necessary?"
"I'm not an invalid," Sydney grumbled, not at all happy to be the center of concern.
"Face it, Doc, you're in a lot worse shape than I am, overall," Sam commented with a dry humor from his perch in the wheelchair. "I'm still not sure how you managed to talk Jarod into letting you be this active today. You'd better pull in your horns a bit, or you'll have Miss Parker and the Lab-rat all over you for doing too much again."
"And me," Kevin piped up quietly but firmly.
"And me," Debbie contributed leaning back against her grandfather fondly with an arm still wrapped gently around his middle. "I appreciate you bringing me here, Grandpa, but I don't want you making yourself bad again..."
"Hush!" Sydney hugged Debbie tightly. "Alright, alright! Hospital food for lunch it will be." He looked down into her face. "Happy?"
Debbie nodded, and Kevin moved behind Sam's wheelchair. "After you, Doc," Sam waved his hand toward the hallway and the cafeteria somewhere down its length.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Randy waited for Ikeda to collect his soft bag from the overhead compartment and start moving down the aisle toward the huge jet's exit before standing in his seat and reaching for his own travel bag. How he'd lucked out and gotten the window seat on the trans-Pacific flight, he didn't know - but he had enjoyed a real rush of homesickness and relief as he watched the Tokyo runway appear below him.
He was tired, but happy. Ikeda had had him make several stops along the way to New York City so that, one by one, pieces of the weapon that had been stored in that fancy briefcase could be disposed of. By the time the two had arrived at La Guardia, the briefcase had been stripped of its foam packing material and was back to being just a regular case filled with various office supplies.
Randy shouldered the strap from his travel bag and made his way down the retractable tunnel from the jet and into the terminal - then stopped short. Ikeda-san had been met by and was now talking to several of Tanaka-sama's top organizational officers, and the group looked positively grim. He took a deep breath, not having been directly ordered to return to Japan after all, and walked resolutely up to the group and then bowed deeply.
"Obayashi-san," the oldest said dryly with a much less deep bow of his own. "Ikeda-san here says that he deemed it wise that you both return here from Delaware. Considering the sequence of recent events, I agree with his estimation. I am Ueda Kyoshi, second attaché of Tanaka-sama."
"Ueda-sama," Randy bowed again. "It is my honor to serve you and Tanaka-sama."
Ueda turned and exchanged glances with his other as-yet-unnamed associates with raised black eyebrows. "Then you haven't heard?" he asked both of the new arrivals.
"Heard what, Ueda-san?" Ikeda asked with just the proper amount of deference for a relative equal within the Yakuza organization.
"Tanaka-sama was at the Centre in Delaware yesterday morning, where he'd gone to keep an appointment with the Triumverate shogun Ngawe-sama. There was an explosion there - it has been on all the US news stations. We are still waiting to hear news of Tanaka-sama and his associates on that trip."
Randy and Ikeda exchanged startled looks. Ikeda bowed slightly. "I saw the explosion, Ueda-san. I was there outside the Centre under Tanaka-sama's orders to take care of two separate hits. And with all due respect, surviving what happened there would take a miracle. I would be very surprised indeed if Tanaka-sama is still breathing air."
Ueda turned and looked at his associates again. "That is indeed unfortunate! Akido-san, you'll have to go check and see whether there were contingency plans set up by Tanaka-sama in case of his death to see the Yakuza through a change in administration." He turned back to the new arrivals. "Let's go get your luggage, gentlemen. I'm sure you both will be glad to get home, neh?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Kevin had been keeping a very close eye on Sydney all through lunch after watching him pop three Tylenol tablets, and he finally nudged Debbie. "Maybe you'd better head back upstairs to check on your Dad. I don't know that Sydney's going to last much longer."
Deb looked over at her grandfather and saw what had triggered Kevin's comment. Sydney's face had become quite pale, and he had a slight sheen of perspiration on his brow. "I think I'll go up and check on Dad now, and then I think I'LL drive home," she announced as she rose. "Kevin, why don't you get Sam and Grandpa out to the car - I'll come out and meet you there."
"Nonsense, Kevin. I'm fine..." the psychiatrist began to complain.
"No you're not," Sam spoke up firmly. Sympathetic dark eyes met stubborn chestnut. "You're not fooling any of us with your tough talk, Sydney - right now you look like death warmed over and on the verge of collapse." The ex-sweeper looked over at Kevin. "Have you figured out how to drive yet, kiddo?"
"Not really," Kevin shook his head. "I have a rough idea, but there's been so much else going on..."
"Just let me go up and check on Dad, and then I'll fetch the car to the lobby door," Debbie inserted firmly. "If Dad's not awake yet, and he probably isn't, I wouldn't be staying very long anyway. You two get Sydney into the lobby, and I'll take care of getting the car close to the entrance and then driving home once I'm back down..."
"The seatbelt..." Sydney tried once more to complain.
"...in the back seat, on the driver's side, won't hit you any worse than it does when you're driving," Sam interrupted him again, finishing the sentence in a far different manner than the older man had intended. "Face it, you're outvoted, Doc. Might as well relax and enjoy getting chauffeured around for the rest of the day - and then make plans to spend the next few flat on your back again, once Jarod finds out how much you overdid again."
"Sam's right - Jarod's going to be really upset that you've made yourself worse yet again. AND he's going to be all over ME for not making you take it easy more," Kevin agreed. "Now that everybody's at least accounted for, and the pressure to get Deb to Dover to find out how her Dad is has let up some, let some of us help you too. You know very well that you're hurt at least as badly as Sam, if not worse."
Debbie bent over her grandfather and gave him a quick hug. "I won't be long, Grandpa, I promise."
"Now you listen to me, cheri - I want you to take as long as you need," Sydney told her vehemently and then kissed her cheek. "Don't worry about me. I'll take it easy in the lobby until you get back, I promise."
"You'd better," she warned him, then nodded at Kevin and Sam and turned toward the cafeteria entrance and the elevator that was a ways down the hallway.
Kevin rose from his chair and collected the trash from the table. "I'll take Sam back to the lobby," he told Sydney, "and then I'll be back for you. You wait for me, so you can lean on me."
Sydney nodded in calm acquiescence. If he were honest with himself, he'd have to admit that he really DIDN'T feel all that well, and having Sam and the kids take control of the situation away from him in this manner was almost a relief.
And that worried him. He'd felt so much better earlier that morning - and he really hadn't done THAT much... had he?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Is that coffee I smell?" Miss Parker asked drowsily, opening her eyes and beginning to roll over, and then she groaned loudly. "Oh God! You didn't happen to get the license number of that semi that flattened me, did you?" She pushed herself into a half-sitting position and tipped her head back carefully on a very stiff neck. "I can hardly move!"
"Here," Jarod handed her the steaming mug of coffee. "I figured you could use this at least as much as I."
"Thanks." She buried her nose in the fragrant steam for a bit after taking a first, necessary sip. "What's going on in the rest of the house?"
"Davy's still on the video game downstairs, Syd and the kids have taken off for Dover to see about Broots." Jarod answered, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to her.
"You found him in the Sim Lab?" she asked quickly, and he nodded. She closed her eyes with self-blame - she HAD walked right past him. "How was he when you saw him last?" was the next anxious question.
"Pretty badly beat up," he replied. "Compound fracture of his left leg made him lose a lot of blood. I don't know that he would have lasted much longer if he hadn't been found when he was."
"Damn," she muttered to herself, having to swallow hard against the guilt welling up in her throat, threatening to choke her. She looked up at him with wide eyes. "I feel so ... I could have..."
"Don't beat yourself up over this," Jarod soothed, a hand coming out to smooth her dark hair back a bit. "Your reasoning was completely sound that if Syd was at home, the Sim Lab would be shut up tight. You've worked at the Centre all these years - that's SOP. You had no way of knowing that Syd had called and sent Broots down there looking for files for him. The important thing is that I got back down to him in time - he was alive and fairly stable when they loaded him into the ambulance." He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. "And if something had happened to him after that, we would have heard."
Miss Parker could hear Sydney making basically the same argument the night before - but she knew it would be a very long time before she could ever forgive herself for inadvertently leaving her old friend behind. "I know that," she reasoned after another long sip of coffee, "but it doesn't help, you know?"
Jarod's dark eyes were understanding. "Yeah," he nodded slowly. "I know." His hand smoothed her hair yet again. "You probably won't forgive yourself until Broots himself lets you off the hook, will you?"
The grey eyes narrowed for a moment. "You know me a little too well sometimes," she said dryly.
"Yeah, well I also know that if you want to get those muscles of yours moving again, you should probably head out for a nice, long, HOT shower," he told her, relieving her of her coffee mug and ignoring her grumble of complaint. "Or I could give you a massage first," he suggested, his eyebrows yo-yoing up and down lecherously.
She swatted at his nearest thigh. "You're impossible," she retorted.
"I am not - I'm just trying to be motivational," he countered, getting to his feet and pulling the covers away. "Maybe it would work better if I threw in a nice lunch as well as enticement?"
"Now you're talkin'," she smiled up at him, then let him help her to her feet. "First the shower, though," she patted him on the stomach as he hugged her gently, then pushed him away. "Go on. A nice lunch takes work."
Jarod shook his head and chuckled at her. "What a slave-driver," he commented and then scooted out the bedroom door before she could swat at him again. "Whenever you're ready," he tempted from the top of the stairs. His tread down the staircase, however, was no more spry that hers would be.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The sleek, new Nissan limousine slipped into the underground garage of the high-rise building in the middle of Tokyo that housed, on the upper 15 floors, the central offices of the Tanaka Yakuza. Randy - he still thought of himself that way, despite his being home and entitled to reclaim his original name for daily use - looked about him appreciatively. He hadn't been in this building since long before his assignment to the States.
And when the elevator stopped on the residential floor, he let out another appreciative sigh. When summoned to the penthouse suite after his contact had turned out to be a police mole, he hadn't really had a chance to see the quality of the accommodations - and he'd been in far too much pain from the loss of his pinky to notice anything after that. He'd then been exiled back to his hometown of Osaka to be a runner for the local boss when his hand healed, and reassigned to the States from there.
"You will find your new accommodations here. Wait patiently, and you will be summoned for debriefing." Ueda-san handed him a key card and pointed him down the corridor in the proper direction from the elevator, then restrained Ikeda from getting off on that floor and let the elevator door slip closed.
The room the keycard made available was very traditional - smooth tatami invited him to shed his shoes immediately by the door. There was a comfortable-looking futon already arranged near the center of the room, a cleaned and crisply folded yukata [kimono-like robe] sitting on top of the covers and a fresh pair of zori waiting for when he was ready to head off for the bath. An aesthetically sparse tokonomo with calligraphy of an obscure quote from "The Five Rings", complete with a small ikebana arrangement beneath it, was located close to the floor to ceiling window. Near the window sat the low table surrounded by four pillows at each seat at the proper distance from the tokonomo.
Randy took a deep breath and smelled in the very essence of being HOME. It was a nearly intoxicating experience to go from such exotic climes as very-American Delaware to very-Japanese downtown Tokyo within the space of twenty-four hours. He had to admit that it was a helluva lot more comfortable adjustment on the return trip. If he had his way, he'd never leave Japan for long again.
He set his travel bag down next to the black lacquered cabinet into which he would unpack eventually and walked over to finger aside the sheer curtains and look down at the Tokyo street scene below. As he raised his eyes and studied the skyline, there was a low knock on the door. When he opened the door, it was to admit a deeply-bowing kimono-clad maid carrying a tray of tea and small morsels to slack his late-afternoon hunger. She silently carried her burden to the center of the table, then bowed her way out again.
Randy shrugged himself out of his sports jacket and hung it in the narrow little closet close to the door. The tea smelled wonderful, and taking the proper time to appreciate this little luxury would fill the time between now and when he was summoned.
And give him a chance to really relax in a more familiar environment.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ueda moved surely behind his desk and motioned to Ikeda to take a seat in the comfortable chair in front of it. "There has been considerable discussion about the mental state of Tanaka-sama in the last few days before his trip to the States. What do you have to add to what we already know?"
"Not much," the assassin shrugged casually. "As you know, my services are contracted - I am brought into the organization only when I'm needed and then given only such information as will make my job easier. Tanaka-sama was adamant that I dispatch Raines-san for having wasted Yakuza time and money with a eugenics project that went nowhere ultimately. I was sent to Delaware originally for just the one hit. Only later was I called and then given an additional target - with no explanation, just a picture of another haku-jin."
"And you say you fulfilled your orders?" Ueda asked, gesturing to an assistant to approach.
"Hai." Ikeda bowed in his seat. "It was as I dispatched that nameless haku-jin that I witnessed the explosion and demolition of the Centre Tower." He shuddered. "I made sure I left no evidence traceable back to me or the Yakuza, and then made the decision to extricate Obayashi-san with myself to avoid possible questions with American authorities."
"So you weren't aware that it was Tanaka-sama himself who ordered that arrangements be made to bomb the Centre?"
Ikeda's jaw dropped to the floor. "Tanaka-sama did that? But... I thought you said... he was in the Tower..."
"One of Tanaka-sama's closest associates was a schoolmate of mine - and had grown increasingly disturbed over the past few years of the close ties that the Yakuza was growing with the Centre," Ueda explained obliquely. "He had expressed this distress to me and several other of his equals in the other branches several times. When Tanaka-sama ordered that an American haku-jin be found to do the demolition job, and then almost immediately took off to America to try to put a halt on the job, I was contacted by the Nagasaki and Okinawa branches for a summit meeting." Ueda's eyes sparkled coldly. "At that meeting, it was decided that the Tanaka family had done sufficient damage to the face of Yakuza in the world that their authority over the Tokyo branch could no longer be tolerated."
The assassin's face stayed very carefully neutral, but inside he was squirming. "Indeed. I take it that you were placed in charge?"
"Provisionally," Ueda nodded very slightly. "And it is my job to try to clean up the mess left by Tanaka through his short-sighted scheme for revenge having the bad karma to harm the head of the Triumverate itself in the process. With the Centre crippled and reeling from this act of aggression, and the Triumverate looking in all directions for the guilty in the harming of Ngawe-sama - whom the gods have favored by keeping alive, although harmed - the entire Yakuza will have to prepare for serious repercussions."
Ikeda bowed deeply from his seated position. "It is my honor to serve the Yakuza to the best of my abilities."
"What does Obayashi Ryoshi-san know about the Delaware situation?"
"Obayashi-san's information was what give Tanaka-sama the ability to pinpoint MY assignment as far as Raines-san was concerned. It is my belief that his information about the removal of Raines-san as Chairman of the Centre that triggered the trip to the States to try to stop the demolition job." Ikeda looked at his Yakuza boss levelly. "It is well known that Tanaka-sama had at one time been close to Chairman Parker-san's daughter - I believe that Obayashi found out that Ngawe-sama was intending on appointing HER Chairman, and wanted to stop the bombing before she was hurt."
"By the gods, all those Tanakas ever did think with was their gonads!" Ueda exploded. "Putting personal agendas before Yakuza face is unforgivable. If Tanaka-san were alive, I'd be ordering you to take him out myself."
"Both Sonny-sama and Tommy-sama were very headstrong," Ikeda agreed very cautiously. This could all be a ploy to determine loyalty by inviting treachery. "But while they were in charge here, I was honor-bound to carry out their requests - as were all under their command."
Ueda nodded. "Understood." He pushed a key card across the desk at the assassin. "Here. I've had your luggage taken to your room. Please tell Obayashi-san that I would like to see him immediately, and then please relax. We will have some time to try to come up with a contingency plan for handling Triumverate repercussions - I will be needing your input. Tomorrow, though, when you're rested."
Ikeda rose and bowed deeply. "Domo arigato, Ueda-sama," he said with the proper tone of deference, and then turned to leave.
At the bottom of that now-innocuous briefcase was a cell phone. Somehow, somewhere, he knew he was going to want to get to a private place and use it - and see just how bad things were going to get.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Sir? Sir?"
Slowly the soft calling broke through the fog that had filled Ngawe's brain as his body had been freed from its prison of fallen Tower rubble. It took several attempts, however, for him to finally convince his heavy eyes to blink open - and then a few more moments for them to focus on the face that hovered over his. "S..s...iskele?"
"Yes, sir!" The round dark face split into a wide grin. "Good to have you back with us, sir!"
Ngawe blinked slowly against the fog in his mind that would have made it ever so easy to just float away again, and he slowly moved his head from side to side, taking in the hospital sights. "Where...?"
"In Dover, sir. They transported all the injured survivors here - not that there were very many of them from the Tower itself..."
"Who..." His mind searched desperately through his last memories. "The Yakuza! Did any of them..."
Siskele shrugged his massive shoulders. "I haven't checked, sir. Do you want me to?"
The elderly African nodded his head weakly against his pillow. "Contact Nairobi and tell them we will be wanting a meeting of the entire Triumverate assembly very soon. We cannot let this affront to global interests go unanswered."
"No, sir." Siskele found himself grateful that his grand-uncle seemed to be regaining his power even as he lay there with a broken back. Too many of his associates from home had perished the day before - and apparently Uncle Otamo knew the ones responsible.
"What about the Centre? Miss Parker? Did she...?"
"She survived, sir. She was underground at the time."
Ngawe nodded. "Then we will need to speak to her too, as soon as possible. We imagine the Centre will be wanting to take part in whatever we decide against the Yakuza..."
"Do you want me to call her, sir?" Siskele asked, not entirely sure how to get a hold of a Centre Chairman newly deprived of an office at which she could be reached.
"Not yet." The elderly African shook his head carefully - just moving invited new adventures in pain. "She has an organization in complete chaos at the moment. Give her a day or so to begin reorganization, THEN call her." The dark eyes finally focused on the round face sharply. "And make arrangements for a guard at our door. The Yakuza must know by now that they have made a grievous mistake in attacking the Centre while it was in Triumverate control - and we cannot put it past them to try a pre-emptive move to correct that blunder. See to it personally that Miss Parker is sufficiently guarded as well - by her own people or by ours, we really don't care which. Call in all the reinforcements from home you feel necessary."
"Yes, sir." The young African had drawn out a small notebook from his breast pocket and was taking notes. "Immediately, sir."
Ngawe tried to move his legs, but suddenly discovered that he couldn't even feel them, much less move them. "And find us our doctor. We need to know what we are to expect by way of recovery. We have far too much work to do to be tied down to a hospital bed for any longer than necessary."
"Yes, sir!"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Davy turned around when movement on the edge of his vision caught his attention, and then he was up - headphones flying - and running. "Mommy!"
"Hey there!" Miss Parker bent and caught her son in a tight embrace. "Thanks for letting me sleep, little man."
"You OK?" Davy asked anxiously. "I mean, I know you're OK, but..." His eyes got wide. "You didn't fall when the building came down, did you?"
"No, baby. I was downstairs. The Centre has a very big basement, and I was down there when things came down." She kissed the top of his head. She should have known - he'd have seen the TV reports, and no doubt the picture had been anything but encouraging. "And nothing fell on me either." She straightened, but it was with an involuntary groan that made his eyes widen just a bit more. "Oh, I'm not really hurt, Davy, I'm just really stiff and sore. I've just walked up and down way more stairs than I EVER want to again!" She sniffed the air appreciatively in order to distract her boy from his fears. "Smells like your Dad's cooking something good for lunch."
"Grilled cheese sandwiches," Davy nodded with a smile. "He knows I like them."
"I like 'em too, you know," Miss Parker ruffled her son's hair and retraced her steps to the kitchen. "Grilled cheese sandwiches are not a bad enticement," she commented as she moved up behind Jarod and wrapped her arms around his waist. "The massage can wait until later - but is definitely motivating..."
"Oh yeah," Jarod quipped, turning his head so that he could share a quick kiss.
Davy stood back in the door between the kitchen and den with a very pleased smile on his face. NOW his Mom and Dad were beginning to act like a Mom and Dad - not only toward him, but towards each other. The more he thought about it, the more he like that. A lot.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Debbie walked through the door and made her way to where she had moved the chair next to her father's hospital bed when she and Kevin had left for lunch. She quietly moved it closer to his head and seated herself after dropping a fond kiss on his forehead. "I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to stay with you today, Dad. Grandpa Sydney drove us in this morning, and right now he isn't doing too good. Besides, Sam was just released, and Grandpa said that he could ride home with us."
She took her seat and reclaimed the hand she'd been holding earlier, again being careful not to dislodge IV connections. "I know that Miss Parker made it home last night, in case you were wondering. That means we know where everybody is. Now all we need is for you to decide the time's come to wake up."
She sighed. "You're in the hospital in Dover, in case you were wondering. Jarod found you early this morning and brought you out. When I saw him this morning, he was really tired and out of it. We left him at Grandpa's to get some more sleep. And Miss Parker was still asleep when we left too - in with Davy. I guess it isn't so easy to climb stairs from the Sim Lab after all."
"Boy, you should see the TV reports from the Centre! The place is a mess - and a zoo! The whole Tower came down, you know. They're talking about quite a number of dead folks being dug out of the wreckage. I'm just so glad you weren't up in the Tower when it went, Daddy. You OR Miss Parker." Debbie caught her breath and held it a bit to steady herself again. "C'mon Dad. You don't want to sleep your life away like this..."
She wiped a stubborn tear from her cheek. "Well, I suppose I had better think about getting back down and driving Grandpa home, so Uncle Jarod can chew him out again for doing too much." She rose and moved her chair back so that it would be out of the way of the nurses. "I'll be back in the morning, or sooner, if you decide to actually make an appearance. I'm staying with Grandpa for at least one more night - I really don't want to be alone right now."
She bent over him again and kissed his cheek gently, then smoothed her hand over his bald pate. "I love you, Daddy. I miss you." Another stubborn tear managed the leap from eyelash to cheek. "Wake up. Come back to me soon. Please?"
She paused from the doorway again. "I'll see you again tomorrow, Daddy," she told him in a half-broken voice, then turned to the corridor and the elevator.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"They're home, Jarod!" Miss Parker's call echoed back into the den where he was giving Davy a run for his money at that video game now that the kitchen was cleaned up again.
Jarod dropped the controller and rose to his feet as he heard the garage door opener rattle and clang, then went to the garage door and opened it. "Hey! Sam!" he called with a wave at the sight of the burly ex-sweeper in the front passenger seat. "Good to see you're not too badly damaged..."
"Nah, I've had a lot worse than this," Sam said, motioning to the goose-egg on his forehead that promised to turn a hideous purple-green before it disappeared entirely. He climbed carefully from the seat, then moved with determination around the back of the car and opened the door for the passenger behind the driver. "But I think I could use a hand here. Sydney's overdone again..."
"Damn!" Jarod swore and hurried to his old mentor's side. Sydney's face was pale and pinched with pain. "I thought you were going to pop Tylenol when things got bad. What happened?"
"The Tylenol didn't do him a bit of good," Kevin answered for the psychiatrist, climbing out of the car and opening the kitchen door for Jarod and Sam, who had Sydney carefully supported between them.
Sydney simply shook his head. "I don't get it. I didn't do all that much - and I felt fine this morning..."
"Syd...ney?" Miss Parker's smile of greeting broke into a worried grimace. "What's wrong?"
"What is this anyway - getting back at me for all the bad times I gave you in the Centre?" Jarod scolded the older man in fond frustration.
"Training you for parenthood," Sydney quipped back with a tight voice as he leaned heavily on both men, just as frustrated and earnestly looking forward to being deposited back on his day bed.
"Uh-huh," Jarod sounded distinctly under-impressed. "Kevin, go get the medical bag. Let's see just what Houdini's done to himself this time."
Miss Parker, however, had hung back, seeing that the men were handling Sydney quite capably without her, so that she could greet Debbie. "How's your Dad?" she asked in a quiet, anxious tone.
Debbie moved into a hug that she desperately needed. "Two legs broken, a crushed pelvis - and he's still unconscious from surgery and all the blood loss." She sighed. "The doctor seems hopeful - he thinks that he'll be OK eventually, provided he begins to wake up pretty soon..."
"Oh, Deb, I'm so sorry..." Miss Parker started, not exactly knowing how to say what was in her heart. "I swear to you that I didn't know he was in the Sim Lab... If I had..."
Debbie's arms tightened around the woman who had been more of a mother to her than her own ever had been. "It's OK - I know that. Dad knows that too."
"But... how did he get so badly hurt?" Miss Parker up and over the top of Deb's head at Jarod. "I was meaning to ask you earlier, then got distracted. How on earth..."
"The file cabinet he was looking through fell on him - hard," Jarod answered. "From the looks of things, he had the top drawer all the way open when the explosion made the floor dance, and when he fell it just slammed into him and pinned him underneath."
"That's my fault," Sydney's voice came from the den, where Kevin was helping him out of his shirt so that his dressings could be checked. "I sent him for some of my old files on you, Jarod."
"It's nobody's fault!" Jarod raised his voice. "Syd, you didn't know that there was going to be a bomb go off; and Parker, you didn't know Syd had called him." He stood in the doorway, put his hands on his hips and looked back and forth between Miss Parker and Sydney. "It was an ACCIDENT, people. Accidents happen."
"Jarod's right," Sam piped up from where he had found a seat at the kitchen table after depositing Sydney in the den. "Nobody could have known this was going to happen, anymore than I knew I was going to have a close encounter with a door edge." He pointed to his goose-egg.
"So... Do you need a ride back in later?" Miss Parker directed her words to Debbie again.
The young woman shook her head. "I think I'll wait until tomorrow morning, and I can drive myself in," she responded, "Thanks anyway. The doctor said that if he hadn't started to wake up by then, they were going to run a whole bunch of tests to see what was going on. By then, I'll know how that's going."
"In that case, if nobody minds," Miss Parker looked over at the rest of her little 'family', "I'm going to need to drive over to the Centre for a while - talk to the firemen there. I left one of them taking down some information that I'm going to need fairly soon about the folks who came up out of the underground facility." She took a deep breath and breathed it out noisily. "I AM the Chairman after all - and my organization is in a helluva mess at the moment. I need to get back to work."
"Miss Parker, if you can stop by my place on the way," Sam suggested firmly, "I'll go with you. I just need to get some decent clothing on..."
"You really should take it easy for a day or so," Jarod cautioned him. "Concussions aren't anything to mess around with. We don't need you pulling a 'Sydney' on us..."
"I resemble that remark," came the tired-sounding riposte from the den, only to be followed immediately by a loud shush from the young Pretender in the process of tending him.
"We noticed," Jarod replied loudly enough for his voice to carry. "Do you want me to go in with you too?" he asked Miss Parker.
"Not if Sam's going with me," she responded, turning to Debbie, "What I DO need, however, is to know if your Dad still had Centre files on his home computer?"
Debbie's eyes widened, and she shrugged. "I don't know what he did or didn't have on there," she admitted. "I tried never to pay too much attention to what he was doing when he was working from home."
"Wise move, Deb," Sam commented dryly.
"How about you and Sam take my car to the Centre and do whatever it is you have to there," Jarod suggested evenly, "while I run Deb home and check out Broots' PC. I'll call you when I have an idea of what he's got. It also leaves the town car here in case we need to transport Syd anywhere - like to a hospital..."
Miss Parker nodded. "Sounds like a plan to me..."
Jarod looked into the den. "Well, Kevin, what's the damages?"
"Nothing obvious. He hasn't pulled any stitches or broken anything open," the young Pretender answered. "He just really needs to stay down and QUIET for a while."
"Think you can handle both Davy and Sydney for the afternoon?"
"I can referee the video game," Sydney spoke up before Kevin could answer. "You folks go on. I'll keep the boys occupied."
"'The boys'?" Miss Parker's eyebrows flew northward.
"Jarod..." Kevin's voice had gone soft. "I think he's running a fever, though..."
The older Pretender was through the den door in a flash and bending over his old mentor with a hand to his forehead and then cheeks. "You ARE a bit warmish, Syd." The dark chocolate eyes looked sharply at the younger man. "I think we're going to have to add in some stiff antibiotics, Kevin. We don't need Sydney coming down with a case of peritonitis on top of everything else..."
"Peritonitis?" Now even Sydney sounded worried.
"It's possible that the bullet could have nicked an ascending corner of the transverse colon on the way through," Jarod told him. "I didn't do all-out surgery to assess the damage when I didn't detect any perforations at the time. But without knowing one way or the other, all this activity for you has got to stop, as of right now." Jarod's face folded into a frown. "Trips to the bathroom and to get up and sit at the table at mealtimes are going to be the limits of your exercise regimen for the next week at least. The rest of the time, you will be lying down, in here on this couch so that you don't have to climb those stairs to lay down either."
"I'm not a child, Jarod," the psychiatrist frowned back.
"And I don't mean to treat you like one, Sydney. I know that all that you've been doing before now has been necessary at the time, but we're reaching the end of what you can be expected to do while this badly hurt. You were shot only a week ago, for God's sake!" Jarod bent so that he could examine the wound Kevin had uncovered. "You're not a young man, and you're not healing as fast as you used to either. You need to give yourself some time, and be patient - and WE need to stop putting you in a position where you CAN'T do either."
"I keep trying," Sydney retorted sharply.
"I know you have been," Jarod soothed, "and recent events haven't exactly been kind to any of us in giving you the time to recoup either. But we're going to have to be a whole more diligent and proactive in keeping you quiet for the time being, or else you're never going to heal properly. The rest of us are going to have to take responsibility for seeing to it that you DO continue to rest and recoup, instead of expecting you to step in and shoulder a load."
"Fair enough," Sydney agreed finally. "Frankly, I don't have either the heart or the energy to argue with you. I'm getting damned sick and tired of feeling like hell."
"All the better." Jarod glanced at Kevin. "Have you got a handle on things here?"
The young pretender nodded. "I'll just re-bandage things and then give him some of his regular pain meds." Kevin looked into Sydney's face. "No more of those useless Tylenols."
"OK. And I'll pick up some antibiotics on my way back from the Broots' house, then." Jarod looked over at Debbie. "You ready?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The mess that had been the Centre Tower looked no less horrific by daylight than it had beneath the halogen floodlights the night before. Miss Parker pulled Jarod's sports car to a halt in an area that had temporarily been set aside for parking and just stared for a while. She glanced over at Sam, who was also staring - even though he'd seen it the day before, it was still a sobering and chilling sight. "It's a miracle any of us came out of that alive," she commented quietly.
"Amen to that!" Sam agreed whole-heartedly.
"C'mon. We've got our work cut out for us," she spurred herself into action, climbing out of the sports car and waiting for Sam to join her before walking toward the command tent. "Who's in charge here?" she asked the nearest fireman, who pointed toward the back of the tent, nearest the table with communications equipment. She thanked the man, then walked purposefully over to the area pointed out to her. "Who's in charge here?" she asked again.
"I'm Chief Simpson," a bulking man with grey hair and steel-grey eyes answered her, looking up from a sheaf of paperwork in his hands at the woman in the smart grey silk pantsuit in front of him. "Who wants to know?"
"I'm Miss Parker, Chairman of the Centre..." she began and extended her hand to him.
"I thought the Chairman was named Raines, although the Chairman before that was named Parker..."
"He was my... father." There was no way in Hell that she'd ever admit to having been related to Raines - not to a complete outsider. Having to admit to a relationship with Mr. Parker was bad enough.
"That explains it, then," the Chief replied, taking her hand firmly in his. She was a cool customer, this new Chairman; her hand in his was firm and steady, and she had as regal a bearing as he had ever seen. "There was a recent change of administration - or you got promoted because of this?" he gestured around him.
"The transfer of authority happened just a little while before this... happened," Miss Parker replied dryly. "This is Sam Atlee, my new Chief of Security," she introduced Sam.
"Mr. Atlee," the Chief shook hands with a man even bigger and huskier than he was with a rather nasty lump on his forehead that spoke of where he had been recently. "Now, what can I do for you?"
"After all my people were out of the underground areas last night, I had them sign out so that I'd have some record of who was here and made it out safely. As you can imagine," she waved her hand at the pile of rubble, some of which was still smoldering, "most of the employment records were in the Tower - and thus are gone. I was wondering if you had that set of papers for me...?"
The Chief was nodding and already sifting through the folders piled in an in-box on the table until he found the one he was looking for. "Here it is." He handed it to her. "For what it's worth, Miss Parker, we have at least a body count for you for those we've recovered from the scene so far." His eyes were grave, with the distance needed for him to deal effectively with this large a tragedy. "Fifty-four positively identified - we're still working on some of the rest of what has been found. We're still not sure just how many more bodies they indicate."
Miss Parker closed her eyes. "How many survivors?" she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer to that one.
"Five, so far. Two women, three men. All were transferred to the hospital in Dover for treatment." The Chief's voice was carefully neutral. "All five were hurt pretty badly - I doubt any have been released from the hospital as yet. All had ID on them. I have a list..." He dug through his folders again. "Yeah, here we are. The names I got were Jenkins and Warren for the women, Ngawe, Fujimori and Hansen for the men."
"Did you say Ngawe?" Miss Parker's eyes widened.
"Yes, ma'am."
She turned and thwacked Sam gently in the chest with the back of her hand. "Get on the horn with the hospital. Make sure they know that the Centre is picking up the tab on his treatment - and make sure that Nairobi is notified immediately that Mr. Ngawe has survived the explosion."
"Uh... what phone?" Sam asked, looking about him and seeing nothing but twisted metal and tumbled concrete.
Miss Parker made a wry face and handed him her cell. "Don't wander too far away with that." As he moved away and started pushing buttons, she turned back to the Chief. "What about the outlying buildings - are they still sound?"
The Chief shrugged. "As far as I can tell - although the closer to the center of the explosion, the more damage they sustained."
"How's the underground facility holding up?"
Now he was shaking his head firmly. "We've already had a couple of minor fall-ins - mostly where we've had heavy equipment sitting and/or working over partially damaged sections." He pointed to a spot about thirty yards from the edge of the Tower debris field, where it was obvious the ground had given way. "It isn't pancaking down to the very bottom, like it could if the whole place were going to give; but I sure as hell wouldn't want to have to try to go down there again until you have some structural engineers do a complete analysis."
"Neither would I, Chief," Miss Parker assured him appreciatively. "Thanks for all your time."
"Before you go, do you have a number you can be reached at, in case we need to confer again?" the Chief asked just as she turned to walk away.
Miss Parker quickly listed her home and cell numbers for him, then went off in search of Sam and her cell phone. She met him at the edge of the command center tent, walking in her direction and holding the cell out to her. "It's Jarod for you," he announced, thrusting the little instrument at her.
She put the phone to her ear. "What?"
"Broots has the complete employee records on his system," Jarod announced with no preamble. "God only knows what he was looking through them FOR, but at least they're there..."
"Good. That gives us a place to start in figuring out who's alive, who's dead, and who's still missing." She pulled her hair back from her face and sniffed. The dust in the air was still plenty thick.
"How are things there?"
"Fifty-four known dead so far," she informed him back. "And guess what? Ngawe's still alive - in the hospital in Dover. There's a Japanese man still alive too - I wonder if he is Yakuza?"
"Did you get the list of survivors you were wanting?"
"Yup." She flipped through the pages with names, addresses and phone numbers on them. "We'll have to compare these names against what Broots has, then begin to see who's missing from those that are left over. I would imagine that there will be plenty who maybe were in the outlying buildings like Sam - they were taken in for treatment and then released later."
"That's going to be a big job, Parker."
She nodded, although he couldn't see her. "I know. And I know just the person to call to help us sort through this mess." His name was on the paper that was now at the top of her list. "Oh, and Jarod? Do me a favor when you're done at Broots'?"
"What's that?"
"Make arrangements for two new cell phones - one in Sam's name and another in mine for the time being. The Centre is going to have to go wireless until we have something resembling an office building again to work out of."
"Anything else?"
She looked over at Sam and then turned her back and walked away a few paces. "Is that offer you made me this morning for a massage still good?"
On the other end of the line, Jarod's eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead, and then lowered over chocolate eyes that twinkled merrily. "Well, because it's you," he purred into her ear, "I suppose I can keep the offer open for another evening."
"Good," she purred back at him, "because I intend to take you up on it."
"I'll meet you at Syd's later then," Jarod chuckled in a low voice full of promise, "and we can discuss this further once we get home. Oh yeah - Deb wants to stay at Syd's tonight again, though - doesn't want to be over here all by herself right now."
"I don't blame her," Miss Parker nodded, moving back toward Sam. "Why don't you also stop and pick up some pizza and salad makings for dinner, then? It'll save Syd from getting up and cooking, not to mention saving him from having to wonder if Kevin can cook at all. Deb doesn't need to be cooking right now either, and I'll probably be too tired to. We'll meet there at... what... six-thirty?"
"Agreed. I'll see you then," Jarod responded airily and then disconnected.
Miss Parker let her eyes wander down the list to the name 'Cody Tyler', and then dialed the number. The phone rang several times, then hit an answering machine. She waited through the outbound message, figuring that he was probably still asleep - just as she would prefer to be. She heard the beep that indicated the time had come for her to start talking. "Tyler, this is Miss Parker. When you get this message please call..." she rattled off her cell phone number. "I have that something challenging for you I was telling you about last night - all I need to know now is if you're still interested."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Chief Harrison looked down at the preliminary report his officers had filed with him with a frown. His department had a mystery on its hands - two of them, actually - and if there was one thing a small-town police department DIDN'T need, it was a mystery.
Of the two bodies found at the edge of Centre property, only one had had any identification - and he was a landscape custodian for the Centre itself. The other had had no indication on the body of who that man had been or what his business had been in the area. Both men had been murdered - the Centre employee with a broken neck, the John Doe with a single gunshot wound to the head execution-style. They had been found only yards from each other.
Subsequent investigation had yielded a rental car hidden in some shrubbery near the road, but it seemed as if whoever had rented the car had used fictitious identification to acquire the car and left no real evidence behind to lead the police anywhere else.
Then there was the fact that the unidentified man had been found with an electronic transmitter - a high-powered detonator. Was this man the bomber who had destroyed a good portion of the Centre - and if so, who had killed him?
All of this put Harrison in a very uncomfortable position of having to call in outside help with the investigation. He simply didn't have the forensics resources to analyze what little evidence had been collected properly, nor access to any of the larger law enforcement databases that might have some of the answers he needed. The situation with the national media breathing down his throat and the reporter corps camped on his police station steps waiting for a hint of word about any of the incredible events of the past day wasn't helping any. Like it or not, he was feeling heavy pressure to make a decision as to whom he was going to call.
He took a deep breath and exhaled in frustration, then lifted the receiver on his phone. "Judy, get me the FBI office in Dover, will you?"
If he was going to need outside help, he might as well go for the best he could get...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Fujimori raised his head and looked around his room calmly. The doctor had been with him only a few moments earlier, and he knew he had been extraordinarily lucky to have come away from such a potentially lethal situation with only four broken ribs and a crushed ankle. The part of his mind that had been trained for a long time to constantly consider the welfare of the Yakuza found itself wondering if Tanaka-sama had similarly survived. The other part of his mind, that part of him that had grown steadily more and more disenchanted with what the Yakuza considered 'life', spoke equally loudly in declaring that it really didn't matter.
Still, if he were to get himself back to Japan, he would have to make use of his position within the Yakuza at least one more time. He had vowed to enter the monastery once he got home. It was possible that Buddha would have to wait until he had completely discharged his duties to those who would be able to see him home.
Moving very carefully, he tried to twist around in his bed and reach for the telephone that sat on the small stand to his right. But just as his hand was almost at the receiver, a huge black hand grabbed it and held on tightly while the other moved the telephone completely out of reach. He stared up into a very serious, very tight African face. "Excuse me?" he began in heavily accented English.
"Mr. Ngawe has ordered that you have no contact with your people for the time being," he was informed in a musical form of English that was difficult to understand. "And no contact is exactly what you'll have until I have orders confirming the change in status."
Fujimori blinked, then settled back into his hospital bed with a fatalistic sigh. Perhaps it was to be his Karma never to see Japan again, much less enter the monastery. At the moment, it certainly was his Karma to be under the control of a Triumverate strongman while in no shape to challenge the man. Besides, he knew that he couldn't even hobble half as fast as this man could walk.
He quietly began his chanting again, finding it a soothing alternative to apprehensive speculation on his immediate future.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Tyler walked stiffly from his bathroom back into his bedroom with nothing but a towel wrapped around his middle. His shower had drained all the hot water from his water heater, and still his legs felt like every muscle in them was knotted and cramped, and his lower back ached. He'd taken a hefty dose of analgesics the moment he'd talked himself into actually moving - but they hadn't had a chance to take effect as yet, he imagined. Much as he would have preferred to just climb into bed again, he knew that getting up and moving around was going to be the only way to work those kinks and knots out with any efficiency.
His head had hit the pillow at about four that morning, and until about half an hour ago, the world could have fallen in without his knowledge or concern. Now it was mid-afternoon, and he was firmly on his way to getting his days and nights thoroughly confused if he wasn't careful. He pulled open a drawer and took out a fresh pair of boxers and a tee shirt to toss on the bed, then closed that drawer and opened another to pull out a pair of faded jeans. He groaned as he discarded the towel and slowly donned the underwear and then bent with difficulty to pull on the jeans.
With a sigh, he sat himself back down on the bed and ran his fingers through his damp, dark hair, giving it some semblance of order - and then noticed that the answering machine near his bed was blinking with a message that must have come in while he was bathing. He punched the play button and listened:
"Tyler, this is Miss Parker. When you get this message please call..."
Tyler moved quickly and grabbed up a pencil and a piece of scrap paper and jotted down the phone number his boss had given him. Somehow, he wasn't surprised that she was already up and working - and he guessed that the chances were that she wasn't half as stiff as he was. But she had remembered - both him and her offer to him.
He groaned as he stretched just that little bit further to grasp the handset of his cordless phone and bring it to him so he could punch in the number he'd been given. His chance to climb out of a morgue would NOT get past him without his reaching for it. He held the instrument to his ear and waited.
"What?"
He blinked. It wasn't a normal way for someone to answer a phone, but then, this WAS Miss Parker...
"Miss Parker, this is Tyler - I'm returning your call..."
"Ah." Her voice relaxed a bit. "How are you feeling this afternoon? Did you get to rest at all?"
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am. I'm stiff, but I'm alive."
He heard her low chuckle. "That sounds familiar. Well, are you interested?"
His eyes widened - boy, she didn't beat around the bush at all. "Yes, ma'am!"
"Are you in any shape to move at all today, or do you want another day to take it easy first?"
"Frankly, ma'am, I think I'd feel better if I got myself moving," he replied. "You said you had something for me?"
"Get your ass over here to the Centre, 'Tyler-ma'am' - and make tracks to the fire department command tent. I'll be waiting for you there and we can talk more once you get here." She paused, obviously considering. "Oh, and stop and pick up some coffee for three on your way in - and some donuts. You're probably hungry, and I could use something myself."
"I'll be there as soon as I can, Miss Parker," he assured her, groaning as he stood.
"And take some pain pills. Sounds like you could use them."
He smiled. "Already have, ma'am, but thank you. See you in a few."
He disconnected with a smile on his face. Something told him that with that call, his life had just taken a very interesting turn.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"'Tyler-ma'am'?" Sam's voice sounded distinctly concerned and confused.
Miss Parker took one look at her new Security Chief's face and burst out laughing. "I wish I had a camera," she teased him, then let him off the hook. "Tyler's a very interesting fellow who attached himself at my elbow while I was 'down below' trying to get everybody out of there. For a morgue assistant, he made a much better personal assistant - and that's exactly what I'm going to have him doing from now on."
"You're going to want a new personal sweeper assigned to you as well, right?" Sam asked quickly.
"Well," she hedged, "I'm not entirely convinced that walking around as if I needed protection is the way I want to live my life from now on. For one thing, the Centre is out of the industrial espionage and strong-arming business - as of right now. We'll need a team of security officers, obviously, but not so much to control those who work for us as to make sure none of our new research sprouts legs and walks away."
"That was a lot of our work before," Sam complained half-heartedly.
"I know that, but it was control through intimidation - and I intend to remove intimidation as a major motivating force at the Centre. The level of corporate paranoia is going to take a decided down turn. I'm going to want you to put together a retraining program for your sweeper corps that reflects this change."
"That's sweepers. What about cleaners?"
Miss Parker's face grew cautious. "We're not going to be using their services any longer. That's a criminal element of the previous administrations here that will no longer be tolerated. Either the cleaners agree to return to being sweepers or they can have two months' severance pay to look for another job elsewhere."
Sam gazed at his boss appreciatively. "You ARE going to be changing things around here, aren't you?"
She nodded firmly, her face folded into an expression of determination. "Absolutely. I predict that in a year's time, you won't recognize the place."
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