Disclaimer:  The characters are not my own, I'm only borrowing them to put them into situations of my own imagining.

Finding Family

Part Two

By Dr. Scott

Rating: G

Category: S

Timeline: Sometime in the middle of the series

Spoilers: None

Keywords: MPJF, JOF

Summary:  Miss Parker accidentally shoots Jarod, which forces her to confront her feelings towards him.  Meanwhile, a seriously injured Jarod has to learn to trust someone to help him and finds out a little about his family history.

The Centre, Blue Cove, Delaware, 10:30 Wednesday

Miss Parker paced in her office, tapping her fingers on her crossed arms.  She found it helped her think, and at this point, she didn't know what to think.  She kept replaying the scene in her mind.  How she had shot Jarod.  She hadn't meant to, of course, but she had seen him jerked forward by the impact and there had been more than enough blood evidence to confirm it when they had found the ladder down the sewer.  The sewer was just the place for that lab-rat part of her snarled.  But another part, a very secret, quiet part was glad he had gotten away.  He had been magnificent as usual—rolling with impact, running when anyone else would have lain there in shock, and eluding their search once again.  She had imagined herself catching him and bringing Jarod back to the Centre, but she had never thought she'd shoot him.  Oh, she may have threatened to but that wasn't her style.  She remembered the few times she had shot men and it had always been in self-defense.  Somehow shooting Jarod in the back just didn't seem fair to the rules of this cat and mouse game they had been playing the last few years.

"M-miss Parker?" a nervous voice interrupted her reverie and she looked up to see Broots leaning his head in the crack of her door.

"What?" she snapped.

"I have the lab results from the blood samples you brought back.  It's definitely Jarod's blood.  And I think I have a lead from the project he was working on there in Durham."

"Well, come in.  Let's see it."

"I got to thinking, maybe if we could find his lair, we might be able to recover the DSA.  If he was injured and in a hurry to escape, then maybe he left it behind.  You know that would go a long way to…"

"The lead, Broots, what about the lead?" she interrupted.

"Oh, yeah," he continued in his breathless way, "Well, we already knew that he had been posing as a professor at Duke University since the beginning of the spring term, but it seemed strange that he only taught these afternoon chemistry lab classes.  I did a search for new utility connections, you know, phone, electricity and all."  Broots walked past her and around to the computer on her desk, quickly typing to access the information he'd found.  "Look, here's the request for power to be turned on for a small office building."

Parker leaned over his shoulder and squinted at the rows of information, trying to focus on the one he was pointing to.  "Spade Investigations?" she wondered.

"Look here.  The date of the request is the day before he started work at the University.  And this building is zoned as a business with an upstairs apartment.  It appears he was working a second pretend as a private investigator at the same time in the nearby town of Raleigh, and maybe that's where he is hiding."

"Find Sydney.  We're all going back to North Carolina," she declared.

Fiesta Grocery Store, Houston, Texas, 11:15 Wednesday

Jarod opened the bathroom door slowly and looked down the short hall to see if anyone was looking right at him.  He saw the cart he had left out on the main aisle and sighed with relief.  Carrying his duffel with his good left hand, he walked slowly to the cart and carefully set the bag on the bottom of the cart trying not to bump or twist his right shoulder.  He had put on all the rest of the gauze and bandages he had and had changed his shirt.  The rinsed one was rolled in paper towels and tucked in with his few other possessions including the DSA player and the recordings of his life at the Centre.  The Centre wanted that back almost as much as him because it was the proof of their atrocious treatment of him, and he had gone to a lot of trouble to keep it with him.

He looked out down the main back aisle of the store.  Fortunately it was a quiet weekday morning with only a few shoppers and they were all focused on their lists and scanning the shelves.  He had been lucky that the bus stop had been across the street from a corner grocery store.  He wouldn't have been able to walk far otherwise.  He leaned on the cart handle as a wave of pain and nausea swept over him.  He needed to get some supplies and risk a cab ride, at least to a motel where he could rest.

He was about to set off in search of the first aide supplies when a disturbance to his left down the main produce aisle caught his attention.  A cascade of oranges came rolling off a bin in the center dropping on and around a small girl and scattering all about the floor.  He watched as a woman hurriedly pushed a cart with a baby boy sitting in the child seat over from the side bins.  She was petite, a little plump from motherhood, but still quite pretty.  She the loveliest red curly hair that reminded him with a pang of sadness of his own lost mother.

"Oh, Kimie," she sighed with dismay and knelt down on one knee to the little girl.  She reached out for the girl's hand and Jarod half expected her to slap the child the way he had seen the young woman on the bus discipline her son.  But this woman only held it then looked the girl right in the eyes.

"You wanted to help Mommy didn't you?" she asked and little Kimie nodded with a stricken face, tears clearly threatening to cascade as freely as the oranges just had.  "Sweetie, you have to take the oranges from the top.  See?  These ones on the bottom hold those ones up.  Just like your blocks," the mother explained pointing.  "Scamper around right quick and pick these up and we'll do it right, okay?"

The little girl started bringing oranges to her mother who straightened up and began setting them back on the display bin.  She took a moment to check on the baby in the basket and then took another three oranges from the little girl.  As they worked to restore the stack of oranges, she sang a silly song to the children to the tune of Humpty Dumpty.

"Humpty Orange fell out of the bin,

Humpty Orange couldn't get back in,

All the sweet Williams and all the quick Kim's

Helped Mommy put him away again."

Jarod grinned at the quick wit and resourcefulness of the woman as the oranges were quickly restacked.  Two had rolled around the corner toward him and he felt he had to acknowledge her somehow.  He pushed his cart back down the aisle and leaning carefully over to retrieve the oranges he felt a wave of dizziness pass over him.  Straightening, he leaned on the cart until the fuzzy, gray spots cleared from his eyes and he took a deep breath.  It would do no good to pass out here he reprimanded himself sternly.

Meanwhile, the lovely woman had picked up the girl and was helping her pick oranges from the top of the pile and put them into a cellophane bag.  She turned as he approached and looked at him suspiciously.  He realized he probably did look rather ragged and didn't blame her.  Nevertheless, he held out the oranges to the little girl and spoke in his quietest, kindest voice, "You did a good job picking up.  Here's two more of those escaping little rascals."

The little girl giggled and took the oranges out of his hand, stacked them carefully back on the top of the bin, and beamed triumphantly at him.  He grinned back, crows feet crinkling in the corners of his eyes and his dimple even showing through the stubble of his two day old beard.  Still smiling he looked over at her mother who was studying him curiously.

"And you handled that so well.  Keep doing what you are doing.  You're a great mother to these kids," he said earnestly.

"Thank you," she said, nodding a little embarrassed.

Jarod nodded in return and turned his cart to walk back to the main aisle.

The Centre, Blue Cove, Delaware, Noon, Wednesday

Miss Parker stepped impatiently into Sydney's office.  Broots was already there standing in front of Sydney's desk, his hands frozen in mid air gesture as he clearly had stopped talking the second she had opened the door.  "Well?" she snapped, "What's the hold up?"

"I'm not coming with you this time, Miss Parker," Sydney said in a soft voice.

"Why not?" she demanded.

"Your tactics have gotten much more aggressive since your brother joined the Centre.  You are more focused on competing with him, than with bringing Jarod home."

"Since when is the Centre home?" she sneered.

"I will stay here and wait for Jarod to call in.  I want to know if he's alright," Sydney continued ignoring her comment.

"Fine.  Come on, Broots.  Let's go catch the injured lab rat so we can bring him 'home' to his zoo keeper," she replied turning angrily and swept back out the door.  She stopped halfway down the hall to wait for Broots to come out of the office as a wave of guilt washed over her.  Why did I say that, she asked herself.  I don't want to hurt Sydney's feelings.  He's the only one who has always been on my side since I was a girl.  Well, not the only one, she admitted to herself.

Then Broots walked up and interrupted her reverie.  "I'm ready, Miss Parker."  She led the way out to the small private airfield and the Centre jet to take them to Raleigh, North Carolina.

Fiesta Grocery Store, Houston, Texas,  11:45 Wednesday

Jarod pushed his cart slowly partly because he was feeling weaker and partly because he had to look down each aisle to find his favorite foods.  He had decided to hole up in a motel and wanted enough supplies for a week.  He had put bottled water, crackers, cans of whipped cheese spread, boxes of Twinkies, and a bunch of boxes of instant soup into the cart.  On the aisle with the plastic cups and spoons, he'd even found a small coffee maker so he could make hot water.

He had paused to rest near the middle of the store by an aisle of frozen foods and watched as the red haired woman and her children shopped.  Her cart was now full of bagged fruits and vegetables.  The little girl was riding cross-legged on the bottom of the cart and the baby was teething on a little carrot.  She breezed along the back refrigerator section pausing only to pick up a gallon of milk.  She turned the cart down an aisle, only to almost immediately appear with a bottle of catsup now on board.  She clearly had the locations of all the items available in the store memorized.  All the while she was singing little nursery rhymes to keep them entertained.

As they came up to him, he smiled again.  As she smiled back, he noticed her incredibly clear blue eyes as they twinkled at him.  "Not the healthiest selection you have there," she teased him.

He shrugged, "Perhaps, but they require minimal cooking."

She nodded amiably and pushed on down the frozen food aisle.

Jarod took a deep breath and forced himself to continue.  He needed to find first aide and some pain medicine and get out of here.  The second to the last aisle finally had what he was looking for.  He put in both a bottle of Tylenol and Advil since he knew he could double dose himself without the two different medications interfering with each other.  He put all the boxes of large gauze bandages they had in his basket, as well has the adhesive tape and antibiotic ointments.  He was just contemplating what other supplies he might need, when the woman turned on to the aisle from the other end and stopped at the baby supplies arranged down there.

"Slide out sweetie.  Mommy needs to put the diapers down there," she called out.

The little girl did as she was told and while her mother began arranging the diaper packages she went skipping down the aisle singing a nonsense song, "Cree-craw-toads-foot-geese-walk-bare-foot.  Cree-craw-toads-foot-geese-walk-bare-foot."

Jarod froze in amazement.  He knew that song.  From when he was little.  He thought he had made it up himself.  He used to sing it to himself at night when he had been first taken to the Centre.  He hadn't thought about it in years.

He squatted down to look at the little girl and sang the song along with her as she skipped up the aisle to him, "Cree-craw-toads-foot-geese-walk-bare-foot."  She grinned at him in appreciation that he was playing along with her.

The mother quickly pushed her cart up to his cart and looked strangely down at him.  "How do you know that song?"  she asked.  "That's just nonsense my grandmother used to sing to me.  It's not one of the regular nursery rhymes.  Believe me I know, I've read them all.  How do you know it?" she repeated.

"I've always known it since I was little.  I thought I made it up myself," he said shaking his head in amazement.

The little girl was just tall enough to see into his cart and asked with concern, "Did you get a really big owie?  I got a bad owie once when I fell out of my red wagon."

Jarod nodded slowly at her and reached up to the side of the cart to pull himself to standing.  An intense wave of dizziness passed over him and he slumped on the cart to support his weight as the gray spots slowly faded from his eyes.

"Are you okay?  Do you need help?" the woman asked with concern.

Jarod smiled weakly at her.  "I just need some rest.  Can you recommend a motel close by here?"

"Hmmm, the Heights is a really old neighborhood.  It's mostly little houses.  There are a couple of bed-and-breakfast inns in big Victorian houses on Heights Boulevard."

He shook his head, "No, I prefer more privacy."

"I guess you'd have to head out down to the Interstate and probably away from downtown to find one of the big chain motels," she replied.  "Do you need directions?"

"I'll catch a cab," he replied.

She looked at him quizzically.  "If you don't have a car, how did you get here?"

"I took a bus," he replied simply.

While they were talking the baby had gotten bored and had managed to squirm his legs up onto the seat and was pushing himself up on the basket handle.  As he teetered precariously over the edge, Jarod sprang to action and for the second time that day caught a baby before he could hit the floor.  Again the action strained Jarod's hurt shoulder and he fell slowly with the boy to the floor moaning softly.

"Oh my God!" the woman exclaimed and bent down to the two of them.  She scooped the baby out of Jarod's arms, the little scamp merely giggling with this new fun way to play on a cart.  "Maybe I should call an ambulance for you," she said looking worried.

"No, No!" Jarod replied a little panicked.  He forced himself to take a few deep breaths.  "I just need to get out of here and rest."

The little girl came over to his side and placed a small, soft cool hand on his forehead, "Mommy, you should check him with the click-click.  He's getting the fevers."

"Look here, ah, what is your name?"

"My name is Jarod," he replied.

"Nice to meet you, Jarod," she smiled warmly and held out her hand, "Mine's Emily.  Emily Brooks."

He took her hand and stared at her in amazement.  Could it be?  How could she know that song?  Could she be his long sought after sister, Emily?

But she misunderstood his look.  "I know.  It's pretty old fashioned, but it's a family name.  I can't believe I'm doing this, but why don't you come to my house?" she invited.

"No, I couldn't.  I'm alright."

"No, you're not alright.  I don't go around inviting perfect strangers to my house you know.  I live only two blocks from here and you can rest all afternoon.  It's almost nap time anyway.  You can find a motel later when you feel stronger.  Somehow I know I can trust you.  Kim has a good sense about people and I do too.  You know the old saying about old dogs and children, they can see through to your soul."

Jarod stared straight in her clear blue eyes and he felt like he could see into her soul too.  He had to go with his gut on this one and it was telling him to trust her.  So he nodded once in agreement, and she smiled back nodding herself.

"Okay, the logistics of getting out of here…" she murmured thinking out-loud to her self.  Emily let go of his hand and stood up with the baby putting him on her hip.  Then she reached her hand out for Jarod and helped pull him to his feet.  "I'm going to take you out to my car where you can sit down and then I'll come back and check out."

He swayed and leaned on the cart again as he adjusted to the standing position.

"Do you think you can walk?" she asked.

Clenching his teeth together, Jarod nodded.  I am not going to faint, he repeated to himself, and began shuffling along leaning on the cart.

"Hold on a minute," Emily said.  She set the baby in one corner of his basket and she quickly transferred all of his items on the top of her basket.  Then she picked up the little girl and set her in the cart next to her baby brother.  "Don't let him stand up, Kimie," she instructed the girl.

As luck would have it, a cashier was available when they walked up to the front of the store.  "Buenas dias, Yolanda," Emily said pleasantly as they approached.

"Buenas dias, Mrs. Brooks," the check out girl replied.

"I'm taking my friend out to the car with the kids.  Will you start checking out?  I'll be right back."

"Si, of course, Mrs." the girl replied.

Jarod walked along in a daze, concentrating on his steps as Emily took over the actual pushing of the cart.  The automatic doors opened as they stepped out and the brisk breeze brought him back more to his senses and the incredible throbbing pain in his shoulder.

They soon reached a large, brown older model town car and she quickly unlocked the passenger side.  Jarod slid gratefully on to the velour seat and leaned his head back on the headrest.  Emily opened the back door where two car seats were belted in, then proceeded to buckle in both children.  As she lifted his duffel bag and set it on the backseat floor board she could sense there was one large item in it shifting its balance.  She closed both doors and then went around to the driver side.  She turned the ignition enough to roll down the two front windows halfway and then cut it off again.

Jarod grabbed her wrist and for a split second she doubted the wisdom of her actions.  Who was this guy she was helping anyway and what sort of trouble was he in?

"Wait," he said letting go and reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a roll of cash.  He set it in his lap and struggled to pull two bills off with his left hand while his right arm lay uselessly in his lap.  "Here," he held out two hundred dollar bills, "use this to pay for everything."

She smiled at him, "I'll be right back.  You two be good," she added to the two small children and hurried back into the store.

The baby started fussing the minute she left, but little Kim scolded him, "Mommy said to be good."

"Let's sing to him," Jarod suggested.  "What does he like?"

"Twinkle, twinkle little star…" the girl began and Jarod sang along as best as he could.

In no time Emily was back opening the trunk and loading the bags in.  As she set them down, he could feel the car rock up and down on the shocks, causing a jolt of pain down his arm each time.  He leaned his head back grimacing as he endured it.

As she slid behind the wheel, she saw his pained expression and reached over to touch his good left arm.  "Are you sure you don't want me to take you to the emergency room?"

Jarod rolled his head to look at her with cloudy eyes, "Can't trust Them.  Only trust you," he said hoarsely.

She nodded and started the engine, "We'll be home in no time."