White Owl
by MMB & NIOMR
Not a Game Anymore
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House
Sydney sat with his handcuffed hands behind him tied into immobility in the very comfortable easy chair in front of the massive fireplace. He had been watching Lyle pace back and forth in silence like a caged animal for the past ten minutes. "Is she even still alive?" he asked quietly.
"Who?"
"That young oriental woman you kidnapped the other day," Sydney reminded him with a very calm and peaceful voice so as not to trigger the explosive and unpredictable temper.
Lyle glanced at the psychiatrist briefly and then waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, her? Yeah, she's still alive." The more sinister Parker progeny paused in his pacing and grinned coldly. "For the time being, that is. Now that she's served her purpose, however, I suppose there are better things I could be doing with her..."
Sydney swallowed hard against the bile that rose in the back of his throat at the thought of just what "better things" Lyle might be contemplating. "Served her purpose?" He grabbed onto the one thread of Lyle's statement that offered the least opportunity for distraction. Keeping Lyle talking meant preventing him from doing something else that would be probably far more harmful to someone. "What do you mean, she's served her purpose?"
"She brought you here, didn't she?" Lyle grinned just a little bit wider.
That floored the Belgian. "That was your intent all along?"
The grin turned into a smirk. "Why does it surprise you that I can put together a plan and have it come off like clockwork? Is it because I didn't end up getting thrown into your precious Pretender program, Sydney, is that it?"
"I didn't think that..." The question caught Sydney by surprise.
"Do you honestly think," Lyle's voice turned that horrible calm that almost inevitably prefaced an act of violence or depravity, "if I wanted my part in that woman's disappearance to remain a secret that I would have made such a public spectacle of myself at that rally?"
Sydney merely blinked. He was convinced, now, that his salvation would come from not panicking and using his years of experience as a therapist to perhaps shake Lyle's belief in what he was doing. He'd taught Jarod for years that his mind was his most valuable weapon - it was time to start putting that into practice. "You could have done that for a number of reasons," he replied in as neutral and scientific tones as he could manage. "You could have been taunting the police, much the way arsonists do when they sometimes stand in the crowd of spectators at the sight of their latest fire - thinking 'see how much smarter I am than you? I'm standing here and you idiots don't even know...' Then again, it could have been a call for help - 'stop me please! See me and catch me...'"
"I think I like the first one better," Lyle sniffed, a little uncomfortable with Sydney's so easily picking up on the part of that day that had been the most exhilarating and making it sound so tawdry. He began to pace again. "Then again, you haven't listed the real reason."
"What reason would that be?" Sydney asked in a very leading professional tone.
"That I wanted to catch your attention," the younger man shrugged. "What better way to do so than by committing the one thing that you, thanks to Jarod and his damned research, would quickly attribute to me anyway? By putting my face in the newspaper and on TV, I was inviting you to try to trip me up - only what I really wanted was to get you into this house alone."
"You mean she was nothing but bait for me?" Sydney was nonplussed. That made him at least indirectly responsible... No! He couldn't afford the luxury of guilt yet.
Lyle's smile became genuinely pleased. "Absolutely - and she played her part as bait perfectly, don't you think?"
"For God's sake, Lyle, what's going on here?" Sydney gaped.
The pacing paused. "I hope you enjoyed your meal tonight, because it will be your last," Lyle chortled with real glee. "Already the chemical you ingested is working through your system. You should already have a somewhat upset stomach..."
Sydney's brows furled. He'd laid the blame for the sour stomach on the stress of having gotten himself into such a tight spot, not on... "You mean poison?"
Lyle's answering grin was enough to make the already sour stomach turn over. "By golly, you are smart a little. Twelve hours from now..."
"For God's sake, why?"
The blue-grey eyes that looked altogether too much like his twin sister's were unapologetic and cold. "Nothing personal, Syd. Just orders..."
"Mr. Raines..."
"That half-dead walking bag of wind had nothing to do with this. The orders came from much higher up."
Sydney wilted. If the orders came from the Triumvirate, there was no way he could expect a rescue attempt led by Miss Parker.
Lyle watched the news shred much of the man's damnable composure. "How does it feel," he asked derisively, "to know that you only have a few more hours of increasing agony to live?" Sydney shot his executioner a withering glare and said nothing. The psychiatrist's obstinacy in the face of mortality pricked Lyle's ire. "What's the matter? You think that just because you got the alphabet soup attached to the end of your name, you can ask others intrusive questions about their personal feelings, but they aren't allowed to ask you the same kind of questions?"
"I refuse to answer questions that only have the purpose of promoting your ability to gloat," Sydney snapped back.
"You never have been a very cooperative man," Lyle grumbled, feeling as if he'd been robbed of part of the enjoyment process. "I'm almost glad the Triumvirate decided the time had come for you to be 'removed'... that was how they put it." He resumed his pacing. "My job was to get you away from anybody who would turn your agony into a public spectacle - to bring you here so you could die away from prying eyes."
It was Sydney who sniffed in derision now. "So the Triumvirate has demoted you to Cleaner for the day, eh? Seems THEY don't have much faith in you either..."
Lyle stopped pacing and whirled to throw an accusing finger into Sydney's face. "Yeah? Well that will change after this is all over..."
The Belgian's chestnut eyes gazed up at his captor with pity. "I seriously doubt that."
"They'll have a lot more respect for me when I not only give you the privacy to die in agony without causing an uproar, but by bringing Jarod back to the Centre to boot," Lyle snapped irritably. "When I do what nobody's been able to manage to do in over five years, I'll be a helluva lot higher on the corporate ladder than just Cleaner..."
Sydney stared at Lyle for a moment, dumbfounded, then began to chuckle in real amusement. "You? Capture Jarod all by yourself? You ARE crazy."
Lyle took on a lecturing tone and began pacing again so as not to be tempted to try to throttle the arrogant psychiatrist. "My sister never could appreciate just what a valuable resource you could be in bringing Jarod back to the fold. I've always been aware that all it would take would be your welfare being threatened," he flashed his cold smile again. "It would bring out the knight in shining armor in Jarod, and he'd come charging to your rescue."
"I don't know what you've been drinking," Sydney replied wryly, "but it has definitely fogged your wits. Jarod wouldn't jeopardize his freedom for me..."
"Now THAT is where you are wrong, my friend," Lyle began pacing again. "Jarod has a definite soft spot in his heart for you - or he wouldn't have come after Nicholas when I captured HIM to get to you and through you to Jarod. I have to admit, I miscalculated in that I didn't expect the BOTH of you to come to the rescue... TOGETHER..." That incident still smarted - Sydney had kept him distracted inside the farmhouse with Nicholas while Jarod had incapacitated the sweepers ranging outside to effect his capture. And then Jarod had proceeded to scare the crap out of him too - but thank heavens nobody suspected the depth of that humiliation except his sister, and even she didn't know the half of it. If she had, he'd have never heard the end of it.
"You didn't expect me to come to rescue my son?" Sydney shook his head in disbelief.
"I did, but..." Lyle shook his head - this was too confusing. "My father never came to MY rescue, did he?" he shot back angrily as an afterthought, then wiped his face with the hand that had all its fingers and resumed his pacing.
"Lyle, your father didn't even know you existed..." the psychiatrist began, only to have Lyle come at him shaking a finger in his face.
"Like Hell he didn't. After all, we all know that Mr. Raines, rather than Mr. Parker, was my... our... sire. And HE knew very well that I had survived!" Lyle's face was flushed. "He... GAVE me to those incompetents, the Bowman's - and then saw to it that the old man learned how to 'properly' discipline me. That damned..." Lyle took a deep breath to try to calm himself.
Sydney, on the other hand, saw an opening. "Speaking of Mr. Raines, does he know what you're doing now, and approve of it?" he asked quietly.
"No." The answer was flat, final. "And as long as I bring Jarod in at the end, he doesn't need to know either. The orders about you don't require his agreement - never did." Lyle's expression grew cold and calculating. "And once I have Jarod safely back in the Centre, I'll be able to argue for his removal as Chairman - and for my promotion to the position I've worked my whole life to earn."
"You're playing a dangerous game there..." Sydney shook his head. "Raines has many allies within the Centre - and you have many enemies. Others have tried to remove him before you and failed..."
"You mean that stupid stunt of shooting out his oxygen tank?" Lyle's chuckle was a cold one. "You should have taken TWO shots and killed him first, THEN blown him to smithereens. God, Syd, can't you do ANYTHING right?"
Sydney stifled the surprise before it could appear on his face. "You know as well as I that I was never found responsible..."
Lyle gave him a sideways glance and began pacing again. "And you know as well as I do that you did it. Even the Triumvirate accepted that as the most likely scenario for the botched assassination attempt."
"Raines has more lives than a cat," Sydney stated flatly, refusing to back down or admit anything.
"So?" Lyle retorted sharply. "The old bastard can't live forever - and it's long since time that a younger, more capable man stand at the helm of the Centre. All it will take is for me to bring Jarod in, and the Triumvirate won't have to look very hard for his replacement... when the time comes..." He grinned to himself. "And I can make sure that time comes sooner rather than later..." He glanced at Sydney, sitting so stubbornly smug in the chair, and frowned briefly. "How's the stomach?" he queried in a light tone.
Sydney shrugged. He didn't feel wonderful, but he also wasn't hurting. "About the same," he reported without much concern in his voice. He looked up into his captor's face and saw the disappointment flit across the younger man's features. "Sorry," he apologized insincerely. It was a point of power when he had very little with which to work to NOT be falling ill at the time Lyle obviously was expecting.
Lyle shrugged too. "Maybe they were a little off on the timeframe," he hedged, justifying the lack of symptoms to himself in frustration. "We just have to be patient."
"What about the woman?" Sydney decided to push slightly and see where it would lead. After all, it wasn't like he had anything better to do... "Did you poison her too?"
Lyle stared at him with an open mouth for a moment. "Of course not!" he burst out in irritation. "If I did that, then I wouldn't be able to..." He took a deep breath, calmed himself, and gave Sydney another sideways glance. "Besides, *I* didn't poison you, that was the Triumvirate."
"And you say she was only bait..."
"That's right."
"Well, then, now that you have me, surely you can just let her go..."
"And have her identify me? Are you crazy?" Lyle laughed in surprise. "Besides," his look darkened, "I have more plans for her - for both before... and after..."
"Her disappearance - and your face in the newspapers - is going to leave a trail. The Triumvirate won't like that..."
"Shows how much YOU know," Lyle sneered and began pacing again. "You forget that I don't exist anymore - Mr. Bowman is sitting and rotting in prison for killing me! Except at the Centre and for the Triumvirate, I am a non-person."
"When they find her body..."
"Who said the authorities will ever find her?" Lyle chuckled at him. "There are all SORTS of ways to make a body disappear, Syd..."
Sydney swallowed hard and then forced himself to look into Lyle's face without flinching. "Consuming them..."
Something washed past the background of Lyle's eyes, something that made Sydney's stomach turn. "That's one way," Lyle admitted blandly. "A very enjoyable way too..."
Sydney forced himself to continue to look at Lyle evenly. "What on earth ever possessed you to start doing such... morally reprehensible things to your fellow human beings?"
"Try having my childhood," Lyle answered sourly, resuming his pacing, "and then imagine what it means to become one of Raines' protégés. HE sent me to learn the drug trade in Thailand from a man named Chin Than - remember him?" Sydney nodded. "It was Than that introduced me to..." Lyle caught himself just before he began to give away his life's story. "Ah-ah-aaaah," he waved a cautionary finger back and forth. "I'm not about to let you earwig me... psych me out... confuse me..."
"I beg your pardon?" Sydney blinked. "All I wanted to know was what it took to make a man into a monster."
"Is that what I am?" Lyle stopped pacing and thought a moment. "Yes, I suppose you're right - I am." He looked at Sydney, sitting there so calmly. "But am I a monster because of what I do, or is it that the actions I was taught to do by others that turned me into a monster?"
Sydney merely kept his gaze calm and non-confrontational. "What do you think?"
"I think that you're talking too much," Lyle snapped, his frustration returning, and then resumed pacing. He checked his wristwatch and then shot a glare at his captive. "Damn it!"
"What are you waiting for so impatiently?" Sydney asked calmly, dropping the more delicate subject and going for something that would tell him something useful about his current situation.
Lyle glared at him again, knowing as well as Sydney that the real cause of his agitation was the obvious wellbeing of the man handcuffed and tied to the chair. "The question isn't what so much as whom," Lyle answered cryptically, trying to throw Sydney a curve that would shatter that damned collected façade once and for all.
Sydney shook his head. "I already told you, Jarod won't come."
Lyle's blue-grey eyes glittered. "You know, if you had any future, I'd bet you real money on that. But as it is... Between the chance to rescue you and to add another name to the list of victimized innocent to his list of admirers, however, you KNOW he'll show. When you end up MIA at your own speech, he'll come running, find the note I left for him on YOUR bed - and I've paid for the room to remain as is for six days, so it WILL be there - and then come here. Of course, by then, it will be too late - and I'll have my Pretender, and with him the key to the Chairman's office."
Sydney sat straight, seemingly untouched by the casual comment about his having no future. If Lyle thought that he was behaving in an intimidating manner, he had forgotten that Sydney could remember very clearly being intimidated by professionals. Lyle was behaving erratically with the potential for behaving monstrously, whereas the Nazis who had controlled his fate for years at Dachau had been true monsters.
"Does it bother you that I might think of you as a monster?" he asked in his calm, professional voice again, returning to the topic that seemed to keep Lyle a little off-balance and distracted. Anything to buy himself the time to think of a way to warn Jarod away. Lyle was right, unfortunately - Jarod WOULD come. Or Miss Parker would... Either possibility was unthinkable.
"No, it doesn't bother me that you might think of me as a monster," Lyle replied in exasperation. "Being a monster has its benefits - people tend to bend over backwards to do what I want them to do rather than have me turn into a monster for THEM. They stay out of my way otherwise."
"Sounds like a monster's life must be a pretty lonely one..."
Lyle shot Sydney a sharp look. "Not really," he answered in patently false nonchalance. "You'd be surprised - I don't have THAT hard a time finding a date in the Asian community. Lots of those girls want to hook up with American guys."
"But you kill and eat them when you get tired of them."
He shrugged. "Some of them can't take a hint, I guess."
"The young lady you took the other day..."
"Can identify me," Lyle interrupted and finished the sentence. "When the police come to investigate the circumstances of your death, I don't want to leave anyone who can point fingers and say 'HE was there - HE did it!" Besides, since I knew that she wouldn't survive her usefulness anyway, I've indulged myself in several different ways with her already." He grinned evilly. "Shall I tell you about it? How about psychoanalyzing the behavior of a serial rapist and murderer in your final hours, Sydney?"
"No, thank you. I don't need to hear the details." Sydney's eyes closed softly and briefly in sympathy for the horrific experience that young lady had probably already endured. "I'd rather understand you..."
"Not that it will do you much good in the long run," Lyle smirked at him.
Sydney decided to ignore the blatant attempt to rile him. He forced his voice back into calm professionalism. "So human life has very little value to you?"
"It depends on the human and the circumstances," Lyle replied with a quixotic smile. "The girl - her value ended when you walked onto the property here. You, on the other hand, have value dead OR alive until Jarod walks onto the property."
"But human life has no intrinsic value of its own, in your mind?"
Lyle sat himself down on the ottoman in front of Sydney's chair, safely out of the Belgian's reach in case the psychiatrist had had any ideas of tackling him. "On the contrary. The value of human life is determined solely by what I can get out of it." He leaned back. "Besides, it's not as if I've been taking someone truly important away from the world - I take the refuse of humanity and make them into something special."
"That girl isn't the refuse of humanity. She's an artist..."
"I'm sure the lack of any of her future paintings won't change life as we know it later on," Lyle mocked. "I took a look at what she does - it's nothing but some of that abstract crap that any chimpanzee could come up with if given paint and brushes." He looked at his captive coldly. "She produces garbage - that makes HER garbage."
Sydney shook his head. "She's a human being..."
"She's bait, Sydney, just like you are." Lyle's pronouncement was stark and utterly without qualm. "And... afterwards... she's at least one good, nutritious meal."
"What about mercy, compassion? Have they no place..."
Lyle waved at him, dismissing his argument entirely. "Those are characteristics of weakness. All the truly powerful men in history gave very little thought to that sort of thing. Power comes only to those who aren't afraid to behave mercilessly. Empires rise that way - it's when the mealy-mouthed begin to sell mercy and compassion and all kinds of other sentimental crap that the empires fall."
Greying eyebrows rose on the forehead. "And you see yourself building an empire?"
Lyle gazed at the man directly. "Not necessarily building one, but managing and eventually running one, yes. The strength of the Centre has always lain in its ability to wield its power and authority without mercy. You know that one as well as I do - you've worked for them long enough..." He glanced at his wristwatch yet again and then gave Sydney a frustrated look. "How's your dinner sitting?"
Sydney could hear the frustration building in that innocuous question and it made him smile perversely to think that his not getting sick on schedule was causing the man so much disquiet. "Fine," he answered with immense satisfaction. "It was a very tasty meal." As his answer only deepened Lyle's frustration, he offered another pointedly irritating, "Sorry to interfere with your plans..."
"Shit." If the chemical had been ingested, and if it were working the way the Triumvirate had claimed it would, then Sydney should be starting to at least show beginning signs of heartburn. The Triumvirate had told him 'signs of extreme heartburn within three to five hours' - and the meal had been served long enough ago that SOMETHING should be happening by now. "You must not have eaten all of it. Did you skip anything...?"
"I didn't touch the pilaf. I don't eat rice, not since Dachau." Lyle rose to his feet and began to pace again, his mind whirling. "Is that where the poison was?"
"No, it wasn't poison per se," Lyle answered in disgust, his frustration making him honest. Damn it! He should have hung around the hotel kitchen, making sure the chemical had been ingested, rather than playing with his Prey here. The Triumvirate would be sure to make this lapse HIS entire fault.
What the hell was he supposed to do NOW? Sydney wouldn't be dying of something that could be attributed to a heart attack, that was for sure - and that would cause comment, which his Triumvirate masters had distinctly told him to avoid. And when Jarod called, Sydney wouldn't be in agony... from that, at any rate...
Lyle untied the rope holding Sydney to his chair and then hauled his gun out of his shoulder holster and motioned with it. "Up."
Sydney rose obediently. Lyle was the one with the gun, not he, and the younger man was upset and nervous enough that he could have a very itchy trigger finger. "Where are we going?" the Belgian asked quietly instead.
"We're going to take a little walk. Shut up and move."
Sydney shrugged and turned in the direction Lyle was pointing - down a hallway and through a smaller parlor before turning and going through a glassed door and ending up in that pyramid-roofed sunroom. "Keep moving," Lyle directed sourly after opening the glass door so that he could push his captive out into the moonlit yard. "Around that way." The two men walked down a narrow walk that led between the stonework wall of the garage and the curved bulwark of the lighthouse, then around the curved wall to the door.
At that point, Lyle took out a key, inserted it in the padlock holding the door closed, pulled the lock from the hasp and pushed the door open with his foot. "In." Sydney stepped cautiously into the total darkness, only to have a small light bulb suddenly flare into life and illuminate the interior of the structure.
The interior of the lighthouse was sparsely furnished. Opposite the door was a mattress on the floor on which a woman, naked and curled into a fetal ball with her back to the door, huddled miserably. She started as the light came on, and Sydney could hear the sound of chains. "You wanted to know if she was still alive," Lyle pushed Sydney forward toward the mattress, "well, here she is."
He dragged at her shoulder and forced her to turn over and face the two of them. "Isn't she a beauty?" Lyle asked, his hand now tracing the line of her bruised chin gently, making the poor girl squeeze her almond-shaped eyes closed tightly in revulsion. "She has all the traits of a classical Chinese beauty. It has been a real pleasure getting to know her better." As the younger man's hand wandered down the column of her neck and then over her breast in brazen audacity, a tear managed to escape from beneath one tightly sealed eyelid. Her revulsion and the chains making it impossible for her to avoid his advances were a powerful temptation to dalliance even now. "Have you ever seen such lines?" His hand slipped to the curve of her hip and then slid slowly and provocatively down her thigh.
"For God's sake," Sydney barked at the thought that Lyle was going to ravish her again right in front of him. His heart ached for the poor girl who, from the looks of the bruising over a goodly part of her body and smears of blood on her inner thighs, had already suffered greatly. "Leave her alone!" Without thinking of his own current situation, he took one threatening step toward the mattress.
Lyle straightened up and turned on Sydney in a sudden rage. He gave the psychiatrist a vicious shove, making him lose his balance and fall backward against the curved stone interior and hit his head painfully on the way down. "You don't tell me what to do, old man!" Lyle roared at him. "You're supposed to be dying, damn it! Now sit up!" he barked as Sydney began to sag, stunned almost unconscious from the blow to his head. Sydney struggled to do as he was told, only to find his handcuffs being attached to the stone wall by a short chain that would allow him very little movement.
"At least here I'm not going to have to worry about what you might get into while I make my preparations for Jarod," the young Parker stated in matter-of-fact calmness. "I'd tell you to make yourself comfortable, but I seriously doubt there's any way for you to make yourself comfortable on a dirt floor." He chuckled at his own gallows humor. "Nighty-night, Syd."
Lyle winked audaciously as he put up his hand and plunged the interior of the lighthouse back into profound darkness. Sydney could only hear the door open and close again, and then the sound of the padlock being firmly put back to prevent either their escape or anybody else finding them. The thick, stone walls no doubt prevented sound from escaping too, so there was no use screaming for help.
He leaned his head against the cold stone and sighed. There WAS nothing that he could do to prevent Lyle from succeeding in his plans.
Lyle stormed around the end of the lighthouse in the direction of the glass door of the sun room. He had a little time to figure out how to turn this entire affair around to his own benefit, the exact measure of that time being just how long it would be before Jarod realized his mentor had gone missing and came looking for him. It was now after midnight - Sydney's speech had been rescheduled, at Lyle's request, to nine in the morning. Sometime after that, Lyle imagined, he'd be getting a telephone call.
A loud "Hoo!" startled him badly, and the quiet rustling of wings told him that he'd just been dive-bombed by one of the great horned owls of the area. He batted his hands about his head and connected, coming away with a couple of feathers that he tossed to the ground in startled pique. His heart pounding from the surprise, he walked quickly back through the sunroom to the living room and the wet bar and poured himself a stiff drink.
He had to THINK!
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
June 27
Santa Luisita, California ~ Embassy Suites Hotel
Jarod calmly affixed the name badge to his sports coat jacket and casually browsed through the folder that had come in his symposium packet. Yes, there it was. Sydney was scheduled to speak at nine. He twisted his arm to look at his watch - ten minutes yet. He toyed with the idea of going upstairs and surprising Sydney in his hotel room, but dismissed the idea. If this symposium had any semblance of legitimacy, rattling Sydney before his speech would be to do his old mentor no favors. No, he'd wait until after the speech, when he'd corner the Belgian alone and give him the news about everything that he'd discovered.
He was tired, running on adrenaline and caffeine now. He never had been able to rest well on buses and planes - and the bulk of his time between flights had been occupied with his computer search. He'd arrived in Santa Luisita just in time to pull into a local café and have a stack of pancakes for breakfast and change in the restroom into the more professional-looking suit and tie that he intended to use in his Pretend as Dr. Jarod Maslow, symposium invitee. Nobody had questioned his late arrival, not even the harried organizer he'd had to pressure for an event packet even after presenting his forged invitation.
He wandered into the hall and found himself a place to sit toward the back and against a wall of the conference room. He didn't need the sudden sighting of his face amid the audience to spoil his old friend's concentration either. Slowly but steadily the hall filled with the other attendees, a few of whom Jarod recognized from his investigation of the sponsoring society and the publication involved in this entire affair.
Twenty minutes later, however, he was worried. Sydney had not appeared to give his speech, and symposium organizers were huddled together with concerned faces. His chosen place close to a door, Jarod slipped out of the hall and walked over to the reception desk. He requested Sydney's room number, claiming to be an old friend of the psychiatrist who was concerned that he hadn't appeared when he was supposed to. At the sight of symposium organizers milling around in confusion, the hotel employee gave Jarod the information and then hurried over to see if she could be of any assistance to the larger group.
Getting the locked hotel room door open was no challenge to the prepared Pretender, who then closed the door after himself. "Sydney?" he called out, not really expecting to hear an answer. He moved further into the room and took a careful, studying look around at the condition of the room.
The bed hadn't been slept in. A newspaper was tossed casually on the foot of the bed, as if Sydney had been reading and then been interrupted. Sydney's garment bag hung in the closet empty - telling the Pretender that his mentor had at the very least dressed for dinner, but most likely never returned. The small suitcase sat on the stool open, and the bathroom held signs that Sydney had at least showered once - his toiletries were neatly arranged along beneath the mirror behind the sink.
There were no signs of struggle. Jarod sank down onto the edge of the bed, staring around the empty room and trying to think of what might possibly have happened. As his eye cruised all the smaller details of the room, it fell on the newspaper and the picture on the front page - and Jarod pulled the paper closer to take a better look. Yes, that WAS Lyle in the background of the picture of the pretty Asian woman. Getting a sinking feeling in his stomach, he flipped over the paper so as to read the headline that went with the picture: "Local Activist Missing." Oh God, Jarod thought in alarm, not again! And then it struck him - Sydney must have seen this picture too! He wouldn't have...
Jarod hauled out his cell phone and dialed Miss Parker.
"What?" she demanded.
"Has Sydney called you?" he asked without any explanation.
"Just to let me know that he got there..." Miss Parker didn't go into details as to WHY Sydney was calling her to tell her of his safe arrival. Besides, she was sitting in the waiting room of the Urgent Care Medical Group in Dover waiting to have a stomach x-ray confirm or deny what the Lab-rat had told her the day before. "What's going on, Jarod?"
"I'm in Sydney's hotel room. He was a no-show at his speech this morning..."
"Say what?" Miss Parker demanded.
"And there's a newspaper sitting on his bed with a picture of an oriental woman - a local activist here who's gone missing - and LYLE is in the background." Jarod closed his eyes and wished hard. "Please tell me Sydney called you, and that you sent him some backup, just in case he decided to pursue this on his own..."
"God, no..." Something HAD happened, just as she had feared. Why hadn't he listened to her... "What are you going to do?"
"I'll find him," Jarod promised her. "But this is Lyle we're talking about here..."
"If anything happens to Sydney, I'll kill that rat-bastard myself," she hissed.
"Only if I don't get to him first," Jarod promised ominously. "Stay close to your phone." He disconnected quickly, picking up the newspaper to read the article more fully. A small, white paper fell from the newsprint and onto the floor. He bent to pick it up and then turned it over to find writing on the other side.
"Took you long enough to figure this out. If you want to see either Sydney or the girl in the article alive, call 302-555-8987. - Lyle"
Jarod sank back onto the bed weakly. Lyle was using Sydney as bait to catch him - and the worst part of it was that there was no way the Pretender could stand by and let that monster keep either Sydney or that Asian woman any longer than necessary. Something HAD to be done.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House
Lyle unlocked the padlock and threw open the door to the lighthouse, then reached through and turned on the light. Against the wall where he'd been pushed, Sydney blinked at the sudden and almost painful illumination, while on the bed, Lori Cheung again rolled her body up into a little ball and turned away from him. Just the sight of that smooth skin and firm buttocks made Lyle's groin twitch. He wished he had the time to play with her a little bit again - and the thought of doing so in front of a helpless and outraged Sydney had a delightfully twisted allure to it. But something told him that he had best tend to business and finish his arrangements before he got that phone call he'd been waiting for all night. It was after nine o'clock in the morning, after all...
"Up and at 'em, Sydney," he chirped gaily, moving quickly to the psychiatrist's side and unchaining him from the wall. "Time for you to come back into the house."
"What about her?" Sydney asked, jerking his nose toward the traumatized young woman on the mattress. He'd tried his best to calm her during the night, only to find her unable of any coherent communication at all. She'd lain there in the pitch darkness, sobbing her heart out.
"I'll be back out for her later," Lyle told him shortly, hauling up hard on Sydney's bound arms. "Right now, my plans are for you." He jerked the Belgian around and pushed him through the open door and into the even brighter morning sunlight. Sydney's eyes filled protectively with tears, making it hard to see and giving Lyle a chance to lock the lighthouse door again before hauling at the arm again to direct Sydney back toward the main house.
"What do you want of me now?" Sydney asked, his voice calm in direct contrast and challenge to Lyle's obvious attempt to intimidate.
"I'm expecting a call any moment now," Lyle explained with astonishing patience, "and you will need to be there when that call comes. After all, all Jarod knows is that you didn't show up for your speech, and that the note in the newspaper on your bed says that if he wants to see you alive again, he has to call ME." He chuckled at his ingenuity.
"And just how is my presence when you get a phone call going to help you?" Sydney asked in amusement.
"Oh, you'd be surprised at how useful you will be during that phone call," Lyle smirked. He pushed Sydney through the open glass door and into the sunroom.
"Will you at least allow me to use the bathroom?" Sydney grumbled, not quite in distress. It had been a very long night, sitting there in the darkness. He'd known the moment he'd arisen that his bladder wouldn't take much more abuse.
Lyle sighed heavily and pulled open the far door and pushed his prisoner through and into the hallway they'd been in the night before. He pulled open one of the doors along the way and pushed Sydney in. "What?" he demanded when Sydney just stood there.
"Unless you intend to do the honors," the psychiatrist said in what he hoped were very calm and collected tones, "I'll need the use of at least one hand."
Lyle pulled out his gun as well as his keys. He buried the muzzle of the weapon in the silvered hair beneath Sydney's left ear. "Just one twitch other than the necessary," he hissed in warning, then unlocked the right wrist. "Hurry up," he urged then.
He pulled the right arm back behind the psychiatrist the moment he heard the zipper for the second time. "Thank you," Sydney said quietly, unwilling to let the incivility of his host deprive him of his own social training. His physical relief was almost staggering.
"Shut up," Lyle growled, disgusted that he'd been blindsided and so easily convinced to let the man make himself more comfortable. Watching Sydney attempt to keep his damnable calm and patience after soiling himself might have been an interesting study in the psychology of stress and crisis.
He dragged the psychiatrist out of the bathroom and prodded him down the hallway again with the muzzle of his gun in the small of Sydney's back. In the living room he directed the Belgian to take a seat on the couch and then took up occupancy himself in the easy chair he'd tied Sydney into the night before. "You're not feeling quite so smart now, are you?" he asked, smirking triumphantly.
"Intelligence has little to do with it," Sydney responded after thinking for a moment. "Unless, of course, you're referring to my coming here without calling for backup... And you have no way to know for sure whether I did or not."
Lyle shook his head discouragingly. "I wasn't born yesterday, Syd. If you'd called for backup, they would have been here already. No, you were definitely not smart - and now here you are, counting down your final hours on earth. It's GOT to be bothering you..."
Sydney eyed the young Parker with sudden disdain. "What's bothering me are your endless attempts to try to get under my skin. Frankly, I find your efforts at intimidation pathetic. If you intend to kill me, I do wish you'd get it over and done with. In many ways, you'll be doing me a favor."
Lyle stared for a moment, and then chuckled uncomfortably. "Very good, Sydney. You had me almost believing you have a death wish." He waved the gun back and forth. "I told you, don't try to earwig me - I'm onto you and your games."
Sydney opened his mouth to counter Lyle's statement, but just at that moment, the cell phone in Lyle's pocket began to chirp.
"I was starting to think you didn't care about him after all," Lyle sneered as he put the appliance to his ear.
"Where's Sydney?" Jarod demanded. "Where's the girl?"
Lyle smiled. Yes, he definitely had Jarod hooked - all he had to do was reel him in now. "All in good time, Jarod. Before I start telling you things, I want to make sure you understand completely what all is at stake here."
"What? I know you have Sydney - and a young woman who has never done anything at all to you," Jarod stated in condemnation. And I know that you think that you can get to me by threatening them."
"Very good. And am I so very far off in my estimation?"
Jarod sighed. The inexhaustible arrogance of the man never ceased to amaze him. "I'm talking to you, aren't I?" he snapped back. "Now, quit stalling and tell me what you want me to do."
"First, I want you to listen." Lyle rose from his chair, raised his gun, took careful aim, and fired. Sydney collapsed back against the cushion of the couch with a groan as the bullet ripped through his belly.
"What the Hell are you doing?" Jarod screamed as the sound of a gun going off exploded painfully in his ear.
"Do you hear this, Jarod?" Lyle asked blandly, carrying the cell phone over to the couch and leaning over Sydney, pushing on the man's damaged abdomen and making him cry out yet again.
"Damn you, Lyle!"
"That's just to convince you that there is a certain measure of urgency here. Needless to say, Sydney is now bleeding - and you'll be wanting to follow my directions to the letter if you hope to see him again before he bleeds out."
"Jarod, don...AAAAH!" Sydney tried to interrupt, only to have Lyle push on his wounded stomach again and bring the agony forward again.
"Tell me what you want!" Jarod demanded desperately.
"Take the freeway south from Santa Luisita until you get to the Spyglass exit," Lyle started and then gave Jarod detailed instructions on how to get to the Triumvirate safe house. "From the looks of things here, you have about a half an hour before the blood loss begins to get critical."
Jarod was already moving out Sydney's hotel doorway and down the corridor toward the elevators. "I'm on my way," he said in a low and dangerous tone. "Sydney had better still be alive when I get there, or else..."
"Or else what, Jarod?" Lyle asked derisively. "Oh, and just in case I forget to tell you later..." He paused.
"Yes?"
"It's so GOOD to be doing business with you again."
Jarod pulled the cell phone away from his ear with a blistering longshoreman's curse and disconnected the call before he could hear Lyle's mocking laughter coming from the little receiver. The elevator had never taken so long to get to that floor...
"C'mon," Lyle said brightly, hauling the wounded man to his feet. "I don't need you bleeding to death on the nice furniture. Let's find you a nice quiet bedroom where you can destroy bed clothing in peace."
Sydney groaned and barely managed to drag his feet along at the pace Lyle set. He knew he was hurt badly - and that he had indeed been used as bait on a phone call. Once more he hadn't been able to protect his protégé.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Central California Coast ~ Southbound freeway
Jarod barely noticed the beautiful gold of the hills through which he was driving, nor looked about him to appreciate how the dark green of the live oaks complemented the scenery. His mind was spinning, trying to figure out just how he was going to walk into what was obviously a trap and escape again with Sydney in time to get his mentor to a hospital. There was another innocent involved as well, but the most pressing matter at the front of his mind was Sydney and how badly he was hurt.
The scenarios playing out in his mind were not having positive outcomes. It was, after all, broad daylight - there would be no skulking in shadows until surveillance cameras were conveniently pointed in the wrong direction. Lyle had outdone himself this time, raised the stakes, and forced the matter. That fact alone lowered the odds of success, and Jarod knew it.
He debated calling Miss Parker, then discarded the idea. With any luck, she was getting herself taken care of - and she was an entire continent away. Besides, if Lyle was working under Raines' orders, any time spent rustling up sweeper assistance to save Sydney would be wasted. Jarod steered the mini-SUV he'd rented for the day down the freeway exit and to the left into the sleep seaside town. No, he'd have to figure this one out on his own and on the fly.
He turned down the street instructed and waited at the stop sign as he looked over to the left and figured out just which house he'd been instructed to go to. If it weren't for the time constraint of not knowing how badly Sydney was injured, he could approach the property from below. The rocks on the promontory were scalable - and he doubted any security cameras were aimed seaward against rock-climbing intruders. With a critical eye, he guessed at how many more streets to the left he'd have to go to approach the house directly, or maybe even slightly beyond, then flipped a U-turn and went back up to the busy business lane which was the only cross street. He drove slowly past each one, keeping an eye to his position in relation to the tall pine trees across the street from the expansive estate, then finally headed down another.
About five houses up from the end, he pulled his SUV over to the side and parked and climbed out. At the end of the street he could see the stucco and ironworks wall and outbuildings beyond. He walked carefully down the street, watching to see if he could catch sight of any surveillance equipment aimed at the street in front of the property. He stopped behind a hedge at the end of the street and studied the situation.
There was indeed a camera that was aimed at the street - or at least at the sidewalk that entered the property through the wall. There was one other opening to the street in the wall - Jarod kept behind as many trees and bushes as he could without calling attention to himself so that he could get a better look at what lay behind. That opening turned out to be more of a service entrance - a dirt drive lading behind a small orchard of fruit trees toward a Danish-styled windmill, past the trash containers and compost heaps. Jarod eyed the trees and the wall suspiciously. There was no camera coverage - either an open invitation, or a flaw in the security - and Jarod doubted that on property as expensive and well maintained as this, there would be too many security flaws.
He had three choices: attempt to climb the rocks from below, breech the gate here at the more forgotten end of the property, or brazenly - perhaps foolishly - walk in the front gate. If he knew Lyle at all, the slime-ball was probably expecting him to attempt a more covert entrance. And yet, if he walked right up to the front door, he would be just asking to be captured before he had the slightest chance to get to Sydney. He grimaced in frustration, knowing that Lyle's trap was practically unavoidable. What to do?
He had to THINK!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Dover, Delaware ~ Urgent Care Medical Group
"You know, you're the second person in as many days with this very same complaint," Doctor Weiss commented, shaking his head as he put up yet another x-ray that indicated the presence of another of those metal encapsulated implants. "I took something very much like this out of a young man just this morning before coming here..."
"I know," Miss Parker replied sourly, sick to her stomach at the visual evidence that Jarod had NOT been just jerking her chain - and anecdotal evidence that Broots too had had this evil visited on him. She didn't even want to think about the fact that it had been Daddy who had authorized this violation. "So how soon can you remove mine?"
The doctor was already seated and writing. "I'll schedule you for morning surgery, just like I did for your friend. Don't eat or drink anything by mouth after midnight tonight." He pulled the top page off of the prescription pad. "And take these now to neutralize any stomach acid."
Miss Parker accepted the small square of paper and folded it precisely. "Did you do any testing on the capsule you removed from my fr... that young man's stomach?"
"As a matter of fact, no," Weiss replied with a frustrated frown. "The young man insisted on taking it with him when he was finished in Recovery."
That figured, she considered as she shouldered her purse and walked from the examination room. Broots knew better than to call attention to the fact that, if Jarod was right - and at this point she had no reason to doubt his information - he'd been given an implant loaded with a lethal poison. She would have done the same herself - only she would have just as soon thrown the retrieved implant at Daddy the next time she saw him, along with her resignation. She'd be in touch with Broots soon enough to try to talk him into tendering his resignation too. But she would also be pocketing her retrieved implant - she didn't need the news of this leaking out to the public. Not before she and Broots were clear of the place, that was.
She stopped at the receptionist's desk only long enough to pay for the bill and make a follow-up appointment, then walked briskly from the office and straight to her car. She looked at her watch and frowned - and then followed her hunch to pull out her cell phone and dial a number she'd otherwise only seen once in her caller id.
"What?" Jarod's voice sounded distracted, tense.
"What have you found out?" she demanded with no preamble.
Jarod sighed. "I know for a fact that Lyle has Sydney - and if my ears didn't deceive me, he shot him while I was on the phone talking to him."
"WHAT?!"
"I found a note..." Jarod leaned against the tree trunk of the palm tree across the way from the service entrance he'd decided was his best bet. "In it, Lyle told me that if I wanted to see Sydney alive again, I was to call him. I did - and there was the sound of a gunshot while we were talking, and I could hear Sydney..." Jarod paused and Miss Parker swallowed in distress. "Anyway, Lyle directed me to this house..."
"And that's where you are now?"
"Outside the perimeter, yes. I've been trying to figure out the best way in."
"Be careful," she found herself warning him unexpectedly. "And call me when you know something."
"I'll do what I can," Jarod promised provisionally. "But I don't know what I'm walking into here - or what shape Sydney's in."
"Just get him out of there in one piece!" Miss Parker insisted with worried vehemence.
Jarod disconnected the call and put his cell phone on silent before clipping it back onto his belt. He didn't need another call giving away his position if he had the immense good luck to end up in a game of cat and mouse. He looked both ways before sprinting across the street and up to the ironwork of the service gate.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House
Lyle zipped up his pants and reached for his tee shirt, looking down at the body of Lori Cheung as he popped his head through the elasticized opening. With the trap for Jarod almost sprung, he had decided to allow himself this one very necessary moment of pleasure before the heavy business ahead. The act of raping and now killing his oriental beauty would help steady his concentration - with that accomplished, half of the ritual of the Hunt was now complete. He was always better able to concentrate immediately following the events of a Hunt.
Besides, Lyle knew all too well that being in a position to throw into the Pretender's face the fact that Jarod WOULDN'T be in time to save this one innocent could give him an emotional edge in the situation to come. Keeping Jarod off-balance and on the defensive was going to be the ONLY way this plan would work, and the question of the welfare of his captives - especially Sydney - was the best way to keep Jarod off-balance.
He tipped his wrist and checked the time. If he knew Jarod, the Pretender was more than likely already on the property, if not casing the place from the street. He reached down and laid claim to the fillet of sweet meat that he had carved from the girl's flank prior to dressing. He should be able to get it onto a plate and into the refrigerator before the rest of the day's business got started in earnest.
Even though there was nothing to worry about as far as having a captive escape, he locked the door of the lighthouse behind himself and headed back down the narrow path between it and the garage that ended at the sunroom door. Halfway to the French doors that led deeper into the house, the device on his belt began to vibrate. Lyle smiled - the motion detectors in the orchard were indicating an intruder. He slipped through the doors and trotted down the hallways and around a corner to put his dinner on a plate already in the refrigerator. Tonight the stir-fry would be a genuine celebration!
Then he moved surely back to a small room off of the living room that was filled with all sorts of electronics. He checked the monitors and motion detector meters and then nodded in satisfaction. Jarod had been all too predictable - he'd come onto the property through the service entrance. His one worry that the wily Pretender would come at him from the ocean side of the property, the side that had the least security coverage due to the fickle nature of the rocky cliffs and the ocean currents below, evaporated immediately. He had guessed that Jarod would feel time-constrained and anxious to find his wounded mentor and therefore choose the less covert option of coming in from street level - and he'd been right. With a pleased grin on his face, he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that he was starting to get the hang of dealing with the slippery Pretender after all.
Jarod moved around the edge of an apple tree cautiously, heading for the cover of the orange tree beyond. He crouched down and slid beneath the foliage and then frowned at what he'd found. Wired to the trunk of the tree, close to the ground, was a small electronic emitter - a motion detector.
Damn, he chided himself, and gazed back at the tree he'd just left to find the receiver for that particular unit. He might as well walk up to the front door and pound on it, demanding entrance, at that rate. Lyle was being cagey - and this estate was more than securely protected. The realization came over him, and he sagged in response. Of course! This was one of the legendary Triumvirate safe houses that were scattered all across the globe - with some of the tightest and up-to-date security provisions known to the technological world. Hell, he'd helped design some of the security systems no doubt in place here!
Well, an informed intruder could still infiltrate some of the tightest security measures imaginable. Jarod checked the tree trunk for more units, and found that the detectors were set out to establish a grid within the orchard. He checked higher in the tree to make sure there were no unexpected surprises, then cautiously stepped over the invisible beam between himself and the next tree. Keeping himself low to the ground, he approached the tree cautiously, taking note of the emitter and receiver units wired to that trunk and being careful not to break another of the invisible beams.
The sound of running water was growing closer as he moved cautiously and deliberately from one tree to the next. Finally he had reached the edge of the orchard and gazed with some surprise and appreciation at the impressive structure ahead of him. Built in the Japanese style, the green-tiled roof was supported by six massive carved and painted round, wooden beams. In the center of the sheltered space was a round fountain with a brass dolphin, blue with weathering and patina, leaping from amid the arcing streams of water.
Jarod peered carefully up into the rafters of this impressive and unexpected obstacle. Yes, the cameras were there - he could only hope that his image hadn't already been detected by whoever was keeping an eye on the monitors. He carefully and deliberately headed just a little further back into the orchard so that he could work his way around the end of the structure. The longer he could manage to keep avoiding motion detectors and camera angles, the better.
Lyle's eyes kept sweeping back and forth from the motion detector meters and the monitors from the cameras mounted in the fountain area. If he were to trust the electronics, Jarod had been motionless for the past ten minutes - and he seriously doubted that the Pretender would have just sat still and waited. He cursed in Thai, figuring out that Jarod must have discovered the grid of motion detectors in the trees and found a way to avoid them. He turned his attention to the monitors from the cameras at the fountain. That was a very open area in the garden, where there was precious little to hide behind to avoid the cameras.
Nothing! Not the slightest sign of movement could be seen.
Lyle seated himself in the chair and leaned his chin in his hand, fuming. Games of patience and stealth were never as much fun on the receiving end as they were on the stalking end - and right now, Jarod was the stalker, and a damned good one at that. It would take a sharp eye and no small amount of luck to catch the Pretender making even the smallest mistake.
Jarod looked at his watch. It was nearly an hour since Lyle had shot Sydney - depending on the seriousness of the wound, every moment he was spending trying to closer to the house by stealth was bringing Sydney closer to death. The back side of the Danish-style windmill had been remarkably free of surveillance - and between shrubs rose bushes that lined the back walkway to the sheltered patio, he had made progress. The sheltered patio abutted the house, and there the surveillance cameras weren't hard to spot. There were three of them, rotating in an apparently random pattern so that an intruder couldn't predict a moment when it was safe to move.
Then he smiled grimly. The far camera wasn't panning the entire sweep of its range - its program kept it aimed on the patio itself and not the cypress-covered promontory beyond it. Jarod eyed the path that ran behind the tall brick and glass wall around the patio - there was no sign of motion detectors at all. There wasn't much land beyond the wall to begin with, for the ocean had washed much of what must have once been there away. Jarod crouched and once more began his forward movement along the back of the wall. A couple of times the sprinkler-dampened topsoil threatened to give way beneath him, forcing him to move forward a little faster than he'd intended, but soon enough he was on the back side of the wall.
Now, finally, he could move to stand with his back against the cold stucco of the house and wait for the cameras to offer him that split moment of opportunity. No doubt there was security on the door itself - he had already accepted that entering the house without raising alarm would be impossible. Jarod wiped the perspiration from his brow and prayed that the surprise of intrusion at that particular point into the house itself would be enough to give him a slight advantage until he could take the measure of what lay in store for him within.
He looked upwards, over his shoulder, at the house itself - and stared at the immense piece of good fortune that had been just waiting for him to look up and notice. One of the second-floor windows was open - hanging out like a little glass door beckoning. Jarod looked around him to see what he could use to hoist himself far enough into the air that he could get his hands on the bottom of that sill. Just inside the patio itself was a chair - a piece of delicate ironwork lawn furniture - something that could be leaned against the stucco and give his feet the smallest purchase in reaching for the sill.
Jarod cast an eye back at the cameras sweeping the patio. He would have to choose his two moments carefully. In the first moment, he would have to reach around - running the risk of giving his position away - to snatch the chair around the end of the wall. The second moment would be the trickier, for that would be when he would definitely be out where a camera could catch sight of him going up the side of the house over the top of the wall. But the only alternative to that was to go through the glassed door and announce his entrance as if at the top of his lungs.
Lyle's patience was wearing thin. He had risen and was now pacing back and forth in front of the bank of monitors and meters which, to his chagrin and disgust, still showed absolutely nothing. Not for the first time did he resent the Triumvirate making this a solo performance - what he wouldn't have given to have Willy and a couple more of the better sweepers prowling the grounds and watching for the sneaky Pretender's next move.
Then he had a horrible thought: what if Jarod was already IN the house? What if he'd already found Sydney? He glanced nervously at the surveillance monitors from within the house, finding them just as uncooperative as the outdoor ones had been. Did he dare leave his post and check on the wounded psychiatrist - make sure that Sydney was still slowly bleeding to death? He stared at the wooden door behind him - did he dare NOT check on him?
Paranoia won out. Lyle opened the door and hurried across the living room to the vast foyer and the staircase, heading for the guestroom into which he had deposited Sydney. He grimaced as he noticed the occasional drop of blood on the expensive carpeting that covered the stairs - he could expect the cleaning costs for the rug to come out of any bonus he'd be getting for bringing in the elusive Pretender.
Jarod had his chair, and had it positioned just so against the stucco side of the house. Now all he needed was a moment when all the cameras would be facing in another direction entirely... There! In an instant, he was standing on the seat, and then boosting himself high in the air with his foot on the top ironwork leaning against the stucco. And it did indeed get him high enough to reach the bottom of the windowsill. Using muscles that constant work-outs in the gym kept in top form, Jarod pulled himself up the wall and then tipped himself over the windowsill and onto the floor as quietly as he could.
He looked around - he was in a guestroom. The furnishings were antique, well maintained and extremely expensive-looking. The rug on the polished wooden floor was high quality Persian, thick and warm. A quick and thorough glance about the room told him that there was no camera here - granted that his entry had been unobserved, there was no indication that he'd penetrated the house at all as yet. He moved stealthily over to the door and cracked it just enough to peer down the hallway - and his eyes opened wide.
Lyle was stalking down the hallway toward him. Jarod froze, astonished that the man could have discovered his whereabouts so easily. And then his eyes widened even further and he let go of his breath in relief when Lyle paused in front of another door and pushed it open instead.
Lyle grimaced in frustration. Sydney had been practically unconscious by the time he'd dumped him on the bed - but obviously no more. While obviously in a great amount of pain, the man was slowly working his way across the bed in the direction of the telephone located on the night stand.
"No you don't," Lyle cautioned angrily and darted across the room to pull the telephone cord out of the wall. "There's going to be no help for you."
"Lyle," Sydney's voice was weak and agonized, "in the name of God..."
"Stuff it, Sydney. I have my orders. The Triumvirate wants you out of the way - and I'm going to give them what they want, even as you bring to me what I want."
"Why?" The psychiatrist's voice was soft, confused, and a cough brought forth a small trickle of blood to run down the edges of his mouth along with a deep groan.
"Because they know now what I've suspected all along - that you've been helping Jarod stay one step ahead of the search team, or sabotaged Miss Parker's aim when she would have shot the bastard and been able to bring him in damaged but alive." Lyle glared down at the older man, no longer bothering to hide his attitude. "You've been a pain in my ass all along. But you know what really made me happy to help the Triumvirate out in it's housecleaning? Finding out you helped Jarod get Gemini away from us - or did you think your little 'Refuge' file wouldn't come to the attention of others eventually? Do you know how long we'd been working on Gemini, getting him ready to take Jarod's place so that all we had to do was issue a standard termination contract - and your scruples just screwed everything up. You've made Miss Parker soft, and you've interfered with our hunt for Jarod - and the time has come for you to exit, stage right."
Sydney coughed again and then groaned as the muscles needed to cough were the same ones that were so badly damaged already.
"I told you," Lyle reminded him with cold satisfaction, "you have no future. You thought I was kidding?" He wrapped the telephone cord around the appliance and tucked it under one arm. "Now be a good boy and just lay there and bring Jarod to me so that I can bring him back to the Centre - and then the Triumvirate makes me Chairman in time. See? Everything works out for the best all the way around. So stop trying to be creative and just bleed to death quietly, please. I have a Pretender to catch and a dinner to make."
He slammed the guestroom door closed for good measure and headed off down the hallway for the stairs again. He had to get back to the security room - Jarod HAD to give away his position sooner or later!
Jarod waited until Lyle had turned the corner and started down the stairs before opening the door and slipping into the hallway, closing the door behind him, and then darting across the hallway and slipping into the room Lyle had just left. He closed the door very quietly behind him and then turned. His brows furled and his heart gave a worried leap as he took in the sight of Sydney facedown on the bed with a small pool of blood near his belly. He moved swiftly to his mentor's side and with gentle hands helped the man roll over onto his back.
"Oh God," he sighed, appalled at the man's condition. "Sydney!"
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com
by MMB & NIOMR
Not a Game Anymore
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House
Sydney sat with his handcuffed hands behind him tied into immobility in the very comfortable easy chair in front of the massive fireplace. He had been watching Lyle pace back and forth in silence like a caged animal for the past ten minutes. "Is she even still alive?" he asked quietly.
"Who?"
"That young oriental woman you kidnapped the other day," Sydney reminded him with a very calm and peaceful voice so as not to trigger the explosive and unpredictable temper.
Lyle glanced at the psychiatrist briefly and then waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, her? Yeah, she's still alive." The more sinister Parker progeny paused in his pacing and grinned coldly. "For the time being, that is. Now that she's served her purpose, however, I suppose there are better things I could be doing with her..."
Sydney swallowed hard against the bile that rose in the back of his throat at the thought of just what "better things" Lyle might be contemplating. "Served her purpose?" He grabbed onto the one thread of Lyle's statement that offered the least opportunity for distraction. Keeping Lyle talking meant preventing him from doing something else that would be probably far more harmful to someone. "What do you mean, she's served her purpose?"
"She brought you here, didn't she?" Lyle grinned just a little bit wider.
That floored the Belgian. "That was your intent all along?"
The grin turned into a smirk. "Why does it surprise you that I can put together a plan and have it come off like clockwork? Is it because I didn't end up getting thrown into your precious Pretender program, Sydney, is that it?"
"I didn't think that..." The question caught Sydney by surprise.
"Do you honestly think," Lyle's voice turned that horrible calm that almost inevitably prefaced an act of violence or depravity, "if I wanted my part in that woman's disappearance to remain a secret that I would have made such a public spectacle of myself at that rally?"
Sydney merely blinked. He was convinced, now, that his salvation would come from not panicking and using his years of experience as a therapist to perhaps shake Lyle's belief in what he was doing. He'd taught Jarod for years that his mind was his most valuable weapon - it was time to start putting that into practice. "You could have done that for a number of reasons," he replied in as neutral and scientific tones as he could manage. "You could have been taunting the police, much the way arsonists do when they sometimes stand in the crowd of spectators at the sight of their latest fire - thinking 'see how much smarter I am than you? I'm standing here and you idiots don't even know...' Then again, it could have been a call for help - 'stop me please! See me and catch me...'"
"I think I like the first one better," Lyle sniffed, a little uncomfortable with Sydney's so easily picking up on the part of that day that had been the most exhilarating and making it sound so tawdry. He began to pace again. "Then again, you haven't listed the real reason."
"What reason would that be?" Sydney asked in a very leading professional tone.
"That I wanted to catch your attention," the younger man shrugged. "What better way to do so than by committing the one thing that you, thanks to Jarod and his damned research, would quickly attribute to me anyway? By putting my face in the newspaper and on TV, I was inviting you to try to trip me up - only what I really wanted was to get you into this house alone."
"You mean she was nothing but bait for me?" Sydney was nonplussed. That made him at least indirectly responsible... No! He couldn't afford the luxury of guilt yet.
Lyle's smile became genuinely pleased. "Absolutely - and she played her part as bait perfectly, don't you think?"
"For God's sake, Lyle, what's going on here?" Sydney gaped.
The pacing paused. "I hope you enjoyed your meal tonight, because it will be your last," Lyle chortled with real glee. "Already the chemical you ingested is working through your system. You should already have a somewhat upset stomach..."
Sydney's brows furled. He'd laid the blame for the sour stomach on the stress of having gotten himself into such a tight spot, not on... "You mean poison?"
Lyle's answering grin was enough to make the already sour stomach turn over. "By golly, you are smart a little. Twelve hours from now..."
"For God's sake, why?"
The blue-grey eyes that looked altogether too much like his twin sister's were unapologetic and cold. "Nothing personal, Syd. Just orders..."
"Mr. Raines..."
"That half-dead walking bag of wind had nothing to do with this. The orders came from much higher up."
Sydney wilted. If the orders came from the Triumvirate, there was no way he could expect a rescue attempt led by Miss Parker.
Lyle watched the news shred much of the man's damnable composure. "How does it feel," he asked derisively, "to know that you only have a few more hours of increasing agony to live?" Sydney shot his executioner a withering glare and said nothing. The psychiatrist's obstinacy in the face of mortality pricked Lyle's ire. "What's the matter? You think that just because you got the alphabet soup attached to the end of your name, you can ask others intrusive questions about their personal feelings, but they aren't allowed to ask you the same kind of questions?"
"I refuse to answer questions that only have the purpose of promoting your ability to gloat," Sydney snapped back.
"You never have been a very cooperative man," Lyle grumbled, feeling as if he'd been robbed of part of the enjoyment process. "I'm almost glad the Triumvirate decided the time had come for you to be 'removed'... that was how they put it." He resumed his pacing. "My job was to get you away from anybody who would turn your agony into a public spectacle - to bring you here so you could die away from prying eyes."
It was Sydney who sniffed in derision now. "So the Triumvirate has demoted you to Cleaner for the day, eh? Seems THEY don't have much faith in you either..."
Lyle stopped pacing and whirled to throw an accusing finger into Sydney's face. "Yeah? Well that will change after this is all over..."
The Belgian's chestnut eyes gazed up at his captor with pity. "I seriously doubt that."
"They'll have a lot more respect for me when I not only give you the privacy to die in agony without causing an uproar, but by bringing Jarod back to the Centre to boot," Lyle snapped irritably. "When I do what nobody's been able to manage to do in over five years, I'll be a helluva lot higher on the corporate ladder than just Cleaner..."
Sydney stared at Lyle for a moment, dumbfounded, then began to chuckle in real amusement. "You? Capture Jarod all by yourself? You ARE crazy."
Lyle took on a lecturing tone and began pacing again so as not to be tempted to try to throttle the arrogant psychiatrist. "My sister never could appreciate just what a valuable resource you could be in bringing Jarod back to the fold. I've always been aware that all it would take would be your welfare being threatened," he flashed his cold smile again. "It would bring out the knight in shining armor in Jarod, and he'd come charging to your rescue."
"I don't know what you've been drinking," Sydney replied wryly, "but it has definitely fogged your wits. Jarod wouldn't jeopardize his freedom for me..."
"Now THAT is where you are wrong, my friend," Lyle began pacing again. "Jarod has a definite soft spot in his heart for you - or he wouldn't have come after Nicholas when I captured HIM to get to you and through you to Jarod. I have to admit, I miscalculated in that I didn't expect the BOTH of you to come to the rescue... TOGETHER..." That incident still smarted - Sydney had kept him distracted inside the farmhouse with Nicholas while Jarod had incapacitated the sweepers ranging outside to effect his capture. And then Jarod had proceeded to scare the crap out of him too - but thank heavens nobody suspected the depth of that humiliation except his sister, and even she didn't know the half of it. If she had, he'd have never heard the end of it.
"You didn't expect me to come to rescue my son?" Sydney shook his head in disbelief.
"I did, but..." Lyle shook his head - this was too confusing. "My father never came to MY rescue, did he?" he shot back angrily as an afterthought, then wiped his face with the hand that had all its fingers and resumed his pacing.
"Lyle, your father didn't even know you existed..." the psychiatrist began, only to have Lyle come at him shaking a finger in his face.
"Like Hell he didn't. After all, we all know that Mr. Raines, rather than Mr. Parker, was my... our... sire. And HE knew very well that I had survived!" Lyle's face was flushed. "He... GAVE me to those incompetents, the Bowman's - and then saw to it that the old man learned how to 'properly' discipline me. That damned..." Lyle took a deep breath to try to calm himself.
Sydney, on the other hand, saw an opening. "Speaking of Mr. Raines, does he know what you're doing now, and approve of it?" he asked quietly.
"No." The answer was flat, final. "And as long as I bring Jarod in at the end, he doesn't need to know either. The orders about you don't require his agreement - never did." Lyle's expression grew cold and calculating. "And once I have Jarod safely back in the Centre, I'll be able to argue for his removal as Chairman - and for my promotion to the position I've worked my whole life to earn."
"You're playing a dangerous game there..." Sydney shook his head. "Raines has many allies within the Centre - and you have many enemies. Others have tried to remove him before you and failed..."
"You mean that stupid stunt of shooting out his oxygen tank?" Lyle's chuckle was a cold one. "You should have taken TWO shots and killed him first, THEN blown him to smithereens. God, Syd, can't you do ANYTHING right?"
Sydney stifled the surprise before it could appear on his face. "You know as well as I that I was never found responsible..."
Lyle gave him a sideways glance and began pacing again. "And you know as well as I do that you did it. Even the Triumvirate accepted that as the most likely scenario for the botched assassination attempt."
"Raines has more lives than a cat," Sydney stated flatly, refusing to back down or admit anything.
"So?" Lyle retorted sharply. "The old bastard can't live forever - and it's long since time that a younger, more capable man stand at the helm of the Centre. All it will take is for me to bring Jarod in, and the Triumvirate won't have to look very hard for his replacement... when the time comes..." He grinned to himself. "And I can make sure that time comes sooner rather than later..." He glanced at Sydney, sitting so stubbornly smug in the chair, and frowned briefly. "How's the stomach?" he queried in a light tone.
Sydney shrugged. He didn't feel wonderful, but he also wasn't hurting. "About the same," he reported without much concern in his voice. He looked up into his captor's face and saw the disappointment flit across the younger man's features. "Sorry," he apologized insincerely. It was a point of power when he had very little with which to work to NOT be falling ill at the time Lyle obviously was expecting.
Lyle shrugged too. "Maybe they were a little off on the timeframe," he hedged, justifying the lack of symptoms to himself in frustration. "We just have to be patient."
"What about the woman?" Sydney decided to push slightly and see where it would lead. After all, it wasn't like he had anything better to do... "Did you poison her too?"
Lyle stared at him with an open mouth for a moment. "Of course not!" he burst out in irritation. "If I did that, then I wouldn't be able to..." He took a deep breath, calmed himself, and gave Sydney another sideways glance. "Besides, *I* didn't poison you, that was the Triumvirate."
"And you say she was only bait..."
"That's right."
"Well, then, now that you have me, surely you can just let her go..."
"And have her identify me? Are you crazy?" Lyle laughed in surprise. "Besides," his look darkened, "I have more plans for her - for both before... and after..."
"Her disappearance - and your face in the newspapers - is going to leave a trail. The Triumvirate won't like that..."
"Shows how much YOU know," Lyle sneered and began pacing again. "You forget that I don't exist anymore - Mr. Bowman is sitting and rotting in prison for killing me! Except at the Centre and for the Triumvirate, I am a non-person."
"When they find her body..."
"Who said the authorities will ever find her?" Lyle chuckled at him. "There are all SORTS of ways to make a body disappear, Syd..."
Sydney swallowed hard and then forced himself to look into Lyle's face without flinching. "Consuming them..."
Something washed past the background of Lyle's eyes, something that made Sydney's stomach turn. "That's one way," Lyle admitted blandly. "A very enjoyable way too..."
Sydney forced himself to continue to look at Lyle evenly. "What on earth ever possessed you to start doing such... morally reprehensible things to your fellow human beings?"
"Try having my childhood," Lyle answered sourly, resuming his pacing, "and then imagine what it means to become one of Raines' protégés. HE sent me to learn the drug trade in Thailand from a man named Chin Than - remember him?" Sydney nodded. "It was Than that introduced me to..." Lyle caught himself just before he began to give away his life's story. "Ah-ah-aaaah," he waved a cautionary finger back and forth. "I'm not about to let you earwig me... psych me out... confuse me..."
"I beg your pardon?" Sydney blinked. "All I wanted to know was what it took to make a man into a monster."
"Is that what I am?" Lyle stopped pacing and thought a moment. "Yes, I suppose you're right - I am." He looked at Sydney, sitting there so calmly. "But am I a monster because of what I do, or is it that the actions I was taught to do by others that turned me into a monster?"
Sydney merely kept his gaze calm and non-confrontational. "What do you think?"
"I think that you're talking too much," Lyle snapped, his frustration returning, and then resumed pacing. He checked his wristwatch and then shot a glare at his captive. "Damn it!"
"What are you waiting for so impatiently?" Sydney asked calmly, dropping the more delicate subject and going for something that would tell him something useful about his current situation.
Lyle glared at him again, knowing as well as Sydney that the real cause of his agitation was the obvious wellbeing of the man handcuffed and tied to the chair. "The question isn't what so much as whom," Lyle answered cryptically, trying to throw Sydney a curve that would shatter that damned collected façade once and for all.
Sydney shook his head. "I already told you, Jarod won't come."
Lyle's blue-grey eyes glittered. "You know, if you had any future, I'd bet you real money on that. But as it is... Between the chance to rescue you and to add another name to the list of victimized innocent to his list of admirers, however, you KNOW he'll show. When you end up MIA at your own speech, he'll come running, find the note I left for him on YOUR bed - and I've paid for the room to remain as is for six days, so it WILL be there - and then come here. Of course, by then, it will be too late - and I'll have my Pretender, and with him the key to the Chairman's office."
Sydney sat straight, seemingly untouched by the casual comment about his having no future. If Lyle thought that he was behaving in an intimidating manner, he had forgotten that Sydney could remember very clearly being intimidated by professionals. Lyle was behaving erratically with the potential for behaving monstrously, whereas the Nazis who had controlled his fate for years at Dachau had been true monsters.
"Does it bother you that I might think of you as a monster?" he asked in his calm, professional voice again, returning to the topic that seemed to keep Lyle a little off-balance and distracted. Anything to buy himself the time to think of a way to warn Jarod away. Lyle was right, unfortunately - Jarod WOULD come. Or Miss Parker would... Either possibility was unthinkable.
"No, it doesn't bother me that you might think of me as a monster," Lyle replied in exasperation. "Being a monster has its benefits - people tend to bend over backwards to do what I want them to do rather than have me turn into a monster for THEM. They stay out of my way otherwise."
"Sounds like a monster's life must be a pretty lonely one..."
Lyle shot Sydney a sharp look. "Not really," he answered in patently false nonchalance. "You'd be surprised - I don't have THAT hard a time finding a date in the Asian community. Lots of those girls want to hook up with American guys."
"But you kill and eat them when you get tired of them."
He shrugged. "Some of them can't take a hint, I guess."
"The young lady you took the other day..."
"Can identify me," Lyle interrupted and finished the sentence. "When the police come to investigate the circumstances of your death, I don't want to leave anyone who can point fingers and say 'HE was there - HE did it!" Besides, since I knew that she wouldn't survive her usefulness anyway, I've indulged myself in several different ways with her already." He grinned evilly. "Shall I tell you about it? How about psychoanalyzing the behavior of a serial rapist and murderer in your final hours, Sydney?"
"No, thank you. I don't need to hear the details." Sydney's eyes closed softly and briefly in sympathy for the horrific experience that young lady had probably already endured. "I'd rather understand you..."
"Not that it will do you much good in the long run," Lyle smirked at him.
Sydney decided to ignore the blatant attempt to rile him. He forced his voice back into calm professionalism. "So human life has very little value to you?"
"It depends on the human and the circumstances," Lyle replied with a quixotic smile. "The girl - her value ended when you walked onto the property here. You, on the other hand, have value dead OR alive until Jarod walks onto the property."
"But human life has no intrinsic value of its own, in your mind?"
Lyle sat himself down on the ottoman in front of Sydney's chair, safely out of the Belgian's reach in case the psychiatrist had had any ideas of tackling him. "On the contrary. The value of human life is determined solely by what I can get out of it." He leaned back. "Besides, it's not as if I've been taking someone truly important away from the world - I take the refuse of humanity and make them into something special."
"That girl isn't the refuse of humanity. She's an artist..."
"I'm sure the lack of any of her future paintings won't change life as we know it later on," Lyle mocked. "I took a look at what she does - it's nothing but some of that abstract crap that any chimpanzee could come up with if given paint and brushes." He looked at his captive coldly. "She produces garbage - that makes HER garbage."
Sydney shook his head. "She's a human being..."
"She's bait, Sydney, just like you are." Lyle's pronouncement was stark and utterly without qualm. "And... afterwards... she's at least one good, nutritious meal."
"What about mercy, compassion? Have they no place..."
Lyle waved at him, dismissing his argument entirely. "Those are characteristics of weakness. All the truly powerful men in history gave very little thought to that sort of thing. Power comes only to those who aren't afraid to behave mercilessly. Empires rise that way - it's when the mealy-mouthed begin to sell mercy and compassion and all kinds of other sentimental crap that the empires fall."
Greying eyebrows rose on the forehead. "And you see yourself building an empire?"
Lyle gazed at the man directly. "Not necessarily building one, but managing and eventually running one, yes. The strength of the Centre has always lain in its ability to wield its power and authority without mercy. You know that one as well as I do - you've worked for them long enough..." He glanced at his wristwatch yet again and then gave Sydney a frustrated look. "How's your dinner sitting?"
Sydney could hear the frustration building in that innocuous question and it made him smile perversely to think that his not getting sick on schedule was causing the man so much disquiet. "Fine," he answered with immense satisfaction. "It was a very tasty meal." As his answer only deepened Lyle's frustration, he offered another pointedly irritating, "Sorry to interfere with your plans..."
"Shit." If the chemical had been ingested, and if it were working the way the Triumvirate had claimed it would, then Sydney should be starting to at least show beginning signs of heartburn. The Triumvirate had told him 'signs of extreme heartburn within three to five hours' - and the meal had been served long enough ago that SOMETHING should be happening by now. "You must not have eaten all of it. Did you skip anything...?"
"I didn't touch the pilaf. I don't eat rice, not since Dachau." Lyle rose to his feet and began to pace again, his mind whirling. "Is that where the poison was?"
"No, it wasn't poison per se," Lyle answered in disgust, his frustration making him honest. Damn it! He should have hung around the hotel kitchen, making sure the chemical had been ingested, rather than playing with his Prey here. The Triumvirate would be sure to make this lapse HIS entire fault.
What the hell was he supposed to do NOW? Sydney wouldn't be dying of something that could be attributed to a heart attack, that was for sure - and that would cause comment, which his Triumvirate masters had distinctly told him to avoid. And when Jarod called, Sydney wouldn't be in agony... from that, at any rate...
Lyle untied the rope holding Sydney to his chair and then hauled his gun out of his shoulder holster and motioned with it. "Up."
Sydney rose obediently. Lyle was the one with the gun, not he, and the younger man was upset and nervous enough that he could have a very itchy trigger finger. "Where are we going?" the Belgian asked quietly instead.
"We're going to take a little walk. Shut up and move."
Sydney shrugged and turned in the direction Lyle was pointing - down a hallway and through a smaller parlor before turning and going through a glassed door and ending up in that pyramid-roofed sunroom. "Keep moving," Lyle directed sourly after opening the glass door so that he could push his captive out into the moonlit yard. "Around that way." The two men walked down a narrow walk that led between the stonework wall of the garage and the curved bulwark of the lighthouse, then around the curved wall to the door.
At that point, Lyle took out a key, inserted it in the padlock holding the door closed, pulled the lock from the hasp and pushed the door open with his foot. "In." Sydney stepped cautiously into the total darkness, only to have a small light bulb suddenly flare into life and illuminate the interior of the structure.
The interior of the lighthouse was sparsely furnished. Opposite the door was a mattress on the floor on which a woman, naked and curled into a fetal ball with her back to the door, huddled miserably. She started as the light came on, and Sydney could hear the sound of chains. "You wanted to know if she was still alive," Lyle pushed Sydney forward toward the mattress, "well, here she is."
He dragged at her shoulder and forced her to turn over and face the two of them. "Isn't she a beauty?" Lyle asked, his hand now tracing the line of her bruised chin gently, making the poor girl squeeze her almond-shaped eyes closed tightly in revulsion. "She has all the traits of a classical Chinese beauty. It has been a real pleasure getting to know her better." As the younger man's hand wandered down the column of her neck and then over her breast in brazen audacity, a tear managed to escape from beneath one tightly sealed eyelid. Her revulsion and the chains making it impossible for her to avoid his advances were a powerful temptation to dalliance even now. "Have you ever seen such lines?" His hand slipped to the curve of her hip and then slid slowly and provocatively down her thigh.
"For God's sake," Sydney barked at the thought that Lyle was going to ravish her again right in front of him. His heart ached for the poor girl who, from the looks of the bruising over a goodly part of her body and smears of blood on her inner thighs, had already suffered greatly. "Leave her alone!" Without thinking of his own current situation, he took one threatening step toward the mattress.
Lyle straightened up and turned on Sydney in a sudden rage. He gave the psychiatrist a vicious shove, making him lose his balance and fall backward against the curved stone interior and hit his head painfully on the way down. "You don't tell me what to do, old man!" Lyle roared at him. "You're supposed to be dying, damn it! Now sit up!" he barked as Sydney began to sag, stunned almost unconscious from the blow to his head. Sydney struggled to do as he was told, only to find his handcuffs being attached to the stone wall by a short chain that would allow him very little movement.
"At least here I'm not going to have to worry about what you might get into while I make my preparations for Jarod," the young Parker stated in matter-of-fact calmness. "I'd tell you to make yourself comfortable, but I seriously doubt there's any way for you to make yourself comfortable on a dirt floor." He chuckled at his own gallows humor. "Nighty-night, Syd."
Lyle winked audaciously as he put up his hand and plunged the interior of the lighthouse back into profound darkness. Sydney could only hear the door open and close again, and then the sound of the padlock being firmly put back to prevent either their escape or anybody else finding them. The thick, stone walls no doubt prevented sound from escaping too, so there was no use screaming for help.
He leaned his head against the cold stone and sighed. There WAS nothing that he could do to prevent Lyle from succeeding in his plans.
Lyle stormed around the end of the lighthouse in the direction of the glass door of the sun room. He had a little time to figure out how to turn this entire affair around to his own benefit, the exact measure of that time being just how long it would be before Jarod realized his mentor had gone missing and came looking for him. It was now after midnight - Sydney's speech had been rescheduled, at Lyle's request, to nine in the morning. Sometime after that, Lyle imagined, he'd be getting a telephone call.
A loud "Hoo!" startled him badly, and the quiet rustling of wings told him that he'd just been dive-bombed by one of the great horned owls of the area. He batted his hands about his head and connected, coming away with a couple of feathers that he tossed to the ground in startled pique. His heart pounding from the surprise, he walked quickly back through the sunroom to the living room and the wet bar and poured himself a stiff drink.
He had to THINK!
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
June 27
Santa Luisita, California ~ Embassy Suites Hotel
Jarod calmly affixed the name badge to his sports coat jacket and casually browsed through the folder that had come in his symposium packet. Yes, there it was. Sydney was scheduled to speak at nine. He twisted his arm to look at his watch - ten minutes yet. He toyed with the idea of going upstairs and surprising Sydney in his hotel room, but dismissed the idea. If this symposium had any semblance of legitimacy, rattling Sydney before his speech would be to do his old mentor no favors. No, he'd wait until after the speech, when he'd corner the Belgian alone and give him the news about everything that he'd discovered.
He was tired, running on adrenaline and caffeine now. He never had been able to rest well on buses and planes - and the bulk of his time between flights had been occupied with his computer search. He'd arrived in Santa Luisita just in time to pull into a local café and have a stack of pancakes for breakfast and change in the restroom into the more professional-looking suit and tie that he intended to use in his Pretend as Dr. Jarod Maslow, symposium invitee. Nobody had questioned his late arrival, not even the harried organizer he'd had to pressure for an event packet even after presenting his forged invitation.
He wandered into the hall and found himself a place to sit toward the back and against a wall of the conference room. He didn't need the sudden sighting of his face amid the audience to spoil his old friend's concentration either. Slowly but steadily the hall filled with the other attendees, a few of whom Jarod recognized from his investigation of the sponsoring society and the publication involved in this entire affair.
Twenty minutes later, however, he was worried. Sydney had not appeared to give his speech, and symposium organizers were huddled together with concerned faces. His chosen place close to a door, Jarod slipped out of the hall and walked over to the reception desk. He requested Sydney's room number, claiming to be an old friend of the psychiatrist who was concerned that he hadn't appeared when he was supposed to. At the sight of symposium organizers milling around in confusion, the hotel employee gave Jarod the information and then hurried over to see if she could be of any assistance to the larger group.
Getting the locked hotel room door open was no challenge to the prepared Pretender, who then closed the door after himself. "Sydney?" he called out, not really expecting to hear an answer. He moved further into the room and took a careful, studying look around at the condition of the room.
The bed hadn't been slept in. A newspaper was tossed casually on the foot of the bed, as if Sydney had been reading and then been interrupted. Sydney's garment bag hung in the closet empty - telling the Pretender that his mentor had at the very least dressed for dinner, but most likely never returned. The small suitcase sat on the stool open, and the bathroom held signs that Sydney had at least showered once - his toiletries were neatly arranged along beneath the mirror behind the sink.
There were no signs of struggle. Jarod sank down onto the edge of the bed, staring around the empty room and trying to think of what might possibly have happened. As his eye cruised all the smaller details of the room, it fell on the newspaper and the picture on the front page - and Jarod pulled the paper closer to take a better look. Yes, that WAS Lyle in the background of the picture of the pretty Asian woman. Getting a sinking feeling in his stomach, he flipped over the paper so as to read the headline that went with the picture: "Local Activist Missing." Oh God, Jarod thought in alarm, not again! And then it struck him - Sydney must have seen this picture too! He wouldn't have...
Jarod hauled out his cell phone and dialed Miss Parker.
"What?" she demanded.
"Has Sydney called you?" he asked without any explanation.
"Just to let me know that he got there..." Miss Parker didn't go into details as to WHY Sydney was calling her to tell her of his safe arrival. Besides, she was sitting in the waiting room of the Urgent Care Medical Group in Dover waiting to have a stomach x-ray confirm or deny what the Lab-rat had told her the day before. "What's going on, Jarod?"
"I'm in Sydney's hotel room. He was a no-show at his speech this morning..."
"Say what?" Miss Parker demanded.
"And there's a newspaper sitting on his bed with a picture of an oriental woman - a local activist here who's gone missing - and LYLE is in the background." Jarod closed his eyes and wished hard. "Please tell me Sydney called you, and that you sent him some backup, just in case he decided to pursue this on his own..."
"God, no..." Something HAD happened, just as she had feared. Why hadn't he listened to her... "What are you going to do?"
"I'll find him," Jarod promised her. "But this is Lyle we're talking about here..."
"If anything happens to Sydney, I'll kill that rat-bastard myself," she hissed.
"Only if I don't get to him first," Jarod promised ominously. "Stay close to your phone." He disconnected quickly, picking up the newspaper to read the article more fully. A small, white paper fell from the newsprint and onto the floor. He bent to pick it up and then turned it over to find writing on the other side.
"Took you long enough to figure this out. If you want to see either Sydney or the girl in the article alive, call 302-555-8987. - Lyle"
Jarod sank back onto the bed weakly. Lyle was using Sydney as bait to catch him - and the worst part of it was that there was no way the Pretender could stand by and let that monster keep either Sydney or that Asian woman any longer than necessary. Something HAD to be done.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House
Lyle unlocked the padlock and threw open the door to the lighthouse, then reached through and turned on the light. Against the wall where he'd been pushed, Sydney blinked at the sudden and almost painful illumination, while on the bed, Lori Cheung again rolled her body up into a little ball and turned away from him. Just the sight of that smooth skin and firm buttocks made Lyle's groin twitch. He wished he had the time to play with her a little bit again - and the thought of doing so in front of a helpless and outraged Sydney had a delightfully twisted allure to it. But something told him that he had best tend to business and finish his arrangements before he got that phone call he'd been waiting for all night. It was after nine o'clock in the morning, after all...
"Up and at 'em, Sydney," he chirped gaily, moving quickly to the psychiatrist's side and unchaining him from the wall. "Time for you to come back into the house."
"What about her?" Sydney asked, jerking his nose toward the traumatized young woman on the mattress. He'd tried his best to calm her during the night, only to find her unable of any coherent communication at all. She'd lain there in the pitch darkness, sobbing her heart out.
"I'll be back out for her later," Lyle told him shortly, hauling up hard on Sydney's bound arms. "Right now, my plans are for you." He jerked the Belgian around and pushed him through the open door and into the even brighter morning sunlight. Sydney's eyes filled protectively with tears, making it hard to see and giving Lyle a chance to lock the lighthouse door again before hauling at the arm again to direct Sydney back toward the main house.
"What do you want of me now?" Sydney asked, his voice calm in direct contrast and challenge to Lyle's obvious attempt to intimidate.
"I'm expecting a call any moment now," Lyle explained with astonishing patience, "and you will need to be there when that call comes. After all, all Jarod knows is that you didn't show up for your speech, and that the note in the newspaper on your bed says that if he wants to see you alive again, he has to call ME." He chuckled at his ingenuity.
"And just how is my presence when you get a phone call going to help you?" Sydney asked in amusement.
"Oh, you'd be surprised at how useful you will be during that phone call," Lyle smirked. He pushed Sydney through the open glass door and into the sunroom.
"Will you at least allow me to use the bathroom?" Sydney grumbled, not quite in distress. It had been a very long night, sitting there in the darkness. He'd known the moment he'd arisen that his bladder wouldn't take much more abuse.
Lyle sighed heavily and pulled open the far door and pushed his prisoner through and into the hallway they'd been in the night before. He pulled open one of the doors along the way and pushed Sydney in. "What?" he demanded when Sydney just stood there.
"Unless you intend to do the honors," the psychiatrist said in what he hoped were very calm and collected tones, "I'll need the use of at least one hand."
Lyle pulled out his gun as well as his keys. He buried the muzzle of the weapon in the silvered hair beneath Sydney's left ear. "Just one twitch other than the necessary," he hissed in warning, then unlocked the right wrist. "Hurry up," he urged then.
He pulled the right arm back behind the psychiatrist the moment he heard the zipper for the second time. "Thank you," Sydney said quietly, unwilling to let the incivility of his host deprive him of his own social training. His physical relief was almost staggering.
"Shut up," Lyle growled, disgusted that he'd been blindsided and so easily convinced to let the man make himself more comfortable. Watching Sydney attempt to keep his damnable calm and patience after soiling himself might have been an interesting study in the psychology of stress and crisis.
He dragged the psychiatrist out of the bathroom and prodded him down the hallway again with the muzzle of his gun in the small of Sydney's back. In the living room he directed the Belgian to take a seat on the couch and then took up occupancy himself in the easy chair he'd tied Sydney into the night before. "You're not feeling quite so smart now, are you?" he asked, smirking triumphantly.
"Intelligence has little to do with it," Sydney responded after thinking for a moment. "Unless, of course, you're referring to my coming here without calling for backup... And you have no way to know for sure whether I did or not."
Lyle shook his head discouragingly. "I wasn't born yesterday, Syd. If you'd called for backup, they would have been here already. No, you were definitely not smart - and now here you are, counting down your final hours on earth. It's GOT to be bothering you..."
Sydney eyed the young Parker with sudden disdain. "What's bothering me are your endless attempts to try to get under my skin. Frankly, I find your efforts at intimidation pathetic. If you intend to kill me, I do wish you'd get it over and done with. In many ways, you'll be doing me a favor."
Lyle stared for a moment, and then chuckled uncomfortably. "Very good, Sydney. You had me almost believing you have a death wish." He waved the gun back and forth. "I told you, don't try to earwig me - I'm onto you and your games."
Sydney opened his mouth to counter Lyle's statement, but just at that moment, the cell phone in Lyle's pocket began to chirp.
"I was starting to think you didn't care about him after all," Lyle sneered as he put the appliance to his ear.
"Where's Sydney?" Jarod demanded. "Where's the girl?"
Lyle smiled. Yes, he definitely had Jarod hooked - all he had to do was reel him in now. "All in good time, Jarod. Before I start telling you things, I want to make sure you understand completely what all is at stake here."
"What? I know you have Sydney - and a young woman who has never done anything at all to you," Jarod stated in condemnation. And I know that you think that you can get to me by threatening them."
"Very good. And am I so very far off in my estimation?"
Jarod sighed. The inexhaustible arrogance of the man never ceased to amaze him. "I'm talking to you, aren't I?" he snapped back. "Now, quit stalling and tell me what you want me to do."
"First, I want you to listen." Lyle rose from his chair, raised his gun, took careful aim, and fired. Sydney collapsed back against the cushion of the couch with a groan as the bullet ripped through his belly.
"What the Hell are you doing?" Jarod screamed as the sound of a gun going off exploded painfully in his ear.
"Do you hear this, Jarod?" Lyle asked blandly, carrying the cell phone over to the couch and leaning over Sydney, pushing on the man's damaged abdomen and making him cry out yet again.
"Damn you, Lyle!"
"That's just to convince you that there is a certain measure of urgency here. Needless to say, Sydney is now bleeding - and you'll be wanting to follow my directions to the letter if you hope to see him again before he bleeds out."
"Jarod, don...AAAAH!" Sydney tried to interrupt, only to have Lyle push on his wounded stomach again and bring the agony forward again.
"Tell me what you want!" Jarod demanded desperately.
"Take the freeway south from Santa Luisita until you get to the Spyglass exit," Lyle started and then gave Jarod detailed instructions on how to get to the Triumvirate safe house. "From the looks of things here, you have about a half an hour before the blood loss begins to get critical."
Jarod was already moving out Sydney's hotel doorway and down the corridor toward the elevators. "I'm on my way," he said in a low and dangerous tone. "Sydney had better still be alive when I get there, or else..."
"Or else what, Jarod?" Lyle asked derisively. "Oh, and just in case I forget to tell you later..." He paused.
"Yes?"
"It's so GOOD to be doing business with you again."
Jarod pulled the cell phone away from his ear with a blistering longshoreman's curse and disconnected the call before he could hear Lyle's mocking laughter coming from the little receiver. The elevator had never taken so long to get to that floor...
"C'mon," Lyle said brightly, hauling the wounded man to his feet. "I don't need you bleeding to death on the nice furniture. Let's find you a nice quiet bedroom where you can destroy bed clothing in peace."
Sydney groaned and barely managed to drag his feet along at the pace Lyle set. He knew he was hurt badly - and that he had indeed been used as bait on a phone call. Once more he hadn't been able to protect his protégé.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Central California Coast ~ Southbound freeway
Jarod barely noticed the beautiful gold of the hills through which he was driving, nor looked about him to appreciate how the dark green of the live oaks complemented the scenery. His mind was spinning, trying to figure out just how he was going to walk into what was obviously a trap and escape again with Sydney in time to get his mentor to a hospital. There was another innocent involved as well, but the most pressing matter at the front of his mind was Sydney and how badly he was hurt.
The scenarios playing out in his mind were not having positive outcomes. It was, after all, broad daylight - there would be no skulking in shadows until surveillance cameras were conveniently pointed in the wrong direction. Lyle had outdone himself this time, raised the stakes, and forced the matter. That fact alone lowered the odds of success, and Jarod knew it.
He debated calling Miss Parker, then discarded the idea. With any luck, she was getting herself taken care of - and she was an entire continent away. Besides, if Lyle was working under Raines' orders, any time spent rustling up sweeper assistance to save Sydney would be wasted. Jarod steered the mini-SUV he'd rented for the day down the freeway exit and to the left into the sleep seaside town. No, he'd have to figure this one out on his own and on the fly.
He turned down the street instructed and waited at the stop sign as he looked over to the left and figured out just which house he'd been instructed to go to. If it weren't for the time constraint of not knowing how badly Sydney was injured, he could approach the property from below. The rocks on the promontory were scalable - and he doubted any security cameras were aimed seaward against rock-climbing intruders. With a critical eye, he guessed at how many more streets to the left he'd have to go to approach the house directly, or maybe even slightly beyond, then flipped a U-turn and went back up to the busy business lane which was the only cross street. He drove slowly past each one, keeping an eye to his position in relation to the tall pine trees across the street from the expansive estate, then finally headed down another.
About five houses up from the end, he pulled his SUV over to the side and parked and climbed out. At the end of the street he could see the stucco and ironworks wall and outbuildings beyond. He walked carefully down the street, watching to see if he could catch sight of any surveillance equipment aimed at the street in front of the property. He stopped behind a hedge at the end of the street and studied the situation.
There was indeed a camera that was aimed at the street - or at least at the sidewalk that entered the property through the wall. There was one other opening to the street in the wall - Jarod kept behind as many trees and bushes as he could without calling attention to himself so that he could get a better look at what lay behind. That opening turned out to be more of a service entrance - a dirt drive lading behind a small orchard of fruit trees toward a Danish-styled windmill, past the trash containers and compost heaps. Jarod eyed the trees and the wall suspiciously. There was no camera coverage - either an open invitation, or a flaw in the security - and Jarod doubted that on property as expensive and well maintained as this, there would be too many security flaws.
He had three choices: attempt to climb the rocks from below, breech the gate here at the more forgotten end of the property, or brazenly - perhaps foolishly - walk in the front gate. If he knew Lyle at all, the slime-ball was probably expecting him to attempt a more covert entrance. And yet, if he walked right up to the front door, he would be just asking to be captured before he had the slightest chance to get to Sydney. He grimaced in frustration, knowing that Lyle's trap was practically unavoidable. What to do?
He had to THINK!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Dover, Delaware ~ Urgent Care Medical Group
"You know, you're the second person in as many days with this very same complaint," Doctor Weiss commented, shaking his head as he put up yet another x-ray that indicated the presence of another of those metal encapsulated implants. "I took something very much like this out of a young man just this morning before coming here..."
"I know," Miss Parker replied sourly, sick to her stomach at the visual evidence that Jarod had NOT been just jerking her chain - and anecdotal evidence that Broots too had had this evil visited on him. She didn't even want to think about the fact that it had been Daddy who had authorized this violation. "So how soon can you remove mine?"
The doctor was already seated and writing. "I'll schedule you for morning surgery, just like I did for your friend. Don't eat or drink anything by mouth after midnight tonight." He pulled the top page off of the prescription pad. "And take these now to neutralize any stomach acid."
Miss Parker accepted the small square of paper and folded it precisely. "Did you do any testing on the capsule you removed from my fr... that young man's stomach?"
"As a matter of fact, no," Weiss replied with a frustrated frown. "The young man insisted on taking it with him when he was finished in Recovery."
That figured, she considered as she shouldered her purse and walked from the examination room. Broots knew better than to call attention to the fact that, if Jarod was right - and at this point she had no reason to doubt his information - he'd been given an implant loaded with a lethal poison. She would have done the same herself - only she would have just as soon thrown the retrieved implant at Daddy the next time she saw him, along with her resignation. She'd be in touch with Broots soon enough to try to talk him into tendering his resignation too. But she would also be pocketing her retrieved implant - she didn't need the news of this leaking out to the public. Not before she and Broots were clear of the place, that was.
She stopped at the receptionist's desk only long enough to pay for the bill and make a follow-up appointment, then walked briskly from the office and straight to her car. She looked at her watch and frowned - and then followed her hunch to pull out her cell phone and dial a number she'd otherwise only seen once in her caller id.
"What?" Jarod's voice sounded distracted, tense.
"What have you found out?" she demanded with no preamble.
Jarod sighed. "I know for a fact that Lyle has Sydney - and if my ears didn't deceive me, he shot him while I was on the phone talking to him."
"WHAT?!"
"I found a note..." Jarod leaned against the tree trunk of the palm tree across the way from the service entrance he'd decided was his best bet. "In it, Lyle told me that if I wanted to see Sydney alive again, I was to call him. I did - and there was the sound of a gunshot while we were talking, and I could hear Sydney..." Jarod paused and Miss Parker swallowed in distress. "Anyway, Lyle directed me to this house..."
"And that's where you are now?"
"Outside the perimeter, yes. I've been trying to figure out the best way in."
"Be careful," she found herself warning him unexpectedly. "And call me when you know something."
"I'll do what I can," Jarod promised provisionally. "But I don't know what I'm walking into here - or what shape Sydney's in."
"Just get him out of there in one piece!" Miss Parker insisted with worried vehemence.
Jarod disconnected the call and put his cell phone on silent before clipping it back onto his belt. He didn't need another call giving away his position if he had the immense good luck to end up in a game of cat and mouse. He looked both ways before sprinting across the street and up to the ironwork of the service gate.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House
Lyle zipped up his pants and reached for his tee shirt, looking down at the body of Lori Cheung as he popped his head through the elasticized opening. With the trap for Jarod almost sprung, he had decided to allow himself this one very necessary moment of pleasure before the heavy business ahead. The act of raping and now killing his oriental beauty would help steady his concentration - with that accomplished, half of the ritual of the Hunt was now complete. He was always better able to concentrate immediately following the events of a Hunt.
Besides, Lyle knew all too well that being in a position to throw into the Pretender's face the fact that Jarod WOULDN'T be in time to save this one innocent could give him an emotional edge in the situation to come. Keeping Jarod off-balance and on the defensive was going to be the ONLY way this plan would work, and the question of the welfare of his captives - especially Sydney - was the best way to keep Jarod off-balance.
He tipped his wrist and checked the time. If he knew Jarod, the Pretender was more than likely already on the property, if not casing the place from the street. He reached down and laid claim to the fillet of sweet meat that he had carved from the girl's flank prior to dressing. He should be able to get it onto a plate and into the refrigerator before the rest of the day's business got started in earnest.
Even though there was nothing to worry about as far as having a captive escape, he locked the door of the lighthouse behind himself and headed back down the narrow path between it and the garage that ended at the sunroom door. Halfway to the French doors that led deeper into the house, the device on his belt began to vibrate. Lyle smiled - the motion detectors in the orchard were indicating an intruder. He slipped through the doors and trotted down the hallways and around a corner to put his dinner on a plate already in the refrigerator. Tonight the stir-fry would be a genuine celebration!
Then he moved surely back to a small room off of the living room that was filled with all sorts of electronics. He checked the monitors and motion detector meters and then nodded in satisfaction. Jarod had been all too predictable - he'd come onto the property through the service entrance. His one worry that the wily Pretender would come at him from the ocean side of the property, the side that had the least security coverage due to the fickle nature of the rocky cliffs and the ocean currents below, evaporated immediately. He had guessed that Jarod would feel time-constrained and anxious to find his wounded mentor and therefore choose the less covert option of coming in from street level - and he'd been right. With a pleased grin on his face, he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that he was starting to get the hang of dealing with the slippery Pretender after all.
Jarod moved around the edge of an apple tree cautiously, heading for the cover of the orange tree beyond. He crouched down and slid beneath the foliage and then frowned at what he'd found. Wired to the trunk of the tree, close to the ground, was a small electronic emitter - a motion detector.
Damn, he chided himself, and gazed back at the tree he'd just left to find the receiver for that particular unit. He might as well walk up to the front door and pound on it, demanding entrance, at that rate. Lyle was being cagey - and this estate was more than securely protected. The realization came over him, and he sagged in response. Of course! This was one of the legendary Triumvirate safe houses that were scattered all across the globe - with some of the tightest and up-to-date security provisions known to the technological world. Hell, he'd helped design some of the security systems no doubt in place here!
Well, an informed intruder could still infiltrate some of the tightest security measures imaginable. Jarod checked the tree trunk for more units, and found that the detectors were set out to establish a grid within the orchard. He checked higher in the tree to make sure there were no unexpected surprises, then cautiously stepped over the invisible beam between himself and the next tree. Keeping himself low to the ground, he approached the tree cautiously, taking note of the emitter and receiver units wired to that trunk and being careful not to break another of the invisible beams.
The sound of running water was growing closer as he moved cautiously and deliberately from one tree to the next. Finally he had reached the edge of the orchard and gazed with some surprise and appreciation at the impressive structure ahead of him. Built in the Japanese style, the green-tiled roof was supported by six massive carved and painted round, wooden beams. In the center of the sheltered space was a round fountain with a brass dolphin, blue with weathering and patina, leaping from amid the arcing streams of water.
Jarod peered carefully up into the rafters of this impressive and unexpected obstacle. Yes, the cameras were there - he could only hope that his image hadn't already been detected by whoever was keeping an eye on the monitors. He carefully and deliberately headed just a little further back into the orchard so that he could work his way around the end of the structure. The longer he could manage to keep avoiding motion detectors and camera angles, the better.
Lyle's eyes kept sweeping back and forth from the motion detector meters and the monitors from the cameras mounted in the fountain area. If he were to trust the electronics, Jarod had been motionless for the past ten minutes - and he seriously doubted that the Pretender would have just sat still and waited. He cursed in Thai, figuring out that Jarod must have discovered the grid of motion detectors in the trees and found a way to avoid them. He turned his attention to the monitors from the cameras at the fountain. That was a very open area in the garden, where there was precious little to hide behind to avoid the cameras.
Nothing! Not the slightest sign of movement could be seen.
Lyle seated himself in the chair and leaned his chin in his hand, fuming. Games of patience and stealth were never as much fun on the receiving end as they were on the stalking end - and right now, Jarod was the stalker, and a damned good one at that. It would take a sharp eye and no small amount of luck to catch the Pretender making even the smallest mistake.
Jarod looked at his watch. It was nearly an hour since Lyle had shot Sydney - depending on the seriousness of the wound, every moment he was spending trying to closer to the house by stealth was bringing Sydney closer to death. The back side of the Danish-style windmill had been remarkably free of surveillance - and between shrubs rose bushes that lined the back walkway to the sheltered patio, he had made progress. The sheltered patio abutted the house, and there the surveillance cameras weren't hard to spot. There were three of them, rotating in an apparently random pattern so that an intruder couldn't predict a moment when it was safe to move.
Then he smiled grimly. The far camera wasn't panning the entire sweep of its range - its program kept it aimed on the patio itself and not the cypress-covered promontory beyond it. Jarod eyed the path that ran behind the tall brick and glass wall around the patio - there was no sign of motion detectors at all. There wasn't much land beyond the wall to begin with, for the ocean had washed much of what must have once been there away. Jarod crouched and once more began his forward movement along the back of the wall. A couple of times the sprinkler-dampened topsoil threatened to give way beneath him, forcing him to move forward a little faster than he'd intended, but soon enough he was on the back side of the wall.
Now, finally, he could move to stand with his back against the cold stucco of the house and wait for the cameras to offer him that split moment of opportunity. No doubt there was security on the door itself - he had already accepted that entering the house without raising alarm would be impossible. Jarod wiped the perspiration from his brow and prayed that the surprise of intrusion at that particular point into the house itself would be enough to give him a slight advantage until he could take the measure of what lay in store for him within.
He looked upwards, over his shoulder, at the house itself - and stared at the immense piece of good fortune that had been just waiting for him to look up and notice. One of the second-floor windows was open - hanging out like a little glass door beckoning. Jarod looked around him to see what he could use to hoist himself far enough into the air that he could get his hands on the bottom of that sill. Just inside the patio itself was a chair - a piece of delicate ironwork lawn furniture - something that could be leaned against the stucco and give his feet the smallest purchase in reaching for the sill.
Jarod cast an eye back at the cameras sweeping the patio. He would have to choose his two moments carefully. In the first moment, he would have to reach around - running the risk of giving his position away - to snatch the chair around the end of the wall. The second moment would be the trickier, for that would be when he would definitely be out where a camera could catch sight of him going up the side of the house over the top of the wall. But the only alternative to that was to go through the glassed door and announce his entrance as if at the top of his lungs.
Lyle's patience was wearing thin. He had risen and was now pacing back and forth in front of the bank of monitors and meters which, to his chagrin and disgust, still showed absolutely nothing. Not for the first time did he resent the Triumvirate making this a solo performance - what he wouldn't have given to have Willy and a couple more of the better sweepers prowling the grounds and watching for the sneaky Pretender's next move.
Then he had a horrible thought: what if Jarod was already IN the house? What if he'd already found Sydney? He glanced nervously at the surveillance monitors from within the house, finding them just as uncooperative as the outdoor ones had been. Did he dare leave his post and check on the wounded psychiatrist - make sure that Sydney was still slowly bleeding to death? He stared at the wooden door behind him - did he dare NOT check on him?
Paranoia won out. Lyle opened the door and hurried across the living room to the vast foyer and the staircase, heading for the guestroom into which he had deposited Sydney. He grimaced as he noticed the occasional drop of blood on the expensive carpeting that covered the stairs - he could expect the cleaning costs for the rug to come out of any bonus he'd be getting for bringing in the elusive Pretender.
Jarod had his chair, and had it positioned just so against the stucco side of the house. Now all he needed was a moment when all the cameras would be facing in another direction entirely... There! In an instant, he was standing on the seat, and then boosting himself high in the air with his foot on the top ironwork leaning against the stucco. And it did indeed get him high enough to reach the bottom of the windowsill. Using muscles that constant work-outs in the gym kept in top form, Jarod pulled himself up the wall and then tipped himself over the windowsill and onto the floor as quietly as he could.
He looked around - he was in a guestroom. The furnishings were antique, well maintained and extremely expensive-looking. The rug on the polished wooden floor was high quality Persian, thick and warm. A quick and thorough glance about the room told him that there was no camera here - granted that his entry had been unobserved, there was no indication that he'd penetrated the house at all as yet. He moved stealthily over to the door and cracked it just enough to peer down the hallway - and his eyes opened wide.
Lyle was stalking down the hallway toward him. Jarod froze, astonished that the man could have discovered his whereabouts so easily. And then his eyes widened even further and he let go of his breath in relief when Lyle paused in front of another door and pushed it open instead.
Lyle grimaced in frustration. Sydney had been practically unconscious by the time he'd dumped him on the bed - but obviously no more. While obviously in a great amount of pain, the man was slowly working his way across the bed in the direction of the telephone located on the night stand.
"No you don't," Lyle cautioned angrily and darted across the room to pull the telephone cord out of the wall. "There's going to be no help for you."
"Lyle," Sydney's voice was weak and agonized, "in the name of God..."
"Stuff it, Sydney. I have my orders. The Triumvirate wants you out of the way - and I'm going to give them what they want, even as you bring to me what I want."
"Why?" The psychiatrist's voice was soft, confused, and a cough brought forth a small trickle of blood to run down the edges of his mouth along with a deep groan.
"Because they know now what I've suspected all along - that you've been helping Jarod stay one step ahead of the search team, or sabotaged Miss Parker's aim when she would have shot the bastard and been able to bring him in damaged but alive." Lyle glared down at the older man, no longer bothering to hide his attitude. "You've been a pain in my ass all along. But you know what really made me happy to help the Triumvirate out in it's housecleaning? Finding out you helped Jarod get Gemini away from us - or did you think your little 'Refuge' file wouldn't come to the attention of others eventually? Do you know how long we'd been working on Gemini, getting him ready to take Jarod's place so that all we had to do was issue a standard termination contract - and your scruples just screwed everything up. You've made Miss Parker soft, and you've interfered with our hunt for Jarod - and the time has come for you to exit, stage right."
Sydney coughed again and then groaned as the muscles needed to cough were the same ones that were so badly damaged already.
"I told you," Lyle reminded him with cold satisfaction, "you have no future. You thought I was kidding?" He wrapped the telephone cord around the appliance and tucked it under one arm. "Now be a good boy and just lay there and bring Jarod to me so that I can bring him back to the Centre - and then the Triumvirate makes me Chairman in time. See? Everything works out for the best all the way around. So stop trying to be creative and just bleed to death quietly, please. I have a Pretender to catch and a dinner to make."
He slammed the guestroom door closed for good measure and headed off down the hallway for the stairs again. He had to get back to the security room - Jarod HAD to give away his position sooner or later!
Jarod waited until Lyle had turned the corner and started down the stairs before opening the door and slipping into the hallway, closing the door behind him, and then darting across the hallway and slipping into the room Lyle had just left. He closed the door very quietly behind him and then turned. His brows furled and his heart gave a worried leap as he took in the sight of Sydney facedown on the bed with a small pool of blood near his belly. He moved swiftly to his mentor's side and with gentle hands helped the man roll over onto his back.
"Oh God," he sighed, appalled at the man's condition. "Sydney!"
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