White Owl
by MMB & NIOMR
The End
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House
Sydney stirred as he felt his body being manipulated with more gentleness than he knew he could expect from Lyle - and his chestnut eyes slowly and finally opened. "Jar..."
"No, Sydney, don't talk now," the Pretender ordered curtly, having already taken the pillowcase from the pillow and started tearing it into strips. "I've got to get you bandaged up here so I can get you out..."
"Lyle... trap..."
"I know." The dark chocolate gaze of his protégé penetrated Sydney's fog of agony. "But I don't think he knows I'm here yet - and that gives us a small advantage."
"Jarod..." Sydney batted weakly at Jarod's hands as the Pretender pulled his dress shirt from his tuxedo trousers to get a better look at the wound and assess his condition. "I want... you... leave me. Don't let... Lyle..."
"No. I'm not going to just abandon you to die, Sydney, so forget it." Jarod's voice was firm and final. "Now be quiet and let me think."
Sydney coughed again, and then groaned in pain as yet another small bubble of blood found its way through his lips. Jarod took one of the strips and wiped away the mess. "Are you having trouble breathing?" he asked worriedly. The older man nodded slowly. "The bullet probably nicked your diaphragm and lung too. The good news is that you won't bleed to death right away - the bad news is that this is a nasty wound and is going to hurt like a son of a bitch when it comes time to move. It's also going to be a real bitch to get over once we get you to the hospital."
"I can't... move... feet..." Sydney managed, closing his eyes against the pain.
Jarod breathed out in silent frustration. Sydney was in very bad shape and getting worse by the moment. The bleeding from the mouth meant there was a danger that his lungs might collapse as the abdomen filled with blood from the torn blood vessels or that he might drown in his own blood, and the paralysis meant that the bullet may very well have lodged in the spine. Lyle had known what he was doing when he fired that shot - he had intended Sydney to die slowly and painfully.
He took the folded part of the pillowcase and pressed it carefully against the open, red mouth of the wound, then put Sydney's hand over the makeshift bandage while he started to knot strips of cloth together. "This will help a little," he said, easing the strip around Sydney's waist and bringing the ends up and over the bandage. He tied it tightly enough that the bandage wouldn't slip, but not so tightly that the pressure would make already traumatized muscles go into spasms.
"Jarod..." Sydney struggled to get his protégé to listen to him. "You need... to get away - rob Lyle... of his prize. My death..."
"You're NOT going to die on me!" Jarod insisted almost angrily.
"Listen to me..." Sydney wheezed, and Jarod wiped away another crimson trickle. "The Triumvirate issued... termination order... for me. They... know..."
"Know what?"
"About Gemini... the 'Refuge' email..."
Jarod shook his head. "So?"
"I'm dead... even if I... survive this." The chestnut eyes gazed upward sadly. "Don't let... him take you... Leave me..."
"I told you that's not an option," Jarod insisted in return.
"I... can't... walk... I'll... only... slow you down..."
"Listen to me, Sydney. I'm not leaving you."
Sydney nodded in defeat, accepting that his protégé's loyalty simply wouldn't be swayed by reason or pleading. "Then you'll... have... to kill..."
The dark chocolate gaze grew cold and determined. "Don't worry," Jarod replied in a deadly tone that Sydney had never heard before, "I have no intention of letting Lyle get away with things this time." He wiped away another bloody trickle from Sydney's lips. "Do you know where he's keeping the girl?"
Sydney nodded slowly. "In... lighthouse... chained..."
"Is she still alive?"
The wounded man shook his head. "Don't... know... Was... last time... I saw her... But Lyle... left me... for a long... while... after shooting..."
Jarod moved over to the door and peeked out into the hallway once more, this time to check for cameras. There was one, aimed almost directly at the door. He swore softly and closed the door again. "Are there any sweepers in the building?"
Sydney shook his head slowly. "Only... Lyle."
With that, the Pretender reached behind him and pulled a gun from his waistband and chambered a round. "Hang in there, Sydney," he shot back over his shoulder and then, after taking a final look at his wounded mentor, brazenly pulled the bedroom door open and walked out into the hallway as if he owned the house. His gun firmly in both hands, he made his way carefully down the hall toward the stairs.
"Hey Jarod, pretty damned clever, your getting into the house that way," Lyle's voice wafted up the staircase, stopping him before he turned the corner or took a single step.
"I thought so," Jarod answered in a confident tone, his back pressed against the wall near the stairwell.
"How's Sydney?" Lyle's voice demonstrated his glee at the situation.
"Still alive, which is a good thing for you..."
Lyle chuckled. From the sound of it, Jarod guessed he was right at the base of the staircase - probably with his gun aimed up the stairs in case Jarod decided to make a suicide run at him. "Too bad the same can't be said of that pretty girl... what was her name? Lori? Yeah - that was it - Lori Cheung. I have a nice piece of flank steak chilling down in the fridge here for dinner later that came from her. After all, she didn't need it anymore..."
Jarod swallowed hard to keep his temper from exploding. There had always been the chance that Lyle would murder either Sydney or the girl before he could get to them - and while he kicked himself for not being able to help the girl, Sydney was still alive in a room behind him. Whatever he did, he had to get Sydney out of there before...
Lyle frowned - Jarod's silence at the taunt was unnerving. "Don't you want to know what I did to her BEFORE I killed her?" he sing-songed up the staircase. "How smooth her skin was, how tight and hot..."
"You're pathetic," Jarod hissed in disgust.
"You think so?" Lyle sounded as if the judgement bothered him not one whit. "Then again, you should have seen the look on Syd's face when I aimed my gun at him and shot him. I thought for a moment there that he didn't believe what I was doing - his look of surprise and shock in that last moment was absolutely priceless..."
Jarod's jaw worked hard, and his dark eyes grew black with repressed fury. "Not only are you pathetic, but you're a coward. It's SO easy to kill helpless girls after you rape them or old men when you have them tied up and handcuffed into submission. But where's your courage now, Lyle? How come you're not coming up the stairs to get ME?"
"I know better." Jarod could tell he'd scored his own set of hits by the lack of humor and beginning of anger in Lyle's voice now. "You're probably standing right at the head of the stairs waiting for me to come up."
"But that shouldn't stop a big, brave man like you, Lyle," Jarod spat caustically so that Lyle could tell that he was being called anything BUT 'big' or 'brave'. "After all, you want this to convince the Triumvirate to give YOU the Big Chair when Raines has been taken care of, right? Well, I hate to tell you this, but you're not going to GET that Big Chair by cowering downstairs waiting for me to throw up my hands and surrender. You're going to actually have to take a few chances - risk getting your head blown off. That Big Chair ain't for ball-less sissies like you who pick on helpless girls and old men."
"Well, you're not going to have your old friend alive for very much longer if you cower upstairs there," Lyle shot back, his temper rising dangerously. "How long do you suppose Syd has now before he's lost too much blood to recover? What will you do when he's gone and the reason he's dead is because YOU were too chicken to come down and take care of business?"
Jarod got down on his hands and knees and crawled until he could just see down the staircase - then ducked back quickly as a bullet sang past his ear and buried itself in the wood paneling behind him. "Nice try, hot shot," Lyle gloated from his position on the landing. "I'm not as far away from you as you thought I was, am I?"
The Pretender sat back up again at a point just out of Lyle's visual range. Frustrated, he looked down the hallway behind him, then snorted in satisfaction. "That may be," he teased the man on the landing, "but you still aren't getting any closer to that Big Chair for as long as you don't come up the rest of those stairs to face me." He rose to his feet and moved silently down the hallway to check and see if his knowledge of this house was as trustworthy as he hoped. Yes. As he had slowly come to suspect, this WAS one of the places for which he'd helped design the security - and part of the need expressed at the time was for an escape route from the upper floor in case of hostile intruders downstairs. With any luck, Lyle didn't know about the stairs that lay behind the door at the end of the hallway.
Lyle ground his teeth together in frustration. This cat and mouse game was getting him nowhere. And unfortunately, Jarod was right - the Chairman's office wouldn't go to a man unwilling to put his ass on the line. But then, most of the time, the Chairman - or the candidate for the position - had backup. Now THERE was a thought... Would Jarod know that Lyle was alone?
"Willy, you and Chet take point..." Lyle began.
"Now who's trying to be a hot shot?" Jarod's mocking voice wafted down the hallway. "Willy and Chet are still in Blue Cove, and you know it. You're all on your own here - and no amount of play-acting can change that. What are you trying to do, anyway, psych me out so that when you pretend you have balls and come up the stairs, I'd be all scared and just hand over my weapon?"
Lyle swore under his breath again at having his ploy so quickly exposed. "You know, life would be just SO much better with you locked away in the lowest recesses of the Centre doing your job again," he stated in his bland manner that he adopted when he was getting furious.
"So sorry to foul up your plans," Jarod commented sarcastically. He opened the doorway into Sydney's room and put the man's arm around his neck. "You have to try to be quiet," he told his mentor firmly, and Sydney nodded his understanding. He dragged his mentor erect and then across the bedroom floor and out into the hallway. "But I have no plans to ever go back to the Centre - you know that," he tossed down the hallway.
"You aren't really going to have much choice," Lyle answered, noticing that Jarod's voice sounded slightly further away than before. "What's the matter, getting nervous and needing to check on your surrogate daddy?"
He listened carefully, but there was no sound coming from the upstairs any longer. He stretched carefully, as if expecting Jarod to suddenly pop around the corner with gun blazing - still nothing.
Jarod had a desperate hold on Sydney's waist and kept his heels from dragging on the hallway carpet all the way down to the end doorway and staircase beyond. The door was still open, and Jarod carefully balanced Sydney against his hip while pulling the doorway closed behind them.
The Belgian let go of a deep breath he had held desperately while being manhandled down the hallway, and it escaped his lips as a deep and agonized groan. Jarod only tightened his grip to start down the steep stairs. "I'm sorry to hurt you, Sydney, but I have to get you out of here..."
"I'll only... slow you..." the psychiatrist complained futilely. He'd seen Jarod get into such moods before - stubborn and completely unwilling to consider any other option than the one he'd chosen. He looped his arm around Jarod's neck and held on weakly for whatever assistance it would give his protégé, and Jarod carefully maneuvered the two of them down the narrow staircase until they were facing the downstairs access doorway.
Jarod let Sydney down and seated his mentor on the bottom steps of the stairs. "I'm going hunting," he announced finally. "You'll be about as safe here as anywhere. Wish me luck."
"Jarod..." Sydney reached for his former student suddenly.
Jarod captured the seeking hand in his. "What?"
"Thank you." In the semi-darkness of the stairwell, Sydney's eyes glittered with unshed tears. "I am so... proud... of you."
Jarod blinked and then squeezed the hand in his tightly. "You hang in there. Don't you die on me now..."
Sydney coughed up another dark trickle down his chin. "I'll... try... not to..."
Jarod pressed the gun into Sydney's hand. "If Lyle shows his face at the top of the stairs, shoot to kill, Sydney. Shoot to kill."
"But... what... will you..."
"Don't worry about me - I have some interesting ideas." Jarod assured him. "Just protect yourself, if it comes down to it. All right?"
The hand with the gun fell limply into Sydney's lap while the old man nodded again. "Be careful," he intoned in a rough whisper.
Jarod felt a stab of worry at his mentor's increasing weakness, but he shut the door to the stairs and began to work his way toward the central staircase upon which he and Lyle had had their taunting match. He passed through the kitchen and, almost as an afterthought, headed for the knife rack and chose a larger knife, suitable for slashing throats, as well as two smaller knives, suitable for throwing. Feeling a little less helpless, he moved into the short hallway that led to the foyer.
Lyle was almost on his belly, mounting the final flight of stairs to the second floor one step at a time as low to the ground as he could get to avoid any bullets from Jarod's weapon - he assumed the Pretender would not have come into the house empty-handed. The two of them had tangled often enough that surely Jarod knew enough to bring something that would be as effective at killing him as his gun could be at maiming Pretenders. But still, there was no noise, no taunting voice - nothing.
At last Lyle made it to the top of the stairs and, taking a deep breath, peeked just the top of his head around the corner to take a quick glimpse down the hall. The hallway was empty - all the doorways that opened onto it apparently closed. Lyle cursed harshly under his breath. Jarod could be hiding behind any one of those doors, just waiting for him to turn his back. Damn that Pretender! This was SUPPOSED to have been a quick grab powered by a headlong panic to save his mentor. With the virtually impenetrable security the Triumvirate had had installed here years ago, it seemed unbelievable that Jarod would have gotten inside with so little effort to once more bollix up carefully-laid plans by simply not agreeing to be caught easily.
Lyle rose to his feet and carefully slipped around the corner into the hallway with his back flush against the corridor wall. His hand reached out and finally found the knob to the first door and pushed it open suddenly. No sound - no shot - rang out. He peeked his head around the corner, keeping one eye on the door immediately across the way, and then huffed in frustration. The room was empty. He held his breath and scuttled across the corridor to the opposite door and repeated the motion and peeking. Again, no sound, no shot - an empty room.
Jarod moved across the foyer floor after checking to see that Lyle was no longer on the landing looking upwards. He began climbing the stairs very carefully lest the slightest creak or groan of step give away the fact that he'd managed to get behind Lyle rather than remain on the second floor to face him. He held his breath and peeked around the corner of the landing and frowned. Lyle was nowhere to be seen. He must be on the second floor now. Checking rooms. Getting too damned close to the stairs at the end of the hallway.
The Pretender took out one of the two smaller knives and tossed it in his hand, expertly hefting the balance of the blade and figuring out exactly how to hold the knife in order to throw it accurately. Then he was once more climbing the stairway slowly and carefully.
Lyle had made it to the doorway of the bedroom into which he'd taken Sydney. If Jarod were hiding anywhere, it would be logical that he would be hiding here to protect his mentor. This time he opened the door with a crash and swept the room with his gun extended and ready to fire. "Shit!" he cursed aloud at the sight of the bloodstained bed empty of the wounded captive he'd placed there earlier. "Damn it!" Yes, Jarod had indeed been checking up on - and possibly even rescuing - his surrogate father. But how the hell...
The answer struck Lyle like a physical blow - Jarod knew the layout of the house! Who else would the Triumvirate have trusted to design cutting edge security provisions for their legendary safe houses but the Centre Pretender before he'd escaped. Hell, he'd probably designed half to three-quarters of the security systems for the place - so who better to know how to circumvent them? The enormity of his mistake was suddenly made clear: the Triumvirate had wanted him simply to isolate Sydney so that the psychiatrist could die from poison far away from prying eyes and potential saviors - nothing more or less. But no, he'd had to try to play both sides against the middle and use the situation to capture Jarod once and for all to bolster his chances at advancement. Now, not only was Sydney NOT dying quietly of a poison that would metabolize so that death would be ruled of natural causes, but he himself had called in the one person not only capable but with adequate motivation to mount a successful rescue attempt of a wounded man.
Lyle stepped out into the hall and contemplated the doorway at the far end. That HAD to be the way Jarod had gotten Sydney away - the Belgian had been far too debilitated by his gunshot wound to have gone anywhere by himself, much less know of the other staircase. He cast a suspicious eye to the two sets of doors on either side of the hallway that were between himself and that forgotten avenue of escape. It would be just like Jarod to get Sydney down the stairs and then hide himself in one of those four rooms to lie in wait. Like it or not, he couldn't afford NOT to check each and every one of them.
Jarod crept up the final flight of stairs, listening as Lyle opened one door after another, obviously searching for him. He stood and pressed his back flush against the wall at the top of the stairs when he heard Lyle crash noisily through a door and then curse - Lyle must have reached the room Sydney had been in and found him gone. No doubt with Lyle's mood at the moment, he would have shot Sydney again and killed him for sure if he'd found him still there. Time was growing short. Jarod knew he couldn't wait much longer before Lyle would be at the stairs at the end of the hallway, where Sydney might not be in any shape to defend himself.
He peeked around the corner and saw that Lyle was leaving the doors open behind him. The moment Lyle poked his head into a bedroom to check for intruders, Jarod slipped around the corner and into the opening of the first doorway. He heard footsteps and then another door opening, and took a chance at slipping from that open bedroom into the next one down the hall. He listened carefully again, and there were more footsteps and another door opening. This time Jarod peeked out his head to see just where Lyle was in relation to the stairs at the end.
His eyes still affixed on the door at the end of the hallway, Lyle was pushing through the second to the last doorway on the side. Jarod used the time to slip one more doorway closer to his prey, holding still and holding his breath for the time it took before soft footsteps on the hallway carpet told him that Lyle had again crossed the corridor to check that last door. Jarod peeked and then slipped silently into the next open doorway. He was now less than ten feet from the man. He bounced the knife a couple more times in his hand while he waited for Lyle's attention to focus tightly on the doorway at the end of the hall.
Lyle pressed his ear against the door and listened, then smiled grimly. From behind the door had come a soft, bubbling cough that could only be the result of a carefully aimed bullet piercing a lung and diaphragm on its way to tearing into intestines and whatever else was in its path. The lack of a comforting voice from Jarod was bothersome - had the elusive Pretender really abandoned his mentor in the enclosed stairwell?
At the base of the stairs, Sydney heard a hand rattle the knob of the door above him. He took a deep breath - something that was becoming increasingly difficult as time passed - and raised the muzzle of the heavy gun in his lap until he had it pointing up the stairs, both his hands supported by the steps themselves above his head. He hadn't heard any sounds of struggle or gunshot since Jarod had taken off on his hunting expedition, so the chances were that the person preparing to open the door was Lyle, not Jarod. Even so, he wouldn't fire until he was sure...
Jarod crept very quietly from the bedroom opening. Lyle had his back turned to him completely and was getting ready to open the door...
Lyle opened the door very slowly and peered down. The dim light of the constant stairwell lamp gave a yellow illumination that reflected sickly off of the head of silver hair at the base of the stairs. Lyle opened the door more completely and chuckled. "So. Your protégé isn't quite so smart after all, leaving you here where I could still find you..."
The sound of Lyle's mocking voice above him was all it took. Sydney raised his head and looked upwards at the silhouette, straightened the gun into a firing position and squeezed the trigger. The recoil knocked the weapon clean out of his grasp and down onto the floor at his feet where he couldn't retrieve it. But the figure above moved suddenly out of the light - and Sydney had no way of knowing whether his shot had hit its mark or not.
The bullet from Sydney's gun slammed into Lyle's left shoulder and staggered him backwards out of the doorway. "Why, you stubborn son of a bitch!" the younger man hissed, his fury pushed past the point of rational thought by the agony in his shoulder. "Why can't you just DIE?!"
"Lyle!" Jarod called out just as he saw Lyle begin to raise his own gun to make the killing shot on the helpless man below.
The surprise of having Jarod being so close behind him made Lyle pull the trigger without aiming as he spun around. Even as his mind registered satisfaction at hearing another pained grunt from below, Jarod threw the knife in his hand and buried it in Lyle's left shoulder, not far from the already oozing bullethole. Lyle screamed and started to bring up the gun.
Jarod dropped the other knives and just ran at the man with a savage yell. His hand closed around the arm that Lyle was extending with the gun in his hand and brought it down hard against the doorjamb, and again, and again, until the gun clattered to the floor uselessly. Lyle brought up his right hand in a fist, but a vicious punch to his wounded shoulder had him staggering back once more against the open door where he was then pinned by Jarod's body.
"Sydney!" Jarod called down the stairwell. "Are you OK?"
Lyle tried to bring his knee up into Jarod's groin, but the Pretender had him pinned too well to make the move more than just token. Regardless, Jarod buried his own fist deep into Lyle's gut in a blow that would have doubled him over if Jarod hadn't been holding him upright against the door.
"Sydney!" Jarod called again, his voice becoming frantic. "Answer me!"
"Maybe the old bastard's finally dead," Lyle sneered at him breathlessly, wheezing in pain from the belly blow. He raised his head to look triumphantly into the eyes of the Pretender - only to realize that he'd made yet another mistake, this one decidedly fatal.
Jarod's eyes had gone completely black, and there was a killing fury in their depths the likes of which Lyle had never seen before - not even in the moments after Jarod's brother had died in front of him, dead at Lyle's hand. Lyle felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise looking into that merciless gaze, realizing he had finally accomplished something that he and Mr. Raines had worked for years to do. He had pushed Jarod to the point that he WOULD kill, and kill willingly and mercilessly out of anger and revenge and hatred rather than only reluctantly out of self-defense or defense of another. There was no doubt in his mind that he was looking into the face of the man who was going to kill him - and kill him soon. "Sydney!" Jarod called once more, his eyes burning holes into Lyle's soul. Only silence answered him. "If there's anybody dead here," the Pretender said calmly and lethally, "it's you."
"Look at it this way," Lyle smiled coldly in arrogant bravado at his future murderer, "I put him out of his miser.. OOF!"
Jarod had buried his fist into his gut again, this time stepping back so that when Lyle began to double over, another fist swinging up from waist-level caught him under the chin and made his teeth snap shut painfully. Lyle tried to stagger out of Jarod's flying fists, but only managed to get himself in a position where Jarod's blows were landing on the side of his face as well as his belly and bloody shoulder.
Jarod pressed in, landing one vicious blow after another in an endless and punishing beating, driving Lyle back away from the gaping stairwell door. Lower lip split, several teeth knocked loose and a cut on one cheek running blood down his cheek later, Lyle finally staggered again and sagged back against the wall to slide to a seated position. Jarod didn't miss a beat - his feet replaced his fists from time to time as he aimed one kick after another into ribs or into the bloody shoulder as often as he could when bending over to pound fist into facial flesh became tiring.
In all the beatings he'd received at the hands of his foster-father, Lyle Bowman, and then later at the hands of Mr. Raines and his Triumvirate trainers, Lyle had never been so systematically, completely and mercilessly thrashed from head to foot. Any bravado or self-control washed out of him and left him limp as the kicks and blows kept on raining down on him, not diminishing in strength or punishment at all. When he tried finally to curl himself up into a fetal ball, the kicks increased in frequency and strength, now aimed at his lower back and kidneys. Breathing had become an exercise in agony - Lyle was certain that at least three of those kicks had snapped ribs like toothpicks and driven them into his lungs, for his mouth continued to fill with the sour-salty taste of fresh blood. One eye was swelling closed and he could feel the first trickle of warm blood sliding down his neck from his right ear.
Finally Jarod reached down with bloody fingers still numb from the pounding they had just administered and grasped hold of the dark locks at the top of Lyle's head and began to pull. Lyle screamed and tried to straighten to fight back again, but Jarod was moving too quickly for his captive to be able to get shaky feet under himself to gain a measure of independent movement. Jarod dragged Lyle on his back by the hair all the way down the hallway, leaving occasional smears of blood behind him on the cream-colored carpet, and then started down the stairs.
Lyle screamed as he felt the floor disappear from beneath his back and buttocks, and then felt the sharp and unforgiving edges of each step thud into his bruised kidneys. His hands grasped at Jarod's grip on his hair, trying to dislodge the fingers and only managing to get himself kicked in the wounded shoulder again for his efforts without ceasing the agonized descent.
Jarod's relentless dragging didn't stop when he got the man to the bottom of both flights of stairs, but he continued to drag him screaming and batting uselessly at the hand in Lyle's hair across the living room floor and through the archway that led toward the kitchen and the bottom access door to the stairwell. At long last, Lyle felt himself tossed hard against the wood paneling of the narrow hallway while Jarod anxiously opened the door to check on his mentor.
While still alive, Sydney was fading fast. Lyle's bullet had indeed found its mark, for there was now a gushing wound in the top of Sydney's right shoulder that had cascaded blood all down the front of his ruined dress shirt. The chestnut eyes fluttered at the sensation of air movement and light, and they finally opened tiredly to take in the sight of Jarod and a very worse-for-wear Lyle sagging against the wall behind him.
"Oh damn," Jarod cursed under his breath and threw the door open wide so that he could get a good hold on his mentor.
"Jar..." Sydney intoned in a gurgling tone, his eyes glued to Lyle and watching in horror as the beaten and bleeding man's hand slowly reached for his ankle and slowly exposing an ankle holster with a small pistol nestled within.
Jarod caught the warning tone within the drowning voice, whirled around and, at the sight of Lyle preparing once more to underhandedly get an advantage, exploded. "NO!" he bellowed, descending swiftly on his former punching bag and removing the gun before Lyle could get his hand wrapped around it properly. He threw the gun into the kitchen with all his might and then turned once more to the treacherous man at his feet.
"Get up!" he ordered, reaching down and taking firm hold of Lyle's hair again and hauling upward. Lyle bellowed in pain and outrage and struck out at Jarod, this time connecting with the Pretender's belly. Jarod lost his grip on Lyle, who sagged back down onto the floor and rolled painfully a short distance away before trying to climb to his feet. Jarod sucked in air painfully for a few moments before, with a low growl in the back of his throat, he went after Lyle again.
Behind him this time, he brought his hands and then forearms up to rest dangerously on either side of Lyle's neck. "This ends here," Jarod growled into Lyle's ear. "For Sydney, for that girl in the lighthouse, for all those other girls you've left scattered across the country, for all the families you've disrupted with your obscene urges..."
"Jar..." Sydney shifted weakly, desperate to keep his protégé from taking this one last step into a darkness that he'd managed to avoid despite his upbringing in the Centre.
Jarod's dark chocolate connected solidly with his mentor's agonized chestnut. "No, Sydney," he said firmly and finally. "It needs to end now. Otherwise, there's no hope of it ever ending." His gaze changed, became almost pleading - asking Sydney's permission.
Sydney could feel himself fading. He could understand Jarod's train of thought too - the Centre or the Triumvirate itself had far too many times bought out law enforcement or officers of the court to prevent Lyle from ever having to face the consequences of his actions. There was no guarantee, if Jarod allowed Lyle to live to be taken into custody, that the same revolving door wouldn't be invoked again - an action that would virtually seal the fate of even more victims.
At last he nodded, and then closed his eyes. He didn't want to witness the execution - the commission of which would mark the supreme perversion of a man for whom he'd had such high aspirations.
Jarod sighed as he finally received his mentor's permission to proceed. Lyle, who had been watching, sighed too and muttered, "Oh shit!"
"That sounds like the fitting epitaph for your tombstone," Jarod hissed into Lyle's ear.
"You don't want to do this," Lyle desperately told the man who literally held his life in his hands. God, he'd been in this same position before - after Jarod had helped Sydney rescue his son - and only the arrival of his twin sister and Centre reinforcements had kept him alive that time. This time, he didn't have even that hope to cling to - still he had to try. "What are you doing? You're supposed to be the GOOD guy - you get your payback but let the legal system handle the final dispensation of justice. Jarod... I know things... about your family... If you..."
Lyle's voice died suddenly as Jarod's forearms tightened and jerked in opposite directions, snapping the man's neck as if a bundle of spaghetti. Sickened, Jarod opened his arms and let the body drop to the floor. Turning his back on Lyle entirely, Jarod leaned through the open stairwell door and dragged Sydney out and the hoisted him up into his arms. "C'mon. Don't you dare die on me, old man - you hang on..." But Sydney was beyond responding now. His body was limp - dead weight.
Jarod carried the wounded man forward into the foyer and set him gently onto a couch. He first tried the solid formal door of the entryway, finding the door locked and the mechanism to unlock it unresponsive. With that, he picked up a statue from a tall pedestal and threw it through one of the stained glass windows to the side of the door, shattering the glass and making an opening big enough for the two of them to slip out of the house.
Not caring what kind of a spectacle he was making, Jarod carried Sydney in his arms like a child up the street to where he'd left his SUV and gently deposited the unconscious and bleeding man on the passenger seat. Breathing hard from the exertion and high emotions, he slipped into the driver's seat, turned the key in the ignition, and squealed the tires making a quick Y turn to head to the freeway and to the closest hospital.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Blue Cove, Delaware ~ Parker Summerhouse
Miss Parker dove for her cell phone on the coffee table and snapped it open. "What?" she demanded. When there was no immediate voice to answer her demand, only an agonized man breathing and trying to keep from sobbing, she softened her voice. "Jarod? For heaven's sake..." Jarod crying? Her heart skipped a beat. "Oh dear God - no..."
"I got him to the hospital alive," the Pretender told her in a voice that was bleak and defeated-sounding. "He's still in surgery." He paused, obviously having to work hard to control his emotions. "It's been four hours already... He lost SO much blood, Parker..."
Miss Parker closed her eyes and released a small portion of her worry that had done nothing but increase since the end of her last conversation with him. Sydney was still alive for the moment, and so was Jarod. "What about Lyle?"
There was a long pause, and just as she was about to call to him again to make sure that he hadn't disconnected on her, he replied in a sickened tone, "Dead. I killed him."
Sydney had once told her how having to kill Damon to protect Broots' life years ago had eaten away at the sensitive Pretender's conscience. After swallowing hard in an attempt to wrap her mind around the fact that her reprehensible twin actually WAS no more, she knew she needed to at least try to allay his guilt. Sydney would have done no less in her place. "Jarod, you know that was the only way..."
"I hit him," Jarod continued, apparently without having heard her at all. "I hit him, and I hit him, and I kicked him, and I didn't even know I was doing it. I lost it, Parker - I was SO angry at him for shooting at Sydney again I... I didn't realize what I was doing until I was dragging him down the stairs."
"Jarod, it's OK," Miss Parker told him gently again. "You did what you had to do."
"That's just it," Jarod said with a hitch in his voice. "When it came right down to it, I killed him so that *I* wouldn't have to deal with him again. Not because of Sydney, or anybody else - even though that's what I told myself and him - but for ME." Jarod sounded as if he was in tears. "He hurt the people I love - and just kept on hurting people I love - I couldn't take it anymore. I killed him not to protect others, but to make life easier for ME - now *I* don't have to worry anymore about losing anybody I love because..."
"You listen to me, Jarod. Do NOT waste your guilt on that monster!" Miss Parker forced her voice to be firmer. "God only knows what he would have done if you hadn't taken care of him today. I'm sure there are any number of oriental girls who will live long and productive lives now who would have ended up in his dinner bowl otherwise." She paused and could hear him breathing hard and brokenly on the other end of the line. "You know this, don't you? You KNOW I'm right..."
Jarod heaved a shuddering sigh. "I know it - sort of. The fact is that while I may have done the right thing, Parker, I did it for the wrong reasons. For a moment there, I finally became what Lyle and Raines always wanted me to be - an unthinking killing machine." His voice broke. "Even Sydney saw it and looked away."
"Jarod..."
His voice calmed and deepened into a lethal tone that brought her hackles up. "Listen to me, Parker, and do EXACTLY what I tell you. Get Angelo, and get Broots and his little girl, and go. Leave. Get away from the Centre, find a hole to crawl into for a while and don't poke your head out for a good long time. If Sydney survives, and when he's released from the hospital, pick him up and take him into obscurity with you. You do NOT want to be around the Centre anymore."
"What are you going to do?" The voices at the back of her mind were whispering again frantically.
"What needs to be done," Jarod said ominously. "Have you had that implant removed yet?"
"Tomorrow," she answered quickly. "Broots had his removed this morning."
"Angelo has one too," Jarod told her quietly.
"Broots showed me the memo a little while ago," she buried her forehead in her open hand. "I'll take care of it." She took a deep breath. "Tell me what you're going to do, Jarod. Maybe I can help you..."
"No," he retorted quickly. "I don't want you to be any part of what I have to do. You're going to have to be the strong one and get things moving to get you and other innocent people the hell out of there as soon as possible. I won't be able to help you there."
"But what about you?" she asked plaintively. "I can't just walk away..."
"You have to," he insisted almost frantically. "What I need to do..." His voice grew softer. "What I need to do, I don't want any of you seeing. Sydney knew enough to look away when the time came - I need you to look away too, Parker. I don't want you to see what I have to become to do what needs to be done."
"What..."
"LISTEN to me!" Jarod insisted, his tone slipping into mild frustration. "Sydney told me that the Triumvirate has issued a contract on his life. Lyle, I take it, was supposed to be the agent..."
"That son of a bitch..."
"That means they'll try again," he continued without letting her outburst interrupt his train of thought. "I'm going to set up round the clock security for him - if he survives..." Jarod's voice hitched again, and Miss Parker could tell that the thought that his mentor might not survive his injuries was tearing the Pretender apart. "But I'll need you to take over and make sure he gets the care and security he needs as soon as possible..."
"I'll be there, Jarod, as soon as I get that damned implant taken care of tomorrow and lay my hands on Angelo." She reached for a piece of paper and pencil. "Where is he?"
"Sierra Vista hospital in Santa Luisita," Jarod answered quietly.
"I'll talk to Broots and Deb tonight," she promised. "But give me a couple of days, OK? Getting Angelo away from the Centre isn't going to be a walk in the park."
"You never know," he replied with a faint ghost of his old humor, "Angelo may surprise you and be easier to find and extract than you expect. Everybody at the Centre has been underestimating him for years. He understands a helluva lot more than any of you have given him credit for."
"Still, give me a few days to get things arranged here and get to California to take over keeping an eye on Freud." She ran the fingers of her free hand through her hair to drag it back from her face. "Will you still be there when I get there?"
"That depends on Sydney," Jarod stated honestly and starkly. "Do NOT come here if you receive a call from me telling you that he..." His voice broke. "I will have made arrangements for him... so you won't..." Miss Parker's eyes filled with tears as she heard him fighting to control his emotions again. "If he's gone, I'll be gone too. If he's still with us, I'll be around - but you probably won't see me."
"Jarod..."
"This is it, Parker. The game of 'I run, you chase' ends now. We can't afford it anymore - either of us."
She wiped at her eyes, angry at herself for crying. "That sounds an awful lot like 'goodbye', Jarod..."
He was silent for a long moment. "Probably because it IS 'goodbye', Parker. Where I'm going, and what I have to become to do what needs doing, you can't follow or watch - and afterwards, you won't want what I've become anywhere near you."
"Let me be the judge of that," she barked at him anxiously. "You've got my world falling apart around my ears here - for God's sake, let ME decide if you're going to be one of the pieces that falls away for good." She waited for a moment for his response, then yelled at him, "PROMISE me that you'll let me decide, Jarod."
"I can't promise that, Parker, anymore than I can promise that Sydney will still be alive an hour from now."
"You have to give me something to hang onto."
He sighed. "All right. I won't just disappear without at least saying goodbye one more time."
"Promise me." She wasn't going to accept anything less.
He sighed again. "I promise."
"Call me when you hear from the doctor."
"I'll call."
"Take care of yourself, Jarod."
There was a long pause. "Later, Parker." And then the line went dead in her ear. She pulled the little appliance away from her ear and stared at it. In all the time that she'd known Jarod after his escape from the Centre, this was the closest she'd ever come to hearing him end a call properly.
Wishing that she dared have herself a tall glass of Absolut to soften the worries at the back of her mind about Sydney's prognosis, she reached instead for the small bottle of prescription antacid that the doctor had instructed her to start taking that afternoon and through the evening, taking a long and deep slug of the chalk-flavored liquid and grimacing it down her gullet. She immediately got herself a tall glass of drinking water from the fridge and sat down at her kitchen table again. She picked up the cell phone and punched a preprogrammed number.
"Broots, me. Listen, are you and Deb busy?" She softened her voice from that of an Ice Queen boss to a concerned friend, figuring the abrupt change of attitude would key him into the urgency of the matter. "I just got a call from Jarod - and we need to talk. Would you mind very much if I came over for a bit?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Santa Luisita, California ~ Sierra Vista Hospital
Jarod paced the length of the long hall outside the operating theatre in which the doctors were frantically working on Sydney, trying to repair two bullets' worth of damage and blood loss. It had been seven and a half long and agonizing hours since they had rolled the unconscious and clearly dying psychiatrist off for emergency surgery. Jarod had taken the time to retrieve a change of clothing from his SUV so he could shed the blood-spattered sports coat and button-down shirt he'd worn when he'd carried Sydney bodily into the hospital emergency room. Now once more garbed in his more traditional black tee and jeans, with his black leather jacket tossed onto a chair in the surgical waiting room, he was getting antsy.
He had been deliberately vague about the details he'd given to the police - who naturally had been called the moment that it had been noticed that Sydney was suffering from gun shot wounds. The officers had noted down his fictitious psychiatrist's name from his latest Pretend attending the symposium, he'd given a statement that had left out the location of the shooting and any names other than Sydney's. Jarod knew he was playing with fire not giving the police all the information they wanted, but there was no way that he wanted them poking around that house on the cliffs of the Pacific ocean.
No, he wanted Lyle to be found by the Triumvirate and nobody else. Lyle's condition, and the fact that it was Lyle's body found at that house and not Sydney's, would be a very effective way of sending a message that something had gone horribly wrong with their plan to just eliminate someone with impunity.
The time had come for him to become exactly what they had wanted him to be all these years - and then turn that violence and lack of mercy and compassion back on THEM. Nobody in any position of authority, either in the Triumvirate or the Centre - would be excluded. The only message these people understood was force and control - and the only way to answer their agendas was with death and destruction. Sydney had known what was starting the moment he nodded his head - that was the reason he'd closed his eyes.
Jarod paused and stared out the window at the well-established residential street with its tall and mature trees and older houses and office buildings. For years he had been - how had Miss Parker once described him? - a 'defender of the weak and the abused'. He would defend no longer. His self-assigned job description had just changed from defender to avenger. The bucolic scene outside the window and his wish to somewhere somehow find a place where he could be with his family was a dream that would never be realized now. The Triumvirate and the Centre had made sure of that the day they had stolen him from his parents - and the time had come for them to pay for their arrogance and lack of human decency. With any luck, and with as much Centre and Triumvirate capital as he could embezzle or steal outright from now on, two organizations that had abused the weak and helpless would learn the TRUE meaning of power and control as they slowly watched theirs slip away.
Top Centre and Triumvirate officials would one by one begin to disappear, never to be seen or heard from alive again. Government and law enforcement officers and officers of the court who had allowed themselves to be bought and controlled by agendas contrary to that of public service would find their deeds exposed. The vast and malignant web of lies, deceit, power and corruption that formed the power base the Centre and the Triumvirate depended upon would shrivel in the heat of public exposure and scandal. And whatever wouldn't die in the light of exposure would die in the darkness of vengeance. It was the only way that the obscenity would finally end.
He felt a hitch grow in his throat, thinking of how one of the last things that Sydney had said to him was that he was proud of him. You aren't going to be proud of me anymore, Sydney, he thought to his mentor sadly. I'm going to hurt a LOT of people - and not all of them the guilty. But the time has come - I HAVE to do this. There has to be a payback sometime for all the evil the guilty had perpetrated on the world - a payback that holds no hope of appeal - or there IS no such thing as justice in the world. And if selling my soul into darkness is the price for putting balance and justice back into the world, then sobeit. Somebody has to do this - considering everything, it might as well be me.
He could only wonder whether or not he would have had his mentor's blessing - or at least forgiveness - on this action as well.
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com
by MMB & NIOMR
The End
Central California Coast ~ Triumvirate Safe House
Sydney stirred as he felt his body being manipulated with more gentleness than he knew he could expect from Lyle - and his chestnut eyes slowly and finally opened. "Jar..."
"No, Sydney, don't talk now," the Pretender ordered curtly, having already taken the pillowcase from the pillow and started tearing it into strips. "I've got to get you bandaged up here so I can get you out..."
"Lyle... trap..."
"I know." The dark chocolate gaze of his protégé penetrated Sydney's fog of agony. "But I don't think he knows I'm here yet - and that gives us a small advantage."
"Jarod..." Sydney batted weakly at Jarod's hands as the Pretender pulled his dress shirt from his tuxedo trousers to get a better look at the wound and assess his condition. "I want... you... leave me. Don't let... Lyle..."
"No. I'm not going to just abandon you to die, Sydney, so forget it." Jarod's voice was firm and final. "Now be quiet and let me think."
Sydney coughed again, and then groaned in pain as yet another small bubble of blood found its way through his lips. Jarod took one of the strips and wiped away the mess. "Are you having trouble breathing?" he asked worriedly. The older man nodded slowly. "The bullet probably nicked your diaphragm and lung too. The good news is that you won't bleed to death right away - the bad news is that this is a nasty wound and is going to hurt like a son of a bitch when it comes time to move. It's also going to be a real bitch to get over once we get you to the hospital."
"I can't... move... feet..." Sydney managed, closing his eyes against the pain.
Jarod breathed out in silent frustration. Sydney was in very bad shape and getting worse by the moment. The bleeding from the mouth meant there was a danger that his lungs might collapse as the abdomen filled with blood from the torn blood vessels or that he might drown in his own blood, and the paralysis meant that the bullet may very well have lodged in the spine. Lyle had known what he was doing when he fired that shot - he had intended Sydney to die slowly and painfully.
He took the folded part of the pillowcase and pressed it carefully against the open, red mouth of the wound, then put Sydney's hand over the makeshift bandage while he started to knot strips of cloth together. "This will help a little," he said, easing the strip around Sydney's waist and bringing the ends up and over the bandage. He tied it tightly enough that the bandage wouldn't slip, but not so tightly that the pressure would make already traumatized muscles go into spasms.
"Jarod..." Sydney struggled to get his protégé to listen to him. "You need... to get away - rob Lyle... of his prize. My death..."
"You're NOT going to die on me!" Jarod insisted almost angrily.
"Listen to me..." Sydney wheezed, and Jarod wiped away another crimson trickle. "The Triumvirate issued... termination order... for me. They... know..."
"Know what?"
"About Gemini... the 'Refuge' email..."
Jarod shook his head. "So?"
"I'm dead... even if I... survive this." The chestnut eyes gazed upward sadly. "Don't let... him take you... Leave me..."
"I told you that's not an option," Jarod insisted in return.
"I... can't... walk... I'll... only... slow you down..."
"Listen to me, Sydney. I'm not leaving you."
Sydney nodded in defeat, accepting that his protégé's loyalty simply wouldn't be swayed by reason or pleading. "Then you'll... have... to kill..."
The dark chocolate gaze grew cold and determined. "Don't worry," Jarod replied in a deadly tone that Sydney had never heard before, "I have no intention of letting Lyle get away with things this time." He wiped away another bloody trickle from Sydney's lips. "Do you know where he's keeping the girl?"
Sydney nodded slowly. "In... lighthouse... chained..."
"Is she still alive?"
The wounded man shook his head. "Don't... know... Was... last time... I saw her... But Lyle... left me... for a long... while... after shooting..."
Jarod moved over to the door and peeked out into the hallway once more, this time to check for cameras. There was one, aimed almost directly at the door. He swore softly and closed the door again. "Are there any sweepers in the building?"
Sydney shook his head slowly. "Only... Lyle."
With that, the Pretender reached behind him and pulled a gun from his waistband and chambered a round. "Hang in there, Sydney," he shot back over his shoulder and then, after taking a final look at his wounded mentor, brazenly pulled the bedroom door open and walked out into the hallway as if he owned the house. His gun firmly in both hands, he made his way carefully down the hall toward the stairs.
"Hey Jarod, pretty damned clever, your getting into the house that way," Lyle's voice wafted up the staircase, stopping him before he turned the corner or took a single step.
"I thought so," Jarod answered in a confident tone, his back pressed against the wall near the stairwell.
"How's Sydney?" Lyle's voice demonstrated his glee at the situation.
"Still alive, which is a good thing for you..."
Lyle chuckled. From the sound of it, Jarod guessed he was right at the base of the staircase - probably with his gun aimed up the stairs in case Jarod decided to make a suicide run at him. "Too bad the same can't be said of that pretty girl... what was her name? Lori? Yeah - that was it - Lori Cheung. I have a nice piece of flank steak chilling down in the fridge here for dinner later that came from her. After all, she didn't need it anymore..."
Jarod swallowed hard to keep his temper from exploding. There had always been the chance that Lyle would murder either Sydney or the girl before he could get to them - and while he kicked himself for not being able to help the girl, Sydney was still alive in a room behind him. Whatever he did, he had to get Sydney out of there before...
Lyle frowned - Jarod's silence at the taunt was unnerving. "Don't you want to know what I did to her BEFORE I killed her?" he sing-songed up the staircase. "How smooth her skin was, how tight and hot..."
"You're pathetic," Jarod hissed in disgust.
"You think so?" Lyle sounded as if the judgement bothered him not one whit. "Then again, you should have seen the look on Syd's face when I aimed my gun at him and shot him. I thought for a moment there that he didn't believe what I was doing - his look of surprise and shock in that last moment was absolutely priceless..."
Jarod's jaw worked hard, and his dark eyes grew black with repressed fury. "Not only are you pathetic, but you're a coward. It's SO easy to kill helpless girls after you rape them or old men when you have them tied up and handcuffed into submission. But where's your courage now, Lyle? How come you're not coming up the stairs to get ME?"
"I know better." Jarod could tell he'd scored his own set of hits by the lack of humor and beginning of anger in Lyle's voice now. "You're probably standing right at the head of the stairs waiting for me to come up."
"But that shouldn't stop a big, brave man like you, Lyle," Jarod spat caustically so that Lyle could tell that he was being called anything BUT 'big' or 'brave'. "After all, you want this to convince the Triumvirate to give YOU the Big Chair when Raines has been taken care of, right? Well, I hate to tell you this, but you're not going to GET that Big Chair by cowering downstairs waiting for me to throw up my hands and surrender. You're going to actually have to take a few chances - risk getting your head blown off. That Big Chair ain't for ball-less sissies like you who pick on helpless girls and old men."
"Well, you're not going to have your old friend alive for very much longer if you cower upstairs there," Lyle shot back, his temper rising dangerously. "How long do you suppose Syd has now before he's lost too much blood to recover? What will you do when he's gone and the reason he's dead is because YOU were too chicken to come down and take care of business?"
Jarod got down on his hands and knees and crawled until he could just see down the staircase - then ducked back quickly as a bullet sang past his ear and buried itself in the wood paneling behind him. "Nice try, hot shot," Lyle gloated from his position on the landing. "I'm not as far away from you as you thought I was, am I?"
The Pretender sat back up again at a point just out of Lyle's visual range. Frustrated, he looked down the hallway behind him, then snorted in satisfaction. "That may be," he teased the man on the landing, "but you still aren't getting any closer to that Big Chair for as long as you don't come up the rest of those stairs to face me." He rose to his feet and moved silently down the hallway to check and see if his knowledge of this house was as trustworthy as he hoped. Yes. As he had slowly come to suspect, this WAS one of the places for which he'd helped design the security - and part of the need expressed at the time was for an escape route from the upper floor in case of hostile intruders downstairs. With any luck, Lyle didn't know about the stairs that lay behind the door at the end of the hallway.
Lyle ground his teeth together in frustration. This cat and mouse game was getting him nowhere. And unfortunately, Jarod was right - the Chairman's office wouldn't go to a man unwilling to put his ass on the line. But then, most of the time, the Chairman - or the candidate for the position - had backup. Now THERE was a thought... Would Jarod know that Lyle was alone?
"Willy, you and Chet take point..." Lyle began.
"Now who's trying to be a hot shot?" Jarod's mocking voice wafted down the hallway. "Willy and Chet are still in Blue Cove, and you know it. You're all on your own here - and no amount of play-acting can change that. What are you trying to do, anyway, psych me out so that when you pretend you have balls and come up the stairs, I'd be all scared and just hand over my weapon?"
Lyle swore under his breath again at having his ploy so quickly exposed. "You know, life would be just SO much better with you locked away in the lowest recesses of the Centre doing your job again," he stated in his bland manner that he adopted when he was getting furious.
"So sorry to foul up your plans," Jarod commented sarcastically. He opened the doorway into Sydney's room and put the man's arm around his neck. "You have to try to be quiet," he told his mentor firmly, and Sydney nodded his understanding. He dragged his mentor erect and then across the bedroom floor and out into the hallway. "But I have no plans to ever go back to the Centre - you know that," he tossed down the hallway.
"You aren't really going to have much choice," Lyle answered, noticing that Jarod's voice sounded slightly further away than before. "What's the matter, getting nervous and needing to check on your surrogate daddy?"
He listened carefully, but there was no sound coming from the upstairs any longer. He stretched carefully, as if expecting Jarod to suddenly pop around the corner with gun blazing - still nothing.
Jarod had a desperate hold on Sydney's waist and kept his heels from dragging on the hallway carpet all the way down to the end doorway and staircase beyond. The door was still open, and Jarod carefully balanced Sydney against his hip while pulling the doorway closed behind them.
The Belgian let go of a deep breath he had held desperately while being manhandled down the hallway, and it escaped his lips as a deep and agonized groan. Jarod only tightened his grip to start down the steep stairs. "I'm sorry to hurt you, Sydney, but I have to get you out of here..."
"I'll only... slow you..." the psychiatrist complained futilely. He'd seen Jarod get into such moods before - stubborn and completely unwilling to consider any other option than the one he'd chosen. He looped his arm around Jarod's neck and held on weakly for whatever assistance it would give his protégé, and Jarod carefully maneuvered the two of them down the narrow staircase until they were facing the downstairs access doorway.
Jarod let Sydney down and seated his mentor on the bottom steps of the stairs. "I'm going hunting," he announced finally. "You'll be about as safe here as anywhere. Wish me luck."
"Jarod..." Sydney reached for his former student suddenly.
Jarod captured the seeking hand in his. "What?"
"Thank you." In the semi-darkness of the stairwell, Sydney's eyes glittered with unshed tears. "I am so... proud... of you."
Jarod blinked and then squeezed the hand in his tightly. "You hang in there. Don't you die on me now..."
Sydney coughed up another dark trickle down his chin. "I'll... try... not to..."
Jarod pressed the gun into Sydney's hand. "If Lyle shows his face at the top of the stairs, shoot to kill, Sydney. Shoot to kill."
"But... what... will you..."
"Don't worry about me - I have some interesting ideas." Jarod assured him. "Just protect yourself, if it comes down to it. All right?"
The hand with the gun fell limply into Sydney's lap while the old man nodded again. "Be careful," he intoned in a rough whisper.
Jarod felt a stab of worry at his mentor's increasing weakness, but he shut the door to the stairs and began to work his way toward the central staircase upon which he and Lyle had had their taunting match. He passed through the kitchen and, almost as an afterthought, headed for the knife rack and chose a larger knife, suitable for slashing throats, as well as two smaller knives, suitable for throwing. Feeling a little less helpless, he moved into the short hallway that led to the foyer.
Lyle was almost on his belly, mounting the final flight of stairs to the second floor one step at a time as low to the ground as he could get to avoid any bullets from Jarod's weapon - he assumed the Pretender would not have come into the house empty-handed. The two of them had tangled often enough that surely Jarod knew enough to bring something that would be as effective at killing him as his gun could be at maiming Pretenders. But still, there was no noise, no taunting voice - nothing.
At last Lyle made it to the top of the stairs and, taking a deep breath, peeked just the top of his head around the corner to take a quick glimpse down the hall. The hallway was empty - all the doorways that opened onto it apparently closed. Lyle cursed harshly under his breath. Jarod could be hiding behind any one of those doors, just waiting for him to turn his back. Damn that Pretender! This was SUPPOSED to have been a quick grab powered by a headlong panic to save his mentor. With the virtually impenetrable security the Triumvirate had had installed here years ago, it seemed unbelievable that Jarod would have gotten inside with so little effort to once more bollix up carefully-laid plans by simply not agreeing to be caught easily.
Lyle rose to his feet and carefully slipped around the corner into the hallway with his back flush against the corridor wall. His hand reached out and finally found the knob to the first door and pushed it open suddenly. No sound - no shot - rang out. He peeked his head around the corner, keeping one eye on the door immediately across the way, and then huffed in frustration. The room was empty. He held his breath and scuttled across the corridor to the opposite door and repeated the motion and peeking. Again, no sound, no shot - an empty room.
Jarod moved across the foyer floor after checking to see that Lyle was no longer on the landing looking upwards. He began climbing the stairs very carefully lest the slightest creak or groan of step give away the fact that he'd managed to get behind Lyle rather than remain on the second floor to face him. He held his breath and peeked around the corner of the landing and frowned. Lyle was nowhere to be seen. He must be on the second floor now. Checking rooms. Getting too damned close to the stairs at the end of the hallway.
The Pretender took out one of the two smaller knives and tossed it in his hand, expertly hefting the balance of the blade and figuring out exactly how to hold the knife in order to throw it accurately. Then he was once more climbing the stairway slowly and carefully.
Lyle had made it to the doorway of the bedroom into which he'd taken Sydney. If Jarod were hiding anywhere, it would be logical that he would be hiding here to protect his mentor. This time he opened the door with a crash and swept the room with his gun extended and ready to fire. "Shit!" he cursed aloud at the sight of the bloodstained bed empty of the wounded captive he'd placed there earlier. "Damn it!" Yes, Jarod had indeed been checking up on - and possibly even rescuing - his surrogate father. But how the hell...
The answer struck Lyle like a physical blow - Jarod knew the layout of the house! Who else would the Triumvirate have trusted to design cutting edge security provisions for their legendary safe houses but the Centre Pretender before he'd escaped. Hell, he'd probably designed half to three-quarters of the security systems for the place - so who better to know how to circumvent them? The enormity of his mistake was suddenly made clear: the Triumvirate had wanted him simply to isolate Sydney so that the psychiatrist could die from poison far away from prying eyes and potential saviors - nothing more or less. But no, he'd had to try to play both sides against the middle and use the situation to capture Jarod once and for all to bolster his chances at advancement. Now, not only was Sydney NOT dying quietly of a poison that would metabolize so that death would be ruled of natural causes, but he himself had called in the one person not only capable but with adequate motivation to mount a successful rescue attempt of a wounded man.
Lyle stepped out into the hall and contemplated the doorway at the far end. That HAD to be the way Jarod had gotten Sydney away - the Belgian had been far too debilitated by his gunshot wound to have gone anywhere by himself, much less know of the other staircase. He cast a suspicious eye to the two sets of doors on either side of the hallway that were between himself and that forgotten avenue of escape. It would be just like Jarod to get Sydney down the stairs and then hide himself in one of those four rooms to lie in wait. Like it or not, he couldn't afford NOT to check each and every one of them.
Jarod crept up the final flight of stairs, listening as Lyle opened one door after another, obviously searching for him. He stood and pressed his back flush against the wall at the top of the stairs when he heard Lyle crash noisily through a door and then curse - Lyle must have reached the room Sydney had been in and found him gone. No doubt with Lyle's mood at the moment, he would have shot Sydney again and killed him for sure if he'd found him still there. Time was growing short. Jarod knew he couldn't wait much longer before Lyle would be at the stairs at the end of the hallway, where Sydney might not be in any shape to defend himself.
He peeked around the corner and saw that Lyle was leaving the doors open behind him. The moment Lyle poked his head into a bedroom to check for intruders, Jarod slipped around the corner and into the opening of the first doorway. He heard footsteps and then another door opening, and took a chance at slipping from that open bedroom into the next one down the hall. He listened carefully again, and there were more footsteps and another door opening. This time Jarod peeked out his head to see just where Lyle was in relation to the stairs at the end.
His eyes still affixed on the door at the end of the hallway, Lyle was pushing through the second to the last doorway on the side. Jarod used the time to slip one more doorway closer to his prey, holding still and holding his breath for the time it took before soft footsteps on the hallway carpet told him that Lyle had again crossed the corridor to check that last door. Jarod peeked and then slipped silently into the next open doorway. He was now less than ten feet from the man. He bounced the knife a couple more times in his hand while he waited for Lyle's attention to focus tightly on the doorway at the end of the hall.
Lyle pressed his ear against the door and listened, then smiled grimly. From behind the door had come a soft, bubbling cough that could only be the result of a carefully aimed bullet piercing a lung and diaphragm on its way to tearing into intestines and whatever else was in its path. The lack of a comforting voice from Jarod was bothersome - had the elusive Pretender really abandoned his mentor in the enclosed stairwell?
At the base of the stairs, Sydney heard a hand rattle the knob of the door above him. He took a deep breath - something that was becoming increasingly difficult as time passed - and raised the muzzle of the heavy gun in his lap until he had it pointing up the stairs, both his hands supported by the steps themselves above his head. He hadn't heard any sounds of struggle or gunshot since Jarod had taken off on his hunting expedition, so the chances were that the person preparing to open the door was Lyle, not Jarod. Even so, he wouldn't fire until he was sure...
Jarod crept very quietly from the bedroom opening. Lyle had his back turned to him completely and was getting ready to open the door...
Lyle opened the door very slowly and peered down. The dim light of the constant stairwell lamp gave a yellow illumination that reflected sickly off of the head of silver hair at the base of the stairs. Lyle opened the door more completely and chuckled. "So. Your protégé isn't quite so smart after all, leaving you here where I could still find you..."
The sound of Lyle's mocking voice above him was all it took. Sydney raised his head and looked upwards at the silhouette, straightened the gun into a firing position and squeezed the trigger. The recoil knocked the weapon clean out of his grasp and down onto the floor at his feet where he couldn't retrieve it. But the figure above moved suddenly out of the light - and Sydney had no way of knowing whether his shot had hit its mark or not.
The bullet from Sydney's gun slammed into Lyle's left shoulder and staggered him backwards out of the doorway. "Why, you stubborn son of a bitch!" the younger man hissed, his fury pushed past the point of rational thought by the agony in his shoulder. "Why can't you just DIE?!"
"Lyle!" Jarod called out just as he saw Lyle begin to raise his own gun to make the killing shot on the helpless man below.
The surprise of having Jarod being so close behind him made Lyle pull the trigger without aiming as he spun around. Even as his mind registered satisfaction at hearing another pained grunt from below, Jarod threw the knife in his hand and buried it in Lyle's left shoulder, not far from the already oozing bullethole. Lyle screamed and started to bring up the gun.
Jarod dropped the other knives and just ran at the man with a savage yell. His hand closed around the arm that Lyle was extending with the gun in his hand and brought it down hard against the doorjamb, and again, and again, until the gun clattered to the floor uselessly. Lyle brought up his right hand in a fist, but a vicious punch to his wounded shoulder had him staggering back once more against the open door where he was then pinned by Jarod's body.
"Sydney!" Jarod called down the stairwell. "Are you OK?"
Lyle tried to bring his knee up into Jarod's groin, but the Pretender had him pinned too well to make the move more than just token. Regardless, Jarod buried his own fist deep into Lyle's gut in a blow that would have doubled him over if Jarod hadn't been holding him upright against the door.
"Sydney!" Jarod called again, his voice becoming frantic. "Answer me!"
"Maybe the old bastard's finally dead," Lyle sneered at him breathlessly, wheezing in pain from the belly blow. He raised his head to look triumphantly into the eyes of the Pretender - only to realize that he'd made yet another mistake, this one decidedly fatal.
Jarod's eyes had gone completely black, and there was a killing fury in their depths the likes of which Lyle had never seen before - not even in the moments after Jarod's brother had died in front of him, dead at Lyle's hand. Lyle felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise looking into that merciless gaze, realizing he had finally accomplished something that he and Mr. Raines had worked for years to do. He had pushed Jarod to the point that he WOULD kill, and kill willingly and mercilessly out of anger and revenge and hatred rather than only reluctantly out of self-defense or defense of another. There was no doubt in his mind that he was looking into the face of the man who was going to kill him - and kill him soon. "Sydney!" Jarod called once more, his eyes burning holes into Lyle's soul. Only silence answered him. "If there's anybody dead here," the Pretender said calmly and lethally, "it's you."
"Look at it this way," Lyle smiled coldly in arrogant bravado at his future murderer, "I put him out of his miser.. OOF!"
Jarod had buried his fist into his gut again, this time stepping back so that when Lyle began to double over, another fist swinging up from waist-level caught him under the chin and made his teeth snap shut painfully. Lyle tried to stagger out of Jarod's flying fists, but only managed to get himself in a position where Jarod's blows were landing on the side of his face as well as his belly and bloody shoulder.
Jarod pressed in, landing one vicious blow after another in an endless and punishing beating, driving Lyle back away from the gaping stairwell door. Lower lip split, several teeth knocked loose and a cut on one cheek running blood down his cheek later, Lyle finally staggered again and sagged back against the wall to slide to a seated position. Jarod didn't miss a beat - his feet replaced his fists from time to time as he aimed one kick after another into ribs or into the bloody shoulder as often as he could when bending over to pound fist into facial flesh became tiring.
In all the beatings he'd received at the hands of his foster-father, Lyle Bowman, and then later at the hands of Mr. Raines and his Triumvirate trainers, Lyle had never been so systematically, completely and mercilessly thrashed from head to foot. Any bravado or self-control washed out of him and left him limp as the kicks and blows kept on raining down on him, not diminishing in strength or punishment at all. When he tried finally to curl himself up into a fetal ball, the kicks increased in frequency and strength, now aimed at his lower back and kidneys. Breathing had become an exercise in agony - Lyle was certain that at least three of those kicks had snapped ribs like toothpicks and driven them into his lungs, for his mouth continued to fill with the sour-salty taste of fresh blood. One eye was swelling closed and he could feel the first trickle of warm blood sliding down his neck from his right ear.
Finally Jarod reached down with bloody fingers still numb from the pounding they had just administered and grasped hold of the dark locks at the top of Lyle's head and began to pull. Lyle screamed and tried to straighten to fight back again, but Jarod was moving too quickly for his captive to be able to get shaky feet under himself to gain a measure of independent movement. Jarod dragged Lyle on his back by the hair all the way down the hallway, leaving occasional smears of blood behind him on the cream-colored carpet, and then started down the stairs.
Lyle screamed as he felt the floor disappear from beneath his back and buttocks, and then felt the sharp and unforgiving edges of each step thud into his bruised kidneys. His hands grasped at Jarod's grip on his hair, trying to dislodge the fingers and only managing to get himself kicked in the wounded shoulder again for his efforts without ceasing the agonized descent.
Jarod's relentless dragging didn't stop when he got the man to the bottom of both flights of stairs, but he continued to drag him screaming and batting uselessly at the hand in Lyle's hair across the living room floor and through the archway that led toward the kitchen and the bottom access door to the stairwell. At long last, Lyle felt himself tossed hard against the wood paneling of the narrow hallway while Jarod anxiously opened the door to check on his mentor.
While still alive, Sydney was fading fast. Lyle's bullet had indeed found its mark, for there was now a gushing wound in the top of Sydney's right shoulder that had cascaded blood all down the front of his ruined dress shirt. The chestnut eyes fluttered at the sensation of air movement and light, and they finally opened tiredly to take in the sight of Jarod and a very worse-for-wear Lyle sagging against the wall behind him.
"Oh damn," Jarod cursed under his breath and threw the door open wide so that he could get a good hold on his mentor.
"Jar..." Sydney intoned in a gurgling tone, his eyes glued to Lyle and watching in horror as the beaten and bleeding man's hand slowly reached for his ankle and slowly exposing an ankle holster with a small pistol nestled within.
Jarod caught the warning tone within the drowning voice, whirled around and, at the sight of Lyle preparing once more to underhandedly get an advantage, exploded. "NO!" he bellowed, descending swiftly on his former punching bag and removing the gun before Lyle could get his hand wrapped around it properly. He threw the gun into the kitchen with all his might and then turned once more to the treacherous man at his feet.
"Get up!" he ordered, reaching down and taking firm hold of Lyle's hair again and hauling upward. Lyle bellowed in pain and outrage and struck out at Jarod, this time connecting with the Pretender's belly. Jarod lost his grip on Lyle, who sagged back down onto the floor and rolled painfully a short distance away before trying to climb to his feet. Jarod sucked in air painfully for a few moments before, with a low growl in the back of his throat, he went after Lyle again.
Behind him this time, he brought his hands and then forearms up to rest dangerously on either side of Lyle's neck. "This ends here," Jarod growled into Lyle's ear. "For Sydney, for that girl in the lighthouse, for all those other girls you've left scattered across the country, for all the families you've disrupted with your obscene urges..."
"Jar..." Sydney shifted weakly, desperate to keep his protégé from taking this one last step into a darkness that he'd managed to avoid despite his upbringing in the Centre.
Jarod's dark chocolate connected solidly with his mentor's agonized chestnut. "No, Sydney," he said firmly and finally. "It needs to end now. Otherwise, there's no hope of it ever ending." His gaze changed, became almost pleading - asking Sydney's permission.
Sydney could feel himself fading. He could understand Jarod's train of thought too - the Centre or the Triumvirate itself had far too many times bought out law enforcement or officers of the court to prevent Lyle from ever having to face the consequences of his actions. There was no guarantee, if Jarod allowed Lyle to live to be taken into custody, that the same revolving door wouldn't be invoked again - an action that would virtually seal the fate of even more victims.
At last he nodded, and then closed his eyes. He didn't want to witness the execution - the commission of which would mark the supreme perversion of a man for whom he'd had such high aspirations.
Jarod sighed as he finally received his mentor's permission to proceed. Lyle, who had been watching, sighed too and muttered, "Oh shit!"
"That sounds like the fitting epitaph for your tombstone," Jarod hissed into Lyle's ear.
"You don't want to do this," Lyle desperately told the man who literally held his life in his hands. God, he'd been in this same position before - after Jarod had helped Sydney rescue his son - and only the arrival of his twin sister and Centre reinforcements had kept him alive that time. This time, he didn't have even that hope to cling to - still he had to try. "What are you doing? You're supposed to be the GOOD guy - you get your payback but let the legal system handle the final dispensation of justice. Jarod... I know things... about your family... If you..."
Lyle's voice died suddenly as Jarod's forearms tightened and jerked in opposite directions, snapping the man's neck as if a bundle of spaghetti. Sickened, Jarod opened his arms and let the body drop to the floor. Turning his back on Lyle entirely, Jarod leaned through the open stairwell door and dragged Sydney out and the hoisted him up into his arms. "C'mon. Don't you dare die on me, old man - you hang on..." But Sydney was beyond responding now. His body was limp - dead weight.
Jarod carried the wounded man forward into the foyer and set him gently onto a couch. He first tried the solid formal door of the entryway, finding the door locked and the mechanism to unlock it unresponsive. With that, he picked up a statue from a tall pedestal and threw it through one of the stained glass windows to the side of the door, shattering the glass and making an opening big enough for the two of them to slip out of the house.
Not caring what kind of a spectacle he was making, Jarod carried Sydney in his arms like a child up the street to where he'd left his SUV and gently deposited the unconscious and bleeding man on the passenger seat. Breathing hard from the exertion and high emotions, he slipped into the driver's seat, turned the key in the ignition, and squealed the tires making a quick Y turn to head to the freeway and to the closest hospital.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Blue Cove, Delaware ~ Parker Summerhouse
Miss Parker dove for her cell phone on the coffee table and snapped it open. "What?" she demanded. When there was no immediate voice to answer her demand, only an agonized man breathing and trying to keep from sobbing, she softened her voice. "Jarod? For heaven's sake..." Jarod crying? Her heart skipped a beat. "Oh dear God - no..."
"I got him to the hospital alive," the Pretender told her in a voice that was bleak and defeated-sounding. "He's still in surgery." He paused, obviously having to work hard to control his emotions. "It's been four hours already... He lost SO much blood, Parker..."
Miss Parker closed her eyes and released a small portion of her worry that had done nothing but increase since the end of her last conversation with him. Sydney was still alive for the moment, and so was Jarod. "What about Lyle?"
There was a long pause, and just as she was about to call to him again to make sure that he hadn't disconnected on her, he replied in a sickened tone, "Dead. I killed him."
Sydney had once told her how having to kill Damon to protect Broots' life years ago had eaten away at the sensitive Pretender's conscience. After swallowing hard in an attempt to wrap her mind around the fact that her reprehensible twin actually WAS no more, she knew she needed to at least try to allay his guilt. Sydney would have done no less in her place. "Jarod, you know that was the only way..."
"I hit him," Jarod continued, apparently without having heard her at all. "I hit him, and I hit him, and I kicked him, and I didn't even know I was doing it. I lost it, Parker - I was SO angry at him for shooting at Sydney again I... I didn't realize what I was doing until I was dragging him down the stairs."
"Jarod, it's OK," Miss Parker told him gently again. "You did what you had to do."
"That's just it," Jarod said with a hitch in his voice. "When it came right down to it, I killed him so that *I* wouldn't have to deal with him again. Not because of Sydney, or anybody else - even though that's what I told myself and him - but for ME." Jarod sounded as if he was in tears. "He hurt the people I love - and just kept on hurting people I love - I couldn't take it anymore. I killed him not to protect others, but to make life easier for ME - now *I* don't have to worry anymore about losing anybody I love because..."
"You listen to me, Jarod. Do NOT waste your guilt on that monster!" Miss Parker forced her voice to be firmer. "God only knows what he would have done if you hadn't taken care of him today. I'm sure there are any number of oriental girls who will live long and productive lives now who would have ended up in his dinner bowl otherwise." She paused and could hear him breathing hard and brokenly on the other end of the line. "You know this, don't you? You KNOW I'm right..."
Jarod heaved a shuddering sigh. "I know it - sort of. The fact is that while I may have done the right thing, Parker, I did it for the wrong reasons. For a moment there, I finally became what Lyle and Raines always wanted me to be - an unthinking killing machine." His voice broke. "Even Sydney saw it and looked away."
"Jarod..."
His voice calmed and deepened into a lethal tone that brought her hackles up. "Listen to me, Parker, and do EXACTLY what I tell you. Get Angelo, and get Broots and his little girl, and go. Leave. Get away from the Centre, find a hole to crawl into for a while and don't poke your head out for a good long time. If Sydney survives, and when he's released from the hospital, pick him up and take him into obscurity with you. You do NOT want to be around the Centre anymore."
"What are you going to do?" The voices at the back of her mind were whispering again frantically.
"What needs to be done," Jarod said ominously. "Have you had that implant removed yet?"
"Tomorrow," she answered quickly. "Broots had his removed this morning."
"Angelo has one too," Jarod told her quietly.
"Broots showed me the memo a little while ago," she buried her forehead in her open hand. "I'll take care of it." She took a deep breath. "Tell me what you're going to do, Jarod. Maybe I can help you..."
"No," he retorted quickly. "I don't want you to be any part of what I have to do. You're going to have to be the strong one and get things moving to get you and other innocent people the hell out of there as soon as possible. I won't be able to help you there."
"But what about you?" she asked plaintively. "I can't just walk away..."
"You have to," he insisted almost frantically. "What I need to do..." His voice grew softer. "What I need to do, I don't want any of you seeing. Sydney knew enough to look away when the time came - I need you to look away too, Parker. I don't want you to see what I have to become to do what needs to be done."
"What..."
"LISTEN to me!" Jarod insisted, his tone slipping into mild frustration. "Sydney told me that the Triumvirate has issued a contract on his life. Lyle, I take it, was supposed to be the agent..."
"That son of a bitch..."
"That means they'll try again," he continued without letting her outburst interrupt his train of thought. "I'm going to set up round the clock security for him - if he survives..." Jarod's voice hitched again, and Miss Parker could tell that the thought that his mentor might not survive his injuries was tearing the Pretender apart. "But I'll need you to take over and make sure he gets the care and security he needs as soon as possible..."
"I'll be there, Jarod, as soon as I get that damned implant taken care of tomorrow and lay my hands on Angelo." She reached for a piece of paper and pencil. "Where is he?"
"Sierra Vista hospital in Santa Luisita," Jarod answered quietly.
"I'll talk to Broots and Deb tonight," she promised. "But give me a couple of days, OK? Getting Angelo away from the Centre isn't going to be a walk in the park."
"You never know," he replied with a faint ghost of his old humor, "Angelo may surprise you and be easier to find and extract than you expect. Everybody at the Centre has been underestimating him for years. He understands a helluva lot more than any of you have given him credit for."
"Still, give me a few days to get things arranged here and get to California to take over keeping an eye on Freud." She ran the fingers of her free hand through her hair to drag it back from her face. "Will you still be there when I get there?"
"That depends on Sydney," Jarod stated honestly and starkly. "Do NOT come here if you receive a call from me telling you that he..." His voice broke. "I will have made arrangements for him... so you won't..." Miss Parker's eyes filled with tears as she heard him fighting to control his emotions again. "If he's gone, I'll be gone too. If he's still with us, I'll be around - but you probably won't see me."
"Jarod..."
"This is it, Parker. The game of 'I run, you chase' ends now. We can't afford it anymore - either of us."
She wiped at her eyes, angry at herself for crying. "That sounds an awful lot like 'goodbye', Jarod..."
He was silent for a long moment. "Probably because it IS 'goodbye', Parker. Where I'm going, and what I have to become to do what needs doing, you can't follow or watch - and afterwards, you won't want what I've become anywhere near you."
"Let me be the judge of that," she barked at him anxiously. "You've got my world falling apart around my ears here - for God's sake, let ME decide if you're going to be one of the pieces that falls away for good." She waited for a moment for his response, then yelled at him, "PROMISE me that you'll let me decide, Jarod."
"I can't promise that, Parker, anymore than I can promise that Sydney will still be alive an hour from now."
"You have to give me something to hang onto."
He sighed. "All right. I won't just disappear without at least saying goodbye one more time."
"Promise me." She wasn't going to accept anything less.
He sighed again. "I promise."
"Call me when you hear from the doctor."
"I'll call."
"Take care of yourself, Jarod."
There was a long pause. "Later, Parker." And then the line went dead in her ear. She pulled the little appliance away from her ear and stared at it. In all the time that she'd known Jarod after his escape from the Centre, this was the closest she'd ever come to hearing him end a call properly.
Wishing that she dared have herself a tall glass of Absolut to soften the worries at the back of her mind about Sydney's prognosis, she reached instead for the small bottle of prescription antacid that the doctor had instructed her to start taking that afternoon and through the evening, taking a long and deep slug of the chalk-flavored liquid and grimacing it down her gullet. She immediately got herself a tall glass of drinking water from the fridge and sat down at her kitchen table again. She picked up the cell phone and punched a preprogrammed number.
"Broots, me. Listen, are you and Deb busy?" She softened her voice from that of an Ice Queen boss to a concerned friend, figuring the abrupt change of attitude would key him into the urgency of the matter. "I just got a call from Jarod - and we need to talk. Would you mind very much if I came over for a bit?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Santa Luisita, California ~ Sierra Vista Hospital
Jarod paced the length of the long hall outside the operating theatre in which the doctors were frantically working on Sydney, trying to repair two bullets' worth of damage and blood loss. It had been seven and a half long and agonizing hours since they had rolled the unconscious and clearly dying psychiatrist off for emergency surgery. Jarod had taken the time to retrieve a change of clothing from his SUV so he could shed the blood-spattered sports coat and button-down shirt he'd worn when he'd carried Sydney bodily into the hospital emergency room. Now once more garbed in his more traditional black tee and jeans, with his black leather jacket tossed onto a chair in the surgical waiting room, he was getting antsy.
He had been deliberately vague about the details he'd given to the police - who naturally had been called the moment that it had been noticed that Sydney was suffering from gun shot wounds. The officers had noted down his fictitious psychiatrist's name from his latest Pretend attending the symposium, he'd given a statement that had left out the location of the shooting and any names other than Sydney's. Jarod knew he was playing with fire not giving the police all the information they wanted, but there was no way that he wanted them poking around that house on the cliffs of the Pacific ocean.
No, he wanted Lyle to be found by the Triumvirate and nobody else. Lyle's condition, and the fact that it was Lyle's body found at that house and not Sydney's, would be a very effective way of sending a message that something had gone horribly wrong with their plan to just eliminate someone with impunity.
The time had come for him to become exactly what they had wanted him to be all these years - and then turn that violence and lack of mercy and compassion back on THEM. Nobody in any position of authority, either in the Triumvirate or the Centre - would be excluded. The only message these people understood was force and control - and the only way to answer their agendas was with death and destruction. Sydney had known what was starting the moment he nodded his head - that was the reason he'd closed his eyes.
Jarod paused and stared out the window at the well-established residential street with its tall and mature trees and older houses and office buildings. For years he had been - how had Miss Parker once described him? - a 'defender of the weak and the abused'. He would defend no longer. His self-assigned job description had just changed from defender to avenger. The bucolic scene outside the window and his wish to somewhere somehow find a place where he could be with his family was a dream that would never be realized now. The Triumvirate and the Centre had made sure of that the day they had stolen him from his parents - and the time had come for them to pay for their arrogance and lack of human decency. With any luck, and with as much Centre and Triumvirate capital as he could embezzle or steal outright from now on, two organizations that had abused the weak and helpless would learn the TRUE meaning of power and control as they slowly watched theirs slip away.
Top Centre and Triumvirate officials would one by one begin to disappear, never to be seen or heard from alive again. Government and law enforcement officers and officers of the court who had allowed themselves to be bought and controlled by agendas contrary to that of public service would find their deeds exposed. The vast and malignant web of lies, deceit, power and corruption that formed the power base the Centre and the Triumvirate depended upon would shrivel in the heat of public exposure and scandal. And whatever wouldn't die in the light of exposure would die in the darkness of vengeance. It was the only way that the obscenity would finally end.
He felt a hitch grow in his throat, thinking of how one of the last things that Sydney had said to him was that he was proud of him. You aren't going to be proud of me anymore, Sydney, he thought to his mentor sadly. I'm going to hurt a LOT of people - and not all of them the guilty. But the time has come - I HAVE to do this. There has to be a payback sometime for all the evil the guilty had perpetrated on the world - a payback that holds no hope of appeal - or there IS no such thing as justice in the world. And if selling my soul into darkness is the price for putting balance and justice back into the world, then sobeit. Somebody has to do this - considering everything, it might as well be me.
He could only wonder whether or not he would have had his mentor's blessing - or at least forgiveness - on this action as well.
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