White Owl

by MMB & NIOMR

Epilogue

White Cloud Lake ~ Sydney's Fishing Cabin

She sat in the warmth of her rental car and stared up at the lights in the cabin, amazed at herself for never before having thought that THIS would be where he would go when it was all over.

She herself hadn't been up to the cabin at White Cloud for over five years - not since she'd kept her promise to Sydney to lay him to rest at last next to Jacob. It had been dicey, getting his body transported up here without catching the attention of anybody remotely associated with what was left of the Centre by then. But considering the years of suffering and pain the old psychiatrist had borne without a single complaint after those two bullets had left him paralyzed and broken in a wheelchair, she hadn't hesitated a single moment in agreeing to his request. She then made very sure, when the time came, that she was as good at keeping her promises as he had ever been at keeping his.

But now it was over. It was finally safe for all of them to come out of hiding and begin to live again.

The list of dead and missing Centre hierarchy was massive - and there was an equally daunting list of dead and missing from Triumvirate ranks as well. Sweepers as well as executives had simply vanished, never to be seen or heard from again. Willy, Raines' personal bodyguard, had been the first to go. The disclosure of the facts and circumstances of Lyle's death had rocked Mr. Raines' world to its foundation, and the Chairman had ordered his bodyguard to stay in near-constant attendance - until the tall African-American had simply vanished. Terrified, the oxygen-tank-burdened ghoul had virtually barricaded himself in his Tower office, allowing few if any visitors and taking even fewer phone calls. It wasn't until the lack of phoned in orders from the Tower had gone on for almost two weeks that his own disappearance became known.

The same story played out across Europe and Africa as Triumvirate executives and strongmen vanished right and left. Those who were left behind to pick up the pieces in either organization soon became very apprehensive of the news the next day would bring, as even they began to vanish. Morale within both organizations plunged to an all-time low, with lower-echelon employees simply abandoning ship and fading away in the night between one work day and the next.

The scandals had also begun to arise on all sides - in the US, senators and representatives and Pentagon officials and diplomatic corps personnel were suddenly charged with bribery and abuse of authority in regards to Centre projects, personnel and agendas. The charges were supported by evidence already in the hands of those untouched by Centre manipulations. Government officials and military officers at similar levels in several other nations quickly found themselves equally vulnerable for their Centre or Triumvirate dealings. The mess had grown so uncomfortable that it had eventually resulted in major political shake-ups in Washington, London, Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, Rome, Athens, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, Nairobi and Johannesburg. Without their army of government lackeys running interference for them on a global scale, any remaining power structure for either entity had been rocked and splintered. As an international consortium, the Triumvirate had been finished quickly, its assets liquidated and absorbed by its many creditors on several continents.

The final straw for the Centre, however, had been a recent series of newspaper exposés in the Los Angeles Times, later picked up and run simultaneously in the New York Times, highlighting the horrors of life for the inmates of the sub-levels of the Centre facility in Delaware. Stock prices had plummeted as the exposé repeatedly shocked and horrified the entire nation, and federal arrest warrants had been sworn out against few remaining Centre employees still brave enough or foolish enough to be working there. The Centre as a research and development colossus became discredited, demoralized, and ultimately financially broken. Finally, six weeks ago, the doors had been closed and locked at the Tower. The complex stood abandoned now, with windows broken out by newly brave Blue Cove vandals once terrified to go anywhere near the once-imposing place. After almost a century of glory, the Centre was an empty shell waiting for the demolition ball to pound it into dust, a 'For Sale - Will Develop To Suit' sign hanging on gates that were chained closed.

Through it all, Miss Parker had held the little band of refugees together by force of will and sheer creativity. There had been six of them to escape the Centre before things began to fall apart - Broots and Debbie, Sydney, Angelo, Sam and herself. Sam had cast in his lot with her when he'd come across her spiriting Angelo out of the Centre without Mr. Raines' authorization in the dead of night. By then, however, news of Lyle's demise was already beginning to rock the Centre. With the discovery of Miss Parker's and Broots' intentions to drop out of sight taking Angelo with them providing illumination for what was surely to come, Sam could suddenly see the writing on the wall.

Jarod provided the little group with more than enough funding from raided Centre and Triumvirate coffers that they were able to purchase several pieces of property and then settle into a tiny community in western Wyoming nestled high in the mountains. There, with the help of some creative forgeries based on the practical expertise of the persons in question, Broots had become a high school math teacher, Sam a deputy sheriff, and Parker an attorney. Debbie had grown up and graduated from the regional high school a year ago and finally left for college in Utah that past September.

For the first few years after their escape, Sydney had cared for Angelo and Angelo for Sydney, each having an ability the other lacked and willingly loaning that ability to the other. Angelo became Sydney's legs and strength, and Sydney became Angelo's more coherent voice. Together, the two of them seemed to gain a certain measure of inner peace as Sydney would sit on the porch watching for hours as Angelo patiently tended their little flower and vegetable garden outside the house in Wyoming. When Sydney finally died from chronic complications that dated back to his injuries at Lyle's hand turning acute, Angelo had withdrawn into a shell that not even Miss Parker could penetrate. He had died two weeks to the day after Sydney's funeral and found his rest in the tiny community graveyard that overlooked a spectacular vista of mountain peaks and valleys.

It had been to Miss Parker that Jarod had finally sent the 'all-clear' message a month ago - the first communiqué she'd had from him in over five years. Since she'd left a message at a pre-arranged private message drop telling the Pretender of his mentor's death, no messages had been passed in either direction. For the years that followed Sydney's demise, the only way she'd known that Jarod was still alive and doing 'what needed to be done' was the stream of news reports detailing continuing disappearances and exposés and scandals. All of them had been big enough stories that even the regional rag had coverage of what was going on.

And yet, he had never given her that final 'goodbye' he had promised her - and like his mentor, Jarod was a man of his word. So once everything that needed doing was finished and she'd received his cryptic 'all clear,' she had systematically settled down to try to locate the elusive Pretender using skills she had allowed to rust with disuse. She had at least a tangible reason for her search other than mere curiosity. Not long before his death, Sydney had entrusted her with a message for his prodigal protégé - a message that she had promised to deliver when it was safe to do so. Added to search skills long unused were the soft voices in her mind, voices Sydney had finally taught her how to understand and control in the last few months of his life - and they had pushed and prodded and led her to where she was that evening.

She climbed from the car and looked around her. It was still as beautiful and peaceful here as she remembered it. The smell of wood smoke teased at her nose, along with the smell of a fresh-water lake only a dozen yards or so behind her. There was a slight chill in the air, as there had been both of the other times she'd been here in the early autumn - once for Jacob's deathwatch, and once to bury Sydney. No doubt the leaves of the trees that stood stoic guard over the cabin would be shocks of golds and yellows and reds in the morning sun, just as they had been both of those times. For now, the trees were just towering black silhouetted sentinels behind the rough wooden building, their outline visible only barely against a starlit sky.

Kelly, the owner of the cabin a quarter-mile down the rutted lane, had called her in Wyoming to tell her that her old friend's cabin was lately showing signs of ongoing habitation. Miss Parker was certain that Kelly was more concerned with vandals and thieves, but she had let her inner voices convince her to fly more than halfway across the continent just to make sure. It was the voices that reassured her that the man she'd been seeking could be found there. From all appearances, it seemed they were right and she'd finally be able to keep her last promise to her old friend.

She walked carefully up the wooden steps in the dark, pausing at the spot where Sydney had broken down and cried in her arms at the impending death of his twin brother all those many years ago. She rubbed a finger beneath her nose, a gesture she'd learned from her aging and ailing Belgian housemate over the years they'd lived together as father and daughter in that tiny mountain town. Tears at this point would not be helpful - for she had no idea what she'd be walking into. She took a deep breath, walked up to the door, and knocked.

For a long moment, all was quiet both within and without the cabin. She was about to raise her hand and knock again a little harder when the door suddenly cracked open so that the inhabitant could peer out amid a beam of warm light. "Jarod?" she inquired, stunned at his haggard appearance.

Still without saying a word of welcome or response, Jarod stepped back and turned his back on the door, which he left ajar, walking slowly around the staircase into the living room of the cabin. Miss Parker gaped for a moment and then cautiously stepped in and closed the door softly behind her. She looked around the cabin, illuminated by the glow of two strategically placed oil lamps and shook her head. She had only been here twice in her life, but the memories were still strong and alive within her. If she closed her eyes, she could almost sense the essence of her psychiatrist friend standing just around the corner, ready to greet her with a wry and lightly accented bon mot.

Sydney had been fastidiously neat, both in his personal and his housekeeping habits. Both of the times that she had visited this place before, other than the unavoidable dust of disuse, the cabin had been immaculate. He had remained fastidious in his dress and hygiene until the end, despite being trapped in a wheelchair. He'd kept his mind fastidiously sharp by tutoring Debbie in Chemistry and Literature or brainstorming defense strategies with her on tough cases. And finally he had kept their house fastidiously tidy to the best of his ability while she worked in her law office - and what he couldn't do physically, Angelo did for him.

Jarod, on the other hand, had a bad habit of living messily - probably an unconscious rebellion against the enforced neatness during the decades of incarceration in the Centre. All of the lairs she had ever visited while searching for him had shown signs of an almost deliberate carelessness about his possessions - all except the Halliburton full of DSAs that literally were his past. That he had always kept very carefully stowed... somewhere.

In the years since then, however, Jarod had evidently changed dramatically. This was not another one of his messy lairs, with discarded food wrappers on the floor and his latest discovery about real life taken to an obsessed level of clutter. Jarod had obviously cleaned Sydney's fishing cabin until it was spotless, and he seemed determined to maintain the immaculate standard his mentor had set for his dwellings. Not a smudge of soot marred the clear glass chimneys of the two oil lamps to mark how much use they'd had of late. There was a half-full mug on the coffee table - and that was the only item out of place in the entire room. Jarod moved slowly back to where he had obviously been building a fire in the freestanding fireplace to warm the cabin as night drew near.

Miss Parker seated herself primly on the edge of the sofa, tucking her purse between her thigh and the arm of the seat and very gently moving the coffee mug so that it was closer to the opposite end of the seat. Finally she rested her eyes on her former nemesis, her former best friend. He still wore black - black jeans and a black tee shirt - but there was something in his overall demeanor that had changed, and not for the better. His movements were those of an old man: slow, cautious and almost painful. His hands didn't shake, but it was as if his entire being had been shaken badly and was only barely hanging together coherently as human.

She waited for him to finish his task in silence, and he didn't look back over his shoulder or even acknowledge her presence until the fire was crackling warmly and he had the screen carefully positioned to prevent free-flying sparks from escaping. Then he rose - slowly, as if his joints didn't want to straighten out again - and shuffled to a seat on the very end of the sofa opposite her. "Why?" was all he asked, reaching for his mug.

"Because you never called or came back to say goodbye," she answered simply, "and because I promised Sydney I'd give you this when it was finally safe." She dug in her purse at her side and pulled out the short envelope with Jarod's name written in Sydney's elegant hand. She held it out to him, waiting for him to take it from her, and then finally set it down on the coffee table within easy reach.

Jarod stared at it for a moment, then looked up to stare into the dancing flames. "How did you find me?"

She folded her hands in her lap. "Sydney finally taught me how to use my inner sense." She looked over at him. "I've always known how to find you. I just never paid attention to it until now."

Jarod's dark chocolate gaze came over to meet hers, and the exhaustion and emptiness in that gaze struck Miss Parker like a dash of ice-cold water in the face. This was not the quick and impulsive Pretender she had known as a child or the impish trouble-maker who had kept her and her team on their toes looking for him for so long. This was a burned-out shell of a man, his soul pulverized by the things he had seen and done until there was nothing left. "Why?" he repeated.

"I told you," she said, shifting nervously beneath that piercing yet depleted gaze. "I had a promise to keep. And..." She dropped her gaze to her hands and then raised it again to meet his in almost the old challenge. "And I wanted to make sure you were all right, now that everything's..." She fell silent, for he had looked away.

"It's quiet here," he said finally as he turned back to study the fire, his voice echoing in the cabin with a hollow sound to it. "It's peaceful. I'm close to nature - there's no phone, no interruptions." He sipped at his mug distractedly. "There's a store down the road where I can get what I need to survive. It's enough."

"What about your family, Jarod?" Miss Parker was shocked. She had always imagined that there would come a time, once all was concluded, that he would resume his search for his lost family. "Aren't you..."

"No." The negation was final. "That was the one thing I had to give up when I started... when..." He rose. "Do you want some tea?" he asked, glancing back at her uncomfortably. When she nodded, he headed off for the cabin's compact little kitchen.

Miss Parker sat for a moment, stunned by what she was seeing and hearing, and then rose to follow him. She leaned against the doorjamb and watched him settle a little teabag into a fresh mug while the teakettle on the stove was starting to bubble and hiss again. "Have you seen them?" she asked gently. "Talked to them?"

"No," he replied emotionlessly. "I didn't want them to see what I... the person I became."

"Why?"

He shot her a sharp glance filled with more pain and repressed anger than she could have ever imagined from him. "They deserve better from me." He looked back to his task. "You all do."

"Then why didn't you call me - and tell me goodbye?"

Jarod's shoulders hunched over painfully, as if he was trying to duck and avoid the question. The teakettle's whistle began to gather steam, and he reached over to pour the scalding water over the little teabag before the shrieking became too shrill. He replaced the kettle on a cooler burner and picked up the mug and saucer. "Jarod?" she asked as he put the dishes in her hand and moved past her back into the living room.

She followed him and reclaimed her seat on the far end of the sofa. "Why didn't you call?" she asked again as she toyed with her teabag before pulling it from the hot water and depositing it on the saucer.

"Did you know that Sydney kept the spare key to this place tucked up high into the rafters of the front porch?" he asked her suddenly.

"Yes," she answered, startled by the apparent twist in the conversation. "I had to use it the last time I was here. But..."

"That way, even if he'd lost the key, he could always get back in." Jarod fell silent and sipped from his mug again. He stared into the flames of the fireplace for a while, then found he couldn't ignore the woman sitting next to him and her question any longer. She was being remarkably patient - it seemed the years had changed her too. "My not calling you was my spare key in the rafters. If the day ever came when..."

Miss Parker was nodding. She understood now. She sipped at her tea, fragrant and very hot. "And until then..."

"He was my only family," Jarod mused sadly, "even though he never... said anything that even remotely indicated that he felt... except once, just before..." He put his mug, empty now, back down on the table, his brows furrowing in pain. That was a very private memory - and the only reason that he hadn't put a bullet in his own brain four weeks ago when his job as avenger was finished. He wasn't ready to share that memory with anybody - not even her.

"He loved this place," he said instead, looking around the room. Miss Parker followed his movement and nodded agreement. The cabin was very much Sydney - she could feel the connection clearly. "I know he wouldn't have approved of... but when... after... I felt like I just had to come back... HERE... where I could talk to him... ask him to forgive..." Jarod looked over at her again. "Can you understand?"

She nodded gently. She understood fully now. This was why Sydney had asked her to deliver his message to Jarod - and she had to give the wily old psychiatrist his due one last time for knowing what was going to happen in the end. He had known his protégé intimately, probably better than the Pretender even knew himself. He had known what Jarod intended to do - and what it would ultimately cost Jarod to finish the job. He'd also known about the connection between the two of them after all - and known that if nothing else survived of his protégé after all was said and done, that connection would still be in place. Even now, over five years dead and buried, Sydney was counting on that connection - and was using it to try to reach out to and minister to his protégé through her one last time.

Jarod seemed to relax a little - he let himself sit back farther onto the sofa so that his back was supported by the comfortable cushions. He hadn't expected her to fully understand, or expected the wash of relief that came over him as he discovered that she did after all. It had been so long since he'd been in the company of anyone or anything but his own dark thoughts... or his victims... He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

"How long has it been since you've gotten any sleep?" Miss Parker's voice was soft, gentle. She had copied his motion after putting her tea on the coffee table and settled back more comfortably into the sofa, with her elbow up and supporting her head as she gazed at him.

He shook his head against the cushion. "I don't sleep," he explained wearily. "The ghosts don't let me sleep." He was silent for a long moment. "The owls wake me up before the ghosts can do much more than just make me wish..." He sighed.

"Still dreaming of owls?" she asked, her mind finding the memory of a phone conversation in the Sim Lab nearly a lifetime ago.

He nodded. "Only now they keep me sane by waking me up before the nightmares get too bad." He shuddered. "There's this one big white owl that keeps flying just past my shoulder..."

He felt the weight distribution on the sofa shift as Miss Parker moved - closer. Then there was a gentle hand at his shoulder, then around his neck, pulling him. "I'll keep the ghosts and owls away," she said softly, finding that he was offering very little resistance to being pulled over until his head landed on her shoulder. "Sleep, Jarod - it's all over now. I'll keep you safe from the nightmares tonight."

Jarod sighed again as he felt that secretly stored spare key in the rafters of his mind turn in the lock and open up to him all the feelings he'd so brutally locked away from himself so that he could become the creature he'd needed to be. His breath hitched as he tipped even further, ending up with his head in her lap and curled on the sofa into a fetal ball with tears pouring hotly from his tightly closed eyes - tears mourning lost innocence and lost chances for happiness. His whole body shook with the strength of the grinding sobs as at last he shed the tears he'd been denying himself. Finally he allowed himself to vent all the grief that he'd built up in his heart at the need to cause hurt to so many innocent people - the spouses and children of the guilty he'd executed or exposed - in order to accomplish the ultimate good of dismantling a gigantic evil. The tears were scalding and painful and filled him until he felt he was drowning in their fiery depths.

"You know," she said in an even softer voice as she ran comforting fingers through his longish hair, "when I picked up Sydney's belongings from the hotel that next day, that he had a white owl's feather in the pocket of his vest?" She could feel his head tip ever so slightly - he was still listening to her, even through his distress. "It had a drop of something on it - I never had it checked, but I could have sworn it was blood." She stroked her fingers through his hair again and again. That feather now resided in her wallet - she rarely went anywhere without it. It had been Sydney's final gift to her, just before he died. Until that moment, it had been his personal good-luck charm. She continued, "When I found it, I remembered the talk you and Syd had had on the phone, and I did a little research on my own. Owls are more than just an omen of death and destruction, Jarod - they're also a symbol of wisdom and guidance through difficult times."

She fell silent and continued to run her fingers through the tumbled salt and pepper locks until at long last she felt him give a deep sigh and relax completely into sleep. She looked up and over at the fireplace with its slowly ebbing flames, and found her eye caught by the sight of movement in the huge picture window beyond. Her eyes widened as she realized that just outside the glass, sitting on a piece of porch furniture, a huge snow-white owl was staring into the cabin through the glass - at her. Its golden gaze was sharp and deeply penetrating. She could feel that gaze all the way to the bottom of her soul and found it supremely comforting - and very familiar.

Jarod shifted in her lap in his sleep, his hand wrapping itself around the outside of her thigh as if to pull a pillow closer under his head. She stroked his hair again and then looked back up into the face of the magnificent bird outside the window. "I have him now, Sydney. It will be OK - he'll be OK. I promise," she vowed solemnly.

With a silent flutter of snow-white feathers, the owl was gone.

Miss Parker reached behind her and pulled down a crocheted afghan to settle around her own shoulders and partially cover Jarod's upper torso so that as the fire died and the cabin cooled, they both could stay somewhat warm. She tipped her head back against the cushion of the sofa and closed her eyes.

FIN

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