Disclaimer: Rights to The Pretender world and all its characters belong to creators Craig Van Sickle and Steven Mitchell. NBC owns a share, as do Twentieth Century Fox and TNT. (Even though they aren't going to air anymore re-runs – the bastards.) The point is I'm borrowing someone else's creation. No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

Admitting Hope pt 2
By Phenyx
09/23/2005

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come." – Anne Lamott.


The car screamed around the corner, ignoring the red traffic signal overhead. Ethan leaned forward in the passenger seat, his hands gripping the dashboard in wide-eyed panic. He glanced at his brother anxiously.

"We're running out of time," Ethan hissed. "Go faster."

Jarod didn't question the younger man's urgency. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator and tried to coax a little more speed from the vehicle. His hands ached from clutching at the steering wheel so hard. They had been racing through the night like this for hours. Controlling the car hadn't been easy. They were driving normal highways and suburban streets, not a smoothly paved racetrack.

It had taken only eighteen hours to drive the more than fifteen hundred miles from Aberdeen to Delaware. They had stopped only for gas and to change positions behind the wheel. Jarod had spent most of the trip waffling between concern and irritation. The concern was two fold. On one hand he was worried for Miss Parker and the desperation in Ethan's voice. On the other, Jarod was afraid the authorities would stop them. They hadn't exactly been following the posted speed limits.

Jarod's irritation stemmed from his brother's insistence that this mission be done his way. "Why not just fly to Delaware," he had asked Ethan at one point.

"Won't work," Ethan had mumbled. "We have to get her out. Must get her away."

Jarod didn't understand how their mode of transport would affect their ability to help Miss Parker. But he respected Ethan's gift enough to go along with whatever the younger man had in mind. "You do realize," Jarod said. "She doesn't really want to leave."

Ethan looked up at Jarod with those deep, fathomless eyes. "Do you honestly believe that? Do you think she enjoys the life she leads?"

Jarod didn't answer right away as he concentrated on taking another turn at eighty-five miles an hour. "She doesn't enjoy it, no," he replied. "But she allows herself to be a martyr to it. She won't leave her life behind, no matter how corrupt it becomes."

"We'll make her leave," Ethan said.

With a sigh, Jarod shook his head. "No one makes Miss Parker do anything anymore."

"We have to save her, Jarod." Ethan's voice was rough with emotion. "Not just from those who would destroy her physically. But from the emptiness she has fallen into."

"She doesn't want to be saved," Jarod whispered. "I've tried."

"You didn't try hard enough," Ethan told him. "You must try again."

"Me?" Jarod gasped at the commanding tone in his brother's statement. "I am the last person she wants coming to her rescue."

"But you are the only one who can do it."

"Why?"

"You are the only one she really trusts." Ethan smiled sadly. That smile, so content and accepting, gave Jarod a deep sense of foreboding.

"Yeah, right." Jarod scoffed. A shiver ran down Jarod's spine. The feeling that something bad was coming rushed over him once more. Quite suddenly, Jarod realized that his brother was keeping something from him. "What is it?" he asked. "What aren't you telling me, Ethan?"

"Hurry, Jarod," Ethan said. "We haven't much time."

"We're nearly there." Jarod maneuvered the car through the empty streets. The houses they passed were all dark. No one was up at this hour of the night. "Tell me what's happening."

"There is a bomb in the house."

Ethan didn't need to say which house, Jarod knew. "We'll diffuse it."

"Can't," Ethan replied. "It is inside the water heater. When it blows, it will look like an accidental ignition of the natural gas line."

Jarod turned another corner and the drive leading to the summerhouse came into view. "We should have gotten here sooner," Jarod growled.

"No," Ethan said, that eerily complacent smile on his face again. "This is the only way."

Leaping from the car before Jarod had even brought it to a complete stop, Ethan ran across the yard. Scrambling to keep up, Jarod rushed after his brother. As Jarod vaulted the railing of Miss Parker's front porch, Ethan broke a window with his elbow and fumbled for the lock. Moments later the two men were standing in the darkened livingroom.

"She's in bed," Ethan declared, as if there would be some other place Miss Parker could be at two o'clock in the morning.

Jarod ran after the shadow that was his brother. They pounded through the house, making enough noise, Jarod thought, to wake the dead. But when Ethan burst into Miss Parker's bedroom, she was still sound asleep.

"Wake her," Ethan hissed. Turning toward the vanity, Ethan grabbed a small wastebasket from underneath. He dumped the trash onto the floor and started scooping seemingly random items from the counter top and tossing them into the makeshift bucket.

Moving to the bedside, Jarod went down on one knee beside the sleeping woman. Without fully understanding why, he reached out with one hand and covered Miss Parker's mouth. At his touch,she snapped into wakefulness, her muffled yelp of surprise warming Jarod's palm.

"Hush, Miss Parker." Jarod said softly. "It's me and Ethan." He glanced back at his brother.

"Hurry, hurry," the younger man chanted.

Her fingernails bit into Jarod's flesh as Miss Parker clawed his hand from her mouth. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"No time for explanations," Jarod growled. "We must go."

"Now, hurry, please hurry," Ethan was nearly frantic, his eyes wide and frightened.

Miss Parker sat up and glared at her intruders. "I'm not going anywhere with you," she snarled.

"Jarod!" Ethan cried. "We have to get out, NOW!"

Grabbing Miss Parker's shoulders, Jarod lifted her from the bed. She fought him, jerking from his grasp and yelling. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Jarod." Ethan's quiet whimper set Jarod's adrenaline running faster than any screamed warning could have.

"I'm saving your life." Jarod moved. In an action so fast that it was no more than a blur, he lashed out at the struggling woman. An instant later, Miss Parker collapsed in his arms. He bent over, folding the delicate figure over one shoulder. "GO," Jarod ordered, turning toward his brother and the exit.

"You'd better be right about that bomb," Jarod grumbled as they ran. "If this place doesn't explode she's going to kill me when she wakes up."

Miss Parker wasn't unconscious for long. She began to stir as they ran through the kitchen to the back door, the nearest exit. They moved away from the house to stand in the shadows of the back yard.

"Put me down!" Miss Parker kicked and thumped Jarod's back with her fists. As Jarod set her bare feet onto the damp grass, Miss Parker glared at him in righteous indignation. "You hit me," she gasped.

Jarod abruptly felt awash in remorse. He stood there, dumbstruck, as he stared at her. Her hair was tousled from sleep, her silk pajama top slightly askew. As his gaze wandered downward, Jarod realized that Miss Parker's legs were bare. The silk shirt, obviously the only stitch of clothing she had on, barely dropped to mid-thigh.

But what really got to Jarod, hit him like a fist in the gut, was the look on Miss Parker's face. Icy rage or fiery disgust was what he'd expected. He could have dealt with either. Instead her eyes were swimming with shock, pain and betrayal.

Jarod reached for her. With no thought to what he was going to do or say, Jarod simply responded to the alluring figure in front of him. But before he could finish the action, before he could step across that invisible line they had always had between them, fate intervened. The house behind them exploded in a glorious ball of red and orange flames.

-

End part 2