"Give me something. Give me anything."
Lyle had dropped by Broots's office, where the remnants of Miss Parker's team were sifting through flight manifests. Broots had his feet up on his desk, eyes glued to his computer screen, partly as an effort to avoid eye contact with Lyle.
"We are still searching," said Sydney with characteristic calm. "As far as we can discern, Jarod is not currently working on a Pretend. It would have been very unusual two years ago for Jarod to take a break between Pretends, but it seems to happen more and more these days."
"You see, Mr Lyle, hm," said Broots, chancing a look up. "New employment records and news items about resolved Pretends are, are typically two of our biggest leads for tracking down Jarod." Broots swallowed, and seemed to gain some measure of confidence when he wasn't immediately shouted down. "But if he's not on a Pretend, it's radio silence. We can't create clues out of thin air, if he's laying low he could be anywhere. This flight information is our best shot."
Lyle's knuckles were white as he gripped the edge of Broots's desk. He closed his eyes.
"How hard can it possibly be to identify which person among these passengers was Jarod? He never changes his name. Look for the guy called Jarod, it's not that hard."
"Oh, that's not the problem," said Broots cheerfully. "We know which one is Jarod. He's listed as a Jarod Spencer on a flight to Idaho Falls. He Pretended as an air marshal. We've also identified a passenger, female, whose name is duplicated in the airport's registration system. Likely Jarod's work, fudging record of Miss Parker's presence without creating a whole new identity for her. We're thinking he pretended to be escorting Miss Parker as his prisoner."
"You're thinking that," corrected Sydney. "There's nothing to support that hypothesis other than Jarod's chosen job. It could be a dozen other things."
It was a flimsy protest, but he had to do what he could. Especially given the fact that, knowing full well Jarod had a shoot-to-kill order on his head, Sydney was devoting his work hours and a fair-sized fraction of his brain power to finding him. Bluntly, he was enabling the assassination of a man he'd raised from the age of four. Not for the first time, he marvelled at his own capacity for compartmentalization.
Broots hesitated, then nodded.
"Sure, that's possible," he said. He turned back to Lyle. "The problem is, there's no record of Jarod Spencer actually boarding the plane to Idaho Falls. The final flight manifest doesn't have that duplicated record, either, the one we think is Miss Parker."
"So? Jarod likely wiped the records afterwards," said Lyle.
Sydney shook his head. "We don't think so. Why not wipe the airport registration, too, while he was at it? We think he was pressed for time, didn't have a moment to change any more details than he strictly needed to. So, we are running on the assumption that they boarded a different flight. The question is, which one?"
"I'd bet it would be difficult for Jarod to do much hacking if he had to keep Miss Parker subdued at the same time," said Broots with a chuckle. "She must have been a handful."
Sydney shot his friend a glare.
"Subdued, Broots?" he snapped. "You are both underestimating your colleague and overestimating Jarod's violent streak. You should spend more time with the logistics and less time conjuring fictional scenarios, we would get much more done."
Broots ducked his head, but it didn't seem to Sydney that he was at all dissuaded. If anything, he was a dog hanging on to his bone all the more avidly. Lyle looked between the two of them, nonplussed.
"Trouble in paradise?" he said, impatiently. "What's this about?"
After a beat, Broots spoke up: "Sydney doesn't believe Jarod kidnapped Miss Parker."
Sydney felt Lyle's eyes on him, but he didn't look up. Blindly, he trailed his finger down a list of names. Lyle broke the silence with a humourless laugh.
"Those rose-coloured glasses when it comes to Jarod aren't helpful, Sydney. We need to be realistic. Besides, the alternative is that Parker left with Jarod willingly, and, well. The Centre doesn't tolerate treason."
An ironic threat, Sydney thought. Everyone present would remember all too well when Mr Lyle had shot up a Centre satellite office and tried to sell access to the off-site data servers to the highest bidder. If there was a known traitor in the Parker family tree, it was Lyle, not his sister. Broots must have been thinking similarly, because he mumbled something which sounded remarkably like 'anymore'. Unfortunately, he miscalculated and pitched the comment slightly too loud. Lyle smiled serenely and got to his feet.
"I'm off, gents. Lots to do," he said. He turned to the door. "Oh, but —"
Lyle kicked Broots's feet off the desk, sending the latter reeling. He then stomped down on Broots's ankle, hard. This left Broots pinned to the ground at an awkward angle, half falling out of his chair. Lyle's heel ground into Broots's ankle, forcing a pained gasp out of him.
"Mr Lyle!" cried Sydney.
"You're getting too relaxed, Broots," Lyle murmured. "Next time I stop by, there will be actionable results, or I will be forced to take steps."
His foot lifted, freeing the abused ankle. Broots scrambled back into his chair, panting, eyes wide and fearful. Without another word, Lyle strode out of the room, unhurried and unruffled.
As a terror-stricken Broots massaged his ankle, Sydney's thoughts went back to Raines down on sub-level 23. As long as he was visibly incapacitated by the stroke, Raines wouldn't be able to contest Lyle's interim leadership; and as long as he was trapped in the sub-levels, nobody would know that this 'interim' leadership was looking more and more permanent every day Raines failed to recover. Leadership was getting to Lyle, that was clear. It was one thing to hold power when everything was sunshine and daffodils. On the other hand, holding power when the Centre hadn't made a successful deal to sell intel to a major military power in over a year, and their power source of ineffable savants dwindled by the day, well, that was another matter entirely. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
"Maybe we shouldn't be tracking down Miss Parker at all," said Broots miserably, interrupting Sydney's train of thought. "Maybe we should warn her to stay away. Hell if I know why I don't. This job will kill me one day."
Margaret set five spaces at the dinner table, one for each of them and one extra.
This meal and the dinner two nights previous were a study in contrasts. Where Miss Parker's first dinner at the Teton house had been seasoned with teasing comments and token efforts at mending the bridges destroyed during the trip westwards, with genuine moments of enthusiasm and celebration thrown in, this latest meal was… not that. Miss Parker was tempted to blame it all on Emily: the new element, the rancid potato spoiling the stew. And indeed, Emily did not bother to self-censor the animosity — silent or otherwise — she felt towards Miss Parker and the threat she represented. Where Miss Parker generally prided herself on giving as good as she got, in this instance if she wanted the moral high-ground, she knew she'd have to bite her tongue. It was hard. Every poison-tipped barb clumsily thrown her way was so, so ripe for a counterattack.
"We've disarmed her, right? … She had a gun in her purse. You let her have weapons?"
I wouldn't need one, little girl.
"Miss Parker's not going to hurt anyone, are you, Marcie?"
"No, ma'am."
Now this felt a little more like family as Miss Parker knew it. Not that she'd never known the warm-and-fuzzy aspects of familial love, around the dinner table or otherwise. Certainly she and her mother had been close, and even since then, her father had had his moments. Bright spots aside, however, Miss Parker had grown accustomed to a much more hostile family dynamic over the last few years. There were a couple of reasons for that, and one of them rhymed with 'bile'. Glares across the dinner table — like those being fired across the bow of Margaret's pot of mashed potatoes, now — were much more in keeping with Miss Parker's not-so-comfortable comfort zone.
She'd allowed Jarod to tell the story of how they'd ended up at Margaret's place, starting with their encounter in Philadelphia. She noted he largely glossed over what happened on the plane ride to Oregon. Understandable, perhaps.
(Margaret insisted on hearing all about the sky-diving again.)
"So you've defected," said Emily when Jarod had finished. She didn't look at Miss Parker, instead frowning at her mashed potatoes as she corralled them onto her fork.
"No," said Miss Parker. Here they were again, her least favourite topic. "I haven't."
This earned her worried looks from the whole family, but she wasn't going to let them get the wrong idea. She was going back to Delaware. It wasn't a question of 'if', only a question of 'when'.
"What will you do when you go back, then?" asked Jarod, putting a slight, placating emphasis on the word 'when'. "Your assignment is to take me back to the Centre."
"If you're doubt—"
"I'm not doubting your word, Miss Parker," Jarod said, cutting off her spitted protest. It was still 'Miss Parker', she noted. Not 'Marcelle' nor 'Marcie', no matter how many times his mother 'slipped up' and used her given name. She wasn't complaining, though she did wonder at the reason. "You said you wouldn't try to take me back, and I believe you." Emily snorted lightly. Jarod ignored her. "I'm asking you: what are you going to do? Will you try to get back to the position in corporate, the one you held before I escaped? Or maybe back to the job running Centre security?"
Miss Parker narrowed her eyes over her forkful of green beans.
"What do you care what job I take? As long as I'm not chasing you, it makes no difference to you what work I'm doing."
Jarod shrugged, though it was too stiff a shrug to be casual. "Just curious. I'm trying to picture you showing up, empty-handed, your contract unfulfilled… and what, the Triumvirate is going to authorize a transfer to another department just because you ask them nicely? Or not-so-nicely, if we're being realistic." A fleeting smirk, which froze as a thought occurred to him. "Unless they move you over to the pursuit for Angelo, if they think you might have better luck there."
"Angelo?" It had been days since she'd thought of Angelo. "What about Angelo?"
Jarod speared a mouthful of green beans with his fork, his face a picture of feigned ambivalence. It was far from his greatest performance.
"He's escaped," he said. Miss Parker's fork froze half-way to her mouth. Escaped?
"How do you know this?"
"He told me."
Angelo had escaped? Miss Parker wasn't sure how to feel about the idea, a couple of different responses battling at the front of her mind for acknowledgement. It wouldn't be the first time he had flown the coop, though the last time he'd done so, it was while Flowers-for-Algernon-ing his way to temporary cognitive coherence. At his current level of mental wherewithal, there was cause for genuine worry. Granted, there was cause for genuine worry while he was confined to the Centre, too.
Perhaps the loudest thought in the crowd was this: What else had she missed? The Centre was a lumbering dinosaur, sure — but at the same time, it could move fast when it wanted to. She'd be naïve to assume everything had stopped just because she'd gone on an unauthorized vacation.
Emily huffed with exasperation. "I don't know this Angelo from Adam, and I don't care. What's bothering me, among other things, is that our home is burned, it's burned thanks to present company, and what — what are we doing? We're just sitting around eating dinner like nothing has changed! Mom, I know you don't trust this easy, I —"
"The ASL for burn is like this," said Margaret, demonstrating, her fingers wiggling towards the sky. "You just said our home was rained on, Em. Which, mind you, we could certainly do with. The forest fire risk is through the roof. We really shouldn't have been out roasting marshmallows the other night, Marcie, but I wanted to show you a treat."
Miss Parker couldn't help it, she snorted out a laugh.
"You were roasting marshmallows with Miss Parker?" said Emily, weakly. She looked around at Jarod. "Marshmallows? With the Miss Parker who has been hunting my brother for years, that Miss Parker?"
"That's what all my business cards say," said Miss Parker dryly. "And to be fair, we never got around to the roasting part."
"True," said Margaret, with regret.
"This is ridiculous," Emily seethed. She'd abandoned her food, had let her cutlery fall from her hands and clatter against her plate. Her hands were shaking, giving her signing an agitated edge. "You're giving her a place to sleep, in our father's bed! In this house, where we're supposed to feel safe, where Kyle should have had a place to feel safe too, if not for —"
"Miss Parker had nothing to do with Kyle's death," interrupted Jarod, low and curt. "She was there, yes, but Mr Lyle killed our brother, not Miss Parker. She is no more at fault for Kyle dying than I am." He left an unspoken challenge on the table, daring his sister to blame him for Kyle's murder. Emily carefully side-stepped said challenge.
"Lyle's her brother," she said with relish, as if laying down a trump card.
It took all Miss Parker's strength to bite back a comment about Kyle's own hair-curling resume, on the subject of sisters being tarred by the same brush as their unhinged, digit-challenged brothers. She was restrained only by the knowledge that Kyle's still-mourning mother wouldn't thank her much for the snappy comeback.
"Lyle's my brother, yes. But he's a Bowman, not a Parker," she said coldly. "If you think otherwise, you don't know Lyle. And that's all I'm saying about it. If you have an issue with my being here, take it up with Jarod. He's the one who invited me. It's seeming like a better and better idea with each passing second."
Miss Parker pushed her plate away. It was the opportune moment for storming off in a huff, but Miss Parker had nowhere to storm without getting lost in the dark, in the woods, in the middle of largely unmapped wilderness. She got as far as the driveway, staring out into the screaming dark encroaching on the house's bubble of warm light from all angles. Again, she was forced to confront the fact that she wasn't home. There was nowhere to go for a moment of peace when she needed it.
So Miss Parker finally knows what it feels like not to have a home, said a voice from the back of her skull, sounding eerily like Jarod. But she did have a home, she insisted. It was back in Blue Cove. She just… couldn't go there at the moment.
Why?
Miss Parker dragged open the Westfalia's side door, crawled into the backseat and heaved the door shut behind her. It wasn't much of a refuge, but it was better than nothing.
Five hours later, she woke in a daze in the back seat of the Westfalia with a fiercely twisted spine and a parched throat. If necessary, she could have laid her head back down and slept through the night in the van, but her pride wouldn't let her give up the third-floor bedroom driven only by the hurt feelings of Jarod's little sister. So, she let herself back into the house, feeling her way around the semi-familiar furniture. The house was dark, with the exception of the kitchen, where Margaret had left a light on in the stove's range hood. The air was sharp and cool, a stark contrast to the heavy humidity of the long, August afternoon.
She grabbed a glass from above the sink, turned on the tap and flicked her fingers under the stream of water until it ran cold.
"You're up late," said a voice behind her. Miss Parker tempered her reaction, taking care not to stiffen or startle, and turned around. Emily stood on the edge of the jagged polygon of light created by the hood light, arms folded, managing to look relatively imposing despite her matching teacup-patterned pyjama set. Miss Parker stared. What was this? A midnight ambush by way of kitchen sink stake-out?
"Nothing gets past you," Miss Parker said in a sleep-coloured grumble. She turned back to the sink and filled her glass just short of the brim.
"Why are you here?"
Miss Parker couldn't quite hide how her shoulders tensed at the question.
"I believe I recommended earlier that you take that question up with your brother," she replied. She took a sip of water, nursing it like she would a hot toddy.
Emily drew up a stool from the kitchen counter and sat down. In the absolute quiet of the night, the sound of the stool feet rumbling against the tile floor sounded like approaching thunder.
"I did," she said.
"And?"
Miss Parker wasn't sure why she was so interested in Jarod's answer.
"You were interested in talking to Mom, he said. I could tell that wasn't the full answer, but it's the only one I have to go on. So? It's been days. You must have talked to her by now. You've roasted marshmallows with her, for fuck's sake."
Emily was evidently trying to stay cool and collected, the better to claim the high ground while butting heads with the Miss Parker. It wasn't working. She exhaled hard out of her nose every couple of words, like a bull ready to charge.
"We never got around to roasting," said Miss Parker lightly, enjoying the effect immensely when Emily's mouth flattened into an angry line, the corners pulled taut.
"Avoid the question all you like," said Emily. "But either you know why you're here and won't tell the rest of us, or you don't and you're just wasting time. Either way, you should leave. You're, you're just sitting on your thumbs, playing house with a family you helped shatter. What are you doing here?"
"If you think —"
"No," said Emily, cutting her off. Miss Parker's lips twisted and she rubbed a soothing thumb over her itching knuckles. You can't hit Jarod's sister, she reminded herself. "I don't think you do know, do you? I have an inkling. You have history with Jarod, right?" She paused, but the question was clearly rhetorical, so Miss Parker said nothing. "He's told me a little about growing up in the Centre, though he leaves out a lot because he thinks I'll look at him differently if he doesn't sand off the rough edges. He talks about how you used to be. He talks about you like…." She stopped talking, but Miss Parker got the gist from her expression. If the look of revulsion in Emily's eyes was anything to go by, Jarod's description of his childhood sweetheart had been disgustingly complimentary.
Miss Parker drained her water and set the empty glass in the sink. It didn't surprise her that Jarod would reminisce about her younger self; he brought up the subject often enough in arguments. Still, it made something twinge in her gut to think of Jarod talking of her — any version of her — with uncomplicated affection.
"Is there a point to this?" she asked, wiping at a corner of her mouth.
"I think you're trying to get something back," said Emily. Her voice had gradually grown louder, forgetting the hour, forgetting her brother asleep one floor up. Her indignation resonated, rebounded off the kitchen walls. "And you don't even know what it is, or who you're trying to get it back from. Maybe it's the Centre, maybe it's Jarod... hell, maybe it's Mom, you two seem chummy. Honestly, I can't figure out which one would be the most pathetic."
Miss Parker thought she knew which one it was, but that wouldn't be anything Emily would understand.
"That's one hell of a case of projection," she said, and punctuated the comment with a yawn. Affected boredom, that was her path forward.
"Don't count on a second of privacy while you're here, Miss Parker," said Emily. "I can't risk that you're playing the long game. I'm not going to let you move an inch."
"Right, right," said Miss Parker with a sarcastically placatory wave. She wiped her hands on a hand towel and swept away towards the stairs up to the second and third floors. "I got it, you're a regular Inspector Javert. I'm going to sleep."
…
She didn't.
At least, not right away. Once she'd left Emily alone in the kitchen and climbed the stairs to Charles's bedroom, she sat on top of her duvet for another hour, staring at the tiny digital display on the front of her cellphone. What she wouldn't give to talk to Sydney, or even Broots, someone who could help set her straight on her priorities. The phone hadn't caught the slightest whiff of a signal the entire time she'd been there, unfortunately, so that wasn't happening. She poked through the settings and found a heretofore undiscovered alarm clock function. She stared at it.
Emily was half-right. Miss Parker couldn't rationalize why she was still there, yes, playing house. The longer she stayed, the weirder it was. She was in a contortionist's holding pattern, and it was never going to get any easier. The only reason to stay was to prove Jarod's little sister wrong, and that…
That wasn't any reason at all.
She set the alarm to wake her up at 4:45am.
4:45am. Far, far too early, but Miss Parker couldn't afford to wake up later. She knew from Margaret's report that Jarod was an early riser, and she had no interest in bumping into him on the way out the door. Then she'd have to say 'goodbye' to his face.
The house was even quieter than it had been last night. No crickets outside, only the very earliest of early-rising birds, the ones who hadn't gone to sleep yet. She paused in the living room and glanced towards the hallway leading off to the bedrooms. After a moment of hesitation, she tiptoed down the hall, telling herself she was making for the bathroom at the end of the hall. That would be her excuse, if she was caught.
The door to Jarod's room was closed and silent. No last glimpse, no telltale sound. Miss Parker headed back the way she'd come, feeling oddly cheated.
She loaded the Westfalia with her re-packed suitcase and left a note pinned to the screen door. The note was for Margaret. It had been easy to thank Margaret for sharing her memories of Catherine, for welcoming Miss Parker into her home, for the home-cooked meals. It was much less easy to say… hell, anything to Jarod that would be in any way sufficient. That was all too big for a note. So, the note was for Margaret.
When she started the ignition, the cough and sputter and rumble of the motor conjured images of Jarod waking up, going to a window, shouting out for her to stop. In reality, nothing happened. No sounds of footsteps, no shouts. Caught between relief and disappointment, she said a curt 'Goodbye, Jarod' under her breath and pulled out down the winding path to the highway.
"I won't do that," said Sydney. He shook his head from side to side on a loop, compulsively. "Not that."
Lyle hovered over him, predator-like. Sydney wouldn't meet his eye.
"Forgive me, Sydney, but I can't see why," said Lyle. He scratched his thumbnail along an imaginary smear on the surface of his desk. "You want to find Miss Parker, don't you? So you should be willing to help us set a trap for Jarod. Help me see what I'm not seeing."
"Jarod wouldn't hurt Miss Parker. If she's with him, she's fine. I won't lure him to be shot by sweepers."
Part of him couldn't quite believe he had finally put his foot down. There were so many violations Sydney had endured, had excused away. Lyle didn't understand the principles of boiling a frog, that was his problem.
(One of his problems, Sydney corrected himself. One of his many problems.)
As the fable went, a frog thrown into a pot of boiling water will hop out immediately; but throw a frog into room-temperature water and slowly crank the temperature to boiling and, well. Who ordered the boiled frog? He was pretty sure it was a myth, but that wasn't the point. Escalating to a kill order, asking Sydney to lure his almost-son into the path of a bullet, that was too much. That was throwing a frog into bubbling water, and here he was, hopping out.
Lyle's lip curled.
"I can't imagine what Jarod has to do, at this point, to make you believe anything less than the best of him. Maybe because I didn't know him as a child, it's easier for me to see who he really is," Lyle mused. He searched Sydney's face. Catching on, Sydney arranged his face to reflect not even a flicker of doubt. Lyle exhaled through his nose and switched tacks with a spasm of a shrug. "Suppose I suspend the kill order. Then you'd agree to help me get my sister back?"
Sydney hesitated.
"What would I be agreeing to? Setting a trap for Jarod? No. For one, he wouldn't fall for it. How many times do I need to remind you? He is a genius. That is the whole reason he was abducted by the Centre to begin with."
While it was probably true that Jarod would see through any Centre ruse, the primary reason for Sydney's refusal was that he did not trust Lyle. He didn't trust that if Lyle said he'd suspended the kill order, that sweepers would not turn up armed and be ready to shoot Jarod on sight. The line had been crossed, the Centre had shown that they didn't value Jarod's life enough to be counted on to preserve it if push came to shove.
"You could say the same for any effort to catch Jarod, he's always been a genius. Are you suggesting we give up?" said Lyle with a growing smirk. "I'd love to see you table that idea at the next Triumvirate meeting. They'd love that."
Sydney set his jaw and did not reply. There was a knock at the door, and Dr. Tuchen pushed in.
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Tuchen. He smiled, and Sydney was baffled to note that the man looked almost shy. "I didn't realize you were in a meeting, Mr Lyle. I can come back." Tuchen didn't look at Sydney, only watched his boss. Meanwhile, Lyle hadn't taken his eyes off Sydney, the corners of his mouth tightened in a poor facsimile of a smile. To complete the triangle, Sydney kept his eyes on Tuchen. Tuchen, who had something like adoration sparking in his eye. So that's it, thought Sydney, watching a puzzle piece fall into place.
There were definitely worse motives for bolstering a coup.
"That's all right, Tuchen, we were just finishing up. I'll give you until the end of the work day, Sydney. I would think long and hard before you commit to refusal of orders."
Sydney stood wordlessly and brushed past Tuchen into the hallway. As soon as he stepped beyond the perimeter of Lyle's office, fatigue overtook him in a cresting wave. Seven hours, fine. He had seven hours to commit to abetting Jarod's ruin. It might as well be seven minutes, or seven years, he knew. He'd reached his limit.
Miss Parker stopped for breakfast at the first town she encountered. 'Town' was a stretch, it was closer to a village by Miss Parker's estimation. By the look of its billboards and the print advertisements in shop windows, the place was painfully desperate for some of that delicious tourist money from all the incoming hikers and amateur nature photographers.
She took a bite of grocery deli potato salad from the container balanced on the Westfalia's side mirror, and took out her cellphone. Ideally she'd give Sydney and Broots a head's up that she was returning, so that the three of them would be able to put up a united front. Alas, alack: no signal. Not even when she held the phone aloft and swayed frenziedly around the grocery store parking lot, chasing the flicker of a single bar of service.
"Yeah, most major carriers don't have towers out here," said a gruff voice behind her.
She turned and squinted into the morning sun. A cop with a bowling-ball head was silhouetted there, thumbs in his belt loops as if he were ready to drop trough at a moment's notice. She turned back to her phone, allowing her hair to swing into her face and obstruct her profile. Already, she'd acquired the instincts of a fugitive. She blamed that on the crowd back on Chabot's private jet. Being recognized as the murderer of a racketeer by complete strangers had damaged her sense of anonymity.
"Knew I should have stayed on the highway," she grunted.
"Do you need help?" asked the officer.
"No." It came out brusque and snappish. She softened her tone; cops could get offended at the drop of a hat, in her experience. "No, thank you, officer."
The cop looked at her for a long moment, then shrugged and walked off.
A prickle of unease travelled up Miss Parker's spine. She should have driven farther before stopping, she wasn't nearly far enough away from where Jarod and his family were staying. If she were recognized here and it got back to the Centre, it wouldn't take too long to pinpoint a couple of uncomfortably realistic guesses at where Jarod could be staying. Suddenly feeling every eye in the parking lot on her, she grabbed her potato salad and hopped back into the van. If she stayed on the road with a quick drive-thru lunch break, she could get to Rapid City before the afternoon picked up momentum.
She spent the lion's share of the trip east across Wyoming rehearsing conversations in her head. When she stepped through the doors of the Centre's main office, people would have questions. Though she'd have no problem brushing off the majority of the idle curiosity thrown her way, Raines and the Triumvirate would want to know what had happened, where she had been, why it had taken so long to return, why she hadn't spared a second to pick up a damn phone. She had to have an answer prepared for every possible question, and she'd have to balance saving her own skin with obfuscating the whereabouts of Jarod and his family. She wouldn't be surprised at all if they sprung a T-board on her within minutes of her arrival back on Centre property.
After explanations would come the most difficult part: making a case for transferring to another Centre project. That was the bit that was stumping her, as it would go against the core tenet of her agreement with the Centre higher-ups. The deal was, find and return Jarod, and she would be rewarded with… being permitted to stop looking for Jarod. The circular logic wasn't lost on her. She'd tried to get out of it many times and always, always failed. Of course, if worst came to worst she could resume her former duties and simply be deliberately awful at her job, but she wasn't sure how long she'd be able to fool Lyle with that sort of act. He was an idiot, but he wasn't that much of an idiot.
In her mind's eye, her images of herself striding down the Centre hallways, slipping back into her usual duties… they all felt surreal, somehow false. Miss Parker had known for years that she did not see eye-to-eye with those who decided the course of her father's organization. For a long time, she'd ached to be part of something positive, instead of being dragged along in the wake of the rusted, oil-leaking whaler that was the Centre. Was there any room at the Centre for bringing something genuinely positive into the world? She pushed down the knee-jerk answer of 'No, of course not' and gave the question due consideration, turning it over in her mind. Her mother had thought so, in a way. Margaret had shown her that. Catherine had suspected mounting a legal offensive against the Centre would only destroy what good it had managed in its earlier, more benevolent years. Still, the real answer was not too far off the knee-jerk: No, nothing positive, not as the Centre currently existed. On the other hand, the Centre promised answers. It was always vomiting up a new mystery with some convoluted secret behind it all. She couldn't throw away access to those answers.
Could she?
Jarod had started the ball rolling on her quest for answers when he'd shown her that DSA from the immediate aftermath of Catherine Parker's "death". Gunshots, screaming, crying, the works. Since then, the quest for answers had never really stopped. First, it was: what happened to my mother? This was quickly followed by the usual suspects, 'who killed her?' and 'why?'. There had been that dead-end with Major Charles, the pointlessly cruel cul-de-sac with Catherine's missing body… and now what? Catherine Parker was dead. Answers wouldn't change that.
But there was still that little voice that asked, what if the next answer makes all of this nonsense worth the years and viscera I've poured into it? What if I only have to find one more answer to unlock it all?
She arrived in Casper, Wyoming just in time for lunch, with another four hours of driving left to cover. Stroke of luck, her cellphone was finally getting a signal. As she'd expected and dreaded, her voice mail was full to bursting. She cued up the most recent message from Sydney.
"Hello, Miss Parker." Miss Parker's eyebrows shot up. Sydney sounded exhausted. "I hope you get this message soon. I'm… worried. About you, yes, but I'm also worried about the Centre. Things have been… off-kilter since you left, as I'm sure you've gathered if you've listened to my other messages." A dry, weary chuckle. "Perhaps I shouldn't count on you being so thorough as to listen to every message I've left, granted. Your brother has been more unpredictable than usual, I think you'd be similarly concerned if you were here. But my main concern is still, of course, Lyle's latest policy change concerning Jarod. I know there's no love lost between you and Jarod, particularly on your side, but I know… I hope you wouldn't want to see him dead, any more than I would. Lyle has never seen Jarod's value, and this shoot-to-kill order is only the culmination of that. It's reckless, and now he's trying to make me a party to — hrm. Now I'm using your answering machine as a sounding board, I apologize. I hope you're well. Goodbye."
"Goodbye," said Miss Parker to nobody, on automatic. Her mind was elsewhere.
Shoot to kill?
Shoot to kill?
A spreading numbness surged in waves through Miss Parker's body, from the palms of her hands to the tip of her tongue. In her mind's eye, she saw the figure of Jarod show up to some generic Pretend, it didn't matter which. As a faceless bureaucrat in the background shook his fist at the heavens, a swarm of sweepers would descend on the scene. Jarod would grin cheekily, expecting the usual by-the-skin-of-his-teeth escape, only to be riddled with bullets from all angles. Blood everywhere, dead eyes… no more Jarod. The last few seconds of the morbid daydream rewound over and over, and she watched Jarod fall again and again. The scene blurred and morphed into the memory of Jarod being gunned down in Philadelphia by Marco Lorefice. The fear she'd felt in that moment, the mind-obliterating horror at the thought that Jarod was dead, and it was all her fault, never mind how. She reached out an arm blindly to the side of the van and leaned against it. Abruptly aware of her surroundings, she looked around at the anonymous gas station. How had she got even this far? What the hell was she doing?
It should have been another fork in the road, another opportunity for Miss Parker to pick apart the next step her life would take. Like when she'd decided to reject Jarod's support after their escape from the Isle of Carthis, or at the hospital in Philadelphia, when she'd made that life-splintering decision to let him go. But this, this wasn't a hard decision at all. Lyle, damn him, had made it easy. If nothing else, she needed to warn Jarod. She could not risk him dying, not when the thought alone threatened to sweep her feet out from under her. Yes, their… relationship, ally-ship, whatever-it-was had taken a hit since taking off from Wisconsin, but that hardly seemed to matter now. She needed to turn back.
Once the notion of returning to the Teton Wilderness cemented itself in her mind, new possibilities poked up through the cracks. She needed to warn Jarod, yes, but it was more than that. She'd left too much undone and too much unsaid.
"Have you reconsidered, Sydney?"
"No. I won't do it. He's… you don't understand at all. He's as good as my son. I can't do this."
"Disappointing."
