Part 2: The House in Blue Cove

It was well past midnight, and the house in Teton had gone dark. Margaret had turned out the kitchen light when she'd left. Miss Parker fidgeted with a pair of handcuffs, watching them as they passed from hand to hand. She was procrastinating.

Jarod ducked his head down to catch her eye.

"Miss Parker?"

"Are you sure?" she burst out, meeting his gaze with a wild look. They were standing out in the driveway, in the dark. They had been standing out in the driveway, in the dark, since Margaret and Emily left.

"Yes." His shoulder hitched. "Wh — yes and no."

She laughed, though there was no humour in it.

"You need to be sure about this. We both do. There are so many ways this could go wrong."

"Absolutely. I can think of at least eight." He was being glib. She could have slapped him. Besides, eight was small potatoes. She could think of at least a dozen ways they could crash and burn.

"So what are we doing? What are we doing here? You know there's another option. You can run."

"You don't want to run," he pointed out.

"I didn't say we. You can run on your own, Jarod, you've been doing alright so far."

"No, I haven't."

Miss Parker got the feeling he wasn't talking about his track record for keeping ahead of the Centre. She carefully avoided his frank admission.

"Or you can join Em and Margaret," she said. "It's not too late to catch up, I can still hear Margaret's car."

"Hm. You're right, I think I can still hear Em yelling." It was an attempt at a bit of levity, but Jarod only looked sad. If Emily was yelling, it was only because she was afraid for her brother. Jarod shook his head, deliberately looking away from the direction in which his mother's car had disappeared. "Running instead of vanishing only had a point when I was looking for my family. As uncomfortable as this plan promises to be, at least it's finite. It's better than running forever."

"It's only as finite as you are, Jarod."

"Exactly," said Jarod with a very deliberate grin. Miss Parker opened her mouth to point out that he was intentionally misinterpreting her point, but Jarod ploughed on. "You're right about one thing, though, we both have to be certain about this. If anything, this is more dangerous for you than it is for me. So: are you sure you want to do this?"

Miss Parker snorted. "I'm not the one who has nightmares about this exact scenario."

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"No," she said, jutting out her chin. "I'm not sure at all. But I'll do it. I want an end to this just as much as you do."

"Great!" said Jarod, his enthusiasm clearly forced. He turned around and held both hands behind his back. "Ready when you are."

Miss Parker swung open the cuffs and snapped them around his wrists, one at a time. It wasn't the first time she'd cuffed Jarod, far from it. Maybe if it were, this wouldn't feel so surreal. Snap-click, snap-click. She fastened both, thumb held over the inside of Jarod's wrist, resolutely ignoring the pounding of his heartbeat.

He was scared.

"Ever thought you'd be asking me to handcuff you?" she said, meaning to lighten the mood. She winced once she'd heard the words aloud.

Jarod didn't seem to notice. He pulled at the cuffs, testing them.

"No. No, I can't say I predicted that."

Miss Parker popped the trunk of Lyle's SUV and jerked her head in the direction of the interior.

"Get in and get comfy. We're headed home."


July 1988

"It's so nice to see you again, Miss Parker. This place wasn't the same without you," said Sydney. His last word broke off into a cough, and he gave Miss Parker's lit cigarette a polite yet pointed look. Put it out, the look said. Miss Parker ignored it.

"Don't get used to it," she said, blowing another smoke ring in his direction, because she could. "Daddy asked me to have a look around, get the two-dollar tour. He didn't say anything about unpacking."

Sydney gave a placatory nod.

"Of course, Miss Parker."

They were walking along a catwalk overlooking the main staging area of Sydney's primary simulation lab. Below, a man sat on the cement floor with his arms around his knees, a hand-made sign abandoned next to him.

"Fascinating stuff, Syd," she said, squinting down at the staging area to try and read the sign. They were too high up, it was illegible. "Is it always this action-packed around here? You should write a memoir, get the movie rights bought by Spielberg."

Sydney chuckled. "True, this simulation is not the most visually interesting. Psychological research is not always a spectator sport."

"Is it ever?" Heavy on the skepticism.

"Sometimes," said Sydney with a shrug. "You should see his work in hostage crisis resolution sims."

"I remember this place," said Miss Parker, because abruptly she had. She knew that set of vents along the far wall, could remember sitting on the stairs up to the catwalk, and over there, there had been a table and chair there.

"Yes, I expect you would. Outside of your father's office, you were likely here more than any other part of the Centre."

"This was where that kid lived."

Jarod. This had been Jarod's home. He was 'that kid' now because she knew how Sydney could be. He'd start asking penetrating questions along the lines of, oho, you remember Jarod? After so long? He must have made quite an impression, Miss Parker, etc. etc.

Yes, he'd made an impression. Of course he had. He'd been her first real friend, her best friend, for years.

"Lives."

Miss Parker blinked. She'd been following Sydney on automatic as they descended down to the first landing, her mind time-travelling twenty years into the past.

"Hm?"

Sydney pointed.

"Jarod. He still lives here. Though not a 'kid' any longer, obviously."

Miss Parker followed his finger and stared at the man sitting in the centre of the room.

Jarod?

She hadn't recognized him at first, but taking a second look… yes, it was Jarod, her Jarod, her childhood best friend. It hadn't even occurred to her that he'd still be here. She'd left to go to school, and at the time she had assumed the same would apply to him, somehow. Or if not school, he'd have left for some other reason, to have a life. Hanging out at the Centre had made sense when she was a kid, and why not? It was the only reality she knew. Why shouldn't there be children living at her parents' workplace? She'd never thought to question it, though she'd been aware in a kind of background way that Jarod didn't necessarily have the world's most comfortable existence in the sub-levels of Centre HQ.

He'd grown up, and the years suited him. The Jarod of her memories had been a child, while this man was… definitely not. The only remainder of childhood on his handsome profile was the guileless expression around his eyes.

"What is he doing?" The question came out softer than she intended. His eyes were closed and he looked like he was concentrating. She felt without being told that he shouldn't be disturbed.

"He's simulating a hunger strike," Sydney explained. "He's on day five."

Miss Parker looked back at Jarod with alarm. Yes, now that she knew to look for it, there was a pinched look on his face, suggesting a chronic, dull pain. The discarded sign on the floor beside him read 'HUNGER FOR JUSTICE' in black sharpie.

"He hasn't eaten in five days? Why?"

Jarod stirred, head turning minutely towards the sound of Miss Parker's voice with a frown of recognition. Sydney hastily led his guest away, whispering all the while.

"He's simulating the reality of participating in a hunger strike. We'll be able to gather information from him on how he was feeling on each successive day, his doubts, what he knows he would have responded to, what his limits were. We decided to forgo force-feeding at the end of the experiment, as that's been banned for over a decade now, but we're very excited about the results that will come out of this, very excited."

Miss Parker looked over her shoulder at Jarod as Sydney propelled her away. He didn't look excited. He looked hungry.

"Who's 'we'?"

"Sorry?"

"Jarod wants to find out how hunger strikers feel? What their weaknesses are? Why would he give a shit?" This was all very strange. She remembered being aware that Jarod worked for her father's company, which was bizarre now she thought about it, wasn't it? She hadn't had a job when she was ten years old, so why had he? "Sydney. Did he want to do this?"

Sydney smiled, and Miss Parker remembered why she hadn't missed him at all. Stupid, patronizing smile.

"Of course he wants to. Jarod is the only one who can give us the real depth of insight we need. He knows that, and he wants to help."

"What if he didn't? What if he told you to shove it? Seems like bullshit to me."

A look of fear flitted across Sydney's face, blink-and-you-miss-it. His gaze darted to a corner of the room and back, blink-and-you-miss-it. He forced a laugh, quick and sharp, blink-and-you-miss-it.

Miss Parker followed his glance to the corner of the room. There in the high corner, where wall met ceiling, a conspicuous security camera held court. It was trained on Jarod, watching his every move.

"You're your mother's daughter, Miss Parker," said Sydney. Whatever that meant.


Miss Parker squeezed the trigger lever on Margaret's garden hose, blasting Lyle in the face with a rude spray of water. She'd considered slapping her brother in the face to wake him up, which presented its own advantages. The hose had won out, for reasons two-fold. One, it did double-duty by also washing off the bear spray residue still caked to Lyle's face. Two, it was deeply funny.

His only response to the face full of water was an irritated groan. Lyle had been out for a good four hours, thanks to the sedative he himself had brought along to subdue Jarod, and at that moment he looked ready to extend the nap by another four hours.

"Wake up, idiot," she said, squeezing the trigger again. With her free hand, she snipped through the last of the zip ties with a pair of wire strippers.

"M'awake," said Lyle. He opened his eyes, wiping water from his face. He swore loudly. "God, my shoulder."

"Yeah, I think it's dislocated. Here —" The night air was split by a bellow of pain, and Lyle writhed to protect his newly reset shoulder joint. Miss Parker sniffed. "You're welcome. That's what happens when you fall down the stairs, genius."

"I didn't fall, I was…" He trailed off. Miss Parker imagined it was difficult to trust a memory that pointed to the bogeyman under the basement stairs.

"I watched it happen. Trust me, you fell. Jarod's sister got you on the shoulder with a wine bottle, too. Not your finest moment. Worked great as a distraction, though."

Lyle pushed himself into a sitting position and looked her over.

"You got free," he said, unnecessarily.

"Well done, Sherlock." Miss Parker pointed to the door to the kitchen, which hung open, casting a warped rectangle of light over the two of them. "I also got out. Can you walk? I want to get out of here before Jarod gets free. Don't do that, tilt your head forward."

Lyle was tilting his head back to stem the blood pouring from his nose. He rocked forward, too dazed to consider arguing.

"Jarod's secured, then," Lyle surmised, looking up at her through his eyebrows. Miss Parker nodded.

"He's sedated and cuffed in the SUV. I'm ready to leave whenever you are."

She was. Her suitcase was re-packed and tucked out of sight in the SUV, somewhere Lyle hopefully wouldn't stumble upon it and start asking uncomfortable questions. As his nose slowed from a trickle to an infrequent spot of blood here and there, Lyle looked at his sister, considering.

"So —" he said, and stopped. He appeared to re-think whatever he had been about to say. "You'll have to drive, I'm too banged up. That sister of Jarod's has one hell of an arm. That, or a very heavy bottle."

"Both."

"Where is she? And the mother?"

"They got away. Jarod pulled some self-sacrifice crap and stayed to 'deal with me'," said Miss Parker, using heavy finger quotes. "Bet they're so proud. Again, I'm ready when you are. Any day now."

Only barely a lie. Margaret and Emily had left, yes, and Jarod had had to persuade them to let him be taken in. Emily in particular had screamed bloody murder at Miss Parker and Jarod both before finally, finally giving in. They were off to the next safe house, though somehow Miss Parker guessed they'd forgo Washington, now that that particular cat was out of the bag.

Lyle peeled himself off the concrete floor, wincing. Miss Parker led the way up the stairs, through the kitchen, out the front door. In her head, she said a wistful 'goodbye'. The house in Teton had represented a moment of unlikely peace amidst it all. She wondered if she'd ever find her way back — to the house, or to any kind of peace.

"Where's Jarod?" asked Lyle. His tone was curt and his words clipped, betraying a bruised pride under his all-business demeanour.

"In the back." As Lyle stepped towards the trunk, Miss Parker called out a warning. "He should still be sedated, but watch out."

Lyle's hand went to his holster, which was empty. He grimaced.

"Jarod got the upper hand on me when I first arrived, took my gun," he said. "Did you happen to…?"

Miss Parker had hoped he wouldn't notice for at least the first leg of the trip. It would have been nice to not have to worry about an armed Lyle for a while. She handed him the gun, grip first. He nodded his thanks and pointed the muzzle at the trunk; with the other hand, he opened the rear door. Jarod lay inside, curled into a ball with his arms cuffed behind him, looking jarringly small. He wasn't sedated, of course, only resting his eyes, but Lyle didn't need to know that.

Lyle made as if to poke Jarod in the leg with the barrel of the gun. Miss Parker's breath stuttered in her chest as she watched the barrel draw closer, far too close, to the gunshot wound in Jarod's thigh. If Lyle were to hit the bullseye, Jarod wouldn't be able to keep from flinching, from gasping in pain, from giving himself away. It would create more questions than they needed. Thinking fast, Miss Parker tugged at the elbow of Lyle's sleeve.

"Take a picture if you need to get off to it later, but we should get on the road. Come on," she said. Lyle dropped the gun and closed the trunk. He didn't get into the SUV, however.

"I'll be honest —"

"How novel."

Lyle glared.

"I may have told the Centre crowd otherwise, but I came here with the aim of grabbing Jarod. Whether you were here or not, it wasn't my first priority."

"OK?" said Miss Parker, nonplussed. "What is this, are you apologizing? No, thanks. Get in the car."

"That's not my point. What are we telling the Triumvirate about what happened here? Who bagged Jarod?"

Miss Parker shrugged.

"Truth works pretty good. It was a collaborative effort."


Mercifully, they didn't have to drive all the way to South Dakota to get a plane back to the Centre. Lyle had a company jet waiting at the airport in Jackson Hole, less than an hour away from Margaret's house. Less mercifully, Miss Parker was faced with the notion of getting back on an airplane after having fallen out of the last two aircraft she'd boarded, to greater or lesser effect. She stepped on board with barely-concealed reluctance.

"What's up with you?" Lyle asked, uncharacteristically perceptive. He watched his sister buckle her seat belt. Jarod was strapped in across the aisle, playing the part of a dead weight with perfect verisimilitude. His greatest role to date. "Oh, right. You had some sort of incident on a plane on the way over here, didn't you?"

Miss Parker looked over at Lyle, startled.

"What?" she said. Lyle smiled blandly.

"You didn't think that would get back to us at the Centre? You weren't exactly inconspicuous in Wisconsin. And of course, we heard about those Yalient folks getting hijacked by a belligerent employee. Inspiring stuff, how they survived an attempt to crash their plane. They didn't say anything about stowaways, but it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots."

Miss Parker fought the urge to look over at Jarod, to check for any sign that he'd heard.

"No, it doesn't take a genius," she agreed. "But then, you're not one. So yeah, I'm surprised you put it together." She let her anxiety bleed out of her into her face, allowing Lyle to interpret as he would. "Jarod was Pretending to be an air marshal, which let him —"

"Escort you as his prisoner," Lyle finished. After a microscopic hesitation, Miss Parker nodded. "Yeah, we suspected. That was Broots's theory."

That should have been your first clue, thought Miss Parker, though Broots's theorizing had proved surprisingly convenient. This certainly fit hers and Jarod's story well enough.

"And then before that, the chopper crashed," said Miss Parker. If the Centre knew about the airport in Wisconsin, they surely knew about the crashed helicopter. It made sense to get out in front of it. "I can't blame that on anyone but myself, I tried to take over the controls from Jarod. But yeah, I'm not the world's biggest fan of flying these days."

Lyle craned his head to look out the window, watching the ground disappear below them.

"So the helicopter crashed because you were wrestling over the controls?" he asked.

There was something in his tone that begged caution, like he was leading her into a trap. Miss Parker wasn't sure how to avoid springing the trap, without being certain what Lyle thought he knew. She fell back on the old stand-by, being deliberately vague.

"Seemed like it, yeah. I don't know what else it could have been."

Lyle turned back from the window.

"Interesting. The forensics team tells me it was damage to the tail rotor. They're currently thinking one of the sweepers shot at the helicopter as it took off."

Miss Parker sighed and feigned fatigue.

"How do I know, I'm not a helicopter mechanic. All I know is, the ground hurt when I hit it." She grabbed a magazine from the pocket on the side of her seat and flipped through it blindly. It had been worth a try, but she knew she hadn't entirely shaken off Lyle's suspicion. He didn't take his eyes off her for a long while.

Lyle's suspicions aside, the remainder of the trip passed by in relative peace and quiet. Every hour or so, Miss Parker got up to go through the motions of pretending to re-apply Jarod's sedative. Each time she did, she reached behind Jarod's back and squeezed his hand. Each time, he squeezed back.


Too soon, the plane touched down on the tarmac in Blue Cove. Too soon, Lyle radioed for a sweeper team to meet them at the disembarkation door to escort Jarod to the Centre. Too soon, Miss Parker's eyes fell on the familiar sight of the Centre's main entrance.

It was hard to believe that not only had Jarod agreed to return to the Centre, it had been his idea from the start. Better his idea than hers; ever since Philadelphia, Miss Parker's perspective on the idea of Jarod returning to the Centre had done a complete one-eighty. She was home. She'd caught Jarod. She would get to move on from the job that had leeched everything from her like a parasitic tapeworm for over five years. It was everything she'd dreamed of, and nothing she wanted. She felt sick.

To preclude Jarod from being granted any dignity whatsoever, Lyle ordered a pair of sweepers to manhandle their prize catch through the doors into the main hall with an arm each hooked under his armpits. Miss Parker followed several strides behind, her eyes glued to Jarod's head as it bounced and lolled with every step. Her jaw was clenched just shy of the point of splintering, the only outward expression of the anger and worry simmering below the surface. Little by little, the employees milling about the hall fell silent and still, like a movie-going audience as the house lights dim and the silver screen begins to grow and distort into the aspect ratio of the film reel. Then, like that same audience when the credits roll, they burst into applause.

Miss Parker jerked, startled. Beside her, Lyle beamed around at the gathered crowd, every inch the Olympic hero of the bureaucratic masses. Nobody looked excited, per se. The expressions Miss Parker glimpsed on the panorama of faces were a grab-bag of vaguely impressed, deferential and relieved. Relief, that was a big one. She spotted it across the hall on the face of Broots; when he noticed her looking back at him, he raised a hand in a shy wave. Miss Parker managed a nod of greeting.

How often had she pictured how this moment would go? Jarod being dragged around like meat on a spit, that had always featured heavily. In her daydreams, her dad had always been there, up until some months after Carthis. Lyle sharing the spotlight was a new element.

"Let's have our new guest join the party, shall we? Hold on to him, guys," said Lyle with relish, and removed something small and translucent from his pocket.

"What is —"

But before Miss Parker could protest, Lyle had jabbed Jarod in the thigh with the small, translucent something: a syringe. At first, nothing at all happened. Jarod continued to hang limply between the arms of his captors. Then, a loud, cut-off hum, like a man trying to shout from the depths of a nightmare. Finally, Jarod came to life all at once in a cascade of unfurling adrenaline. His eyes slammed open, his mouth let fly a bellow of alarm, and his arms jerked wildly in their confines. The sweepers on either side of him staggered and readjusted their respective grips. Jarod's eyes darted around in all directions, taking everything in, every impassive face, every tile in the floor. He pulled experimentally at his arms, breathing hard through his nose.

"Welcome home, Jarod," said Lyle. Jarod swung his head in the direction of the voice. He managed a tired, exasperated glare.

"Lyle," he grunted in acknowledgement. And that was all, not another word. Lyle looked disappointed, but he concealed it behind a toothy grin as he turned back to the crowd.

"All right, all right," said Lyle, loud enough to carry to every corner of the hall. He might have been a newly-elected congressman surrounded by his campaign team. "Sis and I have to get down to the sub-levels, put our favourite Pretender back to work. I'll expect you all to get back to work, too."

The animated chatter of inter-departmental gossip broke out once more as Jarod's guard detail piled into the elevator. Jarod put up some cursory resistance for the principle of the thing, sliding the soles of shoes against the tiles as he tried to get his feet under him and stand up. At one point he almost succeeded, only for Lyle to cheerfully kick him in the calf and send him dangling once more. Miss Parker winced.

Jarod didn't speak as the elevator plummeted down, down into the bowels of the earth. Five floors, ten…

Miss Parker sensed a familiar presence at her shoulder. She glanced over and was greeted by the sight of Sam, the sweeper.

"When did you get out?" she asked. She hadn't meant to say anything, but the words were out before she could stop them.

"Hm?" said Sam.

"You were arrested. How'd you shake the charges?"

"Oh!" Sam laughed. The sound jarred the nerves, unsuited to the brutal ceremony they were carrying out. "The Centre legal team went to bat for me. Didn't even have to stay overnight in a cell. You saw the arrest?"

Miss Parker hummed in assent. She'd have to get a clear picture of the running assumptions at the Centre concerning her 'kidnapping', and fast. If they thought she'd been hog-tied in the cargo area of the helicopter when it had taken off in Philadelphia, the last thing she wanted to do was contradict that. Stay under the radar, Jarod had advised. And she planned to.

Fifteen floors, twenty… twenty-five.

"SL-25?" she read off the elevator display. She'd never been to SL-25 as far as she could remember.

"Home sweet home, Jarod," said Lyle. The elevator doors opened on a low-ceilinged hallway lined with holding cells. "Newly renovated, of course. As much fun as we had last time we went through this song and dance, I'm not interested in playing catch and release with you when you inevitably try to escape. No handy drain pipes or air vents this time."

Lyle did not appear to be embellishing. Most of the sub-levels below SL-20 tended to be damp and poorly-maintained, especially since Sydney had set off an explosive on SL-27. Sub-Level 25, on the other hand, looked state-of-the-art. Miss Parker could still smell the fresh paint and a top note of… what was it? It recalled to mind the acrid scent left behind when a car skids out, decorating the asphalt with a smear of black rubber. The group stopped at the second cell down on the right. Miss Parker had assumed the space behind would be devoted to living quarters for Jarod, but the reality was more depressing.

Behind the door was a vaulted area with a line of cushy chairs facing a wall of steel bars. This viewing area took up the lion's share of the room's total space.

Behind the bars was Jarod's new home. It was a near-featureless, bar-bound box of misery, an inch or two shorter than Jarod's full, standing height. A toilet, a bench, a bed lined with a thin cot. Miss Parker wouldn't have wished it on him even on her worst day, even at the peak of mid-pursuit myopia and Jarod-perpetrated torment.

The sweepers wrestled Jarod into the cell. He stumbled over the threshold and skidded to his knees. After pausing to take a few steadying breaths, he got to his feet. The top of his head grazed the ceiling bars, even with his neck bent at an uncomfortable angle. He looked at them all impassively, glance darting from face to face until it landed on Miss Parker's. She knew what he'd see there, how poorly she was hiding her distress. Jarod smiled. Miss Parker was embarrassed to realize he intended the smile as comfort. As if she were the one requiring comfort.

Would it have happened this way on another day, in another life, if Miss Parker had brought him back earlier? The first year gone, the second, would he have been dropped back into his old apartment instead? Pre-Lyle, would he have been allowed to stand on his own two feet on the elevator ride down? Could this have been mitigated?

"We'll come check up on you in a couple of days, Jarod," said Lyle. "You need some time to cool off before you get back to work."

And he turned on his heel, off to the exits. The sweepers followed close behind. Only Miss Parker remained. Quickly, before anyone could notice that she hadn't joined the group, she fired off a sequence of three signs. They were quick and casual; if someone pointed them out later on security footage, she'd be able to play it off that she'd simply been scratching an itch. She pointed at Jarod, chucked herself under the chin with her thumb, and made a small circle in the air with an up-thrust finger. She caught his eye to make sure he understood, then darted away to catch up with the others.

"You're not alone."


When she got off the elevator at the main level, Miss Parker was immediately accosted by Broots.

"Miss Parker!" he whisper-shouted. "I can't believe you're back! I mean, I can believe it, really, of course you'd get away."

"Broots," said Miss Parker. For once, she thought she might be as glad to see him as he was to see her. "Drop everything, we need to talk."

Broots nodded emphatically. "Dropped, absolutely! We could go to your office?"

"Not a chance, we're going outside, where there are fewer ears around." Miss Parker made for the stairs leading to Sydney's office. "We'll swing by Syd's, too, I have questions for him."

"Um," said Broots, intelligently. This brought Miss Parker up short.

"What is it," she demanded.

"Well," Broots began. He picked at the skin of his bottom lip, the way he did when he was especially nervous. "Sydney's disappeared."

"What?" It had never occurred to her to be frightened on Sydney's behalf. It was Sydney's job to be frightened on her behalf, hers and Jarod's. His voice mail message played back in her memory. Things have been… off-kilter since you left. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know," said Broots. He quailed under Miss Parker's thousand-watt glare. "I don't! He was working in his office as usual one day, and then the next he just wasn't around anymore. He's not even the only one who has disappeared, by the way. Seems like every day I hear from another person that some co-worker of theirs just didn't show up for work. It's weird. Things have been weird."

Miss Parker steered Broots by the elbow towards a side exit, speaking low.

"Did he mention anything to you before he disappeared, anything that might point to where he's gone? I got a voice mail from him a couple of days ago, something about Lyle trying to force him to be involved in… something. I'd have to listen to it again. What was he talking about?"

"Ah, the thing with that is, I don't know. He didn't tell me anything about that."

The two of them felt silent as they passed a knot of people going through the side exit in the opposite direction. Miss Parker shot Broots an incredulous look. That was two more I don't knows than was typical for Broots.

"He didn't say anything? Give me something, Broots, c'mon."

"I'd like to, Miss Parker, believe me I would. The problem is that Sydney and I, well, we haven't been talking as much since you left."

Miss Parker raised an eyebrow.

"Did he go and steal your three-hole puncher? Bastard."

"Ha. No, not quite," said Broots. "We had a small difference of opinion. It's a little embarrassing. Maybe more for Sydney than for me, no disrespect meant to him. He's a very intelligent, intuitive person, but we all have our blind spots."

"What the hell are you talking about, difference of opinion?"

Broots coloured.

"See, Sydney refused to believe that Jarod kidnapped you. It didn't matter what evidence was put in front of him, he couldn't believe that of Jarod. Even though he's kidnapped before — your own father, for example. It wouldn't be out of character for him to resort to kidnapping to keep his freedom."

"No, it wouldn't be out of character," Miss Parker agreed. Psychologically terrorizing someone without physically harming them was precisely Jarod's cup of tea when the situation called for it. She'd seen it on display up close on the plane ride out of Wisconsin. "But I hope you didn't put any money on it."

"Huh?"

"Jarod didn't kidnap me."

"You — what? You — I don't understand. It wasn't Jarod? You weren't with Jarod?" Broots stammered.

"No, moron," said Miss Parker. She felt almost cheerful; mildly bullying Broots was a comfortable instinct. "I was with Jarod. By choice."

Broots looked as though his entire world-view had been turned inside out.

"Why?" he got out finally, after devoting an appropriate amount of time to gaping.

Miss Parker shrugged.

"He said his mom had some information about my mother."

Of course, it had ended up being more than that. She'd gathered all the information she was ever going to from Margaret pretty early on. Why she'd stayed, why she'd left, and why she'd come crawling back… that was more complicated.

"Did you meet her?"

"Yep. Nice lady."

"Wow," said Broots, voice hushed. "I guess that makes sense, she was in that photo with your mother." He frowned. "So, Jarod agreed to let you meet his mom, when he knew you were going to take him in afterwards?"

Miss Parker stopped walking and considered Broots's artless expression, debating whether to let him in on the full picture of how and why she'd returned to the Centre with an unconscious Jarod in tow. She'd planned on it, but then there was that comment — we all have our blind spots. True. Broots had one too. Where Miss Parker had done her best to view Jarod as a job that needed doing, albeit a frustrating one, Broots viewed him as a threat. She suspected that at least on some level, Jarod scared him. And fair enough, she supposed. Jarod could be surprisingly intimidating when he wanted to be.

If it were Sydney, she wouldn't hesitate. That was funny, when she took a moment to think about it. Sydney and Broots were both equally loyal to her, that wasn't in question. Neither of them would turn her in to the Centre higher-ups if they knew what she was up to, sneaking around behind the backs of Raines and Lyle. No, the difference came back to Jarod again. Sydney, while he had a much lengthier history of bending the course of Jarod's life towards hurt, would nevertheless be much more likely to side with Jarod over the Centre. Broots, meanwhile, was more of a question mark. He seemed to be objectively aware that Jarod had been wronged by the Centre; at the same time, that cold fact didn't appear to sway Broots's heart in one direction or the other. Jarod was a concept more than a person, the way that victims of overseas calamities were to be pitied but were not, at the end of the day, personal. As she saw it, Broots was a fear-driven person, and between two bogeyman — Jarod and the Centre — he was more likely to be cowed by the one with the more impressive firepower.

"Something like that," she said.