Chapter 3 – Now You Don't.
"And just what did you think you were going to accomplish?" Sydney scolded Miss Parker, watching her pace back and forth in front of his desk at the back of the Sim Lab like a caged tigress. She'd landed in his lab almost the moment he'd come in to work, and already he'd had to drag her back to this more private venue and close the doors so she could vent without causing any more comment than the ever-present surveillance footage would generate. Her description of what had happened, coupled with his own vivid imagination regarding what COULD have happened had she not backed down, had brought the hairs up straight on the back of his neck – and he couldn't remain silent.
"I told you last night, I was going to get my sweeper back," she retorted in an exasperated tone – which Sydney decided was a big improvement over her furious yelling only a few moments earlier. Not that it improved his mood much…
"Damn it, Parker, you could have gotten yourself seriously hurt – or worse," he retorted back, his sharp tone finally catching her attention. "Sit down – you're giving ME a headache; and it's too damned early in the morning for that already," he pointed demandingly. He glared at her with lowered eyebrows over snapping chestnut eyes until she finally relented and slouched into the chair in front of his desk. "What the Hell did you think you were doing?" he continued in a much gentler, but still chiding tone. "You know better than to go up against Lyle and Willy at the same time without backup…"
"But Sam…"
"Is out of reach for the time being! You're going to have to accept that until we can figure a way around it!" Sydney's voice got sharper again as he began to feel like a teacher pounding a concept into a deliberately thick-headed student, and he waved his arm around for emphasis. "Going around challenging Lyle when he has Willy there to back him up isn't going to help us figure things out – and it could backfire and make things even more difficult if you end up in traction and out of the picture. For God's sake, Parker, use your brain for something besides holding your ears apart!"
Miss Parker blinked and stared at him, startled and impressed by the vehemence he'd put into his tirade. Very seldom was she given such a clear indication of his fondness for her nowadays, and even rarer were the times when he had ever genuinely attempted to chew her out effectively for anything. In fact, she couldn't remember a time when he'd acted so completely out of sorts with her – except when he'd felt a threat to either himself or someone he held very dear. He must be pretty upset on her behalf, she decided, for him to speak out so clearly – and the mere thought of that, and the idea that a threat to her safety was enough to make him sprout a backbone, was warming and calming. Still, there were appearances to maintain… "Whoa! Who put the Metamucil in your Wheaties today, Rocky?" she asked in a dismissive tone – but her expression and the lack of heat in her voice dulled the sharpness of the insult.
"Enough of the sarcasm – you know I'm right," he growled and shook his finger at her, not backing down in the slightest or letting her comment penetrate. "Who's going to try to figure out what happened to Sam if you're not around because Willy breaks enough bones to put you in the Renewal Wing again for weeks? Face it, neither Broots nor I have the clearance…"
"OK, OK!" She waved her hand between them. "You've made your point, Syd. It was stupid, and it was taking risks, but…" her grey eyes came up and snapped determinedly, "…I'm not sorry I did it. I saw Sam with my own eyes – at least I know he's OK – and now I KNOW something fishy's going on." She sat back in her chair with grim satisfaction. "And I know Lyle is up to his ass in whatever IS going on. For what it's worth, we have more to go on now than we did before I did this," she added, determined to justify her actions to him, even if just a little.
"The benefits weren't worth the risks." Sydney insisted forcefully and slowly as he scowled at her. If he weren't so fond of her, he realized, he could have easily throttled her for being so pig-headed.
"That's YOUR opinion," she muttered rebelliously, refusing obstinately to be brought to heel like some trained puppy, and then pointedly shrugged to concede the point in order to placate him. It was one thing to stand her ground, but having Sydney pissed at her for the rest of the entire day wouldn't exactly help HER mood any – not to mention she needed his help.
Sydney gave her a wary look and then relaxed back in his chair, finally ready to begin to process in his mind the evidence she'd brought to him. "But you say Sam didn't answer you?" he asked, steepling his fingers beneath his nose thoughtfully.
"Pretty hard to believe, considering how loudly I called to him," she answered dryly. "Especially since I only had to open my mouth twice to get Lyle and Willy on either side of me in no time flat, dragging me out." She paused and ran the scene back through her memory. "If I didn't know better, I'd say that he didn't even recognize that it was me calling him."
There was a timid knock on the door that could only come from one person. "Come on in, Broots – we're not killing each other, yet," Miss Parker called out in a frustrated tone.
"You're sure? It sounded like it from out there for a while," Broots responded, not entirely convinced yet. It wasn't often that he heard Sydney standing up to and arguing loudly with Miss Parker and getting away with it without somebody coming away bloody. He looked from one tight face to the other. "Anything new happen – or do I really NOT want to know?"
"Miss Parker, acting on a tip I gave her last night, went down to the gym this morning and found Sam – or someone who looks just like him – working out with Willy, with Lyle in attendance. She called to him and he never responded – although Lyle and Willy escorted her on a bee-line out of the gym, with a serious warning to stay away." Sydney explained the day's events in a dry tone that was eloquent with disapproval. "She's lucky she got out of there in one piece."
"Sam didn't answer you?" Broots was astonished. Miss Parker's personal sweeper had been the MOST responsive of the team members – NEVER failing to answer her call and do what she bid without the slightest question of conflicting loyalties or agendas. Sam's entire reason for working for the Centre had for years been protecting Miss Parker's flank; for him not to answer was completely out of character. "Are you SURE it was him?"
"Yes, I'm sure, you moron," Miss Parker answered in frustration. "Face it, he's a pretty big man to mistake for somebody else."
"Take a deep breath, Parker – I need you to remember what Lyle told you – precisely," Sydney told her calmly. "There has to be a clue in what he said."
"Well," she started, then paused when another firmer knock came on the door and Tim stuck his head through.
"Miss Parker?"
"Get out. Go to your corner and wait for me," she demanded, instantly irate again yet refusing to look at him. "You don't belong in here – and you've been told that a hundred times."
The deep, blue eyes didn't flicker, nor did the blonde head withdraw. "Mr. Raines would like to have a word with you," he announced in a flat tone. He didn't like her much more than she liked him – but Mr. Raines had told him to stick to her like glue and report back on anything he might hear. That duty also meant he had to pass along messages from the upper echelons from time to time, whether she wanted them or not – not to mention deal with the flack that came afterwards.
Storm-grey came up and looked at him, and Tim felt a chill run down his spine from his collar. It didn't do to test the patience of this one – he'd heard horror stories about what this willowy woman could do to a man, no matter how well-trained he was. "Fine," she said in a very soft, very cold, very dangerous tone. "You've delivered your message – and I'll go see the Vampire King when I'm damned good and ready to. Now either go over to your corner, like a good little sweeper, or get out and don't come back. The only reason you're still here is because I haven't had the time or patience to choose someone more qualified for the job – so either you do exactly what I tell you, or I'll MAKE the time to replace you. Capisce?"
Blue battled with grey, with neither giving an inch – and Sydney merely sat back and watched the exchange with interest for a change. Tim was a target for Miss Parker's ire in whom he had no vested interest in either egging her on or reining her in – and Parker needed to blow off steam safely. He neither liked nor trusted this new sweeper – and frankly, he thought Miss Parker was doing the whole team a disservice by NOT going down to the sweepers' office and choosing another man to fill Sam's temporarily empty shoes. A quick glance at Broots found the computer tech observing her with much the same attitude toward the newest member of the team, and the two of them exchanged a quick glance of understanding before turning back to the show.
"Look, Miss Parker, I work with you because Mr. Raines told me to," Tim said slowly and firmly, for the first time confirming that he wasn't HER choice for the job. "You can't…"
"I can do whatever I damned well feel like – including firing you for insubordination and just plain pissing me off," Miss Parker rose to her feet and walked over to face off with the rebellious sweeper. "As the head of SIS, I have both the authority to give you your walking papers as well as make it impossible for you to get another bodyguard job in the state of Delaware, AND I can choose my own sweeper from the ranks whenever I damned well feel like it, even if I DON'T fire your ass." She paused and thought. "Then again, I also have the authority to oblige you to meet me down in the gym for some re-qualifying trials – just to make sure that you're good enough to work with me. I don't have time for any sweeper-come-lately who can't fight his way out of a paper bag."
Tim's eyes widened slightly at the deliberate dare. "You don't think I'm good enough?"
Miss Parker's lips quirked in a cold and dismissive smile. "That's just it – I don't know whether you are or not. I haven't seen you do much of anything besides eavesdrop and poke your nose in where it isn't wanted – and any lily-livered, limp-wristed wimp can do that. Tell me, Tim," she stepped up to him, toe to toe, and looked him up and down with a scathing and penetrating glance that made his pale face blush a furious red, "do you think you're man enough to pass MY exam?"
The tall sweeper caught himself just before accepting the challenge in the heat of an overwhelming rush of testosterone, not to mention a bruised ego. It was common knowledge that Miss Parker had had a level of training in her youth that wasn't even attempted in the sweepers training program – as a matter of fact, she had been the one to train the men that had trained HIM. Her assignment to the top of the Safety and Internal Security Department had years ago resulted in a complete revamping of the training given to recruits just to qualify as a sweeper – and made the path to advancement within that department more difficult, strenuous and challenging than it had ever been. What was more, one of the most important parts of her job as the director of SIS was to personally train the top operatives for other corporations, foreign governments and government agencies so that they could go back to their employers and implement similarly stringent and demanding training. She was a dangerous, lethal, woman – one that a man would only get one chance to underestimate, a chance they with luck might survive.
The story in the sweepers' locker room was that nobody had ever bested her on the mat – ever – except for the one man whose name he was now forbidden to mention or even acknowledge: Sam. And Sam had bested her only because of his greater size, greater physical strength – and because somewhere in his back history, he'd received martial arts and self-defense training on a par with or even better than her own. Either way, messing with Miss Parker was a known recipe for disaster. One look into her face, into her eyes, told him that if he were stupid enough to accept her dare, at best he'd be spending a week or more in Renewal on top of being replaced as her sweeper – and he didn't want to consider what the worst-case scenario might be. Neither alternative, in retrospect, was anything to look forward to, nor would it be acceptable to his real boss. That left him only one choice…
"I think that you should consider heading to the Tower at your earliest convenience, ma'am," he responded in a very tight tone, his gaze not flinching even while his ego cringed on the inside. She'd probably interpret this statement as capitulation – evidence of weakness and cowardliness – but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.
The grey eyes flashed, and Miss Parker felt the knot in her stomach begin to unwind slightly. She'd suspected that the man wasn't ready to meet her on the mat – his backing down to insist on the meeting with Raines only confirmed Tim's lack of backbone, which in turn withered what little respect she had for him down to non-existent. Perhaps it WAS time to go down to the sweeper's office and sort through the recent recruits for a suitable temporary replacement for Sam. "I told you, I'll go to the Tower when I'm damned good and ready," she repeated slowly, as if to a child. "Now go sit in your corner while I talk to your boss." She stared at him hard. "NOW!" she barked sharply, making both Tim and the other two men in the room jump.
Seething but not in a position to do much about it, Tim took a deep breath, closed his eyes briefly, gave a quick nod of concession and withdrew his head from the door. Miss Parker pushed the door closed behind him sharply so it would slam audibly to reinforce the rejection.
"Man," Broots whispered, daring to take a breath again, "I thought for a moment you two were going to duke it out right here…"
"Parker," Sydney began in a cautioning voice at the same time. "What did I tell you…"
"Just think about what I told you before," she said over her shoulder, her hand reaching for the knob, "and I'll be right back. We'll finish this conversation then."
"Be careful," Sydney persisted again.
"Don't worry, Syd," she smiled coldly at him. "I know when to behave."
Sydney stared at the door after she'd left the office. "That's what I'm afraid of," he murmured to nobody in particular.
oOoOo
The last thing Miss Parker saw of the Tower lobby in front of the Chairman's office before the elevator door slid closed and the car began descending to the sublevels again was Willy's cold and triumphant grin.
She was seething – again – and her headache was coming back with a vengeance. Raines had had the audacity to repeat the demand that she quit bothering others about her alleged former sweeper named Sam, that she keep her nose out of sweeper training – despite that being a job that was specifically designated as hers alone – and most specifically, that she stay away from the gym early in the morning. To make matters worse, Lyle had been in the office along with a freshly showered and immaculately dressed Willy; and their superior attitudes and smirks hadn't helped her mood or simmering headache at all.
When the elevator coincidentally stopped at the floor where her office was to let on a very shy and thoroughly intimidated file clerk, Miss Parker abruptly disembarked and headed down the hallway to her office to commune with both the bottles of painkiller and antacid. No doubt Sydney would be in no mood to put up with much more of her spouting – and it was rapidly becoming apparent that "figuring out a way around things" wouldn't happen until the three of them had a chance to talk uninterrupted and unobserved.
She lifted the phone and dialed Sydney's office.
"This is Sydney…"
"Syd – get Broots and come up to my office."
"Miss Parker…"
"We need to confer on this latest clue to Jarod's whereabouts before he gets a chance to get away again." God, Sydney, she thought frantically, get the message – please!
There was a slight pause, and then the psychiatrist responded in a slightly more animated voice than before. "Very well. We'll be up momentarily."
She disconnected the call and began to count with her eyes closed. She knew better than most how long it would take a motivated Sydney to collect Broots and get him into the elevator, heading for above-ground climes. About the time she figured the elevator to be halfway to her floor, she rose to her feet and walked out of her office.
"Miss Parker…" Sydney was surprised to see her greet the elevator even as the door opened.
"This way," she said shortly and gestured for the two of them to follow her. There was one place she knew about on this floor – one place where the cameras didn't quite penetrate and the sensitive microphones were turned just enough away that conversations didn't get recorded well. "Keep it down," she warned with a finger at her lips.
"At least Raines didn't order YOU to Renewal," Broots whispered gratefully.
"No," she sighed, "but he did order me to keep away from sweepers in general, sweeper training programs in particular and the gymnasium to be specific." She looked at Sydney intently. "He's keeping me away from Sam deliberately. Why?"
"You were going to tell me what Lyle said – EVERYTHING he said – before we were interrupted," Sydney reminded her in a low voice.
Miss Parker closed her eyes and concentrated. "Other than the usual threats, there were just a couple of things that stood out. One was that he called Sam 'Jerry' and that he was training to be assigned to Raines' personal staff. The second was that any attempt to interfere would be dealt with severely."
"I told you that you were playing with fire," Sydney frowned at her worriedly.
"You say Lyle called him 'Jerry' now?" Broots, on the other hand, was thoughtful. "Do you happen to remember which trainer he was with?"
"Willy himself, moron," Miss Parker spat.
"Parker, cut it out – he's just trying to help," Sydney snapped at her in a quiet yet cutting tone. The attitude was getting very old and approaching disruptive now.
Amazingly, she took the rebuke and backed down immediately. "Sorry, Broots – I guess this whole thing has just got me wound up in knots."
Broots and Sydney exchanged another glance. Getting an apology from Miss Parker was only another sign that things were getting way out of hand. "What I meant was," the tech began again more carefully, "who ELSE was with Sam – coaching him, maybe?"
She thought, and then recognized the man who had been at first standing at the edge of the mat, and then had had Sam by the shoulder leading him away and talking to him to keep him from paying her any attention. "Hank. Hank Obermann. The top man in the sweeper training program – best we have, other than yours truly."
"I can always check his training schedule," Broots announced with a small smile – and that will give us a name to go with the time frame in which you saw Sam with him."
Sydney's brows rose appreciatively. "Good thinking, Broots!"
Miss Parker snapped her fingers and then jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "Get going – and drop me a note when you have anything. We don't discuss this at all in here anymore unless I know we're under the radar." Broots immediately scuttled away down the hallway toward the elevator again.
"Don't you think you're becoming a little paranoid?" Sydney gazed at her calmly.
"You tell me, Doctor Mengele – my bodyguard vanishes, only to reappear weeks later being called by another name, and I'm warned to stay away from him and anything remotely having to do with him. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean that someone isn't out to actually get me," she finished sarcastically. "Go play with your human bookends – or better still, keep playing with Jarod's books, if you're not done with them yet – I'll let you know if I hear anything from Broots."
Sydney sighed. It certainly looked like it was going to be another long day.
oOoOo
Broots gazed at the screen of his computer terminal with some trepidation. He'd known that sooner or later he'd trip over an internal security alarm, considering how tightly all the information about the sweepers had been suddenly locked down. Still, he'd managed to trace the schedule of Hank Obermann and determine that the person Miss Parker claimed to be Sam was being called "Jerry Silva" – and that he was currently being housed in the on-site sweeper dormitory on the far northern edge of the Centre property.
From that mote of information, he'd dug back into the Centre mainframe and found a very interesting set of obstacles that had taken the better part of the day to get around quietly before he'd made it into Jerry Silva's personnel file. From what little he knew of Sam's background, it certainly looked as if this Jerry Silva was cut from exactly the same cloth – same hometown, same basic training… Strangely, there was a project name listed at the top of each of the pages of personal information as well – Project Contingency. Broots had shaken his head in disbelief – none of the other personnel files he'd rifled through at Miss Parker's behest had ever had a project name so prominently attached to them.
That had made him even more curious, so he began to search on the keyword "contingency." Only one single document had come up after nearly an hour's worth of digging; and before it had encrypted itself and become illegible, Broots had only been able to make out a reference to "Formula 837A". Frowning, he typed in "Formula 837A" into the mainframe search criteria and hit enter. Immediately his terminal had frozen – with "Unauthorized Access Attempted" emblazoned prominently across the entire screen.
Genuinely frightened now, Broots skittered quickly out of his cubicle and down the hallway to the Sim Lab, where Sydney was once more leafing through the pile of books from Jarod's lair. "Syd," the tech whispered, grateful that Tim was nowhere in sight.
"Broots!" Sydney was glad for the interruption – the environmental law manual was incredibly dry reading. "What…"
"Listen. I've set off alarms somewhere with my digging, and I don't know what's going to happen now," the balding technician stammered quickly, "so you need to listen to me real fast. I found him - Sam is now listed under the name 'Jerry Silva' – and he has a project name on all his files: 'Contingency'. I brought it up – and the only thing I got before it encrypted itself was a reference to something called 'Formula 837A' – and trying to search on that locked up my entire terminal. 837A - ever heard of it?"
Sydney shook his head and gazed at his friend in concern. "No." He frowned. "But why didn't you use that old security password of Mr. Parker's that Miss Parker gave you a couple of years ago?"
Broots dropped his face. "I didn't think of it until it was too late," he admitted. "I just wanted to tell someone what I'd found before…" His face paled. "Syd, you don't think they'd disappear ME like they did Sam, would they?"
"I doubt it," Sydney replied. "For one thing, you have a family that would miss you – Sam didn't. For another, everything you accessed before that lock-out point had been of low enough security that anybody could have gotten to it – you only tripped over the one file, right?"
"Yeah, except for the encrypted one," Broots didn't sound so sure. "I suppose…"
Sydney rose and put his arm about the shoulders of the smaller, younger man. "Just go back to your station, reboot your terminal and continue on with whatever work you were doing originally. When or if somebody asks about it, tell them you typed in something by mistake while researching something for Miss Parker." He shrugged at Broots' startled stare. "It's always best to hide a lie within a truth, especially if there's no way to get around lying. It should be enough to get you off the hook."
"You're sure?" The technician badly wanted to be reassured.
"As certain as anyone can be about anything here at the Centre," Sydney replied dryly, earning himself a quick glare of frightened frustration. "Just hang in there and don't let them see you sweating. Nine chances out of ten, this will all blow over by quitting time."
"If you say so," Broots sighed heavily and shook Sydney's hand. "Thanks, Syd."
Sydney watched the younger man head slowly out of the Sim Lab and back in the direction of the Computer Services Lab, and then he turned and walked back to his office and closed the door – and locked it. He seated himself at his desk and booted his own terminal, then bent and reached into the depths of the bottom drawer of his desk in search of a small paper he'd hidden in the bottom of the drawer above it. Miss Parker knew nothing of this – even Broots didn't know he had this – and he'd never let either of them even suspect that he'd come into possession of it, much less what he'd done to get it. He'd never had an occasion to use Mr. Raines' current password until now – but from the sounds of the finds Broots had made, perhaps this was important enough.
The screen that appeared once he'd carefully typed in the password was considerably different from the one that he normally saw – and he held his breath as he punched in "Formula 837A" and hit the return key. Immediately, he was given a selection of documents to choose from – apparently progress reports dated from approximately three months earlier all the way back to mid-2001 – all of them authored by a Dr. Marjorie Morrison.
He opened his desk drawer, withdrew a floppy disk, and immediately copied the files to read later, when he'd have the time and the privacy to try to understand them – then reset to the search page and typed in Dr. Morrison's name and hit enter. There were four documents that rose to the top of the screen as the most recent dealing with her – the earliest an entrance report for her admission to the Renewal Wing after a car accident on the grounds had left her with a head injury. Next was a recommendation that she be moved to a facility off-site. Next was the assignment of her case to a Centre-related yet independent psychiatrist – with the final document transfer papers for Dr. Morrison's removal from the Renewal Wing to…
Sydney blinked. The Mount Pleasant Convalescent Home – THAT was where they sent her? He shuddered. It was a secured facility, and an old one – one that was remotely connected to the Centre, he was fairly sure, but one the Centre kept in nearly dilapidated condition. It lay in the midst of a thoroughly dreary part of the Virginia countryside where it rained more than almost anywhere else on earth, it had always seemed to him. Jacob – his twin, in a coma from a car accident – had lived… no, Jacob had EXISTED there for nearly twenty years, and he had faithfully come to visit every Christmastime.
He shuddered. Mount Pleasant was little more than a warehouse of damaged human goods – and while the on-site staff was talented and dedicated, he'd seen very few of the patients there over the years improve to the point of being released.
He followed the lead and brought up recent patient reports filed by a Dr. Han regarding Dr. Morrison's condition at Mount Pleasant – as well as enigmatic notes regarding continuing sedation and… lo and behold… yet another reference to Formula 837A. Evidently Dr. Morrison was receiving periodic and minute maintenance dosages of whatever that compound was during her convalescence.
The entire scenario was making him nervous. Sydney saved all of the files regarding Dr. Morrison and her tragedy to the floppy disk, put the floppy disk in his jacket pocket and then logged off the system. Carefully he filed his slip of paper with the high-security password on the underside of the desk drawer again and then closed and locked his desk. A glance at the clock and he was standing and stretching, with no intention whatsoever of going back to the pile of books on the table. It was quitting time for normal, working people – and tonight, he intended to go home and make himself a very strong drink to unwind.
He just had one last thing to do first.
oOoOo
It was odd that there was no lock on the lab that had been assigned to Dr. Morrison – it was as if whatever was inside was either not valuable enough to protect or bait for a trap. Sydney stood in the open doorway for a long moment, knowing himself to be nothing but a silhouette if a camera were actually active and trained on the door. His eyes swept the far wall of the room, checking nooks near the ceiling as well as crannies down amid bookshelves or file cabinets, but no glowing red lights indicated that the lab even had an active security system.
He peeked his head in, and still saw no sign of cameras, so walked in further.
The lab had the look of something abandoned in haste. There were test tubes and Bunsen burners still on the counters, where they'd been left when last there had been someone there working with them. In the dim light of the corridor, Sydney could see a dried residue in the bottom of one – and he reached for a rubber stopper for the vial and slipped it into his pocket, in case it held some clue to this mystery that seemed to get bigger and bigger the further they dug.
In the furthest corner of the lab stood the wooden desk – so much like the one that had been assigned to Jarod during the Pretender's final days in the Sim Lab – on which were piled a haphazard stack of spiral notebooks. Sydney flipped on the small reading lamp and opened the top notebook – and frowned. This looked like nothing he'd ever seen before – even the symbols were unfamiliar. Whatever Dr. Morrison's talent, she'd kept her hand-written notes encrypted.
Unsure whether this was a wise move or not, Sydney gathered all seven of the notebooks up and thrust them into his usually empty briefcase. Dr. Morrison wouldn't miss them now – and perhaps they could shed some light on what was going on. He turned off the light and, with a final glance around the lab, walked to the door. A quick look up and down the hall showed that he wouldn't be much noticed amid the stream of departing lab workers, and so he slipped into the crowd that was headed like lemmings for the elevator. With any luck, the corridor camera wouldn't have caught him at all…
oOoOo
Broots closed down his computer terminal and shut the machine off, glad that the day was finished. It had been a long and nerve-wracking day, waiting for the axe to fall for having had the temerity to attempt to call up information that was so tightly protected only to have the day pass relatively peacefully and serenely. Even Miss Parker had seemed subdued somehow – she'd stayed out of his hair and, for as far as he knew, had even let Sydney alone. That was fine with Broots, because with Miss Parker's absence had come Tim's absence – and that man made Broots extremely nervous.
Broots tossed on his sweatshirt and retrieved his bicycle helmet from the bottom drawer of his desk, whistling. Despite the stressful day, he was determined to enjoy the evening. It was, after all Debbie's birthday – and he had bought her a lovely pair of diamond earrings to commemorate her fifteenth year on earth. They were in a small box in the glove box of his car, from which he'd retrieve them as he took his soon to be grown-up daughter to a nice dinner.
He picked up the phone and dialed.
"Hello, Broots residence," Debbie answered.
"It's me, Sweet Pea," he said in a loving tone, smiling as if she were in front of him. "I'm on my way – so you be ready, OK?"
He could hear the delight and expectation in her voice. "OK. I'll be watching for you."
"See you soon."
He hung up the phone, walked calmly and slowly to the elevator and pressed the button.
oOoOo
Miss Parker raised her head from the newspaper she was finally getting a chance to read and looked at the clock as her telephone began to ring. It was almost seven-thirty – far too early for Jarod to be calling to disrupt her sleep. She leaned over and put her iced tea on the reading table next to the lamp and reached for the nearby receiver.
"Miss Parker?"
"Debbie?" She blinked in surprise. Broots' daughter wasn't in the habit of calling her this late in the evening, if ever. "What's the matter?"
"Did you see my Daddy tonight after work?"
She didn't need to think hard. Courtesy of Raines steering Security-minded clients in her direction for the greater part of the day, she hadn't seen the tech much at all after she sent him off to do his computer voodoo. "No – what's the problem?"
"He was supposed to come home and take me to dinner, but he never came home," Debbie told her father's boss with a very worried tone. 'He called me to say he was on his way – but I waited and I waited…"
"How long ago was that?" Miss Parker was sitting up straight. Sydney had told her of the strange conversation he'd had with a very spooked and rattled Broots the evening before – had it take this long for the Centre to decide what to do with meddlers?
"He called at five-fifteen."
Miss Parker was on her feet. "Put together an overnight bag, Debbie – I'm coming over to pick you up. Don't answer the door for anybody else. Turn off all the lights you can – make it look as if you're not there – understand?"
"I think so…" Debbie was sounding even more worried. "Is my father in trouble again, Miss Parker?"
"God, I hope not, Debbie," Miss Parker told her fervently, and then hung up the phone so she could reach for her purse.