"I brought coffee and donut holes!" crowed Broots, teetering into the conference room with his hands full of cardboard cup holders.

What remained of the QS-9300 field team was scattered around the conference table. Parker and Sydney sat together, while Jarod had chosen the chair closest to the door. He'd been dodging Parker's eye for the past ten minutes. She was tempted to guess the reason for this morning's antisocial tilt, but the task involved sorting through such a convoluted tangle of histories and happenstances, she quickly gave up. She wasn't here to sort out his mood swings for him. Maybe he was just hungover; he certainly looked tired enough for it.

"For you, Sydney, and this one's for you, Miss Parker," said Broots, setting down the cups in front of their respective owners. "Aaand Jarod — I wasn't sure how you would want your coffee, so I just got two creams, two sugars. Is that okay?"

"What?" said Jarod, seeming to come out of a reverie. He followed the sound of Broots's voice, then looked quickly away, like he'd been caught looking at something he shouldn't. Broots's face fell.

So it wasn't just Miss Parker's eye he was avoiding. Her emerging theory held that Jarod was nursing a grudge against her for the raid on his storage unit, or possibly for narcing on him about his route in and out of the Centre, or possibly both. Broots had played no part in either incident, though. It must be something else.

She shook her head to clear her mind. Fathoming the convolutions of Jarod's brain was an exercise in rainbow-chasing.

"I brought coffee," Broots repeated bravely. "And donut holes. Would you like some?"

Jarod's mouth split into a wide, pleased grin which didn't quite reach his eyes. Still, he didn't look at Broots.

"Thank you!" He bit into a chocolate donut hole. "Mm! This is very good."

Sydney frowned. "Are you alright?" he asked Jarod.

"I am now! I love donut holes."

Parker looked at him askance. "You sound like you're in an ad for Krispy Kreme." He's usually a better actor than this, she thought.

Brigitte pushed through the doors into the conference room, carrying matching file folders. This was de rigueur for the team now, a predictable routine on a (roughly) weekly schedule. The previous week, Jarod and Miss Parker had knocked out a quick job in Las Cruces, tracking down a white-collar informant in witness protection. Las Cruces had followed so quickly on the heels of the Tower attack that Brigitte had arrived with a briefing folder prepared for Lyle. She'd shredded the contents at the briefing meeting with a kind of half-sombre ceremony, their own private mourning ritual for their fallen coworker. This time, Brigitte had only brought four file folders. She passed them out on her way to the head of the table.

"We're still down a team member," she said, in lieu of greetings. "And unlike Las Cruces, this next mission was planned around the assumption that Mr. Lyle would be on hand. We're going to make lemonade from lemons, however, and use this as an opportunity to shake things up. Sydney, you will be staying at the home office again, no change there. But Broots, it's your turn to limber up your legs for some field work." Broots picked at his bottom lip between sips of coffee. "For those who are less than fond of all the hours-long plane flights on previous contracts — Spokane, Anchorage, Las Cruces, San Juan — you'll be pleased to hear that the latest contract is much closer to home." She switched on the overhead projector. "The Port of Baltimore."

If she expected fanfare, or even the least reaction, she got none.

"You'll find the details in your folders, but in short: a lot comes through the Port of Baltimore, some of it destined for the Centre. Goods on both sides of the law. Don't look so scandalized, Jarod, you've been with us since you were four, this can't be monumental news. Anyway, lately Customs has waylaid a fair chunk of our more… illicit cargo. This happens sometimes, and we often have ways around it. But! It should not be happening this frequently. We believe we have a mole. Based on the nature of the interference, this mole is most likely working at the port. Broots, before the three of you leave, I need you to put together a resume for Jarod as a Customs agent—"

"Longshoreman," Jarod interrupted.

"Jarod? Do you have a contribution for the class?" said Brigitte sweetly.

Jarod rolled his eyes. "Unless the mole is in Customs and Border Patrol, putting me in CBP is just giving them manpower. Putting me in among the longshoremen makes more sense."

"But the mole would report to Customs, wouldn't they?" asked Sydney, leaning forward.

Patterns often come in threes. After avoiding meeting Parker's eye, then avoiding meeting Broots's eye, here again Jarod glanced at Sydney, then looked away as if struck. This time, Parker thought she glimpsed a flash of fear throwing shadows across his face.

"Very likely, but CBP will have protocol and redundancies and red tape all bent on protecting the mole's identity, if there is one," said Jarod. He addressed his analysis to the edge of the table in front of him, rather than looking at Sydney. "The longshoremen, on the other hand, may not even know someone is tattling on you guys to Customs. They have no reason to be loyal to a rat, especially one they don't know about."

"Tattling on us," Brigitte reminded him. "You're an employee of the Centre, too."

"Employees don't get kidnapped into employment," Jarod snapped. "If I'm an employee, nobody told your payroll department."

"Your new car not working out for you? I could always take it back. I heard its doppelgänger already got repossessed by our material asset department."

Now, Brigitte — Brigitte, he could look in the eye. He did so then, a searing resentment beamed across the room. Brigitte frowned.

"Your eyes are pink," she said.

Jarod started.

"What?" he said.

"They're pink," she said again, impatient. "They're not supposed to have gone pink yet. We're supposed to have another twelve hours until you show initial symptoms. Did you take your last shot early?"

Jarod cast around for the closest reflective surface, only managing to get his hands on a spoon. He held the concave side to his eye and peered into it.

"I said, did you take your last—"

"No!" barked Jarod. Broots jumped, startled. Jarod took a deep breath. "No. I took it on time. Miss Parker can vouch for that."

She could. The shot had been timed to the minute. Why would he be showing signs early?

"Go see Cox," said Brigitte. "I need you clear-headed for the planning stages, if we're going with longshoreman instead of Customs agent. Dammit. I don't know a thing about longshoremen. Well, go on…!"

Jarod slipped out, keeping his head low. He left an odd vacuum behind, a bubbling silence that no one seemed eager to fill.

Sydney cleared his throat. "Do we know anything about this mole?"

"Not a lot," said Brigitte. She settled into a chair, her eyes never leaving the door. "Preliminary investigations suggest it's someone who has a chip on their shoulder about the Centre, since virtually no other shipments have been reported, legal or illegal, since this started. For a while, Raines was at the top of our suspect list, but the Triumvirate assures us he isn't involved."

"Doesn't mean he isn't," said Parker. "They've been in his corner since before this project started. They've got their heads up their asses about his involvement in the Tower bombing, too." She paused, remembering. "Lyle — before Lyle went up to the Tower for the last time, he said he was going to check into how long Willie had been on the premises, and what he was doing. I wonder if he got the chance."

Brigitte's expression became urgent and pointed. "Willie? What are you talking about?"

"He was at headquarters on the morning of the bombing, Lyle chased him out the front doors."

"Why am I only hearing about this now? You couldn't tell us at the interrogation?"

Parker gave her a withering look. "There was a lot going on. I'm telling you now."

"Hm." Brigitte was silent for a long moment, appearing to file the news in its appropriate folder. She jotted a note on a handy scrap of paper and brightened. "Thank you, Miss Parker. That should help immensely. This mole, though — on that count, I agree with the Triumvirate that Raines is likely not involved. No, this smacks of some disgruntled ex-employee or someone else with a grudge against us."

"… And you're putting Jarod up to catch this guy?"

"Yes? And?"

Sydney and Miss Parker shared a look.

"I'm sure Jarod would love to see the Centre crippled by legal trouble," said Sydney. "He understands the project parameters better now, but you can still expect delays, incomplete information, maybe even Jarod colluding with the mole."

"Like paying a construction firm by the hour," said Parker.

Brigitte nodded. "Fair point. You'll just have to keep a closer eye on Jarod this time, Miss Parker. A closer eye and a shorter leash."

Jarod returned twenty minutes later. He closed the door behind him quietly, staring into the middle distance like a condemned man.

"Well?" said Brigitte. "Everything peachy?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

"Great!"

The briefing picked up where it left off, with some brainstorming about how to drop Jarod into a longshoreman team without making ripples.

When the meeting wrapped up, Parker tugged Jarod aside by the crook of his arm.

"What did Cox say?" she asked.

Jarod looked down at her hand on his arm. He tensed under her fingers.

"Nothing. He gave me a shot. It's fine." So saying, he tried to move off towards the door.

"Bullshit. You're not as good an actor as you think you are, Jarod. Not when it counts. What did he say?"

Jarod pressed his lips together.

"He doesn't know why the signs started to appear early. He had a theory that it could have to do with stress. Guess I should think about taking up yoga."

It had the wording of a joke, but he didn't smile.

"What about stress?" Parker pressed.

"He thinks increased stress could stimulate increased quicksilver production."

Parker almost growled. "And you didn't think I needed to know that, because…? Part of my job is keeping you away from the edge in the field, I need to know if we need to start booking regular shiatsu massages between assignments."

"It's just a theory. A theory I'm skeptical of. It's not as if this project has been a tropical vacation up until now. If stress were a factor, I don't see why it would only have an effect now."

Privately, Parker hoped he was right, and that Cox was making wild guesses. If not, she'd have a hell of a time keeping Jarod safe and sane. Making Project Quicksilver a stress-free work environment with job satisfaction and good work-life balance was a tall order.

"Jarod called a meeting."

Broots looked up from his computer. "What, now?"

Broots's hotel room was kitted out with a pared-down version of his usual setup. Parker had commissioned two cleaners to help move it all. They'd earned a few amused glances, piling the monitor, tower, and every assorted doodad onto a luggage cart and wheeling it into an elevator.

They were two days into the job. Parker wouldn't admit it to him with a gun pressed to her head, but Broots was in some ways much more bearable company than Sydney, especially in the mood Parker was in. In the past two days, Broots had attempted to shrink her head a grand total of zero times.

"Yeah, now. Problem?"

Broots looked around at his workstation, collected around him like a bird's nest. "No, no problem. I can finish this later, there's plenty of time. Where—?"

"You can finish it now, actually. I'm going to the meeting. You're staying put."

"Oh." He appeared to deflate. "You know, I'm starting to wonder why Brigitte wanted me on this. I… to be honest, I was looking forward to being out in the field again. But if you don't need me there—"

His voice wheedled at the end, a clumsy attempt at passive aggression. Parker ignored the fumble and buttoned up her coat.

"We probably don't, you're right, but this was Jarod's call. He requested a one-on-one."

Broots blinked.

"He didn't want me there?"

Parker wheeled on him. "Oh, for the love of — what's the matter with you? I thought you'd cast Jarod as the bogeyman in the closet. You said he could snap and break our necks with his bare hands! And now you're sad you didn't get an invitation to his birthday party?"

Broots was a man ripped in two.

"I don't know," he said in a small voice.

"Well, figure it out. And hold down the fort, I'll be back after lunch."

"I need a shot."

"No, you do not."

Parker had picked the meeting time while Jarod had picked the place, which was why they were now wandering around the exhibits of the Baltimore Museum of Industry, pausing every so often for Jarod to examine some rusted bit of mechanical something-or-other.

"You're not listening to me," said Jarod urgently. "I need one. This was the deal, right? I work for the Centre, you keep me away from quicksilver saturation."

"And you're not listening to me. The last shot you got is doing its job, it's only two days old. You show me symptoms, I'll look into getting a shot early, but I'm not seeing any. Look at me?" He did, though when their eyes met, there was that same reluctant tug she'd seen ever since their mission briefing — he didn't want to look at her. She ignored this and focused on her cursory examination of his eyes. Brown iris on white sclera, as expected. "Your eyes look fine. You start seeing red, we can talk. Did you call this meeting just to beg for a fix? Wouldn't have figured you for a junkie, Jarod."

A nearby tourist glanced over with an expression of alarm. Jarod grimaced.

"I don't always get the same symptoms first. Sometimes it's the headaches. This time…"

"What?"

He shook his head. "You should have seen me this morning. I almost bit Kalakos's head off."

"You want an early dose because you were snippy with a coworker? Because you woke up on the wrong side of the bed? If I downed a shot of an expensive, extremely perishable blue goo every time I woke up tired and irritable, I'd have drained the Centre's coffers by now. Hell, I'd have had one this morning, thanks to my neighbour waking me up at the crack of two AM, yelling gibberish."

Parker hadn't intended to say anything about the unusually early wake-up calls over the past two mornings. It wasn't Jarod's fault there was an agricultural research symposium in town for the week, making high-end hotel accommodation pretty thin on the ground. It wasn't his fault that the Centre had booked them adjacent rooms (400, 402 and 404 this time), or that the walls between his room and hers were pretty damn thin. It wasn't even his fault that he was — to all appearances — having nightmares. If she blamed him for that last, she'd be a hypocrite, as she was still being treated to semi-nightly showings of his death on her porch in technicolour and surround sound.

She didn't need it to be his fault to be ticked at him about it.

Jarod coloured and looked away.

"I didn't know you heard that. Sorry."

"Well, I did. Both times. You need to calm the hell down or you really will need a shot early." She relented. "How's the grift going?"

Jarod crammed his hands into his jeans pockets. "I've had smoother introductions. Rockier ones, too, though not many. I've never embarked on a Pretend before where I was expected."

"Expected? What do you mean?"

"They knew someone was coming from the Centre. They don't know for certain it's me, but they've been waiting for someone, and the new guy is always going to look the most suspicious. Most have been at least superficially welcoming, but a couple got into my face from day one. Kalakos… I don't think he'll be happy until he gets a fistfight from me. He might get it, too."

"Why would they be expecting someone from the Centre?"

"Sounds like I'm not the first inside guy the Centre sent in, only the most recent. The last guy was found out within a week."

"That — I'm gonna wring Brigitte's neck when I next see her. There was nothing in my file about this being sloppy seconds."

A teacher escorting a class of twelve-year-olds through the oyster cannery exhibit glared at Parker as the group passed. A few of the twelve-year-olds giggled, and Parker overheard one of the girls stage-whisper to another the finer semantic subtleties of sloppy seconds.

"Nothing in mine, either," said Jarod. "I've cleared a few dock workers of being the mole, but it's slow going. It won't ramp up until there's a new new guy at the port. Although — a reporter came poking around yesterday, dropping hints about the recent Customs and Border Patrol raids. She might have an idea."

A reporter? Parker had little doubt that Jarod knew how to talk to a reporter. If memory served, he'd Pretended as one before. Nevertheless, the thought of getting a reporter involved made her bum leg itch.

"Leave her be for now. You need a new new guy, right? I'll look into it." Her fingers groped for an absent cigarette. "You should have seen Broots's face when I told him he wasn't invited today. Ever seen a grown man pout before? I can't say I recommend it."

"He wanted to come?" Jarod seemed surprised.

"I wouldn't say that, but I think he wanted to have the option. Poor guy thinks you hate him."

"I don't! I just—" He didn't have an end to the sentence prepared. "I don't." A wry smile lifted his mouth at one corner. "Maybe I should have called the meeting with him instead. He has a much healthier caution about my Hyde counterpart than you do. He'd get me all the extra shots I could dream of."

Parker snorted. "Which is why I'm in charge, and not him."

Parker wore earplugs to sleep that night, so Jarod wouldn't wake her up again. The real, flesh-and-blood Jarod let her sleep. The Jarod lying dead on her dream-porch didn't; he woke her up in the wee hours of the morning and left her staring at the ceiling in frustration. Unable to go back to sleep, she got up and made a couple of unabashedly rude phone calls. Her goal: to investigate Jarod's precursor in the role of the Centre's Port of Baltimore informant.

Before the glow of the sun reached the horizon, she'd found her man. He was from the generously-named Department of Intelligence, and he'd stuck out like the only crayon in a box of markers when dropped off at the marine terminal with his spoofed resume and people-pleasing attitude. As far as she could tell, the guy wasn't a Pretender. He was also a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet.

An idea blossomed.

The next day, the Port of Baltimore greeted its second new longshoreman in a week. He arrived in the morning, two hours late for a normal shift. His eyes jumped around nervously, and he fairly swam in his too-big safety vest. He answered to the name of "Broots".

Over the lunch hour, the port received yet another new arrival: a visiting investor who introduced herself as "Miss… Devereaux". Note the conspicuous pause.

"You're very welcome, of course," said Aart, the foreman for Seagirt Marine Terminal Berth 3 and, consequently, Broots's new boss. "But it's not as if we have an organized tour. You know, there's the berth. There're the gantry cranes. There's all the damn storage, looking like a Lego yard n' everything. What is there to see? Not a lot."

Miss… Devereaux (née Parker) gave the foreman a charitable smile.

"I'm not looking for a tour. I just want to make sure my, hm, my cousin is making himself at home. This new job means a lot to him."

Was she laying it on a little thick? Maybe. But then, she couldn't rely on the cultural literacy of this crew to pick up on the idea that maybe, just perhaps, they had reason to be suspicious of another new hire. Broots would do most of the heavy lifting himself on that front, in that he would do none of the literal heavy lifting. Unlike Jarod, he couldn't become an overnight expert at wielding heavy machinery to move cargo onto and off of ships. He had orders to dance around actually performing any duties for as long as he was there. At the present moment, he was sitting in the cafeteria, filling out his income tax forms with sloth-like deliberation.

Parker looked out the second-storey window and spotted Jarod walking across the yard to the only covered building on the terminal, flanked by two other men. One, an olive-skinned man with a tremendous moustache, prodded Jarod's shoulder with a vehement, out-thrust finger every few paces. The other, a bald man with a crooked nose and long eyelashes, was taciturn and unflappable, paying no attention to the finger-pointer. The three of them spilled through the cafeteria doors minutes later, carrying on a bitter argument.

"—can't prove you're not. I don't like narcs, no matter who they report to."

"No, I can't prove that," said Jarod calmly. He wore a cable-knit sweater under his safety vest, the better to stay warm in this early December cold snap. "Nobody can prove a negative, Kalakos."

"The fuck does that mean? Sounds like something you'd say when you're out of an argument. What's this?"

Kalakos had spotted Broots. In the same time, Jarod had spotted both Broots and Miss Parker, hesitated a half-step, then rolled with it. He took off his helmet and wiped his brow.

"You new?" he asked Broots.

Broots straightened in his chair like he'd been touched with a live wire.

"Uh," he said.

"He is!" said Parker. "This is Broots, my… cousin. He'll be helping you gents soon. Right now he's just learning the ropes, but he's a fast learner."

The quieter longshoreman on Jarod's other side finally spoke up.

"Lady, aren't you the—"

Kalakos leaned over and nudged him in the ribs.

"Learning the…" Jarod's nose wrinkled in clear contempt. "Wow. If I'd known you could jump over proper credentials and actual experience by having a well-connected cousin, I'd have hunted through my family tree instead of learning how to operate a crane." He twitched the edge of his knitted cap in a parody of a hat tip. "No disrespect meant, ma'am."

Parker had to fight down a smile. She'd rarely had the opportunity to pseudo-Pretend opposite Jarod, and when she had — in Spokane and fleetingly in Anchorage — the character he became was not too far off the Jarod she knew. Longshoreman Jarod, on the other hand, was a different species altogether. The slight Baltimore accent, the complete lack of restlessness in his body language, even the cast to his eyes was different, like his eyelids were heavier. There was a rangy quality about him that made her want to touch.

"I suspect disrespect was meant, but I'll let it go, I'm in a good mood," said Parker.

"My lucky day," Jarod deadpanned, and moved off towards a wall of lockers without granting Broots any further acknowledgement. Jarod's two coworkers followed on his heels; Kalakos looked a little sheepish, glancing between Broots and Jarod every few seconds as he trotted to keep up.

"How long do I have to do this?" asked Broots quietly, once the longshoremen had passed out of earshot. "I've looked at the different expected duties — I might pull off being a mediocre spotter or checker, but I'm not a Pretender. They're going to notice I don't have experience."

"That's the whole point," said Parker through gritted teeth. She didn't bother to hide that she and Broots were having a private conversation, as any signs of collusion between them would lend to the message they were sending. "The workers here associate being a Centre plant with being bad at the job. Jarod is… Jarod, so he's good at the job, but they don't have an alternative scapegoat. Enter you."

"So I stick around until they team up and toss me out?"

"Not necessary. If you quit once you get a couple of accusations of being a plant, they'll assume they scared you off."

Broots relaxed a little.

"I… I guess that's alright."

She chucked him under the chin. "Buck up, Broots, you've got the easiest job in the world: be purposefully bad at a job you're not qualified to do. Like an anti-Pretender."

Across the hall, Broots's introduction appeared to be having its intended effect already. Kalakos was watching the anti-Pretender with unconcealed suspicion, allowing a gob of mustard to fall unheeded from his sandwich onto his jeans. He hailed Jarod's attention with a jerk of the chin and appeared to consult him, sotto voce, about the cut of Broots's jib.

The door to the hall swung open once more and a young woman, perhaps in her late twenties, walked in. She had dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and her winter clothes — more university student than dockworker — advertised that she was not at home at the Port of Baltimore. The woman spotted Parker and beelined straight for her.

"I'm looking to speak with someone about the recent legal trouble that Berth Three has been involved in," she said, without greeting or introduction. She pulled a black device about the size of her palm from the pocket of her coat. "Do either of you know anything about that?"

"Legal trouble?" said Parker. "Who says there's been legal trouble — and what is that?"

The woman brandished the device.

"It's a tape recorder. Do you mind if I put this on record?"

"I do, yeah." So this was the reporter Jarod had mentioned. "Who told you about this legal trouble, Miss…?"

Reluctantly, the reporter slid the recorder back into her pocket. Before it vanished, Parker thought she heard the tiny snick-click of a finger depressing the play button.

"Emily," said the woman. "I'm Emily. So about—"

"Emily what?" There was something about the woman's face. It was uncannily familiar.

A flicker of annoyance passed across Emily's brow.

"Emily… Woodward."

Parker almost snorted. Even Jarod was better at generating surnames.

"Any relation?"

"No."

"Well, Miss Woodward, I have somewhere to be. Feel free to pester this man here, though. He knows even less than I do."

Broots looked up from his W-4 in alarm.

"Hang on, no, what?"

Both women looked at him expectantly. The journalist's hand was in her pocket, fidgeting with the stop button on her recorder.

"Uh," said Broots. "She's right, I know very little."

Emily grinned. "That's alright, I'll take anything."

Parker waited for her teammates' return in the dingy hotel lounge. The Centre had skimped on the accommodations again — the entire ground floor smelled of chlorine and scrambled eggs. She read the newspaper while she waited. Apparently, in addition to the agricultural research symposium that was taking place this week, there was also some nerd convention getting underway the next day. Fascinating stuff. She didn't take in much, and found herself summoning to mind the face of the reporter from the terminal cafeteria once more.

It was a familiar face, but in a particular sort of way. She didn't think she'd ever seen the face talking and laughing and moving on a regular basis. "Emily Woodward" wasn't from school, and she wasn't some background Centre employee. Parker had seen the face before, possibly many times, but in a picture.

She picked up her phone and dialled Sydney's office.

"Miss Parker, good evening. You've caught me just as I'm about to go out the door, is this a quick question?"

"No. Settle in. I need you to fax me something."

An hour later, Broots and Jarod trudged through the automatic doors into the hotel lobby. Both looked exhausted, but then, Jarod had looked chronically tired since the beginning of the assignment. Parker put down her paper.

"Tell me you didn't leave work together," she said, by way of hello. "Because that would defeat the entire point of putting Broots in the game."

"Of course not! We met outside," grumbled Broots, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. He looked like he might keel over at any second. "Anyway, I think it worked. They recognized you, Miss Parker, as Centre staff. Then, of course, they connected you with me, and now they hate me. Now we just have to hope they don't hate me so much that they snap and throw me in the Patapsco. I haven't unclenched all day."

"Gross. Before you go upstairs and unclench to your heart's content — Brigitte called while the two of you were on the job. Apparently, this place is overbooked, and we have to shuffle rooms after tonight. From three double rooms to one double room and a single. We kept room 402 and picked up a room on the second floor."

Broots's face flushed. "So… two of us are doubling up?" There was a hopeful edge to his voice, which Parker could only assume was not a reaction to the idea of him and Jarod sharing a room. Broots had gained some wobbly form of comfort with the notion of working alongside Jarod, but not so much that he would perk up like that at the thought of a multi-night sleepover with their favourite gland-infected asset.

"Yeah. As for who's shacking up with who, Brigitte took the decision out of our hands. Apparently, Broots did such a fantastic job pulling Jarod's weight today, he gets a sticker. And a single room to himself."

It was difficult to judge who looked more dismayed, Broots or Jarod. As for Parker, she'd made her peace, made all the more possible through her purchase of a twelve-pack of industrial-strength earplugs. Jarod tended to get in late from the port. If she feigned sleep when he got back to the hotel, she might cut the awkward close-quarters interaction down to mere minutes. Seconds, even. She'd endured worse.

"Oh, that's alright, I didn't really do anything," said Broots, with a self-deprecating wave of the hand. "I just, y'know. I filled out forms, mostly. I did some pointing, so they would put boxes in the right spot. Jarod — Jarod operated a crane!"

Parker rose to her feet.

"And we're all very impressed with you both. A team has already been commissioned to move your tech suite to the second floor, I'm not calling them back at this hour. Get a grip and go brush your teeth, you have work in the morning."

Broots slunk off, throwing a look of betrayal back at Jarod. Jarod stayed rooted to the spot. Parker raised an eyebrow.

"Can I help you?"

"This is a bad idea," he said. His voice was wracked with dread. Parker was unimpressed.

"What, the shared room? It's not a big deal, Jarod." She refolded the newspaper and turned to go, but Jarod caught her by the arm. He let go immediately, as if scalded.

"I need a room to myself," he insisted.

"Why?" She moved in close, pinning him down with her eyes alone. "What, do you sleep in the buff? Are you especially flatulent? Are you secretly a werewolf? What?"

"I—" Jarod looked around, clearly aware of their potential audience. He jerked his head in the direction of the breakfast buffet room, which would be dark and untouched until tomorrow morning. With a roll of her eyes, Parker followed him into the shadows.

"Enough with the cloak and dagger," she snapped, once they'd found privacy. "Why are you so wound up? Cox said—"

"This has nothing to do with Cox's theory. I need my own room because… I'm worried about the gland. I haven't had the time to sit down and do any testing since the briefing, but there's something wrong. It's worth being careful. What would you do if I reached quicksilver saturation in the middle of the night?"

"That won't happen. Your next shot is tomorrow, before we shack up. You'll be the furthest you can possibly be from good ol' Red Eyes."

"But if something has gone wrong—"

"What makes you think there's something wrong? You seem fine, just tired. How do you know?" Parker pushed.

Jarod's mouth opened and closed.

"The thing's in my head. I can feel it, it's like I said — when you're home in bed and you hear someone come up to the door but they don't knock. Except now, now it's knocking. I… I've been having these nightmares. Every night for over a week."

"I'm aware. I got earplugs." She spread her arms. "I get nightmares, too, Jarod. They're just nightmares."

"I keep…" He forced the words out. "I keep killing you."

In fairness, this revelation was enough to strike her dumb. At least for a beat or two. Then she recovered and squinted blandly back at him like he'd reported nothing more significant than the weather forecast.

"Like I said. Just a nightmare."

"Not just you." He was back to avoiding her eyes. "Sometimes it's Sydney… once, it was Broots."

"Don't tell him that."

"Oh, I won't," he said, with a sad little not-laugh that drained from his face almost immediately. "It's every single night, and it's so real. It feels exactly like hitting the saturation point. And then…" He stared at her, his focal point flitting around like he was watching it play out in front of him. Was she grateful that he spared her the details, or just annoyed, she wasn't sure. Strangulation, maybe? Stabbing? "There's this intent. Like it's telling me what it has planned the next time it gets out. And then when I wake up… for long, horrible minutes I think you're dead. You're dead and I killed you."

His voice shook, pleading with her to be as terrified as he was.

She wasn't. His subconscious didn't want her dead any more than hers wanted him dead, they were both just throwing up new fears for the sleeping brain to chew on. Ironically, if Cox was right and stress messed with the gland, this terror of killing Miss Parker was driving a self-fulfilling prophecy, if only the part about premature madness. The more he agonized over these nightmares, the sooner he'd need another shot.

She folded his hands in hers, felt his panic vibrating through him into her. Little by little, his hands stopped trembling.

"You're not going to kill me," she said, firm and inarguable. "You're not going to kill Sydney or Broots, either. I won't let you."

Jarod shook his head helplessly. "How could you stop me? No offence, but you weren't even the one to catch me."

"No offence to ol' Red Eyes, either, but he's not nearly as wily as you are. He's a little more blunt force and a lot more predictable." She pulled her secondary weapon from its concealed holster. "Also, I have this. I've been carrying around tranqs ever since the assignment in Spokane. You go berserk, I drop you with one of these in seconds."

The way Jarod looked at the tranq was more than a little unnerving, like it was some divine relic.

"That's good. You could keep that beside your bed, or — someplace I don't know about, don't tell me. I can't know about it, I remember everything once I've gone red-eyed."

"I'm not gonna start disaster planning with you, this thing is just in case of an emergency. You won't have the chance to hit saturation. You're getting a shot tomorrow, and we'll be back in Delaware in plenty of time to get our Christmas shopping done."

One last protest: "It always happens in the hotel room."

Parker blinked.

"Always? You dreamed of this hotel before we got here? You said this has been happening for over a week."

He backpedalled. "No, just since we arrived. I'm not dreaming the future."

"Well, there you go. Your brain is using a familiar setting, the same place you wake up each morning, and showing you something you're scared of."

The thing he's most scared of, she realized, though she didn't voice the thought aloud. The Centre higher-ups were all concerned that Miss Parker was getting too attached to Jarod; meanwhile, Jarod's subconscious was busy embodying his worst fears by showing him, again and again, the death of the woman who'd chased him all over the continent. Who was attached to whom, again?

Jarod was nodding to himself. "Okay. I still think it's not worth the risk, but maybe that's the quicksilver talking. Never thought I'd be looking forward to a shot of counteragent. Never thought I'd be looking forward to getting back to Delaware, either."

They said their goodnights at the doors to rooms 402 and 404. Some time later, the ring of the fax machine interrupted Parker part-way through changing into her pyjamas. As requested, Sydney had faxed all the pictures from Jarod's file, with brief labels on each. After she brushed her teeth, she curled up in bed with the faxed pages and set about leafing through them. She stopped on the eighth picture of thirty-two.

The picture was of a brunette with a heart-shaped face. She looked younger than how she'd looked at the port terminal, but then, that was an immutable fact of photographs. Sydney had scribbled in the bottom right corner:

EMILY
JAROD'S SISTER
09/19/69 -
WHEREABOUTS UNACCOUNTED FOR

It wasn't a surprise. As she read the words, she expected each one she encountered. Still, it introduced a new tangle. Jarod would want to know, that was certain. Just as certain: the Centre would not want him to know, for the sake of keeping Jarod isolated and for the sake of this assignment in particular — this couldn't be a coincidence, her turning up like this. No way Jarod's sister had just happened to choose to investigate the ship berth used by the same organization that'd kidnapped both her brothers.

Once again, circumstance had sandwiched Parker between her loyalties to the Centre and this whatever-it-was with Jarod. Choosing between them was less of a quandary than it might have been this time last year, however. The Centre had burned her too many times since then. New, evolving worries had sprung up to fill in the gaps. What would happen to Emily if (when) the Centre found out she was in contact with Jarod? What would happen to Jarod?

She fell asleep accidentally, not noticing when her eyelids sagged mid-thought. At 2 am she jerked awake and, expecting muffled shouts from the neighbouring room, she lay there in silence for long minutes, straining her ears. Nothing came. She fell asleep once more and didn't wake again until sunrise.