Three days later, here she was, back on Jarod's front porch again.

One definite perk to this new arrangement was the paid time off. Technically, Parker was always on-call during work hours, should an emergency arise only she was qualified to quash. But this was a far cry from the gruelling work hours attached to the pursuit of Jarod. In those days, if she wasn't actively tracking down the next Pretend or poring over some obnoxious clue he'd left behind, it was time wasted. Every second she slacked off, he was farther ahead, she farther behind.

Now, there was a novel concept before her: time off. Ostensibly, time off to see friends and live a little; in actuality, time off to stew and regret ever agreeing to return to headquarters back in '96, when her life had gone down the crapper.

Though she'd been off work for the last two days, she'd made the drive in anyway on one day out of the two. It should have been worth it to gain Sydney's ear, which was always receptive to her kvetching. Sydney had been preoccupied, however, too worried over this new project. So much could go wrong, Sydney said. Parker couldn't fault his pessimistic analysis. In the intervening days, she'd done little but wait in a persistent state of low-grade dread — would today be the day, or the next? Would today be the start of their first mission as a team?

Then, that morning, the call came in.

"I'll come around Sydney's office at half-past eight," Brigitte had said. "Plenty of time for you to swing by Jarod's, assuming you're still carpooling."

Carpooling with Jarod. The thought was ridiculous, but it was the reality of the situation. Until he bought a car, she was his ride to headquarters.

Which is what brought her to his front porch, bright and early on a Friday morning. The neighbourhood was sleepy and still. Nearby, a mourning dove cooed insistently. Parker rapped at the screen door, the sound tinny and hollow. No answer.

She opened the screen door and rapped on the wooden door within. No answer. For a beat, no sound came from within. She strained her ears, and caught something — a short, cut-off grunt, the slide of something moving against the floor, and (so soft she couldn't be sure it wasn't the wind) a dry wheeze of a laugh. Parker turned her fist so that the flat of it rested on the wood and thumped at the door, one, two, three.

"Jarod!" she bellowed. It wouldn't win her any fans among the neighbours, but if it got her in the door, it'd be worth it.

Finally, her ear caught the sound of approaching footsteps, and Jarod swung open the door.

At first, she thought he must have been asleep when she knocked. He blinked and squinted at her, a convincing impression of a man still adjusting to the pale morning light. His hair was making shadow puppet shapes again, flattened on one side, sticking up on the other. He pulled his arms through the sleeves of a Space Jam t-shirt and tugged it down over his bare torso. It all added up to give the impression of having just pulled himself out of bed. All of it, that was, except for a vicious slice to his upper lip, and a smudge of blood on one of his front teeth.

"Good morning, Miss Parker," he said, half-friendly, half-irritable.

"You're not ready." It was stating the obvious, but it was all she had. The image of Jarod in striped pyjama pants and bare feet, wiping sleep from the corners of his eyes, was a disarming one. No, not only disarming — humanizing.

Not that she didn't see Jarod as human, mind you. Her job demanded, however, that she re-categorize him less as a person with an everyday life, who got bed-head and eye-sleep and watched bad kids' movies, and more as a project subject.

"I didn't know I was supposed to be ready," said Jarod cheerfully.

"Nobody called you?"

"Called me? I wouldn't say that."

He said this as if there was something funny in it. Some inside joke between Jarod and himself. Parker squinted at him.

"Did you go a couple of rounds with one of your new neighbours?" she said, nodding to the cut on his lip. "I can think of a few retirees around here who might throw down if you look at their geraniums sideways."

Jarod touched his lip and opened his mouth to reply.

A third voice cut him off. "Morning, sis."

Lyle stepped into view around the threshold and shot his sister a bitter, closed-lipped smile. He, too, bore signs of recent violence, though Jarod must have known better than to hit him where it would show. Not with all that counteragent will be withheld nonsense hanging over his head. Lyle had one of his favourite suits hanging over one arm, the sleeve marred by a ragged, foot-long tear.

"Lyle?" said Parker, incredulous. "What the hell are you doing here — what, was it sleepover night?"

Lyle snorted. "Oh, yeah. We watched horror movies, ate popcorn, braided each other's hair. It was a blast."

"Lyle was just leaving," said Jarod pointedly.

For whatever reason, this was hilarious to Lyle. A laugh like a wooden plank falling down a set of stairs tumbled out of him.

"Never thought I'd see the day," he said to Jarod as his giggles dried up. "You hiding behind Parker."

Jarod refused to take the bait. "Is that what I'm doing?" he said, dry as a chokecherry. "I thought I was seeing you out."

Parker snapped. "I don't care what you were doing, we need to get to headquarters," she said. "You can have your dick-measuring contest later. Lyle, get lost. Jarod, put on some grown-up clothes and meet me at the car in five."

Lyle shot them both a winning smile, winked at Jarod, and with uncharacteristic obedience, got lost. His host watched him leave. Despite the time slipping away before them, Parker did likewise.

"Why the hell was he here?"

Jarod shrugged. "Your brother has a chip on his shoulder about me. I could say the same for myself, about him. And…" A mischievous grin. "He may have heard some bad news this morning."

"Bad—" She curbed her curiosity before the question escaped her. "I don't care. Big boy clothes. Car. Five minutes."

The grin persisted, and he shook his head slowly.

"Oh, no. No, I have to shower. You're welcome to come in, though. Make yourself at home!"

Depending on how long it took him to shower, it could make them as much as twenty minutes late, and would almost certainly run them into morning traffic.

"We don't have time for that," she snapped.

Jarod retreated from the doorway, letting the door swing shut in her face. Through it, she could still hear his voice, vanishingly faint as he disappeared in the direction of the bathroom, humming to himself.

He raised his voice. "You can go ahead and get a drip going if you like, you look like you haven't had a cup yet." Parker pushed her way in, almost tripping over a collection of shoes that had accumulated from nowhere over the past three days.

Moments later, a sudden rush of water against tiling told her he'd come through on the threatened shower.

A scan of the kitchen revealed that he did indeed have a brand new coffee maker, with a host of unnecessary bells and whistles. While the coffee was brewing, Parker poked around Jarod's new digs. It looked like a different house altogether, at least on the inside. The furniture had been reupholstered, the fittings replaced, the kitchen partially remodelled. Peeking through the crack between his bedroom door and the door frame, she could see what looked like a freshly unwrapped water bed.

In the corner of the living room, Jarod had set up a modest study, complete with a desktop computer. Not quite state-of-the-art, but not outdated either. Parker sat down by the monitor and jabbed at the keyboard. The monitor flickered to life, and after a few seconds of chugging and white text flying across a black background, a grey box popped up in front of the Microsoft Windows 98 logo.

The grey box read:

"To any Centre employee: if you can guess the password, fair play. Otherwise, make your peace with respecting my privacy, for once."

Under the message were two text fields which allowed Jarod to enter his username and password.

Parker held the power button until the computer shut off and made it to the kitchen in time for Jarod to shut off the water and climb out of the tub.

Some minutes later — enough time for her to fix a cup of coffee the way she liked it — Jarod emerged from the bathroom in a billowing cloud of steam, groomed and dressed, using the corner of a towel to dry the inside of his ears. The Space Jam t-shirt was gone, replaced by something more understated, which clung to his damp skin in places.

"You've been busy. That, or Martha Stewart has stopped by sometime in the last few days," she said, taking a sip from her mug. She jerked her chin towards the desktop computer. "And you're going to give Broots a run for his money with all that tech, too. You know they say those things are gonna fry when Y2K hits."

Whether this was a bizarre attempt at small talk, or simply her innate inclination to be nosy, not even Miss Parker knew. Jarod shrugged it off.

"I'm prepped for it. Ready to hit the road?" he asked.

She considered commenting on this sudden, uncharacteristic enthusiasm to get to headquarters. "About time," she said, instead of making an issue out of it. They had little enough time as it was. "By the way, do I want to know how you paid for all this?"

Jarod grinned. "Don't worry, I didn't use your credit card. I didn't use mine, either."

Something in his tone told Parker that Jarod's split lip had been well deserved.


The employees' rubbernecking had calmed down somewhat once they reached the front hall of Centre headquarters, but not by much.

"They keep staring," Jarod said under his breath, as if he expected Parker to do anything about it.

"I'm not surprised," she said, not looking round. "These people don't have much going on in their lives."

Jarod tapped her on the elbow to get her attention.

"You go on ahead, I'll catch up."

"What? No, we don't have time," she hissed.

But he wasn't listening. Something mischievous took over his face. "I'm going to have a little fun."

"The hell you are. We're headed to Sydney's office, come on."

Then, before Parker's eyes, his entire being changed. His weight shifted into a more regal posture, his expression filled with an unfamiliar authority. Even his clothes seem to hang on his body in a subtly different way from a second previous. He walked up to a knot of employees, all of them champion rubberneckers, and addressed one of their number. The addressee wore his employee ID on a lanyard around his neck.

"There you are," he said with a put-upon sigh. "I've been looking for you everywhere, Todd. You have the quarterly reports, right?"

Todd's mouth wobbled in his confusion.

"Quarterly — aren't you—?"

Jarod cut him off, feigned irritation mounting. "Don't tell me you don't have them. Todd, if I have to — you know I needed them last week, this is incredibly disappointing. We all expect more from you. I may have to write you up for this."

Parker spotted the exact moment that Jarod dropped into some preconceived role in Todd's schema for employed life. A new manager whose face he hadn't adjusted to, an assistant manager he'd only ever emailed, never met face-to-face. Something like that. Todd blanched.

"No, hang on, you don't need to do that. I have them here somewhere. Shelley, can you take my — thanks so much." He offloaded his morning coffee onto a colleague, opened his briefcase on his knee, and set about rummaging through the papers within. Jarod heaved another sigh and, while Todd was distracted, turned back to Parker. He winked and made a shooing motion with one hand.

Fleeting curiosity warred with impatience in Parker's mind, and impatience won out. Already envisioning the grating comments she'd get from Brigitte when she arrived twenty minutes late with no Jarod, Parker held back a growl of irritation and continued on toward the elevators. When she arrived at Sydney's office, however, Brigitte was nowhere in sight. The only occupants were Sydney and Broots, the latter perched on the edge of Sydney's desk, looking like a sufficiently loud noise would shatter him.

"Miss Parker!" he gasped, clambering down off the desk. "You're here! Welcome back. How are you? I mean, I mean. Get a load of this assignment, huh?"

She stared at him, nonplussed.

"You feeling copacetic today, Broots? You're not usually quite this level of caffeine-fuelled chinchilla at this hour. Did someone leak gasoline into your morning OJ?"

"Ha, no. I don't think so." He was so jittery, his facial features threatened to vibrate off of his face, like a Mr. Potato Head toy in a rock tumbler.

"You don't think so?"

"That is, uh, no. No. But — okay, you'll never guess who they're having us work with this morning."

Parker narrowed her eyes. "Do you mean apart from—"

"It's Jarod."

Sydney grimaced from his spot behind the desk. "He's only just heard," he said, his tone confidential. "And, as you can see, he's having a bit of a hard time with the idea."

Parker stared at Broots.

"You only found out this morning?"

Broots boggled right back. "You mean you already knew?"

"I should hope so," said Jarod by way of announcing himself. If Broots's bladder had been full, he might then have widdled on the linoleum. "Otherwise, I can't explain why she woke me up at the crack of eight to drag me in here." The lie fell smoothly from his tongue.

"Woke you up, did I?" said Parker dryly. She nodded at Jarod's hand, which held a sheaf of papers. "I take it that's the quarterly report?"

Jarod shrugged and gave her a guileless smile. "There's always a quarterly report."

"Jarod!" Sydney pushed himself out of his seat, a broad grin splitting his face. He came around the desk and wrapped his arms around Jarod, a hug so enthusiastic that Jarod staggered a step from the impact. "So good to see you. You're looking well!"

Pleased, Jarod murmured his thanks.

"Hello, Jarod," said Broots, directing his greeting to somewhere behind Jarod's left knee.

"Broots." Jarod bit back a smile and ducked his head at an awkward angle to catch Broots's eye. "Nice to see you. Why do you always look like I've threatened to throw you in the Delaware? Have I ever given you any reason to think I'd hurt you?"

Bravely, Broots looked up into his new coworker's face. "No, of course not," he said, but he didn't sound like he believed his own words.

"They wouldn't tell me where they've relocated you," said Sydney. "Or I would have stopped by with a housewarming gift."

Jarod grinned helplessly. "I would have liked that."

"Wait, you're not living in the sub-levels anymore?" said Broots. "Where — why would they let you… I mean. Were you somewhere more secure, or…?"

"Oh, wow, so they really didn't brief you, did they?" Parker glanced at Jarod, whose brow creased in sudden discomfort. "Do you want to…?"

"Be my guest," said Jarod with a noncommittal jerk of the head. "I've been over it too many times already."

Broots glanced between Miss Parker and Jarod, expectant. Parker cleared her throat.

"Last week, Jarod underwent surgery…"

She launched into an explanation of their new circumstances. Jarod tacitly surrendered the floor to her and contributed no commentary to what followed, instead wandering around the office, examining his drab, untidy surroundings.

Broots didn't interrupt, except on one occasion.

"Aggressive?" he said. His vowels wobbled. "What sort of aggressive?"

"Trying to kill people with his bare hands, sort of aggressive."

She looked over at Jarod, who appeared to be tuning out the description of his erstwhile madness as best he could. He was Pretending, but on a smaller scale than usual. He'd been doing a lot of Pretending since the moment he'd opened the door at the crack of eight that morning. Not just the little charade in the hallway about quarterly reports, nor the various fibs he'd littered in his wake along the way to Sydney's office. No, he was Pretending good humour, Pretending that his jailers weren't getting under his skin, Pretending not to be affected by his new lot in life. It was a little eerie.

She was struck with the need to see him crack, if only a little.

"Would you say that's accurate, Jarod?" she asked.

Jarod only hummed his agreement.

Stripped of all its corporate double-speak, the deal sounded even worse: work for the Centre or lose yourself to homicidal madness. Homicidal madness and pain, too. Parker remembered the way Jarod had reeled from the accompanying headaches, minutes before the quicksilver saturated his bloodstream. A perfect little Skinner box.

As Parker was winding down with an explanation of each team member's new role, Jarod finally spoke.

"I guess Sydney won, huh? Technically."

Miss Parker et al. looked round. Jarod had turned his attention to a heavily edited sheet of paper tacked to a corkboard on the wall. The title was in block letters, inked with black sharpie: WHEN WILL WE CATCH JAROD? Under this headline were the details of an ongoing betting pool among the employees assigned to the pursuit team, reflecting its fluctuating membership.

The initial bets, one each from Miss Parker, Sydney and Broots, were all dates in '96. Parker's had been the most optimistic, Broots's the least. They had all been amended multiple times, and the list of bettors expanded as Lyle and Brigitte joined the pursuit of Jarod. Interest in updating bets had waned over the first year as pessimism grew, but in the most recent version, Sydney had shot for the moon and pencilled in the latest date yet: January 1, 1999.

"Oh, God," gasped Broots, as the same thought occurred to all three gamblers. "Oh, no."

The office pool was not the only sign remaining of the pursuit for Jarod, not by a long shot. The space was wallpapered with evidence of their increasingly frustrated efforts to catch him. Maps charting his haphazard cross-country treks, a collection of newspaper articles detailing the results of his more successful grifts, scribbled theories and character profiles, several headshots of Jarod from his various employee badges. Many of the latter had sharp objects puncturing them, usually in the eye or smack-dab in the middle of his forehead. Parker was not above abusing photographs when she couldn't get her hands on the real thing.

Broots darted around the room, frantic and silent, stuffing wads of papers into drawers and, when they wouldn't fit in the drawers, under his arms. Lastly, he yanked the betting pool sheet off the wall. It was too late, of course. Jarod had seen everything.

"Sorry about that," Broots breathed, addressing Jarod's shoes.

"Sorry about what?" said Jarod. On the face of it, he appeared unconcerned, but his posture was stiffer, his mouth a straight line. "I knew you were hunting me. What are you sorry for?"

It was a fair question, though it wouldn't get an answer. Sorry for the mess? Sorry for rubbing your face in the nature of our work? Sorry for treating your abduction like a nine-to-five job? Sorry for taking bets on your freedom? Or, most daunting of all, sorry we won the day and caught you after all?

When nobody replied, Jarod snorted. "Anyway, congratulations, Sydney. What did you win?"

Again, no response. Sydney rallied and met Jarod's eye.

"We — I'm sorry, Jarod. I never wanted—"

"Stop saying that," Jarod barked. Even Parker jumped. If she had never seen Jarod in the grip of madness, perhaps she wouldn't have. "You're not sorry. 'Sorry' means you wish it hadn't happened, it means you regret it. You've been trying to catch me for years. Regret should have tripped you up long before now, if it was ever going to."

A stunned silence settled over the room, broken only when Brigitte swept in.

"Wonderful, you're all here! What are we yelling about?" She looked around at them all and came up against a unified colony of clams. She chomped happily on a wad of gum, a bizarre sort of plastic mania in her eye. "Nothing? No? I guess it can't have been too important."

Parker spoke up. "Are we all here, though? I thought Lyle was joining us." Then, as an afterthought: "Although if we can do this without him, I'm game."

"Lyle was briefed last night, I just saw him off at the tarmac. I need him covering contingencies in case you four screw up plan A." She fanned a quartet of manila file folders in front of their eyes. "Speaking of which, ready to hear about your first mission? We're starting out with a softball to ease us all into this exciting new venture."

They each took the folder labelled with their respective names, with varying levels of reluctance.

"Nikki Angus," said Parker, reading aloud from the topmost file.

"Yes, Nikki," said Brigitte. "She's your mark. Playing to your strengths, Jarod, I've put together supporting documentation to set you up on Nikki's public relations team, as part of her larger campaign team. Our good friend Nikki here is running for governor of Washington state this fall. Slight problem, however: a little bird told our client that Nikki is holding something back from the good people of Washington. It's your job, Jarod, to dig out whatever dirt she's been hiding, to ferret out proof of the skeleton in her closet. And… bring it back to us."

"That's it?" said Jarod, frowning.

"That's it," said Brigitte brightly. "You'll have full rein for how you want to approach this, within reason. That said, I would suggest starting with Carol Mathyssen, there's a file on her in there too. She's Nikki's best friend, as well as her campaign manager."

"So this is…," Jarod started.

Parker jumped in. "Blackmail material. I assume the client is her opponent in the gubernatorial race?"

"That's confidential," said Brigitte.

Jarod leafed through the file in his hands; Parker noted his folder was thinner than hers. Brigitte must have given him as little information as she could get away with, since he hadn't proved yet that they could trust him with more. Jarod picked a single sheet of paper out of the stack and waved it so it wobbled between his pinched fingers.

"This is all we get on Angus? I need more. Do you know how much research I usually do on a mark? Weeks of observation and background research, sometimes full binders full of information. Who is this woman? Why does she deserve to be pushed out of the race for governor? This doesn't even say which party she's affiliated with."

Brigitte shook her head. "Oh, Jarod. You needed all that prep time when you were working solo because your jobs were part-time morality plays. You had to know whether she deserved to have her house burned down, or to be stranded in the middle of the ocean, or whatever." She closed in, close enough that Jarod had to stare down his nose to keep her face in view. Close enough to be dance partners, should a ballroom dancing competition suddenly break out. "Now, there is no 'deserve'. It's an assignment, that's it, that's all. Cozy up to the best friend, get the dirt, run on back home for your shot to stay on this side of sane. Simple."

Jarod's stare sharpened at the mention of his new chemical dependence, but he didn't answer. He loomed in silence, instead.

"What?" Brigitte scoffed. The glassy, manic light in her eye was back. "What's that glare? Welcome to the working world, Jarod. Most of us are out here doing things we don't want to, simply to stay clothed and fed. Your deal is just a little more… explicit than most. We're all somebody's whore. You…" She bared her teeth lasciviously and stepped around behind him, where he couldn't see her without turning his head. Jarod's shoulders tensed, but he remained staring straight ahead. "You happen to be mine."

She punctuated the taunt by trailing the tips of her fingers over his shoulders, across his back, and down his arm. Jarod stayed statue-still, a muscle pulsing in his jaw. Something flame-hot clawed its way up Parker's throat, some bizarre instinct insisting that her territory had been breached. Her territory, like she was a bitch raising her hackles at a poodle moving in next door. She stepped forward, to…

To do what?

Sydney beat her to it.

"This is inappropriate and unnecessary. Jarod understands the terms, they're clear enough. There's no reason to be spiteful."

Brigitte's eyes were bright.

"Inappropriate?" she said, feigning shock. She turned to Jarod. "Jarod, was I being inappropriate? Did you find that inappropriate?"

On paper, the question might have been an effective power-play. What could Jarod say? If he said no, he would give her permission to walk all over him; if he said yes, he would admit she was getting to him. The effect was abruptly lost, however, as Brigitte's voice wavered on the final word.

Like this: Inappro-opriate?

And her pitch skewed crazily at the end, like this: Inappro-opriate?

Like she was wrestling down a sob. An uncomfortable lull fell over the group as Brigitte's subordinates all waited on tenterhooks for her to break down in unexplained tears.

"Right," said Parker, fighting a mad urge to laugh. "Well. That was fascinating. Do you have anything else we need to know, or can Jarod and I head out?"

Brigitte was silent a beat longer, then she swallowed. Hard, like she was swallowing an oversized pill. "It's all—" Her voice came out rough and brittle; she cleared her throat. "It's all in the folders." She paused, considering. "Oh, no, one more thing. Sydney will be joining you in the field for this first mission, this first one only. Broots will handle home support from here on his own. You can handle that, right, Broots?"

"Sure," said Broots. His pitch was similarly superscript.

Parker frowned. Why the change in plan? She hung back as the rest headed for the exits. Jarod noticed and shot her a quizzical look; in answer, she jerked her head towards the door.

"I'll catch up," she mouthed at him. She raised her voice. "Brigitte, hang on."

Brigitte paused. "Yes?" She almost met Parker's eye, but not quite.

"Why is Sydney coming to Washington? Syd made sense as an assigned team member when Jarod was on the run, but now he's just going to be a distraction. He'll be shrinking heads the entire time, I don't need that."

"Many hands make light work," said Brigitte with a shrug. She seemed to have recovered from her brief moment of… what had it been? Hysteria? Vulnerability? Her own flirtation with temporary madness? "The guys on SL-10 predict that if Jarod is going to test the boundaries of his deal, it will be on this first mission. And I agree — why wouldn't he? If I were him, I'd want to figure out what I could get away with. You'll need eyes on him twenty-four-seven. And excuse me for saying so, but you aren't in great shape to keep up with him."

She gave Parker's leg a pointed look. Parker scowled.

"So you assign me a septuagenarian? You think he'll be any better at keeping up with a guy who's built a years-long vocation around being a prey animal? Yeah, that's wonderful help."

"Put him on one of the exits, it's better than having nobody at all. You've heard of the concept, yeah? Covering the exits?"

It was an ongoing point of contention between the two of them, a kind of one-sided inside joke, back during the cross-country hunt for Jarod. Whenever Jarod escaped Parker's grasp at the last minute, when she reported back, Brigitte would point out how things might have gone differently if she'd only, yes, covered the exits. Parker had plenty of ammo in her defence: for one, the Centre rarely gave her the human resources to station anyone at the exits. Sydney and Broots made poor exit guards as a rule, since they lacked the wherewithal to waylay Jarod on their own. Sydney in particular was more likely to pay for Jarod's bus fare to the next state over than to lug him back to Delaware single-handed.

Brigitte had slipped back into their usual trade of blows, a comfortable routine, but her eyes were still oddly bright. Parker recognized the expression. She'd seen it in the mirror, the odd time she'd had to duck away to the ladies' room to dab a stray tear away and get her breath under control. It was the expression of someone trying desperately not to show emotion in public.

"Alright, I give up," said Parker, her patience giving way. "What the hell's the matter with you? What happened to the corporate automaton from Conference Room C? Day one of this demented project, and the project head's already flirting with the indentured servant and threatening to burst into tears. Is this pregnancy hormones, or what?"

The bright look vanished, replaced by a flinty glare.

"I meant what I said," said Brigitte. "We're all somebody's whore. My business is my own, yours is yours. Maybe someday, when the Triumvirate hand down this level of responsibility to you, you'll understand why I might trip over the occasional word. That day is not today. Your jet is waiting for you at the Centre airfield."

She hiked up her dignity around her shoulders and stalked off before Parker could get another word in.

This was no answer at all, but as she watched Brigitte's heels vanish around the corner, something occurred to Parker. There had been a camera in Conference Room C. Brigitte had been performing for an audience, an audience with power. Brigitte was small-p pretending to have her shit under control, just like the rest of Team Quicksilver. When the cameras turned off, the mask slipped.

Understanding Brigitte, even for a moment, was an uncomfortable experience. Parker hoped it wouldn't happen again.