Parker was quickly earning a reputation as a menace among Jarod's neighbours.
As was his wont, Jarod had made friends with everyone on the block. He knew all their names, their kids' names, how each of them felt about their jobs and coworkers, how they took their coffee, and who they would be voting for in the next federal election. For their part, they knew nothing about Jarod besides the fact that he carpooled to work with an irritating brunette who, on certain cursed mornings, would wake the entire neighbourhood by yelling loud enough to wake the dead and pounding at Jarod's front door with a flat fist.
"Jarod!"
She'd thought they were past this. He knew when work started, and he knew the consequences for showing up late. He still took every opportunity he could to push at his boundaries, but this was just him dicking her around for no goddamn reason, and this song and dance on Jarod's porch was wearing thin.
Parker thumped at the door again, hard enough that she could feel the hinges flex with each impact. This was the latest he'd ever kept her waiting. Two more minutes, and she'd seriously consider breaking the door down.
Two minutes passed. Still, no sight nor sound of Jarod from within.
Parker ran a hand through her hair. This had gone beyond a simple case of Jarod sleeping in or deliberately ignoring her. An unwelcome thought niggled at her brain: was he home at all? Was he hurt and couldn't come to the door? Had they miscalculated his last counteragent dose, sending him into quicksilver madness prematurely and setting off a rampage through the suburbs of Blue Cove, Delaware?
Whichever the case, she had to act quickly. She picked up a potted plant from the porch, hefted its weight, and threw it overhand through the glass window above the doorknob. The glass exploded inwards, sending a cloud of fine splinters across the welcome mat and shoe rack within. She pulled her sleeve down to cover her wrist and thrust her arm through the jagged hole.
"Hey!"
Parker looked round, her fingers inches from the door latch. An elderly man with dyed brown hair stood no more than a dozen yards away, brandishing the end of a garden hose at her.
"Can I help you?" she asked, with more dignity than the situation should permit, considering the man had effectively caught her mid-burgle.
"Yeah!" said the man. He shook the hose. "Yeah! You can help yourself off Jarod's front steps. You can help yourself the hell out of this neighbourhood! Unless you want me to call the cops?"
A muscle in Parker's jaw throbbed. This was just what she needed.
"I'm his… friend," she said reluctantly. "I'm here to pick him up for work."
"Yeah, I've heard you before," the neighbour grumbled. "Not everyone's a morning person, I get that, but you seem a real piece of work, if you don't mind my saying. What kind of friend throws a plant through a man's window? Besides, he's not even home."
This gave her pause. Jarod knew to be home at pickup time.
"He's not home?"
"That's what I said."
"How do you know? You saw him leave?"
"Yep," said the man with a bizarre look of pride. "He left an hour ago. Maybe he found a better ride to work, someone who doesn't abuse his front door before the sun's even properly risen."
Parker leaned her head back in exasperation. Again? Jarod had fled again? This soon after the last escape attempt? She fumbled blindly in her jacket pocket for her phone and flipped it open. Sydney's line rang once, twice, thrice.
"You've reached Sydney. Please leave your name and number and I will get back to you at my earliest convenience."
She cursed under her breath. The beep sounded in her ear.
"Sydney, call me back as soon as you get this. Jarod has… I think he's gone." She stopped herself from saying again, in case anyone but Sydney ever played the tape back. As far as anyone else knew, Jarod had made no escape attempts since his time down in the cells. "It's his shot day, I don't understand why he would do this. If I don't hear from you in five minutes, I'm commissioning a sweeper—"
"Good morning, Miss Parker!"
On the other end of the line, someone had removed the phone from its cradle. The voice on the line was not Sydney's.
"Brigitte," said Parker testily. She prayed that Brigitte hadn't overheard the rest of the voice message, but it seemed a vain hope. "Is Sydney there? I need to speak with him."
"It can wait. Take your time coming in today. I still need you to chart your observation hours from last week's in-house sims, but for the most part, you have today off. I might put you to work helping with the efforts to track down Raines."
Parker stared at her phone. Apparently, Brigitte really hadn't heard the message, if she could sound so cavalier. Parker put the phone back to her ear.
"It can't wait, actually. Is Sydney there? Put him on."
Brigitte's laugh sounded oddly staccato over the phone. "You don't need to speak with him. Just come in, alright? We'll have a short debrief when you get here. Everything's fine."
It was the "everything's fine" which brought Parker up short. Brigitte was… reassuring her? Had hell frozen over as well? She said her goodbyes, characteristically clipped and snappish.
"What's a sweeper?" asked Jarod's neighbour. He'd turned the hose on his begonias and was giving them a morning shower. "Is that someone to help you clean up all that damn broken glass? That's breaking and entering, you know. Breaking, at least. I really should call the cops."
Parker shot the man a venomous look. The Centre higher-ups would drop a crate full of reprimands on her for involving the local police, but at that moment, she couldn't give a shit.
"By all means," she said, and stalked off.
The nosy neighbour did not call the cops, having gotten what he wanted in the end: Miss Parker, gone.
Brigitte met Miss Parker at the entrance to Centre headquarters. Not inside the entrance, mind you, but outside. She stood on the stairs leading up to the grand set of double doors to the main entrance hall. With her maroon suit jacket and its shiny bronze buttons, she could have passed for a bellhop.
"Miss Parker," she said with a chipper nod. How did she manage to pronounce her M's and P's through such a toothy grin? "As I said on the phone, we have a slow day scheduled for you. You didn't need to rush in."
Parker gave her stepmother an incredulous once-over, waiting for the punchline to drop.
"What would you have done if I hadn't?" she asked. "Stood out on the stoop the whole morning?"
"Oh, it's a beautiful day!" said Brigitte with a wave of her hand at the heavens. It wasn't. It was overcast, and there was a frosty edge to the wind. Autumn was winding down. "Nothing like a little fresh air. Why don't we do a loop around the courtyard while I bring you up to speed?"
"Away from surveillance, you mean?" It was the only reason she could think of why Brigitte would want to move an official debrief out of doors. "Sure, fine. Lead the way."
Brigitte gave her a tight smile, but didn't speak until they'd rounded the southeast corner. She was walking a pace or two too fast for Parker to keep up without losing her footing. It had been raining off-and-on all week, and the mud sucked at the base of her cane.
"I didn't want you making a scene," said Brigitte. "Sydney doesn't know either, and I know he'd be a pain about it. He'd make it my problem, and it's completely out of my hands."
"What's out of your hands?" Parker asked once she'd caught up. She forced herself to take slow, even breaths so Brigitte wouldn't notice she was winded.
"Mr. Lyle has taken over for the day," said Brigitte. Her voice was bright and cheery, spinning her words as good news, but it came out sounding false and put-upon. "He and Jarod took one of the jets out early this morning."
A spotlight fixed Parker in place, demanding her level-headed reaction. This… was fine. Wasn't it? She didn't appreciate her brother swooping in and taking over, no, but it wasn't the first time he'd done so and it wouldn't be the last. He'd shouldered his way onto the pursuit team back when they were hunting Jarod. He'd even taken over Daddy's office for a time, two years ago. It was what he did. And if this meant that Parker could kick up her feet for the day, well, that was fine.
I didn't want you making a scene, Brigitte had said. She'd expected Parker to be angry. But that tight feeling in Parker's chest below her sternum, that wasn't anger. Anger wouldn't make sense.
"I see," she said. Measured words. See? She was staying calm. "Where did they go?"
Brigitte raised her eyebrows. "You're taking this better than I thought. Hm." She appeared to search her memory. "I think he said something about Puerto Rico. San Juan? Yes, that sounds right. They went to San Juan. Somewhere along the San Antonio Canal."
It would be Jarod's first field assignment since their abject disaster of a mission on the west coast. His first since the discovery that his new man-made tumour was a little less operable than previously thought.
"San Juan," Parker repeated. "Okay. Okay. Why?"
Her control slipped a bit on that last word. She bit the word more than she said it.
"No idea," said Brigitte, who seemed to have relaxed somewhat. She didn't know Parker well enough to spot the early signs. "Mr. Lyle doesn't share everything he does or plans with me. An assignment, I gathered. That's all."
Parker nodded slowly.
"Got it. San Juan, on the canal." She made a decision. "I'll be back when the job's done."
Brigitte's mouth groped around a question. "… When—? No, you don't—"
"Have I been fired? Was Lyle given my job? No? Then I'm going." She needed to head off the inevitable questions before Brigitte gathered momentum. "I'm not leaving my brother to bungle this and get the asset shot by Puerto Rican police."
"This is unnecessary," said Brigitte, jutting her chin up at Miss Parker. The gesture only served to exaggerate their height difference. "It's not even a day-long job, Mr. Lyle said they'd be back by dusk. He didn't even bring — ah, hm. He didn't even pack an overnight bag."
Parker narrowed her eyes.
"Didn't bring what?"
"I just said, an overnight bag."
"That wasn't what you were going to say," said Parker. She stepped close, an edge of intimidation in her voice. "Didn't bring what?"
Brigitte exhaled noisily. "I knew you were going to make a scene. A shot. He didn't bring a shot of counteragent."
"Oh." That wasn't so bad. Today was shot day, he would be good for another six days. Unless — "But Jarod got a dose before he left, right?"
"No. Like I said, day-long job."
Asked later, Parker would not admit to the squeeze of fear that seized her upon these words.
"Unbelievable. Okay, have Cox meet me in five at the parking lot entrance with a full dose. I'll settle for the Cessna if there's nothing else available, but I need wheels up in twenty minutes."
Brigitte summoned the crumbs of authority left to her.
"Miss Parker, you're not listening. Mr. Lyle has the reins of Project QS-9300 today, and you're needed at headquarters. Raines—"
Parker darted forward, so her nose was bare inches from Brigitte's.
"No, you're not listening. You gave me a job, I'm doing it. If you don't want me on this assignment, give me something else, but for now, I'm doing the job in front of me."
Here was the paradox, as she saw it: she was working as Jarod's handler purely because she'd been told to do so by the Centre. The Centre — by way of Brigitte — was now telling her to not do her job, and to take it easy for a day. Objectively, the path of least resistance. Yet here she was, bullying her way onto the path of most resistance, for… what?
For the love of being an asset handler? Hardly. For the joy of getting one over on an annoying sibling? That didn't seem like reason enough. For sun and sea? She'd been to San Juan before, and she could take it or leave it.
All the other possible rationales were even less plausible.
In five minutes, Cox was waiting for her at the parking lot entrance with a two-slot case of counteragent. In twenty, the wheels retracted into the Cessna's body and Miss Parker watched as Centre headquarters vanished to a pinprick below her.
Miss Parker's primary misstep was in assuming that, once she'd reached the San Antonio Canal, it would be trivial work to track down her brother and Jarod. Finding the canal was simplicity itself — the airport ran half the length of the inlet on its south shore, a stone's throw from her hunting site, and from the air it looked like a modest dip in the land. It wasn't as if she was committing herself to scouring the banks of the Suez. How hard could it possibly be?
The problem was this: the San Antonio Canal was one of the most popular cruise ship ports in the world, and the place was therefore plagued with crowds. Walking along the narrow streets, Parker went for long stretches without hearing a word of Spanish, as tourists from the contiguous states to the north wandered vaguely east, gawking at the architecture and pausing to lounge on restaurant patios. She caught a couple of stray gawking looks herself, overdressed as she was for the heat. There hadn't been time to consider a change of clothes.
She'd crossed the continent as fast as the air currents could take her, but once she touched down, all that momentum came to a standstill; one hour of wandering became two, which became three, and so on. The pain in her leg started as a background uncertainty, which grew into a scream with every step by the time the shine had worn off the day. All that drove her forward was the threadbare hope that she'd get to Lyle before… well, before whatever Lyle had planned, or before Jarod lost his marbles, whatever came first.
She didn't. Instead, Lyle found her.
After checking what seemed like the twentieth hotel in eight blocks, Parker was about ready to give up. She found herself thinking wistfully of the tracker Jarod had yanked out of his brain — it'd sure as hell be handy now. The tide of cruise ship passengers had shifted, the tourists drifting apathetically toward their disembarkation port with plans to leave enough time to get dolled up before dinner on the ship. Parker was following the tide, combing the storefronts for familiar faces, when a pair of hands seized her shoulders from behind and a harsh mouth spat words in her ear.
"Hey, Parker," said the voice. "Fancy seeing you here. Brigitte just couldn't keep her mouth shut, could she?"
Parker wriggled out of her attacker's grip and turned to face him, one hand grasping for her absent gun. She'd been forced to leave her weapons on the plane to avoid tangling with airport personnel.
"Lyle!" Never before had she been so relieved to see her brother, though she wouldn't flatter him by showing it on her face. "Finally. I thought I'd never catch you in this crowd. Where's Jarod?"
Lyle spun her bodily by the shoulders so that the paleolithic shape of the visiting ship loomed in front of them, and pointed along her line of sight.
"There, at your two o'clock. With the Disney t-shirt, under the orange awning."
She followed Lyle's finger and her gaze alighted, sure enough, on the Centre's favourite lab rat. Jarod was sitting at a table on a street-side café patio, squinting around at the passing crowds. The aforementioned shirt bore the faded face of Mickey Mouse. Parker recognized the shirt from a previous early morning pickup. If it weren't for his jeans, she might suspect he'd been pulled right out of bed. On the table in front of him sat a large metal case, like a briefcase, but thicker. She caught his eye, and he waved. At first glance, he appeared to be enjoying some leisurely time in the shade; at second glance, there was a tension to his posture, pushing everything up by the elbows. Like he expected an alarm to go off at any moment.
"Are you allergic to taking a day off work, Parker?" Lyle continued. "Or have you grown so attached to our Pretender friend that twenty-four hours is too long to be without him? Whichever it is, you need to take care of your issues in your own time. Some of us are working."
Parker turned on her brother.
"I wouldn't trust you to pick up my groceries, much less with — with this project," she said. She'd been about to say "with Jarod", but no, that wasn't what she meant. That sounded too… too possessive. That's what it was about, though, wasn't it? Lyle couldn't be trusted with Jarod. Especially not after how he'd handled things when Jarod was imprisoned on SL-25. Those sponges hadn't been for sponge baths. "You've been screwing this mission up from the beginning. Did you even notice you forgot to bring counteragent? Or did you just not care?"
Lyle's mouth twitched, holding back a smile.
"I didn't forget anything."
"You're a terrible liar. Brigitte already told me you didn't bring any."
"Brigitte was correct," said Lyle. He tilted his head as if to say, on the other hand. "I didn't forget anything."
Parker scowled. The vague language, the hidden smile — Lyle was entertaining himself with his very own inside joke, amusing himself by dangling the missing punchline in front of her nose. If she pushed further, he'd only yank it away.
"It's Jarod's shot day, he starts going red-eyed tomorrow," she said, refusing to take the bait. "I'm here to keep him on this side of sane, and I'll oversee the rest of the operation while I'm here."
"No, you won't." Again, the warble of a hidden laugh in his voice. Parker wished dearly to hit him.
"I will. I heard through the grapevine that you're trying to work your way back up into the Triumvirate's favour, but you're not using this project to fuel your ambitions. You're field support, that's it. This is my job."
Lyle sighed and motioned theatrically for her to take the lead back to the café where Jarod sat.
"I'm looking forward to seeing how you intend to direct this mission when you haven't been briefed," said Lyle as they made for the café patio. "You don't even know who the mark is. This should be impressive."
"I have faith that you can talk fast with the right incentive," she shot back. The pair wove their way through the umbrella-skewered patio tables. Parker sat in the chair opposite Jarod's and crossed her aching left leg over her right. "Jarod. Miss me?"
From close up, Jarod's expression was strained.
"You'd be surprised how much, Miss Parker," he answered. He squinted across at her; Parker, on instinct, checked the hue of his eyes. No hint of red. "Did Lyle tell you why we're here?"
"We were just getting to that," said Parker. "Lyle?"
Lyle made a small noise of exasperation through his nose.
"Fine," he said. He glanced around for listeners-in and dropped his voice. "The target's a passenger on the Carnival Surfeit. Jarod's job is to convince him he — Jarod — is the diplomat the man arranged to meet, and to get the mark to sign the papers in the case. It's a half-hour operation once we spot him, which should be soon, since the passengers will be heading back for dinner soon. Which reminds me, Jarod — you need to go upstairs and get changed."
Saying as much, he tossed Jarod a dry cleaning bag on a hanger. Inside, a suit was visible through the transparent plastic. Jarod gave Lyle a glib, two-fingered salute and vanished into the closest doorway with the suit and briefcase, pausing only to cast Miss Parker a look of commiseration.
Parker pulled the counteragent case from her bag and half-rose from the table. "Hang on, you need—"
Lyle held out his hand to stop her.
"Later. It can wait."
She couldn't very well argue with that. Jarod wouldn't start going feral until tomorrow. The shot could wait, and so could they. Lyle tossed a small, plastic something — a radio earpiece — Miss Parker's way. She fitted it into her ear with a practiced twist of the wrist. The only sounds on the line were the slight echo from Lyle's piece and the sound of cloth swiping across the surface of Jarod's mic.
"So, this job," said Parker, in part to drown out the sound of Jarod changing into his suit. It was an oddly intimate sound. "Why'd it come to you instead of through the regular channels?"
Lyle shrugged and shook out his newspaper. "Beats me. Perhaps they thought I'd bring something unique to the contract."
"… To conning a diplomat into putting his John Hancock on some papers? If you say so." She fanned herself with the café's laminated menu. It didn't help at all. "I can't imagine what you could bring particular expertise to, maybe… hm, I don't know. Something that requires a maximum of nine fingers? Something to do with faking one's death?"
Lyle replied with nothing but a silent glare.
"What's this guy look like, anyway?" asked Parker. "I might as well help keep watch."
He slid a picture along the tabletop toward her. It showed a man with a slender build and salt-and-pepper hair; he had a long face, an easy smile, and an expensive suit draped over his skinny shoulders. She stared at his profile, imagining its aspect from alternate angles until she knew it by heart. Flipping it over, she found the words "Gavin Rayner" penned on the back. The mark's name, she assumed.
"Coming back down," said Jarod over the earpiece.
"Don't," Lyle answered. "Stay up there and use the bird's-eye view to spot Rayner. Let me know when you see him."
"Copy."
It was disorienting, having read through a full dossier on Nikki Angus before their first assignment as a team, and now having to act on crumbs. Lyle fiddled with his earpiece, plucked it out, and palmed it in his fist, abruptly muffling the echo in Parker's ear.
"Between you and me, are you getting any of that?" he asked, jerking his chin in Jarod's approximate direction.
"Getting—" Miss Parker stared at her brother. "Good lord, Lyle, you're an adult. If you mean sex, say it."
Lyle's mouth threatened a grin. "Is that a yes?"
"It means none of your damn business."
Which sounded like more of an answer than it was; it sounded like yes. That was none of her concern. Let him stew in ignorance, for once. She seized her cane and pushed herself to her feet. Her words had done nothing to wipe the delight from Lyle's expression.
"I hit a nerve, didn't I?" he wheedled.
"I'll be back down once we've cleaned up," said Parker, with a mocking wiggle of the eyebrows.
The room Lyle had rented as a temporary base of operations was up a set of skinny, rickety stairs, which flexed under each step. They were murder on Parker's leg. Most of the time, loathe as she was to admit it, her cane offered much more stability while walking. On the stairs, it felt like she was one weak step away from careening over the railing. No help at all.
Are you getting any of that? Parker made a dismissive noise at the back of her throat. It wasn't as if the thought had never occurred to her, but thoughts were one thing, and action another. Perhaps it would have been more professionally convenient if her physical attraction to Jarod had vanished as soon as she'd been assigned the task of hunting him down, but it hadn't. What about it? She'd never known her attractions, physical or otherwise, to be professionally convenient. Thomas might have attested to that, if he'd survived long enough to do so.
She shook her head. Tommy had nothing to do with this.
Upstairs, Jarod was perched on a stool by the window, watching the street below through a gap between the shutters. The jeans and Mickey Mouse t-shirt were strewn across a nearby twin-sized bed, along with the dry cleaning bag. The suit didn't fit him as well as the grey number from the fundraiser, but it was a step up from a t-shirt she was half-sure he'd slept in. He looked round as she limped in.
"I wasn't told about this assignment," she said, before he could speak. In an odd way, she felt as though she were apologizing.
A beat, then Jarod nodded.
"I know."
She slipped in beside him and trained her eyes on the road, watching all the assorted scalps from above. It was hard to imagine that another pair of eyes would help from this angle, but she had to do something.
"Any early signs of QSM?"
Jarod started to shake his head, then stopped himself. "A few headaches. That's it."
Headaches? That was reason enough for another jab.
"We—"
Jarod surged forward in his seat and pointed. "There," he hissed. He raised his voice loud enough to be picked up by the mics. "Lyle, Rayner is coming around a corner to the east, closing fast. I'll be down in a moment." He picked up the briefcase by the handle and made for the top of the stairs.
"Stay up there," said Lyle.
Jarod frowned. "He's heading for the dock. I'll miss my chance to talk to him before he boards."
"Never mind that. Open the case."
Cautiously, Jarod set the case down on the bed, disengaged the clasps, and raised the lid. It was —
"Empty," Parker breathed. No papers to sign. "What the hell?"
"Check the closet," said Lyle. "I had something stowed there ahead of time. Just for you, Jarod."
Jarod shot Miss Parker a cautious look before heading for the closet, which lurked in the corner of the room farthest from the window. He eased open the door a crack, not enough to allow the meagre light of the room to penetrate the gloom within. Whatever was inside, the sight of it made Jarod inhale sharply.
"You are out of your mind if you think I'm doing this, Lyle," he said. His voice trembled. "There's such a thing as overplaying your hand."
Parker hobbled over and craned her neck to see Lyle's gift. Within, a sniper rifle stood barrel-up, leaning against a folded ironing board and surrounded by spare pillows. There could be no doubt about its intent. The Centre had never intended for Jarod to talk to Rayner at all.
Parker bit down on her back teeth, the weapon leaving an afterimage on the back of her eyes. Her gaze flicked to Jarod. Had he moved since he saw the thing?
"I've read the script on how this will go," said Lyle, "so could we skip the next couple of lines? I order to you put a bullet in Rayner's head, you refuse, I insist, you whine about how you would never kill an innocent man, I rattle off some evidence of how he's not so innocent after all, you dig your heels in, I remind you that you can't disobey orders without risking drug-induced madness… you comply. Let's skip to that part."
Jarod stared at the baseboards, unseeing, his mouth working silently. He'd forgotten to tie his tie, and the ends dangled loose from his throat. Silent seconds crept forward.
"Make the call soon, Jarod," said Lyle. "If Rayner boards the Surfeit before you act, I'm letting you loose on the streets of Old San Juan tomorrow. The collateral damage will be more than one politician if we take that route, I guarantee it."
Parker snorted, though the gesture was forced. "There's no way you have authorization to allow Jarod to run amok, red-eyed, through the streets of San Juan." He couldn't, could he? Her hand snuck into her bag and cradled the case Cox had handed over before she left Centre headquarters. "Besides, I'm not backing this play. If the assassination is a Centre order… so be it, we'll discuss it, but we aren't turning a cruise ship port into a hostage crisis."
"We will not discuss it," snapped Jarod. "I'm not doing it. You can go to hell, Lyle. You too, Miss Parker, if you think this is worth a debate."
"So you're choosing carnage," said Lyle. "Are you going to tell the neighbours, or shall I?"
"Enough," said Parker. She took the case of counteragent from her bag and opened it. Jarod's eyes followed the case. Counteragent might not have any chemically addictive properties, but its psychological allure was nothing to sneeze at. "Blackmail is off the table. Lyle, do you hear me? You may be comfortable with setting off a Jarod-shaped explosive in Old San Juan, but I'm not. He's getting a shot either way, your blackmail won't work. I have a pair of doses on me."
"Do you?"
"Yes." She readied a syringe, sticking the needle into one of the vials. "I told you, I brought some. Cox gave me a two-week dose set."
"Did he?"
She hadn't caught his tone the first time around, but she caught it on the rebound. What did he know that she didn't?
"… Yeah, yeah he did. What are you getting at? He gave the case to me personally."
Jarod held out a hand. "Could I see?"
For a mad moment, Parker considered refusing. What if he stole the vials and ran? She was beginning to dread, however, that the risk was irrelevant. She handed over the one remaining full vial.
"You weren't briefed," Lyle reminded her.
"I know that. It's obvious why, now. I didn't sign up for an assassination squad."
"Jarod wasn't briefed either. Nor was Brigitte." In the pause that followed, the distant laughter of a family on vacation came through tinny and distorted over their earpieces. "Cox was briefed."
The words took a moment to sink in.
"Cox knew? Son of a bitch."
This apparent fact set off a chain reaction of conclusions. If Cox knew the rough sketch of the mission, he'd know Lyle planned to blackmail Jarod. If Cox knew, he'd know the plan was to withhold counteragent, and that Lyle didn't plan on taking any with him. If Cox knew, he'd know it would bungle everything up if Miss Parker showed up with a pocket full of vials and syringes. If Cox knew, he wouldn't have given her the counteragent in the first place. If Cox knew…
Jarod held the vial up to the afternoon light falling in through a gap in the shutters. Everyone looped in on Project Quicksilver had seen counteragent before at least once, namely that first afternoon in Conference Room C, when the group had passed around a vial like a treasured toy from a child's show-and-tell. A thin liquid, translucent, a desaturated blue that reminded Parker of her favourite pair of jeans.
The liquid in the vial suspended from Jarod's fingers was not desaturated but a bright, sky blue. With a scowl of disgust, Jarod unscrewed the cap, pressed his wrist over the opening, and deftly upended the vial so that his wrist came away lightly damp with the contents. Jarod wafted it towards his nose, then, apparently satisfied it wouldn't immediately kill him, licked it off with a quick swipe of his tongue.
"Saline," he spat. "Saline and food colouring."
Jarod considered the vial for a moment before chucking it half-heartedly at the wall, where it burst into a wet mess of glass splinters against the drywall. He sank onto the bed next to the window. After a beat of tense contemplation, his gaze drifted toward the closet door.
The earpieces spat noise as Lyle laughed. "I heard that all the way down here. If you've got that out of your system, the clock is ticking. I estimate that in about forty seconds the crowd will be too dense to get a clear shot on Rayner. It's all the same to me, whatever you decide."
There was no winning. Maybe if they had more time, Jarod might have devised some scheme to wriggle out of the ultimatum. This mission had been kept a secret for a reason, not only from Jarod himself but from higher-ups like Brigitte. If Lyle was dodging scrutiny, he must have known that the plan would fall apart under peer review.
But there was no time.
Parker wrenched open the closet door, grabbed the sniper rifle by the barrel, and limped across the room with it dangling awkwardly from her grip. Jarod watched her progress warily, his face creased in pain. He raised his hands in useless protection as she approached, as if to push the gun away once it was offered to him.
I can't, his helpless expression seemed to say. I won't do this.
"I know," she said, a little breathless, and limped past Jarod to the window.
She leaned down in front of the window sill, putting most of her weight on her good leg. Rayner's silvery crown was unmistakable even in the thickening crowd. Her arm was steady.
"Miss Parker, what are you—"
When she looked back at him, Jarod had half-risen from the bed, staring at her like… well, like she was aiming a gun at a man who did not deserve to die. To Jarod, all needless death was personal.
"Shut up, Jarod," she mouthed.
It was too easy. Lyle had chosen the perfect spot. He had to have been scouting the flow of passengers on and off cruise ships from this port for months. She hardly had to aim.
"No, don't—!"
Jarod shouted an instant too late. Across the square, Gavin Rayner stumbled sideways and slumped against a public trash bin. It was very clean. The angle of the bullet aligned beautifully with the angle of Rayner's fall, such that his body immediately concealed the worst of the impact spatter. Another passenger, a twenty-something woman with her arm linked around the elbow of another woman, immediately shrieked with laughter, while her partner shouted something indistinct culminating in "—so drunk!". They weren't the only witnesses, however. Another woman, likewise bee-lining for the entrance to the boarding area with her teenage son trailing behind, paused and called out to ask whether the fallen man was alright.
Back in the dim room above the café, Jarod wrestled the gun away from Miss Parker. It wasn't much of a fight — she didn't want to be caught with her hands on the trigger if she could help it.
"You didn't need to do that!" said Jarod in a whisper-shout. "I cou—mph!"
Parker slapped a hand over his mouth and shoved him backwards, hard. As he regained his balance, she reached up and plucked the receiver from his ear. She likewise retrieved her own earpiece, let both devices drop to the floorboards, and crushed them under her heel like a pair of cockroaches.
"I know I didn't need to," she hissed. Half her attention was on the stairwell. How long would it take Lyle to join them? "As far as Lyle knows, you pulled the trigger. Okay? Easiest Pretend you'll ever pull off. Just look a little remorseful and a lot resentful and nobody will ever question it."
Jarod's face shut like a set of window blinds.
"We'll talk about this," he promised.
"Looking forward to it," she shot back.
Heavy footsteps approached on the stairs. When Lyle breached the sniper's nest, he found the pair of them sitting opposite each other, both in subtly different, oily hues of simmering anger. Neither were play-acting. Though Parker had made the decision to pull the trigger of her own free will, without outside pressure, without any intentional guilt trip or encouragement, more than anyone else she blamed Jarod for what she'd done. What she had to do. Never mind that she'd need two hands to count the number of people more culpable than him. Never mind that he'd wanted Rayner dead even less than she had. If it weren't for Jarod, if it had been almost anyone else, she wouldn't have taken that shot. But it was Jarod, so the corpse of Gavin Rayner was gathering shrieking onlookers on the streets of Old San Juan, steps away from safety.
Lyle looked between Miss Parker and Jarod; to complete the scene, his attention darted from the window, to the gun, to the bare hollow in Jarod's ear. Parker had dropped the obliterated earpieces into the flower box under the window.
"What a cheerful scene you both paint," said Lyle. "How about a smile, hey? That's two assignments down. On any new job, each day is easier than the last, that's what I've always found."
Jarod crossed the room in two strides. His fist caught Lyle under his jaw. Lyle hit the threshold, slid off at an angle and almost fell backwards into the stairwell and down the stairs, but caught himself on the railing at the last second.
"Hm," said Lyle, once he'd righted himself. He touched his jaw gingerly with the pads of his fingertips. "You know, I get it. I actually do. And I can't say I'm not pleased with your work, Jarod. So, I'll tell you what, I won't put that in the report, because I know that wouldn't look good for you." He grinned. "But you only get one. Next time that happens, I won't be able to overlook it."
Jarod scowled. "Next time, you won't get the chance."
