After all the trouble Parker had gone to in order to avoid carpooling with Jarod, he picked her up that morning in one of his twin cars, since her car had spent the night in the visitors' parking lot at headquarters. When she sat down in the passenger seat, he dropped a neatly folded pile of clothes on her lap — her clothes from last night. She'd worn the bathrobe home.
"You should have burned them," she said, unfolding the blouse and examining it critically. "I bled all over these. And — what happened to the tear in the leg where the bullet hit?"
"I stitched it up. And the blood came out fine, don't worry."
"Who taught — no, what am I saying, of course you know how to sew."
Jarod smiled. "Sydney taught me."
One carefully quiet car ride later, they arrived at headquarters. Just as Parker reached out to pull open the double doors to the main entrance hall, they burst open and a bulky mass dashed by her — through her, more like — and bounded down the stairs. Less than a second later, another bulky mass ran straight into her.
"What in the goddamn—" Parker grabbed wildly for the door handle, missed, and might then have toppled ass over teakettle down the concrete stairs, if not for a sudden bracing force at her back. She pushed back against it — it was Jarod's arm.
Lyle stood in the doorway, scanning the environs and conspicuously failing to apologize for having collided face-first with his sister.
"Where'd he go?" he panted. "Parker — where'd he go, did you see?"
"No, funnily enough, I was a little busy being knocked off my feet. Christ, Lyle. What's wrong with you?"
But Jarod was scanning the parking lot, too.
"Was that—"
"Willie," said Jarod and Lyle at once. They caught each other's eye and scowled.
"Fast enough to be him," mused Jarod.
"I think it was him, yeah," said Lyle. "Damn. I don't need this, I really don't. I'm going to have to swing down to SL-9 before my meeting with Dad, so I can check the footage, see how long he was here. You definitely didn't see which way he went?"
"Even if I did, after this welcome, I'm not sure I'd tell you," said Parker. She pushed past him into the entrance hall. "Who gives a shit about where Willie goes?"
Lyle performed one last visual sweep of the parking lot surrounding the main entrance, then gave up and joined his team members. He huffed in impatience.
"I take it you haven't been keeping up with your memos from Dad's desk? Willie left with Raines, Parker. If he's here, he's here on Raines's behalf, unannounced. I bet he was after server access. Raines's people have been trying to break through our network security for weeks. Damn it, I don't have time for this."
He jogged off toward the elevators, muttering all the while. Parker shook her head.
"Raines and my father can hiss and spit at each other all day, nothing's going to persuade me to read those page-long hit pieces Daddy sends out every morning." She glanced sideways at Jarod, whose attention was still trained on the parking lot. "I bet you read them, though, don't you?"
He nodded. "It's mostly a transparent opportunity for your father to vent on office letterhead, but sometimes there's a useful nugget of news buried in there. Apparently, Raines has threatened our — the Centre's shipping infrastructure."
He frowned and stared down at his hands. Our, he'd said. Parker decided not to draw attention to it. Sometimes a slip of the tongue was just that, a slip of the tongue.
The Soyuz TMA was right where they'd left it, in the middle of the main sim lab.
"We'll pick up where we left off," said Sydney. "Jarod, you know where your uniform is."
As Jarod retreated to an adjoining room to change, Broots came up alongside Parker and cleared his throat.
"You okay?" he asked.
"What? Yes. Why?" It came out brusque and snappish, as she intended. Broots nodded at her leg.
"You're limping more today. Is it getting worse?"
She could avoid all the medical doctors in the building, but apparently the computer specialists of the world could still notice the telltale signs of a gunshot wound to the leg.
"It's fine. I had a long night." True and true. On waking up in her bed after a fitful night of little sleep, the lancing pain in her leg had dulled to a background ache.
Jarod returned sporting his Roscosmos blues. He rubbed his hands together.
"Ready to work?" he boomed, his eyes alight with enthusiasm.
"We're testing hydration against physical exertion today," Sydney announced. "Ready for blastoff whenever you are, Jarod."
Parker deserted Broots and sidled over to Sydney.
"Anything new on Angelo? You were doing blood work the other day."
"A few abnormalities," muttered Sydney out the side of his mouth. For fear of missing out on crucial information, he didn't spare a glance her way. "He seems to have reached a plateau of quicksilver secretion once saturation was reached. That is, the gland's function stopped once it did its job, so overdosing on quicksilver is not something we need to be worried about. I did manage to get a sense of the speed of accumulation before he reached one hundred percent saturation, and his gland isn't producing it any faster than Jarod's is. That was my first hypothesis — that his gland was a prototype which produces quicksilver too quickly. The data simply don't support it, it seems. Then again, I am not a biochemist."
Jarod bent his head and stepped into the loading hatch of the Soyuz TMA.
"There must be some difference," said Parker. "He can't—"
A terrific explosion of sound from above drowned out the rest of her thought. The lights flickered. Dust shook from the tops of shelves and cupboards. There was an echoing clatter as startled employees dropped whatever they were holding. Shrieks and loud oaths resounded up and down the hallways.
"What the hell was that?" Parker stared upwards, pawing blindly for her dropped cane. "I mean, what the hell was that?"
Parker got her answer once the QS-9300 field team reached the ground floor. The sound like a bomb going off had been… the sound of a bomb going off.
The ground floor itself was largely intact. A few worrying cracks ran across the ceiling on the south side of the building, and assorted objects — fragile decor, water bottles, improbably high stacks of yet-to-be-filed papers — had fallen and added to the overall impression of chaos. Dust and dark smoke hovered in the air.
Parker grabbed a passing employee by the collar. The man boggled at her with mad, rolling eyes.
"Snap out of it," she barked. "What exploded, where was it?"
"Wha — uh! I, I don't—" The terrified man shook his head. "The Tower, I think? Let go! There could be another one!"
Parker's fingers loosened and the captive employee bolted. The air was suddenly full of static, prickling her fingers and rushing in her ears.
"The Tower?" Her voice was small, barely audible. "Not—" Daddy. Daddy is in the Tower. "Get out of my way!"
Employees bounced off her like bowling pins, some taken out at the knees by a well-placed jab courtesy of her cane, until she reached the only elevator that allowed access to the Tower. The rest of the team piled in behind her — Jarod, Sydney and Broots. She hadn't noticed them following her, so intent were her iron sights on reaching the Tower.
The elevator doors opened again on a scene of absolute ruin. Everything was gnarled and soot-black. Much of the walls and ceiling were gone, and the wind off the shore blew the remains of the Tower across the surrounding landscape, across the open field, across the vineyard, across the water. A team of first responders bustled around the place, putting out what few fires remained. The wind had taken care of most of it. Deprived of any work to do, a volunteer firefighter threw on the mantle of authority and stepped in their path.
"Excuse me, you need to proceed to the ground floor and make your way to the muster point with your fellow employees."
He held up a flat palm to stop them. Parker slapped the hand away.
"Where is he? Where's my father?" she snarled.
"What — oh! Miss Parker! I'm sorry, I'm — right, never mind, come with me."
The volunteer firefighter beckoned them down a side hallway, toward the administrative washrooms, rather than heading to the office at the end of the hallway as Parker had expected. Outside the men's room, a small knot of people was huddled around, looking down at something on the floor.
"Daddy, please, no. No, nonono. Daddy…?" Her soft pleas ran unchecked in a long, deteriorating stream of terrified syllables. She shouldered through the knot of people.
"Hey! Miss Parker, calm down." One of the faceless people in her way spoke up — it was Brigitte.
"Get the fu—"
An unsteady voice piped up from the core of the concerned huddle. "Angel?"
"Daddy."
Mr. Parker was sitting against a mostly intact wall, his knees bent in front of him and his arm held to his chest like it was glued there. Ash blanketed him, the brunt of it focused on his left side. His eyes appeared unfocused, and he looked at a spot a foot to his daughter's right when she called out and stumbled to her knees before him.
"Angel, there you are." He found her face with his hands and patted it shakily. "You're safe? You've eaten?"
"I've ea — yes, Daddy, I'm fine, never mind me. Are you okay? What happened?"
"I'm told my office blew up. They won't tell me anything else. My arm — a little banged up, I think. Your brother? Have you seen your brother…? Oh, dear."
Thick raindrops began to fall, sliding through the cracks in the ceiling. The rain had arrived too late to help put out the fire. Brigitte crouched beside Miss Parker and leaned into her ear.
"The paramedics are saying it's crushed. We're waiting on a helicopter to fly him out."
"Crushed?" repeated Miss Parker. It was all too much information at once. A hand alighted on her shoulder, a warm anchor. She didn't look to see who it was.
"His arm. It was pinned under the wall."
Another person piped up, as if there weren't far too many people talking at once already.
"He's also showing some signs of a bang on the noggin. Mild concussion, perhaps. They'll tell us more at the hospital in Wilmington."
"Angel—!" Mr. Parker seized his daughter's arm. "Your brother. They won't tell me where your brother is. We were… it was a meeting. Yes. We were having a meeting in my office."
The hand on Miss Parker's shoulder tightened slightly, then slid away. A moment later, the wind picked up — no, not the wind. The ordered helicopter had arrived.
"Miss Parker, please," said one of the paramedics. "We have to get him mobile. If you could please move out of the way, the gurney—"
Miss Parker levered herself to her feet and staggered away while paramedics swarmed her father like birds at a sky burial. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jarod standing over by the entrance to her father's office, staring at the ruins. Something in his stare made her uneasy.
"Jarod?"
He regained his wits with a jerk and looked up at her.
"Miss Parker," he said. That was as far as he got. She took a step toward him, but he rushed to stop her. "You don't need to see this. Your father — doesn't your father need you?"
She narrowed her eyes.
"What is it?"
Jarod looked uncomfortable.
"Lyle. It's Lyle. It looks like he was… it looks like it was quick. He wasn't too far from the blast when it — ah."
She pushed past him. Her ears were ringing. Around the corner, through the door… and there he was. There it was.
Lyle's body was lying face down on the brittle floor, next to the ruins of Mr. Parker's desk. The roof was completely open in this part of the Tower, and the rain had drenched Lyle through; his hair was wet, clumped and running red. Jarod's hand closed over her arm. She realized abruptly whose hand had been on her shoulder earlier.
"The floor isn't stable here. It must be why they haven't moved him yet."
She shook him off.
"I need to see this, I need to see that it's him. I've been through this rodeo before."
The thought revolved through her head like a carousel: he's done this before. When she'd shot him down at the pier, he'd even severed the thumb of the decoy body to throw her off. The man loved a good faked death.
As a compromise to Jarod's imploring look, she took her steps carefully, testing each footfall. The floor creaked ominously but loyally bore her weight. She crammed the end of her cane under the body and levered it onto its back. Her breath came out of her in a whoosh of air.
"No, that's… that's Lyle."
The worst of the blast had hit his back, carving away the back of his skull and charring him from crown to heel. One eye was closed, like he'd had time to flinch before the explosion hit him.
She wondered what she was supposed to feel. There was one argument and one argument only for grief: he'd been her brother. The two of them had sprung from Catherine Parker's womb within minutes of each other. At the moment, however, disgust was kicking grief's ass. She tugged her cane free, allowing the corpse to fall prone once more.
A busy ruckus punctuated by apologetic mutterings approached from behind her.
"Stop, stop for a moment," said Mr. Parker. The paramedics were trying to push him past the worst of the wreckage to the best access point for the helicopter. His moustache dripped with rainwater. "Oh, for heaven's sake. What a mess. And who's that, there? Someone didn't — who is that?"
Miss Parker turned to face her father. Brigitte seemed to recognize the intent in her face and tried to stop her.
"Miss Parker, this can wait, your father is not at his best right now. This will only upset—"
"It's Lyle, Daddy."
Mr. Parker frowned in clear confusion. He pushed himself up on the gurney with his remaining good arm, ignoring the protestations of the paramedics.
"Lyle? Lyle? What do you mean?"
"He was in the office when the explosive went off. He's dead. Lyle's dead."
She should sound… consoling, right? God, but she was trying her damnedest. Everything was happening too fast, too much, too loud. Hadn't they just been about to start the second day of simulations in that Russian bottle rocket?
Mr. Parker breathed heavily through his nose, his mouth falling open by degrees as the reality settled over him. His scrutiny flicked erratically from face to face. Finally, it landed on Jarod.
"Who did this? Who — that was my son!" he barked. He thrust a quivering finger at Jarod. "Did you do this? You did this, didn't you?"
"I didn't," said Jarod. He was trying for calm, but it hit wrong. He was one blade of grass standing ramrod straight in the middle of a windstorm. Mr. Parker made a noise through his teeth, a spitting, snarling sound of disgust and pain.
"Oh, God. Oh, Lyle." Then, a new sound burst out of Mr. Parker, a wail of grief like Miss Parker had never heard from him. Her first thought, a little petty, a little spiteful: where had these waterworks been when her mother died?
"This is too much for him, please leave your father be," said Brigitte, trying to push the gurney away by herself. The paramedics noticed and jumped to help her. As Mr. Parker was wheeled away, he dissolved into a fit of strident hyperventilation.
Two men, a sweeper and a cleaner, came up behind Jarod and took him by the arms. He tried briefly to wrest himself away, until the realization of what was happening came over his features. Then he looked down at his shoes with an exasperated smile.
"I didn't do this," he said. "We're gonna go through this song and dance again?"
"At least until we work out what happened here," said the man holding his right arm.
Jarod's eyes found Miss Parker's, waiting for her inevitable reaction. On whose authority? she should have said. He's innocent, that was another option. Rounding out the set: He wouldn't do this.
But… wouldn't he? If there were anyone in this world who could inspire hatred in Jarod, it was Mr. Lyle and Mr. Parker. Along with Mr. Raines, they rounded out the bottom three on his ranked list of people on this Earth.
So she said nothing, but watched his retreating back as he was tugged towards the exits, craning his neck back to stare at her the entire way.
The service for Lyle was a rush job, as if they were worried he'd start stinking up the joint if they kept him above ground for too long. Brigitte insisted that they not wait until Mr. Parker was out of the hospital.
"We don't have a timetable for how long they'll keep your father here," she said over the phone to Miss Parker. "Could be a quick weekend stay, could be months. He doesn't want everyone to put their lives on pause for him."
"He said that?" said Parker.
"Well, he would say that if he were verbal. He's had some… the doctors say it's some sort of swelling in the brain, makes everything seem worse in the short term. He's not talking. But he'll be alright! Really, I insist. I'm sure Lyle's friends will want some closure."
But, of course, Lyle didn't have any friends. There were a couple of good old boys in his neighbourhood he might share a drink with while watching the game, might congregate with at the occasional backyard barbecue, but nobody who actually knew him. The attendance at his funeral was made up entirely of Centre staff.
After the minister finished up his generic mumblings, a morbid queue of well-wishers formed out of nowhere, entirely unsolicited, to express their condolences. As the only family member present, Miss Parker was the unfortunate target of a concentrated dose of insincerity. She did her best to dodge the mourners, but they followed her through the graveyard like the tail of a snake following the head.
"Did you know him, then?" she asked the latest pest, a redhead with a bold, square jaw. Said pest had introduced herself as Lena.
"No, not at all," said Lena. She seemed proud to say as much. "Never exchanged a word with him. As long as we're here, though, I don't have to even so much as look at a spreadsheet."
"Lena!" Her friend, a woman in a plum-coloured hijab, elbowed her hard in the side. "He was her brother."
"Yeah, sure, but you knew him — what, three years?"
Parker was finding it difficult not to laugh. "Two."
"Even better." Lena slung her arm around her friend's shoulders. The friend glanced at the hand on her shoulder and smiled a private, pleased smile. Lena cleared her throat, seeming to remember who Miss Parker was. "My condolences, though. Hey, the guys in the accounting department were wondering — who did this, do you think? And do you think they'll try again? If they're gonna keep trying, I'm out. Sorry, but I'm outta here if I have to be worried about masonry falling on my head every other week."
Parker let the prattle wash over her, her gaze unfocused. In everything but body, she was elsewhere, her mind playing back the image of Jarod, his eyes glued to hers as Centre muscle pulled him away from the Tower's soot-caked detritus.
"I need in."
The guard stared at Miss Parker impassively. He was stationed outside the door to the Renewal Wing. Usually, Parker didn't even have to show ID to be shown through.
"Hello? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? I need to get into room six, buzz me through," she said.
Still no response from the guard.
"He's not in there," said a voice behind Parker. She spun around — Brigitte, again. She kept popping up like a whack-a-mole. "You're looking for Jarod, right? He's not in the Renewal Wing."
Parker had just returned from another visit to the hospital in Wilmington. The news had been optimistic — after the aforementioned brain swelling responsible for the confusion and incoherence on display at the scene of the bombing, the doctors had been able to relieve the intracranial pressure quickly. Long-term effects, they said, were likely to be minimal. His pulverized arm was faring worse, but between a ruined arm and a ruined brain, the former was less catastrophic.
"Where is he, then?"
"He's shut up in his old apartment, one floor up," said Brigitte. "Cox wanted him in room six, but I made a case for the alternative."
"You did?" Parker blinked at her stepmother. "Why?"
Brigitte spread her arms magnanimously. "Innocent until proven guilty, right? Plus, they still haven't put everything straight in room six since Jarod tore everything to pieces in there. It's not set up to hold him long-term right now. The apartment hasn't been touched in a while, but he seems comfortable enough. I'll radio up and let security know to let you in."
She gave Parker a dazzling grin and strode off without waiting for a reply.
Brigitte had spoken up for Jarod? Even if her logic made sense, when had logic ever stopped Brigitte from being terrible on purpose? Parker puzzled over this development as she made the trek to Jarod's old apartment. Sure enough, the security guards outside the apartment had been forewarned of her arrival.
"Go on in, Miss Parker," said the stocky one on the left. Parker did a double-take — could he be the guard they'd bowled over outside the bodily fluids repository, the night before the attack? He did seem to be holding himself stiffly. Would he have said anything to anyone yet about the burglary attempt on SL-15?
Inside, Jarod was running on a treadmill. He didn't notice her arrival, as he was wearing bulky headphones over his ears, the wires leading to a CD player crammed into one of the cup holders. Only when she limped into his peripheral vision did he remove the headphones.
"Miss Parker," he said. He jammed his thumb into a square red button on the treadmill interface and came to a gradual stop. "How is your father?"
"The arm's crushed. His brain is on the mend."
Jarod snapped a towel up from where it lay draped over the arm of the treadmill and towelled off his face.
"I'm sorry to hear about his arm. We tend to think of the medical field as infallible, but it's really anything but."
Parker scowled. "You're not sorry."
"Aren't I?"
"I may not believe you planted that bomb, but your detractors have a point. You hate my father, and you hated Lyle. I bet you're crowing on the inside."
"I'd like to be. That would be easier." He threw the towel across his shoulder. "I'm not. That's the most uncomfortable part of empathy — understanding the pain of everyone, not just the pain of those you love and respect. Most of all, I'm sorry for the stress your father's injury is causing you."
Parker couldn't relate. She could empathize with those she cared about, or for those who had done nothing wrong, but those she hated? When Sydney had shot up Raines's oxygen tank, she'd felt nothing but schadenfreude.
"I notice you've said nothing about pitying Lyle."
Jarod shrugged. "He's gone. He's not going through any pain now, if he ever was. If anything, he got off easier than your father did."
It was harsh, yes, but Parker hadn't been crying into her pillow at night either.
"I wouldn't recommend telling my father that, it won't look better for you," she said. She looked around. "I haven't been here in years. Not since the first time, a week after you escaped."
Jarod spread his arms to encompass the room. "D'you like it?" He let his arms drop. "I don't understand why I'm here and not on the Renewal Wing, but I won't question it. It's nicer than I remember it being. I don't even have a treadmill at the house. Plus, no sims — I'm not hurting anyone, directly or indirectly. I should get falsely accused more often."
"Yeah, they were going to stick you in room six, but Brigitte put in a good word. And now you're here."
Jarod's eyebrows flew up. "Brigitte?"
"Yeah. My thoughts exactly."
"Huh."
Parker's eyes snagged on something out-of-place — on the kitchen table, a map had been spread out against a corkboard. Little golden thumbtacks were sprinkled across its surface. She drifted over for a better look.
"I thought they didn't have you working?"
"Oh, that." Jarod scratched the back of his neck. "That hardly counts. It's something I've been picking away at for a couple of weeks now. They have me tracking a serial killer, trying to work out where he'll strike next. A sister of one of the victims hired the Centre when the trail went cold and the cops dropped it. This guy… he's targeting women of East Asian backgrounds." His mouth squirmed like he was fighting down nausea. "He harvests their organs."
Parker made a noise of disgust and backed away from the table. "More than I needed to know. You think you'll catch him?"
Jarod looked at her, then down at his shoes. "No. No, I don't think so. He… he got away."
"That doesn't sound like you," she said. Her eyes narrowed. "What are you not—"
A phone on the wall rang shrilly, cutting off her question. Jarod gave her an apologetic look before he answered. Seconds later, he held the receiver out for her.
"It's Sydney, for you."
She took the phone, frowning. "Sydney?"
"Miss Parker! They're coming to take you to interrogation. I wanted to warn you, in case… ah, in case you have anything you need to sort out."
"What? Why the hell would they — you're sure you heard right? They want to take me to interrogation? Not Jarod?"
"I'm positive. I'm afraid you have me to blame for that, in part. They were set on interrogating Jarod, but they consulted me on how to go about it, and I recommended they skip it altogether. They want to do a polygraph, and polygraphs are useless when applied to Jarod. He can simply Pretend that whatever he says is true, and his physiological responses will reflect that. Their next idea was, well, you."
"Thanks a lot, Syd, what on Earth would I do without you?" said Parker, with sickly sweet irony.
"Sorry. I'll be at the interrogation. See you soon."
Once she hung up, she opened her mouth to relay the news to Jarod, but he stopped her.
"I heard. You'll be fine, Miss Parker. Just tell the truth."
"The truth is going to land you back in room six."
"Possibly," said Jarod. She gave him a look. "Okay, probably. There are worse things under the sun than a week off from work."
"For you? Name one."
He couldn't.
"Do you have another idea?" he asked.
"Yeah. Your specialty. Lie." She pulled a thumbtack out of the map, leaving Las Vegas blissfully un-skewered.
"Hm. The thumbtack trick?"
A grin split her face as she brandished her prize. "The thumbtack trick."
She quickly palmed the thumbtack as the door burst inwards and two sweepers — one of them being Sam — stalked in.
"Sorry about this, ma'am," said Sam. "But you need to come with us."
