"Sometimes," Detective Sergeant Aaron Welkins said, popping a piece of chewing gum in his mouth, "I just don't get this town at all. Broad daylight, some guy shoves an old lady in front of a car, butchers two guys carrying big guns but no ID, then drags an unconscious woman off to his car like some caveman grabbing a mate. I mean, I'm from New York, sure, I expect that kinda thing there. Here, in the latte and dot com capital of the world? Don't make sense. Don't make sense at all."

Jarod nodded. He was cool and professional outside, but inside he felt raw and scorched. Parker. He couldn't allow himself to see any of that, feel any of her terror. Focus on the moment. He hadn't had time to prepare a good cover; the badge hanging on his jacket was never meant to be closely examined by police. He'd made it as a flash badge, something that could get him admitted quickly to locked rooms or past checkpoints. Wearing it in public was a measure of his desperation. At least Special Agent Morales hadn't yet gotten word of the murderous scene. Trying to juggle his newly minted persona as Lieutenant Paul Dexter of the Seattle P.D. was difficult enough without stirring Agent Jarod Kendrick into the mix.

"Any description of the car?" he asked.

"Huh?" Welkins asked vaguely, still scribbling in his notebook. He glanced up, then back down. "Yeah, six of 'em. We've got everything from a red Monte Carlo to a black Impala. One guy got a partial plate number, though, so we're working the list. It'll be a bitch of a day. Lotsa footwork. Say, you know Kelly Reilly? Reilly used to work out of our office, coupla years ago. Good cop."

"No, I don't know him," Jarod said. He bent down to look closer at the pavement by the car. Something there, glittering scarlet in the shadows, redder than the blood. He took a glassine envelope out of his pocket, drew a fast chalk outline around the object to mark its position, and collected it.

A ruby, cabochon cut, chipped at one edge. It from Miss Parker's ring. He remembered seeing it flash on her hand in the sunlight.

When he looked up, Aaron Welkins was crouched directly across from him, staring into his face. He'd dropped the dumb-street-cop pretense, and there was nothing in his eyes but cold intelligence.

"She," he said. "Kelly Reilly's a she. But you didn't fall for it. Congratulations. So, anyway, you're not from any bureau in this town. What are you, a fed? Wait, stupid question, you wouldn't be wearing some faked-up badge if you were a fed. Right?"

Jarod sat back on his heels, holding the envelope. He didn't answer because he didn't have an answer, and he waited for Welkins to supply his own.

"Woman a friend of yours?" Welkins asked. He gestured a finger toward the envelope.

"I think so."

"Which side of the law are you on, buddy?" Welkins' eyes cut quickly to the dead men lying crumpled and bloody just beyond them. "Their side?"

Silence was still his best defense. It held for a long time, long enough that Jarod's muscles began to cramp. Welkins made his decision and slowly rose to his feet. Jarod rose with him.

"I'll take that," Welkins said, and reached out for the envelope. "Damn shame about that woman. She's probably be dead by the time we track down that plate."

As Jarod handed him the envelope, he was startled to realize the detective was holding out something in return. The exchange was made so seamlessly Jarod doubted any of the other cops noticed.

"Better get going," Welkins said flatly. "Detective."

Jarod nodded, took off his badge and stored it in his pocket, and walked back to the car he'd rented. On the way, he unfolded the tiny piece of paper Welkins had passed him.

Maroon Chevy Impala, partial license 184.

As he got in the rental car, he took out his cell phone and made a call he had hoped he would never have to make.

###

There were very few pleasures in Mr. Parker's life, but his afternoon martini was foremost. He allowed no calls from four to four fifteen, no interruptions, no meetings. At precisely four p.m. each day, his assistant Helena came in his office and mixed him a perfect gin-and-vermouth vacation, complete with double olives. He liked to drink it watching the surf roll outside of his eastern-exposure window. The bulletproof glass distorted things only slightly.

The music today was Sibelius, a haunting, ghostly soundtrack to the beat of the waves. He sipped cool, mistlike gin and sharp vermouth, and felt the satisfaction of a day well spent. His erring daughter would be landing in an hour or two – poor judgment on her part, but then she'd always been too much like her mother. He'd thought he'd trained that out of her, but it kept cropping up. A nuisance. A damned nuisance.

The phone rang, a shrill electronic buzz slicing through the fabric of the Sibelius. Mr. Parker swore harshly, set his martini down, and reached for the phone handset.

"Helena, you know very well that I – "

"Shut up and listen," said a voice he thought he'd never hear. Jarod. My God. "I need you to run a California license plate."

"Who the hell do you think we are, the goddamn DMV? Jarod, you can't – "

Jarod interrupted, "She'll die if you don't do this. Now."

Parker sat back in his chair, feeling a chill spread through the pit of his stomach. He almost asked who, but it was a stupid question, he knew exactly who Jarod meant.

"Mr. Parker, a serial killer has your daughter. He's going to rape her, then stab her, and if you've got a strong stomach I can tell you exactly what he'll do to her after that. I need all possible owners of maroon Chevy Impalas with a partial license plate of 184 registered in the state of Washington, concentrated in Seattle. I need them now if you want to see her alive."

Whatever he'd been prepared for, it hadn't been this. He'd been half-expecting Jarod to abduct his daughter, threaten her life ... the most desperate action of a desperate man. But this ... he didn't doubt Jarod's anger, or his urgency.

And so help him God, he didn't doubt his daughter's danger, either.

"Hold," he rumbled, and punched buttons, listened to the hollow ring of the phone.

"H-hello?"

"Broots, I've got Jarod on the phone. No, don't interrupt me, damn it, just listen! I'm putting him on, and you do whatever he tells you. Whatever he tells you. Understand?"

"Y-yes sir."

Mr. Parker jammed the button. "Go, Jarod. Broots is ready to help you. I don't need to tell you what's going to happen to you if you're playing games, do I?"

"I wish it was a game," Jarod said. "Believe me."

###

It was so quiet that the only thing Miss Parker could hear, once the fog began to lift, was her own heartbeat. It thumped slowly, as if it couldn't quite believe all this wasn't just a dream. A nightmare that would vanish any second now.

She opened her eyes and blinked. It lasted half a lifetime. Slowly, her eyes adjusted and focused on something white that swayed rhythmically in the shadows.

It was a dead woman, ghost-pale, her eyes open and clouded. Her long dark hair brushed the floor because she was suspended from a rope by the feet. There was a pool of spilled shadow that had to be blood on the floor underneath her.

It was her future, staring her in the face.

Panic fought back the drugs. Parker tried to move her hands, her feet, but even fueled by fear she couldn't do more than drag them a few inches across rough wood. She was lying on something – a table, maybe. A stack of lumber. The smell of old oil and bleach burned in every breath she took, and she didn't know where she was, where to go, how to live through this. This was worse than the Centre. It was worse than anything she could imagine.

God, if only she wasn't so cold.

Something shifted position in the shadows, and the breath she had caught froze into ice. She tried desperately to move her hands again, her feet, anything, and felt a scream building inside as the shadow moved closer, closer ...

... and meowed.

She swallowed hard and whispered, "Nice kitty."

It meowed again and slinked closer. A gray cat, sleek and beautiful. It passed through a patch of reflected light shining under a door and disappeared again into the darkness – but not before she saw the dark caverns where its eyes had should have been. The cold spread through her body again, driven by a wave of pure terror.

"All cats are gray in the dark," a voice said, inches away. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood rather than scream, bit harder when she felt something cold and rubbery touch her hand and turn it over to inspect her fingernails. "Beautiful. You have beautiful hands, Miss Parker. I still don't know your first name, Miss Parker, what is it?"

"Listen to me," she said. Her mouth was dry, her throat clicked when she swallowed. "My father will give you anything."

"Anything I want?" The rubbery touch moved farther up her arm, into regions that were still numbed. "I doubt any father would. What's your first name, Miss Parker?"

"Catherine," she lied. She didn't know why she said it, it forced itself out under the pressure of her fear. Her mother's name should have been a talisman, but it sounded naked and vulnerable here in this place, with this creature's hands on her. God, what was he doing? What was he ...

"Catherine," he murmured back to her. It was a desecration. "My sweet beautiful Catherine, you're going to be perfect. My masterpiece. I'm going to get you right."

And she felt, just barely, another pinprick of pain somewhere in her arm, and the world blurred again. She heard him say, "This isn't going to hurt, my dear. Try to be brave."

She would have screamed, if she'd been able.

###

Jarod studied the warehouse door carefully for any hidden traps or triggers. Nothing he could see. Maybe it was as simple as a squeaky hinge.

He'd come prepared for that, as well as many other things. He took a can of WD-40 from his pocket and sprayed the hinges before trying the doorknob.

Locked. It didn't cost him more than twenty seconds of time to remedy that.

Inside, there was no sign of the machine shop that supposedly occupied the space – a machine shop owned by Howard Mannheim, who also owned a car that matched the partial license plate numbers Jarod had been given. Broots had come through.

The question was, had he come through in time?

The room Jarod entered had a deliberately mazelike look to the stacks of boxes. He had to be careful of scattered metal and glass; sound would fly through this metal building like panicked crows. His best weapon was silence. He tried to pick out any sounds that might tell him where she was, what was happening to her.

He couldn't think of that for long without a tremor coming to his hands, a cold metallic taste to his mouth. He concentrated on sounds, and heard what he thought might be whispers off to the left. As he moved that way, the smells of disused metal and old oil changed, distorted. Something astringent, like bleach or chlorine. And the sweet filthy undertaste of decay.

There was nothing except another door where he thought he'd heard the whispers. He stood very still, eyes closed, and tried to extend his senses as far as he could.

Yes. His eyes flew open, straining at darkness. Voices beyond the door – way beyond. But that meant, maybe, that Parker was still alive to talk to.

All he had to do was go through the door.

He gave it the same methodical inspection as before, sprayed the hinges, grabbed the doorknob, and said a short, heartfelt prayer before he eased it open. The darkness on the other side was thick, velvety, almost palpable. He had a flashlight, but using it could alert the man beyond the hallway; he dialed it down to its smallest possible beam, intense as a laser, and directed it toward the floor at his feet. The floor looked clear.

He took his first two steps into the darkness, and suddenly pulled himself to a stop. Nothing showing in the beam of his light, but still, something told him –

Jarod reached out carefully, feeling in the darkness with his left hand, and slashed his palm across a butcher knife.

He stumbled backward and to the right, away from what had cut him, and instinctively aimed the flashlight at it.

Light glinted from what seemed like a thousand shining surfaces.

The hallway was lined with knives, jutting out at every angle. The one two feet in from of him had a thin bead of red on it – his blood. He took another step back away from it.

God, he thought, stunned, just as a knife he hadn't seen dug deep into the flesh of his right thigh from behind. The shock and pain made him fumble the flashlight. It blinked on impact with the hard concrete floor but didn't go out. He watched it roll gently across the rough surface, all the way to the end of the hall where it illuminated a section of wall about three inches in diameter.

Ten feet of knives between him and the light.

He turned back to the door, but he already knew there wouldn't be any way to get out. No doorknob on this side, just a smooth sheet of metal.

He was trapped, in the dark. In the one look he'd had of the hallway and its bristling forest of knives, he'd seen another door at the end, studded with knives of its own. That was the way out.

First he had to get there.

His left hand burned, but the muscles were intact; he couldn't necessarily say the same about his right leg. It felt suspiciously weak, and when he tried to put his full weight on it, it trembled. Shock, maybe. Or maybe worse.

He took off his leather jacket and wrapped it around his hands. It wasn't thick enough or tough enough to ward off the edges for long, but it was all he had.

I have to do this. He took a deep breath and stepped forward into the dark, into the knives. He kept his leather-wrapped hands at a level to protect his face and throat, and moved very slowly. When he felt the cold bite of metal against his chest, he froze and felt his way past it.

For three feet, he managed to avoid the worst of it, and then as he moved his foot forward something stabbed hotly into his ankle. He hissed in pain and pulled back, balancing on his injured leg. It trembled and threatened to give way. If he fell – he had a vivid premonition of what that would mean, and steadied himself.

If only it wasn't so dark. So cold. The cold was biting at him know, sharp as the knives, and he was shivering without the protection of his coat.

He carefully put his foot back down, eased himself forward –

-- and felt a knife slide into his left side. He let out his breath in shock and resisted the impulse to jerk backwards. He'd hit the ankle-high knife again, cut a hamstring, fall into a hedge of knives that would kill him outright if he were lucky.

He inched his body backwards until the knife was out of him. Liquid warmth spilled down his side, and he wondered how far he'd advanced toward the door. Not far enough. His glimpse had told him the hallway was at least ten feet long, he couldn't have possibly gone more than five feet. Halfway. Halfway.

He was shaking so badly that for a long moment he couldn't force himself to move at all. He had to keep moving. If he stopped again, even for a moment, he might never be able to start again.

The leather coat was no protection at all. He hardly felt new cuts as he moved forward, but he knew there were a lot of them; he was hitting a knife on some part of his body every move he made.

Another foot of hallway behind him. Two. Three – surely he had to be close to the door now. His arms and legs were hot blurs of pain, his body burning with cold. He heard the steady patter of liquid and knew he was bleeding badly, probably from the wound in his side but maybe from the slash on his arm, or his leg. Or his hand. Or a thousand other places he tried not to feel.

He reached out and impaled his left palm on metal.

The blade slid right through the leather, through his hand, forced aside bones on its way through. He heard it separate skin and felt a vast cold gray fog settling over him. The darkness, the blood loss, the pain ...

He staggered, almost went down, pulled his hand free and huddled in on himself. The world had become a ten-foot stretch of knives and darkness, and he couldn't imagine what would be beyond it.

I'll never get out of here, his mind whispered. To which Sydney's voice replied, strong and warm and utterly confident, You will. You can do anything, Jarod. I've always said that.

Maybe. But even in the Centre there had been limits. The only limits here were to his endurance, and his courage.

I can't, Sydney.

I can't!

Jarod reached out again with his wounded hand, brushed cold steel, flinched, and then fitted his hand around it.

A cold brass doorknob, slick now with his blood. He turned it and pushed, and stepped – or fell – out into open, echoing shadows.

He had made it. He was free. For a few seconds he couldn't master his panting, or the tears that burned in his eyes; he was on his knees and couldn't remember how he'd come to be there.

The door shut behind him with a soft hiss of air and a click of metal.

Another silent, dark room, but his eyes were dark-adapted now and he immediately picked out something moving at the far end of the room.

Swaying.

Swinging like a run-down pendulum.

The breath huffed out of him in shock before his mind acknowledged what he was seeing. He stumbled up to his feet and ran, skidded to a stop, and finally let himself understand.

He was seeing a woman hanging by her feet, dark hair brushing the floor. She was pale as marble, and her blood was in a thick pool below her. Her arms hung down like a diver's, and the backs of her hands dragged slowly through the blood on the concrete floor.

She had no face.

No face.

He reached out to touch the blue-white skin, but somewhere between thought and action he was on his hands and knees, then down on his side, trembling.

Parker was dead. He was too late.

It occurred to him dully that the Centre would be arriving soon. Broots would have had to tell them the same findings. Daddy Parker would have put killers on a plane within minutes. Any time now, they'd be here, and they'd take him back to a life of pain and cages.

He didn't care.

###

Someone was talking to her mother. That was strange, because her mother was dead.

"Mom?" Miss Parker whispered, or thought she did, and opened her eyes into a bright white light. She blinked, blinked again, tried to swallow but there was no moisture in her mouth or throat. Her tongue felt parched, her lips numbed and cracked.

She couldn't move her hands or feet. It wasn't only the drugs this time; she felt the drag of restraints cutting into flesh. Cold metal underneath her, no clothes to protect her.

Then she remembered where she was, and tried to scream. All that came out was a harsh whimper.

Something blocked the light, a head-shaped black hole of a face with eyes like the dark at the bottom of a well. He looked like a man but he wasn't a man, not really, not in the way she'd always understood. He was something less. Something else.

"Hold still," he said, and his cold rubbery hands pressed on her collarbone and she felt a needle jab, then something going in. It didn't come out. She saw the long flexible tubing as he taped the IV in place, and her eyes followed it up to a boxy machine on wheels that had old-fashioned light-up buttons and switches.

"What ..." she whispered. He glanced at her. "What are you doing to me?"

"Believe me, you'd thank me for it in a few years when that perfect skin starts wrinkling and those lovely breasts start sagging, when you get cellulite and bags under your eyes and gray in your hair. I'm going to help you avoid all that. I'm going to make you perfect. A piece of art."

He switched on the machine. A compressor started up with a fast thumping noise like her heartbeat.

"Actually," he continued, "that's not what I'm doing to you in the way you're asking. You mean, what does this machine do, am I right?"

She managed to nod. He smiled, but it wasn't like any human smile she had ever seen, not even Lyle's.

"It's an embalming machine," he said. "It'll pump your blood out into a canister. I keep that, you see. For later. Then I pump in my own special blend. It makes you more beautiful."

He reached over and pushed the green button on the machine.

"Remember when I said it wouldn't hurt?" he asked. "I lied."

She felt a sudden tearing suction and saw blood thread through the tubing, red lace suspended in midair. Her heart pounded, and she thought for a few seconds that she might literally die of fear, but the machine kept up its steady drumbeat and her blood flowed out and she felt an eerie calm settle over her.

This was what it was like. This was what it was like to know it was coming. She thought about her mother in the elevator, about the doors opening, the man with the gun stepping inside. Her mother had known this feeling.

"Catherine," the man standing over her said, and began to touch her. "Don't close your eyes. I need to see your eyes."

She closed them anyway.

###

Jarod flinched at the sound of rattling metal. No ... not rattling. Thumping. Some kind of machine was operating, not far away. A compressor? Something like that.

The body turned slowly in front of him, and he caught a glimpse of a shadow on her left hip. A bruise, marring perfect skin. No, not a bruise –

He was staring at a tattoo.

He forced himself back to his feet and began moving in the direction of the sound. Before long, he was running, driven by the return of an emotion he'd forgotten he could feel.

Hate.

Another hallway, this one free of knives. He slammed open the door at the far end, half-fell into the room, and saw ... saw ...

Miss Parker lying naked on a steel table, hooked to a machine that thumped like a metal heart. Her blood was gushing into a glass jar on the floor. Standing over her, his hands on her, was Howard Mannheim.

Jarod pulled the gun he carried from the ruins of his jacket and shot the bastard three times, a tight grouping center mass. Mannheim turned to look at him, clearly amazed. He took two steps toward Jarod, hesitated, took another one. Jarod held his gun in shooting stance and waited.

Mannheim reached out a hand to him, pleading or threatening, and then pitched face forward to the floor.

Convulsed.

Died.

Jarod waited for a guilt that refused to come.

He jumped over the body and slapped his hand down on the red STOP button on the machine. The thumping shuddered and stopped, leaving only the tortured sound of Parker's gasps for air. Jarod stripped off his cut, bloodied shirt, folded it into a pad, and carefully pulled out the IV needle from Parker's neck. He applied pressure to the wound with one hand while he worked at the straps on her right hand, then her left.

"Hold that," he told her. She didn't. She reached up and touched him, touched his face, his neck, his throat, his bare and bleeding chest. Her hands were cold. Her fingernails were almost blue. He captured one hand in his, raised it to his lips and kissed it gently. Placed it on the pressure bandage he'd put on her neck. "Hold it for me, Parker. Please."

She did, somehow. He quickly unbuckled the straps on her ankles and looked around for something, anything, to wrap her in. There was a white sheet folded neatly in the corner on a metal tray.

"Jarod," she whispered. He came back to her, shook the sheet open and draped it across her skin. She was almost as pale as the fabric. "Jesus. You look like shit."

He smiled.

"You too," he said, and picked her up from the table. "You too."

###

He carried her out into the dark, silent room with its pale pendulum in the shadows, and stopped for breath when he realized that he could never take her down the hall with its gleaming bristle of knives. Mannheim must have had some other way in, but it might take hours to find it.

Neither of them had time to spare. Jarod looked down at the woman in his arms and saw that her lips were pale lilac, her skin brushed with blue. Still breathing, but he'd seen the amount of blood pumped out into that cold glass canister. He felt her heart laboring to pump the low volume of blood through her body. The sheet he'd wrapped her in couldn't warm her, and he was shivering violently himself, unable to give her the heat she so desperately needed.

Somewhere back in the room with Mannheim's body was the ruin of his leather jacket, with his cell phone in the pocket. Not thinking clearly. He should put her down, go get the phone, call for help.

When he knelt to lower her to the ground, she opened her eyes in panic and whispered, "Don't leave me!"

"Have to," he said. He took her hand in his and laid the back of it against his face, the only spot on his body that wasn't bloody or agonizingly sore. "Hang on, Parker. I'll be back."

Her lips formed his name, but he couldn't hear her voice over the harsh buzzing in his ears. Lightheaded. He tried to stand, faltered, and went down to one knee again. The second attempt brought him upright.

He'd only taken a few steps back toward the room when he heard the sound of footsteps coming from that direction.

Mannheim. No, he was dead. Jarod knew that, he'd checked the pulse, seen the damage the bullets had done. Men didn't walk around with shredded hearts. Still, he had a skin-tightening vision of Mannheim's corpse shambling out of the darkness, grinning, coming back for Parker.

Jarod retreated back to her side, crouched down and tried to pick her up again.

He failed. The effort sent him down to the concrete. He managed to cushion her fall with his body, but he knew he'd never be able to get up carrying her.

And he could not – would not – abandon her.

He dragged himself and her back into the deep shadows between some stacked crates until he felt a damp wall at his back. Parker was a heavy weight across his legs, cradled in his arms. He put his fingers to her neck and felt for a pulse.

"Still here," she whispered. He brushed her lips with his fingertips.

"Shhh," he warned her, and felt her nod.

"Jesus Christ!" a man's voice rang out, ragged with disgust. "What a freakshow this is. Got another dead one over here."

It wasn't Mannheim. Jarod let out a shaky breath and held Parker tighter as the footsteps -- more than one person, maybe as many as five or six -- moved out into the room. His eyes were blinded by a sudden flare of flashlights, but they weren't pointed at him, not yet -- they were focused on the hanging corpse at the far end of the room.

There was a moment of silence, and then a single set of footsteps advanced across the room.

"It's not her." Jarod opened his eyes. He knew the voice, and realized the reality was only marginally better than the nightmare of Mannheim. Lyle. The Centre had found him. "Fan out, look everywhere. If I go back without little sister your asses won't be worth the coffins they'll bury you in."

Parker's white skin and sheet glowed like a beacon as a flashlight bounced their direction. She turned her head away from the light, and Jarod swallowed a bitter taste of defeat as someone shouted and the flashlights all turned their direction, pinning them in a circle of glare.

Lyle stepped into the light and made himself a backlit shadow.

"Well, you've looked better," he said. "Hello, Jarod. Nice to reacquaint. We'll have to sit down later, talk over old times, hook you up to a battery cable or two. I see you've found my sister. Hey, sis, how come you're always naked when I find you? Not that it isn't convenient when, you know ..."

Jarod felt a slow acid burn of hate combust in his stomach. When Lyle took a step forward, he said, "Come any closer and I swear I'll kill you." The harshness of his voice echoed around the room like scraped metal.

He moved his hand out from under Parker and showed Lyle the gun. Lyle laughed. Jarod took it off safety with a loud click.

"You're not going to touch her," Jarod said. "Back away."

"Please. One gun -- " Lyle pointed at him. "Six guns." He moved to indicate the circle of men. "You want to keep her alive and healthy, putting her in a firing squad isn't the best strategy."

Not thinking clearly. Jarod blinked against the lights and saw that the world was going gray and foggy. He felt so cold it was an effort to hold the gun straight.

Lyle slowly lowered himself to a crouch. Eye level, and Lyle's eyes were shining and avid. His voice lowered to a dark purr. "Put the gun down, Jarod. You're not doing her any good."

"No," Jarod grated. Lyle stared at him for a few seconds, then went smoothly back to his feet and walked out of the way of his men.

"Shoot him someplace painful," Lyle said. "Try not to make it fatal."

There was a sudden earsplitting explosion at the far wall, a blast of acrid smoke and sudden hazy daylight. Lyle's men ducked and scattered, taking aim at the jagged opening as bodies poured into through the opening.

Jarod blinked and realized they were wearing familiar blue windbreakers, badges suspended around their necks.

Everyone was yelling. Echoes deafened. One voice rose above the rest.

"Drop the guns!" FBI Special Agent in Charge Morales roared. "FBI! Drop the guns NOW!"

She was pointing her weapon at Lyle. He was aiming back. After a frozen few seconds he nodded to his men and leaned over to put his gun on the ground. The others followed and the blue windbreakers rushed forward, slamming them to the ground, clicking handcuffs.

Lyle turned his face toward Jarod. No expression on his face, but the look in his eyes was poisonous.

"Kendrick?" Morales went into a crouch in front of Jarod. Her voice was surprisingly gentle. "Kendrick, let me have the gun. You're safe now."

He couldn't hold it anyway. His hands had gone numb. She took it, turned and spoke into a hand radio. "Clear here. Get the paramedics in here, we've got two wounded."

"Hey," Lyle called. Morales glanced over at him. "If you don't want to be Special Agent in Charge of Nothing in Buttfuck, South Dakota, you'd better think about what you're doing. That man's my prisoner."

"Really?" she asked. She stood up and walked to where he had been pulled up to a standing position, hands cuffed behind his back. She rifled his pockets and came up with a wallet. "Mr. Lyle. I don't see anything here that tells me you can tell me what to do."

"Trust me. One phone call, and you're going to be on your knees asking me what you can do to make it up to me." His tone made it obscenely suggestive. Morales nodded and pocketed his wallet.

"Thanks for the warning," she said, and looked over his shoulder at the agent holding his elbow. "Let me tell you how this is going to be, Mr. Lyle. You're going to be locked a holding cell with some smelly, unpleasant people who might like you very much, and I'm really not going to care, because your right to keep and bear arms does not extend to pointing them at Federal agents. Now shut up. If you ever talk to me like that again, a telephone will be the last piece of electrical equipment you'll need."

Morales turned back to Jarod as two paramedics wheeled stretchers through the smoking hole in the wall.

"She's okay," he said. His own voice sounded like it was coming from a huge distance away, echoing off the edges of the world. "I think she's okay."

Parker reached out for him as the world went gray and foggy.

He slid to the floor as the paramedics took her out of his arms.

###

When he woke up, he was in a hospital bed hooked to tubes and wrapped in bandages. Special Agent Morales was sitting in a chair next to the bed reading what looked like an old issue of People magazine, which she folded shut as she saw him turn his head toward her.

"Is she all right?" Jarod asked. Morales' obsidian eyes glinted.

"Pretty major blood loss, but a few units of O Negative fixed her up," she said. "You needed more blood than she did. The docs stitched up almost fifty cuts on you, including a perforation of your liver and two in your lungs. You're lucky to be alive." Her tone shifted up a degree or two in warmth. "We found the hallway. The knives. You went down that to get to her?"

He nodded. She stared at him for a few seconds, then shook her head. "Jesus."

"I couldn't save the other woman," he said. "I took too long."

"She was dead a day before we got there. Don't beat yourself up about that." Morales studied him as if she was looking for something, some clue. "I've been asked to turn you over to those assholes from the warehouse. Strongly advised, actually."

He didn't say anything. Her eyebrows quirked upward.

"Not going to ask me what I'm going to do?"

He shook his head. She smiled.

"So far as I'm concerned, you and your friend are under protective custody until you're well enough to walk out of here on your own. But I don't think the people who are asking me to turn you over are going to go away."

"No," he agreed.

"You're not going to ask me for a favor, are you?"

"No."

"That's what I figured." She sat back in the chair, folded her hands over the magazine, and regarded him very seriously. "So it's not actually a favor. I know you're not an agent, Jarod. Neither is she, but if I admit that I let two jokers con their way into my investigation, I'd be lucky to get a job guarding dead fish in Alaska. If you were good enough to impersonate an agent in the FBI, and your credentials are good enough to still be holding up, my guess is that you are, or have been, an agent somewhere else. CIA, maybe NSA, something like that."

She waited for confirmation. He didn't give any.

"My hunch is that handing over a working agent of any service to these people would be very bad. So what I did was tell them what hospital you were in, and then move you two secretly to the military hospital where we house wounded agents and witness protection subjects. You've got ten days to get better and get the hell out of my jurisdiction. Want to say thank you now?"

"Thank you," he said.

She smiled.

###

Jarod finished the last set of reps on the leg weights, wiped sweat from his face, and looked up to find his physical therapist. Instead, he found Miss Parker standing in front of him. She was dressed for workout success in shiny black and bright blue – beautiful, outwardly collected, almost back to full health.

He nodded. She nodded back. There was an awkward moment of silence, and then she sat down on the free weight bench across from him, rested elbows on knees, and leaned back and fitted her hands around the bar.

He got up and walked around behind the bench to spot her. She did four reps. He watched muscles shake in her arms.

"Too much weight," he said quietly. She ignored him and pushed through six more reps. Then another five. Then another five. He grabbed the bar as her arms wobbled and guided it back into the stand. She tried to pick it back up. He held it down and went to a crouch so that they were on eye level as she turned to face him.

She opened her mouth to deliver the opening blow, but he beat her to it by asking, "Are you talking to Sydney?"

Whatever she'd been about to say disappeared in favor of a bitter smile. "Sydney knows how fucked up I am. He's not interested in taking on a lost cause."

"Parker – "

"Don't," she said sharply. "Don't do this. We have to leave here. Don't pretend things are going to change between us, because they won't."

"You're piling on the weights because you feel helpless," he said. "You feel violated and betrayed, and you never want that to happen again. If anyone can ever understand that, Parker, it's me."

She shook her head. He reached out and took her hands.

"Don't do this," she said. She pulled her hands away, but not before he felt them trembling. "Leave me alone."

"You can always be hurt," he said, as if she hadn't pushed him back. "You can train every single day and you're never going to be stronger than I am, physically. That's genetic. But strength doesn't always matter. If I got stabbed with a sedative, I'd have ended up in the same position. You survived. You will survive."

She stared at him with those hot blue eyes until he felt his spine melt, and then she said, "Maybe I don't want to if my life is spent making other people suffer."

"Then change the life."

The tears in her eyes spilled over. She bowed her head. He bowed his until their foreheads touched. It was like a dam breaking inside, a shattering of all the barriers that had ever been between them, and in that pure second he knew he had never been this close to anyone in his life. No one.

Their hands were tightly intertwined. He didn't know when that happened.

"I have to go back," she whispered. "Oh God, I have to, you know that, Jarod. How can I do that? How can I go back and smile at that fucking bastard Lyle like I don't know how those women felt ... "

He kissed her. In the middle of a busy room, under the watchful eyes of their FBI keepers. Her lips tasted of tears and honey, and her body pulled at his like gravity. He wanted – needed – to fall.

"Stop," she whispered. He didn't know if she was talking to him or herself, but he pulled back. "No. This isn't – "

"Shut up, Parker," he said fiercely. "Don't tell me what it isn't. Tell me what it is."

"Crazy." Her laugh echoed through his skin. "It's crazy."

"Why'd you come out after me to Seattle?" he asked. "Why'd you leave the sweepers behind? Sydney? Broots?"

"You know why."

He brushed her thick, glossy hair back from her face and kissed her again, thoroughly, deeply. He hadn't forgotten how much he liked the taste of her, but the strength of it still surprised him.

"Jarod – " She was breathing fast now, her eyes bright. "Lyle's in town. He's patient. You can't stay here forever."

"I wasn't planning to," Jarod said. "Were you?"

Silence, but this time it wasn't awkward. It felt strong. It felt – insane though it was – right.

She sat back, swung her legs back up on the weight bench, and put herself in lifting position. "Are you just going to sit there, or help me sweat?"

###

"Hey," Agent Carlisle said, and handed over a cup of instant mocha. "So, anything interesting happening?"

Agent Taylor looked up from his crossword puzzle, took the cup, and set it aside. He didn't care for the coffee, but he liked that Agent Carlisle took the time to bring it. She was beautiful, smart, funny, utterly professional, and he was having thoughts that probably wouldn't be approved of by the SAC. Or the OPR, for that matter.

But damn, she was fine.

"Nothing much going on," he said. "Have a seat." He dumped completed crosswords off the uncomfortable hospital chair next to him. Carlisle eased into it. Body heat traveled with her. He focused back on the puzzle. "Know of a six-letter word for an item of Greek apparel?"

"Chiton," she said. "How long are we scheduled to be stuck here in the waiting room of Hell?"

"Another – " he checked his watch. "-- half an hour until their PT is finished. Enjoy. I think Oprah's on in ten minutes. I hear this assignment's over in another day or so."

"Hey," she said. She looked past him and jerked her chin. He turned to take a look. "Isn't that your guy?"

"Yeah, that's Jarod," he said. Jarod looked sweaty but hardly exhausted – wouldn't have known him from the slashed, bleeding man they'd wheeled in a week ago. "Can you believe he ran through a hallway full of knives? I saw it. Scared the bejeesus out of me just to look at it."

"Damn," Carlisle said, drawing it out. Just the one word, but Taylor knew what that tone meant when you heard it from a woman. His hopes took a nosedive. "Too bad I didn't get to protect and serve him."

"You've got the woman, right? The one he saved?"

She nodded. Taylor watched Jarod disappear into his hospital room.

"Wonder why he's early?" she asked. Taylor shrugged and tried the coffee. It sucked. He wasn't surprised.

"Hey," he asked. "Isn't that your girl? What're they doing, letting everybody off for the day?"

He pointed without pointing to the woman coming down the hall from the opposite direction. Sweaty, glowing, disheveled – drop dead gorgeous. She was toweling moisture from her hair.

"I guess," Carlisle shrugged. She sipped her own coffee, made a face and put it aside. "That's her."

"Well forgive me, but damn." That got a smile out of Carlisle. They watched the woman walk past them, continuing down the hall. Turning left into a room. Letting the door shut behind her.

"Taylor," Carlisle said slowly. "Tell me she didn't just go into his room."

"Wish I could," he confessed. "So, do you want to go break up the party, or should I?"

They looked at each other. Carlisle shrugged and keyed her radio mike.

"Agent Carlisle to SAC Morales," she said. She waited for an answer. It wasn't long in coming. "Do we have any orders covering whether or not we should interrupt any – ah – personal contact between the two subjects?"

Personal contact. That was a good euphemism. Taylor decided to remember it. Carlisle was watching his face, so he tried to keep it to an expression of polite disinterest. After a few more seconds she cleared the channel and clicked off.

"What'd she say?" he asked. Carlisle gave him a slow boiling smile.

"She said Oprah's on in ten minutes."

"Works for me."

###

Cold water. Lots of it. Jarod stood under the pounding, unforgiving spray and tried to forget about it, all of it. He knew zen techniques to clear the mind, breathing exercises to focus the chi, and none of that mattered a damn at the moment.

He didn't want to clear his mind.

He'd thought – really believed – that there had been a moment when the two of them connected, and then it was gone, buried under the realities of life as pursuer and pursued. But he hadn't been able to shake it off, not the way he had before. Maybe it was because he'd had to face the emptiness in his soul in that dark room, with that gently swaying corpse he'd thought was hers. Maybe it was because he finally understood what he'd been feeling for her all these years.

The water still seemed warm. He could have taken a bath in ice cubes and it wouldn't have helped. After thirty seconds more he gave up and turned the taps on to hot, hot enough to billow steam through the tiny bathroom.

He heard the door open and looked over his shoulder at it. Probably another nurse. They were in and out so often he'd lost his initial shyness.

Not a nurse after all. Miss Parker standing there, watching him, and the look on her face appalled him. He grabbed for the white bathrobe hanging on the door, threw it on as he stepped out of the shower.

"What's wrong?" he asked. He was irrationally afraid she'd come to tell him that Mannheim wasn't dead after all.

She stepped forward, moved the sleeve of the bathrobe so that she could see the scars and sutures. He didn't stop her. She eased the cloth back from his chest and traced the ridges of cuts, then the deeper laceration on his side.

"I didn't know," she whispered. "God, you didn't tell me there were so many."

"They'll heal," he said. "That's the worst of it, there and the back of my leg. The rest were mostly superficial."

"These aren't superficial." She gulped in a shaky breath. "I suppose I have to thank you."

"No. No, you don't." Not like this, he thought. Much as he wanted it, he didn't want it to be an obligatory thank-you kind of occasion.

"There's soap in your hair," she said. She reached up and caught a handful of white foam to show him. He smiled. "Better rinse it out."

She didn't move away from the door.

"Are you planning to watch?" he asked bluntly. She crossed her arms and leaned against the frame in an I've-got-all-day pantomime. "Or are you going to join me?"

The hot water was still hammering away in the empty stall. Parker gave him a look that sent lightning bolts up his spine.

"You first," she said.

He unbelted the robe but held it closed.

"You second," he said. She slowly straightened up and hooked thumbs under the elastic of her black jog bra. He let his breath out slowly as she pulled it off, releasing perfect breasts with nipples the color of apricots. He tried to think of something witty and charming to say, but there wasn't anything left.

She stepped out of the Spandex shorts. He slid the robe off his shoulders.

They hit the water together, already too close for drops to force their way between. Her body flushed and eager and slid on his like satin. Then it was a confusion of hands and tongues and tastes and heat, and he had never felt so much urgency and power and gentleness at the same time, not even with Nia, not ever. The feelings Parker pulled out of him were so strong they came out of the core of him, out of a place he hardly knew existed. They spilled into her with every touch.

He came back to himself with a jolt. She was against the tile wall now, vulnerable, completely helpless and pinned against him. He pulled back and looked into her eyes for any sign of panic or terror.

All he saw was a hunger that matched his own.

"Parker," he whispered. She kissed him again.

He said her name again, her first name, just a breath as her hands traveled down his body and found his sex. The solid pressure of her fingers made him moan low in his throat. It turned into a full growl as she wrapped her legs around his waist.

"Sure you're strong enough?" she asked breathlessly, and braced herself against the tile wall. Her warmth slid like silk around him, sheathing him in heaven.

"Try me."

###

When he woke up, she was gone, but the smell and memory of her lingered on his skin. Jarod lay in the dark staring up at the ceiling for a long time, then got up and dressed.

He was just pulling on his shoes when someone knocked on his door. He opened it to find SAC Morales and a tall male agent in an impeccable suit. He looked at Morales a long time before he said, "She's gone."

Morales nodded. "I don't know how she did it, but she got out without our people spotting her. Wherever she is, I hope she's safe."

Jarod swallowed a mouthful of ashes and razors and said, "She is."

Morales cut a look at the agent at her elbow. "There'll be a full investigation of how she managed to slip past strict security, of course."

The tall agent looked chagrined. He took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it over. Morales passed it along to Jarod.

"For you," she said. "Hope it's good news. Oh, and Jarod? I wouldn't want to lose two of my charges in one day. Stay put, will you?"

"That depends," he said. She frowned as he opened the letter.

"On what?"

"On whether I'm under protective custody or under arrest."

"As far as I'm concerned, you're a wounded agent operating under deep cover, and that earns you protective custody."

Jarod looked down at the paper in his hands. "Then I'd say it depends on what this says."

He read it once, then twice, then folded it and carefully put it in his pocket. Morales' eyes were too sharp and knowing.

"Bad news?" she asked.

"Not exactly," he said soberly. "But dangerous."

"For you?"

"No." He traded a long look with Morales. "For her. She takes too many chances."

"And you don't?"

He smiled, but it felt hollow. "She's taking chances for me," he said. "I never wanted that."

Morales raised an eyebrow. "Then you shouldn't have run down a hallway full of knives to save her life. Sets a bad example."

###

Agent Taylor was back at his usual spot in the waiting room; Carlisle balanced two cups of coffee, sank into the chair next to him, and handed over mocha without comment. Taylor nodded. That was the total of their welcome.

On the surface.

"So she's gone," Taylor said. "In the wind."

Carlisle sipped bad coffee. She shifted position in a vain attempt to find a comfortable spot on the hard seat, and that brought her closer to Taylor. Not a bad thing, all things considered.

"Apparently," she said. "Your guy still here?"

"Apparently. What's a six-letter city in Greece?"

"What's your deal with Greece?" she asked. "Athens."

"Nope. Doesn't work."

"Thebes." He frowned and pencilled it in. She eyed him sideways. Nice. Very nice. She wondered if she had a chance in hell with him. "I'd better do a position check."

"Be my guest," he shrugged. She keyed the radio and verified their positions. Nothing interesting to report, not since yesterday's memorable afternoon and evening spent watching the tube and trying not to speculate about what was going on in Jarod's room. She and Taylor had avoided that subject like the plague.

Not that they hadn't both thought about it all through Must See TV.

Three suited men approached from the direction of the nurse's station. Taylor looked up from his crossword, then put it down as the three men headed for Jarod's door. Carlisle radioed in a contact, and Taylor got up and walked over, nice and easy.

"Gentlemen," he said, and had his shield out and flashing as they turned. "Step away from the door, please."

Carlisle didn't like the look of the man in the center – expensively dressed, too many teeth, a tan too deep to be real. The guys with him looked like neckless thugs.

Mr. Teeth gave Taylor a scorching look of contempt and nodded to one of the thugs. Taylor got picked up by the lapels. He hit the wall hard enough to slam the breath out of his body.

"Hey!" Carlisle yelled sharply. She skidded to a stop next to him, gun drawn. "Up against the wall. Now!"

Taylor rolled forward, right into the legs of the two men taking aim at Carlisle. They went down in a messy tangle. He fought free and got his gun out just as Mr. Teeth pushed open the door to Jarod's room. Carlisle grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head back as she pressed the muzzle of her service weapon to his temple.

"Jarod?" she yelled into the room. "Stay down!"

A second after she yelled it, she knew it was useless. Jarod wouldn't stay down.

He wasn't in the room. Or in the bathroom.

He was gone. Like Miss Parker. In the wind.

###

Mr. Teeth – whose name, it turned out, was Mr. Lyle – had some kind of get-out-of-federal-jail-free card. SAC Morales and Agent Taylor had a smoldering look in their eyes as they watched the whole neckless party escorted out of the hospital atrium by security. Carlisle just felt tired.

"I can't explain it," Taylor said to Morales. Carlisle felt for him. Morales looked ready to murder somebody, and he was handy. "He was there during regular checks, then he was gone. Nobody saw him leave. There's nothing on the surveillance tapes."

"Don't worry about it," she said. "I was going to let him go in the next day or two anyway. Go on home. Be in the office tomorrow morning, we've got at least three major operations ongoing and I'll need you both."

Carlisle and Taylor nodded respects. She walked away without another word.

"So that's the ball game," Taylor said. "No more waiting room."

"No more instant mochas," Carlisle added. They looked someplace neutral for a few heartbeats. "Unless you want to grab one."

"Now?" She startled Taylor into looking directly at her.

"Unless you've got plans."

He smiled slowly. "I love that mocha stuff."

She found herself smiling back, and for no good reason, wondered if Oprah was on TV.

###

Parker felt the burn in her muscles, but it was a good slow burn, controlled, focused. Kenneth Fu held the target and gestured for her to attack.

She hit it with a flying kick that broke it in two, hit the mat, and rolled smoothly back to her feet. He studied her for a second, nodded sharply, and pointed her toward the padded bag. She went through the kata of strikes, moving in a fast, controlled, focused rhythm that felt utterly right to her.

"Stop," Kenneth said. She did, instantly, dropped her hands to her sides and bowed slightly to him. "On the mat."

He took the exercise floor with her, faced off, and gave her the measured bow of respect. She returned it and flowed into form, waiting with perfect stillness for his move.

He didn't move. He waited. Not a flicker from him, nothing urgent. It was the patience of a trap door spider.

She waited, too. The stillness inside of her was like a perfect, deep pool.

Kenneth feinted and launched a lightning-fast strike at her leg. She moved just enough to let it miss, spun, and took his next blow as a sacrifice to let her get close enough to deliver three fast strikes -- thigh, side, neck -- that robbed him of balance.

She tipped him neatly over on his back, knelt on his chest, and pulled back a hand for a throat strike.

Paused. Waiting. Kenneth's eyes studied her dispassionately.

"Good," he said. She nodded and moved off of him. They exchanged bows to end the bout. "Very good. You're changing the rules on me, Parker. Two weeks ago you thought strength was about fury. Now you understand that strength comes from peace."

"And patience," she said.

"I didn't think that was in your vocabulary."

Her turn to smile. "I'm looking into personal improvements."

He watched her as she settled in for stretches. No comments this time about her form, silent or vocal. It was a harmonious few moments, comfortable. Peaceful.

She stretched far out over her extended leg, felt the stretch, and for no reason other than the physical sensation suddenly remembered Jarod's hands on her. Her pulse spiked. She breathed deeply to slow it and turned her face away from Kenneth.

"Something happened to you," Kenneth said. "Good, I hope."

"Not in the widely understood way, but yes, I think so."

"Ah." She heard the sudden enlightenment in his voice. "Conflict builds character. You got close to the man you pursue."

"Close," she agreed, and widened the stretch. She closed her eyes and pictured him lying beside her asleep. "Definitely."

"But no cigar?"

She laughed.