TODAY

She entered her kitchen with the awareness that this would be a different day. 

She had been thinking about it the day before and all night long, while her husband was sleeping right next to her, as he had done for the last ten years.

She was conscious of the fact that he was probably living a very similar inner turmoil, because when she had put his favorite food right under his nose the evening before, he hadn’t performed his usual act of eating his portion of meatloaf in two seconds and a half just to have a second one – and she had to admit, she loved to see the children’s face whenever their father sat with them for dinner and ate everything faster than a starving hyena.

The night before had been different, for both of them.

‘Well, that’s the effect that anniversaries have on both of us’, she thought, trying to change her mind on a different subject.

But all her efforts were vain. She couldn’t think of anything else.

Ten years before, her life had changed. Drastically.

She sighed and tightened the node that was keeping her robe closed. She inhaled slowly and took a look around. She loved the kitchen, that was the part of the house she preferred.

She remembered that the first time they had made love in that house, it was right there.

A wonderful, perfect, moment of bliss, that she still remembered as the best time they had been together. Ever. She slightly touched the kitchen counter where she was sitting that night, just before he dragged her on the floor, while their first son was sleeping in his bedroom.

A soft smile formed on her lips, just as her husband appeared behind her and put his strong and muscular arms around hers. She couldn’t help but feeling aroused by the slight touch on her bare skin, while he lowered her robe to have better access on her neck and put a trail of kisses down her collarbone.

“Ethan will wake up in thirty minutes...” she managed to tell him, her words sounding more like hums.

“So will Katie”, he answered her.

“I have to make breakfast…”

He smiled, noticing that her answer was definitely in conflict with the way she was now holding his back to make him come closer to her.

“I don’t think our children will get starved if they don’t have breakfast just for…one…day…” he told her, moaning the last words to her ear.

She turned around, brushing his lips with hers. She really needed his closeness, but she also wanted to talk about what was going on in her mind.

He felt her hesitation as soon as her lips left his mouth.

“Another sleepless night?” he asked her.

She nodded and sighed, while he made a few steps across the room to lean casually on the wall.

She wondered once again if he had ever realized how many times a day he could assume that position and how bewitching he could be when he looked at her in those moments.

He probably wasn’t that oblivious, because he smiled when he saw her eyes dancing and scanning him from head to toe. Ten years had not scratched his well-formed body and he was still the handsome man she had fallen in love with many years ago. Actually, a lifetime ago.

“Stop grinning like an idiot, I can’t focus when you look at me like that!”

He smiled again, then decided to get serious.

“What’s bothering you?” he asked her.

“Don’t you know?” 

His arm left the support of the wall and he stood, coming closer. He sighed and put his hands on her face, caressing her cheeks and kissing her forehead.

“Of course I know. But I need you to tell me.”

She looked at him, straight into his chocolate-brown-eyes, while his ones couldn’t help but drowning inside hers.

“It’s about today”, she murmured, “It’s about what happened ten years ago today.”    

He nodded in answer, never stopping to caress her cheeks.

“I know. And I knew you wouldn’t sleep because of it. I tried so hard to got you enough exhausted so that you would fall asleep after our night of passion. We hadn’t made love four times since…Wait a minute…We never had sex four times in the same night!”

She burst out laughing and then she kissed him with gratitude. She loved when he made her laugh. And he’d always made her laugh in the last ten years. Everyday.

He responded and deepened the kiss until they both started to need for air. He solely released her as the softest smile spread over his face.

“I know it’s hard to think about the lives we had ten years ago. Do you remember how we used to be against each other?”

“I remember you, running all over the damned States…”

“Mmm…” he moaned, kissing her cheek.

“And I also remember me, chasing you and never being able of taking your sorry ass back to where you belonged…”

“The Centre?”

Another kiss, this time dangerously close to her earlobe. She stopped him and grabbed his hands in hers, then she put them on her chest, clearly over her heart.

He made that gorgeous and seductive grin of his.

“And what do you remember?” she asked him.

“I remember your face blushing, claiming your almost kissing me on a moment of weakness...”

“I didn’t blush!” she replied, but he ignored her.

“And I remember you saying that thing about turning points, what was that?” he asked her, pretending not to remember well.

“Oh yeah, that they only come…when you’ve got someone to turn to.”

“All those pretending skills finally got to your head, Boy Wonder. I never said anything like that…”

“Oh, didn’t you?” he smiled.

“Nope. I said something to turn to.”

“Oh, well…” he whispered, then kissed her again.

“You’re getting older if your mind plays tricks on you.”

“Did I mention that I hate you?!” he told her, releasing her immediately and gazing at her pretending to be offended by those words.

“Well, that was a long time ago”, she answered, “There’s a second time for everything.”

He looked at her with uncertainty. What did she mean by that?

“I’ve never said something so terrible to you…”

“Didn’t you?” she asked him, folding her arms over her chest and raising an eyebrow.

“No, I didn’t!” he replied, sure that he might as well be dead before saying that he hated her.

She sighed in exasperation, “You don’t remember ‘cause you were in a state of trance and later you took back the words, but you did. And before you say anything, yes, I forgave you because you were not your usual self at that moment.”

He tried to focus on his memories, trying to remember what the hell she was talking about. 

She made a sweet smile and moved her fingers, asking him to come closer. When he did so, she hugged him and kiss his cheek.

“I don’t remember ever saying that –”

A look of recognition appeared on his face.

“You’re still talking about that night…”

She nodded, a tear streaming down her face. He used his thumb to dry it away. After all those years, he couldn’t  stand watching her crying, yet.

“I told you it’s about ten years ago…I can’t help it…”

He wanted to kiss her sorrow away, and he did.

“I know it’s hard. I’ve been thinking about it, too. I just have to be stronger than you, because I figured out you would need me to pretend to be man of the house, just for one day…”

She laughed between tears, “The other man in this house is still a kid, you genius!”

“Actually I was talking about you.”

He did it again, he made her laugh out loud. That was the sound he loved more in the whole world. Along with the voice of his children calling him ‘daddy’.

“I’m the man of the house”, she replied, satisfied by his choice of words.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re incredibly sexy for being a man?”

She smiled and kissed him back when he put his lips on hers.

“I love you…” she sighed against his chest.

Then he remembered another important thing.

“Hey…Am I right to assume that was the night I also told you that I loved you for the first time?”

She smiled, so glad that he still remembered.

“Yes, you did…”

She was going to hold him tighter, but he took her hands and looked at her, in silence.

“What?” she asked, long forgotten her Ice Queen tone whenever she said that word years before.

“You told me first, Parker…”

Once again, she smiled, happiness enlightening her face.

“Yes, I did, Jarod.”

He nodded, now he remembered everything very clearly.

“One night. But it changed everything…”

And while she held him again, they both started to live it again in their memories.

TEN YEARS AGO

Three months have passed since their little adventure on Carthis.

Everything seemed ‘back to normal’, as Miss Parker has pointed out with Raines and Lyle as soon as she was back from the island.

Parker hadn’t taken that turning point, yet. Apparently she was still trying to catch Jarod, at least as much stubbornly as her twin brother was. She used to reach Jarod’s lairs always a step ahead of Lyle. Parker used her inner sense much more, now that she had started to understand her gift. It helped her to find all the lovely holes where the lab rat had spent some days, always before Lyle even finding out about their existence.

All her efforts, anyway, seemed to no avail. Jarod wasn’t simply interested in playing their game of cat-and-mouse anymore. He still ran, she still chased, as she had told him during their last phone conversation. But he didn’t leave little presents behind anymore, and he hadn’t contacted her or Sydney for three months. He just seemed to be vanished into thin hair.

Lyle was furious and so were Raines and the Triumvirate, that was still looking for Adama’s murderer.

And yet, there were at least three people at the Centre who knew that this wasn’t exactly the truth. Sydney, Broots, and Angelo were well conscious of what was happening between the fugitive and his huntress.

Miss Parker had decided she was simply too tired to deny the truth anymore.

She wasn’t ready to admit her feelings yet, but after her trip to the island she couldn’t lie to herself. She couldn’t take Jarod back to Centre, she would never do it. She cared too much for him to condemn the pretender to a life of loneliness and exploitation. He wasn’t their little experiment anymore, he’d never deserved to be.

---

 

A week after her return from Carthis, she had come back from the last place Jarod had been sighted in. She was so tired after the flight from Los Angeles that when she saw a very weary pretender waiting in her living room, she almost thought it was a dream. Or maybe that she was dead and gone to heaven.

Then she reminded herself that she would never go to heaven, so she realized she had to be very much alive.

“I hope for your sake that you are here to kill me or rob me, because I’m too tired for anything else.”

Jarod saw her gun finishing inside her closet, then she placed the holster on a chair and went straight towards the cabinet where she kept her strong drinks bottles.

She opened it and grabbed one bottle of her favorite whiskey.

Jarod was still standing in the same spot she had first saw him while entering her house. He was quiet and didn’t seem willing to talk not to spoil the moment.

Parker gave him a glimpse and saw tiredness on his face, the same he could see on hers. His eyes were full with blood, as if he hadn’t slept for a while. For the first time, Parker saw pain and resignation on the pretender’s face, and she thought she really missed the cute grins that used to appear on his face during the first months of the pursuit, when everything was different and they hadn’t discovered so many lies, yet.

Of course, she hated those smirks, because she usually saw them when Jarod said goodbye, to point out that he had escaped once again. And they were usually accompanied by smiles coming from Sydney, who always enjoyed seeing his child prodigy slipping through their fingers.

All gone, now. The truth was, Jarod looked exhausted.

Parker took two glasses and poured some whisky inside both, then she approached Jarod and passed him one.

Jarod looked at her with disbelief, he didn’t feel like drinking at all. Well, he had never drunk something so strong, probably. But when he saw Miss Parker nodding with encouragement, he changed his mind. He took the glass and started to drink, just like her.

“We came pretty close today, Jarod. You must keep your wits about you, or they are going to catch you, sooner or later.”

Jarod didn’t need to stress that she’d just said ‘they’, not ‘we’. He nodded, instead.

“I was pretty sure, this time. I thought I’d found him…”

Parker knew who he was talking about. She’d been looking for her brother as much as Jarod, in the last week. And yet, Ethan had become the invisible man. He had disappeared. Or perhaps, he was in the hands of Raines. Or worst, of Lyle.

“Why are you here, Jarod?”

“I thought I knew where Ethan was. Then I followed your movements and realized you were tailing me. Which didn’t upset me at all, ‘cause I know how much you’re trying to help me, these days.”

Miss Parker didn’t answer. She just sighed and looked inside her glass as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. Jarod noticed her discomfort and secretly smiled to himself.

“I decided to wait, I needed to check on Ethan’s last payments. He’s using a credit card I’ve lent him, but it’s difficult to track, even for me.”

Parker chuckled, she couldn’t believe the extremely-brilliant-pretender had problems in finding his little brother, who was using his credit card.

“My program was almost over with the search, but I intercepted a conversation between Lyle and Raines, he’d just landed in L.A. and was coming to get me.”

Parker nodded, “He arrived just ten minutes after we did. He’s getting closer. I guess he’s eventually starting to understand how you think.”

“I had to run, Miss Parker. I could handle you coming there, not Lyle and his sweepers. Let’s just say he’s not very accommodating when it comes to letting me go.”

“He’s not even interested in finding Ethan. Gee, he’s his brother, too.”

Jarod shrugged, “Lyle has never been interested in anyone but himself. He’s getting more resolute, I need to keep an eye on him, I don’t want to underestimate his skills.”

“Funny, I thought that was what you needed me for.”

Jarod smiled for the first time, and so did Parker. A magic moment of trust between them.

‘I’ve been here for five minutes and I don’t have cuffs on my wrists. Maybe the world is changing, after all.’

“So, Jarod. What do you want from me?”

She had asked him that question so many times in the last five years. And yet, this time felt completely different.

It felt of companionship, camaraderie, friendship. Maybe something more. 

“Help me.”

Parker never imagined a day would come with Jarod asking her for something, let alone for help. But she knew that things weren’t what they used to be.

When Ethan had disappeared, everything had changed. Parker often pondered Jarod’s words about their brother. She also had nightmares about the explosion on the train, but memories were still very clear. Memories of Jarod talking and trying to convince her that she had to help him save Ethan.

‘This is your brother Miss Parker, our brother. It could be a beginning, don’t make it an end.’

Jarod’s voice usually sounded booming and far.

‘It’s your mother’s voice he can hear Miss Parker, maybe you can hear it too. Trust that voice.’

Since Ethan’s disappearance, Miss Parker had felt very guilty. She’d left him to go and save a man who wasn’t even her father, and Ethan had been missing since then. She knew Jarod didn’t blame her for that, but she couldn’t help it.

Every now and then Jarod’s words came to her mind and she really wanted to listen to them. She could hear her mother’s voice trying to guide her, trying to make her understand that was the right way to go.

‘It could be a beginning, don’t make it an end.’

Between a drink and the other, Miss Parker had finally come to the conclusion that Ethan could indeed be their new beginning. She’d known him for a very short time, but she felt like she’d known him a lifetime. Ethan was the real brother she’d always wanted, he was like her and also like Jarod. He had all the values she’d always admired in Jarod and the strenght of their mother, too. Parker loved him unconditionally, and she wanted him back.

So, since their return from that damned cursed island, Miss Parker had realized that she really wanted to find Ethan. Both she and Jarod needed their little brother back to their lives. Perhaps, after they’d find him, there would be a new beginning for the two of them, too. And this time without lies, pranks and games, just truth and trust. What Jarod had been asking her since his escape from the Centre.    

“Help me find our brother. I need him. And I have a…gut feeling…that you need him even more than I do.”

Parker didn’t know what to reply. The fact she hadn’t called a sweeper team was enough as an answer, for Jarod. She was willing to help him.

‘Help me save him. Help me save our family. It’s your choice.’

Once again, she remembered Jarod’s words on the train. She nodded to herself, glad for the sudden realization that, eventually, it was her choice. It had always been.

So Miss Parker approached Jarod and looked into his eyes. He swallowed imperceptibly, his mouth all of a sudden became dry. Her closeness was disturbing, he felt like he couldn’t control his arms and hands anymore, they were moving against his will. He put the glass on the near table, his eyes never leaving hers.

“I miss him”, she said.

Jarod sighed, he didn’t like seeing tears at the corner of her eyes. The pretender’s right hand moved on its own accord and reached a strand of Parker’s hair, putting it behind her ear.

To his – and her – surprise, she didn’t protest. She didn’t even flinch.

Jarod was incapable of moving his hand from her head, on the contrary his other hand reached the soft tenderness of her hair and started to stroke it, too.

“Don’t…” she managed to say, between a caress and the other. She closed her eyes, but she didn’t move from his hold.

“I know you miss Ethan, Miss Parker”, he interrupted her, “We’re going to find him. Trust me.”

‘Trust. What an overrated word’, she thought.

“What kind of trust can you give, Jarod? The one that kills you or the one that sets you free?”

He was really surprised by her question.

“I knew you were listening…”, he scoffed her.

He released her and lowered his arms, then he walked towards the door.

“I’ll be in touch. I’ll let you know as soon as I have news about Ethan’s whereabouts, I promise.”

“Will you call?” she asked him, reaching him again, searching for the warmth coming from his body.

“Phones are dangerous, these days. I believe all of you are controlled by Centre SIS. I’ll stop by.”

“Well, you are the genius. I’m sure it’s less dangerous to come here, at a stone’s throw from the hell, than make a phone call from one of your safe rat holes!” she was almost shouting, but she didn’t care. She was going to risk her neck to help him, she didn’t want Jarod to make stupid things and being caught right outside her house.

He grinned in answer and opened the door, “As you know, I’ve gotten sort of used to taking care of myself, Miss Parker.”

She came closer to him once again and put her hands on his chest, slightly but gently.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

And then she saw that expression of pure love spreading over his face, the same one he'd had on that car in Glasgow when they had talked about turning points and she had rejected him…

She didn’t want to appear too vulnerable, so she continued, “Not before you help me to find Ethan, at least.”

“I’m not going anywhere”, he said, grabbing her hands in his ones. She thought she had to extricate from his held, but she couldn’t. Jarod’s touch was soft and delicate, just as it had been back at Ocee’s, in front of the fireplace. She felt safe, safe as she hadn’t felt in a very long time.   

“I know I probably shouldn’t say this, but you know…the rules of our game seem to have changed a bit. Unless, I’d be watching the barrel of your 9mm right now…”

“Yeah, you probably would.”

“Well, I guess you are starting to take that turning point, aren’t you?”

She sighed, “It’s complicated, Jarod. Don’t rush it.”

He shook his head, “It’s almost thirty years, Miss Parker. I wouldn’t call it rush.”

He leaned in to her, his mouth right next to her ear, “I need you.”

Even if she started to tremble, she didn’t want to surrender. She wasn’t ready.

She really wanted to feel his lips all over her skin, but she knew it wasn’t right, not yet. So she used her hands to push him away, just a few more inches.

When she opened her eyes, Parker saw that Jarod’s were now full of desire.

“I need you too.” she admitted. Maybe more to herself than to him.

This time Jarod sighed in relief. He’d been waiting for these words to come from her mouth since he first escaped the Centre. It was like the end of a nightmare, she was finally admitting that she cared for him.

Parker looked intensely at him, then she said, “One step at a time.”

He nodded in agreement, “One step at a time. Let’s find Ethan, first.”

Jarod turned around and exited, his feet already on the porch.

“Be careful!” the words slipped from her mouth before she could stop them.

Jarod couldn’t stand it anymore. He closed the distance between them and pulled Parker to him in a strong and passionate hug, his hands on her head while Parker folded her arms behind his waist. She was trembling again, so he tried to calm her by telling soothing words. 

“You trust me?” Jarod asked her, his lips brushing against her ear.

Parker nodded fast, she didn’t need to answer out loud. And Jarod didn’t need to hear her.

He released her again and gazed deeply into those beautiful eyes.

“I’m going to be okay.”

Miss Parker nodded again and then she watched him disappearing in the middle of the night.

TEN YEARS AGO

The following weeks were spent with the main goal of finding Ethan.

Whenever Jarod discovered something about their brother, he showed up at Parker’s house. She usually came home after work to find him eating in her kitchen, reading the newspapers, tapping on his laptop, calling a friend who might be helpful in the search of Ethan. One memorable time, she found Jarod asleep on her couch and she put a blanket over him, deciding at once that watching Jarod during his slumber made her feel peaceful and relaxed. When Jarod woke up, he had a delicious smile on his face, so childish that Parker almost lost it and bent to kiss it away. Hopefully, they were interrupted by Jarod’s phone, but since then Parker had been wondering what would have happened if that kiss hadn’t been interrupted – again! – and if she would resist his charm.

 

As he had promised, Jarod never called. Sydney was becoming impatient and more irritable than ever, since his former protégé wasn’t looking for his advice anymore. Jarod didn’t want Sydney and Broots to be in further danger than they already were, so he thought better than calling his mentor. And yet, he would really need to hear his voice, because his bond with Parker was getting stronger with every passing day and for the first time it felt like they were friends again. They had eventually realized how well they worked together, and they were both looking forward to find their brother.

Jarod didn’t dare making the first step with Parker. Since that first night on her porch, contacts and touches had almost become a taboo. He didn’t want to push her to do anything she wasn’t ready for. And yet it was amazing to see how much her attitude around him was changing. He noticed she came back from work earlier, probably because she already knew when she would find him there, thanks to her inner sense. She smiled more often. And she got more and more confident when Jarod told her Ethan was probably heading back to Delaware.

---

When ten days passed without ever meeting Jarod, Parker started to get worried. Not more than four days had passed between their last encounters, and she had a bad feeling that Lyle had something to do with it. Her brother hardly ever spoke to her and he spent all the time in his office, without doubt he was conceiving a plan to catch Jarod, or Ethan, or maybe both.

Sydney entered Miss Parker’s office and found her thoughtful and tired. She was staring at a picture, the old man was sure it was one of her mother, or maybe her father. She still didn’t know if Mr. Parker was actually dead, they had never found his body. But Miss Parker couldn’t simply accept the idea of Raines being her biological father.

Sydney coughed to claim her attention and Parker realized the psychiatrist was inside her office. She smiled with unhappiness and let out a sigh of resignation. Sydney walked and stopped behind her chair, just to see that she was holding a picture portraying to young kids walking across the corridors of the Centre. Sydney smiled and realized he’d had the chance to see those very kids wandering around the Centre a long time ago.

“He gave me this”, Parker explained to her old friend, “He took it from a DSA.”

Sydney watched carefully, “That might be around ’71 or ’72.”

Parker nodded. She couldn’t take her eyes off the picture.

“Does he know about your feelings?”

Parker looked at Sydney in astonishment.

“Broots, Lyle and Raines don’t know the two of you as I do, Miss Parker. They can’t see what I’ve always seen.”

“And what exactly did you see, Sydney?” she asked, a bit irritated.

“I saw you growing together and separately. I saw you running from each other for years, trying to deny the truth.”

Parker listened to him, a tear forming at the corner of her eye.

“I saw you fighting a battle with yourself because you always trusted Jarod against your father’s will. I even saw you letting him escape, a couple of times…”

Parker grimaced, but Sydney knew she was actually hiding a smile.

“And I’m seeing you now, Parker. Don’t let it go.”

“It’s never gonna happen, Sydney. Just…forget about it. Who finds his soul mate at ten years old?”

“You did.”

Parker sighed, this time in exasperation. She stood up, while Sydney tried to convince her.

“You love him, don’t you?”

Parker stopped at once, but didn’t turn. She couldn’t face Sydney in that moment. He knew her too damn well. He knew her so well that he made a few steps to reach her and showed her the picture again. Parker sighed.

“Give these kids the gift they never had, Miss Parker. Let them love and be loved!”

“Love was never the problem, Syd...” Parker admitted.

Sydney nodded in response, “Jarod deserves the truth, Parker. Let him know how you feel, before it’s too late.”

Parker did something she’d never done before. She leaned in to put a kiss on Sydney’s cheek. Then she put her hand on his shoulder and moved away, letting the older man alone in her office.

TEN YEARS AGO

---

 

When she got home, she felt at once that he might be there. The pretender’s presence was all around her, Parker could almost smell his cologne in the air. She loved that perfume, even if she’d never told him. It made her knees weak. And she didn’t like feeling weak.

Parker closed the door behind her and whispered, looking around her living room, “Jarod?”

He didn’t answer.

“Jarod?” she called him again.

She couldn’t see him anywhere, so she looked in all the rooms. Jarod wasn’t there.

Parker tried to catch any signs of the pretender, but there weren’t. She was probably mistaken. But when she came back from her bedroom, she found a recorder over the kitchen counter. It still contained a tape. Parker took it and pressed play.

“Miss Parker, it’s me. I’m sorry I’m not there in person, but I couldn’t wait for you to come back from work. I’ve found Ethan!”

Parker gasped and went straight to the door, taking her keys and exiting again in the direction of her car.

“He’s in a warehouse of a fish shop in Dover, it’s close to the town bank where we met Fenigor. I guess he was trying to come back to Blue Cove. I’m on my way out!”

‘So am I’, she thought, her hands already on the steering wheel.

“I’m really sorry, I must get there before anyone else. If I was able to find him, somebody else might be aware of his presence…”

Parker was horrified. Jarod was right, and she hoped at once that he would find their brother before the Centre.

“I’ll let you know when I get there.”

Parker thought his speech was over, but she was proven wrong when Jarod’s voice continued to speak.

“I miss you. Please, follow me as soon as you listen to this message.”

Parker smiled and stopped the tape, then she threw the recorder on the backseat. She would exceed speed limits, but she didn’t care. Ethan needed her. And so did Jarod.

---

Parker took her gun from the holster and walked silently towards the back door. She’d found the place almost immediately, because she still remembered where the Dover Town Bank was located. Now, she was aiming her Smith & Wesson right in front of her, trying to avoid making any noise. Outside the warehouse she’d found a car, probably the one Jarod had rented lately.

The engine was still warm, which meant he hadn’t been there for long.

When she opened the door, it creaked loud, causing the sound to echo all over the damned place. Parker swore to herself, then she continued her walk inside the building. It took her one minute to see some movements. As soon as her eyes got used to the darkness, she noticed someone kneeling on the floor.

“Jarod?” she whispered.

When Parker recognized the pretender, who was wearing his usual leather jacket, she ran towards him with a smile on her face.

But her happiness vanished in one second when she realized what was going on.

The voices inside her head exploded and she noticed that Jarod was rocking back and forth, moaning and muttering something she couldn’t understand. He was crying desperately.

Ethan’s lifeless body was lying in front of them. A hole through his forehead left no doubt about how their poor brother had been killed.

A perfect execution, with ‘Compliments of the Centre’ written all over it.

Parker fell on her knees next to Jarod and left out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She reached for her brother’s body and found the courage to close his eyes, for his eyelids were still open.

“Ethan…” she murmured. She wanted the voices to disappear, the intensity of their screams was unbearable. Her mother’s voice, more than others, seemed to be almost mouning in pain.

Jarod was still crying in disbelief. His eyes were wide opened and so was his mouth. He simply couldn’t believe the truth. Ethan was dead. Another brother taken away from him.

He tried to speak, but words seemed to fail him. He couldn’t breathe, the shock starting to sink in.

Parker looked for his hand and took it in hers. She couldn’t deal with this all on her own. She needed to rely on Jarod, he was the only one who could help her to get through this moment. Memories of another man in another time came to Parker’s mind. She remembered the day she’d found Tommy lying on her front porch, blood coming from the hole Brigitte had shot in his forehead. Two men she’d loved so much, taken away from her in the very same way. She held Jarod’s hand stronger, but he didn’t react. He was lost in a different world.

Parker sighed and looked at him. He was trembling and Parker started to worry.

“Jarod, you need to calm down, now…”

“They killed him.”

“I know. Jarod, this is a setup, they’re certainly arriving at any time…we need to go.”

“He’s dead. They killed him.”, he repeated.

Parker understood that Jarod was in a trance. She didn’t have time to take care of him, they had to leave at once. If she was right, this was a trap and sweepers would come inside the building at any moment.

“Jarod. We can’t do anything for him, now…we must go.”

“I won’t leave him. I’m not going anywhere. He needs me. I’ve found him, we have to stay with him.”

Parker started to hear signs of insanity in Jarod’s voice. She had never seen him like that before, not even when Kyle had died in his arms.

“I had to find him before. I left him alone. I killed him.”

“Jarod, don’t do this to yourself. It’s not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault.”

“It’s all my fault!”, he shouted, “I killed him! He was all alone, we had to protect him!”

Parker heard noises coming from the outside. There was no more time. They had to go.

“Jarod, I know how you feel. I know. But we have to go, now. They’re coming. Sweepers will be all around this place in a couple of minutes, we must run!”

Jarod bent to take Ethan’s hand in his one. It felt so cold and lifeless. Just like Kyle’s when he’d died in Dry River.

“Ethan…I’m so sorry, little brother…I’m so sorry…”

Parker’s heart broke into a thousand pieces, but she didn’t have time to be sad. She had to take Jarod out of that place.

She stood up and pulled him closer, trying to convince him to stand. She dragged him, but he wasn’t cooperating.

“Jarod. I’m gonna tell you once. We get out of here. Now!” she said through clenched teeth. Jarod saw her resolution, but he knew she was feeling as bad as he felt, maybe even more.

He stood up behind Parker while noises were getting closer to their actual location. They both looked at Ethan once more. Jarod made up his mind: he couldn’t let his brother behind.

“I’m gonna take him out of here.”

Parker stopped him before he could bend once again.

“We can’t carry him, Jarod. You know that. They’re already here.”

“I – won’t – leave him!” he replied. Parker realized that was the first time she saw a very furious pretender. She was scared.

“He’s dead, Jarod.”

“I can’t let Lyle have him…”      

"It's necessary, Jarod."

Parker grabbed his arm with her free hand, trying to pull him away from the corpse, but Jarod didn't want to. She heard a voice coming from the alley and she realized it was Lyle's.

"Jarod, I don't want to leave him either, but we must go. Lyle's here and he's not alone...you asked me if I trusted you, now I'm asking you to trust me. We can't do anything for Ethan..."

Jarod's tears streamed down his face. Parker dragged him away from Ethan just as sweepers entered the huge room with guns in their hands.

"Find them!", Lyle was screaming.

Parker and Jarod hid behind a tank full of fish. She was still holding her gun, her hands were sweating. She could hear her companion crying silently next to her, his breath was getting deeper. Parker knew they would never make it out of there if Jarod didn't recover from the shock of Ethan's death.

Parker waved her hand towards a door that would lead them to the exit of that damned place, then she hushed him. She didn't know if Jarod would follow her lead, but they had to get out of there. She waited for Willie to move past them, then she started to crawl silently. To her surprise, Jarod followed her. They'd almost reached the door, when she bumped against a big tank that fell loudly to the floor.

"Shit", she screamed.

Miss Parker stood up at once and dragged Jarod with her, while at least five men ran in their direction.

"Right there! Take them!"

Lyle's voice roused something inside Jarod's mind. He turned around, ready to get back and fight against him. He was sure he'd been Ethan's killer. Just as he had already killed his other brother.

Parker noticed in a glimpse that Jarod was going back, but she stopped him. She grabbed his shirt and she pulled him to her, causing the pretender to lose his balance.

"This is NOT the time for revenge, Jarod!"

"Let go of me!" he shouted. Then he did something he'd never done before. He took the weapon from her hands and started to fire blindly. He didn't care about killing other people, he just wanted to put a bullet inside Lyle's head and scatter his brains all over the place. He shouted out loud while Parker couldn't do anything but stare at him in disbelief.

The sweepers sought for repair and so did Lyle, who bent just in time to see a bullet missing his head but hitting his left shoulder instead. Two sweepers fell down, probably dead.

When Parker's cartridge was over, Jarod was still pulling the trigger. Parker took advantage of that moment to take Jarod outiside. They ran as they've never done before, pushed by their instinct and will of survive and with bullets whistling all around them.

Jarod had escaped many times before, but that night he couldn't even feel his legs. His limbs were acting by themselves.

"My car, there!" she screamed, using her hand to show him the place where she'd left her black sedan.

Jarod reached the passenger side and opened the car door, waiting for Parker to sit and finally start the engine to get away as fast as they can.

He was out of breath just as much as Parker, who stepped on the gas stronger than she thought she ever could.

"Are you okay?" she asked him, afraid that some bullet might have hit him.

He didn't answer, he was looking at his hands, still holding Parker's gun. Worried, Miss Parker moved her right hand and started to inspect his chest and arms to find out if he'd been hurt.

When she noticed blood on her hand, she looked at him, trying to keep en eye on the street.

"They hit you!"

Jarod stiffened at once, he used his own hand to touch the wound on his left arm. It didn't hurt at all, the bullet had probably entered and exited. 

Parker was frightened by his silence, she didn't know what to do and she needed Jarod to help her. She'd never felt so powerless and vulnerable before. Every time she felt lost, she had Jarod to try and comfort her. This time he was the one in need of attention, he really seemed to have lost it. Ethan's death had been the last straw.

"Jarod, I can't go back. They saw me, they know I helped you."

He looked at her for the first time in that terrible night.

"We left him. We abandon him with that crazy brother of yours..."

"Don't call him that. We came out of the same uterus, but that doesn't change the fact we don't have anything in common. I'm nothing like him."

Miss Parker watched carefully at the rearview mirror, nobody was following them. She increased the speed, annoyed and disappointed by Jarod's words.

"He killed Ethan. He killed my brother."

"Our, brother", she reminded him. "We need to get somewhere safe, Jarod. One of your typical lousy motels will be fine. We need to calm down and sort things out."
"There's nothing to sort out. Ethan's dead."

Parker sighed and shrugged. She couldn't deal with him, not now. She saw her weapon in his hands and took it. It was still warm. She threw it on the backseat and it landed just next to the recorder. Then she used her free hand to grab Jarod's one.

She wasn't surprised to feel it slip between her fingers and to see a very shattered pretender leaning his head against the window and beginning to cry again.

TEN YEARS AGO

---

 

Miss Parker drove for hours to be sure they hadn’t been followed. When she felt too tired to go on, she chose a motel located a few miles outside of Baltimore. She didn’t even remember when they’ve crossed the state line between Delaware and Maryland.

The clerk was a young guy, used to meet foreign visitors. He’d seen the weirdest people coming in and out of that motel, but those two looked different. The woman was stunning and the man seemed the kind of guy everyone would like to be like. Tall, handsome, muscled and in great trim. And yet, they looked tired and the clerk was sure there was sadness in their eyes.

When the woman handed some extra money over him, he took the $ 50 bill and asked her, “What is this for?”

In the meantime, Jarod took the key to their room and move past Miss Parker, the only thing he wanted was to touch a bed.

“Nobody has to disturb us. For no reason.”

“Yes Ma’am”, he answered.

“Should anyone come here and ask, you’ve never seen us. Are we clear?”

He nodded in agreement. Parker smiled and handed another bill to the young man.

“Indeed…”

---

 

The room was small but clean. When Miss Parker entered, Jarod was sitting on the bed. he was staring sightlessly at the floor in front of him, his hands resting on the bed blanket, an unfathomable expression. Parker sighed with her eyes roaming over his face.

“Jarod, I need to call Sydney. He must be freaking out.”

He moved his hand just to take a mobile from his jacket inside pocket, then he gave it to her. 

Miss Parker smiled guiltily when she noticed that Jarod’s phone had only three numbers stored in memory. The third one was Broots’, the second Sydney’s. And the first was hers.

When the old psychiatrist answered the phone, Miss Parker put him on speakerphone, so that Jarod could hear him too.

“Parker! I was so worried for you! Where are you? Where is Jarod?”

Parker looked at the groggy pretender sitting next to her, then she answered, “He’s here with me, Syd.”

The old man didn’t ponder the possible implications of her words. He was glad to know they were together, though.

“Ethan is dead, Sydney.”

“I know, Parker. I’m really sorry.”

Jarod gasped once again and Parker put a hand on his shoulder, trying to soothe him gently.

“Lyle came back a couple of hours ago. He was furious. He’s wounded, but his shoulder’s not the first thing you should be worried about. He saw you, he knows you were there to help Jarod. Raines has already informed the Triumvirate. They issued a Schedule K against you, Miss Parker.”

She closed her eyes and smiled nervously, she had been expecting this. Jarod, instead, raised his head and gave her a frightened gaze, then he glared at the wall, “They gave order to kill her?”

Sydney was so happy to hear his protégé‘s voice that he exhaled in relief.

“I’m afraid so.”

Miss Parker didn’t speak, she was as much preoccupied as Jarod. And yet, she felt excited when she realized that Jarod still cared about her, if he was worried for her safety.     

“You must stay hidden, Parker.”

“We will. We can’t contact you anymore, we would put you in danger. But you can’t stay there either, Sydney. As soon as they find out of this phone call, they will throw you and Broots in front of another T-board. You must take him, Angelo and Debbie and run away, now!”

Sydney shook his head, “And where could we go? I can’t leave, there are still people whose safety is more important than mine…”

“Michelle…Nicholas…” Jarod whispered.

Parker huffed in exasperation, “Then take them with you, too. I want you to go somewhere safe, where they won’t find you…”

“Where?” Sydney asked. The Centre already knew about all the places he would be headed to.

“Write this down, Sydney”, Jarod urged him, “It’s a house I’ve bought last year, the Centre doesn’t know anything about it. It’s in the Keys.”

Sydney wrote down the adress Jarod was telling him.

“Don’t use traceable flights, or the Centre will find out. Call Angela Wiley, she’s an old friend of mine, and a pilot. She will escort you there.”

“This is the pilot of the plane that crashed?”, Parker asked him.

Jarod ignored her question and replied, “They can’t use their true IDs, they need new fake ones.”

Parker nodded in agreement, “Syd, there’s a metal case inside a safe deposit box located at Sussex County Airport. The key is hidden inside the rabbit cage in Debbie’s room.”

Jarod wondered if the rabbit she was talking about was still the one he’d given her that Christmas some years before. He thought he would ask her later. And he wondered why she had fake IDs ready for all of them. Had she been planning to leave the whole time?

“Sydney don’t go there, there will be cameras all around the place. Look for my old friend Argyle, he’s currently leading a Casino in Atlantic City, it’s called the Vatican. Tell him that I sent you to make him retrieve the case for me. He’s going to do anything you ask him to.”

Sydney was still writing down all the information the couple was sharing with him. He was so proud of how well and fast they could think.     

“Sydney, don’t trust anybody!” Parker reminded him.

“This is the Centre, Miss Parker. When did we?”

 Sydney hung up and left them dazed. 

---

 

Jarod stood up and stepped away from her. He didn’t like her closeness, in that moment. He was still mad at her, at Lyle, at the Centre, at the whole damn world.

He was trying to accept the fact he had lost another brother, but he couldn’t let go.

“I’m glad you’re speaking again”, she stated gently. She didn’t want to argue with him, she just wanted to know he was okay. Jarod turned around and glared at her. Parker had never seen that look on Jarod’s face, not addressed to her. She’d seen him angry, disappointed, irritate, but never furious. He was pacing the space between the wall and the bed, trying to find a reason to explain what had happened.

“Jarod”, she stood up in the middle of his pacing, blocking his way and placing her hands on his chest tenderly, “You can’t do this to yourself. You and I have to deal with death every single day, since the Centre is our own little hell. People die because of us, and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s what we’ve been taught.”

“And what will I tell my family? That Ethan died because I wasn’t able to save him and we must accept it because that’s what I’ve been taught?!” he snapped back at her. He was screaming, but Miss Parker didn’t react badly. She wanted to calm him down, but she knew that before he had to explode and let everything come to the surface.

“You know there’s nothing we could do about it, Jarod. You know”, she repeated, trying to soothe him but to no avail.

“We’ve abandoned our little brother in the hands of his killer. He won’t even have a burial, Miss Parker! I can only imagine what Raines and that twisted brother of yours will do to his corpse!” he snarled.

Rationally, he knew he was picking a fight just to unload his sorrow on her, but unconsciously he didn’t care. He felt bereft and empty.

Parker was feeling the same, but Jarod was the one in trouble, the one who needed to grieve. And he had to do it soon, because their lives depended on it. Parker had to help him, in the hope he would not hate her later.

“Well, we were late, Boy Genius. Your alleged-pretending-skills didn’t help us saving Ethan.”

“Shut up…”

Parker ignored Jarod and scolded him, “Well, it’s all your fault, Jarod. You blew it and Ethan was the sacrificial lamb on Raines’ altar.”

“I told you to shut up…”

Jarod was trembling, his wrath growing and ready to burst out. His pacing became even more evident and heavy on the floor.

“The truth is you’re feeling guilty because you could have saved him and you didn’t!” Parker shouted and Jarod stopped at once, looking back at her in total commiseration over himself.

“I hate you!” he yelled at her. 

Miss Parker felt as though he was twisting a knife in her back. She gazed back at him in astonishment and swallowed, trying to accept what Jarod had just told her. It took her at least ten seconds, then she responded.

“No, you don’t”, she hissed back, “You simply can’t accept the thought of losing another person you loved.”

Jarod had heard enough. He took the gun from the bedside table and aimed it against her, his hand trembling with rage.

Parker wiggled her eyebrows at him, while Jarod blinked hardly to keep focus. She remembered the last time she’d had the same reaction. They were on Tommy’s grave, and she got mad at him for showing up on the anniversary of his death.

“What are you going to do, shoot me?”, she taunted him, “There are no more bullets, remember? A genius thought better of using them to slaughter a bunch of sweepers and hurt that twisted twin brother of mine!”

Jarod sighed, the fatigue of his wrath overpowering him. He let his arm rest on his side and then the gun fell on the floor. He wailed and crumbled into tears, leaning his back against the wall and slipping to the floor. He hid his head between his arms, which held his knees in what looked almost a fetal position.

Parker knew Jarod had reached the highest pick of his rage, now he was falling down again. She sighed in relief and sat down next to him, trying to avoid looking at the shattered pretender while she still needed to confess her feelings. All she could think about were Sydney’s words:

 

‘Give these kids the gift they never had, Miss Parker. Let them love and be loved!’

 

“Jarod, I’m sorry for what I said before. It wasn’t your fault. Ethan’s killing was just a bait, a means to draw you into a trap. God, maybe me, too. Now I realize Lyle must have known about our cooperation for a while…”

Jarod didn’t answer but didn’t even ignore her. He raised his head and glanced at Parker, with eyes red for the countless tears he’d cried that night. Parker looked at him, trying to pass on to him all her sympathy.

“I know how you feel, Jarod. I’ve been through the same despair when Thomas died. Remember what a wreck I was?” she commented. Jarod’s eyes were looking sightlessly in front of himself, but he nodded imperceptibly.

“Remember how I overcame Tommy’s death?”

“Alcool, cigarettes, and a Russian roulette every night?” he quipped.

She rolled her eyes, but she was glad to notice his sarcastic sense of humour hadn’t vanished.

“I managed to live through it just because of you.”

Jarod blinked at her in disbelief, the reality of this confession sinking down inside his heart.

Parker gasped and found the strenght to continue, “You’ve been the only one who helped me, without you I would have never made it. You challenged me to find the truth, you put me on the right trail. You followed me in that bar, you helped me with Dawson’s autopsy, you came to tell me the truth about Miller’s death at that police impounding depository. You know, that day I really understood what you’d been trying to tell me for years. That we’re all pawns in the sick game of the Centre. That they control us, use us…All the lies I’d been told, my father’s sick way of administrating that hell…”

“I’d been trying to tell you the same damned things for years, Miss Parker…”, he replied sharply.

“I know. But I had to face the death before finally starting to believe you. I’ve doubted my father since then, I’ve never trusted him again, not truly. I’ve always followed your advice instead of my father’s.”

His head leaned against the cold wall behind them, his eyes closed.

“One year later, the day of the anniversary of Thomas’ death…I was overwhelmed, I thought I couldn’t deal with it on my own. But I wasn’t alone, was I?” 

Jarod squized his eyes more.

“I’m so sorry for the things I told you that day at the cemetery. But you caught me out of guard and I didn’t know how to be around you…”

Jarod’s lips quivered, Parker feared that he would cry again. But she didn’t care, he needed to know all the truth.

“Finding the truth about you and Tommy was…” she sighed in frustration, “Excruciating.”

“Why?” he asked her, his voice taking a low discomforting tone.

“I thought you were trying to manipulate me, just like my father. Tommy wanted me to go with him, and for a second I thought you might have pushed him to ask me to leave the Centre.”

Jarod’s lips turned into a faint smile, with the result that Parker looked at him with the most delicious expression on her face.

“Actually I did told him to ask you. I wanted you to leave, I thought Tommy would have been the best for you. And he was, you know?”

“I know, Jarod”, she nodded in agreement, “And later I had time to ponder and I realized you’d lit the torch between us just because you cared for me very deeply.”

“I wanted to see you happy, Miss Parker.”

“Yes.”

She noticed with pleasure that he’d calmed down and for the first time in many minutes he turned his head and started to look intently at her. He was quiet but still panting.

Parker took his hands in hers and looked at him in return, trying to keep her bravery.

“The first time you pleaded me to take a turning point, I wasn’t ready. I ignored you and voluntarly scolded you, I was sure that things would never change. The second time you asked, when you came to visit me, I knew I would try to change my life and turn to something different, but yet, I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t leave everything behind.”

Jarod nodded slowly, he understood what she was trying to tell him. Too many times she’d been over the edge, praying for something – or someone – to help her make a decision.

“Now I’ve been forced to stare that turning point right in my face. Ethan’s death changed everything. Now I really am an outcast, just like you.”

“You’ve always been, Miss Parker.”

Jarod blinked a few times, then directed a gaze reflecting his deepest emotions at her. He moved his hand to touch Parker’s face and he caressed the sweet line that went from her cheekbone to her jaw. She let out a deep sigh and let his words sink deep into her soul.

A comfortable silence fell between them as they just stared in each other’s eyes. Parker’s feelings were so overwhelming that she looked away to release a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“Where do we go from here? I don’t know what’s going to happen, all I know is that we must stay together, Jarod.”

The pretender suddenly realized how much he’d been needing to hear those words.

“If that offer is still valid…If all the things you confessed to me in Glasgow are true…Then all I want is to be with you.”

Jarod blinked a couple of times and rolled his eyes, trying to grasp the irony of the situation.

“You know, it’s ridiculous that you’re taking that turning point just now that our brother’s dead. We’ve always needed someone we both love to die to get closer to one another. Your mother, Faith, Thomas…and now Ethan.”

“I told you, Jarod. This is the Centre. Death is always on our daily agenda.”

“It’s just…”

He sighed again and squeezed his eyes, then he got rid of Parker’s hands to rub his face. She noticed that he had an intense five-o’clock shadow. Parker always thought that Jarod looked much intriguing with a beard. Not a very long one, just the short fascinating regrowth.

“I don’t know. I’m just so tired of fighting. I can’t do it alone...”

It was Parker’s turn to smile. She grabbed his hands again and stared right into his eyes.

“You’re not alone. Not anymore.”

Jarod smiled back and caressed her cheek with his fingertips once more. Her skin was the softest thing he’d ever touched in his life. He felt so sorry for all the things he’d said before. He needed to apologize to this incredibly strong woman.

“You know that I don’t hate you, don't you?”

Parker nodded solemnly, “I do.”

“I need to find something still worth fighting for, Miss Parker.”

“Your mother’s still out there, Jarod. And so is the rest of your family. They’re still alive, Jarod, they need you to focus. There are so many people that the Centre took away from us. My mother, Tommy, Kyle…We must end this thing, once and for all.”

Jarod closed his eyes and saw the faces of those incredible people, who had been unlucky enough to find their ends because of the Centre. He was so intent on remembering his friends and relatives, that he lost some of Parker’s last words.

“…And I’m going to help you. I won’t hide my head in the sand anymore, I won’t deny the truth I’ve always known deep inside. I’m not one of them.”

“You’ve never been. You were pretending. Just like me”, he stated spontaneously. Parker waited for him to tell something, but he was more interested in caressing her cheeks. Jarod realized he wasn’t able not to touch her, his hands needed to feel the touch of her soft skin.

“I need you”, he whispered, his voice trembling with emotion and desire, “I need to feel alive. I need to forget about everything, just for one night.”

Parker ran a hand through Jarod’s hair, by now shorter than it had been on the island, massaging little circles on the back of his head.

“And I want to be needed”, she purred back, her voice now reduced to a trembling murmur.

Jarod let out a lovely sigh of contentment that made her smile wider.

“We’re going to deal with it together. One step at a time, remember?”  

Parker folded her hands around his neck, pulling him closer to her, feeling the need of tasting his lips becoming almost compelling. But Jarod fliched once more to stare at her intensely.

“There’s still something I have to say, Miss Parker. I should have told you that day in Glasgow. Well, actually I should have told you years ago.”

Parker knew what he was going to say. But she didn’t need to hear the words. Their actions were talking enough for them both.

“I already know, Jarod. It doesn’t matter how much our lives made us apart. We always find each other, in the end. Maybe it’s really supposed to be that way…”

As soon as Jarod heard those words, he found himself back on the island. They weren’t in a low class motel room anymore, they were on Carthis again. They were in front of Ocee’s fireplace, where everything had started but not finished.

He closed the distance between them and finally brushed her lips with his.

It wasn’t how Jarod would have imagined an adult kiss with Miss Parker would be.

It was better.

He felt her responding and deepening the kiss, slowly opening her mouth to give his tongue access. He could almost hear Parker’s heart racing as much as his. Parker’s hands reached his shoulders to remove his leather jacket, and Jarod helped her, moving his chest to allow her to get rid of the garment. But their lips never parted and Jarod’s hands continued to stroke her hair and cheeks.

Parker ran her hand over Jarod’s left arm and find it again covered with blood. She’d completely forgotten about his wound. Worried, she slowly released him and they both catch their breaths. Noticing her hesitation, he explained, “Just a scratch. We’ll take care of it later.”

Parker felt more aroused by that simple later than she’d ever felt in her life with any other man. When Jarod kissed her again, she took advantage of the moment to take off his black shirt, careful not to hurt his arm. She ran her hands all over his chest, finally able to touch the wonderful torso she’d always secretly dreamed of. When they both stood on their knees, heading for the bed, Jarod returned the favor and undressed her, starting from her red silk shirt. When he touched the bare skin of her shoulders, he felt that ripple of electricity that had flowed also when their hands had touched by chance in Carthis.

Jarod guided her to the bed where Parker lay down under him. Her hands were still folded behind his neck and Jarod’s were caressing her shoulders, with the aim to lower the bra straps. Parker moved her hand over his mouth and her thumb gently touched his lips.

Jarod kissed it and whispered, “Are you sure?”

She nodded, feeling the heat generating from his body and willing to feel him inside her.

 

No more words were said.

While they slowly and patiently divested each other of the clothes they’d been wearing that night, they continued the exploration of their bodies. They felt the urgent need to touch, caress and kiss each other. This wasn’t something unexpected, there were 30 years of history between them. As if every single event in their lives had leaded to this very moment.      

They needed to be close to each other, they were spiritually joined, not just physically. This went beyond the simple sexual act, this was a union of souls. And with every kiss Jarod was placing on her belly, legs, thighs, shoulders and breast, she felt more and more adored and needed. Just the way she wanted to feel at that moment.

And when he slowly thrust inside her and they were joined in the most literal meaning, they both realized they’d reached the highest level of bliss ever.

When Jarod felt Parker stiffen, inhaling deeply and increasing her hands pressure on his shoulders, he gazed at her with concern, afraid he might hurt her. But Parker smiled tightly, trying to reassure him about her condition. Jarod realized at once that she hadn't been with any other man after Thomas. He could read it in her eyes. Parker caressed his cheek, inviting him to go ahead, while a huge grin appeared on Jarod’s face at the acknowledgement that she trusted him enough to let him lead during this sensual dance. So he began to rock, driving him deeper inside her.

They were face to face, connected in the most natural of ways, wrapped in intimate and deep movements that were leading them to a fast but incredible release. This couldn’t be slow, they wanted each other too much to make it slow.

Her release was nothing she’d ever experienced before, maybe because she’d never been with someone who knew her so well, so deeply. Their bodies were really fitting like two pieces of the same puzzle. When she came back to herself, Parker intentionally captured with her lips the lovely sound of Jarod’s moans during his release, trying to catch his own breath with hers.

They rested on the bed in the aftermath, sweaty and tangled to each other,  their respiration slowly coming back to normal after long minutes of gasps and swallows.

Jarod bent to kiss her belly lovingly, then Parker touched his head to claim his attention. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, while she pressed her lips over his once more, this time tenderly.

“I love you”, she whispered to him, feeling that it was the right time.

Jarod smiled and deepened the kiss again firmly, trying to breath through it.

“I love you”, he responded with a moan.

 

Parker nodded and suddenly started to cry. All the emotions of that terrible night were finally sinking in. It didn’t take Jarod much time to realize that she’d tried to be strong just to push him to overcome Ethan’s death.

She was shattered too, but this time she hadn’t had a heroic pretender to help her. As Parker’s tears streamed down her face, he held her from behind and started to place soft kisses on her hair and cheeks. Jarod came to the conclusion that he loved that woman more than he could have ever thought possible. She’d set aside her pain, she’d put on her Ice Queen mask once more just to drag him out of his sorrow, of his numbness.

Jarod leaned in to her, his lips brushing against her ear, “I’m so sorry, Miss Parker. I’m sorry I left you alone. You didn’t have to see me like that, it was unfair. You had to keep your strenght for both of us…”  

Parker sobbed heavily, she couldn’t help but crying.

“It won’t happen anymore, I promise. I’ll be back from tomorrow, I swear. The same annoying pretender you’ve always secretly loathed.”

Parker chuckled between the tears, “You’d better…”

“Thank you, Miss Parker…Thanks for everything you’ve done tonight, I’ll never forget.”

Jarod used his thumbs to dry her tears away.

“Well, I’ve always thought you were quite the stud in bed, Boy Wonder.”

Jarod grinned from ear to ear, “That’s not what I meant. Even if I must admit I’d really like a second round with you.”

“Anytime, genius…”

Jarod pressed his lips on hers, tasting the salty savor of her tears.

“Thanks for helping me through it. This is why I love you so much. Because you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. You understand the real me, like nobody else ever could.”

He kissed her forehead and caressed her cheeks again.

“You knew that if I had ever reached the breaking point, I would have needed you to survive.”

Parker smiled at his words. He’d finally understood all the things she’d been saying that night, “You’ve always been there when I needed you. Time had come to pay you back.”

“This is who I am, Parker. I am simply incapable of being far from you whenever you need me. Now I know this feeling is mutual, isn’t it?”  

“Totally, Pez Head”, she answered gently. “And I love the sound of that.”

“Of what?”

“As far as I can remember, it’s the first time you call me Parker.”

Jarod looked around and realized that she was right. He never forgot the title when he called directly. She’d always been Miss Parker to him. 

“It’s ridiculous if you think that you’re probably the only person alive who knows my real name.”

“Sydney knows.”

Parker nodded in acceptance. After all, Sydney had seen her growing.

“Well, there’s a first time for everything.” Jarod stated, smiling.

“And also a second time, I hope.” Parker purred in his ear.

TEN YEARS AGO

---

When Miss Parker woke up a couple of hours later, she felt Jarod’s fingertips caressing the bare skin of her arm. While a huge smile appeared on her face, Jarod kissed her cheek and inhaled the scent of her skin. She turned around to face him and waited for a deeper kiss, just to make sure that she wasn’t dreaming.

“Mmm. You are definitely real”, she purred against his mouth.

“Afraid you’d been dreaming all time long?” he teased her.

Parker chuckled, “Ok, when did you learn to read my mind?”

“Probably the day you told me that you were a girl”, he quipped.

“Jarod, that was the day we first met!” she taunted him.

He leaned in to her, “Exactly.”

The pretender kissed her again with passion. But before feeling the urge of making love to her again, he stopped.

“Parker.”

“Mmm”, she murmured, stealing another kiss from his lips and starting to worship her last name said by Jarod’s sensual voice. 

“If we want this to last…if we want…” he pointed out to both of them using his finger, “Us…to work, really…it’s time to be honest with each other. I don’t want any other secrets between us.”

“What do you mean?” she asked him, urging him to answer clearly.

“We still have some time before our lives change completely. I want to tell you all the secrets I still keep. All the truth.”

Parker nodded in agreement, even if she couldn’t imagine what other secrets the pretender might have hidden from her.

Jarod sighed bitterly. He didn’t know where to start.

“I have to give you something. It’s not here with me, it’s in a safe place. We’re going to fetch it as soon as possible.”

“What?” she inquired.

“Your mother’s diary.”

Parker felt her heartbeat increasing rapidly. Jarod watched her expression changing from delighted to frustrated.

“How long have you kept it from me?”

“Four years.”

Parker raised up on her elbows to look better at him. She was furious.

“You gotta be kidding me!”

Jarod shook his head, “I’m so sorry, Parker. I read it years ago, but I never delivered it to you.”

“Why?” she yelled. She didn’t know if she was mad at him for the fact he hadn’t given her such a precious memento of her mother or because he had read it.

“I thought I could find information about my parents, about my family. I really hoped Catherine had written something about her old friend Margaret, I needed to understand how she had tried to save me.”

Parker shook her head in dismay. She tried to stand up from the bed, but Jarod stopped her, grabbing her arm gently.

“That diary contains your mother’s inner secrets and memories. The information I’ve passed on to you all these years came from Catherine’s diary. That’s how I found out about Timmy becoming Angelo, or about Edna Raines being her friend…”

“I don’t care, Jarod. What the hell were you thinking not to let me read my mother’s diary? And what else does it say?”

Jarod sighed deeply, afraid of losing Parker for his stupidity.

“She talks a lot about Faith. She really wanted you to meet her, but your father didn’t allow that to ever happen. She talked about the watch she gave you and that later helped you to survive. I found that watch with the diary, by the way.”

Parker stared at him in disbelief. Another secret finally revealed.  

“She also talks about her son. She really thought he died at birth, she never knew Lyle was still alive. She wrote that she never found the nerve to tell you the truth because she knew this would have caused you pain.”  

“So you knew about my brother even before finding the red files?” she scolded him.

Jarod nodded, “I knew about the twin, not that he was alive. When I found out that your brother wasn’t dead, I realized at once you had to know the truth. But believe me, I’ve never known it was Lyle. And surely I never rooted for him.”

“All these years, Jarod”, she shook her head again, “You used my mother to lead me towards the truth. You took advantage of her memory to manipulate me to do whatever you want me to. Why didn’t you give it to me, Jarod?”

The pretender noticed she felt disappointed and betrayed. He felt terrible and guilty.

“I’ve found another letter from your mother attached to this diary. It was a message written the day of her presumed death. She asked one thing very clearly: she didn’t want you to read her diary if anything happened to her. She didn’t want you to know the truth behind the Centre, particularly about your father and what kind of man he really was. She didn’t want her little daughter to know how sad her mother’s life had been.”

Parker was crying. Whenever she thought about Catherine and how much she’d suffered, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

“Well, Boy Genius, you didn’t take her words literally, because you’ve been telling me all the things she said in her diary even if I never read it. You didn’t respect her will anyway.”

“I couldn’t do otherwise, Parker. We wouldn’t be here now, if I hadn’t. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned at the Centre is that everyone deserves the truth. I believe that now you are ready to read it, you have enough awareness. Not only of Catherine, but of yourself, too.”

Parker chuckeld ironically, she was still pissed off by Jarod’s behavior.        

“Please, forgive me Parker. I thought I was doing the right thing. Now I know I was totally wrong. If I had given the diary to you sooner, maybe you would have learned to trust me before.”

Jarod’s last words soothed Miss Parker. She was glad he hadn’t said something stupid like ‘I did it for your own good’. 

“Did my mother talk about Ethan?”

Parker’s question reminded Jarod about their little brother. He swallowed hard to hold back the tears, then he shook his head, “No, the last note in the diary goes back to the day of her presumed death, she doesn’t talk about Mirage. Maybe she thought it would be too dangerous.”

Jarod waited for her to ask something else, but she didn’t. Maybe she was thinking about Ethan, too.

“But she wrote a lot about you. She also liked talking about Angelo and…me.”

“Did she?” Parker smiled, her heart filled with joy.

Jarod traced his fingers down her face, pushing her hair behind her ear. He nodded slowly and then he kissed her, relieved when Parker didn’t resist.

“I’m still disappointed, Jarod. I’m sorry that you thought i wasn’t enough mature to have it.” She sighed deeply. “But I trust you completely and I know you gave me pieces of truth one step at a time. And then you gave me my mother’s ring and her letters…”

Jarod nodded in agreement. He was glad that Parker understood his point of view.

“Jarod…I want you to promise me that from now on you won’t hide ANYTHING from me. No more secrets, no more pranks, no more clues, no more twisted little games, no more dead ends…I mean it, Jarod!”

Jarod grinned again, satisfied and full of himself, “Miss Parker, you amaze me. I won’t need to do that anymore. Don’t you realize that you’re in big trouble?” he threatened laughingly.

“Why?”

“Because from now on I’m never letting you go. Ever. I’m never gonna lose sight of you, not even for a second. You’re stuck with me, Parker.”

“Mmm…A girl could get used to it.”

Parker gently stroked his cheek with her fingers, wondering why she had denied her feelings for so long. They kissed again.

“Your turn, now.” Jarod inquired politely.

Miss Parker laughed and thought about her secrets. She told Jarod about the first memory that came to her mind.

“When Sydney and I found out about Gemini, we felt disgusted. When I saw the boy, I noticed he was scared, I really wanted to help him.”

“Meaning?” Jarod asked her, inquiring.

“I would have saved him. I wanted to help him escape from the Centre, but you came first.”

Jarod smiled, impressed by her confession, “Why?”

She shrugged, “I visited him in his room because I needed to see him. He was you, Jarod. I suddenly felt like I was eleven years old again…”

“I know what you mean.”

“Do you?” Parker asked, “To you, Gemini was a clone, Jarod. But to me…it was like going back to the past and becoming that little girl again. When I looked at Gemini, I saw you. I saw the little boy who looked just like him. I told him that I cared for you, but I never let you know. And I realized that when we were kids I saw pain in your eyes, but I looked away. I couldn’t do the same mistake with that little boy. I had to help him.”

Jarod had been caressing her arms while listening to her. He’d always thought that Parker didn’t care about the boy, now he’d been proven wrong. She always surprised him.

“His name is Jeremy, by the way. Like the song. He likes Pearl Jam, you know. One thing we have in common.”

Parker smiled, “One thing we have in common. I guess the men of your family always have the same effect on me. I’m always distracted by their charm. I’ve never been able to put a bullet in your lovely brains.”

“Are you talking about my father?”

Parker nodded with a smile, “When I spoke to him I realized at once he hadn’t killed my mother, even before he told me the truth. He’s just like you, Jarod. He’s honest, humble and generous. I felt safe those few minutes, during our conversation. I only wish he knew how much he helped me.”

“You’ll tell him yourself, Parker.” Jarod told her, “And what about Kyle?”

“I asked him the same thing. I wanted to know if he had killed my mother and he denied it. But Kyle wasn’t like you, Jarod. He was weird, a tortured soul. And yet, I saw understanding in his eyes. There were love and fear in his gaze…I’m so sorry that I was the cause of his death.”

“You weren’t, Parker. I was so afraid for your life, that night. You were very brave to hit your brother like you did. But Kyle’s death…it was all Lyle’s fault.”

“It’s always his fault…” Parker commented bitterly.

Jarod tried to ease the emotions that were surfacing again, “Now I understand why Jeremy always asks about you! You might have stunned him pretty well, Miss Parker.”

“Must be genetic”, she prodded him.

“Enough talking for now”, Jarod hushed her with a passionate kiss.

“I thought…you wanted…to know…everything…” she said between the kisses.

‘God, they should outlaw his tongue’, Parker thought.

“Later”, Jarod purred in her ears.

---

That night they talked a lot. Jarod felt as if they had opened a Pandora’s box full of secrets, truth, memories and emotions. He’d never spoken so much in his entire life. And the pretender was the best, when it came to using words. But Parker turned out to be even better than him, maybe she just needed to get everything off her chest, once and for all.

Jarod asked her about his escape from the Centre, he wanted to know if Parker had something to do with it, seeing that she was in the SI department at that time. She hadn’t helped him, but sometimes, when she was alone, she liked watching his surveillance cameras, just to know what he was doing. When she’d come back from Corporate, she couldn’t muster up the courage to visit him. She confessed she’d been missing him since she’d come back from University, but she’d been feeling neglected because Jarod had never aswered her letters. Jarod explained that he did wrote to her, but her father had intercepted his mails before they could leave the Centre. As he’d found out only later, all the letters were stored in Mr. Parker’s office strongbox. Parker asked him if he’d found also hers. He had.

Then they shared a hard look, full of love. Jarod revealed that he’d actually read her letters, that’s why he had understood there was still hope for them. That’s why he’d never given up on her. Parker thanked him for his trust in them, and Jarod asked her if she wanted to read the letters he’d written for her and she’d never been able to receive. Parker nodded, delightfully.

Parker told Jarod that her favorite color was red, that she also loved to dress in red. Jarod answered that he knew, and that he loved the way she dressed. He admitted he’d spent many nights dreaming of her, and in his fantasy Miss Parker always wore a very short skirt and ran after him with those incredibly high stilettos of hers.

Parker inquired him about his favorite color, and he replied it was violet. When she wanted to know why, he told her about Tricia Holmes and the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. Even more beautiful than Parker’s.

Jarod asked her why she’d shot him after Fenigor’s fake revelation about Major Charles being Catherine’s killer. Parker sighed and admitted she’d run after Jarod and shot him in the certainty that she would never hit him. Jarod smiled.

Parker confessed that she was still anonymously financing Ronald Miller’s family. Jarod remembered very well how much Parker had felt guilty for the detective’s premature death. Miller had been the only one helping her to find Tommy’s murderer and he’d been killed by the Centre. So Miss Parker had established a scholarship for his four children and every month she transferred a huge sum of money to Miller’s wife bank account. Jarod asked her if she didn’t want to meet the woman to tell her the truth, but Parker was sure it was much better if Mrs. Miller believed that the money came from her husband’s life insurance.    

Then the pretender asked her about the rabbit. Parker chuckled and realized once again what an affectionate and loving man Jarod could be. She told him that the bunny was now in Debbie’s hands because she travelled too much to be a trustful owner. Jarod asked her what was its name and Parker replied that she’d called him Snowball, because no other name would fit a white and fluffy little ball of fur like him.

Parker also revealed that Sydney had showed her the DSA about Kenny’s death. She told him that she’d felt very sorry and that she hated Damon for what he did to him. When Jarod asked her if she hated Damon for killing his friend, Miss Parker replied that she hated Damon because he’d made Jarod believe he would be given his freedom and later he’d destroyed that hope. Jarod couldn’t believe Parker’s kindness and felt immediately the urgency to kiss her gently and slowly.  

Jarod chose that moment to confess that he’d taken her side when Broots thought she was responsible for the attack to the Data Annex. When a very smiling Miss Parker asked him what he had told Broots, Jarod replied he’d just said something to convince him, probably a compliment. Parker was curious and tickled Jarod until he remembered precisely his sentence.

‘Miss Parker is many things, but she would never do that, especially to you. She doesn’t have it in her heart or her eyes.’

Needless to say that Parker jumped on him as soon as she heard those words.

TEN YEARS AGO

---

Without noticing, it was already 7.00 a.m. and Parker’s stomach growled loudly. Between the laughs, the former huntress and prey decided to go out and have some breakfast.

Parker wasn’t satisfied yet. There was still a topic they hadn’t talked about, and she was far too curious to let go. Miss Parker wanted to know everything about Jarod’s past relationships with other women.

Jarod asked the waitress almost everything they had on the menu, then Parker ordered a huge cup of cofee and scrumbled eggs. She was staring intently at the pretender, a slight smile on her face.

“What?” he asked her, slightly suprised of her good mood.

“Tell me about Zoe”, she suddenly said.  

Jarod almost choked on the fruit juice he was drinking and Parker smiled in satisfaction.

After coughing for at least twenty seconds, Jarod looked back at her and noticed that her smile was still there. ‘Well, why not?’, he thought.   

“What do you want to know?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not together anymore. If you were, I would probably kill you after tonight.”

Jarod grinned and Parker thought he was extraordinarily attractive whenever he smiled like that, “I haven’t been seeing her for almost a year, Parker.”

“Well, then I want to know why. What happened? I thought you were in love with her.”

Jarod huffed, “Love is a huge word, and we both know how difficult it is to use it with the wrong person.”

Parker nodded solemnly, but didn’t speak. Her thought – and probably also Jarod’s – went immediately to Tommy.

“Almost two weeks after our friendly rendezvous with Alex, I met Zoe. I needed to take a break. I wanted to forget about the Centre and our mothers, at least for a while. So when Zoe asked me to make a trip with her I thought it might be a good idea to have some fun and…distract myself.” Jarod tried to hide his smile at Parker’s wince when he said the word fun, “We went to California, we were having a very good time together.”

“But?” she sighed. Maybe listening to Jarod speaking about his former girlfriends wasn’t a good idea.

Jarod smiled, “How did you know there was a ‘but’?”

Miss Parker shrugged and smiled at him. She knew him pretty well, after all.

“We were doing the most incredible things together, and yet whenever she…kissed me…” Again he stopped, trying to analyze Miss Parker’s reaction, “I couldn’t help but thinking about Alex’s words.”

“What kind of genius would seriously ponder words coming from an insane sociopath?” Parker scolded him.

Jarod had a sip of his juice, “Never wondered why I came to save you and Mr. Parker that day at the shipyard?” when he saw her shaking her head, he continued, “Alex and I met at the Opera House, where I managed to save the Swedish Ambassador. He shot me, then I ran after him and when I reached him, he told me something.”

Jarod shrugged and sighed, “Something I’ve known all my life, but that I’d never really admitted to myself before that day.”

“What?”

 

Alex was talking through the bars separating him from Jarod.

“Luring you was simple. It's that flaw in your character that made it so easy. Always risking your life for somebody who's not important to your world.”

Jarod stood up, punching the iron gate and shouting, “The Ambassador is important to the world!”

Alex looked amused, “Not the world. Your world. The Swedish Ambassador? She's nothing to your world.”

Jarod leaned his head against the wall, shattered and unable to respond.

“But Miss Parker is.”

Jarod glared at Alex, his eyes willing to kill the chameleon. How could he possibly know Miss Parker? And did he have any plans, for her?

“In fact, you have no idea how important to your life she really is…”

Jarod stared at him, more and more worried, wide-eyed for the anger.

“And after today, you'll never know.”

 

“So this is why that whacky lunatic kidnapped my father! So that he could lure me to the shipyard and kill me, everything just to...”

“To strike me.”

Miss Parker swallowed hard, no longer hungry.

“Alex wanted to kill you in front of my eyes, he wanted to show me that saving all those strangers was useless, if I couldn’t save someone important to my world.” 

“And Ethan told you where to find me…”

Jarod smiled, the thought of his lost brother closed his stomach, “Yes. I went completely nuts, I couldn’t believe I was going to lose you without ever telling you how much important you really were to me.”

Parker smiled at him, “And what does this have to do with Zoe?”

“Whenever I kissed her…well, it just didn’t feel…right. I mean, there was this incredible woman, asking for some affection, and all I could think about was…that I wanted her to be someone else.”

Parker had never blushed in her life, before. But at that moment she turned at least a little pink. Jarod avoided looking at her face, he was blushing too. Which was very weird, seing that they’d just spent the last night naked in the same bed.

He coughed in embarassment, “Well, Zoe felt that detachment. I guess anyone would have. She didn’t realize it was about a woman, though, she was sure I felt uncomfortable because I still feel guilty for her kidnap.”

“What did you tell her?”

“The truth. Part of, at least. I told her about my abduction when I was a child, I explained everything about my pretender skills, about the Centre. I told her enough, and before you ask, I didn’t go into detail, I didn’t want to put her in further danger. But I’ve made a mistake anyway.”

Parker chuckled, “You told her about me.”

‘Poor Jarod’, she thought, ‘A childlike pretender who can’t understand jealous women’s scorn’.

“Well, it slipped from my mouth when I told her that you were Lyle’s sister and also my huntress. She wondered who you were and I…well, I…I sighed.” 

Parker tried to imagine the moment.

Jarod always sighed. For relief, for wrath, for hope, for sadness. That was one of his typycal mannerisms. She’d become pretty good in interpreting what Jarod’s sighs meant.

But she’d known him a lifetime, unlike Zoe.

“Then Zoe asked me what your first name was and I answered that it is a secret I wouldn’t reveal not even in my deathbed.”

Parker smiled in satisfaction, “What did she respond?”

“In spite of what you think, she’s pretty smart. She understood immediately that our relationship was more than the you-run-and-I-chase I told her it was, so I had to tell her truth. You know, that you were my childhood friend at the Centre and then your father sent you away. That when you came back you’d become the cold Ice Queen who’d been chasing me for years. You know, the same old story I tell everyone to explain our complicated and sick relationship.”

The waitress arrived with their food and Jarod stopped his tale to let her put the dishes on the table. Parker started to eat her eggs, Jarod threw himself headlong into his pancakes. He continued his tale between the morsels.

“Well, Zoe…she couldn’t understand why I cared for you even if you were my enemy. And I can’t blame her. It’s difficult to explain us…if you are not one of us, isn’t it?”

Parker nodded and sighed, “Sometimes I wonder how would I had ever told Tommy about you. Maybe I’ve never told him the truth about me and the Centre because it would have been too difficult. The fact that you actually knew him before me…” Jarod swallowed and stared at her in apprehension, then Parker continued, “Well, it changed everything. But before having the news, I often asked myself how would I explain our relationship to Thomas. Obviously at that time I hadn’t realized that I was in love with you, yet.”

Jarod exhaled the longest breath of his life. ‘There you go, one of those sighs, again’, Parker thought.

“Well, Zoe and I continued our trip. I tried to mention your name the least possible, I thought Zoe deserved it. I guess she probably was more in love with me than I ever was. I cared deeply for her, I helped her living through her cancer, I still love her. But that was not…you know.”

Parker knew.

“The day we were leaving from Los Angeles she opened my suitcase, the one with all the DSAs. I also keep my most important belongings there, including pictures of my family. My mother’s, Emily’s, my father’s, Kyle’s…and yours.”

Parker opened her eyes wide, “You keep my picture with you?!”

“Actually…” Jarod lifted his hand and move his middle and index fingers to show her the number 2.

“Which pictures?”

“The first is the one you keep in the frame on your bedside table.”

“The one with me and my mother?”

“I sneaked into your house one night and I made a copy. It’s a wonderful picture. And before you mention it, I felt entitled to take it because…oh, maybe you don’t even remember but…”

“You were the one who took it.” Miss Parker nodded.

Jarod smiled, “You remember?”

“Yes, I do. We were at the Centre and she asked you to take a picture because she wanted you to have it. She died before giving it back to you.” 

He nodded, close to tears, “I must admit I stole the second photo. It was in an album you kept in you bedroom. I guess Broots was the one who took it because you were with Debbie, it was last Christmas and you two were feeding Snowball.”

“And to think that I accused poor Broots of stealing it!” she replied, faking anger.

“Well, Zoe wasn’t so condescending when she saw them. She said that you only keep photos of people you really love. So she asked me how much important you were to me.”

 

“Like Sydney, the psychiatrist who kept you prisoner all your life and deserves to be considered as you father, though he’s guilty like all the others? Like Broots, a man you think of as a friend and that you helped many times even if it is his job to hunt you? How much important is Miss Parker to your world, Jarod? I want to know!”

Zoe’s words only made Jarod think even more about Alex. He couldn’t lie.

“More”, he confessed to Zoe. “She’s probably the most important person to me. Alex was right…” he said, more to himself than to Zoe.

The woman stared at him in disbelief.

“I’m so sorry Zoe. You were right, I can’t pretend that Miss Parker doesn’t mean anything to me, because she’s everything to me. And you helped me understand that.”

“Well, you’re welcome!” she replied.

“Zoe…I’m so sorry to disappoint you… I know this might look like a stockholm syndrome towards my huntress…”

“Well, I’ve always known…I really hoped it was just paranoia, but you were different from the first second of this trip. So…you love her?”

 

“What did you tell her?”

Jarod smiled, “I guess my answer was something sloppy like, ‘Since I was eleven’…”

“She was very pissed?”

“Nope. She smiled.”

“What?!”

“She’s a romantic soul, she wanted to know if you loved me too. Imagine her reaction when I told her I’ve never asked you about your feelings and you didn’t know about mine.”

“What a show. So sorry I wasn’t there.” she teased him.

Jarod squeezed his eyes, pretending to be annoyed by her words, “Well you should thank Zoe, because she’s one of the reasons I told you the truth in Glasgow. Even if I knew that it would have been more difficult than any pretend I'd ever done before.”

“So you two are still friends?”

Jarod grinned, “Yes, we are. I helped her fighting cancer and going home to her family. You can’t forget something like that, Miss Parker. We finished our trip as the best of friends.”

Parker was glowing. She couldn’t believe how much she really loved that man. And above all she didn’t want to let him know how much his omnipresent grins affected her.

“Well Zoe must be very…interesting to deal with.”

“You have no idea. She’s the craziest woman I’ve ever met. And she’s full of life. And beautiful.”

“There better be a but, genius.”

 Jarod grinned once more and leaned in to kiss her from his side of the table.

“But…I belong to you.”

“Mmm…you’d better get a tattoo with ‘Miss Parker’s property’ written on you butt.”

“I might consider it, but now it’s my turn. I’ve been wondering just one thing from last night…”

“Tommy?” she asked in advance.

Jarod nodded, but in silence. She didn’t need to hear the question, he didn’t need to ask.

“I truly loved him. Like anyone else before. That was a different kind of love, for a man who was honest, generous and good. I guess in a way Thomas reminded me of you.” 

“Really?” he smiled tenderly.
“Thomas was the man you might have become if the Centre hadn’t exploited your skills. He was loyal, brave, funny, handsome and he believed in his ideals. He was everything I could wish for. And yet, I never told him that I loved him.”

“You didn’t have the time.” Jarod reminded her.

“I don’t know. Thomas was such a good man, but I was scared for our commitment, maybe I wasn’t ready to tell someone that I loved him. Maybe I knew deep inside that you and I were too connected to create a solid relationship with Thomas. When I agreed to leave with him, I really hoped I could forget you, for good.” Miss Parker wasn’t hungry anymore, her eggs were cold by now and she was playing with her fork, “I loved him very much, Jarod. I regret his death every single day.”

Jarod nodded, “Me too. I often wonder what would I have done if you’d really left with him.”

Miss Parker knew the answer, even if Jarod wasn’t sure.

“You would have disappeared, Jarod. Without me at the Centre, there would have been no need to contact me or Sydney.”

“Perhaps you’re right. I’ve always felt a connection with the people from my past, certainly not with the place that stole my freedom. And I knew Tommy would have made you happy, so I would have let you go.”

“And what about me? Living in doubt, not knowin what happened to you? Wondering where you were, everyday…I guess I would have bought newspaper just in hopes of finding news about a good Samaritan appearing in Portland to save the little guy.”

Jarod chuckled and so did she, but their thoughts soon came back to Thomas.

“I also wonder if Tommy would have told me the truth about you.”

“He couldn’t.”

“Why?”

“I made him promise not to, ever.”

Parker sighed, she didn’t understand the pretender’s behavior, “Jarod, why hiding such an important thing from me? Why not let me know the best part of you? Maybe everything would have been different…if you’d told me before…” she sighed.

“I don’t think so, Parker. Today it’s obvious that I sent Tommy to meet you because I cared for you, but just because now you know that I love you. If he’d told you back then, you would have thought that I was trying to manipulate you. And I really wanted you to leave, to be free. Tommy could save you from the Centre…”

Parker wanted to object, but she changed her mind, “Well, it’s useless to think about ifs and buts. Thomas is dead and it’s all my fault. He left a great void inside me…”

Jarod took her hand, “It’s so good to be able to confess you that I feel exactly the same. He was my friend, you know. We were real friends. We spoke often and he knew that I was a pretender. Maybe you were right before. Maybe Tommy was like me. He was alone, he’d lost his parents when he was young.” Parker nodded in understanding, “I saw something in Thomas, something I’d seen in you, too. He was strong but vulnerable, just like you. I was sure you would fit together like two pieces of the same puzzle. And believe me, Parker. I wouldn’t have intruded your life anymore, if Tommy hadn’t died.”

“I know.” Miss Parker squeezed Jarod’s hand. “I think that’s why I love you most, because you were ready to put my happiness at the first place, even if that meant you had to give up on us.”

Jarod’s hand left hers and came back to the fork. Parker let him eat his pancakes for a couple of minutes, then she spoke again.

“What about Nia?”

The fork Jarod was holding fell on the dish as he stared at Miss Parker with a smirk on his face.

“What’s this, the Ex parade?”

Miss Parker shook her head, “Did you love her?”

“You can’t love a person you’ve known for two days, Parker, but you can care deeply about her.”

“What happened to her?”

“She’s married, she has two children. I was very glad to discover that she’d found the right man. I also went to her wedding.”

Parker looked at him in disbelief, “You went to your first lover’s wedding with another man?”

Jarod shook his head, “I know you don’t understand. But Nia and I shared something. We understood each other completely, I met her in a moment of my life when I didn’t know almost anything about myself or my family, I wasn’t even aware of having siblings. She was alone like me, we consoled each other and I felt loved for the first time in my adult life.” 

“Well, I met her after you left. I knew that she wasn’t the usual target of one of your pretends. She described you like a lover, not like the hero who’d saved the day.”

Jarod noticed that Parker was blushing again, but not for the shame. It was something different.

“You were jealous!” he taunted her. When Miss Parker didn’t reply immediately, Jarod understood he was right.

“Ok, maybe I was.” She admitted. “I kept listening to your conversation with Sydney and thinking about our first kiss as children.”

Jarod smirked again, he’d never felt so satisfied before, “Well, I kept watching the DSA of our first meeting…”

“What a day…” she whispered.

“Yeah…” Jarod smiled. “And Tommy Tanaka?” Jarod blurted out suddenly, looking intentely at her. Miss Parker started to laugh and Jarod realized he’d never seen her so amused before.

“Well, Tommy was a…seasonal affair. We just had some very good sex, nothing more. You know…” she purred, “Japanese men are real masters of the art.”

Jarod grinned, “Better than a pretender?”

Parker’s voice took on a low sensual tone as she leaned over the table, “Absolutely not.”

She kissed him slowly and with passion, trying to convince the pretender of what she’d just said. When she sat back, she eased the tension by saying, “You should have seen Lyle’s face when he saw Tommy and I kissing in my father’s office…” she chuckled.

But her laugh soon faded, mentioning Lyle had brought Ethan back to their minds again. Parker noticed that Jarod’s good mood was disappearing, so she tried to keep on the conversation.

“So, the black widow?”

Jarod looked at her reproachfully, “Kristi was the worst error in judgment I’ve ever made. I was sure she was the innocent who needed my help, instead she was the culprit.”

Miss Parker heard resentment in his voice.

“I tried to help her after her husband’s death, but she manipulated me. And to think at that time I was trying to teach you something about trusting the right people, instead I was the first who put trust in the wrong person!”

“That’s when you sent me my mother’s quote about trust?”  

Jarod nodded, “When Kristi tried to kill me, she lured me into a house that was going to explode by telling me that she loved me. Later, I often wondered how could anyone lie about loving someone…”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I’ve told the big words just to two persons.”

“If you say that Tommy Tanaka is one of them, I’ll have to shoot you with your own gun.”

Parker laughed, “No, you moron. The first was my mother, and since yesterday night, you.”

Jarod exhaled slowly and his eyes went from the dish on the table to hers, trying to remember how amazing Miss Parker had been the night before.

“You know that I really love you, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, I do. And you should know that, leaving out my family members, you are the only one.”

Miss Parker smiled slightly and decided that she was enjoying this confession time.

“And Michael Patrick?”

Parker punched the table, “Oh, come on, this isn’t fair!”

“You brought up the black widow!” he stated, quipping.

“Yeah, talking about errors in judgment…I didn’t know that Raines had hired him to find you. We’ve known each other for long, we used to fence together.”

Jarod looked at her in astonishment, “And I thought I knew everything about you!”

“In your dreams, lab rat. Well, we spent a few hours together while you were playing with fire in Pittsburgh, he had amazing sex with me while I had quite mediocre with him.”

Jarod smiled for her remark.

“I didn’t even know if he was really married.”

“He wasn’t.” Jarod commented. “I had some research done, later. But I often wondered why you slept with a man if you knew he was married. I was a bit…”

Parker sighed, “Disappointed?” Jarod nodded, “That wasn’t definitely the best part of me, Jarod. Sydney warned me, he told me I didn’t have enough healthy relationships in my life to compensate for what I was doing just for fun. That I was falling down an upward spiral because I couldn’t keep my feelings about you in check, and that would be my ruin.”

At that moment, Jarod realized that Sydney had been a surrogate father to him, but also to Miss Parker. And he was thankful for that.

“Well I was exhausted, I never managed to catch you and you behaved awfully with me…late phone calls, mind games, pranks and clues…I guess everything I was feeling for you came to the surface with Michael. In the wrong way. End of story.”

“That was after or before you broke the finger of an Italian friend of mine?” Jarod asked with a mischievous smile on his face.

Parker chuckled, “Later. Oh, Giuseppe…” she said.

“You really liked him, didn’t you?”

“What did he tell you about us?”

Jarod shrugged, “You dated for a month before he realized you were far too woman for him.”

Parker grinned, “I tried to corrupt his pure soul, but Giuseppe was a good guy, never really interested in satifying my…whims.” She explained, almost sensually. 

Jarod smirked, “What a fool!” Parker nodded in satisfaction “Well, I guess this is it. No more former lovers to talk about, am I right?”

“Well, I’ve heard something about that profiler, Rachel Burke…”

Jarod grimaced. He was sure Parker didn’t know about her, but he was wrong. She knew him very well, after all. And she was smiling again, “Come on, Boy Genius. It was my job to know everything about you, wasn’t it?”

Jarod nodded, “Rachel was different. I helped her with a stalker who was bothering her and we…liked each other. Rachel knew that I was no FBI agent, but I never told her the truth about me. We found solace in each other’s arms in a very dark period of my life. I hadn’t seen Zoe for months and I didn’t speak often with you either. It’s been a while, actually.”

“Well, for being a man who’s been isolated for 30 years, you’ve scratched more than one itch.”

Jarod laughed, “It’s really funny, Miss Parker. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you really are jealous of my former girlfriends.”

“You’d wish!” she replied, naughtily. She waited for him to stop laughing, then she stared at him lovingly.

“Parker.”

“What?”

Jarod’s eyes narrowed, “What did you feel when you found out  that…we could be brother and sister?”

“Oh, speaking of which, you could have spared me calling me “Sis” that night, it was so unfair!”

Jarod smiled, “I’m sorry, Parker. But I couldn’t resist.”

She shooked her head and waited for the pretender to talk, “Well, I’m going to tell what I feel. When I found the red files I was very excited. But all that happiness disappeared as soon as I realized the eighth file was yours. I couldn’t help thinking about the words I’ve read in Catherine’s diary, what she said about her son. I started to believe that I could actually be your brother, I almost convinced myself.”

Miss Parker’s heart rate increased rapidly while Jarod kept talking, “Well at first I thought it could be wonderful, the best thing ever. I thought I could convince you to join me, my brain was telling me that it could be the solution to all my problems. I could come back to the Centre as a heir, a Parker. Not a lab rat anymore, but Mr. parker’s son. I had all these incredible scenarios coming to my head, where you and I would change the Centre and begin to rule it at our own way, as Catherine would have wanted…”

Parker smiled shyly, that was a nice thought, indeed.

“Then I started to panic. My heart made me understand that it wasn’t what I really wanted. I couldn’t stand the idea that the only woman I’d ever loved…would be the only one I would never have. It was unbearable, an overwhilming idea, I simply couldn’t accept it. While I was waiting for the test results narrowing your brother’s identity, I even began to make terrible plans.”

Parker almost closed her eyes, “Meaning?”

“I planned not to tell you, at least for a while.”

“What?! How could you – ”   

“Well, as soon as I got the results I calmed down and started to think coherently again. And I felt, you know…an incredible, huge relief.”

Parker stared at him in disbelief, “You would have hidden such an important information from me just to keep the status quo?”

“I felt it would be better that way, what we had…”

“What we had sucked, Jarod!”

He laughed at her angry tone. After a couple of seconds, she laughed too.

“Well, all I can tell you is that when we were in Oakview, with Angelo…and Davy…Well, I’d never heard my heart beating so fast, before that night. I was excited, and I was upset. I wanted to jump on you and to kill you at the same time. I couldn’t believe that the boy I’d shared my first kiss with…could be my brother. I knew I still felt something for that little boy, deep inside.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah.” She sighed, “And suddenly that stupid lab rat I used to get in trouble with when I was a kid could actually be my brother, how was I supposed to deal with something like that?!”

Parker sipped some coffee, “Anyway, before your revelation, I thought, ‘Well, it would be nice. It would be nice to have Jarod as a brother.’ So I gained control over myself again.”

“It would have been nice indeed, Parker.” Jarod smiled.

“Oh, stop it! Do you really think that after last night?”

Jarod glanced at her with a provocative grin on his mouth, then burst out laughing, “Nope.”

Parker laughed along, then she sighed, “The truth is I really wanted Angelo to be my twin.”

“I know”, Jarod smiled, grabbing her hand.

“Truth wasn’t easy to accept. I had to face the fact that my brother was a monster.”

For a second, Jarod saw Ethan’s corpse floating on the back of his mind.

“I had no choice but to accept it.”

Jarod nodded with complicity and understanding. He also had his difficulties to deal with the fact that Kyle was his brother when he still thought of him as a killer and a kidnapper.

Parker slowly breathed in, trying not to think about Lyle for a moment.

“Just one more thing. More personal.” She said.

“What?”

“The Saddest little Valentine...”

Jarod felt ashamed and uncomfortable, “I know, that was silly.”

“That’s not the first word that came to my mind when I read it. Why did you send me that candy, Jarod? Wasn’t it too obvious? For a moment, I really thought you cared for me.”

Jarod smiled, “I wrote that book in hopes I could destroy the walls you'd built around your heart. Later I met this woman I learned something from, a tough contractor who made me realize that the strongest women are often the most vulnerable, too. And when I called you that night on Valentine's Day I felt like I was actually closer to obtaining my purpose.”

“Jarod, I behaved like a bitch that night. I lied unashamedly and I scolded you as usual!”

“Yes you did.” They both laughed. “But I also heard your breath and your voice through the phone, they felt different. You asked me what the hell I wanted from you, the answer was under your eyes, written on that candy. I wanted your love. I tried to tell you with the book, the candy, the call. I even thought about coming in person, but I was afraid you weren’t ready.”

“I wasn’t. I probably would have taken your sorry ass back to the Centre, Jarod. But…I can’t be sure. Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you’d involved me in your life before? Without all those stupid clues and pranks, just by telling me the truth about your feelings…and not waiting until now…”

“Yes, I do. But I couldn’t afford trusting you, Parker. I couldn’t trust nobody. You and Sydney were the only important people of my life. He was like a father, you were my best friend. Do you have any idea how traumatic was for me to find out that you were the ones chosen to pursue me? For months I’ve blamed Sydney for everything and denied my true feelings for you. Then I slowly started to accept it. Like when I sent you the rabbit for Christmas…or when we were in Bahia Grande together, wasn’t it obvious that all I wanted to do was to kiss you?”    

“Did you?” she asked tenderly.

“I thought that if anything would happen between us, you needed to make the first step. And I was right, because you did, yesterday.”

Parker sighed. “Jarod, I was your pursuer. You played with me like a mouse with a cat. You sent me all those clues about my mother to drive me mad and…”

“No, Parker, that was never my goal. All I wanted to do was to teach you something. I wanted to tell you the truth. The real truth, not the one you’d been told by Mr. Parker. And if I’m sure of one thing is that I’ve never lied to you, did I?”

Parker shook her head, “Never. Not even once.”

Jarod smiled and took her hand, squeezing it gently. “All right. Am I allowed to finish my breakfast, now?”

Parker kissed his hand and let it go, then she watched him lovingly while he finished his food.

“Jarod.”

He gazed deeply into her eyes.

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, Parker.”

He looked out of the window and sighed, “I don’t know.”

TODAY

---

The woman once known as Miss Parker used to drive her children to school everyday. All the teachers and the other children’s parents knew her as Mrs Miller, pretended wife of the most adorable pediatrician of Rock Cove, Jarod Miller. They’d chosen this surname as soon as they’d decided to live in Maine, in a place that was very dear to both of them. Jarod had his own office in the centre of the town, while Parker worked at home. She had become a painter when she’d finally realized the importance of her inner sense. She loved painting, her mother had passed this passion down to her many years before.

But the most important thing in her life was her family.

First there was Jarod, then her two children, Ethan Kyle and Catherine Faith (whose names were an obvious homage to Jarod and Parker's dead relatives). Their first son was 12 and their little girl was turning 10 the following December. Parker still couldn’t believe that ten years have passed since that night.

 

In that late March of 2012, she still felt safe and happy. Nothing had come to ruin their newfound happiness, not since their last encounter with Lyle ten years before.

Parker and Jarod hadn’t really got married, but they wore wedding rings and spoke with other people as if they really were. And they’d been Mr and Mrs Miller for ten years, by now. There were very few persons who knew the truth about them. And they were all living very far, hidden in Florida and with faked identities. The only other man who knew about their former ‘personas’ was Ben Miller, who still lived in Lake Catherine. Parker and Jarod always spent their holidays to his inn and the children loved it.

 

The school they had chosen for Ethan and Catherine was close to their home, so that the parents would run in case of danger. The two children loved each other very much and always played together. There had never been jealousy between them, maybe because they were both gifted, like their parents. Ethan was the most intelligent boy in his class and Catherine had inherited her mother’s inner sense and stubborness, which made her the most fascinating girl her teachers had ever seen. Parker and Jarod were very proud of them, but also scared by their talents. They both knew that if the Centre ever found out, they might steal the children, just as they’d done with Jarod many years before. So the pretender had decided to prevent any harm to his son and daughter by putting cameras in the house, at school, at Catherine’s ballet school, at Ethan’s dressing room and field at the sports center. Every place visited by his children was always under control, nothing would escape his careful look.

Even if Parker knew that Jarod’s attitude was slightly paranoic and misplaced, she also realized that he was just a very loving and worried father. The Centre was still very much alive, they only needed to make a mistake to be found. And until now, they hadn’t.

---

 

Whenever Parker drove Ethan and Katie to school, she always looked around to be sure that nobody was following her or the children. So it didn’t take her long to feel something different that morning.

“Mom, remind daddy that he promised to come and fetch us after school.”                     

Parker smiled at her son, “Don’t worry little monkey, daddy is home, he took the day off.”

“Mom, stop calling me that!” Ethan replied. He hated when his mother didn’t realize he wasn’t a baby anymore.

“Ok then, Old Pirate, see ya later.”

Ethan sighed and exited the car while his mother laughed along with his sister. Katie warned her mother, “He’s going to be upset with you for that. I don’t want him to spoil the party later.”

“What party?” she asked, getting out of the car and closing the door behind her, while her daughter did the same.

“You know, the very secret party you and daddy are planning for tonight. We still don’t know what we’re going to celebrate, but both Ethan and I know that it’s something very important.”

Parker stared at her daughter in desbelief. She was as smart as her brother, even more than she had been at her age.

Parker sighed, “Pumpkin, I swear you two grow up too fast.”  

Her daughter smiled and kissed her goodbye, “Well, I still love being called that. So don’t worry for my growth. And I’m not ashamed of you kissing me in public places. Not yet.”

Parker watched her daughter run towards the school and sighed again. She saw so much of Jarod and herself in them. Ethan was scorbutic and moody like her but also generous and spontaneous as Jarod. Katie was cute and compassionate like her mother, but she also had Jarod’s cunning and perspicacity. They were just amazing.

 

She looked around once more and that was the moment she noticed him. Again.

Her eye for detail was almost proverbial. She couldn’t be mistaken. She had already seen that man three times in a week.

He looked like another caring father, taking his child to school and waving his hand to say goodbye, but her inner sense told her something completely different. She dind’t like him. And she hadn’t actually ever seen his child with him.

Everyday Miss Parker parked the car in front of the school and turned off the engine. She was methodical and precise, she never changed her habits, to make sure her children were always safe and sound. She was never late, nor early. And that man was always there at the very same time. This could be no coincidence. No other parent could be so anxious for his child’s safety.

And then, as soon as she left, the man disappeared too. She also caught him looking at her, once. But she might as well have imagined it because it had been just for a second.

Parker didn’t want to upset Jarod, but she couldn’t help it anymore. She was feeling nervous and she needed to tell her husband about that man. She wanted to be sure he wasn’t a danger for them and the only way was to ask Jarod to investigate.

---

 

When she arrived home, she found Jarod in the kitchen. He was drinking a cup of cofee and reading the newspaper. In front of him, on the table, a laptop was showing the videos of the hidden surveillance cameras he’d secretly installed at school. The two videos were showing both Ethan and Katie’s classrooms.

“Looking for the little guy in need of help, Boy Genius?”

Jarod almost chocked with his coffee. He moved the newspaper to look carefully at Parker and realized at once how much her mood had changed since two hours before.

“What’s going on? The last time you called me one of your stupid nicknames we were still on the run from the Centre.”

Parker sighed, “I’m sorry, Jarod…Ethan asked me to remind you that you promised to fetch them after school.”

“I’m fully aware of my personal daily duties towards my children, but now I want to know what’s bothering you.”

“It’s just a bad feeling I’ve been having…”

“A bad feeling?! Since when?” he inquired.

“A few days.”

 Jarod stood up and approached her, “Tell me about it.”

“Well, there’s a man…I’ve never seen him before, but he always shows up at school just at the same time I arrive there with Ethan and Katie”

Jarod felt his heart beating again. “That’s all?”

Parker didn’t like his reply, “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Parker, come on, he’s just a man taking his child to school…Did he ever approach you?”

“No.”

“Did he…annoy you in any way?”

“No.” 

“Did he ever talk to you?”

“No, but…”

“Parker, listen to me. I know that today is not easy to deal with, but I thought we’d already talked about it.”

“That has nothing to do with it! I don’t like that man, Jarod…And you’ve always been the one to ask me to trust my inner sense!”

Jarod shrugged, “This might not be you inner sense, maybe you are just feeling neglected because for the first time in your life a man didn’t notice your amazing legs.”

Parker smiled when Jarod’s malicious grin appeared on his face, “You’re far from it, Jarod. Believe me, I had a…gut feeling…”

“Parker, don’t you think you’re just a bit paranoic? I mean, we already have cameras to control our children, what do you want more?”

“Do you need me to remind you that the Centre is still working? That your brother Kyle and our brother Ethan’s killer, my evil twin Lyle, is still there?” she yelled.

“I know that.” He replied, annoyed.

“Our perfect life can be destroyed in just one second if Lyle decides to put an end to it. Do you need me to remind you that?”

Jarod was looking angry, now. Parker didn’t like fighting with him. Actually they hadn’t been quarreling since their escape from Dover. It had been ten years.

“I’m…I’m sorry, Jar. I didn’t mean to yell at you like that.”

Jarod’s eyes went from her eyes to her mouth and back. He decided it wasn’t worth it to fight with Parker in such a lovely day. After all, it was like an anniversary, to them.

“I’m sorry, too. It’s not that I don’t believe you, Miss Parker.” Parker rolled her eyes at the sound of the title, but Jarod ignored her, “I just don’t want you to imagine things.”

“But you called me Miss like you used to ten years ago.”

Jarod sighed. She was right.

“It’s not my imagination, Jar. It’s my inner sense warning me about something very dangerous. Please, promise me you’re going to check.”

He stared at her in total wonder. “How come you always make me do whatever you want?”

Parker chuckled and leaned in to speak to his ear, “You’re my little slave, Jar.”

Jarod felt a shiver all down his back and suddenly felt the urge of kissing Parker, but she stopped him just as his lips were crushing to hers.

“Do your homework, first. If you are a good boy, I might consider kissing you then.”

She left him alone in their kitchen and Jarod felt a useless arousal reminding him of the amazing night of sex they shared the night before…

TEN YEARS AGO

---

The first thing Jarod and Parker did after the ‘confession time’ at the café was to retrieve Catherine’s diary and Jarod’s childhood letters from one of the pretender’s ‘safe place’. Miss Parker had then spent a whole day reading her mother’s diary, only to find out that Jarod was right. She wasn’t ready to have it, before. She would have thought that Catherine was crazy, at best. Her mother’s words reflected her behaviour towards other people. She was compassionate and generous, all qualities Parker could only dream of duplicating. She talked a lot about Faith, about Jarod, about Angelo. She expressed her sorrow for the loss of her son because she didn’t know that Lyle was still alive. Parker felt very sorry at the realization that Catherine had really died in that conviction. But she also felt amazed and proud whenever she read her mother’s deepest feelings about her. Catherine worshipped her daughter and Parker could only regret once again the fact that she’d lost her mother so soon.

When she finally let go of the diary, Jarod was still working at his laptop, waiting for her comments about it. But Parker wasn’t satisfied yet, she wanted to read Jarod’s letters, too.

The pretender was sure she would get tired soon, seeing that he’d found 150 letters written within the years. He’d been used to write to her at least once a week, until he’d finally decided that writing to his old friend wasn’t worth it anymore.

But Miss Parker didn’t stop. She went on and on, all night long.

When she let fall on the bed the last piece of paper, she also felt Jarod’s eyes scrutinizing her.

She was crying, and when Jarod saw tears in her eyes he started to feel his nose itching, as if he was going to cry, too.

They stood up at the same time, running towards each other. He hugged her ever so gently as she kissed every inch of his face, neck or hands she could reach.

“All this time…” she murmured.

But Jarod hushed her, “We’ll make up for it. I promise.”

---

And they did, indeed.

Life on the run wasn’t easy. And not that they weren’t having fun, because they were.

Miss Parker and Jarod were really making up for lost time. They talked a lot about the past, travelling from motel to motel, changing cars not to be tracked down too easily.

They had a lot of sex. And sex was incredible, actually.

Miss Parker soon realized that she was having the time of her life. She’d never been happier before, not even with Tommy. And that was rich, seing that the two fugitives were constantly followed by Centre sweepers.

 

Jarod was really missing his calls with Sydney, though. He would love to talk about his new relationship with Parker because he was full of expectation and hope for the future, but also doubts and fears. This was all new to him, he’d never seen Parker smiling so much before. It seemed to him that the little girl he once knew had finally managed to come back and defeat the evil Ice Queen who had taken her place for so long. Parker’s smile made him feel safe and happy.

And the greatest thing was when she touched him. She didn’t even notice, but by putting her hand over Jarod’s thigh while he was driving, or softly caressing his nape and neck, she always aroused him in a way the pretender would have never thought possible with other women. She also tried to encourage him when he felt lost and scared at the idea he would never find his mother. At times like those, Parker would just say something like, ‘Watch it Boy Genius, a woman needs to talk with her partner’s mother before deciding if he’s worth the effort.’

When Jarod politely asked her what kind of effort she was talking about, she would simply shrug and smile under her sunglasses. And then, they simply laughed together.

She made him laugh. A lot.

She told him about her school years in Europe, she confessed how much she hated Japanese people and their formal everyday restraint, she also remembered a couple of funny moments shared with Thomas, without crying, neither mourning. Jarod decided it was also time to tell her how he and Thomas had met, and Parker listened to the story with a bitter smile on her face, trying not to be affected at the realization that she still felt guilty for Tommy’s premature death, but that void had eventually been filled.      

---

 

After two weeks, Jarod felt it was enough safe to contact Broots and Sydney. Parker was missing her former colleagues very much, even if she tried not to show. On the other hand, the pretender wanted to know if they had managed to reach the Keys without harm.

Jarod parked the car outside a café and followed Miss Parker who was already sitting on a bench outside, waiting for the waitress to come. He took his laptop with him, ready to start a connection with Broots. While he was working to cover the transfer data, Miss Parker ordered two cups: one of coffe for her and a huge one of ice cream for Jarod. Then she stared intently at the pretender, “You think they’re ok?”

He smiled back at her. “We’re going to find out soon.”

A couple of minutes later Broots’ face appeared on the monitor. Parker couldn’t help but smile when she saw her lovable moron and Debbie on the other side of the videocall.

Jarod sighed, “It’s good to see you, Broots. Where is Sydney?”

Debbie ran out of the room to call someone she was addressing to as ‘Uncle Sydney’.

“How are you?” Miss Parker asked the technician.

“We’re all fine. We’ve found your house, Jarod. We’re all here. That weird little guy from Atlantic City…”

“Argyle?”

Broots nodded, “He helped us to settle down here. And that pilot friend of yours, Angela…she was very kind, she brought us to the Keys without even asking why. She just said that if it was for you, she would take us to the Moon and back.”

Jarod blushed slightly and lowered his gaze, Parker looked at him in admiration. Broots noticed the glance the two of them were casting at each other, but he was interrupted by Sydney’s arrival before he could investigate further.

“Parker! Jarod! Thank God you’re fine! I was so worried for you…”

Parker almost cried when she saw the old man. She still remembered their last conversation and she really wanted to thank him. “I’m so glad you’re safe, Syd.” She told him, emotion evident in her voice. Jarod squeezed her hand in a way Sydney couldn’t help but notice.

“Nicholas and Michelle?”

Sydney nodded, “They’re here with us, and so is Angelo. We found him waiting for us with a box full of DSAs. He also had the files stolen from SL-27 the first day we found it, Parker.”  

Miss Parker remembered the occasion and sighed in desbelief, “He kept them all this time?!”

Sydney nodded. “Unfortunately there’s no relevant information in them. I guess that’s why he didn’t tell us sooner.”

“When are you coming?” Broots asked them.

Jarod looked at Parker and she exhaled slowly. How could they tell their friends what they were planning to do?

“Broots, we won’t come. Not right away.”

“Why, w- why wouldn’t come? It’s safe here and we’ll be together, we can find a way to defeat the Centre and…”

“Broots, don’t wet your pants!” Miss Parker interrupted him, “The Centre is after Jarod and me, not you.”

Sydney sighed and turned around, he didn’t want his children to see him so worried for them. But Jarod knew him better, so he guessed at once what his former protector was thinking. “She’s right, Sydney. It’s the only way. We must be separated, for now. You have to stay hidden while Parker and I act as bait, we’ll be careful not to let them come too close to ever catching us.”

“Which won’t happen, seeing that Boy Wonder doesn’t intend to leave bread crumbs for Lyle anymore.”

“Well, I’m not interested in the Centre anymore, I already found what I was looking for.”

Sydney turned around immediately. He stared at the monitor, with acknowledgement appearing on his face as he looked at his protégé and surrogate daughter smiling at each other with gentleness, long forgotten the days spent as huntress and prey.

Miss Parker smiled, “I didn’t let go, Sydney. I see it too, now. I gave those kids the gift they never had, before it was too late.”

Sydney’s smile enlightened his face as Parker told him, “Thank you.”

Jarod looked at Parker with interest, oblivious to what she was referring too. And so was Broots, who gazed at Sydney with his mouth open.

“You’re welcome, Parker.”

“We have to go now. We’ll be in touch.” Jarod interrupted them.

“Be careful.” Broots warned them.

But Sydney wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet, “Jarod!”

The pretender gazed again at the monitor, looking expectantly at his former protector, “What?”

Sydney’s eyes roamed from Jarod’s image to Miss Parker’s, “I’m glad you are in this together. I’m very proud, of both of you.”

A soft smile returned on Parker’s face when Jarod traced his fingers down her cheeks. Sydney chuckled and Broots’ eyes almost fell on the floor.

“Guess what would they do if they saw us kissing?” Jarod asked her, then he purposely ended the call just as Parker was leaning in to him with a mischievous grin on her face.

“Oh my God. So they…they are together now? How could this be?” Broots asked in a whisper.

“I reckon that during this journey they’ve finally realized something very important.” Sydney explained to him.

“What?” Broots urged him.

“That they couldn’t lie to themselves anymore.”

Broots noticed the huge smile on Sydney’s face. He’d never seen him so satisfied before.

Syd patted his shoulder and exited the room, leaving Broots alone. It didn’t take him long for starting to take in the news and accept it. Jarod and Miss Paker had belonged together since the beginning of that unreasonable pursuit, and Broots knew it. Only a blind man wouldn’t notice Miss Parker’s attempts to hide her real feelings for the pretender, and Broots had spent enough time with Jarod to realize that his main goal was often to protect Miss Parker or to help her discovering the truth. They’d known each other a lifetime, now they were only taking back what was theirs. They deserved to love and be loved and he was sure that no one else could love and understand Miss Parker more than Jarod.

“Now I see it in her eyes too, Jarod”, he murmured to himself. He exited the room with a stupid grin on his face, looking for Debbie who would surely be enthusiastic for the good news.

---

Since the call with Sydney and Broots, Jarod’s mind had been set on one purpose: he wanted to find his mother. He’d lost two brothers during the search of his family, he wasn’t willing to lose anybody else, let alone Margaret.

“Why don’t you contact your father?” Parker asked him one afternoon.

They were driving North, willing to reach Maine to visit the only familiar place they both knew, Ben’s bed and breakfast in Lake Catherine. They wanted to see him and maybe hide for a while, and Parker wanted Jarod to rest and relax a couple of days while he decided what to do next.

The pretender sighed, “I can’t, not yet. It’s not safe, Parker. Lyle was enough mad to set dozens of sweepers on us, I want to hack into the Centre mainframe to find out what he is up to, but I can’t do it without more equipment. I must be sure that they won’t track us when I do it.”

“I know. But we need to find your mother and maybe Major Charles has more clues on her whereabouts.”

Jarod nodded, “You’re probably right, but I don’t want them to be in danger. They’re in a safe place, Emily was still recovering after the ‘accident’ with Lyle…”

Parker stared at him, waiting for another explosion, but it didn’t come.

“I can’t believe he almost killed my sister, too.” Jarod simply stated.

Parker shook her head. She’d never stood the idea that Lyle was her brother, before, and now even the mentioning of his name was like bringing bad luck on them.

“Jarod, we need to find out something about the Scrolls, too. We don’t know anything useful about the Triumvirate, our search for Ethan took our total self-denial for a month. We don’t even know if my father is really dead...”

Jarod looked at her for a second, trying not to taunt her, “Well, a few weeks ago you didn’t even know if he was your biological father.”

Parker didn’t reply, she knew that he was right, but Jarod’s words hurt nonetheless.

“I’m sorry, Parker. I didn’t mean it”, he excused himself.

“No, you did, Pez Head. But it’s true, there’s no need to deny it.”

“There’s no need to mention it, too.”

Parker smiled at him sadly, “I just want answers, Jarod. There are too many unfinished business in our lives. I need closure.”

“So do I.”

“I also want to find my little brother…Last thing Broots told me is that nodoby had seen him in months. And I’m afraid of what Raines would do to him now that my father’s not around anymore.”

“I thought you didn’t like the fact that Mr. Parker had a baby with…”

Parker stopped him before he could mention Brigitte, “I delivered him with my own hands, Jarod. I’ve loved him since I took him in my arms, he’s a lovely baby.”

She looked at Jarod, who was slowing down the car to have another stop. They’d been driving for hours, he really needed coffee before going on.

“What’s his name?” Jarod asked her, innocently.

Parker opened her eyes wide and started to laugh, “I don’t know!”

Jarod’s eyes roamed over her face and then he burst into laughter along with her. It felt so good, almost cathartic.

“What kind of a twisted sick family the Parkers are, Jarod. Not knowing each other’s first names…”

Jarod turned off the engine and took her hand in his, “Well, I know yours.”

Parker nodded solemnly, then she noticed he was brooding again. His eyes always roamed around when he thought hard about something.

“What?” she asked him.

“I don’t know.” He exhaled slowly and closed his eyes. “I mean, we are so far from the Centre, now. Every bond I had with that damned hell isn’t there anymore. Sydney is safe, and so are Broots and Angelo. And now you’re here with me, and…”

Parker simply smiled, encouraging him to go on.

“I’m not…interested anymore, Parker. I don’t want to hear about Scrolls, lies, secrets. All I ever wanted is almost accomplished.” He squeezed her hand again. “My mother is the only missing piece to complete my own puzzle.”

Jarod looked back at her and moved his hand to push the hair from her face, then he caressed her cheek. “I know that I should destroy the Centre once and for all. I should inform the authorities, try to shut it down forever. But I’m tired, Parker. I’m tired of running, I just don’t…” he sighed again. Parker leaned in to him and stroke his face, too.

“Does it sound selfish to you?”

“Jarod, if a word doesn’t suit you at all, that is selfish.”

“Since Ethan’s death I’ve been thinking a lot. About my life, about us. I thought about Tommy, your mother, Kyle…Life is so short, Parker. We already wasted forty years. I don’t want to spend the rest of my days running from the Centre. Not anymore.”

“I guess it wouldn’t be any fun now that I’m not the one who’s chasing, would it?”

Jarod laughed and kissed her to thank her. Then he leaned his forehead on hers.

“I couldn’t live without you. I still can’t believe you took that turning point, Parker, but now that you’re here, I want to make it count. Make you understand it’s gonna be worth it.”

“It’s already worth it, Jar. You deserve a life more than anyone else. You helped so many people, maybe it’s time that you help yourself.”

He nodded, close to the tears.

“I should cut out the dramatics and not confess you this, but…I am very proud of all the stunts you did out there, helping the little guy and defending the weak and the abused. You did a very good job all these years. You used your skills to help others, without asking anything in return.”

“I just want to know who I am. I just want to find my mother…” he sobbed between the tears. Parker took his face in her hands and stared at him.

“You know, a few weeks ago a very annoying lab rat told me that it was time to make myself the gift my father never gave me, the truth.”

“What a silly little lab rat”, he replied. They both chuckled and Parker kissed him with joy.

“Well, with you I already found the only truth that matters. We’ll find your mother, Jar, I promise. And we’ll save my little brother. After that, if you want to disappear, that’s what we’re just going to do. I’m pretty sure that the Centre won’t find us, if we don’t leave clues as you did with Sydney and me.”

Jarod grimaced, “I did it just because I wanted to see you. I couldn’t stand your absence in my life. The runaway-pretender leaving bread crumbs for his pursuers. Gee, what a twisted basket case I was?”

Parker burst out laughing, “Melodramatic fool, neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it.”

Jarod squeezed his eyes the way he did whenever someone made a reference to something he didn’t understand. Parker knew that when Green Day’s breakthrough album Dookie was realesed in 1994, the pretender hadn’t escaped yet. So she smiled in answer, “Never mind.”

TODAY

---

Jarod spent the rest of the morning doing what he’d always done best: having a close eye on Lyle’s activities. Parker didn’t know anything about it, but Jarod monitored his pretended brother in law every day. Lyle had made a promise ten years before, but Jarod didn’t trust him to keep it. He still saw Lyle as the killer of his brothers, nothing more, nothing less.

As soon as Parker had informed him that she was pregnant with their second child, Jarod had put hidden cameras in Lyle’s and Raines’ offices.     

Within the last ten years, he’d always kept an eye on them. That was the reason he had found out that Raines had died for a respiratory failure in 2011 or that Lyle was still holding up his end of the bargain. And that oddly nobody at the Centre seemed to be looking for Jarod and Parker.

Yes, the facility was still working. And yes, they still did tremendous things. But Jarod wasn’t interested anymore. He was content, as long as Lyle didn’t threaten the happiness they had eventually found. Lyle had practically become a puppet in the hands of the Triumvirate. He felt bored and useless, his life wasn’t as exciting as it used to be a few years before. He’d also suffered the blow after Raines’ death because now he was alone against the Africans.

How did the Centre manage to survive without his skills, Jarod didn’t know. And he didn’t care at all. He just wanted to be left alone with his family.

---

“What the hell – ”

Jarod turned around fast and closed the laptop screen, but it was too late: Parker had seen everything. She moved over him and pushed him aside.“Parker, wait…”She glared at him and Jarod sighed, then he let her open the screen. The videos of Lyle’s office cameras appeared under their nose again.

“When did you think you’d tell me about this!?” she yelled at him.

“You weren’t supposed to find out, Parker. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? For this? Or for not telling me?”

Jarod sighed again, “Parker, I didn’t want to upset you.”

Parker shook her head and started to pace around, “I really don’t get it, Jarod. Ten years ago you were the one who told me we had to let the Centre go, that we had everything we needed. That you didn’t want to hear or talk about the Centre anymore.”

“And I meant it, Parker!” he replied, standing up.

“But you put cameras all over the country to control Lyle?!”

Jarod smiled, she always exagerated things when she got angry at him, “Not – all over the country, just in his office. And his house. And…his car.”

Parker couldn’t believe her ears.

“I thought you’d never lie to me, lab rat.”

Jarod shook his head and took her arms in his hands. “I’ve never lied to you, Parker. I didn’t want you to worry, this was just a reasonable precaution.”

“Reasonable? Do you even know what that word means?” 

Jarod grinned, “I’m sorry, Parker. I wanted us to live our lives without thinking about the past. Everything was fine, we were happy and safe. Nothing mattered more, to me.”

Parker stared at him, she still felt betrayed, “You should have told me. See? The past always comes back to haunt us…”

“No, it doesn’t.” Jarod replied sharply. “I assure you that Lyle is not up to something. That’s how I knew that man you saw at school was not following Lyle’s orders. Your sick brother is still having the time of his life, he’s just more annoyed and bored. He also put on a few pounds.” Jarod told her, his hand pointing at his computer. Parker smiled and chuckled, the sign Jarod was waiting for to kiss her. 

“Sometimes I do hate you, Boy Genius.”

“No, you don’t.” He purred back.

Parker’s smile disappeared again and Jarod sensed her mood changing. “What?”

“I don’t know, Jar. Maybe he doesn’t have anything to do with Lyle, but I still have that feeling…I think it’s my…”

“Inner sense?” 

Parker nodded and lowered her head again. She hadn’t been warned by her inner sense in years. Whenever it started to send her signals, it was never good news.

“I need to talk to him.”

Jarod opened his eyes widely and snapped at her, “What?!”

“I need to know that he really doesn’t have anything to do with this!” she answered.

“So what, you’re going to the Centre, walking inside your old office as if you'd never run away?” he urged her.

“I’ll do whatever it takes! I won’t let that bastard ruin our lives again! If he’s behind that man, I’m going to find out!”

Jarod sighed and passed his hands through his hair. Parker stared at him, he was rubbing his face. He looked worried.

“Remember the last time we saw him?”

“How could I forget?” she huffed back.

“So you remember our deal.”

“I don’t need you to remind me, Jarod!” she shouted.

“Well, I think you do! Because your brother is still the chairman of the Centre and even if now he’s nothing more than a puppet under the control of the Triumvirate…I still don’t trust him.”

“It’s been ten years. Jarod. He never betrayed his word.”

“So, now you’re defending him?!” Jarod questioned her, shocked.

Parker sighed in exasperation, “I’m not! But I must do this, Jarod!”

“Why?” he urged her again.

“Because we’re too old to run, Jarod.”

The pretender didn’t answer. He just stood there, staring at the love of his life, knowing that there was nothing he could do to make Parker change her mind.

TODAY

Lyle entered his office whistling and sitting immediately on his chair. He glanced at the calendar on his desk and eventually realized that ten years had passed since his life had changed.   

He had to admit that his sister’s disappearance had only improved his personal and working environment. The Triumvirate was unaware of his participation to the escape of Miss Parker and her son, let alone of his effort to sidetrack any attempt to find a clue that could lead to her, or Jarod.

Even if Lyle had always known that his life was almot perfect, a couple of years before he’d eventually started to notice that he was completely – and inexorably – alone. Of course, he enjoyed the company of many women. He didn’t need to pay for sleeping with them. They were always fascinated by his charm and his position – and his bank account. Most of them were ready to go out with him just to try and have their chance with the most wanted bachelor of Blue Cove. None of them lasted more than one night. Lyle didn’t want a stable relationship, he couldn’t afford the idea of a woman coming into his life. Rationally, he knew that this was probably due to the fact that he’d never known his real mother.

When thoughts like these came to his mind, he always found himself trying to remember something – anything, about Catherine.

At times like these, he missed Miss Parker. She’d always been a thorn in his side, but she was the only one worth quarreling with. Sometimes he even missed Sydney’s psychological judgments and Broots’ stupid statements.

Whenever he felt this kind of crap arriving to haunt him, he usually drove to town, entered some filthy bar and picked up the first unfortunate girl willing to go out with him. He usually took the unlucky woman to his apartment, then he tightened her to the bed and did whatever he wanted to satisfy his needs. Women never complained, because Lyle could be a very passionate lover, someone who could go on all night long.

But he’d lost the bad habit of torturing them. He wanted to believe it was not to make the police suspicious, but the truth was he had lost his former passion for sadism. After that night in the warehouse with Parker and Jarod, he hadn’t hit or killed another human being, ever. He’d also been to church, once.

And after Raines’ death, he’d found out he was the last survivor. No more Brigitte or Mr. Parker to support, no more Raines to comply to. And no more Miss Parker or Jarod to look for.

His life had gotten meaningless.  

Until he had met Chuntao.

He was attending the annual celebration of Mr. Parker’s disappearance. It had been Raines’ idea to create an event to commemorate his brother’s premature death.

Lyle didn’t know if Raines was trying to make up for his past by remembering Mr. Parker, but he had to admit that this event usually turned into a very nice evening that he could spend with the richest and most powerful benefactors of the Centre and their beautiful wives. Lyle never failed to steal one of them and bring her to his house, after the party.

But the year before, his attention had been caught by a wonderful Chinese woman who apparently was at the party on her own. When Lyle noticed that there was no husband at her side neither a wedding ring at her finger, he approached her to introduce himself.

“I don’t think we’ve met, Miss, I’m…”

“I know exactly who you are, Mr. Lyle.”

Lyle laughed, “I see my reputation precedes me. May I know who am I talking to?”

“My name is Chuntao. I work for the Chinese branch of the Centre, but I’d love to ask for a permanent transfer to United States.”

“Well, I think you’ve found the right man to talk to, Chuntao.”

The woman giggled and Lyle realized at once that was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

That evening they spoke for hours. Chuntao told him about the origin of her name, that meant ‘spring peach’. Lyle purred at her that he hoped he would have the chance to taste such a juicy fruit one day, and Chuntao started to laugh, not so sure that Lyle was actually joking. Chuntao told him about her family, she’d lost a sister when she was very young and her parents were both dead. She was born the same year of Lyle, who couldn’t believe that she was still so charming.

The woman kind of reminded him of his sister. She was strong and funny at the same time and she did love to make sarcastic jokes. She was the first person who told Lyle that he’d put on a few pounds and who lived enough to laugh about it.

The first night they spent together was the first time that Lyle felt satisfied and…happy.

He’d never felt like that before. He started to wonder if that was what love was about. And the day after, when Chuntao greeted him with a smile and a caress on his face, he realized that she had to be at his side forever. She had bewitched him like anyone else before.

Chuntao wasn’t a bit surprised when Lyle asked her to move in with him two months later, neither she was when he asked her to get married at the beginning of 2012. Their wedding was due to the 13th of April. Lyle chose that day because he wanted to remember it not only as the day of Catherine’s death (at least the presumed date of death), but also as the best day of his life. Chuntao was his soul mate, he was sure of that. The only thing he was sad about was the fact he didn’t know who would be his best man or who he would invite to the ceremony.

 

Lyle was thinking about this very problem when he suddenly realized he wasn’t alone in his office. He felt a presence behind him, but he was so sure that it was Chuntao that he turned his chair in a slow  motion, smiling at the foreign presence, “You know, I really have some work to do, Peachy.”

Lyle’s expression when his eyes met his sister’s was unfathomable.

“Well, I’m glad you eventually learned some good manners, Lyle.”

“Miss Parker? What the hell are you doing here?” he jumped from his chair and, unexpectedly, started to smile. Parker was caught by surprise when she noticed that Lyle’s joy seemed to be real.

“Well, I thought that after ten years you would be glad to see your dear old sister.”

“You may not believe it, but I really am, Parker. I’m just concerned about you, I can’t guarantee for your safety while you’re here. How did you get in, by the way?”

“Cut the family-reunion act, Lyle, I don’t give a damn! I’m not here to remember good old times.”

“Then why come? Did you find out about the wedding? I’m sorry I didn’t invite you, but I’ve never actually known how to reach you.”

Parker stared at her brother in disbelief. Her eyes fell on the framed picture on his desk. It was a photo portraying a Chinese woman. Miss Parker’s face assumed a very incredulous and sincerely surprised expression, “You are going to get married?” she asked him.

Lyle nodded in answer, “Her name’s Chuntao. We met a few months ago.”

“Let me guess, she’s going to be both the bride and the main course during the wedding feast?” she quipped.

Lyle smiled. His sister hadn’t changed a bit. She was still the same bitch she used to be ten years before. She had more wrinkles around her eyes and her hair was of a lighter color than he remembered, but Miss Parker was still there.

“So she is the one you were calling Peachy? That’s sweet. Does she still wear a retainer?”

“What was it that you wanted, Parker? Or should I call the sweepers?” Lyle answered, annoyed by his sister’s stupid jokes about his wife-to-be.

“A man has been following me for a while. I want to know who he is and why you sent him.”

“I’m sorry, Sis, but if he was my man, your lovely husband would already be back at the Centre, by now. Speaking of which, how’s good-old-buddy Jarod? Still helping the little guy?”

“He’s – not – my husband! And this is none of your damn business! If I came here is just to find out who’s tailing us. This man knows where I live, he knows my movements, he even knows where my kids go to school.”

“Kids?” Lyle questioned her. Parker shut up at once, realizing immediately that she’d made a huge mistake.

“So, you and Jarod had another child? A son made in the old fashioned way?”

“Actually it’s a daughter”, Parker didn’t even know why she was telling him, “and I want to know everything about that man, Lyle. You owe us.”

“I don’t owe you anything, Parker. You had you freedom all these years, didn’t you?”

Parker approached him threateningly, “I won’t jeopardize my children’s safety for yours, Lyle.”

Lyle sighed, “Ok, I’ll need some pictures of this man.”

Miss Parker took some photos from the pocket of her jacket, as if she’d read Lyle’s mind. Her brother snorted. “And I’ll need some time.”

“I can accept that.”

Parker knew it was almost time to leave.

“By the way, I know everything about Jarod’s surveillance tapes.”

“Meaning?”

“I know that he’s controlling me. And I assume he never told you about it, or you would have come here sooner.”

Parker lowered her eyes. She was still angry with Jarod for keeping this little detail from her. It still felt like a betrayal. Like a lie.

“Oh, is that resentment that I see on your face, Miss Parker?”

“Stop calling me that! I’m Mrs Miller, for you. I’ve forgotten that name a long time ago.”

“As you wish, Sis. Anyway, why do you think Jarod didn’t tell you about my wedding?”

Parker had no answer to that question.

“Maybe he thought you would like to come?”

Lyle’s grin made Parker want to vomit. She took the gun from the holster hidden behind her back, then she asked her brother to sit so that she could go away.

“Parker…” He called her before she exited the room.

“What?” she replied pointedly.

“You’re all the family I’ve left. For what it’s worth, I’m going to find out if that man is a threaten to you or your children.”

Parker stared at him in silence for a few seconds. Then she exited, answering, “I’ll be in touch.”

Lyle smiled as his sister disappeared again from his view.

TEN YEARS AGO

---

The day the two fugitives arrived at Ben Miller’s bed and breakfast was a memorable one. Miss Parker parked the car in front of the cottage. It was almost 3 a.m. and Jarod was sleeping by her side, comfortably sitting in the passenger seat.

She casted a tender smile at his sound-alsleep-form, then – not so lovingly – she woke him up, “Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”

Jarod suddenly opened his eyes, twitching and rising his fists in a defensive posture. Parker stretched her arms and leaned onto him to calm him down.

“Jarod, it’s okay…” she tried to soothe him, “Whatever it was, it’s over now.”

Jarod sighed and put a hand still clentched into a fist on his forehead. Parker noticed that he was also sweaty.

“No, Miss Parker. It’ll never be over.”

The former huntress looked at the pretender with sadness and resignation. Jarod glanced up at her and took her hand in his, kissing the soft skin of her palm.

“Not until we get our son back”, he continued.

“You were dreaming of him, weren’t you?”   

Jarod smiled bitterly, “How come you know me so well?”

Miss Parker grinned, “Know you so well has been my lifetime job, Jarod. What were you dreaming of?”

Jarod closed his eyes, still worried by his own demons but without letting go of her hand, “He’s alone, Parker. He’s desperate, I feel his fear. We have to take him out of there.”

Parker tried to smile at Jarod, “He’s still so young, Jarod. He probably doesn’t even realize what’s going on.”

“And what if he does? What if Lyle doesn’t keep his word? What if – ”

“Stop it, Jarod!” Parker cut him off, her resolution evident in her tone. “We don’t have time for ifs or buts. We have an agreement, Lyle will keep his promise.”

“How can you trust him? After all he did to you, to me, to our brothers…”

Miss Parker sighed and jumped off the car, she was tired of having this kind of arguments with Jarod. She slammed the car door, the pretender tailing her. Miss Parker wanted to reach the front door, totally forgetting that they had their baggage in the trunk.

“Parker, don’t!”

“Don’t what, Jarod?” she stopped in her tracks and glared at him, frustrated and annoyed by his naïve view of life. Only black or white, to him, never shades of grey.

“I don’t want to fight with you about this again, but I can’t help it, I hate Lyle. I know he’s your brother, but –”

“Why is it that whenever we talk about him you come out with the twins story?! Jarod, I don’t give a  damn if he’s my brother, don’t you see? He’s a psychopath, I loathe him!”

“Then why trust him?” Jarod was almost screaming and his hands rested on Parker’s shoulders as he shook her a bit too resolutely. The look she gave him was one she could have casted at him in the old days, when they were still huntress and prey.

Jarod suddenly took his hands off her shoulders and sighed, his voice a murmur of desolation, “I – I’m sorry.”

Parker chuckled sarcastically, “Oh yeah, I bet you are.”

She moved past Jarod, trying to reach Ben’s front door again.

“What is that supposed to mean?!” Jarod shouted at Parker, this time without following her.

He didn’t need to, as she came back immediately, facing him.

“It means that you’re an annoying-pesky-lab rat!”

“And I thought we were among grown-ups, here!” he replied, sternly.

“I wish it was easier talking to you, but I swear you remind me of a mule at times!”

Jarod wanted to reply, but she lifted her right hand and hushed him. Then she leaned into him and lowered her voice, “When the hell are you going to drum into your head that the only person I trust is you, Boy Genius?!”

Jarod opened his mouth to talk, but she interrupted him, “Shut up for once, will you?”

The pretender closed his mouth and sighed, his eyes betraying his damaged self-esteem.

‘Only *she* can do this to me’, he thought.

“Want to talk about trust? Then tell me why after all we’ve been through you still don’t have faith in me”, she asked him, sounding very disappointed.

Jarod was upset, he would have never imagined that Parker knew about his worst demons, the ones he still had to fight himself, and yet she did. He always underestimated her. 

How would the pretender ever admit that he was scared of totally trusting her because he feared it would lead him to disaster?

He’d been so used to their little games of cat and mouse that now he was afraid they wouldn’t be able to deal with the everyday life, that their new relationship would separate and eventually hurt them to the point they wouldn’t trust each other anymore. And this frightened him to death, because Miss Parker had been the only constant in his life, for better of for worse. He couldn’t afford to lose her.

As if she could read his mind, she rolled her eyes, “You think that without the status quo we won’t be able to get along, don’t you? You think we’re not ready for having a son and becoming a family.”

“I think it’s complicated. It’s always been.” He answered sincerely.

Parker chuckled nervously, “No, it’s not! But I’m going to adopt your view of things, so black or white it is. You have to choose between two alternatives: Trust me, or not. It’s very simple, actually.”

“You know I love you.” He replied. He didn’t want to have this conversation with her now, he wasn’t ready. For the first time in his life he had no words to tell *her*.

Parker shook her head, “Love is not an issue, here. We are talking about trust. And to think I was sure we were over that, now I figure I was totally wrong.” She sighed, “I should have spoken before.”

“About what?” Jarod stared at her in disbelief. Was she trying to break up with him?

Parker put her hands on his face, so that Jarod could relax in her touch. He was already feeling better.

“Ok, let’s get straight to the point. I’m pregnant, Jarod.”

The pretender’s eyes roamed over her face as he assumed an astonished expression. Parker tried to decipher it, but finally give in.

“And before you ask, yes I’m sure. Didn’t you notice that my bladder drove me into an unberable incontinence these last days? And you’re supposed to be the genius!”

Jarod felt he didn’t have any voice left. He tried to say something, but he just couldn’t.

“I don’t know what it is that makes you feel so bad. Maybe you’re afraid I’m just taking the piss out of you, that I will bring you back to the Centre and that this is just a very meticulous plan I made up with Lyle. Or maybe you are just afraid of us because you don’t know how to be around me anymore. Am I so difficult to deal with, Petruchio?” she asked him, jokingly.

Jarod lifted his arms and let his hands rest on her hips. Soon a new picture of Parker crossed his mind. An image of those lovely hips (that he already woshipped) getting larger to leave space to a growing belly. And this brought a huge smile on his face. He raised his head and looked into her eyes, feeling overwhelmed and speechless at the same time.

Parker’s voice became almost a soft moan, “Please, trust me, Jarod. Trust us.”

He nodded slowly, a tear forming to the corner of his eyes.

“We’re gonna make it through this. I’m not gonna leave you, let alone betray you. Lyle is only a means to a purpose. He’s going to give us our boy because he knows you would kill him, if he didn’t. You were the one who taught me that he would do anything to survive, remember?”

The pretender nodded again, feeling stupid and sorry. He wanted to disappear, such he felt a nullity only standing there, facing that amazing woman.

“And if he tries anything” Parker took her gun from her holster, “I’m going to put a bullet into his brain. Just to remind him how much his sister loves him.”

Jarod grinned, but still didn’t talk.

“Gee, say something, Jarod!” she grumped.

He limited himself to put his right hand on her belly, caressing it tenderly.

“You’re pregnant.” He murmured, his eyes blinking.

Miss Parker grinned back at him and Jarod thought she’d never looked more beautiful. She even blushed a bit and looked away, embarassed.

“Knocked up by the horny pretender. Daddy would be so proud of me.” She joked.

“Which one?”

Parker looked back at him, astonished. Then they both burst into laughter, revealing into that sound echoing all around them. Jarod chose that moment to kiss her, still unable to move his hands from her hips. Then he bended to the ground leaning on his knees and kissed her belly, too. Parker would never forget how much delighted she felt at that moment.

Jarod rested his face on her belly, then he sighed. He thought about the life growing inside Parker’s womb, he thought about the son they were still waiting for. He suddenly realized he’d never felt happier before. All his fears disappeared at once, leaving place only for happy thoughts.

“Forgive me, will you?” he almost begged her.

Parker took his hands in hers and helped him standing up, so that he could see her answering.

“No more stupid worries, genius.”

“I swear.”

“I mean it, Jarod. I need to know that you will take care of me and the children, I can’t be afraid of you running away from your duties.”

Jarod smiled, “Now, you really sound like a mother-to-be. Can’t wait ‘till you start show.”

Parker laughed, “Yeah, if you say so. Now let’s get this obese-to-be inside, ‘cause I’m tired and I would really need some rest.”

Still smiling, Jarod took her hand and stopped her before she could step away from him.

“Parker…”

“What?”

He squeezed her hand, “Catherine would be proud of you.”

As usual, all her strenght faded at Jarod’s attempt to mention her mother. She let a few tears of joy she’d been holding stream down her face.

“I think she would be proud of both of you, actually.”

Startled by the intrusive voice, Parker and Jarod turned around only to see Ben Miller on his porch, smiling at them in astonishment.

“Well, Miss Parker, Jarod” he made a few steps towards them, “I didn’t think I would have seen either of you again. And especially not together.”

Jarod grimaced in embarassement, “How much did you hear?”

“Enough to know that in nine months you’re going to need diapers.”

Miss Parker chuckled and held him, making Jarod realize how much she cared for this man.

Then Ben stared at Jarod, “But not enough to know what has changed since the last time…When you came here on your own, separately, you were willing to talk behind each other’s back…and now here you are, as a couple…and as parents-to-be.”    

“Can this wait until tomorrow?” Jarod asked him, “She’s going to kill both of us if she doesn’t touch a bed soon.”

“And I think she’s going to be even more dangerous, now that her hormones will affect her mood, won’t she?” Ben said, jokingly.

Parker glared at the two of them, “Watch it, boys. My gun safety is still unlocked.”

When she woke up the next day, Miss Parker found empty the other half of the bed but voices and laughter were echoing from downstairs, she guessed Jarod was likely to be entertaining Ben with stories of the youth. Honestly, Parker was glad she didn’t have to face Ben’s comments. She loved that man, he was very dear to her, but she still felt a bit umcorfotable around him. He’d had a relationship with her mother, after all. He could have been her father, if things had turned out different. There were times that she tried to imagine how her life would have changed, if Ben actually had been her father.

Dismissing those thoughts from her mind with a shrug, she stood up. Jarod’s DSA viewer drew her attention from the desk, it was still open. Knowing the pretender as she did, Miss Parker figured that Jarod might have been watching his past sims to find advise on his actual condition of father-to-be. But she doubted that the Centre ever made him pretend to be a father. Too much emotion, too many risks.

Intrigued by the black screen, Parker approached the desk and played the last DSA that Jarod had been watching. A huge grin appeared on her face when she realized that the not-supposed-to-get-emotional-pretender had been watching a memento from their past. The day they had the first kiss.

‘Sentimental bastard’, she thought, smiling.

And yet she found herself involved as much as Jarod. After all, she’d never *seen* it, she had only memories of it. And Miss Parker was pleased to notice how good her real memories were. The only difference was that her memories were in color, not black-and-white. That thought made her realize how many years had actually passed.“Feeling melancholic, aren’t we?” 

 The pretender’s voice startled her. She couldn’t stand the fact that after all this time she wasn’t able to hear him approaching behind her, yet.

“He was definitely cute.” She told him, as young Jarod nervously tried to wedge the body doll anatomic elements in.

“So was she.” Jarod nodded towards the screen, grinning as young Miss Parker reminded his younger self that ‘girls mature faster than boys’.

“Gee, such impudence!” she laughed.

“Yeah, reminds me so much of her older version.” He confessed, holding her while their younger selves kissed.

“You wish I was like her, don’t you?” Parker turned around, smirking.

Jarod rolled his eyes jokingly, “At times.” Parker prodded him “But *you* are far more interesting to deal with. Not to mention…arousing.”

When Parker felt the bulge in his pants, she grinned mischeviously, “Oh boy, you have no idea…”

---

Two mugs with coffe were on the kitchen table, next to Jarod’s laptop. Ben smiled as Parker took one cup in her hands.

“You shouldn’t drink coffee, you know?” Jarod teased her.“Yeah, try to deal with the didn’t-get-her-morning-coffee-cup-Miss Parker, then you tell me.”

Ben laughed at Jarod’s amusement expression.

Then they were interrupted by a sound coming from the laptop; The computer voice advised Jarod that he had just received an e-mail.

He turned around, surprised, “It can’t be Lyle, it’s not time yet.”

“Then who?” Miss Parker asked him.

When Jarod opened the message, Ethan’s face appeared on the screen and both he and Parker gasped. She put a hand on her mouth while Jarod frantically controlled the mail details. With his next sentence, he destroyed at once Parker’s hope to discover that their half brother may still be alive.

“It’s a postdated message. It’s a video, it was recorded…the night he was killed.”

“My God.”

Ben could only assume that the boy in the video was Ethan, the brother Miss Parker and the pretender had in common and of whom he’d been told about by Jarod that very morning.

“Uhm…I’ll give you some privacy.” Ben announced.

Parker watched him exiting the kitchen and Jarod managed to murmur an almost voiceless “Thanks.”

Miss Parker gazed at Jarod and shook her head, “This can’t be real.”

“But it is. Do you want me to watch it alone?”

“No, no.” she sighed deeply. “Just…let’s play it, ok?”

Jarod nodded and did as she asked. The video began and they fell silent.

 

*Jarod, Miss Parker. I know this is going to be difficult for you, but if you’re watching this video…it probably means that I’m already dead.*

Parker gasped again and squeezed Jarod shoulder. The pretender’s hand moved automatically over hers.

*I don’t think we’ll ever meet again, and I’m sorry I have to send you this message, I really wanted to deliver this information in person, but the voices are telling me that…I won’t leave this place…*

As their brother sighed, a terful Miss Parker noticed that the building around Ethan was the same they had found his corpse in.

*The voices are also telling me that you have received this message together and that you are encouraging each other to overcome my death.* Ethan paused for a few seconds and smiled to himself. *Thanks, Mom* he said to an invisible voice, only audible in his head; Parker and Jarod shared a worried glance.

*Our mother is telling me that you’ve finally found the strenght to follow the path that you’ve denied yourself for so long, Sis. That you and Jarod found each other again. I’m happy for you both, really. I’m just sorry that to reach this achievement you’ve had to lose me. But it was a necessary sacrifice.*

Jarod realized that Ethan was talking to the past, like he already knew what they woul think and feel even if nothing had happened yet.

*I’m not afraid to die, the voices are with me, always. Specially Mama’s, Miss Parker. She’s already waiting for me.*

Miss Parker’s tears streamed shamelessly down her face and Jarod couldn’t help but follow her example and starting to cry.

*Jarod, I have to tell you. I found your mother. I know where she is.*

Jarod stared at Parker in disbelief and hope.

*That’s why I’ve disappeared all of a sudden, and I’m sorry for worrying you like that. But Mama really wanted me to find Margaret, she guided me until I met her, a couple of days ago.*

“I can’t believe this!” Jarod exclaimed.

*I took her to a safe place and I asked her to wait for you, I made her promise that she won’t leave until you and Miss Parker show up.*

“But where, Ethan?” Miss Parker silently asked her dead brother.

*I can’t tell you where she is because I’m afraid of this message ending up in the wrong hands. You’ll find her in the place we first met, big brother.*

Jarod smiled to himself. He knew where Margaret was. Parker noticed the smirk of satisfaction on his face, too.

*I’ve gotta go now, I think they’re coming. Sis…I’m glad that you’ve finally found what you were looking for. Take care of Jarod, you know that he shows the tendency to think about other people more than himself. He’s stubborn, but he needs you in his life more than anyone else in the world, even if he would never admit it. But one of the first things he confessed me when we escaped was that to him you were a piece of work.*

Parker chuckled lovingly, cheered up by Ethan’s words, and so did Jarod. He rememebered that conversation very well.

*Well, he tried to talk with undisguised irony, but I saw a light in his eyes. And I saw it sparkle only when he spoke about you, Miss Parker.*

If Jarod had tried not to blush until then, after those words he totally failed.

*That was what pushed me to come and save you from that explosion. I wanted to meet you so badly, I wanted to know better that piece of work. And you really were.*

Miss Parker was still crying, she simply couldn’t stop.

*Jarod. I know you will suffer for my loss, even more than my sister. She’s stronger than you, and she’ll help you through it.* The two of them glanced at each other in agreeement. *But you don’t have to be sorry. I know you feel guilty because I’m dead, but you must know that you saved me, Jarod. You set me free from a life I would have spent at Raines’ service. He wanted me to be an assassin and I was following his rules, until I met you. You helped me and you changed me. I know this may sound ridiculous, but I feel like I already accomplished my fate, even if you don’t understand this. Don’t blame yourselves for what’s happened to me, it was just meant to be. Your journey will be still difficult and dangerous, but if you face it together, then nothing will ever harm you. And I’ll always be with you, I promise. I love you both. Goodbye.*

 

As the video faded into black, Miss Parker continued her crying of relief. Jarod closed the laptop screen and caressed her back, trying to calm her by saying soothing nonsense words.

“He was right about everything, Parker. He was so wise. I’m so proud of him.”

“So am I.” She managed to say between the sobs. “And I’m happy for you, too. He took that weight off your shoulders. You won’t have to feel that guilty anymore.”

“Neither will you.”

Ben appeared from the other room and noticed that Miss Parker’s face was a mess.

“Are you ok?”

“Got a bonus question?” Jarod demanded him.

As Ben smiled bitterly, Jarod’s mobile rang. The pretender stood up to collect it.

“What?” he blurted out.

“It’s me.” Jarod recognized Lyle’s voice. “I know where the boy is.”

Jarod’s eyes roamed over the room, falling on Miss Parker, “You have him already?”

“Not yet. But it won’t be difficult to take him. Raines is still trying to find the two of you, he won’t suspect the abrupt disappearance of the last pretender he still holds captive.”

Jarod grimaced, “If you keep your word, you run out of pretenders. Why would you mind?”

“I don’t expect you to understand my motives. I just expect you to tell me where and when.”

Jarod sighed and Miss Parker casted him an encouragement look.

“2429 Sylvan Lane, Philadelphia. 9.00 p.m., tomorrow.”

If Lyle was wondering why in hell Jarod would want to meet in Philadelphia, he didn’t show.

“Lyle.”

Jarod got only silence as answer.

“If you try anything, this time I kill you. You have my word.”

Jarod ended the call and prepared himself to explain eveything to Miss Parker.

“Ethan took my mother to his foster parents’ house. That’s where we met for the first time, a few hours after Raines ordered to get rid of them.”

“Why setting up the meeting with Lyle there? It’s going to be dangerous. It’s only the two of us, Jarod, what if the Centre finds out the truth? What if Lyle is planning to betray us?”

“Who told you it’s going to be just the two of us?”

Parker casted him a questioning look, then she watched as he made another phone call.

“Hi dad, it’s me. I know, I know! Just listen to me, we don’t have time for that now!”

Miss Parker stared carefully at the pretender, who was sighing in exasperation.

“I know where Mum is. No, listen to me!”

Ben watched the scene in astonishment. He hadn’t known Jarod for so long, but he was sure of one thing: He always knew what he did. So he couldn’t understand why his father was giving him such a hard time just in listening to his explanation.  

“Daddy, I swear, I’m going to tell you everything. But now I need you to move from wherever you are and come straight to Philadelphia. Leave Emily and Jeremy behind, I don’t want them to be in danger. Can you do this for me?”

Parker could hardly imagine the Major’s reaction to his son’s phone call. He hadn’t heard from him in almost a year, and now, all of a sudden, Jarod was calling to say that he’d found Margaret and needed his help. She probably would have yelled at him too. God, a few months before she *would* actually have.

“Yes.” Jarod closed his eyes. “Yes. I hope so, too.”

The pretender closed his mobile and ended the convesation, looking back at Parker, “We’ve got to go.”

“What did he say, Jarod?”

“He’s on his way. God, I thought he was smarter than this…every second we spend at the phone could be our last, he should know by now. The Centre is always listening.”

Parker smiled bitterly, “He’s just a very worried father, Jarod. How long was it since you last talked to each other?”

Jarod gazed at her and realized what Parker was trying to tell him. His father had just been missing him. Trying to reassure him, Parker caressed his arm, “You’ll have all the time in the world to make up for all the years you spent in solitude.” Jarod nodded, and Parker looked straight into his eyes, “All of you.” She remarked.

Jarod kissed her forehead and let his own rest on hers for a few seconds while Parker kept stroking his arms tenderly.

“So, it seems that you’re running again.” Ben interrupted them.

“I’m so sorry, Ben.” Parker whispered to him.

“Don’t be. Last time you came,  you were chasing each other. Now you’re leaving together, running in the same direction. That’s all that matters to me.”

Parker moved past Jarod and hugged Ben. She did love that man, and she wanted to spend more time with him. But now they weren’t allowed to. Jarod was right, the Centre could find them at any time.

TEN YEARS AGO

---

Jarod and Miss Parker arrived in Philadelphia the same evening, 24 hours before the appointment with Lyle. Jarod parked the car in front of the house, turning off the engine.

Miss Parker looked at the building and shrugged.

“2429 Sylvan Lane. Are you sure this is the place?”

The house was silent and looked abandoned. No lights, no sounds. The atmosphere was almost creepy and Parker felt her inner sense starting to sting immediately.

“The estate agents weren’t able to find new tenants after the death of Ethan’s foster parents, I checked on their web site.”

“Not many people would live in a house where a murder took place.”

Jarod noticed that she wasn’t looking at him, and he knew why. Miss Parker had lived for years in the same house where she’d found Tommy’s dead body.

“You think she’s really here?” she asked him to end that embarassed silence.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Jarod got out from the car and closed the cardoor behind him. Parker followed him after grabbing the weapon from her holster and checking that it was loaded.

Jarod waited for her to join his side, then the couple walked towards the house. Jarod stopped in front of the door and knocked; his anxious slight touch was enough to open it.

“It’s unlocked.” He commented, glancing at Parker. She nodded in return and moved past him, aiming her gun in front of her.

As Jarod remembered, the stairs leading to the upper floor were right in front of the entry and he suddenly had a flashback of Ethan and himself rolling over the ladders and tumbling to the entrance floor.

Jarod inspired slowly and gathered all his strenght, looking for Margaret in hopes of finding her in the house.

“Mom?” he called out.

Parker visited the living room only to find it empty, and so was the kitchen. When she heard her inner voices getting louder, she decided to follow their indication to move upstairs. Jarod followed her blindly.

When they reached the upper floor, they were startled by a noise coming from their right. Parker turned around so fast that she almost lost the grip on her gun. She stood in front of Jarod, protecting his form with her weapon as they moved towards the bedroom.

Parker stopped in front of the door and stared at Jarod, then she mouthed, “1...2...3.”

 

Jarod slammed the door and Parker aimed her Smith & Wesson against the guest. The pretender and his former huntress found themselves facing a very scared Margaret who was doing the same with a Beretta. Her arm wasn’t as steady as Miss Parker’s, in fact she was trembling from head to toe. She opened her eyes wide as soon as she recognized her son, then she lowered automatically her weapon. The gun fell to the floor and she gasped.

“Jarod…”

“Mom!”

Jarod moved automatically and did what he’d wished the most for his entire life: Holding his mother.

Margaret was still too stunned to realize that the son she’d been looking for all those years was finally back where he belonged, her arms. She cried in agony as she felt her weak knees surrender to her son’s weight. They both fell to the floor, holding each other for dear life and crying. Miss Parker, on her hand, couldn’t help but doing the same. Even if she would never hold her mother again, Jarod had finally found his. And that scene was enough to affect even a woman like her. Jarod had been given a second chance by Ethan. This reunion had been the last gift from his brother.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life...” Jarod managed to whisper to his mother.

“I know, son.” she replied, trying to smile at him. “It’s a miracle.”

“Daddy is coming too, Mom...We’re going to be all together, soon.”

“Emily, is she fine?”

“Yes, she is.” He reassured her. “You know about Kyle, don’t you?”

Margaret nodded ruefully, “Where’s your other brother?”

“Jeremy is at home with Em – ”

“I was talking about Ethan. Your brother.” She was talking to Jarod, but after a couple of seconds she looked at Miss Parker, who was still standing on the doorway.

“Ethan is dead.” She abruptly confessed to Margaret, who squeezed her eyes as tears streamed down her face again.

“Mom, I’ve got at least a thousand questions I need to ask you...”

“I will answer. To both of you.” She addressed Miss Parker.

Jarod suddenly realized that he’d behaved like a caveman in the last few minutes, so he stood up and took his mother hand, approaching Miss Parker who was finally entering the bedroom.

“Mom...” he looked intently in his lover’s eyes while saying, “This is Miss Parker, Catherine’s daughter.”

He’d always hoped to be able to introduce Parker to his mother, one day. And now that the day had eventually come, he felt the luckiest man on Earth.

“I’m so honoured to finally meet you. And without a gun between the two of us.”

Miss Parker laughed along with mother and son, all the three people in the room felt the tension diminish right away.

“Now I see where Jarod took that piercing sarcasm of his from.”

“I would not underestimate his father, though.”

Even if she hadn’t been listening to her husband’s voice for years, Margaret recognized it at once when she heard it coming from the corridor.

“Dad!” Jarod grinned when he saw his father’s figure approaching them.

“Dave!”

“Maggie...”

The pretender watched in amazement as his parents got reunited and held each other. He’d never thought he would actually live enough to see his childhood dream come true. Parker was at least as much astonished as Jarod. They shared a look that was more eloquent than a thousand words, then they moved closer to the married couple, hand in hand.

The Major kept holding Margaret at his chest, glaring at the younger woman. “Miss Parker. The last time we were in the same place you almost died in a desperate attempt to save your father’s life. I almost lost my son that day because of his silly intent to try and save you!”

Miss Parker held the Major’s gaze without a flinch. Jarod glanced at her, scared that his father would say something to irritate Parker’s previous self. But the woman seemed calm, almost delighted.

“Are you here to threaten my family...or have you eventually realized what kind of people are worth of your trust?”

“Dad, I need to tell you –”

“I think Miss Parker can speak for herself, son.” The Major cut him off. He didn’t know why Jarod was in that room with his former huntress, even if he could imagine the reason. The last time he’d spoken to his son, he’d been blathering something about splitting up with Zoe because he still had unfinished business in Blue Cove. The Major knew that his son and Miss Parker had always maintained a very complex relationship, only a blind man or a hopeless denier wouldn’t recognize the tension between the couple while staying at their presence.

If things between Jarod and Miss Parker had really changed, he wanted to hear it from her voice.

“You know, Major” Parker stated, stepping forward, “Things won’t get easier from now on, so let me put something straight. Your family is finally back together because my brother Ethan gave his life to grant Jarod’s wish of ever meeting his mother.”

The Major’s eyes moved from the woman to his son, seeking for the truth on his face. When he noticed Jarod’s expression, he knew there was no doubt, Ethan was really dead. Another son he’d lost before having the chance of actually know him.

“I’m not going to annoy you with tales from the past, we all know what my duty was when I worked for the Centre. I hunted your son high and low, I shot him, I tried to capture him, I almost got us killed more than once.”

Jarod smiled to himself, his thoughts running immediately to the Keys.

“I know that Jarod is your son and you want to make up for all the time you’ve lost. I’m pretty sure you probably think that I’m stealing him from your attention.”

The Major didn’t answer, but that was exactly what he was thinking. If Miss Parker was in love with Jarod – and the Major didn’t need to ask his son if the feeling was mutual – then they were in real trouble.

“To answer you question, today I’m not here as a threat, Major.” Miss Parker kept talking, “I’m here as a woman who’s pregnant with your grandchild and in need of your help to rescue your other already-born-grandson.”

Margaret and the Major looked in astonishment at Miss Parker’s after this final revelation. When they saw Jarod squeezing his eyes as if he was trying to excuse himself, they understood that the woman wasn’t lying. They were going to be grandparents. They already were.

“Now, if this disappoints you in any way, I don’t give a rats ass.” Jarod closed his eyes at Parker’s coarse remark, “I happen to be in love with Jarod, oddly enough he loves me in spite of all the things I did to him. And even if he’s just a romantic fool and doesn’t have the slightest idea what he got himself into, he’s stuck with me, because I’m not going anyway. Comprende?”

The Major was shocked and amused at the same time, Margaret couldn’t hold her laugh longer. When Miss Parker saw the woman laughing, she knew that Margaret would never be a monster in-law to her, she’d just won her heart. She grinned at Jarod, who was probably realizing the same thing.

“In spite of Parker’s sweet words, everything she said is true, dad. And I love her too, even if I should probably change my mind after this speech.”

“Poor baby.” Parker mocked him.

The Major sighed and stared at Parker, “You look so much like your mother.”

“Yeah, I’ve been told a coulpe of times.” She replied, sternly.

“I’m sure Catherine would be very proud of you.” Margaret commented.

Parker nodded, “This is everything my mother ever wanted for me...for us, actually. And by the way, you still owe us some explanation, Margaret.”

“We don’t have time for that now, Parker. We must think about Lyle. He’s going to be here tomorrow.”

“Why?” the Major asked him, disappointed by the news.

“Delivering your grandson, Major.” Miss Parker explained.

TODAY

---

“What the hell were you thinking!?”

Jarod heard the door slamming hard behind his back and turned around just in time to see Parker approaching him with the most disgruntled expression on her face. In the last ten years, Jarod had seen her so angry only once.

The pretender had received an urgent call from Argyle, asking for his help with a couple of pawnbrokers willing to get rid of him. Argyle had sounded so worried that Jarod had went off in a hurry without warning Miss Parker. He’d only left a caustic paper note on their fridge behind. And when three days later he’d come back home, Jarod had found a very pregnant Parker waiting for him with that same expression on her face, waving the paper note under his nose, reading out loud, “Gone for a pretend, see you in two days, J?!”

An overly grinning Jarod had taunted her with his answer, “Well, it took me one more day than I had planned. Miss me?”

Then the pretender had listened to Parker reproaching him for the following hour, screaming and barking that he wasn’t alone anymore, that Ethan had been worried because he’d sensed immediately that his father wasn’t away for work as Miss Parker pretended him to be, that she’d been scared to death in the certainty that he’d left for Centre-business and that he would never, ever, do an act like that anymore, if he really treasured his attributes.

He’d spent the night segregated on the couch, trying to figure out how to make up for his terrible mistake. The day after, Parker had found dozens of Pez forming the words ‘I’m sorry’ on the kitchen table – during the pregnancy she’d been developing an unbelievable adoration for Jarod’s favorite candy, so she ate Pez all the time. So when Jarod had entered the kitchen with a guilty expression on his face, she’d totally forgiven him. Nonetheless, she’d asked him to promise that he would never disappear like that again.

If that had been the moment Jarod had realized that his career as a pretender was over because Parker and the children would always come first, that day he realized as well that he was likely to sleep on the couch for the second time since they’ve bought that house.

“Parker, the kids are upstairs...” Jarod tried to use an old excuse to calm her.

“I don’t give a damn, Jarod!” she replied, but lowering her tone, “Why didn’t you tell me that Lyle was getting married?”

Jarod sighed and felt the urgent need to kill his false-brother-in-law. Lyle was spoiling their day and making him fight with Parker for the first time in ten years. He was lucky he was still alive.

“Listen, Parker, I really don’t want to talk about this now. We promised to spend a nice night with Ethan and Katie, I already collected the cake from the bak –”

Parker walked across the room and gripped him by his collar, “I want an answer, lab rat! Tell me why you lied to me!”

If he was shocked by Parker’s behavior, Jarod didn’t show. But if she was going to be her old self, then he could play the game too.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re far from being safe from the Centre. After Raines’ death Lyle became the chairman, I was just keeping an eye on him!”

“You knew about the wedding?” she asked, still holding his collar.

“Yes.” He hissed back at her.

Parker opened her eyes wide and glared at the man she thought she knew best. He didn’t even look sorry. But when he noticed the look of disappointment on her face, Jarod realized his mistake and raised his hands in an attempt to caress her arms.

“Parker...”

But she stopped him before he could talk, putting some distance between them. Jarod tried to reach her again, but they were interrupted by the sudden appearance of their children in the room.

“Mom, it was time you came home! Daddy told us that –”

Katie was flabbergastered by the mood in the room, she and Ethan had never seen their parents fight, not even once. And certainly they’d never seen their mother looking so angry and their father so desperate.

“Is...everything ok?” Ethan dared to ask.

“Yes, kids.” Parker replied, trying to hide her feelings with a fake smile. “We were just talking. Go upstairs and get ready, we’re leaving in ten minutes.”

“But...I thought we were going to celebrate whatever-day-is here at home, daddy even bought the cake and –”

“Ethan” Jarod interrupted his son, “Do as your mother told you. We’ll wait for you and Katie in the car.”

Ethan had never heard his father responding to him so cooly, he was always nice to his children. Katie was as much surprised as her brother, but the siblings decided to let go and obey their parents.

When Parker was enough sure that the children were in their bedrooms, she stared back at Jarod, “We’re going to discuss this later, when the kids are asleep. ‘Til then, just pretend. It shouldn’t be difficult for you.”

Jarod wasn’t ready to let the subject fall, he was afraid that this whole mess he’d created would disappoint Parker to the point she would leave him. And he wasn’t going to lose her for any reason, Lyle above all. So he approached Parker and dragged her to him, kissing her as if there was no tomorrow. He didn’t feel her protesting or resisting, but she wasn’t as participating as usual. She felt distant, like she was doing this automatically. He didn’t like the feeling, so he leaned his forehead on hers after the kiss.

“Talk to me, please.”

“Not now”, she grumped, “Later.”

“Don’t hate me for that, Parker.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“But you don’t love me anymore, do you?”

Parker couldn’t hide the slight grin showing on her face after that sentence. ‘Sometimes this boy really pisses me off’, she thought. ‘He’s supposed to be the genius, and yet, he still behaves like a child.’

“Don’t talk nonsense and get the car, Wonder Boy”, she patted him.

Jarod grinned in answer and walked past her, reaching for the door.

“Jarod?” she called him. He turned around, the sweetest smile on his face, “Yes?”

“You realize you’re going to sleep on the couch tonight, don’t you?”

Parker smiled to herself as she heard him whining something like, “...same old story” as he exited the house.

---

After dessert, the family was chattering about the day Katie was born. There were times that Ethan asked himself why his parents never spoke about his own birth, but it didn’t really matter to him. He loved his sister more than anything in the world, probably even more than his parents. He always enjoyed listening to tales about the day Katie had arrived.

On the other hand, noticing that after the cheesecake her parents looked more relaxed, Katie took her chance to try and ease the tension between them by asking her father, “Daddy, when did you fall in love with Mom?” 

Jarod smiled at his daughter and glanced at Parker, who was suspiciously pretending to be cleaning her face with a napkin. He looked back at his children who were both waiting for an answer. Not wanting to make Parker more disappointed than she already was, Jarod said, “I think you two are a too young to ask things like that.”

“Come on, daddy! Answer this or I’m going to ask you why do we always celebrate this day of the year!”

Jarod opened his mouth at his daughter’s shrewdness and his eyes moved from Ethan, who simply shrugged with a huge smile on his face, to Parker, who was trying so hard to stay mad at him but was also curious to hear his answer to Katie’s question.

“Well, Pumpkin, I’m pretty sure that I fell in love with your mother the first day we met.”

Parker smiled to herself, but Jarod didn’t notice. Then it was Ethan’s turn to ask his father, “How old were you?”

“I was ten.” Jarod quietly stated.

Both children started to laugh and Parker wiggled her eyebrows as soon as she heard that lovely sound, “What’s so funny?” she asked Ethan after looking in disbelief at Jarod.

“So you found the love of your life when you were Katie’s age? It’s impossible, dad!”

“Why, you don’t believe that your mother and I have been knowing each other for more than 40 years?” Jarod questioned him, blinking slowly.

Ethan and Katie’s laughter faded and Jarod had the chance to share a look with Parker for the first time that evening. Yes, 43 years have passed, but she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

“So, tell us what happened that day.” Katie urged her mother.

Finding silent agreement in Jarod’s eyes, she decided to tell them the censored version of their first meeting, “Well, I met your father at school. We both attended the same institute when we were kids.”

“The Centre?” Ethan asked.

Parker and Jarod gasped, looking almost sternly at their son, “Where did you hear that name?”

Ethan shrugged again and murmured, “I…heard daddy mentioning a Centre a couple of times, but he was sleeping. I just... knew it was something from his childhood, because he never spoke of it.”

And to think they tried so hard to keep the truth from their children, and then nightmares betrayed them. Parker sighed, “The first time your daddy saw me, I was entering his classroom during one of his lessons with Sydney and –”

“You mean ‘grandpa’ Sydney?” Katie inquired.

“You want to hear the story, don’t you?!” Parker shot back, annoyed.

Katie and Ethan shared a mischevious smile and Jarod couldn’t help but grinning, pleased by the children’s intelligence.

Sydney didn’t travel often, if nothing else for reasonable precaution, but Jarod’s former protector was known as grandpa Sydney by Ethan and Katie. He was the man who always sent gifts for Christmas and who came to visit them a couple of times a year.

Jarod interrupted Parker to continue the story from his point of view, “When I saw your mom, my heart started to beat so fast...” Parker loved the way Katie’s eyes filled up with light, they were actually sparkling.

“She was so beautiful that I almost couldn’t breath. I’ve never seen anything more extraordinary in my life. Not until you were born, Katie.”

Katie blushed, as she often did when her father made her a compliment. Jarod loved his children equally, but his relationship with Katie was very deep and special. The pretender didn’t want to make the same mistakes Mr. Parker had committed with his daughter, so he wanted their connection to be as much truthful as possible. Jarod was never too busy to listen to his daughter, neither to say how great it was to have her in his life. And Parker usually did the same with Ethan, who was her little monkey – even if he didn’t like being called that anymore.

“And the rest is history. When we were introduced, your mother decided that I would be her pet for the rest of our lives. She chased me for almost thirty years and then we got back together a few months before Ethan’s birth. End of story.”

‘Yeah, the short version of the story’, Parker thought.

“What did you like the most of mommy, dad?” Katie asked him, not willing to change the subject yet.

Jarod looked intently at Parker, “Her smile.”

As a smile slowly returned on Parker's face, he grinned too, “There it is.”

“I thought you’d say my eyes”, she murmured at him, blushing just like her daughter had done a few moments before.

Katie stood up and moved towards her father, jumping on his legs. The little girl didn’t seem capable of staying far from him for too much.

“Oh, yes, those too” Jarod corrected himself, while he held his daughter in his arms, “And her nose” and he touched Katie’s nose, making her laugh, “And her cheeks”, then he lovingly kissed Katie.

“I guess it would be easier to ask him what he despised the most in you” Ethan said to his mom, interrupting Jarod’s list.

“You have no idea, Ethan...”

Mother and son looked at each other in agreement while Jarod seemed too busy tickling Katie.

“Impatience.” He stated suddenly, startling them both and his eyes staring at Parker. “Your mother had always the talent to put herself in danger because she was impatient and never waited for my help.”

Now Jarod was talking to Parker only, trying to excuse himself for what had happened with Lyle and the secrets he’d kept about his wedding with Chuntao.

“She never listened to my explanations and she often mistrusted me, even if she knew that whatever I did, it was to protect her.”

“Well, kids, your father’s most annoying feature was that he never realized that I was big enough to take care of myself!” Parker remarked pointedly.

Ethan and Katie realized that they were quarreling again, just as the waiter was arriving with the check.

“The fact is that you never listen, Parker!” Jarod scolded her.

“And you should never keep secrets from me, Mr. Miller!” she snapped, standing up from her chair and bringing the check with her, willing to pay and leaving the restaurant as soon as possible. Jarod looked at his children and sighed, “I’m going to fix this, I promise.”

Katie was still in his arms when he stood up. Jarod caressed Ethan’s head as the boy commented, “I don’t know what you did to make her mad at you, dad, but the only time I saw her *that* angry was the day I came back late from school and she thought I’d been kidnapped.”

Jarod noticed that Parker was already exiting, so he followed her outside with the kids. He let go of Katie, who jumped inside the car and waited until Ethan was sitting on the backseat, too.

When he attempted to open the passenger seat door, Parker activated the safety lock and left as fast as she could.

“Parker!” Jarod screamed, his figure in the rearview mirror becoming more and more little.

As they looked at Parker grinning mischeviously, Ethan and Katie realized that their mother kept some aspect of her personality still well hidden and secret. She really could be vindictive.

“He deserved it, believe me.” She told the kids. They didn’t dare to utter a single word.

One hour later, Parker was starting to get worried.

Considering that the journey from the restaurant to their house wasn’t long, it would have taken Jarod 25 minutes to return, maybe 20 if he walked fast.

When she heard the door squeaking, Parker didn’t flinch, but she had to admit that she was relieved. Jarod locked the door behind him in time to see Parker approaching him silently.

“The kids?” he asked her.

“In bed. I guess I scared them with my running act, before. They’ve had their fill of surprises, today.”     

Jarod smiled sadly, but he wasn’t angry anymore. He was, when he’d started to walk back home, but then he’d also pondered Parker’s words. One hour of thoughts and steps later, Jarod had finally found himself in front of his house without even noticing.

“I’m sorry if I overreacted, Jarod.” Parker apologized. “I didn’t mean to leave you like that, but I’d be a liar if I told you that it wasn’t fun. Call it payback.”

Jarod sighed, “I’m the one who should be sorry, Parker. I should have told you about Lyle getting married, but the news got me so…overwhelmed…that I decided to hide it from you.”

“Why? He’s nothing to do with us, why do you even care?”

“I was thinking about that poor woman. She has probably no idea about who Lyle really is.”

“Chuntao?” Parker inquired.

Jarod nodded slowly, “What did he tell you about her?”

“Not much. I saw her picture in a frame and I had the special privilege to find out that Lyle usually calls her Peachy. You discovered something else?”

Jarod shook his head in exasperation, “Only that she comes from the Chinese branch of the Centre.”

“Beijing?”

“Shangai”, Jarod corrected her, “That’s the most terrible annex the Centre has in Asia. And the worst thing is that I can’t find anything about this Chuntao. It’s like she came out of nowhere!”

“This can be no coincidence. First that man who’s following me, then Lyle getting married with a stranger...”

Jarod finally remembered why Parker had visited Lyle in the first place, “Did he tell you anything useful about him?”

“Lyle swears he’s nothing to do with this. He asked me to give him some photos to investigate, though.”

“And you trust him?” Jarod demanded, between resignation and exasperation.

“My inner sense never twitched while I was there. However disgusting my brother is, I always know when he’s not telling the truth. He wasn’t lying, Jarod. And I had a distinct feeling that he’s really changed.” Parker replied, looking very determined.

“Maybe he’s really in love.”

Jarod chuckled sarcastically at Parker’s remark, “Watching Lyle taking a woman to the altar? I’d rather eat a bowl of pistachios!”

“Watch it, Wonder Boy, you could eat your words, instead!”

Parker smiled tenderly and embraced him, her cheeks leaning delicately on his.

“So, are you still mad at me?”

“Yes.” She stated, still holding his gaze. “Tell me the truth, you were afraid that I’d want to attend my beloved twin’s wedding, weren’t you? Just forget for a moment how crazy you are to even think something like that, but what if I actually wanted to go?!”

Jarod purred in her ears, “I wouldn’t let you.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, I would.” He replied, kissing the sensible spot under her ear. “You know what I think of Lyle. I will – never – trust him.”

“Me neither, Jar. But I need you to understand how stupid it was to hide this fom me.”

“Ok. Later.” He almost kissed her, but she drew back.

“No, now!” she snapped at him. “Jarod, ten years ago you promised me that you would have never hidden anything from me!”

“Parker, I wanted to protect you!”

“I don’t need you to do that!” she stated, “God, sometimes you really behave like Sydney! Always the same old story, acting like the knight in shiny armour, coming to save the damsel in distress! But what I want from you, what I need from you, is only the truth!”

Jarod nodded, he felt guilty and embarassed, two feelings that only Parker was able to raise in him at the same time.

“My father, Raines, Lyle...They all kept secrets from me. But you…I’ve always trusted you, we never lied to each other. I don’t want us to start now, are we clear?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?” she urged him, pinching his arm only to listen to Jarod’s exagerrated whim of pain, “Yes, Ma’am!”

The pretender grinned from ear to ear and took her wrists in his hands, then he kissed her passionately and Parker felt the arousal increasing immediately. She opened his shirt in one fast movement, probably ripping a couple of bottons. While Parker manoeuvred to unbuckle his belt and open his zip, Jarod pulled off her shirt and lowered the straps of her bra, delivering all his attention to her neck.

“The kids...” Parker moaned in her last seconds of lucidity.

“The shower.” He murmured.

Parker grinned, “I’ve always said you’re a genius.”

---

After a quick and passionate encouter in the shower, Jarod and Parker decided that a long relaxing bath was in need. Jarod was lying comfortably inside the bathtub with Parker leaning on his chest. She was revelling in the sensation of his fingers caressing her arms and she’d totally forgotten why they’d argued in the first place.

“We should fight more often”, Jarod whispered to her ear.

Parker giggled in answer, “Careful, lab rat. One day your grin won’t affect me anymore and I’ll have to kill you.”

“I’ll take the chance, Parker.”

“Let’s get out of here, or we’re going to freeze”, she returned as she stood up and got out from the bathtub. Jarod followed her lead and put on his bathrobe.

“Jarod”, she called to him, “I meant what I’ve said before. And I’m still frightened.”

Jarod nodded in answer, “If Lyle is trustworthy, then we must find out who that man really is. But I don’t want to scare him away. Could you just pretend for a couple of days while I check with my sources?”

“I thought pretending was only a prerogative of yours, Jarod.”

“Parker...” he scolded her, wishing that she could be serious just for once.

“Ok.” she sighed.

Jarod watched as she put a hand on her forehead and started to rub it in nervousness.

“You inner sense is really talking to you again, isn’t it?”

Miss Parker stared at him, “I guess…it’s…just a gut feeling. It comes from underneath. I’m almost sure I’ve never seen him before, and yet...I felt like he knew me, Jarod.”

“Come here.”

He took her in his arms and hugged her lovingly, “I won’t belittle your feelings anymore. If there’s something dangerous about that man, I’ll find out. I promise.”

“How?”

“Let me take care of it, will you? And I’m taking the kids to school tomorrow, I want to see that man, too.”

TEN YEARS AGO

---

Major Charles was rocking the swing on the front porch, comfortably sitting in silence on his own. His wife was inside with Jarod and Miss Parker, trying to explain the story of a lifetime. It was nearly evening and they were still waiting for Lyle to arrive with the baby. They had conceived a plan to give Parker’s twin a warm welcome, but Jarod had also conceived a Plan B, as usual. In spite of what his son kept claiming, all the Major wanted was to drag his son and wife far from that place and disappear forever.

Miss Parker’s presence bothered him. And the Major blamed himself, because he knew very well how much that woman meant to his son. It wasn’t the first time he was present to notice the looks in their eyes when they gaze at each other.

He remembered the first time he had discovered that bond.

He could almost hear the tires screeching on the asphalt as Miss Parker’s car arrived at the airport, his son walking fast to approach her, angry for her betrayal and yelling, “I told you, Sydney comes alone!”.

What kind of sick and masochist fugitive would stay to help and save his pursuer, if not for love?     

She inspired slowly, revelling in the sensation of that springy fresh fragrance.

“I wouldn’t blame you, if you hated me, Major.”

The Major smiled at her ability to go straight to the point, “I don’t hate you, Miss Parker. I just need some time to cope with all the news.”

Parker smiled to herself because for the first time since the reunion she could hear something in Major Charler’s voice reminding her of Jarod.

“I wanted to thank you.”

“For what?”

The Major was prepared to every kind of nonsense coming from Miss Parker’s mouth, but not for that.

“For the day we spoke about my mother’s death. Well, at that that time I wasn’t aware that she didn’t die in that elevator, but, anyway…you really helped me back then.”

“How?”

“Since Jarod and I spoke with Fenigor, I was convinced that you had killed my mother. I was seeking revenge, but you made me realize how wrong I was.”

The Major smirked, “In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man.”

“Yeah, and Nietzsche never met the Parker women!”

They had a frank laugh together, until Miss Parker cut it off, “I can’t believe I blamed Jarod for that.” She sighed in frustration.

Major Charles stared intently at Miss Parker’s wonderful eyes. The strenght and stubborness were still the same. Regret was something new.

“Catherine tried to help us with Jarod, signing her death warrant. I owe you for that, Miss Parker.”

She nodded imperceptibly.

“If I could give her back to you, I would. She was the kindest person I’ve ever known.”

The bitter smile plastered on Miss Parker’s face spoke for her, “I wish I could be half the woman she was.”

Major Charles forgot his previous predicament and took her hand in his, “But you are. More than you think.”

Parker shook her head and responded in a whisper, “I should have helped him before.”

“Who?”

“Jarod…” she murmured.

Major Charles chuckled, “My son would have never let you, you would have been in danger and he could have never lived with that thought.”

“I’ve been an idiot! Chasing him for five years while we could have joined forces before...he could have found you and Margaret five years ago, if it wasn’t for me!”

“It wasn’t your fault, Miss Parker.” He soothed her. “Now I’m starting to see it, too.”

Major Charles couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth, and yet he was speaking honestly. Miss Parker was spilling her guts right then and there, sitting on that swing; She was trusting the Major by confessing her feelings, probably thoughts that she’d never even mentioned to the pretender.

“We’ve lost so much time...”

The Major took her chin between his fingers and lifted it so that Miss Parker could look at him, “You’ll make up for it.”

“How?” she asked him, desperate.

“We stick to the plan. Lyle comes, we take your son, we leave. Nobody will ever hear from us again. You, Jarod and the child are a family, now. And you’ll be more, very soon.”

Miss Parker managed to smile when she remembered that a life was growing inside her. The Major put his hand on her abdomen and caressed it tenderly, deciding at once that all his bad feelings about Jarod loving a Parker would eventually fade away in time. He couldn’t blame Miss Parker anymore: She was just a victim, like her son. She’d learned from her mistakes and she deserved a second chance.

As the Major caressed Miss Parker’s back to console her, Jarod was exiting the house, but when he noticed them on the swing, he stopped, willing not to intrude such a lovely moment.

“You think he’d rather have a girl or a boy?” Miss Parker asked her father-in-law-to-be.

“I don’t know my son as much as you or Sydney do, Miss Parker.”

Parker noticed the sadness in his voice as he answered, and so did Jarod, who felt his heart almost breaking for the truth in his father’s words.

Major Charles sighed, “But – I’m pretty sure that if Jarod loved so much that little girl that he met at the Centre...he’s gonna love her daughter even more.”

Miss Parker’s smile enlightened the environment.

‘She looks wonderful when she’s happy’, the Major thought. Jarod wanted to kiss his father for putting such an incredible expression of joy on Parker’s face.

The Major had finally understood that Jarod falling in love with Miss Parker was something natural and unavoidable. They were just meant to be.

And the pretender was grinning from ear to ear because he was having the very same thought.

He chose that moment to join them, deciding not to mention what he had just casually overheard.

“Lyle’s gonna be here in two hours. We need to get ready.”

“What if he doesn’t follow the instructions?” Major Charles asked him.

Jarod wiggled his eyebrow at him, “Then his sister will have to kill him.”

---

Lyle parked the black sedan in front of the house that he had reached after following Jarod’s directions – the pretender had contacted him a few hours before to list his conditions. Lyle wasn’t one to quietly follow someone else’s orders, let alone orders coming from Jarod or his sister. But actually, this wasn’t something that happened to him everyday.

Driving for hours, making sure that he wasn't followed by the Centre... And especially with his sound asleep nephew comfortably nestled in a child seat that Lyle had bought the night before.

Of course, he had something of his sister, too. Her eyes. And probably that was the main reason he was so cute.

For being a two years old child, the boy was more intelligent than the average. When he’d seen Lyle entering the room, he had pointed his little index finger at him exclaiming, “Uncle!”

Lyle wasn’t sure if that depended on the fact the boy had inherited his twin sister’s inner sense, but it had certainly felt weird. Like the boy already knew him.

A few seconds later he felt the barrel of a gun touching his back.

Lyle grinned as he powerless watched Jarod appearing at his side to open the car door and retrieve his son. The pretender smiled as he held the boy in his arms, trying to avoid to wake him up. In the meantime, Miss Parker searched Lyle for hidden weapons, without finding any.

“Almost”, Miss Parker answered, stepping aside to let Lyle see her, “I need one last thing.”

Lyle started to sweat. Every wasted second was dangerous. If anyone had followed him, he would soon be a dead man.

“What would it be?”

Both Jarod and Lyle gazed at Parker, then they scowled at each other.

“I have no idea where he…”

Jarod held his son more tightly, willing to avoid all the shouting to wake him. He looked down at the boy, noticing a silver bracelet pending from the child’s wrist. It caught the pretender’s attention because it had a long metallic bend with an ornament at both sides: Two tiny upright-eights representing his favorite symbol, infinity. Intrigued by the weird coincidence, Jarod turned the bracelet to get a better look at it.

In the meantime, Major Charles was safely hiding behind the bushes like a pro-sniper, with a rifle in his hands aiming directly at Lyle’s head. Margaret was looking at the scene right next to him, rubbing her hands in nervousness.

“Come on, Jarod... You have the boy, what are you waiting for?” the Major murmured more to himself than to his son, who couldn’t obviously hear him.

Lyle was practically panting in fear, “Sis, if I knew, I’d tell you. Only thing I’ve heard was that Raines wants to use the body to test Ethan’s blood, he wants to find out if his DNA can be duplicated.”

“That filthy son of a bitch... betraying what thirty years ago he was so willing to create!”

Miss Parker turned around, “What’s going on?”

Parker stared at him in astonishment, “Sydney bought that bracelet himself, Jarod, it was a gift for the baby.”

“What?”

Parker’s head moved slowly at Lyle’s direction. She glared at him in hatred.

Jarod was in hysterics, “Lyle, you’re disgusting.”

Jarod looked at Parker. Her expression made him realize that she was thinking what he was thinking. Incredibly, Lyle was telling the truth.

Jarod shook his head in response, “I don’t know. Are you sure you weren’t followed?” he asked Lyle. The man shrugged, a questioning look appearing on his face.

 

As soon as he heard the sound, the Major exclaimed, “Oh no...”

“What’s going on?” Margaret asked her husband.

The Major stood up, willing to approach Jarod, but a glare of his son made him change his mind.

“I won’t leave without Jarod! I lost him three times already, I won’t lose him again!”

When another black sedan with a Centre numberplate stopped right next to Lyle’s one, Jarod started to panic, but Miss Parker was much more resolute. She stared at Lyle and whisper so that only her brother could hear her, “I want my answer, Lyle. If you want to save your sorry ass, I want your word that you will help me to get Ethan’s corpse.”

Car doors opened all around them as four sweepers and Mr. Raines got out of the vehicle. Parker noticed the smirk on her father’s face: She’d never seen him so satisfied before.

“You’ve been following me?” Lyle asked him. He looked disappointed, almost offended.

Lyle grimaced, glaring at Raines. Jarod felt the soft bundle in his arms starting to move so he looked down to see the child opening his eyes. The baby yawned, looking carefully at the man above him, smiling as he saw his father for the very first time. Jarod managed to smile in answer. “Hello, Little Monkey”, he murmured to his child.

Parker didn’t want Raines to see her cry, but she couldn’t help it. That was the first time their son was with both of them, and they were about to lose him again. The Centre had found them, there was nothing else they could do. Jarod lifted the baby so that the boy could watch around him; his eyes immediately fell on Mr. Raines.

As two sweepers moved past the bald man, Miss Parker put herself in the middle and aimed her gun against them, “On my dead body.”

 

A million thoughts crossed Lyle’s mind in the next thirty seconds.

He thought about Jarod’s youth, growing up as a prisoner, caged at the Centre.

He pondered the results of Raines’ experiments that had caused Angelo’s actual state of empathy but also the traumatic loss of his mind.

For the first time in his life, Lyle felt that, no, it wasn’t fair.

The kid turned his head to look at him, with a worried expression on his face.

If it was for the word pronounced by the boy or for the look of terror in his sister’s eyes, Lyle would never know.

Parker looked back at Lyle in disbelief, opening her mouth as Lyle nodded in silent agreement.

“You know what, Raines? I have no intention to let you put your filthy hands on my baby anymore.” Jarod said. Then he waited a couple of seconds and raised his voice, “A father has to protect his son, for better or for worse.”

Still hidden behind the bush, Major Charles heard Jarod’s last statement and held the rifle even more firmly in his arms.

“Stay back, Maggie. I don’t think you’re going to like this...” he warned his wife.

“Sorry, daddy. I guess bloodlines ain’t as strong as they used to be.”

Raines' smirk changed into a grimace of surprise and incomprehension as Jarod raised his right arm to give the signal his father was waiting for.

The Major started to shoot at the Centre sweepers, trying to aim at their arms and legs. He didn’t want to kill, but he was ready to do it, should it become necessary.

Raines didn’t move and took out his own gun, willing to shoot at Jarod to stop his escape at any rate. Lyle noticed his movement and anticipated Raines, stealing the gun from his hand and pointing it at Miss Parker’s nape. He dragged his sister against his chest and shouted, “No way to go, Jarod. Not if you want her to live another day!”

Major Charles kept shooting against the sweepers, preventing the enemies to come closer to the group beside the cars. He was doing what Jarod had ordered him to a few hours ago. He had to keep the sweepers far from the baby, no matter what happened to him or Miss Parker.

 

Parker clenched her teeth and cursed herself for even thinking of trusting Lyle. But her brother’s intention wasn’t to kill her. She felt his mouth next to her hear whispering, “You have to hit me, now. Take the gun and shoot me, it’s your way out.”

“Why should I trust you?” she hissed back at him.

“You have no other choice, Sis.”

Parker squeezed her eyes.

“Sorry, genius, but your little honeymoon is over. Maybe you can have adjoining cells at the Centre!”

The pretender sighed in relief and moved fast to put his son in the child seat in Lyle’s car.

At these words, Miss Parker was brought back to another place and time.

“Who was that, uh, playwright with the white beard? Your mother used to read him all the time-with all that punctuation...”

“Yeah, well, whatever. Listen, there’s a quote I want you to remember. ‘A family is a tyranny ruled over by its weakest member’. Its weakest member. Don’t forget that.”

“‘Baby Parker’. Wh-What was that?” she’d asked him.

“It looked like a medical record.”

“It is mine, or Lyle’s?”

But he never had. He’d died after jumping from that plane, taking with him all the secrets Catherine kept talking about during her visions.

“I do know...this...is the only thing that really matters. It’s the future of our family. It’s the heir to the Parker name, and it’s growing inside Brigitte. The baby’ll be here soon.”

“Well, the key is still Jarod. Bring him back, and it’ll be just like it was.”

Parker swallowed hard, trying to forget that she’d been following her father’s rules for too long. But that *was* ancient history.

So she made a step towards Raines.

Lyle was recovering but didn’t move from his laying position. He needed to corroborate appearances and make Raines believe that he was too hurt to move.

Jarod moved closer to Parker, panting and willing to run away ASAP.

Jarod grinned in satisfaction.

Raines’ look of terror was the last expression they saw on the old man’s face. Parker hit him with the gun and knocked him out. Then she grinned, too, “Consider this my letter of resignation.”

 

The Major looked at his son and future daughter-in-law standing together in front of Mr. Raines. He smiled when he saw Miss Parker hit him, then looked back at Margaret, “Our job here is over. Let’s go to the rendezvous point.”

Margaret chuckled in relief and took her husband’s hand in hers. They still had a long journey in front of them, but they were finally facing it together. And she was looking forward to meet her daughter Emily and Jeremy.

“Parker!” Lyle called his sister, finally standing up. The last survived sweeper was running towards them now that the gun fire had stopped.

“We have to go, Parker, please!” Jarod admonished her. She nodded at him, walking backwards, still looking at her brother.

Lyle stared at the car as it disappeared from view.

 

The last sweeper reached him, screaming in exasperation. He couldn’t believe the pretender had run away, again.

Lyle smirked, “Call the cleaners, we have a lot to do.”

“What about the others?” he asked his boss.

“Yes, sir.” The man replied, suddenly happy that he wasn’t wounded as his colleagues.

His life wouldn’t be easy without Jarod a the Centre, and he surely needed to find a damned good explanation for his weird behavior. But if he played it well, Raines would appear as the real failure in a perfect plan. Yes, he would explain the Triumvirate that he’d pretended to make a deal with his sister only to find her and bring her back to the Centre with Jarod. Then Raines had decided to show up to ruin what he’d so carefully planned.

And without Miss Parker to spoil the party, everything would be just great.

And he knew exactly where to find it. As soon as Raines came to his senses, of course.

With Parker still sound asleep, Jarod kept his promise and took the kids to school the day after.

“Yes, Katie?”

Ethan stared at his father sitting at his side in the passenger seat, interested to learn the answer Jarod would give them as much as his sister.

Ethan scrutinized his father’s reaction to Katie’s question. Jarod’s fake smile showed that he was on the defensive, ponderating each word he was using. He could cheat with Katie, but Ethan was a whole other story, and Jarod knew it. He casted a nervous look at his son, faking another charming grin, but Ethan knew better. The son looked at his father suspiciously, then opened his mouth. Jarod was sure that his son was trying to tell him something, but Ethan hesitated a couple of seconds then decided not to talk at all.

Sighing in resignation, Jarod parked the car in front of the building and exited. He helped Katie getting out and kissed her goodbye, “Have a nice day, Princess.”

Ethan stopped in front of his father and noticed that he was looking around, pretending that he wasn’t.

Jarod’s eyes moved down to his son. Ethan was so smart and sensitive that he might have felt something. So Jarod took off his sunglasses and bent down to look straight into his eyes.

He nodded vigorously.

Ethan smiled a bit bored, “You told us all the time, daddy!”

Ethan noticed the change in his father’s look. It looked like the ever joyful sparkle had faded, to a certain extent. He knew at once that Jarod wasn’t just making the typical paternal recommendation.

Ethan nodded slowly, “Ok, dad.”

“Of course I am, daddy. And also more fascinating. At least that’s what Mom always says.”

“You too, dad.”

But then he saw him. The same man of the pictures, the same man Parker was talking about. Bald, dark complexion, tall, light blue eyes that could even be purple, Jarod wasn’t sure.

‘Maybe they’re already inside, don’t be paranoic’, he told himself.

Jarod almost ran to the car, getting ready to leave, then he took his chances and drove the vehicle next to the bald man’s one. Jarod didn’t see him look back, so he passed over the other car and checked his rearview mirror. The man was already doing the same: He drove his own car away on the opposite direction and in a few seconds he disappeared from view.

The first was that Parker had been right all along. That man was creepy.

Something Jarod had been convinced since the man had nodded at him.

He couldn’t focus on the when and where, but he’d met him before. His face was familiar, there was something he recognized in that deceitful smile.

---

 

“I can’t believe he’s still asleep. Kids of that age shouldn’t sleep that much!”

“Maybe he’s like his father.”

Jarod grinned at Parker and squeezed is eyes pretending to be bothered by her words. Which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Jarod was still so impressed with his son’s beauty that he kept looking at Parker to remind himself that he’d taken everything from his mother.

Parker had the most delicious smile on her face, she’d never looked more relaxed and satisfied before. She kept thinking that this could actually be happiness. A happiness that she’d been neglected all her life.

The three of them were driving separately from the Major and Margaret, they had mutually agreed to wait for the waters to settle before rejoining with Jarod’s parents. Even if the pretender was looking forward to meet Jeremy and Emily again, the truth was that he couldn’t care less about his siblings.

He had a son.

And he owed it to Lyle, even if he would never admit it out loud.

Suddenly she had an epiphany.

“What?” he asked her, still not moving his eyes from the boy.

Jarod blinked and glanced at her, the truth of that omission right under his nose.

“Of course not”, he replied sternly.

Jarod smiled sadly, “He’s Ethan.”

But even if naming their son after Ethan was something she truly appreciated, she wanted to give Jarod another reason to be proud of the name given to the boy.

Jarod’s grin enlightened the environment. He looked down at his son and whipered, “Ethan Kyle. I like that.”

“Well, at least we don’t need to wonder what name we’re giving to our second child, because since you told me that you’re pregnant I’ve been waiting for Catherine to arrive.”

Jarod shook his head, “It’s a girl. I feel it. What does your inner sense tell you?”

Jarod nodded in agreement and noticed that she was slowing down.

“Any effect after the fight with your biological father?”

Jarod chuckled and got out of the car, then he lay his son on the back seat. Parker walked to his side of the vehicle and leaned against the car, closing her eyes. She was exhausted.

“Help youself, Jar.”

As he was walking towards the café they’d parked in front of, Parker suddenly opened her eyes and called him back, “Ehy, Pez-Head. You think we should get married?”

“I’m not kidding, Jarod.” She replied, more seriously.

He put his hands on her arms, gently caressing them, “I would be a liar if I told you that the thought didn’t actually cross my mind, Parker”, she smiled and so did Jarod, “There’s nothing I’d want more than making an honest woman of you. God knows you’d need it!”

The pretender kissed her, “As much I would like to marry you, there are too many obstacles. If we wanted to do it well, all our friends would like to come. And that would mean to put Broots and Sydney’s life in danger.”

“But you won’t.”

It was the first time that she heard him speaking so obviously about his own needs. Jarod had never been the selfish kind. It looked like he was learning something from Parker, in the end.

Parker stared at him, she was out of words, “It looks like you thought about this quite a lot, didn’t you?”

He walked past her and looked for his bag in the trunk, seeking for something inside it. When he found the object he needed, Jarod closed his hand around it and sighed.

Jarod opened his hand and showed her the mysterious object. It was a ring.

“This was supposed to be a present. For you…and Tommy.”

“No, no…but when he called me to inform me that you two were leaving, I wanted to send you a last gift. Something that would convince you that you were doing the right thing. I wanted it to be a wedding gift for you.”

Jarod nodded, “Please, don’t hate me.”

“You would have loved it, then?”

“You know, I’m selfishly glad that I’m the one who’s giving this to you. Even if it’s for our fake-wedding.”

“Oh, no. We’ll be married, or at least this is what everybody will think. So you’ll need to wear this. May I?”

Jarod took the ring and put it at Parker’s wedding finger, slowly. Then he kissed her left hand.

“As soon as I find a jewelry.” He answered.

“Actually I was thinking about a new surname, fitting with our new life. What about Miller?”

Jarod looked at her, incredulous, “You want me to call you by your first name?!”

“And I don’t think I could actually stop calling you Parker, you know that.”

“With one slight difference: you’ll entertain yourself with me.”

Just when Jarod was kissing her, she interrupted him, “But you’ll have to share my attention with two other people.”

He remembered eight kids sitting down at two tables. He remembered Sydney’s anger and Raines’ humiliation. He remembered young Miss Parker squeezing his hand so tightly that it hurt. He remembered Angelo running.      

And suddenly the realization stroke him as a lightning.

He knew that man. He had seen him before. A long time before, actually.

When Jarod arrived home, he was out of breath and still shocked. He hadn’t been feeling like this since his last escape from Raines and Lyle. And it had been ten years.

He ran to his bedroom, looking for the object he’d been craving the most to reach in the last ten minutes. He needed to understand, he needed to confirm that this wasn’t only a stupid fear originating from Parker’s bad feeling.

Jarod opened the secret compartment in the walk-in closet and took the metal case containing the DSA viewer. He slammed it open, searching for a DSA that he’d barely seen once. When he found it, he put it in the viewer frantically, playing the record.

 

---

Jarod and Angelo were sitting on the floor. The pretender was checking on his friend as he played with letter cubes to form the names of the people in the room with them. Sydney was standing right next to Mr. Raines and Mr. Parker, they were discussing and for what Jarod could hear from his actual position, his mentor wasn’t really happy of what was going on.

Angelo was forming another name and Jarod glimpsed at the cubes in time to notice that he was spelling the two words he worshipped the most, ‘Miss’ and ‘Parker’.

Angelo grinned at him and pointed at Jarod’s back, making the pretender turn around and see his friend coming towards him, with the sweetest smile plastered on her face. The young girl almost ran to join Angelo and Jarod, she hadn’t seen them for a couple of weeks and she’d felt neglected. But that was her father’s will, and she never questioned it, let alone objecting it.

Jarod welcomed Miss Parker, standing up, his arms reaching to hold her. She was almost wrapping her arms around him, when she saw her father, his mere presence diverting the daughter to greet her best friend in such an informal way. She wanted to see Jarod and Angelo more, and the only way to do so was to make her father proud of her behavior.

Jarod sensed her change and retracted his arms, his eyes still sparkling.

“It’s good to see you, Miss Parker. It’s been a while.”

“It’s good to see you too, Jarod”, she answered politely, “Good morning, Angelo.”   

Former-Timmy’s satisfied expression turned into a petrified grimace when five kids appeared on the stairs making their way to the floor.

Jarod and Miss Parker watched them walking as in slow motion, both of them sensing that those kids weren’t certainly there for a tea party. Hardly they knew that Sydney was almost as astonished as they were.

“Who are they?” Miss Parker wondered.

“I know one of them. His name is Kyle.” Jarod indicated the boy. “He used to be my friend, but we haven’t been seing each other for a very long time. I thought he was gone.” Jarod explained.

One of the five strangers walked over the room and joined them. He looked like the most friendly of the five kids, he was even smiling at them. 

“And you are?” Miss Parker asked him, almost resentful for having so many strangers faces around her. She was used to know everyone at the Centre, but now she realized she’d been wrong all the time.

“My name’s Eddie. I’m going to work with Mr. Raines for a while.”

Miss Parker squeezed her eyes at him, trying to analyze that boy. He wasn’t as easy to read as Jarod, and yet she felt he was reliable, just like her best friend.

“I’m Jarod, this is Angelo.”

Miss Parker relaxed when she saw Angelo shaking his hand with Eddie, so she imitated him and announced, “I’m Miss Parker. Do you know the others?” Miss Parker questioned Eddie.

“That is Alex”, he replied. “I’ve met him before. Can’t say I really like him, though.”

Jarod’s wish to know everything surrounding him was so compelling that he turned around looking for Sydney. A second later, his mentor joined the group, placing a hand on Jarod’s shoulder. The pretender glanced at his protector with an inquisitive look.

“Who are they, Sydney?”

“No one you should really care about, Jarod.”

Mr. Raines moved from his position next to Mr. Parker under the scrutinizing eyes of the chairman’s daughter. The doctor approached the kids to greet them.

Jarod watched Kyle, Alex and the other kids moving closer.

“They work with Mr. Raines? They work with Kyle?”

Sydney sighed and closed his eyes. He wasn’t enjoying this, at all. And Jarod could read his mind.

Miss Parker felt something, too. She casted a look at Jarod that meant everything. They didn’t need to talk to understand each other. They were both confused and frightened.

Sydney put his other hand on Miss Parker’s shoulder, keeping his children closer than he would have had in any other circumstances, “You’re going to do an experiment, today.”

“What kind of experiment?” Miss Parker asked. This was something totally new to her. She’d never been involved in Jarod’s SIMs until now, and she’d always felt angry about it, almost jealous. She’d always been sure that she could be a good pretender as much as her best friend.

And yet, today she didn’t really want to be part of an experiment, not one that would include Mr. Raines’ presence.

“You’ve already met Kyle.” Sydney spoke, then he pointed at the second blonde boy, “Alex has just arrived from Africa.”

Eddie and Jarod shared a glance that Sydney didn’t notice, “Eddie just came here as well. They are both under Mr Raines’ authority during their stay at the Centre.”

“Who’s that guy, Sydney?” Miss Parker asked the psychiatrist, pointing at the dark haired boy.

Sydney stroked her shoulder slightly, without even noticing, “His name’s Robert. He’s an orphan staying in some clinic in Atlanta. He’s waiting for a family to adopt him. That’s all I’ve been told.”   

Miss Parker suddenly felt the urge to take Angelo’s hand. The little boy flinched, but didn’t retreat until the girl let go of his hand on her own.

“And who’s that boy over there?” Jarod asked, noticing that the last kid was voluntarily staying aside. Sydney shook his head slowly, “That is Gabriel. I can’t tell you more.”

When Sydney’s comforting touch left Miss Parker’s shoulder, the girl took Jarod’s hand and squeezed it firmly, as if her life depended on it.

Mr. Raines approached Sydney again, staring longingly at the three kids of the Centre, then at Eddie.

“We’re going to perform a very exciting simulation, today. And it will involve all of you.”

Jarod searched for Sydney’s reassuring look, but his eyes were set on Raines.

“Let’s go, Sydney. Arrange the teams. I’ll take Miss Parker, Robert, Alex and Gabriel.”

Miss Parker’s heart bumped, and Jarod gasped, “Teams?” the boy asked Sydney. “Which teams?”

“Jarod”, Sydney explained, “The eight of you will form two different teams, today. That’s what the simulation is about.”

Angelo stood up and ran, frightened and screaming like he did whenever he was on the verge of a crisis.

“Stop him!” Raines shouted.

Sydney watched powerless as a sweeper caught Angelo and lifted him from the floor, the young boy struggling to escape from his arms.

“I don’t want to go with them!” Miss Parker screamed, standing up as well, Jarod’s hand still intertwined with hers. Jarod positioned himself between Miss Parker and Mr. Raines, willing to protect her from whatever was going on.

Jarod’s mentor moved past them and joined Mr. Parker on the stairs, his face contorted into a tense expression, “I told you I disagreed with this experiment. They aren’t ready for this!”

“Miss Parker, calm down.” Jarod tried to soothe his friend. “They aren’t going to separate us. Are they, Sydney?”

Sydney had never been more proud of Jarod before. That wasn’t a question, it was a statement. And it meant one thing: Should he be in a different team than Miss Parker’s, Jarod would not perform the SIM.

Mr. Parker watched the scene silently, then he casted a look at his daughter, who was staring at him with tears in her eyes. Sydney and Raines waited for a response.

“As Jarod’s teacher, Sydney has the priority to choose the members of his team.”

As Sydney grinned in satisfaction, nodding with complicity at Jarod, Raines walked fast towards Mr. Parker, glaring at him. “This is unacceptable. The Triumvirate chose *me* as coordinator of this experiment!”

Mr. Parker clenched his teeth, “And I’m still the chairman of the Centre, Raines!”

All the kids stared at that implicit fought for power, almost expecting Mr. Raines to answer as a peacock, opening his tail in counteroffensive. But he didn’t. He moved back and glared at Sydney, who was still gloating for his success. To clarify his victory, Sydney involved his protégé, “Jarod, what did I teach you about performing simulations with other people?”

Jarod answered politely and wisely, “That it’s wrong, Sydney. The perfect pretender works alone, avoiding any distractions. Avoiding feelings to come on his way.”

At those words, Miss Parker tightened her hold on Jarod’s hand. Obviously, he didn’t let go.

“And what happens if a pretender is obliged to work with other pretenders, due to force majeure?”

Jarod shook his head slightly, “Then the pretender must be sure that he can perform at the best of his skills.”

Sydney smiled, “And when does a man works at his best with other people?”

Jarod’s confused expression turned into a sly one, “When he works with people that he already knows. With people he can trust unconditionally.”

Miss parker smiled and looked at Angelo, who grinned in answer.

“And what if he cannot do that?”

Jarod stared at Miss Parker, still behind him, “Then he will refuse to perform the SIM, until he can do it on his own terms, Sydney.”

“Precisely.”

Raines might have killed Sydney with his mere look. But that conversation didn’t bat an eye. The Triumvirate delegates were watching from behind the cameras, the two doctors and Mr. Parker were well aware of that. And Sydney had just won the first round. He walked back towards Jarod and put his hands on the pretender’s shoulders.  

“Jarod, you may choose your teammates, now.”

The boy grinned joyfully, “Angelo and Kyle.”

He pointed at both of them. Then he lifted his arm, with his hand still cleched into Miss Parker’s.

“And Miss Parker.”

Mr. Parker observed carefully at that demonstration of affection between those kids. His daughter was close to Jarod. Too close. And he needed to do something before it was too late.

But today wasn’t the day to think about that problem. That would be dealt with in due time. He nodded at Mr. Raines, who sighed in exasperation, “Fine. Robert, Alex, Eddie and Gabriel will form the second team.”

The eight kids split into two groups and sat down at two different tables, while Sydney and Raines provided the material for the SIM.

Miss Parker was sitting at Jarod’s left, Angelo was at her other side.

“Thank you, Jar.” She whispered to his ear.

“You’re welcome. I only hope we win this competition, otherwise Sydney will be in real trouble.”

“You think this is a challenge?” she asked him.

“Love. Hate.” Angelo murmured. “Good. Evil.”

“What?” Kyle asked the boy.

“Don’t think about it. Angelo doesn’t talk much.” Miss Parker explained.

Kyle seemed interested in the weird relationship going on between the three of them, especially between Jarod and Miss Parker. He never had a girl friend, he hadn’t actually met a girl before. Miss Parker was fascinating, and very smart.

“I think that when two teams are involved, the first one to find the answers wins.” Jarod continued, watching carefully at Mr. Raines, who was talking with Gabriel and Alex. The two kids were smiling maliciously at the doctor.

“And what happens to the losers?” Kyle asked Jarod.

Jarod wanted to reply, but he was interrupted by Miss Parker, “We won’t. Jarod is the best pretender around. Aren’t you, Jar?”

The boy tried hard not to be galvanized by his best friend’s words and contagious smile, “Hardly, Miss Parker. And only if you don’t draw me to distraction.”

Miss Parker’s eyes were almost gleaming, “Do I do that?” she whispered.

Jarod caughed sheepishly and Angelo chose that moment to talk, “Love. Friends.”

The other three kids watched Angelo pointing at the other table, “Hate. Enemies.”

Miss Parker, Jarod and Kyle couldn’t help but nodding in agreement as a bad feeling pervaded their souls.

 

---

Jarod was still looking at the black screen when he sensed Miss Parker’s presence behind him.

“How long have you been there?” he asked her without turning to face her.

“Enough.”

The pretender stood up and closed the case. He rubbed his face and shrugged, breathing deeply. Miss Parker approached him and throw a few files on the bed. Jarod startled at the sound and opened his eyes wide. Miss Parker had just thrown something that Jarod thirteen years before had sworn not to see anymore on their bed.

The red files.

“Where did you get these?”

“Your safe deposit box in Augusta. How did you remember?” she asked him.

“And you?” he questioned her back, pointing at the red files.

“I called Lyle this morning.”

---

 

“Well, Sis, I must admit you really made me curious with this quest. I looked for this man in the Centre archives, but I wasn’t able to find anything.”

“Well, I’m surprised that you stole one of your collaborative monkeys from his job to do this little search for me. I reckon that it might have taken… how much, about 12 minutes?”

“For your information I also made a phone call to an old friend of mine at the Bureau who owes me a couple of favours. He couldn’t find anything either.”

“The Bureau…I’m impressed, Lyle.”

“So, couldn’t it be just your fervid imagination?”

Parker sighed, “Were you ever warned about something dangerous by your instinct?”

Lyle thought about it, “Maybe, but it was a long time ago.”

“Well, that was you inner sense, you idiot. And if you hadn’t been so willing to obey our beloved daddy’s orders, perhaps you could have developped it.”

“I’m not a freak, Sis. I don’t need to hear voices in my head to feel complete.”

“Well I’m sorry for you, Lyle, but this is something you will have to face, sooner or later, willing or not.”

 

---

“Did he tell you about him?”

“No, he said that he wasn’t able to find anything about that man. So I contacted Broots, I sent him the picture, couldn’t find anything either. And then it happened again.”

“What?”

“My inner sense. The voices were so loud that I wasn’t able to comprehend anything but two words.”

“Red files…” Jarod concluded for her.

Miss Parker nodded.

“When I saw that man I had an epiphany. Like a light bulb turning on in my head after a very long time.”

Miss Parker threw the last file she’d been holding and it fell open on the bed.

“Gabriel.” She stated.

“Gabriel.” Jarod agreed, nodding in answer.

“What do we do now?” she asked him.

Jarod sighed, shaking his head slowly.

“I need to speak with Sydney.”

“Do you think that is really necessary?”

“We have no other choice.”

It wasn’t his everyday phone ringtone. It was the other.

When Sydney realized this, he almost jumped from the couch and ran to the study, the phone was hidden in a secret compartment inside the third closet of his desk.

He found the mobile and answered worriedly.

“This is Sydney.”

“I wish this was only a drill”

When Sydney heard Jarod’s voice, he knew that something was really wrong. “I thought our next contact was due for your birthday, Jarod.”

“Do you have access to your DSAs archive?”

“Give me two minutes. Broots is with Angelo in another room.”

“In the meantime, I suggest you take a sit. And a beverage. We don’t want to be the cause of your first heart attack.” Miss Parker stated, stepping in the conversation.

 

A few checks on the security of the line from both sides and the phone call had turned into a video conference.

After watching the DSA twice, Sydney asked Broots to stop and zoom the video at the specific frame where Gabriel’s face was more visible.

Angelo put his hand on the screen, “Gabriel”, he said.

“I don’t understand. Why suddenly this SIM would be so important after forty years?” Broots asked them.

“He is the man tailing us. I want to know everything about him before depriving him of his family jewels.”

“Parker…” Jarod scolded her, with Broots sniggering from the other side of the screen.

“That man is dangerous, Jarod! He is the eighth red file, the one we didn’t remember anything about!”

Sydney cut in their quarrel, “That SIM was authorized by the Triumvirate. At that time I didn’t know anything about the red files, I didn’t understand their idea to make you prented all together like that. Especially I couldn’t figure why they wanted to involve the chairman’s daughter, too. Now everything is clear.”

“Clear?” Parker questioned him.

“I was told that the Triumvirate wanted to establish what kind of training we were supposed to give the pretenders. But I wasn’t informed that those eight kids were all red files, that they all carried the pretender gene in their blood.”

“How did they justify Miss Parker’s participation, then?” Jarod asked him.

“They told me that they needed a girl in the group, to evaluate how she would affect the kids’ behavior during a SIM.”

“Well, I think I affected you damned good, didn’t I Jarod?”

“Parker, will you please stop it?!” Jarod begged her, worn out by her sarcasm.

“I can’t believe this, we had met Lyle when he was only a kid…and I didn’t remember!?” Sydney asked himself.

Jarod sighed, “Parker and I were wondering the same thing. The only rational explanation is that they made us all forget about this SIM.”

Broots nodded, “Like they did with the memory of you and Mrs. Parker talking when she was pregnant with Ethan?”

Jarod felt a lump in his throat, “Exactly.”

“Well, now I remember everything. The SIM was lead on competitive basis. Your team won, Jarod, but the Triumvirate wasn’t interested in the final result. They just wanted to know which pretenders they could train to be...”

“Psychotic?” Parker asked.

“Mean.” Sydney corrected her.

“Love, hate…Good, evil…” Angelo murmured, still concentrated on Gabriel’s face.

“Yes, Angelo”, Sydney nodded at him.

“Angelo was excluded because of his empathic skills, and you were already under my supervision. They thought better than take you away from me after that demonstration of complicity between us.” 

“Pure luck, I guess.” Jarod stated, sardonically.

“Don’t confuse their real purpose with kindness, Jarod”, Parker cut him off. “They just wanted you to work at your best. And you and Sydney were a perfect duo. Just like Pavlov and his dog.”

Sydney talked on, “Eddie and Alex were committed to the Triumvirate, they came back to the Centre only years later, not long before you ran away in 1996. Once again, I wasn’t told about their arrival.”

“And I suppose Lyle was brought back to NuGenesis and later Raines managed to make the Bowmans adopt him.” Jarod continued.

Sydney nodded, “I believe it’s true that Mr. Parker wasn’t aware about Lyle being his son, at that time.”

“And in the meantime…Raines was given custody of Kyle, the smarter pretender he could have, seeing that I wasn’t available.” Jarod concluded.

“But what about Miss Parker?” Broots asked, “I mean, why wasn’t she exploited, like Jarod and Kyle, or – or…discarded like Lyle?”

“She was the chairman’s daughter, after all. Your father would have never allowed it, Parker.”

The woman nodded sheepishly and sighed, Jarod put his arm around her shoulders.

“So, what happened to Gabriel?” Jarod wondered, finally getting to the point.

Sydney shook his head, “I thought he’d been sent away, just like I’ve been assured they’d done with Timmy.”

Angelo looked down. He was feeling empathically all the pain in that room and from the other side of the computer screen, but nobody’s pain was stronger than his very own.

“You think he was brought to the Triumvirate, too?” Miss Parker asked Jarod.

“Where else?” Sydney answered with another question. “We were sure that Jarod and Angelo were all was left of the pretender project. We’ve been wondering for years how the Centre could survive without Jarod’s skills. Now we have our answer.”

“You mean that this man, this – Gabriel…he’s the one who’s been performing simulations for the Centre all these years? That he worked in Africa, with Alex?”

Jarod shook his dead, “I’m sure Alex didn’t know about him. He wouldn’t have accepted another pretender to compete with. But this is the only plausible explanation. The pretender business has been the Centre most important source of profit all along.”

Sydney followed Jarod’s reasoning, “And Raines’ death must have shuffled the cards. They must have realized that Lyle wasn’t as keen to find you as they wanted him to be, so they put someone else on your tracks.”

Jarod nodded, “Someone who could pretend to be me.”

“I must admit they were pretty clever, this time. A pretender to find another pretender. This is insane.” Parker admitted.

They kept all quiet for a while, pondering all those thoughts.

“It’s our fault. We shouldn’t have let this go 10 years ago. We should have put an end to the Centre once and for all, instead we decided to make one of those David-fucking-Copperfield acts you were so good at.”

Jarod wasn’t really hurt by Miss Parker’s words, he knew that she was right.

“We did it for our children, Parker. We did it to protect them, to give them a better life than we had. And at least for ten years, it worked.”

Parker sighed, staring at him. She didn’t want to fight with Jarod, she was just worried and exhausted. A couple of days had been enough to turn her life upside down. Now she was starting to realize that they’d been living in a dream. Their whole life had been a mirage. A house of cards that was collapsing under the strenght of the Centre blow.

“There’s nothing you could do, Parker”, Sydney tried to support Jarod, “And when you and Jarod ran away, the red files were a well-dead topic, anyway.”

“That’s because after finding out who Parker’s brother was,  I thought we were over with them. Lyle was back at the Centre, I was sure that Alex had died during our escape from the Centre and I believed Eddie had disappeared forever, or worse that he’d been killed. Even if I didn’t remember Gabriel, I trusted what his red file reported.”

“What?” Parker asked him.

Jarod sighed, “Certified the uselessness of his contribution to the pretender project, he was senteced to spend the rest of his life in renewal wing…”

“Which meant he was like dead.” Parker finished for him.

“Oh God.” Broots murmured.

“There is one thing I don’t understand, though”, Jarod stated, “Why is he here?”

“What do you mean?” Sydney asked him.

“Well, for all I know, all the pretenders exploited by the Centre have always been caged, locked inside. No contacts with the ‘outside’ world, no friends, no relationships. But Gabriel is here, in Maine. He looked like a free man, to me, it didn’t look like he was following orders!”

Parker nodded, “Jarod is right. He was behaving more like a sweeper than a fugitive pretender.”

“Maybe he’s run away from the Triumvirate, just like you did.” Broots guessed.

Jarod shook his head, “You know what was the first thing I did after finally being outisde on my own?” Jarod smiled slyly, “I used all the money I had to buy Pez. I didn’t eat anything but Pez for two days.”

Parker, incredibly, chuckled, “What was the second?”

Jarod grinned at her like an idiot, “I called you.”

Sydney opened his mouth in astonishment, and so did Parker.

“I don’t remember talking to you before the Village People-conversation!”

If Broots and Sydney were surprised by that remark, they didn’t show. They were accustomed to the couple’s eccentric anecdotes.

“Well that’s because when you answered the phone and I heard your voice after all those years, I was too scared to talk to you. So I had to come out with something like, ‘Uhm, I’m calling for a survey, are you in possession of a goldfish?’ – and you answered – ”

Parker opened her eyes wide and grinned, “No, but you’re going to sleep with a bunch of them if you ever call me again!”

They all started to laugh. Angelo was giggling too, he was enjoying the tranquillity of that moment.

“Needless to say, the day after I was watching The Godfather.” Jarod waited for the laughs to fade before continuing, “What I meant is that a pretender escaping for the first time would rather enjoy his newfound freedom, before starting to think about the rest of his troubles. And Gabriel looked satisfied and totally careless, like he’s been out here for a while.”

“So this leads us to option number two. He’s searching for you, Jarod.”

“Maybe he’s been trying to contact me and he’s just being cautious. Maybe he needs my help.”

“No.” Angelo exclaimed. “Jarod, good. Gabriel, evil.”
“I think he’s right, Jarod.” Miss Parker warned him. “I know you always tend to see good in people, but that man really gave me the creeps. Even more than Lyle. I think nothing good can come from him.”

Jarod shrugged and sighed, “Well, then you and the kids are leaving today. I’ll meet you at Ben’s after this story is over.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!” Miss Parker shouted, her voice laced with impatience.

“I’ll take care of Gabriel, but I don’t want you and the children around, if he’s really dangerous. I’ll try to lure him so that I can talk to him honestly.”

“Talk to him?! Jarod you don’t know anything about him, he might be there to kill you!” Broots returned, gasping from time to time.

“Then I’ll take the risk. I don’t want to scare him away by involving the authorities, or worse the Centre!”

“Jarod, I won’t let you face that man like a martyr, are we clear?”

Sydney interrupted their quarrel, “I think she’s right, Jarod. This is an enemy you can’t face on your own. Think about that SIM. The three of you were later educated canonically. But Raines’ pretenders have always been manipulated to be mean. You’ll need my help to deal with them.”

“I know that. But I messed up your lives too much in past. I’m not going to cause further confusion, now that you have a relative stability. Debbie is going to college and your grandson is just four, Sydney. I won’t deprive Nicholas and Michelle of your presence!”

Parker was still quiet, but Jarod knew that she was ready to explode. So he bent down to end the conference call.

“Jarod!” Sydney prevented him from pressing the mouse button. “Please don’t do this. Gabriel is dangerous…”

“Danger!” Angelo shouted, a worried expression on his face.

Jarod watched his three friends on the other side of the screen.

“Danger is my middle name.”

Sydney watched helplessly as Jarod’s screen faded to black.

Jarod was staring at his children entering Ben Miller’s house. Ethan had a Spider-Man rucksack on his back, it contained a few videogames and books, including the novel he loved the most, Asimov’s “The Caves of Steel”. The boy intended to read it to spend the spare time at Old Ben’s, in hopes of taking his mind off the anxiety due to his father absence.

Katie, instead, held her favorite stuffed animal while she walked hand in hand with Ben and looked back to take a glimpse of Jarod’s face for the last time before he left.

The pretender was no fool: he knew that his absence would indelibly affect the relationship he shared with his daughter. Katie would problably make him feel guilty for leaving and abandon them exactly when she was feeling such an evident danger ahead and she was having these ominous dreams that scared her to death.

Jarod waved his hand to say goodbye and gave her a hint of a not-so-convinced smile; Katie replied with a nod, her eyes glistening with tears. 

While Katie entered the house with Ben, Parker was coming out, letting the door slowly shut behind her.

Jarod took advantage of those seconds to let out a long sigh of resignation, he closed his eyes and smelled the air around him.

He loved that place, he wanted to stay with his family.

But he couldn’t. He had Gabriel to deal with.

“Suitcases are unloaded, Ben will help the children to settle down in their bedrooms.”

“What about your luggage?”

“If you’re talking about my gun, I have one hidden in my mother’s old bedroom.”

“Parker…”

“I hope I won’t need to use it. But if the time comes, my old Smith & Wesson will be ready. And so will I.”

Jarod sighed again, “I better be going. I left a message for my mother to let her know you are here, I didn’t elaborate about the reasons of my trip.”

“She will understand that something’s going on. It’s the first time you leave the children behind since Katie was born.”

“I don’t want mom and dad to be involved in no way. With Emily’s wedding to organise and Jeremy’s degree so close, I don’t want to trouble them.”

“Talking of which, you remember that you are your sister’s best man, don’t you? Don’t mess with her and don’t spoil her big day.”  

Jarod smiled, “Is this a gentle way to remind me to be careful and that you’ll miss me?”

Parker gently hit his stomach, touching the exact point that she knew would bother Jarod,  then she dragged the pretender to her and kissed him.

“Please, be careful Pezhead.”

“Don’t worry, Parker. I entrust you with taking care of our children. Keep them safe.”

“Always.”

Jarod briefly kissed her one last time, then he moved rapidly towards his car without watching back. He feared that he might change his mind, should he wait a little longer.

He only peeked once from the rearview mirror while he left in direction of their home.

Parker had never seemed so far like in that moment.

---

THE KEYS – BROOTS AND SYDNEY’S REFUGE

Sydney was finishing to pack a few last things in his bag. Broots stared at him pretrified, he was still too much astonished for the decision taken by his lifetime friend.

“Are you really sure?”

“We already talked about this, Broots. I won’t allow Jarod to risk his life without nobody there to help him. He’s already suffered too much because of me. If Gabriel is as dangerous as Angelo confirms, maybe Jarod is going to need my help to face him.”

“And what are you planning to do? Pretending to come to the Centre after ten years only to have the chance to work with Gabriel?”

“Precisely.”

Angelo sighed in concern from his position at the foot of the bed.

“Your plan really sucks, Sydney.” Broots confessed. “Lyle will make the sweepers shoot at you as soon as the new biometric detection system will recognize your face.”

“I’m too old to fear death, Broots.”

“But too young to leave Michelle, your son and your grand-son!”

Sydney sighed slowly, “Broots, I love Michelle and Nicholas. But after everything I’ve done during my years spent at the Centre, if anything happened to Jarod because of me…”

Broots ruefully looked at him, noticing that Sydney was gazing at Angelo. The man understood his old friend’s feeelings.

“Promise me we’ll be in touch.”

Sydney nodded.

“Use our safe mobile, I’ll check on the Centre movements, as for as I can.”

“Thank you Broots.”

Angelo held Sydney’s hand before he could leave the bedroom, “Sydney…Danger.”

“Don’t worry for me, Angelo.” Sydney caressed his head tenderly, “If I don’t come back, just know that…”

“Angelo knows.” The empath hushed him.

Sydney smiled and walked to the other room. He knew that saying goodbye to Michelle would be even more heartrending. But he had no other choice: he had to come back to Blue Cove.

---

THE CENTRE - LYLE’S OFFICE

Lyle was still thinking about the conversation with his sister of a few hours before.

He hadn’t seen her for ten years and now, all of a sudden, she showed up twice in a couple of days. And all of this now that he was getting married.

Well, Miss Parker had never been very good in timing.

And yet, Lyle had been very pleased to have her around, like it happened in old days, those few – rare, times that he felt affection for his sister. Probably it was because of the common bloodlines, or maybe because of that damned inner sense that he neglected so much.

He had lied to Parker, since there have been circumstances in which his inner sense had even saved his life. Like when they were in Hillman Marine: He had tried to hurt Miss Parker with his gun to make her shoot at him and be able to fake his death.

Or in Dry River, when that inner voice suggested him to shoot in Jarod’s direction because he would save himself. Of course, he wasn’t so proud of the result, seeing that Kyle had run in front of Jarod to take the bullet and he got killed. But Lyle aimed at Jarod’s shoulder, he didn’t want to kill him, he knew how much valuable was the pretender for the Centre.

His inner sense even astonished him when, in the occasion of his first meeting with Chuntao, it warned him that she could be the great love of his life. The voice he heard hadn’t used these very words, but it had pushed Lyle to talk with that charming woman.

Lyle knew he couldn’t consider himself a good man. He knew he had a turbulent past  - at least. But now, since Chuntao had come into his life, he felt different. More…human.

And a weakness of this beeing more human was connected to the childhood joy he felt when he saw his sister.

Chuntao entered his office and lessened his embarrassment for those thoughts, “So, are we going to dinner?” she warmly asked him.

“Of course, Peachy.”

The woman noticed an open file and a few pictures on his desk. Photos of a bald man, with dark complexion and very light blue eyes.

“Are you searching for this man?”

“A little favor to an old friend, nothing more.” Lyle answered, skating over the issue. “Let’s go or we’re getting late. I’m taking you to Etienne tonight.”

“My favorite restaurant? What, you want to score tonight?”

Lyle patted her buttock and followed Chuntao outside.

---

Jarod was driving home, the trip would still take him a few minutes. The radio was on but he wasn’t listening, so many were the thought troubling him. Even if Parker and the children were always at the first place in his mind, he couldn’t help but think about Gabriel.

Jarod wondered if he was really an enemy, if he was really supporting the Centre. And most of all he couldn’t understand why he decided to come out like that, with the risk of being recognized by Parker and himself. Did he need his help? Or was he insane like Alex, ready to appear from the past to try and kill him?

Without noticing, Jarod had arrived home, driving beyond the house alleyway. It was already evening but darkness hadn’t fallen yet, it was a warm day announcing the upcoming of spring.

The pretender entered his house after coming back and parking the car. He walked instantly towards his computer, ready to open the application that allowed him to monitor the new cameras he had installed at Ben’s home.

He messed about with passwords for a few seconds, then he opened a connection with the new decives, ready to keep an eye on his children. He knew that if he could see them safe and sound, he would feel less nostalgic about their absence. The house seemed so quiet and empty without them.

At last, the images that would magically teleport him in Ben’s house appeared on the screen.

The kitchen was empty and so were the children’s and Catherine’s bedroom (Parker persisted in calling the room that way even if she always slept in it).

When Jarod used the cursor to change the view to the living room camera, he got chilled to the bone. The room was empty except for Ben’s body lying to the ground.   

The pretender startled panicking, then he hit the button to rewind the surveillance videos, trying to understand what might have happened. He had a terrible feeling that he could already guess, though.

The video was flowing backwards, confused figures were appearing on and off the screen. Jarod stopped when he reached the time when he had left after saying goodbye to Parker. It was not more than fifteen minutes before.

Ben came down the stairs, probably after taking Ethan and Katie upstairs to settle. Parker sat on the couch and Ben asked her something, maybe if she wanted something to drink, seeing that she smiled as to thank him. And soon after that, chaos started to reign. Men, certainly sweepers, seeing how they were dressed, entered the house with weapons and dragged Parker away; Ben came back to the living room attracted by the noise and one of the sweepers hit him from behind, making him fall. Jarod sighed in acknowledgment that Ben hadn’t been killed. But his relief lasted only two seconds, because the video showed two sweepers holding his kids struggling to get free from their hands. Lastly the men took them outside Ben’s house.

Jarod contemplated the screen turning almost into a picture portraing the living room and a fainted Ben Miller. He was shocked and worried as he’s never been before. The time was going on, but the still didn’t change. The pretender wanted to do something – anything, but he knew it would have been to no avail.

It looks like Gabriel made his move, he thought. “And it’s the wrong one.” He murmured out loud, “You just signed your death warrant.”

A few seconds and Jarod’s mobile rang. It was an unidentifiable ID caller that troubled Jarod, because he never received calls from unknown people.

He stood up and took the appareil, answering. “Whoever you are, just know that you just committed the worst mistake of your life.”

The voice of the man from the other hand burst into a scornful laugh, “Jarod, you’re so predictable. You know, before ordering to kidnap your family, I simulated your reaction many times. And every single time, you answered exactly as you did.”

Jarod walked fast to gather his DSA viewer. If he couldn’t see the man he was talking to, he wanted at least to have an image of the boy he once had been.

“It’s not fair that you know who you’re talking to while I don’t know nothing about you, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Come on, Jarod…” the fact that the stranger called him by name with such nonchalance annoyed Jarod, “You think I don’t know that you found out who I am?”

Jarod stopped the DSA video to still the image of the blond kid that was troubling his thoughts.

“Gabriel.”

“And they call you the genius. It’s unbelievable that the Centre looked for you all these years.”

“If I’m so useless, why did the Centre keep searching for me?”

“We’ll get to it in due time. Are you ready to meet me?”

“Why didn’t you capture me along with my family, if you wanted to talk to me so damn much? Why didn’t you contact me the other day at school?”

Jarod walked and reached the door, ready to jump on his car and drive away to reach for Ben’s.

Gabriel answered, “I had to be sure that I got your attention.”

Jarod didn’t make it to the car that it exploded in a loud and deafening blow right in front of him. He was thrown at ground by the explotion, but he still kept his mobile when he opened his eyes to see his car still burning. Jarod found himself to think desperately about the power of this new enemy.     

“When did you mine my car?” he asked worried, realizing that he’d probably driven on a mined car for who knew how long.

Gabriel sniggered, “Now I got your attention, don’t I?”

THE CENTRE - SL-17

THE CENTRE

Gabriel was sitting in his office, thoughtful and troubled.

Miss Parker had demonstrated a huge strenght. The love for her children was so inconditionate that she was probably ready to die for them. He didn’t understand this kind of connection. He had never felt such a bond with anyone.

Sure, Chuntao was his partner and she had never disappointed him. But Gabriel couldn’t feel “love” in the most literal sense. Maybe that was the secret of his cleverness. He was detached. He never relied on anyone. So he couldn’t be deceived.

Jude knocked on the door, “Sir! You won’t believe this.”

“What?”

“Mr. Lyle is back. And you’ll never guess who’s with him.”

Gabriel covered the distance between the office and the lobby in a minute or so. He needed to see the man with his eyes. The Triumvirate had thought him to be dead, but he should have known better than to believe this kind of crap.

Sydney was a survivor, like the pretender. He was older than he looked in the last picture the Centre held of him, but he was just the same man that had left the Centre ten years before.

“Gabriel. Here is my first delivery.” Lyle grinned.

“What?!”

“May I introduce you to Sydney? He was our most well-known psychiatrist when the pretender project started.”

“I know who he is, you idiot!” Gabriel shouted, for the first time in his life overwhelmed by what was happening around him. “How did you find him?”

“He didn’t find me. I contacted him.” Sydney replied, serious and firm on his feet.

“Jude. Cuff him and bring him down to the cell next to Miss Parker’s.”

Sydney backed up, “I’m not here to be a captive. I’m here to resume my job.”

Gabriel stopped Jude with a snap. He stared at Sydney, willing to hear more.

“It is my opinion that you are in possession of Ethan Kyle.”

Gabriel laughed, “And you think I’d believe that you consider the boy an item?”

“I don’t want to spend my last days on Earth watching my back from the Boogeyman. Jarod’s imitation of life has unfortunately come to an end. You have Miss Parker, you have the children, and I assume that they are still alive, because you need them. But me? I’m expendable. I don’t want to be the next one to be disposed of. If you promise me not to hurt Parker and the kids, I will cooperate.”

“Basically Sydney realized how much life costs in the old age if you don’t have a valid medical insurance. He wants to work for the Centre again. He’s ready to deceive Jarod.” Lyle was trying to look sincere, but it was difficult not to sweat when that damned earphone was hidden in his ear.

“Work for the Centre. Again.” Gabriel murmured.

“Yes. I believe I might be able to work with Ethan as I did with his father. He knows me, he already trusts me. It won’t be difficult to manipulate the boy.”

“And I assume that you want me to spare your life in exchange.”

Sydney sighed and nodded. He wasn’t sure if this was a good idea anymore.

Gabriel made a couple of steps in Sydney’s direction, his face now right in front of the older man’s one.

“You know, that old saying, You hear a story too good to be true…it ain’t.”

 

Jarod was secretly listening to the conversation thanks to the earphones. He had nothing to blame Sydney and Lyle for, they were respecting the plan. But Gabriel was a tough nut.

 

“You know, there’s a way to find out if your loyalty goes to the Centre or to Jarod.” Gabriel looked at Jude, “Call Chuntao and ask her to bring the prisoners to the SIM lab.”

Jude nodded and disappeared, Gabriel intimated his two guests to follow him, so Lyle and Sydney started to walk behind Gabriel.

 

“Sydney, try to convince him. Tell him about the importance to have a good training.”

Jarod’s voice made Sydney and Lyle flinch, but fortunately Gabriel was pacing in front of them, he couldn’t see their faces.

“I believe that the best way to train a pretender is to make him discern the good from the bad, Gabriel. The only sane pretender the Centre ever had was Jarod. And he had me as a mentor. I was the one who taught him to distinguish what’s good and what’s not.”

“Well, he’s got a point.” Lyle tried to reinforce Sydney’s statement. “I was designated to train Alex in Africa. I must admit I didn’t do a very good job. Sydney was the best in this…uhm…working environment.”

“Alex was a mad man.” Gabriel replied, still walking and guiding them through the bowels of the Centre. “Maybe your training was the final straw, but he’s always been corrupted. And Sydney, you’ll be surprised to know that Jarod is not the best pretender the Centre ever had. I am.”

“You? How?” Sydney asked, now actually intrigued by the conversation.

“I was trained by the Triumvirate. I was their legacy, not their property.”

“So you had a normal life?” Lyle asked, beginning to resent this man.

“I lived my life like your beloved Miss Parker. A private education, with good opportunities. But I had no bonds. No connections. They forged me. The shaped me into the best pretender I could be and they paid me for it. I never looked for my family because I simply already had one. The Triumvirate made me the man I am today.”

 

“What a job.” Jarod murmured. Lyle smirked without getting noticed.

 

“I met Alex. He worked with me for a couple of SIMs. That’s how he knew everything about the Scrolls, many of his SIMs were aimed to locate them. I think this is why he ran away. He thought he could beat me, that he could beat Jarod. He should have known better, though.”

 

Jarod was listening to every single word. Many pieces of the puzzle were going to their place. Gabriel was really the key to discover the majority of the secrets of the Centre.

 

Gabriel stopped and turn around. Sydney noticed that they were in front of the elevator where Catherine’s supposed death had been staged.

Gabriel pressed the button to call the elevator, but it was already at their floor. The doors opened and the three men entered.

“There’s one thing I still don’t get. If you are so damn god, why do you want Jarod back?” Lyle asked.

Gabriel smiled sadly, “As you know, the Scrolls were the key to the Centre power against the Triumvirate.”

“Actually, none of us ever read them.” Sydney corrected him, “Except Mr. Parker. We don’t know what they actually said.”

Gabriel looked at them and started to laugh.

“The Scrolls were found just a few hours after Mr. Parker’s geronimo, Sydney.” He explained. “I studied the plane route and analyzed the black box. I was able to retrieve the exact location of Mr. Parker’s jump and we retrieved the Scrolls on a beach of the Morocco coast.”

The elevator stopped at its destination and the group stepped onto the floor. Both Lyle and Sydney were almost in filbrillation. Sydney was really looking forward to see Miss Parker and the kids, he had to know if they were safe. He recognized the path they were taking as the faster way to reach the SIM lab. How many times had he walked down those corridors when Jarod was a kid?

 

“Ask him about the Scrolls, Lyle. I want to know what they say.”

Jarod’s voice was so authoritative that Lyle decided to keep going with his request.

“So, what did they say? Were the Scrolls real…prophecies?” Lyle asked.

“The text mostly expands upon the topic of human power. Power is gained with control. And the main concept is that only control can govern an uncorrupted world.”

“Sounds like a dictatorship.” Sydney replied.

Gabriel smiled at him, “So you won’t be surprised to know that the Scrolls predicted the advent of the Centre.”

“This Centre?” Lyle asked, incredulous.

“Well, the text suggested the creation of a corporation the purpose of which was gain control and make a social change.”

“How?” Sydney asked the question to Gabriel at the same time that Jarod askd it on the earphone.

“By raising superior minds to rule the world. Genius to lead purer races of people.”

“And where does Jarod fit with this nice picture?”

 

Jarod was curious and impatient to hear the rest. He had been wondering about those damned prophecies for ten years.

 

“Jarod is the Chosen, Sydney. He is said to be the key to the Centre growth. But the Scrolls also talked about his escape from the Centre and they foretold the years of darkness after his disapperance.”

“So, it all comes down to Jarod? This is funny.” Lyle muttered.

“But he was the key, Lyle. All those years, we managed to achieve incredible outcomes thanks to his simulations. He was the reason of the success of the Centre.”

Sydney’s words came out of his mouth so innocently that Gabriel believed for the first time that he wasn’t faking it.

“After Jarod’s betrayal, the Centre would lose his global power. Only one man would bring the Centre back to its former splendor. A genius with the pretender’s same intelligence but vowed to consecrate his superiority to the ultimate sacrifice.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Lyle inquired him.

“That someone else had to continue Jarod’s work. Someone with the same abilities but without his velleities for freedom.”

“Somebody like you.” Sydney understood.

Gabriel nodded. He stopped in front of the doors of the SIM lab. Sydney noticed that the whole space had been renovated.

“Well, all this chattering doesn’t answer my question. Why do you want Jarod back so madly, if you are supposed to be his substitute?”

“Because…I am dying.”

THE CENTRE – SIM LAB

Gabriel’s last revelation was still echoing inside their minds. Sydney didn’t know if he should feel sad for this man’s destiny or not. He was another victim of the Centre, the worst victim, actually. Grown up as a Triumvirate marionette and with connections to nobody.

Still waiting in the car outisde of the Centre, Jarod was devastated by the truth. If Gabriel wasn’t bluffing, if he was really dying, then why did he orchestrate the kidnap? Why did he care so much about the future of the Centre?

“You are dying?” Sydney asked Gabriel.

“I’m afraid so. Unknown genetic desease. I don’t know if it depends on the way they tested me when I was a kid or if it’s something that I developed in Africa. Maybe this is what eventually happens to every single Red File. It looks like we are not supposed to live long.”

“And you are spending your last days in this hole instead of retiring on an island? I still don’t understand your will to bring Jarod back. You shouldn’t care anymore.”

 

Jarod mentally thanked Lyle for posing this question.

 

“I am a devoted follower of the Vespasians creed. This is my last duty. If my interpretation of the Scrolls is correct, I am the man who must vow his superiority to the ultimate sacrifice, which is death. I was the only one who could give power to the Centre. With Jarod on the run, the pretender project would be over, without me.”

Gabriel turned on the lights in the lab. The whole room was just like Sydney remembered it. A huge open bowl was stationed in the middle of the huge atrium. Sydney had distinct memories of using it with Jarod and with Jeremy. He remembered having one of his most sincere conversations with Miss Parker, in that place.

 

Parker was looking at the bowl with a loving expression, she seemed almost a child, “When I went down to talk with the boy. It was, um… It was so surreal being with him. It was like I was suddenly 11 years old again.”

“And yet...” Sydney began.

“And yet?”

“And yet the boy is Jarod in every way except the most important one. He doesn’t have Jarod’s soul.”

“And he didn’t have you.”

Sydney’s expression meant everything to Miss Parker. They were more than colleagues, they were friends. They were connected in a very peculiar way. He was her guide. He was the most fatherly figure she had ever have. And in spite of being Mr. Parker’s daughter, she had inherited all of her mother’s best traits.

She was such an incredible human being, and Sydney was so proud of her.

 

“Welcome home, Sydney.” Gabriel shook him from his reverie.

Sydney walked towards the bowl and stared at it. If he was sure of one thing, it was that Ethan would never, ever, finish inside of it like his father and uncle.

“Why didn’t the Triumvirate order the kidnap of other children? You could create a new generation of pretenders, like we did in the sixties.”

“We couldn’t. The Red Files were our last hope. We tried to create the pretender gene in our labs, but we couldn’t. Something is missing and we can’t figure out what it is.”

“And NuGenesis?” Lyle demanded.

“Jarod destroyed everything. One of the last gifts he left for us before disappearing.”

“This is why you want him back so badly.” Lyle finally understood.

 

“And this is why they also want my kids.” Jarod said.

He had heard enough. It was time to act, he couldn’t stand there and wait anymore. He opened the car door and started to run towards the Centre. He had his own ways to get inside without being noticed.

 

“And Ethan and Katie?” Sydney asked.

Gabriel smiled, “As children of two Red Files, they have the pretender gene. Simple genetics. They inherited it from their parents. And we believe that they also developed their mother’s inner sense, especially the girl. We only need to bring it to the surface and use it to our advantage.”

“The last pretenders. To ensure a long prosper future to the Centre.” Sydney commented.

“Bloodlines and money. Same old story.” Lyle nodded to himself.

“Precisely.” Gabriel concluded.

“Sydney!” A voice interrupted their conversation.

Sydney turned around to see Miss Parker being dragged down the stairs of the lab by Jude. Behind her, Chuntao was urging Katie and Ethan to follow their mother.

“Parker!” Sydney exclaimed, “Are you all right?” he asked.

The woman nodded, then she casted a look at her children. Sydney tried to convey his real feelings in his expression. He couldn’t give himself away, but he needed Parker to understand that he was just pretending.

“So, let’s see what you can do, Sydney.” Gabriel prompted the old man.

Lyle was staring at his nephew and niece. He was admiring how beautiful they were. He had not seen Ethan for almost ten years, and yet he still looked like that little bundle of joy he’d taken away from the Centre.

But the real surprise was Catherine. The girl looked so much like her mother that Lyle was amazed by the resemblance. Now he knew how charmed Jarod felt everytime he looked at his daughter.

Sydney approached Ethan. The boy seemed calm and relaxed. He was looking curiously at the bowl. Sydney couldn’t help but remember Jarod when he had seen the same bowl for the first time.

Ethan looked exactly like him.

“Ethan, do you trust me?”

The boy glimpsed at his mother, who nodded in approval. Then he looked at his sister. Katie was worried, she didn’t like that room at all. It felt cold and dark. But setting apart that feeling, Katie could feel something else. She knew that they could trust Grandpa Sydney.

“We are going to make a test now. It will seem a little weird at the beginning, but all you have to do is follow my instructions.”

“No!” Parker threw herself between Sydney and Ethan. “You won’t do this to him, too!”

Jude moved faster than Lyle and dragged Parker away from the man.

“Come on, Parker. It’s just a sim, after all.” Lyle mocked his sister, trying to keep his attitude on a low profile.

“Let – go – of – me!” she shouted, “Sydney! Don’t!”

“I have no choice, Parker. Don’t you see? There’s nothing we can do about this.” Sydney murmured.

“Jude” Chuntao stated, observing the scene while a furious Parker tried to escape from Jude’s hold, “Take Miss Parker to her cell. It’s time to introduce her to her new friend.”

“Wh- what friend?” Sydney asked.

“But the electroshock, of course.” Chuntao explained.

 

Jarod was crawling inside the air ducts of the Center, he was on his way to reach the SIM lab. Sweaty and tired, he was acting on pure instinct. Rationally, he knew that he was a fool, that as soon as he would touch the floor of the lab they would cuff him and close him into a cell, but he wasn’t following his mind.

His heart had taken the lead.

And when he heard Chuntao pronouncing the word ‘electroshock’, his stomach flipped over.

 

Lyle stared intently at his ex-fiancée. If until that moment he had thought about her as an imprudent woman, now he was eventually realizing that she was really mean.

‘Gosh, I think I might have loved this Chuntao even more’.

But was it true, indeeed?

Lyle had fallen in love with her when he had first understood that Chuntao could actually help him to change, that his past sins would disappear, that with her he could put an end to his purgation.

He couldn’t deny this, he’d changed deeply.

A former monster and killer ready to redeem himself.

And now, there he was.

He stared at Miss Parker, dragged away by Jude and probably goint to die because of one reason: he wasn’t strong enough to avoid it.

“Mom!” Ethan screamed.

The boy tried to run towards his mother, with Katie sobbing next to him. Gabriel was faster and took him by his shirt. Ethan stopped and turned to gaze carefully at him.

Gabriel noticed that the boy’s eyes were just like his father’s. He snapped his fingers, inviting Chuntao and Jude to wait.

“Listen to me, boy. If you’re as smart as your parents are, you already know I’m no person you can test.”

“I do, Sir.” Ethan replied.

“You don’t want me to be obliged to kill your mother, don’t you?”

Lyle swallowed hard, staring at his sister. Miss Parker was paralized, full of terror. For the very first time ever, she feared for her life. And Ethan and Katie would never make it without her in that hell.

“Nope, Sir.”

“Good boy.” Gabriel caressed Ethan. “Chuntao. I think Miss Parker’s rendezvous with electricity will have to wait.”

Chuntao wasn’t glad to hear that. She didn’t like that woman. She’d always secretly loathed her.

She’d been Tommy Tanaka’s fiancé, before his decision to betray Chuntao with Miss Parker, who had only been a seasonal affair, while they’d been together for two years.

Obviously, Parker wasn’t aware of this particular skeleton in Tommy’s closet. But Chuntao was so willing to let her know.

“Now, where were we? Oh yes, Sydney. Will you please put the boy into the bowl? Simulation number 1.”

Sydney remembered every facet of his work with Jarod. He had used the bowl many times, also during Jarod’s first SIM at the Centre.

One of the fastest sims was the one that took place on 13th Apr, ’70, just a few minutes before Catherine Parker’s presumed death in the elevator.

Jarod was simming the Apollo 13 accident in that bowl. The infamous Houston-we-got-a-problem disaster had occurred that same day, 21:07:53 CST. The Centre had immediately been involved by NASA to try and find a solution to bring the astronauts home safe. And jarod had found a way.

But Jarod was eleven, in 1970. And he was a far more trained pretender than his son.

Ethan didn’t even know what a SIM was.

Sydney had worked with Jarod for the first time in 1963, when he was just a four years old baby. Now Gabriel wanted the doctor to perform that very first SIM with Ethan.

Sydney’s determination was fading. He didn’t want the boy to sim, he didn’t want his little sister seeing him become a labrat. And most of all, he didn’t want to betray Parker and Jarod’s trust.

“Doctor.” Gabriel approached him. “I'm starting to doubt your resolution. I think I should ask Chuntao to go on and bring Miss Parker down.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”