---

---

Silence, oppressive and thick, hung between them. Jarod interrupted it with an anguished grumble, grievances too cumbersome to swallow. Stunned, and with deliberate, sluggish movements he released Parker's ankle and shoulder, meticulously smoothed the silk blouse, and with infuriating tenderness returned everything to its proper place.

Already flattened against the wall, Parker withdrew further from Jarod's efforts, and with a reproachful glare pushed his hands away. "Uh, sorry," he whispered, asking, solicitously, "Are you all right?"

"Of course," Parker answered irritably. "But Broots isn't."

"You've never needed any assistance squeezing a trigger before, so you're asking me to -- what? Fake his death?"

"I can pay you half a million dollars."

"Tempting," Jarod said. "I don't want your money."

"I don't know what else to do."

"Or who else to ask," Jarod said for accuracy's sake. "Does Broots know?"

"No," Parker answered softly, pushing herself off the wall. She felt stiff and numb, disconnected from reality, distant from herself. And oddly unsteady. She recalled a table surrounded by U-shaped seating, off the kitchen, and ambled slowly in that direction, attributing the vertigo to the boat. "I don't have a plan yet."

"It has to be one hell of a plan," Jarod contended, following Parker. "Flawless."

"I'm aware," Parker agreed somberly. "And only one person can pull that off."

"Me," Jarod drawled bitterly.

"I don't know how else to save him," Parker confided ruefully, exhaling a weary breath. Arriving at the uncluttered dining area, she promptly sat, and folded her hands in her lap. "The Centre arbitrarily renegotiated Broots' contract three years ago. They consider him a liability, and won't honor his initial retirement date until he agrees to memory expungement."

"Ah, expungement, so that's what they're calling it now."

"The procedure is-- delicate," Parker said crisply, "and Broots fears he won't survive, but staying isn't option. He's always been anxious, but now," Parker's voice dissolved into silence, startling Jarod.

"But now?" Jarod prompted gently.

"Lyle has always terrorized Broots, occasional bullying, pranks. Three months ago he sort of abducted Debbie."

"Sort of?" Jarod asked, squinting with skepticism.

"Lyle lured Debbie and her fiancé Sergio away from their law firm," Parker clarified. "Debbie didn't refer to it as abduction. She said Lyle was charismatic, gracious. He told her he and Broots were colleagues, and that he wanted to surprise him with a trip to Paris-- fly him out to meet her and Sergio there, all expenses paid."

"Lyle succeeded," ventured Jarod blandly.

"That's understating. Broots was thoroughly surprised—nearly to death—when he received the zoom call from Lyle. Debbie was thrilled, couldn't wait for him to join them. Lyle knew how it would look. A Paris hotel room, Sergio nowhere in sight- not during the call. Broots was frightened Lyle had seduced her, intended to kill her. He collapsed, stopped breathing."

"Takotsubo cardiomyopathy," Parker answered bleakly. "We almost lost him."

Jarod sat opposite Parker, and listlessly murmured, "Broken heart syndrome."

"Sydney would be here," Jarod snarled, his voice strained, his eyes hard suddenly, "and Angelo, too, if the Centre hadn't killed them."

"Killing is what they do, and Broots is next," Parker asserted indignantly, struggling to preserve equanimity. Her voice was fierce; her eyes, nevertheless, filled with tears. She felt obscurely and inexplicably responsible for both Angelo and Sydney, and for Lyle's sins. She was wholly unsuited to the role of proverbial brother's keeper, and believed that if she couldn't protect her own people from him she sure as hell couldn't protect the next dark web special he purchased. "A week ago he hinted at ending his life. Debbie abandoned her career, fiancé, put her house on the market, and moved back in with Broots. I have one chance to do this right, and you're the only person I know who has successfully pulled this off."

"If I had successfully pulled it off," Jarod countered with a quiet, fleeting laugh, "we wouldn't be sitting here right now." Parker's presence confirmed that his stratagem had been an abject failure. "What gave me away?"

"Not what," Parker answered with a taut grimace.

"Who," Jarod murmured speculatively. "Your mother," he whispered reverently.

"Mom isn't alone," Parker confessed uneasily, her voice wavering with the strain of speaking those words, the force of the truth piercing the air, its impact. Jarod inhaled a sharp breath. "Ethan," he said, and observed Parker's modest affirming nod.

"I'm assuming this a recent development," Jarod inquired softly.

"That's a fair assumption," Parker remarked amiably.

"Fair," Jarod repeated thinly. "Is it an accurate assumption?"

"What," Parker asked with a throaty, hollow laugh, "do you think I knew you were alive all this time, and where to find you and your family?"

"That does seem rather preposterous," Jarod said lightly, adding with cynical leer, "So, you knew the entire time huh?"

"Time," Parker asserted, "is something Broots doesn't have. If you're afraid of compromising yourself and your family I'll understand, but you should tell me now."

"Hmm, and if I refuse you know where to find me and my family, right?" Jarod watched Parker's face, the sudden surprise, suggesting she hadn't considered issuing ultimatums. There was a brief flicker of self reproach, malevolence. On the verge of a retort, Parker's lips parted, but quickly closed in resignation, and Jarod imagined the discomfort that accompanied the final whisper of pride slipping down her throat, particularly considering that she'd fled from a turning point, from him, only to return, two decades later, on her knees, at his feet, and at a breaking point, to ask for his help.

Jarod imagined, too, how Broots and Debbie felt knowing they were loved so fiercely by Parker.

"Am I wrong?" Jarod pressed.

"Happens to the best of us," Parker answered dimly. "Evidently. I didn't want to come," she confessed what Jarod had already deduced. The forced smiles, strained civility, and mute entreaties had been rather painful for her. She was all business, economical with words, careful not to stray from specifics. "Mom and Ethan insisted," Parker said, rising. "I guess they were wrong, too."

"No, I'll do it," Jarod announced, and observed Parker reluctantly return her hands to her lap, as if she believed he'd reconsider.  Ignoring the pang of guilt, and vowing to play no more games, Jarod said neutrally, "You seem awfully set on homicide. Any particular reason why?"

"A fatal accident or suicide mere months from retirement is awfully convenient, would raise suspicions; I can't afford an investigation."

Jarod nodded resolutely, and rose. Parker observed him pluck the kettle off the stove, and fill it with water. He returned it promptly, and scooped coffee into a press.

"Do you disagree?" Parker asked.

"Only with that last part," Jarod answered, turning to meet Parker's gaze.

---

---

There was no fierce rebuttal, tidy omission, or clever forestalling, and no loose adaptation. The unabbreviated truth spilled from Parker's lips all at once, like a dam bursting open, or a severe wound, Jarod mused, with the occasional impassioned spurt that indicated Parker was struggling to maintain equanimity.

Jarod was much too afraid that he'd fracture the tenuous acquiescence to stem the flow, ask Parker to slow down, repeat herself. He jogged steadily to match her pace, and quietly absorbed each gruesome detail.

The missing young intern, Broots' suspicions, Parker's insistence that Broots reconnoiter on his own, Lyle's house of horrors with a twist surprise that was, strangely, no surprise.

Bobby, after all, considered himself an outdoors-man, and outdoors-men hunt and kill, and consume flesh, and many of them, arrogant with pride and recounting their tales, display the kills, trophies—or parts of them—in their homes. Bobby had done the same. Bobby's prey, however, was neither moose nor deer.

The head mounted on the door of Lyle's kill room was human. Two torsos, reclining like sphinxes, and positioned, sentinelesque, on either side of the door, were human. Long dead; human, nevertheless.

The missing young intern, Haliah, no longer missing, was also quite human. "Broots found her dangling from a steel frame in the center of that shed," Parker hastily informed Jarod. The Pretender's mind promptly joined Broots and Haliah, and immediately saw that beneath Haliah's feet was a long, wide black polyethylene stock tank whose purpose became clear when he drew close to determine whether or not Haliah had a pulse. Both Broots (and Jarod presently) immediately deduced she was dead; her heart, horrifically out of place, seemed to stared up at them from the tank.

Her body, however, appeared, impossibly, unmarred.

There was no typical sternum-to-crotch hunter's cut, no incision at all, none that were visible; he, therefore, posited that the heart, blood, and intestines couldn't belong to Haliah. Despite the evident depravity surrounding him, his mind decisively rejected the reality that his eyes presented him. Hope, cruel and fleeting, flickered brightly. He covered his mouth and nose with a shirt sleeve and leaned closer, intending to ascertain a pulse, but abruptly halted his movements. Jarod was close enough now to see what Broots had seen, the pink stains on the insides of Haliah's thighs, and near enough, too, to hear the intermittent dripping.

Both Jarod's brain and body recoiled from the truth; he stumbled to an abrupt halt and inhaled a sharp breath. He knew Broots had tried to do the same, breathe through the upsurge of nausea, ignore the savagery. Instead, Broots had fallen to his knees and clutched his chest, and had neatly swallowed his vomit.

Jarod observed forlornly as Parker continued her pace, never slowing; improbably, neither her voice nor feet had faltered. He feared he wouldn't see Parker again when he lost sight of her, and vividly imagined her driving away. But when he reached the dock Parker was there, pale and pacing.

"This isn't your fault," Jarod said.

"I'm never talking about this again," Parker quietly growled.

Jarod knew, instinctively, that Parker had only talked about it once, and he'd had to push her all the way up against the proverbial wall to compel her to do it. He was astonished and perturbed that she had sat across from him with such immense barbarity and carnage gnawing away at her, consuming her, and had deliberately chosen silence, and after finally voicing the truth, adamantly refused to discuss it further. Jarod, however, didn't argue; Parker wasn't obligated to talk about it, no more than Jarod was obligated not to talk about it.

"This isn't your fault," Jarod repeated.

"That isn't the way it works," Jarod said sympathetically, and observed as she reached the dock's end, and swiveled.

"The way what works?" Parker asked.

"My brain," Jarod answered softly. "Tell me something: why didn't you come to me with this before now?"

"If you were capable of a clean break, not looking back," Parker explained, advancing swiftly, and abruptly swiveling. "I wanted you to go, be free. I thought I could tip off the police, or snitch to the Director, but Lyle owns the Blue Cove PD, and he has the Director eating out of his hand- literally; I found them, last month, in flagrante delicto, with fruit and escargot. And putting a bullet in baby brother's brain, as much as I'd love to do it, wouldn't have any impact on Broots' contract."

"Not to mention," Jarod called softly, "you aren't a murderer."

"I suppose there's that, too," Parker reluctantly agreed, reaching the end once more, and unsteadily returning.

"Do you need to take another minute?" Jarod asked, collecting the cups and saucers.

"No."

Jarod observed Parker closely, and with an expression both cynical and sympathetic, asked, "Are you certain?"

Parker stiffened, and answered with a noncommittal shrug, "Let's just do this, okay."

With a nod of affirmation Jarod said, "Refresh my memory, will you? Is Lyle's building gas or electric?"

"Why," Parker asked, her incertitude, momentarily, supplanted by curiosity.

"Because," Jarod answered darkly, "I think it's time someone blew up Bobby's playhouse."

"I-," Jarod hastily stammered, straightening in his seat, "I'll get out of your way, and you can climb over."

"Yeah," Parker murmured quietly, immediately dismissing whatever the hell that was. She couldn't attribute it to guilt sickness; after all, Jarod, too, had been thrown offbalance. The Pretender recovered nicely, however, and swiftly exited the plane. He collected Parker's bag and his own, and offered to assist Parker in stepping out of the plane.

"I got it," Parker politely declined, "but thank you." She stretched and yawned, and grimaced in the heat. "What now?" She asked, swiveling. "Of course," she said, studying the asymmetrical two-story stone structure, its pair of four-story octagonal towers-- and the domes that crowned them. "You live in an observatory. One with an airstrip. A fast escape if this goes sideways. Clever."

"Necessary. My family- uh, doesn't trust you."

"Can't say that I blame 'em. I don't need them or you to trust me. I need you to help Broots, and when he's safe you'll never have to see me again. I'll pay you," she reminded him. Again. "I want to pay you."

"No," Jarod said, "you want to frame this as tidy business transaction, instead of something personal, but this isn't business no matter how much you want it to be."

"Whatever," Parker groused. "How the hell could you possibly have a pied-a-tier in Dover without the Centre knowing about it?"

"Is that rhetorical," stammered Jarod thickly. "I have one in Blue Cove as well," he confessed, closing the door.

"You're kidding, right?" Parker asked, following Jarod along the tongue of hot asphalt that split a sunflower farm. "You can't possibly be that insane," Parker chided, attempting to retrieve her bag from Jarod.

"No?" He asked. "Why can't I be?"

"If you wanted to run for the rest of your life you wouldn't have faked your death. I'll take my bag now."

"Ah, right," he said, relinquishing the black garment bag that he had, at the behest of his family, painstakingly examined for listening and tracking devices, and weapons. "I hope she didn't forget to swing by Gabi's," he murmured.

"She?" Parker asked.

"My-- associate," Jarod answered vaguely.

Associate? Mm. Weird way to pronounce lover, but whatever. "And Gabi's?"

"Gabi's Cafe," Jarod clarified. "The pancakes are-- otherworldly. Pillow-y, delicious other-worldliness."

"Jarod, we don't have time for you to eat again."

"That wasn't eating," Jarod corrected sternly, his eyes wide with incredulity. "It was toast. And that was hours ago. I need you to-- to trust the process. Careful," he cautioned, stepping onto a narrow, sloping, and poorly maintained, stone footpath.

"Two hours ago," Parker corrected Jarod.

"Hmm, I'm famished."

"And what process?"

"I have a process," Jarod said, defensively. "Eating is a part of that process."

"I hope to hell there's coffee in your process," groused Parker.

Jarod grinned, adjusted the duffel on his shoulder. "The first step can be tricky," he said a moment later, and observed Parker's inscrutable gaze. "The steps. Up ahead," he clarified. "Erosion," he explained succinctly. "I usually just jump over it."

The erosion had decimated a retaining stone wall, archway, one of the transit houses, and a pavilion as well- in addition to the footpath and the crumbling stone step. Jarod, a man of his word, leapt nimbly over the eroded stone with ease, and jogged up the intact steps that encircled the exterior rotunda wall.

"The portico on the north side's in even worse shape, believe it or not," Jarod said conversationally, pushing a key into the lock. "The ivy was the only thing holding up one columns."

Oh, I believe it.

"Well, welcome to the observatory," he announced with a sweeping gesture into the vestibule. "I haven't gotten around to repairing the telescope just yet," he explained, closing and bolting the door. "But the view from the balcony's not half bad."

"An observatory without a functioning telescope? Pff, disgraceful," Parker exclaimed quietly, following Jarod into a wide, dim corridor, and past half a dozen closed doors. "That's going to cost you a couple stars on the ol' yelp review, Mister."

"Then you definitely don't want to see the moisture damage in the basement."

"Ugh, what a dump," Parker jested with a light chortle.

"Hey, the raccoons that lived in the attic would have disagreed; it took me two years to evict them."

"I'm outta here," Parker joked.

"Ha. Ha." Jarod said dryly, slowing his pace when they arrived at the spiral staircase. "Before we go up I should probably warn you that all of these steps were missing when I bought the place, and these things," he said, tracing ornate newel caps with a fingertip, "weren't even here."

Parker drew to a halt halfway up, moments later, and swung her gaze at Jarod. "Wait, you're not seriously-- you are restoring the observatory?"

"Sporadically," Jarod answered with a shrug, "over the last seven years."

"Seven?"

"I get a bit uneasy when I'm this to close Blue Cove for too long. You're surprised, aren't you?"

"No," Parker insisted. "It isn't what I was expecting."

"What were you expecting?"

"I don't know. The exterior steps are crumbling, the trim's peeling."

"Ah, you judged it by its façade. Tsk-tsk."

"I surmised," Parker argued, joining Jarod on the second floor landing. "And I- wow, clearly, was mistaken," she added softly upon entering a room whose walls were lined with bookcases- several of which were ceiling-to-floor, and could be accessed only by rolling ladder.

An antique apothecary chest, with its dozens of tiny drawers and compartments, sat opposite a matching card catalog cabinet. Two pillars on either side of the room were original- scarred, worn, beautiful.

The hardwood floors had been repaired and polished, however, and the fireplace had been upgraded. The sofa, half dozen accent chairs, and five lamps scattered about the room were, evidently, recent additions.

Only thing missing is a contentious ghost and a secret passage.

Jarod set his keys on a sturdy banquet table that stood in the center of the room, and inventoried the contents of a large insulated tote that had been delivered, moments earlier, by his mother. A dozen pancakes. A thermos filled with coffee. A bottle of maple syrup. Butter. Heaven.

"Make yourself at home," Jarod said to Parker, although by then she already had. She'd been drawn to the century-old gramophone, and was presently spinning Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D minor, and flipping through a worn leather-bound.

Frankenstein.

Of course.

Manor. Music. Novel. Gothic trifecta achieved.

Jarod decided not to tell Parker about the secret passageways just then. Instead, he said, "I'll grab some plates from the kitchen."

"This place have a bathroom?" Parker asked, hastily returning the book to its home on the shelf between a leather-bound Byron and a creased Lovecraft.

"Several," he answered. "Behind you," he said, looking over her shoulder. "Down the hall. Third door on the left."

Parker nodded her understanding, and casually strode off, and Jarod did the same- in the opposite direction.

Sunlight poured into the vertiginous corridor from skylights that ran its entire length; the sky was a flawless blue beyond glass. And that felt, inexplicably, wrong, incongruous.

The plane could have at least had the decency to sputter a couple of times. They could have crash-landed, been stranded, forced to thumb rides to Dover.

It was all too perfect. And nothing had ever been perfect.

There was a pattern of sidequests, setbacks, storms, all troublesome and tiresome, yes, and also familiar. Unfamiliarity made each decision feel incorrect, and the future both predestined and unalterable regardless of any decision she made. Fuck these appointment-in-Samarra feels.

"Mm," Parker hummed, gazing curiously at the third door on the left; it stood open to reveal a bedroom, and six closed doors. She entered the room, pulled open what she was certain should have been the bathroom door. "Men and directions," she groused, staring into a massive walk-in closet. She opened a second and third closet, and groaned in frustration. "There's gonna be more moisture damage if I don't find--- finally."

Correction, Jarod. Down the hall, third door, inside the master bedroom, second door past the third chiffonier on the right.

She zipped her slacks, straightened her blouse, and glared at herself in the mirror while she washed her hands. 

Not just any mirror. No. Geniusboy's antique mirror inside geniusboy's restored bathroom inside geniusboy's restored bedroom inside geniusboy's partially restored observatory house.

What in the hell am I doing here?

Parker dried her hands.

Drew a breath.

"Okay. Let's get this the hell over with," she said, and promptly returned to the library to find Jarod paging through blueprints and tucking away his phone. "Am I interrupting?"

"No," Jarod answered sheepishly. "Of course not. Sit, eat."

"Let me guess," Parker said, sliding a chair from the table and sitting. "If you don't call every hour your family's going to assume this was a trap, and come after me?"

"Something like that," Jarod answered, stabbing the stack of pancakes with a fork, and sawing off a section with a butter knife.

"Mm," Parker hummed, thoughtfully chewing. "That's reasonable."

"Not really, no," Jarod argued softly, "considering you've known where to find me and them all this time."

Shrugging noncommittally, Parker tore off a piece of pancake with her fingers, thrust it into a small knob of softened butter, and bit into the salty-sweet fusion with a low hum of approval. She rose, and retrieved the blueprints and plans, and spread them out on the floor. "Avoiding gas lines is going to get dicey," she said, kneeling, and leaning over the papers.

"Dicey," Jarod said. "Not impossible."

"Are you certain? Because you said even a small leak is capable of triggering a catastrophic explosion, which would destroy evidence of Lyle's crimes, and Broots' motive."

"I'm certain."

"I'm not," Parker said. "The blast has to be small enough that it won't level an entire neighborhood, but large enough to kill a person, and knock down enough walls to reveal Lyle's shed of savageries."

"That's the plan. The Centre will blame the insufficient amount of explosives on Broots' inexperience."

"And blame him for blowing himself up. He isn't an idiot, Jarod."

"I know," Jarod agreed, nodding somberly. "And I know you don't like this- no more than you like the idea of Broots looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, or what living like that would do to him."

"Killing them all would be so much easier."

"You can't kill them all. The Triumvirate will simply appoint a new board, recruit new operatives. Could it be possible that maybe your mother and Ethan sent you to me to talk you out of doing something you'll regret?"

"It's bold of you to assume I'd regret killing Lyle."

"Lyle is Catherine's son, Ethan's brother."

"He. needs. to. be. put. down."

"And what does your mother and our half brother have to say about that?" Jarod asked, and observed Parker's strained expression. She pressed her lips together so tightly they blanched, nearly disappeared. "All right," she said in a taut voice. "Let's talk explosives."

---

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