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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Disclaimer: Ditto the disclaimer in chapter 1.
-
Seizing Destiny
Part 4
09/12/04
-
It was well after eleven o’clock at night by the time Miss Parker pulled into the driveway in front of her house. Dinner with her family had been an exhausting affair, as usual. She and her father, her uncle, whatever he was, had quickly fallen back into their old relationship. They talked without saying anything, hedging around the truth, lying to each other through omission.
Added to the strain of dealing with dear ‘Daddy’, had been the knowing, secretive looks from her twin all night. Lyle had a point, of that Parker could not argue. She had given his words a great deal of thought. All through dinner, she had found herself reflecting on the three men at the table, Daddy, Lyle, and Raines. Which of them deserved her allegiance? The answer had been simple, and incredibly depressing. Not one of them.
But Lyle’s offer had opened a tantalizing possibility. Parker’s other option was to let things continue as they had in the past. How long could she go on this way? The ‘status quo’ was slowly destroying her, had in fact been eating away at her for years. This fact had become glaringly apparent to her while she and Jarod had been on Carthis.
“Is this the legacy you want to pass on to your children?” Jarod had asked her that day at the airport.
“No,” she whispered now in her darkened car. Yet, joining forces with Lyle seemed akin to selling out to the devil. With an exasperated sigh, Parker threw open her door and stepped into the night. She didn’t need to make any decisions immediately. She would wait and see whatever it was that Lyle had to show her.
High heels clicking loudly on the sidewalk, Parker walked to the house and quickly climbed the stairs of her front porch. The light was on above the door, giving her just enough illumination to find the lock. As the tumblers clicked and the door opened, something shifted along the edges of her peripheral vision.
Parker quickly pulled her weapon and moved to investigate. Just beyond the circle of light, hunched among the shadows of her porch, was Jarod. Little more than a darker shape in the darkness, the pretender was sitting on the floor leaning against the wooden railing. His knees were pulled up so that he was hugging them to his chest. If Parker hadn’t known better, she would have sworn that Jarod was staring at the spot where she had found the body of Thomas Gates. But there was no way he could have learned the exact location.
“Jarod,” Parker growled in icy warning. “It has been one hell of a day. I’m not really in the mood to play your games.”
A strangely flat burst of laughter came from the shadows. “No games, Parker,” Jarod said. His voice sounded strange, weary and defeated. “I’m sick to death of games. They keep breaking the rules.”
A shiver ran down Parker’s spine. The tone in Jarod’s voice was quite contrary to what she had come to expect from him. The fact that his words so closely mirrored the ones Lyle had spoken earlier only magnified her uneasiness.
Crouching down beside him, Parker asked, “What are you doing here, Jarod?”
“Looking for a hole,” he said. “A deep dark hole that I can crawl into and hide forever. Maybe pull a nice big rock in over my head.” There was another rush of that eerie, cold laughter.
“I’d be only too glad to accommodate you there, Pez-head,” Parker said. She wasn’t sure how to deal with this new aspect of Jarod’s personality. So she fell into the part she’d played with him for the last half dozen years. “There are a few pits at the Centre that would fit the bill quite nicely.”
“Exactly why I came,” Jarod answered.
Parker’s concern increased several notches. Something was horribly wrong. “What has happened?” she asked. The sharpness abruptly felt from her voice to be replaced with sincere concern.
“For behold there came a pale horse and he who sat upon it had the name Death; and Hades followed with him,” Jarod intoned.
“Jarod, you’re scaring me.” Parker told him. Reaching out she grasped his hand and was startled to find his skin cool to the touch. “You’re freezing. Come inside,” she commanded. She stood and urged him up as well. Jarod offered no resistance at all, following her without comment.
Parker led Jarod across the porch toward the open door. As they passed under the light, she glanced back at him and nearly screamed at the sight she beheld. The pretender was covered in blood. His hands and shirt were covered in dried rusty stains. It was spattered across his face and into his hair where it clumped the strands together. Jarod’s dark eyes burned bright with an unseen horror.
“God,” Parker gasped. She hurried Jarod into the house, fearful of being seen. Once inside, she quickly bolted the door and pulled the curtains across the windows. The dimly lit room cast Jarod’s gruesome appearance back into shadow.
“Jarod,” Parker rasped. “What is going on?”
“I killed her.”
The whispered confession made Parker’s blood run cold.
“I let them kill her,” he said. “Then I killed them. Killed them all.”
Parker tried again to get some coherent information from the tall man. “Jarod. Tell me who was killed.” As she spoke, Parker took Jarod’s hand once more and forced herself not to shudder at the dried crust on his fingertips.
“My mother.” Jarod answered flatly. “Willie killed her. Enigma.”
“Damn,” Parker sighed. Tears sprang to her eyes and for a long minute she was at a complete loss as to what to say or do.
Jarod laughed again, that chilling cackle. Parker abruptly realized that the pretender was in shock. That was why his flesh was so cold and his eyes so bright. She acted without thinking, moving quickly through her house while Jarod stood in the livingroom. When she returned a moment later, he was swaying ever so slightly on his feet.
“Here, take this.” Parker handed Jarod a single tablet.
He took it without question and swallowed it with the shot of bourbon she offered him.
“Come on,” Parker said. She guided him to her bedroom and into the bath where she turned on the spigot in the tub. “A hot shower will make you feel better. Get undressed.”
Jarod was moving slowly, but doing as he was told, when Parker left to give him some privacy. A quick look at her watch told her she had about ten minutes before the Valium she had just given Jarod began to do its work. With rapid efficiency Parker set to her task.
She peeled off her dress and tossed it across a chair carelessly. Her clothes were abandoned as she stripped out of them. Yanking open a bottom drawer, Parker pulled out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. These were followed by a simple pair of canvass shoes, easily recognizable as inexpensive blue-light specials. Price tags still dangled from one shoelace.
Parker dressed quickly in the cheap but common attire. Pulling her hair back into a ponytail, Parker stood beside the bathroom door and waited. When Jarod had been in the shower for nine minutes, Parker pushed open the bathroom door and entered without knocking.
“Jarod?” she called cautiously. Under the sound of running water, Parker could hear a muffled sob. Pulling aside the shower curtain, Parker looked down to find Jarod curled in one corner of the tub. He had his knees hugged close to his chest and his face buried in his arms.
Grabbing a towel from the rack, Parker helped Jarod out of the tub and did her best to dry his body. She took the opportunity to check for wounds but found none. Satisfied that the last of the blood had been washed away, Parker wrapped the naked man in her largest fluffiest robe. Even at that, he looked ridiculous. His frame was too broad and tall for the robe to cover him properly but it was the best she could do for now.
The sedative, in combination with the alcohol, was doing its job. It was all Parker could do to get Jarod out of the bathroom and onto the bed before he collapsed. She stood at his side for several minutes, watching and waiting as Jarod’s breathing deepened into a regular rhythm. With the back of one hand against Jarod’s cheek, Parker checked his temperature before tossing a quilt over him.
Parker went on automatic pilot. She pulled a roll of garbage bags from under the sink and from a box in the medicine cabinet she took several pairs of medical gloves. Moving with a calm professionalism, Parker snapped on a pair of the gloves before picking up the bloodstained clothes that littered the bathroom floor. She found nothing in the pockets when she searched them. Stuffing the garments into a bag, she carried it with her as she left the room and quickly made her way out of the house.
She did not use her flashlight, but left it in her pocket as she walked through the night. Jarod must have gotten to Blue Cove somehow. His appearance would have attracted attention on any form of public transportation. Logic would dictate that he had driven himself.
Finding the car was easy. Parker knew where to look and found the abandoned SUV less than an hour later. There was no mistaking it for the pretender’s vehicle. A set of keys dangled from the ignition, a silver case lay on the floor of the passenger’s side and in the back seat, carefully swathed in a blanket, Parker found a dead woman.
It was Jarod’s mother. She had been shot in the heart and must have died very quickly by the looks of things. Parker wondered how far Jarod had come to reach Delaware. How long had he driven with nothing but this corpse for company?
Forcing these dark thoughts from her mind, Parker set to work. It was amazing how quickly it all came back to her. Before Parker had become a pretender-hunter, she had been an executive at corporate. Before that she had served a three-year stint as chief of security at the Centre. And before that, she had been a cleaner.
It was the skills Parker had learned then that she relied upon now. Her years as a cleaner had been difficult ones. Desperate for her father’s approval and struggling to establish herself within the Centre, Parker had been forced to work twice as hard, to be twice as good as anyone else. She had been the best cleaner the Centre ever had.
Old habits die hard. It had never occurred to Parker that only cleaners needed to keep a set of untraceable clothing hidden in a drawer. Only cleaners carried gloves at the ready. Only cleaners knew what to do when faced with a bloodstained automobile and a dead body. Parker hadn’t been a cleaner for years, yet the deadly precision that had made her great at the job, was a permanent part of her psyche. She eased back into the role as smoothly as Jarod could slip into a pretend.
Several hours later, Parker sat in a cushioned chair in her bedroom with her legs curled beneath her. Jarod’s car was gone and would never be found. His mother’s body was carefully hidden in a safe place where it would stay until Parker could arrange for a death certificate and a decent burial. Parker had salvaged what she could of Jarod’s belongings. The rest, including the clothes he had arrived in, had been destroyed. Even the garments Parker had worn during the night were gone forever.
A very hot and vigorous shower had followed. After which, Parker had propped herself in this chair to stand watch for what remained of the night. She did not sleep, but instead stared at the pretender while she reflected over everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
Her father’s reappearance on the very day Jarod’s mother was killed had little to do with coincidence. There was no such thing at the Centre, and Parker knew it. Jarod’s mother had known something. She had held some piece of information that Mr. Parker had thought was dangerous.
The older woman’s death had somehow paved the way for Parker’s father to return. The perceived risk had been eradicated. The knowledge Jarod’s mother had held was now gone forever. Parker doubted they would ever learn what those secrets had been.
By the time dawn had crept over the windowsill, Parker had made a decision. It wasn’t a conscious choice, per se, but was more of an acceptance of fate. She rose from her post and dressed quickly.
There wasn’t much time. She needed to rouse Jarod and get him functioning on some level of coherent thought. With a little luck she could get him to drink a few cups of coffee. But she would have to hurry.
Lyle was coming.
-
Seizing Destiny
Part 4
09/12/04
-
It was well after eleven o’clock at night by the time Miss Parker pulled into the driveway in front of her house. Dinner with her family had been an exhausting affair, as usual. She and her father, her uncle, whatever he was, had quickly fallen back into their old relationship. They talked without saying anything, hedging around the truth, lying to each other through omission.
Added to the strain of dealing with dear ‘Daddy’, had been the knowing, secretive looks from her twin all night. Lyle had a point, of that Parker could not argue. She had given his words a great deal of thought. All through dinner, she had found herself reflecting on the three men at the table, Daddy, Lyle, and Raines. Which of them deserved her allegiance? The answer had been simple, and incredibly depressing. Not one of them.
But Lyle’s offer had opened a tantalizing possibility. Parker’s other option was to let things continue as they had in the past. How long could she go on this way? The ‘status quo’ was slowly destroying her, had in fact been eating away at her for years. This fact had become glaringly apparent to her while she and Jarod had been on Carthis.
“Is this the legacy you want to pass on to your children?” Jarod had asked her that day at the airport.
“No,” she whispered now in her darkened car. Yet, joining forces with Lyle seemed akin to selling out to the devil. With an exasperated sigh, Parker threw open her door and stepped into the night. She didn’t need to make any decisions immediately. She would wait and see whatever it was that Lyle had to show her.
High heels clicking loudly on the sidewalk, Parker walked to the house and quickly climbed the stairs of her front porch. The light was on above the door, giving her just enough illumination to find the lock. As the tumblers clicked and the door opened, something shifted along the edges of her peripheral vision.
Parker quickly pulled her weapon and moved to investigate. Just beyond the circle of light, hunched among the shadows of her porch, was Jarod. Little more than a darker shape in the darkness, the pretender was sitting on the floor leaning against the wooden railing. His knees were pulled up so that he was hugging them to his chest. If Parker hadn’t known better, she would have sworn that Jarod was staring at the spot where she had found the body of Thomas Gates. But there was no way he could have learned the exact location.
“Jarod,” Parker growled in icy warning. “It has been one hell of a day. I’m not really in the mood to play your games.”
A strangely flat burst of laughter came from the shadows. “No games, Parker,” Jarod said. His voice sounded strange, weary and defeated. “I’m sick to death of games. They keep breaking the rules.”
A shiver ran down Parker’s spine. The tone in Jarod’s voice was quite contrary to what she had come to expect from him. The fact that his words so closely mirrored the ones Lyle had spoken earlier only magnified her uneasiness.
Crouching down beside him, Parker asked, “What are you doing here, Jarod?”
“Looking for a hole,” he said. “A deep dark hole that I can crawl into and hide forever. Maybe pull a nice big rock in over my head.” There was another rush of that eerie, cold laughter.
“I’d be only too glad to accommodate you there, Pez-head,” Parker said. She wasn’t sure how to deal with this new aspect of Jarod’s personality. So she fell into the part she’d played with him for the last half dozen years. “There are a few pits at the Centre that would fit the bill quite nicely.”
“Exactly why I came,” Jarod answered.
Parker’s concern increased several notches. Something was horribly wrong. “What has happened?” she asked. The sharpness abruptly felt from her voice to be replaced with sincere concern.
“For behold there came a pale horse and he who sat upon it had the name Death; and Hades followed with him,” Jarod intoned.
“Jarod, you’re scaring me.” Parker told him. Reaching out she grasped his hand and was startled to find his skin cool to the touch. “You’re freezing. Come inside,” she commanded. She stood and urged him up as well. Jarod offered no resistance at all, following her without comment.
Parker led Jarod across the porch toward the open door. As they passed under the light, she glanced back at him and nearly screamed at the sight she beheld. The pretender was covered in blood. His hands and shirt were covered in dried rusty stains. It was spattered across his face and into his hair where it clumped the strands together. Jarod’s dark eyes burned bright with an unseen horror.
“God,” Parker gasped. She hurried Jarod into the house, fearful of being seen. Once inside, she quickly bolted the door and pulled the curtains across the windows. The dimly lit room cast Jarod’s gruesome appearance back into shadow.
“Jarod,” Parker rasped. “What is going on?”
“I killed her.”
The whispered confession made Parker’s blood run cold.
“I let them kill her,” he said. “Then I killed them. Killed them all.”
Parker tried again to get some coherent information from the tall man. “Jarod. Tell me who was killed.” As she spoke, Parker took Jarod’s hand once more and forced herself not to shudder at the dried crust on his fingertips.
“My mother.” Jarod answered flatly. “Willie killed her. Enigma.”
“Damn,” Parker sighed. Tears sprang to her eyes and for a long minute she was at a complete loss as to what to say or do.
Jarod laughed again, that chilling cackle. Parker abruptly realized that the pretender was in shock. That was why his flesh was so cold and his eyes so bright. She acted without thinking, moving quickly through her house while Jarod stood in the livingroom. When she returned a moment later, he was swaying ever so slightly on his feet.
“Here, take this.” Parker handed Jarod a single tablet.
He took it without question and swallowed it with the shot of bourbon she offered him.
“Come on,” Parker said. She guided him to her bedroom and into the bath where she turned on the spigot in the tub. “A hot shower will make you feel better. Get undressed.”
Jarod was moving slowly, but doing as he was told, when Parker left to give him some privacy. A quick look at her watch told her she had about ten minutes before the Valium she had just given Jarod began to do its work. With rapid efficiency Parker set to her task.
She peeled off her dress and tossed it across a chair carelessly. Her clothes were abandoned as she stripped out of them. Yanking open a bottom drawer, Parker pulled out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. These were followed by a simple pair of canvass shoes, easily recognizable as inexpensive blue-light specials. Price tags still dangled from one shoelace.
Parker dressed quickly in the cheap but common attire. Pulling her hair back into a ponytail, Parker stood beside the bathroom door and waited. When Jarod had been in the shower for nine minutes, Parker pushed open the bathroom door and entered without knocking.
“Jarod?” she called cautiously. Under the sound of running water, Parker could hear a muffled sob. Pulling aside the shower curtain, Parker looked down to find Jarod curled in one corner of the tub. He had his knees hugged close to his chest and his face buried in his arms.
Grabbing a towel from the rack, Parker helped Jarod out of the tub and did her best to dry his body. She took the opportunity to check for wounds but found none. Satisfied that the last of the blood had been washed away, Parker wrapped the naked man in her largest fluffiest robe. Even at that, he looked ridiculous. His frame was too broad and tall for the robe to cover him properly but it was the best she could do for now.
The sedative, in combination with the alcohol, was doing its job. It was all Parker could do to get Jarod out of the bathroom and onto the bed before he collapsed. She stood at his side for several minutes, watching and waiting as Jarod’s breathing deepened into a regular rhythm. With the back of one hand against Jarod’s cheek, Parker checked his temperature before tossing a quilt over him.
Parker went on automatic pilot. She pulled a roll of garbage bags from under the sink and from a box in the medicine cabinet she took several pairs of medical gloves. Moving with a calm professionalism, Parker snapped on a pair of the gloves before picking up the bloodstained clothes that littered the bathroom floor. She found nothing in the pockets when she searched them. Stuffing the garments into a bag, she carried it with her as she left the room and quickly made her way out of the house.
She did not use her flashlight, but left it in her pocket as she walked through the night. Jarod must have gotten to Blue Cove somehow. His appearance would have attracted attention on any form of public transportation. Logic would dictate that he had driven himself.
Finding the car was easy. Parker knew where to look and found the abandoned SUV less than an hour later. There was no mistaking it for the pretender’s vehicle. A set of keys dangled from the ignition, a silver case lay on the floor of the passenger’s side and in the back seat, carefully swathed in a blanket, Parker found a dead woman.
It was Jarod’s mother. She had been shot in the heart and must have died very quickly by the looks of things. Parker wondered how far Jarod had come to reach Delaware. How long had he driven with nothing but this corpse for company?
Forcing these dark thoughts from her mind, Parker set to work. It was amazing how quickly it all came back to her. Before Parker had become a pretender-hunter, she had been an executive at corporate. Before that she had served a three-year stint as chief of security at the Centre. And before that, she had been a cleaner.
It was the skills Parker had learned then that she relied upon now. Her years as a cleaner had been difficult ones. Desperate for her father’s approval and struggling to establish herself within the Centre, Parker had been forced to work twice as hard, to be twice as good as anyone else. She had been the best cleaner the Centre ever had.
Old habits die hard. It had never occurred to Parker that only cleaners needed to keep a set of untraceable clothing hidden in a drawer. Only cleaners carried gloves at the ready. Only cleaners knew what to do when faced with a bloodstained automobile and a dead body. Parker hadn’t been a cleaner for years, yet the deadly precision that had made her great at the job, was a permanent part of her psyche. She eased back into the role as smoothly as Jarod could slip into a pretend.
Several hours later, Parker sat in a cushioned chair in her bedroom with her legs curled beneath her. Jarod’s car was gone and would never be found. His mother’s body was carefully hidden in a safe place where it would stay until Parker could arrange for a death certificate and a decent burial. Parker had salvaged what she could of Jarod’s belongings. The rest, including the clothes he had arrived in, had been destroyed. Even the garments Parker had worn during the night were gone forever.
A very hot and vigorous shower had followed. After which, Parker had propped herself in this chair to stand watch for what remained of the night. She did not sleep, but instead stared at the pretender while she reflected over everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
Her father’s reappearance on the very day Jarod’s mother was killed had little to do with coincidence. There was no such thing at the Centre, and Parker knew it. Jarod’s mother had known something. She had held some piece of information that Mr. Parker had thought was dangerous.
The older woman’s death had somehow paved the way for Parker’s father to return. The perceived risk had been eradicated. The knowledge Jarod’s mother had held was now gone forever. Parker doubted they would ever learn what those secrets had been.
By the time dawn had crept over the windowsill, Parker had made a decision. It wasn’t a conscious choice, per se, but was more of an acceptance of fate. She rose from her post and dressed quickly.
There wasn’t much time. She needed to rouse Jarod and get him functioning on some level of coherent thought. With a little luck she could get him to drink a few cups of coffee. But she would have to hurry.
Lyle was coming.
