LOCATION:

PARKING LOT

JOE'S SPORTS VIEW CAFE

CINCINNATI, OH

DATE:

1/12/00

TIME:

8:53 PM

You're a fan of "The Pretender," too, right? Yeah, I know. I like the show too. It's great, you know? A wonderful show. But, as Miss Parker escorted all of us out to the unmarked Centre van, I wished it would stay that way--just a TV show. I mean, here I was, getting into a van, one that was owned by the Centre and populated entirely by Centre personnel and/or former residents, along with my hapless friend Angie.

The really scary thing was that no one had even noticed any of this--Miss Parker and her gun, the fact that she was escorting this guy out in handcuffs, the way that Sam the Sweeper had been looming over me the whole way out of the bar, in case anybody made a wrong move. Nobody'd even glanced up and seen the tenseness or the forced order to the positions in our little crowd. I was beginning to understand how robberies could be carried off without a single witness seeing a thing beforehand.

And nobody noticed it--well, except for those of us who were immediate participants in the event--when she pulled out her gun again after we left the building. There was nobody to notice anything--the entire parking lot of Joe's Sports View Cafe was empty, at least of people. It was, however, filled with cars and trucks--and I was wishing to be getting into any one of them besides the one I was actually getting into.

"You can't just take us like this," I protested. "This is America, for God's sake!"

"America?" Jarod actually laughed aloud at my admittedly feeble protest. He stopped walking and turned back to face me. "The Centre runs America." I heard a certain amount of hysteria in his voice. "Remember, I'm a citizen, too--well, I was."

"Move it, Uncle Sam." Miss Parker grabbed hold of his arm and forced him forward the few steps to the van, even as she said to me, "Sorry, girlfriend--the wrong place, the wrong time, and all that."

Another Sweeper, Willie, materialized from inside the van, appearing from behind the double doors in the back of the van, holding the doors open.

Miss Parker had her gun on Jarod the whole time. I, for my part, was being a nice, quiet little hostage, mostly due to the fact that Sam was practically breathing down the back of my neck.

"You're not seriously going to bring them in," Sydney said, indicating Angie and I. "They're just--"

"Potential witnesses, Syd." Miss Parker interrupted, turning Jarod around to face the van. "Who knows how much classified information your little science fair project has already enlightened them with? Blame Jarod, not me." She jammed the gun into the small of Jarod's back. "Get in."

"Shoot me," Jarod said, his voice low. "Because I'm not going back there." I couldn't see his face--he was facing the van, not me--but I could read in the firm set of his shoulders that he was determined. He really meant it.

"Don't test me, Jarod," Miss Parker warned. "Now. Get. In. The. Van." She cocked the gun.

Jarod whirled around, ducking low to the ground, even as he lunged at Miss Parker, knocking her off-balance as he collided with her.

"Jarod!" Sydney shouted, even as Jarod forced Miss Parker back, leaning into her with one strong shoulder, shoving the barrel of the gun back in her direction. "Parker, don't shoot!" Sydney ran forward, intent on intervening in what could easily become a worse situation than it already was

Miss Parker managed to keep her balance a little--she was only knocked to her knees by a move that was probably meant to send her careening backwards onto her mini-skirted ass. And then Jarod was on past her, heading for the back of the lot, and never mind the handcuffs. Sydney was running after him.

And I remembered my hostage status--even as Sam reached around me from behind. He wrapped one beefy arm around my throat; the other hand held the gun. And within a half-second of Sydney's shout, I could feel the cold barrel of that gun pressing into my temple.

"Let go of her!" Angie cried, seeing my plight. Willie reached out, grabbed her, and started forcing her in the van.

My hands automatically went for the arm that Sam had around my neck, but it was like trying to remove myself from the implacable grip of a statue. I wanted to cheer Jarod on, but . . . you understand. This whole hostage thing was making me selfish.

"Doctor, get out of the way!" Sam yelled at Sydney. "Jarod!"

And I'm damned if I know how all of Joe's patrons managed to miss this whole production in the parking lot. Just when we could've used some actual witnesses to dial 911. It figures. I've never had good luck, though, and I had a feeling that Jarod's luck wasn't the greatest, either. Luck, hell--the whole parking lot was one big sheet of ice, and it was slowing Jarod up considerably. You can't run where you can't even walk, after all.

With Angie out of the way, Willie took off after Jarod, his own gun drawn.

"Jarod, you stupid shit!" Miss Parker got to her feet, immediately training her gun on Jarod. "Stop or Sam shoots the kid!" That's her--she's not even the one with the gun to my head, and here she is, telling Jarod I'm gonna buy it if he doesn't do what she says.

Even as Jarod stopped running, Willie tackled him from behind. Jarod hit the ice hard--he couldn't reach out to break his fall, what with the handcuffs. That, and Willie landed on top of him. It was like watching touch football gone awry. Willie got off of Jarod just far enough so that he could whack Jarod a good one on the back of his head with the butt of the gun. I saw Jarod go completely still as Willie turned him over on his back.

And then I didn't see anything else because Sam turned me around and practically tossed me in the back of the van with Angie, who was crouched by the back seat. Just before the door closed, I saw why she hadn't tried to exit through the front doors--there was another Sweeper seated in the driver's seat. I landed on my knees and scrambled over to Angie; we grabbed onto each other like a couple of frightened kids at a horror movie.

The Sweeper up front watched us in the rear-view mirror, impassively.

"You OK?" Angie asked me, and then the whole thing just kind of hit me and I started shivering uncontrollably. Angie held me tighter, offering what little comfort she could. I just kept feeling the gun to my head and all the terror that came with it--

"I thought he was going to--" I began, and then the back door opened, letting in a wash of cold air that felt suprisingly good against my hot face.

"Get him inside," Miss Parker barked, even as Willie and Sam brought Jarod into the van. They stepped up and in on either side of him, their hands under his arms, half-escorting and half-carrying him--he was semi-conscious from the blow to the head Willie had given him. In the glare from the overhead light, I could see blood darkening his hair in the back.

Angie and me only held each other tighter as Willie and Sam threw Jarod to the floor of the van beside us.

Sydney climbed in after Willie and Sam; Miss Parker followed, pulling the doors closed after her. "Drive! Drive!" she yelled to the Sweeper up front.

The van lurched into motion.

There were two benchlike seats in the back of the van, facing each other; there were also two rows of seats facing the front. Angie and I were huddled beneath the back of the last seat facing the front. Miss Parker sat down on the bench closest to us as she returned her gun to its holster again. Willie and Sam went up front, to the seats just behind the driver.

Jarod was dead to the world--he'd landed on his left shoulder, with his back facing us, and hadn't moved since.

Sydney knelt down beside Jarod, just in front of us. "Jarod?" He put a hand on Jarod's shoulder and turned him over. Jarod was so close to me now that his head and shoulder were actually touching my jeans-clad leg.

"Sydney!" Miss Parker snapped. "Sit down!"

"I need to see how badly he's hurt--" I could see actual concern for Jarod in the older man's eyes--and of all the people here tonight, Sydney's eyes had been the only ones to reflect that emotion at all.

"He's a big boy, Syd." Miss Parker reached into a blazer pocket. I wondered what she'd pull out this time--a stun-gun? Mace? No--just her silver cigarette case. "He'll live. Now sit down!"

Reluctantly, Sydney got to his feet--right when the van made a particularly sharp turn. Sydney almost fell, and he would've landed right on top of us, too. But he reached out and caught his balance on the seat-back that rose above Angie and I.

Miss Parker shook her head in annoyance as she watched this whole display.

What she didn't see was Sydney's look--he glanced from us to Jarod, and back again, pointedly. The look clearly said 'Help him.' Then the psychologist turned around and sat down on the bench across from Miss Parker.

Parker, meanwhile, had been scrounging around in her pockets, looking for something, holding a cigarette in her other hand. It was pretty obvious what she was looking for and not finding. My suspicions were confirmed when she looked down at me, smiled, and said, "I know you have a lighter."

I reached into the breast pocket of my vest, moving slowly just in case anybody got the wrong idea. Miss Parker leaned down as I reached out to hand her my black Zippo. She lit her coffin-nail and handed it back.

Miss Parker's first smoke-filled exhalation was a sigh of relief. I wondered if she would be nicer now, then concluded that even Marlboros couldn't perform miracles.

"We're going to the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Airport, aren't we?" I whispered to Angie. She nodded, as I added, "They probably came here that way--private corporate jet." I shook my head. "We are so doomed."

"Do you think they'll kill us?" Angie asked me.

I shrugged. I knew that, the closer we got to the Centre, the smaller our odds of actually surviving this ordeal became. Once inside the Centre--my God, if they could keep Jarod there forever, what chance did we have of ever making it out? And that's if they didn't just pull a Mafia and shoot us on the spot.

The van was going pretty fast--I surmised that we were already on I-75, heading into Kentucky. With no windows in the back, it was hard to tell. But once we did hit the E-way (if we hadn't already), I knew it would be about forty minutes to the airport. I doubted the driver would speed, either--there was always the risk of being pulled over by one of Cincinnati's Finest--or Kentucky's, depending on which side of the Ohio river we were on. And you try explaining a van full of nondescript "government" guys, a stressed-out woman with a concealed weapon, an unconscious handcuffed man, and two kidnapped college girls. Somehow, I didn't think they'd take the chance.

Up front, the driver turned on the radio. The distressingly normal voice of Jay Gilbert, a DJ at WEBN, filled the van. It was decidedly out of place, here, where I was being abducted with my best friend and the title character of our favorite TV show.

"Turn that shit down," Miss Parker snarled. Immediately, the volume was cut.

Beside me, Jarod moaned in his unnatural sleep. I wondered if he was having some kind of nightmare, or if the metal floor of the van was just hurting his already-wounded head. Sydney and Miss Parker were both watching as I took off my vest and rolled it up. I slid the makeshift pillow under Jarod's head.

"Parker," Sydney began. "Can I--"

"No." She took another drag off of her cigarette. "You're not going near him, Sydney. Not after the way you were acting tonight." She shook her head. "Jarod calls and asks you to meet him--"

"I could have brought Jarod in, without him being hurt, and without these poor girls--"

"'Girls?'" I said. "I'm 25, for God's sake." They both turned and looked at me, as though they'd forgotten I was there again. "I know I don't look it, but--"

"You're the hostage in this little performance, remember?" Miss Parker informed me. "And it's not a speaking role. So shut up." She turned on Sydney again, this time accusing him in a lower voice. "If the Tech Lab hadn't intercepted that phone call--and you'd even gone ahead and booked the jet without telling me!" She pointed her cigarette at him accusingly. "You're only here because I couldn't trust you enough to leave you behind! And don't you forget it."

I was beginning to understand just why Miss Parker was so angry tonight. She hated nothing more than people going behind her back.

"At least take off the handcuffs," Sydney pleaded. "My God, Parker, he's not going anywhere. There are three armed men in this van, not counting you or I. And he's probably got a concussion. I'd be able to tell for sure if you'd let me examine him."

"You're not going near him!" she repeated. "Someone at the Centre's been helping him, and I'm beginning to really believe it's been you all along." When she paused, her full lips were pressed together in a thin line of anger. "Your baby boy will just have to tough it out until we get him back in his playpen."

"Of course someone's going to get hurt," Sydney said, "when you go in with three Sweepers and make a big production out of it--and how do you think the Tower will respond when you show up with your two 'potential witnesses'?"

"'Potential witness,'" I muttered. "Sounds a lot better than 'hostage.'"

"How do you think the Tower will respond when I tell them about that phone call?" Miss Parker retorted. "You'll be lucky if they just hold a T-Board in your honor."

Sydney frowned at the thought, prudently abandoning all arguments save one. "The handcuffs?"

Miss Parker knew Sydney was right about that much, at least--Jarod wasn't going anywhere. "Oh, all right," she snapped. "I'll save Houdini the trouble." She smashed the remainder of her cigarette into the ashtray in the arm of the bench, and then got up and walked across the van to where we were, carefully keeping her balance in the moving vehicle.

She knelt down beside Jarod, her trench-coat flowing out behind her like a long silver cape. She was so close to me that I could smell her perfume. It wasn't Chanel No. 5, either, as the TV show had once asserted. I could've easily reached out and touched her, but I didn't dare--between the glare of warning she gave me and the fact that there were three operatives up front, I was intimidated.

Miss Parker pulled a small key out of the inside pocket of her blazer and pushed Jarod over onto his side again so she could get at the handcuffs behind his back. With a small click, the handcuffs were off. She sat back on her heels and looked at me . . . looked down at the handcuffs in her hands . . . and then looked back at me again.

Miss Parker smiled.

"Oh, no," I said, shaking my head. "Uh-uh. Whatever it is you're thinking--no."

"Yeah, really," asserted Angie. "We won't pull any tricks--we promise."

"Oh," Miss Parker said through her smile. "It's not your tricks I'm worried about."

We all looked down at the still-unconscious Jarod.

"What are you thinking, Parker?" Sydney asked, his tone ominous. "What are you going to do?"

But she ignored him, still focusing on me. "Do you ever watch the show?"

"Huh?" I said, intelligently--I hadn't expected her to say that, of all things--and then, "Yeah..."

"Then you'll understand why I have to do this!" Before I could even move, I saw the flash of metal--and one handcuff-bracelet closed around my left wrist. The other one went back around Jarod's right wrist. Miss Parker sat back on her heels again, smiling triumphantly.

"What the hell--" I looked down at Jarod and the new metal connection between us. "Actually, no, I don't understand why you had to do that."

"Now let's see him try to escape," she told her captive audience. "I think it would be much more fun if Jarod had the hostage, don't you?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" I asked Miss Parker.

"Oh, you're quite the smart-ass, aren't you? You remind me a little of myself when I was your age." She shook her head, the smile finally disappearing. "Bad attitude, cigarettes, and all. I suggest you lose that attitude around me."

Sydney apparently couldn't resist adding something to this conversation. "And exactly how quietly would you take to being a hostage, Miss Parker?"

She glared at me, knowing he was right, as she rolled Jarod over onto his back again. He was still out cold. "It's time for Show and Tell, Jarod. And since you can't 'tell,' you're damn well gonna 'show.'" She leaned down and began to go through his pockets, methodically. She produced a little red notebook from the inside pocket of his leather jacket; digging in further, she found three Christmas-theme Pez dispensers. "It's like mugging a child," she muttered, as a Santa dispenser looked up at her accusingly. She tossed everything she'd located on the bench behind her.

In short order, a plastic neon-yellow "Virtual Pet" key-ring, a wallet, a half-pound bag of special Olympic M & M's, and six unopened Pez lemon refill packages joined the other items.

After she was done rifling through his pockets, she expertly patted him down, just in case he had anything hidden anywhere else. "Not a single weapon on him," she concluded, coming up empty-handed. "Unless he's trying to kill somebody with calories." She snorted in disgust as she got to her feet. "Wouldn't surprise me. He's managed to synthesize just about everything else into a weapon." She sat down next to her small pile of trophies and started to sort through the more relevant ones.

Sydney looked on, his face anxious.

Miss Parker opened the red notebook first and paged through it. "No newspaper clippings, no bizarre chemical equations?" She was honestly puzzled. "What the hell is this?" She held out the small book so that Sydney could see it.

"It's a journal," Sydney said, his eyes narrowing. "Jarod's diary. As far as I know, he's never kept one before."

"Perfect," she said, snatching the book back out of Sydney's reach. "Just perfect. Probably all about his traumas at the hands of the Centre." Her tone was sarcastic. "It's a good thing this didn't fall into the wrong hands."

"It probably just did," I murmured, watching Miss Parker open the notebook again. Fortunately, she didn't hear me. Sydney heard me, though--he glanced over at me and the look in his eyes didn't contradict me at all.

Miss Parker set the notebook aside and reached for the wallet. She opened it and pulled out a wad of cash. She flipped through the little plastic card-holders, only to produce a credit card; I could clearly see the light reflect off of a 3D hologram of a globe that had the words THE CENTRE superimposed on it. Below that was a VISA logo. She gave a short bark of laughter as she returned it to its slot, but otherwise offered no comment.

At the back of the wallet, she found a small card with a few sequences of numbers on it. "This one's my calling card number!" she cried, as she yanked the card out. "And this one's my ATM account! And this one's my Social Security number! And . . . and I don't even know what this last one is!" She glared down at Jarod. "Goddammit!"

But Jarod was still unconscious. Angie and I watched her, wide-eyed, leaning towards each other like frightened kids at a horror movie again. (And what was the fictional terror of any horror movie when compared to that inspired by the real-life Miss Parker?) Sydney just watched her, his expression neutral, obviously used to such explosions of rage.

Miss Parker tried to regain some of her composure as she said to Sydney, "Well, at least this explains those ATM withdrawals I haven't been making." She put the small white card in her inside blazer pocket. Along with the cash (hell, I figured maybe it was enough to cover her calling-card bill or something). "Not to mention all those calling card calls that I never made." She smiled ruefully. "Hell, Syd, that call he made to you tonight--it's probably charged to me, too."

"We didn't talk long."

"I know that, Syd." She brushed a strand of hair back from her face. "I listened to it. Very interesting conversation. Especially that part where you promised to come alone."

"I was just trying to allay his fears. There's no way Jarod--or anyone else, for that matter--would show up, knowing he would be surrounded by Sweepers." Sydney spread his hands in a gesture of defeat.

"Oh, yeah," Miss Parker snapped. "And I'm sure you were going to tell me all about it, right after you'd finished secretly booking the Centre jet."

"Actually, I--"

A muffled but decidedly frantic beeping sound interrupted Sydney's effort to justify himself. He fell silent as everyone looked around, trying to locate the source of the shrill sound.

I knew what the noise was; beside me, Angie stifled a snicker--she did, too. My God, was this situation surreal or what? We were being kidnapped and I was a hostage and it really wasn't funny . . . but it was funny. Know what I mean?

Miss Parker actually reached for her pager before her serious expression degenerated into a smirk. Her hand stopped halfway to her blazer and changed course. She felt behind her and produced Jarod's "Virtual Pet" key-chain. Now, out in the open, the virtual creature's beeping only seemed louder. "I'd forgotten about this damn thing." She shook her head in disgust, and muttered, "Mugging a child? Try 'pre-schooler.'" She grimaced as the beeping continued. "What the hell is this thing, anyway?"

"It's a Gigapet," Sydney said.

Miss Parker glared at him. "And how the hell do you know that?"

I felt Jarod move--there was this faint pressure on the handcuff-chain that hadn't been there before. I glanced down at him--his brow was furrowed in concentration--it was like he was trying to make himself regain consciousness. "You would wake up because your damn Gigapet needs something," I muttered.

I looked up again in time to see Sydney shrug as he answered with, "Broots's daughter has one."

Miss Parker held the small key-chain closer, squinting at the tiny computer-screen. "What a waste of modern technology. And how in God's name to you turn it off?"

"That, I don't know for sure." Sydney was smiling that one little smile he does on the show, when something amuses him. And God help him if Miss Parker noticed.

Miss Parker glared down at the tiny virtual life she held in her hand. "What is this thing, anyway? A chicken? A duck?" She smacked it with her other hand. "Dammit, shut it off!" she yelled over the shrill beeping as she tossed it to Sydney.

Sydney caught it in one hand and pressed one of the buttons, still smiling a little. "It wants attention. And I think it's a penguin." The beeping stopped.

"A penguin? Jarod has a pet penguin? Which exit ramp was marked 'The Twilight Zone,' anyway? Because we are definitely hell and gone from reality." She leaned back against the side of the van and shook her head tiredly. "I'll give that thing 'attention,' she muttered. "I'll shoot it like a clay pigeon."

Beside me, Jarod gave a really good tug on the handcuff connecting us--his natural reaction upon regaining consciousness was to reach for the wound at the back of his head. But he'd barely begun the move before he detected the handcuff; as I watched, he returned his right hand to his side and used his left hand to inspect the head-injury. He frowned at the sight of blood on his fingertips, and then glanced up at me.

I shrugged, trying to indicate that I had nothing to do with any of it--the wound, the handcuffs, the National Debt, I don't know.

I looked away from him and surveyed the other passengers in the back of the van. Miss Parker's eyes were still closed--God, she looked tired--and Sydney was still watching Jarod's penguin cavorting around on-screen, or whatever it was doing. Angie was watching Jarod over my shoulder.

Jarod's dark eyes narrowed even as they took in his current surroundings. "Where the hell--" he whispered. His eyes were kind of glazed--he was awake, yeah, but barely, and he seemed pretty disoriented. I don't think he expected to wake up here, of all places.

And I, for one, didn't want to be the one to tell him the bad news.

But he figured it out for himself as he raised his head a little and saw Sydney and Miss Parker. The dazed look in his eyes disappeared as the reality of the situation hit him. He grimaced and let his head fall back onto the leather vest-pillow I'd made for him earlier.

I felt someone watching us. I glanced up, right into Sydney's eyes. Jarod hadn't made a sound that anybody'd been able to hear, besides Angie and I, but Sydney had known he was awake, anyway. Sydney didn't alert Miss Parker, either. I (somewhat sarcastically) concluded that the older man just wanted Jarod's headache to go away, before Miss Parker laid into him and made it worse.

I looked back down at Jarod just in time to catch the glare he was giving Sydney. "You said--" Jarod's voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, but Miss Parker's eyes flew open at the sound of it.

"Well, well, if it isn't Penguin Boy," she smiled, her tone deceptively sweet. "How's the head?"

Jarod touched the back of his head with his left hand again, and winced. "I'll live," he said, his voice still low. "Better luck next time."

Her tone sharpened a little. "If I'd been the one to do it, you'd be dead right now." She leaned forward again, her hands clenching into fists in her lap.

"Where--" Jarod cleared his throat and tried again, his voice stronger now. "Where are we?"

"You're the genius," Miss Parker smirked. "You figure it out."

"Parker," Sydney said, shaking his head in annoyance. "We're on our way back to Blue Cove, Jarod. Back to the Centre."