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Disclaimer: The characters Miss Parker, Sydney, Jarod, Broots etc. and the fictional Centre, are all property of MTM and NBC Productions and used without permission. I'm not making any money out of this and no infringement is intended.
Part XXIV By Rebeckah
Part XXIV By Rebeckah
Sam, Major Charles, and JJ sat in the silver Jeep in the parking lot of a McDonalds, eating a meal. Well, JJ was eating, Sam and the Major just picked at their meals while they brooded morosely on what to do next. None of them noticed the maroon Volvo pulling into the parking lot of the fast food establishment.
Emily, like most of her family, seemed to thrive on next to no sleep and she’d awakened a few hours after they’d arrived and Broots’ relatives. Debbie had slept most of the way to Rochester, so she too woke a few hours later. Rather than risk waking people up, Emily decided to take Debbie to McDonalds for breakfast. Debbie was thrilled, and it was the two of them who pulled into the parking place to the left of the silver Jeep in the maroon Volvo.
"Hey, isn’t that Sam?" Debbie asked curiously, staring at the dark haired man in the driver’s seat.
"Sam who?" Emily asked, wondering if Debbie really thought she would know who ‘Sam’ was.
"Sweeper Sam, from the Centre!" Debbie explained absently as she stared harder at the man. He seemed to sense her gaze because he looked directly at her.
"It is! It is!" She exclaimed excitedly. "Hi Sam!" She waved, smiling broadly.
"Debbie don’t!" Emily protested, restarting the car and preparing to pull out of the parking lot.
"No, he helped Miss Parker. I heard Daddy tell Sydney about it." Debbie justified herself with all of the hurt only a child could muster.
"Who’s that with him?" Emily asked warily, noting that there were more people in the jeep.
"I don’t know, but maybe they can tell us where Miss Parker is!" Before Emily could stop her Debbie was out of the Volvo and pulling open Sam’s door.
"Sam!" Debbie declared happily.
"Who’s that?" The question came from both JJ and the Major at the same moment.
"Hello, Debbie." Sam said gravely. "I don’t think you should be here right now."
"Emily was just getting me some breakfast." Debbie answered him, looking hurt again.
"Emily?" Major Charles repeated, trying to hold down a dawning hope.
"Debbie, I don’t think-----" Emily’s voice trailed off and her brown eyes widened as she caught a glimpse of the man in the passenger side of the Jeep.
"Daddy?" She asked, tears springing to her eyes.
"Emily?" He breathed, with similar tears. "Is that you, baby?"
Before anyone else could move the Major was out of the car and Emily was in his arms for a fiercely joyous reunion.
"Daddy, we thought you were dead!" She told him, looking at him like he would vanish if she took her eyes off of him for a second.
"No, I wasn’t in the plane that crashed, but by the time I could get to our rendezvous point you and your mother were gone!" He explained sadly. "Oh, baby, I didn’t think I was ever going to find you again!"
"Me either!" She admitted to his shoulder as he hugged her again. Sam, Debbie and JJ watched them with amazement. Sam understood first, remembering bits and pieces about Jarod’s family that Miss Parker had let slip in his presence. Then JJ realized that this was, in a way at least, his sister and climbed out of the jeep smiling broadly.
"Why are they hugging?" Debbie asked JJ, as he came to stand beside her. She tried to whisper, but her question was heard by all.
"This is my daughter, young lady." The Major explained to Debbie. "And we haven’t seen each other since she was close to your age."
"I wouldn’t like it if my Daddy went away and didn’t come back." Debbie decided solemnly.
"I didn’t like it either." Emily confessed to the girl. "But my Daddy couldn’t help it."
"Oh." Debbie looked like she was trying to decide if that made things all right or not.
"Emily, I’d like you to meet JJ." The Major gestured to the boy who slowly moved closer. "He’s your brother."
"Brother?!"
"I’m Jarod’s clone." JJ announced gravely. "Dad says that that means we’re identical twins born a long time apart, so I’m his son and your brother."
"So I finally get a brother I can be with!" Emily smiled her welcome and moved to hug JJ, much to his dismay. "And I get a little brother to boot! I’m not the baby anymore!" She grinned mischievously. JJ looked like he wasn’t sure this was a good thing or not.
"Look, let me get Debbie something to eat for breakfast, and then you can follow me to her aunt and uncle’s place. I think we all have some catching up to do." Emily suggested impulsively.
"We all?" Sam asked pointedly.
"My daddy and Sydney are here too." Debbie told him. "They had to run away after Mr. Raines tried to kidnap me. But Daddy saved me."
"Broots and Sydney have left the Centre too." Emily explained more clearly. "They felt it was necessary after Debbie was kidnapped and we retrieved her. We’re looking for Miss Parker now."
JJ’s face fell and he opened his mouth to tell them she was gone, but his father quelled him with a shake of his head.
"We’ll share all of the news when we’re all together, okay son?" The Major explained gently. JJ nodded obediently.
"I just wish we had better news to share." Sam and Emily said in unison.
******************
Catherine tried to reach her daughter mentally. She could feel Angelina’s pain, and she knew that her daughter loved this man, in spite of her words, but she couldn’t get past the walls her daughter had raised in her mine. Once again she found herself mourning the years apart and wondering what had happened to her daughter to make her so hard and self contained. And, once again, she found herself wondering if she really wanted to know the answers to those questions.
Jarod looked away from the two women, his chocolate brown eyes nearly black with emotion. The primary emotion was hurt, but Catherine sensed that he was feeling somewhat unfairly attacked as well. Well, she could understand that, men aren’t the most observant creatures at the best of times, and if you brought his emotions Into play you could just about guarantee he’d make an ass of himself. She would have smiled if she’d known how closely her sentiments echoed those that Major Charles had told his son just days ago.
"Angelina, don’t you think you’re being a little unfair?" Catherine asked her daughter gently.
"You don’t know anything about it, Mother." Parker answered harshly, refusing to look away from the window. "You weren’t even there for most of my life!"
Catherine reeled with the pain of that attack, even though she realized that her daughter didn’t mean it.
"Dear, I had amnesia after that attack on the elevator. I didn’t remember anything until I saw they boy this morning." She managed to keep her voice even and loving.
"How could you forget me?" Parker demanded, finally turning away from the window to stare at her mother. The woman looking at her wasn’t 30 some odd years old, though, she was a little girl and full of hurt.
"I don’t know, darling." Catherine’s eyes radiated just as much hurt. "I don’t know how or why it happened, all I know was that until I followed my feeling that someone needed me up north, I had forgotten all about you, and your father, and the Centre."
"What feeling?" Parker felt uneasy, sensing that there was something threatening about her mother’s hunch.
"It was almost like I could hear you calling for me, although you sounded like my little girl, not like you do now, and, oddly enough, I could hear a man calling for me too. I----" Catherine’s voice trailed off as she remembered, once again, what Sam had said about Angelina killing her twin brother.
"That was your brother I heard, wasn’t it?" Catherine asked sadly, but with no anger. "My little Daniel wasn’t stillborn at all, was he?"
"Daniel? Is that what you were going to name him?" Parker asked her mother, desperately stalling for time.
"It was him, wasn’t it? Tell me, Angelina, it’ll eat away at you until you do." Catherine kept her eyes locked on her daughter’s and Jarod watched in amazement as Parker’s face crumpled and she began to cry.
"Yes, Mama, I killed him." She admitted, sounding more like a little girl than the cold, hard woman Jarod was used to seeing.
"You had no choice." Jarod insisted, his eyes dark now with worry rather than hurt. "He would have killed you if you hadn’t."
"No, it was JJ he threatened." She wept.
"Oh, and those bruises on your jaw and wrist were from Sam?" Jarod demanded astutely.
"He just wanted me to love him!" Parker burst out. "Oh, God, Mama, I felt it all when the bullet hit him. He was so hurt and he couldn’t understand why I didn’t love him."
"Oh, my poor baby!" Catherine cursed inwardly when the cuffs kept her from being able to hold her daughter like she wanted to, but she was able to grab Parker’s hand and hold it tightly.
"But Mama, I killed him." She looked at her mother, her eyes full of remorse and faint confusion.
"I believe Jarod when he says you had no choice, Angelina." Catherine kept her eyes steadily on her daughter and her face full of love and compassion.
"Oh, Mama, I’m so tired." Parker sighed, leaning her head on her mother’s shoulder. Catherine was able to reach high enough to stroke her daughter’s hair and she soothed her with her thoughts and her words.
"It’s okay, baby. Mama’s here now and you’re going to be fine." Catherine noticed Jarod’s look of amazement and asked, quietly. "Is she asleep?"
"Yes, but how?"
"It’s a mother’s trick." Catherine dismissed his question airily. Jarod’s eyes narrowed fractionally, telling her that he wasn’t convinced, but then he looked at Parker and smiled a little.
"Whatever it was, I’m glad. It’s not good for her to be so upset." He told Catherine bluntly.
"Maybe now that she’s finally told me, she can start to heal." Catherine speculated.
"That’s not all she has to heal from." Jarod told her darkly.
"Tell me." Catherine responded promptly. "Tell me what I’ve missed."
Jarod sighed, where to begin?
"Well," he started slowly. "After you died…"
**********************
"Ma’am?" Alexander kept his voice down, even though he was in the front of the plane where none of the captives could possibly overhear him.
"Yes, Alexander."
"She’s got the gift, just like her mother." He told his leader smugly. "I overheard them talking about it."
"Parker and Jarod?" Marion was frankly amazed, she hadn’t expected Parker to open up, even to Jarod.
"No, Parker and her mother." Alexander corrected her.
"That’s impossible! Catherine Parker is dead!"
"No, Ma’am." Alexander answered slowly, beginning to worry that he was in serious trouble now. "We picked her up with Jarod and Parker. They were all in the bedroom together."
"Catherine Parker? Alive?" Marion was silent for a long moment, increasing Alexander’s worry. Her next words didn’t soothe him much.
"I’m not happy that you waited until now to tell me this, Alexander. I do not like surprises. However, you at least told me in time for me to make some preparations. Remember not to make this mistake again."
"Yes Ma’am." Alexander was relieved that the rebuke was so mild. "We’re about three quarters of the way to you now."
"Good. I’ll be waiting." Marion disconnected the phone abruptly, her eyes narrowed in thought.
Alexander hung up the phone and made his way back to his seat, feeling like a man who’d been reprieved from a particularly nasty death sentence.
********************
"Where are they?" Raines demanded frantically over the phone. "Mutumbo is on his way here right now, and I’ve got to have them in my hands before he gets here!"
"Sir, I don’t know." The Sweeper said solidly, praying inwardly that he wasn’t going to wind up in the renewal wing for this fiasco. "The house was empty, door open, when we got there. Someone had thrown a sleep gas in through one of the bedroom windows, but other that that we’re without information."
"It’s the Pagode." Raines mused desperately. "It must be! Get the Centre jet ready and get your best team together. We’re going to Berlin."
‘If nothing else,’ Raines thought silently. ‘I’ll be on a different continent from Mutumbo.’
Emily, like most of her family, seemed to thrive on next to no sleep and she’d awakened a few hours after they’d arrived and Broots’ relatives. Debbie had slept most of the way to Rochester, so she too woke a few hours later. Rather than risk waking people up, Emily decided to take Debbie to McDonalds for breakfast. Debbie was thrilled, and it was the two of them who pulled into the parking place to the left of the silver Jeep in the maroon Volvo.
"Hey, isn’t that Sam?" Debbie asked curiously, staring at the dark haired man in the driver’s seat.
"Sam who?" Emily asked, wondering if Debbie really thought she would know who ‘Sam’ was.
"Sweeper Sam, from the Centre!" Debbie explained absently as she stared harder at the man. He seemed to sense her gaze because he looked directly at her.
"It is! It is!" She exclaimed excitedly. "Hi Sam!" She waved, smiling broadly.
"Debbie don’t!" Emily protested, restarting the car and preparing to pull out of the parking lot.
"No, he helped Miss Parker. I heard Daddy tell Sydney about it." Debbie justified herself with all of the hurt only a child could muster.
"Who’s that with him?" Emily asked warily, noting that there were more people in the jeep.
"I don’t know, but maybe they can tell us where Miss Parker is!" Before Emily could stop her Debbie was out of the Volvo and pulling open Sam’s door.
"Sam!" Debbie declared happily.
"Who’s that?" The question came from both JJ and the Major at the same moment.
"Hello, Debbie." Sam said gravely. "I don’t think you should be here right now."
"Emily was just getting me some breakfast." Debbie answered him, looking hurt again.
"Emily?" Major Charles repeated, trying to hold down a dawning hope.
"Debbie, I don’t think-----" Emily’s voice trailed off and her brown eyes widened as she caught a glimpse of the man in the passenger side of the Jeep.
"Daddy?" She asked, tears springing to her eyes.
"Emily?" He breathed, with similar tears. "Is that you, baby?"
Before anyone else could move the Major was out of the car and Emily was in his arms for a fiercely joyous reunion.
"Daddy, we thought you were dead!" She told him, looking at him like he would vanish if she took her eyes off of him for a second.
"No, I wasn’t in the plane that crashed, but by the time I could get to our rendezvous point you and your mother were gone!" He explained sadly. "Oh, baby, I didn’t think I was ever going to find you again!"
"Me either!" She admitted to his shoulder as he hugged her again. Sam, Debbie and JJ watched them with amazement. Sam understood first, remembering bits and pieces about Jarod’s family that Miss Parker had let slip in his presence. Then JJ realized that this was, in a way at least, his sister and climbed out of the jeep smiling broadly.
"Why are they hugging?" Debbie asked JJ, as he came to stand beside her. She tried to whisper, but her question was heard by all.
"This is my daughter, young lady." The Major explained to Debbie. "And we haven’t seen each other since she was close to your age."
"I wouldn’t like it if my Daddy went away and didn’t come back." Debbie decided solemnly.
"I didn’t like it either." Emily confessed to the girl. "But my Daddy couldn’t help it."
"Oh." Debbie looked like she was trying to decide if that made things all right or not.
"Emily, I’d like you to meet JJ." The Major gestured to the boy who slowly moved closer. "He’s your brother."
"Brother?!"
"I’m Jarod’s clone." JJ announced gravely. "Dad says that that means we’re identical twins born a long time apart, so I’m his son and your brother."
"So I finally get a brother I can be with!" Emily smiled her welcome and moved to hug JJ, much to his dismay. "And I get a little brother to boot! I’m not the baby anymore!" She grinned mischievously. JJ looked like he wasn’t sure this was a good thing or not.
"Look, let me get Debbie something to eat for breakfast, and then you can follow me to her aunt and uncle’s place. I think we all have some catching up to do." Emily suggested impulsively.
"We all?" Sam asked pointedly.
"My daddy and Sydney are here too." Debbie told him. "They had to run away after Mr. Raines tried to kidnap me. But Daddy saved me."
"Broots and Sydney have left the Centre too." Emily explained more clearly. "They felt it was necessary after Debbie was kidnapped and we retrieved her. We’re looking for Miss Parker now."
JJ’s face fell and he opened his mouth to tell them she was gone, but his father quelled him with a shake of his head.
"We’ll share all of the news when we’re all together, okay son?" The Major explained gently. JJ nodded obediently.
"I just wish we had better news to share." Sam and Emily said in unison.
******************
Catherine tried to reach her daughter mentally. She could feel Angelina’s pain, and she knew that her daughter loved this man, in spite of her words, but she couldn’t get past the walls her daughter had raised in her mine. Once again she found herself mourning the years apart and wondering what had happened to her daughter to make her so hard and self contained. And, once again, she found herself wondering if she really wanted to know the answers to those questions.
Jarod looked away from the two women, his chocolate brown eyes nearly black with emotion. The primary emotion was hurt, but Catherine sensed that he was feeling somewhat unfairly attacked as well. Well, she could understand that, men aren’t the most observant creatures at the best of times, and if you brought his emotions Into play you could just about guarantee he’d make an ass of himself. She would have smiled if she’d known how closely her sentiments echoed those that Major Charles had told his son just days ago.
"Angelina, don’t you think you’re being a little unfair?" Catherine asked her daughter gently.
"You don’t know anything about it, Mother." Parker answered harshly, refusing to look away from the window. "You weren’t even there for most of my life!"
Catherine reeled with the pain of that attack, even though she realized that her daughter didn’t mean it.
"Dear, I had amnesia after that attack on the elevator. I didn’t remember anything until I saw they boy this morning." She managed to keep her voice even and loving.
"How could you forget me?" Parker demanded, finally turning away from the window to stare at her mother. The woman looking at her wasn’t 30 some odd years old, though, she was a little girl and full of hurt.
"I don’t know, darling." Catherine’s eyes radiated just as much hurt. "I don’t know how or why it happened, all I know was that until I followed my feeling that someone needed me up north, I had forgotten all about you, and your father, and the Centre."
"What feeling?" Parker felt uneasy, sensing that there was something threatening about her mother’s hunch.
"It was almost like I could hear you calling for me, although you sounded like my little girl, not like you do now, and, oddly enough, I could hear a man calling for me too. I----" Catherine’s voice trailed off as she remembered, once again, what Sam had said about Angelina killing her twin brother.
"That was your brother I heard, wasn’t it?" Catherine asked sadly, but with no anger. "My little Daniel wasn’t stillborn at all, was he?"
"Daniel? Is that what you were going to name him?" Parker asked her mother, desperately stalling for time.
"It was him, wasn’t it? Tell me, Angelina, it’ll eat away at you until you do." Catherine kept her eyes locked on her daughter’s and Jarod watched in amazement as Parker’s face crumpled and she began to cry.
"Yes, Mama, I killed him." She admitted, sounding more like a little girl than the cold, hard woman Jarod was used to seeing.
"You had no choice." Jarod insisted, his eyes dark now with worry rather than hurt. "He would have killed you if you hadn’t."
"No, it was JJ he threatened." She wept.
"Oh, and those bruises on your jaw and wrist were from Sam?" Jarod demanded astutely.
"He just wanted me to love him!" Parker burst out. "Oh, God, Mama, I felt it all when the bullet hit him. He was so hurt and he couldn’t understand why I didn’t love him."
"Oh, my poor baby!" Catherine cursed inwardly when the cuffs kept her from being able to hold her daughter like she wanted to, but she was able to grab Parker’s hand and hold it tightly.
"But Mama, I killed him." She looked at her mother, her eyes full of remorse and faint confusion.
"I believe Jarod when he says you had no choice, Angelina." Catherine kept her eyes steadily on her daughter and her face full of love and compassion.
"Oh, Mama, I’m so tired." Parker sighed, leaning her head on her mother’s shoulder. Catherine was able to reach high enough to stroke her daughter’s hair and she soothed her with her thoughts and her words.
"It’s okay, baby. Mama’s here now and you’re going to be fine." Catherine noticed Jarod’s look of amazement and asked, quietly. "Is she asleep?"
"Yes, but how?"
"It’s a mother’s trick." Catherine dismissed his question airily. Jarod’s eyes narrowed fractionally, telling her that he wasn’t convinced, but then he looked at Parker and smiled a little.
"Whatever it was, I’m glad. It’s not good for her to be so upset." He told Catherine bluntly.
"Maybe now that she’s finally told me, she can start to heal." Catherine speculated.
"That’s not all she has to heal from." Jarod told her darkly.
"Tell me." Catherine responded promptly. "Tell me what I’ve missed."
Jarod sighed, where to begin?
"Well," he started slowly. "After you died…"
**********************
"Ma’am?" Alexander kept his voice down, even though he was in the front of the plane where none of the captives could possibly overhear him.
"Yes, Alexander."
"She’s got the gift, just like her mother." He told his leader smugly. "I overheard them talking about it."
"Parker and Jarod?" Marion was frankly amazed, she hadn’t expected Parker to open up, even to Jarod.
"No, Parker and her mother." Alexander corrected her.
"That’s impossible! Catherine Parker is dead!"
"No, Ma’am." Alexander answered slowly, beginning to worry that he was in serious trouble now. "We picked her up with Jarod and Parker. They were all in the bedroom together."
"Catherine Parker? Alive?" Marion was silent for a long moment, increasing Alexander’s worry. Her next words didn’t soothe him much.
"I’m not happy that you waited until now to tell me this, Alexander. I do not like surprises. However, you at least told me in time for me to make some preparations. Remember not to make this mistake again."
"Yes Ma’am." Alexander was relieved that the rebuke was so mild. "We’re about three quarters of the way to you now."
"Good. I’ll be waiting." Marion disconnected the phone abruptly, her eyes narrowed in thought.
Alexander hung up the phone and made his way back to his seat, feeling like a man who’d been reprieved from a particularly nasty death sentence.
********************
"Where are they?" Raines demanded frantically over the phone. "Mutumbo is on his way here right now, and I’ve got to have them in my hands before he gets here!"
"Sir, I don’t know." The Sweeper said solidly, praying inwardly that he wasn’t going to wind up in the renewal wing for this fiasco. "The house was empty, door open, when we got there. Someone had thrown a sleep gas in through one of the bedroom windows, but other that that we’re without information."
"It’s the Pagode." Raines mused desperately. "It must be! Get the Centre jet ready and get your best team together. We’re going to Berlin."
‘If nothing else,’ Raines thought silently. ‘I’ll be on a different continent from Mutumbo.’
