Disclaimer: I have absolutely no right to use these characters, just an abiding admiration for the creative work of the cast and crew of The Pretender.  All rights to all characters within this story are owned by NBC and the fine folks who created and slaved over this sorely-missed gem of a series.  Although the story is original, it is a "derivative work" and I claim no copyright.  No profits are made in any way in the writing or distribution of the work.  It is written solely for creative enjoyment.

"Cozumel." Miss Parker repeated it slowly, disbelievingly, and watched her father's face for any sign he might relent. "Daddy, no. No."

"Princess, you have stirred up a true hornet's nest here. The Centre's no place for you to be right now, and neither is Blue Cove. It's time for you to take a nice, long, relaxing trip. I've already made the travel arrangements." He smiled, a big, fatherly smile, his sharp eyes missing nothing. He held out a packet of plane tickets. When she didn't reach for them, he lost his smile. The eyes stayed sharp enough to cut. "Take them."

"Daddy - " It was a useless fight, stupid to protest any further. Parker stubbed out her cigarette and leaned forward, flipping through the tickets. Tonight. She looked up, startled, and her father nodded. No room for negotiation there, either. "Fine. How long?"

"Three weeks should do it. No phone calls, Princess. No checking in. I don't want to hear a word from you until those weeks are up, do you understand? Keep your head down and - " The smile again. "Enjoy yourself."

She tilted her head and gave him a wide-eyed sarcastic look, picked up her purse and strode out of her father's office into the deserted evening hallways of the Centre.

"Enjoy myself," she muttered. "Jesus." She shoved the tickets in her purse and took long, adrenaline-draining strides, wishing she knew what was going on, half-relieved that she didn't. She'd offended someone badly this time, and this was the price. Daddy's backhanded punishment.

She stiff-armed the door of her office, surprising Broots out of her chair and three steps back; he took one look at her face, reached over and turned off her computer and said, "Sorry, I thought you were gone."

"Snooping already?" she said, poison-sweet. "Can't even wait for the body to get cold?"

"Body?" Broots sounded nervous, as well he should. "Uh, whose body?"

"Yours if I catch you in my files again." She opened a drawer, slammed it shut, tried another. "Where's the damn Pepto-Bismol?"

He grabbed it from the corner of his desk and handed it over. She took a thick, milky chug and said, "I'll be gone for three weeks. Don't call, don't e-mail, don't look for me. As far as anybody's concerned, I'm dead."

"Dead?" It was, perhaps, not the best choice of words.

"On vacation," she amended. "If you get a lead on Jarod, you and Sydney follow it up, but leave me out of it. Daddy's orders."

"Oh," he said, as if he got it. Maybe he did. Broots was far from clueless, he wouldn't have survived all these years in this politic-ridden place if he hadn't known when to keep his head down. "Right. Well - enjoy yourself."

She gave him a scorching look, screwed the top back on the Pepto-Bismol, and said, "If that were any funnier I'd have to kill you."

I'm in hell.

Miss Parker stepped off the plane into sticky sunshine, adjusted her shades to filter the cloudless blue sky. The heat was unbearable already, at 8 a.m., and she felt her crisp linen suit begin to droop, her hair to frizz. God, she hated this, she hated sun, she hated sand, she especially hated sweaty fat tourists with fashion disabilities. She hated the trinket vendors who crowded around the fences, hawking cheap jewelry and things only the mother of a mentally disabled arts and crafts student could love.

She scanned the mob past the fence, looking for a taxi that didn't seem like a train ride to Auschwitz, and her gaze stopped on a black limousine, a driver in a snappy black uniform. He was holding a sign.

Miss Parker. Well, well. Mexico was beginning to have its good points.

She shoved her way through the crowd toward him, thinking Jesus, haven't these people ever heard of underarm deodorant?, and saw his oil-slick of a grin pool on his lips. Close up, the uniform did not make the man. She looked at the sign, at him, sighed and said, "Luggage." She held out her claim checks.

"Ma'am," he grinned, bobbed his head in what he probably thought was charm and hurried off in pursuit of her bags. He didn't even open her door. She muttered, "Ever heard of service?" and slid inside the limo.

Her budding good mood crashed. The interior was hot and rank with spilled beer; she rolled down the window to catch a breeze and had to endure losers pushing watches and rings and genuine relics of Christ. Daddy, I could kill you.

The driver came bag with her bags, opened the trunk and thumped them in with cheerful disregard for breakables. Parker gritted her teeth, rolled up the window, and told him "Hilton," all the conversation she could manage without a curse leaking in. He babbled to her in heavily accented English, asking her about her flight, her plans, her sightseeing. She let it go on for almost a minute before she leaned forward and said, "Pablo, your tip is getting smaller. Shut up and save what's left of your dollar fifty."

He stiffened. The look he shot her was hostile, dark and pretended to be dangerous. She lit up a cigarette, sucked smoke and stared out the window as they sped away from the airport. She'd seen more dangerous three-year-olds in the Centre nursery.

"No smoking," he said. She took another drag.

"Bite me, Pablo."

He kept up a quiet boil all the way to the hotel. When they pulled under the shaded portico, he jumped out and opened her door for her, oily smile gone now, hauled her bags out of the trunk as if he couldn't wait to get rid of her. She ground her smoke out with her toe and looked down at his open hand as the doorman took charge of the bags. Slid her glasses down her nose.

"You've got to be kidding."

He insisted with a stare. She dug two dollars from her purse and tossed them in his direction, then followed her bags into the cool shadows of the Hilton lobby.

More like it. Still a tourist trap, and she wouldn't have stayed here on a bet if she'd had a choice, but the tropical plants and faux marble were better than Pablo and his ride of love. She crossed to the counter, waited while the fumbling clerk found her room, and escaped into what she hoped would be, if not luxury, at least bearable middle-class comfort.

"Oh, God," she said, stared at the room in disgust as the silent valet stacked her bags in the corner. "Wal-Mart does Mexico."

The bad Monet prints were, well, bad enough, but the Martha Stewart bedroom set was unbearable. She growled in frustration, ripped open the curtains and looked out at the tourist-swamped beaches, the cheap tinsel glitter of the sea.

Daddy, I WILL kill you.

"All done," the valet said. She threw a tip at him, didn't bother to see if he caught it, and flopped on the bed as he clicked the door shut. The air conditioning, at least, was excellent. She let it dry her sweat for a few moments, then stripped off her jacket, pants, and shirt for some indoor non-sun bathing. She left on her underwear, as she always did, even sleeping. Soaking up the chill. She had no intention of setting foot on that sticky, tacky beach outside with all of the thousands of middle-class idiots in Speedos and bikinis and gallons of sunblock. Screaming children made her head ache.

What was there to do in Cozumel? Sightsee? She moaned and covered her eyes.

Food. That was the answer. Food, and drinks.

Lots of drinks, for a very long time.

The waiters hated her. The bartender hated her worse. Parker, on her second neat Scotch, didn't much care about that, except that she seemed to get better service than all the disapproving pallid nice people around her. She tipped well, not extravagantly, and read her magazine while she devoured Chicken Poblano.

"I always thought you were more the Guns 'n Ammo type," a void said from just behind her shoulder. Parker flinched, turned, and came face to face with Jarod. "Then again, Vogue fits. But I'd skip the article about 10 ways to a better orgasm, I don't think it's well researched."

He sat down in the chair across from her, smiling, and for a second she was as happy as she had ever been in her life. There was something about Jarod that did that to her - his smile, maybe. Then again, it could just be that he was her ticket out of the hell that was her vacation.

"Don't move," she said. He was holding two tall green margaritas, the glasses beaded with sweat and crusted with salt. "Don't even think about running."

"Too hot for that. Here." He pushed one drink across to her. "Made them myself. My treat."

She reached in her purse for her cell phone, and remembered that she'd left it on Daddy's desk, at Daddy's request. All right, pay phones would do fine. She snapped her fingers for a waiter.

Jarod, still smiling, said, "You can't call the Centre."

"Watch me."

"The switchboard was instructed not to put you through. To anybody."

"Fine. Sydney has a cell phone."

His smile widened. "What are you going to tell him, Miss Parker? By the time they get here, I'll be long gone, and you'll be back in the vacation gulag. That's what this is, isn't it? The penalty box?"

He had a point. The waiter hurried over, breathless, and she held him in suspense for a full ten seconds before she said, "Nothing. Never mind." She flipped her fingers to dismiss him.

"Aren't you going to ask me?" His eyes were very wide, glowing with mischief. He leaned forward and took a sip of his drink, his gaze never leaving her face.

"Ask you what?"

"Why I'm here."

"Evidently I really AM in hell." She tried the margarita, and despite herself, she had to admit it was the best damn margarita she'd ever had. She took another drink. "Why?"

Jarod was still looking at her, just looking. It made her angry. It made her uncomfortable. It made her -- admit it -- hot.

"I wanted to see you. It seemed like the best chance I would have without your sweeper teams breathing down our necks."

"So you followed me."

Jarod shrugged. He was wearing the tourist uniform, a brightly colored tropical shirt, khaki shorts, deck shoes. On him, it looked somehow fashionable. He'd acquired a small gold earring, somewhere along the way. It winked in the reflected light of the sea.

"I wanted to ask you something. For old time's sake."

"We're not children anymore." Far from it, if the feeling in the pit of her stomach was any indication. She ate a bite of peppered chicken and took another smoothing drink of margarita to counter it.

For the first time, he looked away. She wondered how he was seeing the crowded restaurant, the boring crowd, the cheap, overdone gaudiness. She wondered if they even lived in the same world.

"So ask," she said.

"I've experienced a lot of things in the last two years since I've been away from the Centre, but I don't think you can call it a normal life. And there's something I'd like to - to learn about. Something important."

She clamped down hard on the fantasy that swept like flashfire over her mind, Jarod naked in her bed, every line of his body fitted to hers - she said, coldly, "I'll just bet. Sorry, I'm all out of sea monkeys."

"I want you to tell me about dating."

It was so innocently done that it disarmed her. Sarcasm she could deal with, arrogance she could squash like a bug, but that vulnerable, soft voice - she glanced up at him, locked eyes, felt a flush crawl over her skin like sunburn.

"Great. Now I'm Dear Abby."

"Dear Abby?" He looked puzzled, gave her one of the looks she remembered so vividly from childhood, his eyes eager for any bit of knowledge.

"Never mind. What about dating? I had the impression you'd already skipped right to the home run stage."

She couldn't believe she was having this conversation. The Centre -

Her inner child, who was, truthfully, a willful little bitch, said, Screw the Centre, they sent you out here to fry for three weeks. It's their fault if they didn't let you contact them. Savor the revenge.

It did taste sweet.

"Home run?" Jarod asked. She gave him a look. "Baseball?"

"Sex." He blushed. She watched him, fascinated by the rush of wickedness his reaction brought. She took a long, slow drink and said, "You did have sex with the girl in Oregon, didn't you?"

"I'm not talking about sex." The blush was fading, Jarod shifted his realities internally to cover his vulnerability. That was the thing about Jarod; he changed, like a chameleon, while you were watching. "I want to know what people do to get to know each other."

"Come on, confess," she pressed. No answer. "Oh, come, on, you might as well admit it. I would."

"If I asked you out on a date, what would we do?"

"At fourteen?" She rolled her eyes. "Go to the movies, get a soda, eat a burger, play video games."

"At thirty?"

It was her turn to be silent. He waited her out, his margarita forgotten. She looked down at her plate, the magazine fallen next to it.

"Dinner," she said. "Drinks. Dancing."

Jarod checked his watch. "Dinner would be at - seven o'clock?"

"Try eight."

"What kind of drinks?"

She lifted the margarita. "Ten more of these, I might even dance."

She hadn't intended to propose a toast, but Jarod took it that way. He clinked glasses with her, took a sip, and his eyes lit up with that heartbreaking smile again.

"Eight o'clock," he said. "I'll meet you in the lobby. Oh, and if you bring a chaperone, like Sydney or a sweeper team, I'll have to stand you up."

"I'm on vacation," she snapped, picked up her magazine, and scanned the article to find the place she'd stopped.

When she looked up again, Jarod was gone.

"Show off," she muttered.

"Welcome, may I help you?"

"Mr. Parker."

"Who's calling, please?"

"His daughter." Parker aimed a stream of smoke at the ceiling, shivered as cold air stroked her skin. She'd shed her blouse and skirt at the door, lay now on the bed in her bra and panties. Deliciously cold. The Centre operator put her on hold -- no music, thankfully. She stared at the bad Monet print, the bolted-down frame. Daddy, you must really be pissed at me.

"Miss Parker?" The operator was back, sounded fortified with a coating of steel. "He's not available."

"Leave him a message."

"I'm sorry. He won't be available. Thank you for calling."

"Don't you hang up on me, you -- !" Parker couldn't get the BITCH out faster than the dial tone. She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it in disbelief, dialed Sydney's cell phone number.

No answer.

Broots.

No answer.

Broots' home number. Sydney's home number.

"Christ!" She threw the receiver at the Monet print; the cord stopped it short and sent it crashing to the carpet. "I don't believe it."

She covered her face with her hands, rolled over on her stomach, and propped her chin on the pillow. The Centre had cut her off -- comprehensively. Even Sydney and Broots, who'd probably been given no choice. What am I supposed to do? Drop them a postcard? Club him like a baby seal and bring him back in my carry-on?

She groaned out loud and rolled over on her back again. Past her feet, a movie played silently on HBO, subtitled in Spanish. Pauly Shore wasn't any funnier in a foreign language.

She was stuck in Cozumel.

She was stuck with Jarod.

"Dr. Raines?"

"Yes?"

"You asked to be informed."

"And?"

"She's calling from the Hilton in Cozumel, Mexico, sir."

"You're sure."

"The trace was perfect, sir. I even have her room number."

"Give it to the team as they leave. And tell them - no mistakes. I don't want to see Miss Parker back in this office. Ever."

"Sir."

At six thirty she showered. At seven she laid out the outfits she'd brought, pacing past them nervously, counting off the good and bad points. After long deliberation, she chose the black leather -- half intimidation, half invitation. The top zipped and held her tight. The skirt was only barely legal. She added stockings and high heels, left the jewelry behind, and rode the elevator down to the lobby.

Stepping into the Hilton, she created a wake like a great white shark; sunburned, overstuffed tourists turned their heads to watch her progress, cruising single men stopped, cruising single women stared in outright hate. She was aware of it, and it pleased her, just as it pleased her in the Centre to walk into a room and hear the uneasy silence.

She didn't see Jarod. She walked to the glass doors, glanced out, made a slow circuit of the room. Two men tried to catch her eye; they caught it, all right, and got frostbite.

He's not here. Fine. I don't need this.

She punched the button for the elevator, angry with herself for having been stupid enough to fall for it, angry for feeling let down. At the far end, doors opened.

"Going up?"

Jarod. He was standing at ease in the car, arms folded, leather-jacketed shoulders against the far wall. She stared at him for a few seconds, then stepped inside. The doors hissed shut behind her.

The elevator started up. She tried to think of something to say, settled for the obvious.

"How did you see --"

The elevator cleared the lobby, and she had her answer. Glass walls, offering a panoramic spy's viewpoint of the entire area. He'd just ridden the elevator and waited. She raised an eyebrow in appreciation and turned back toward him.

He said, "You look beautiful." Not a rehearsed comment, it sounded husky and dragged from some deep part of his throat.

"Let's dispense with the pleasantries. Thanks." She pressed herself against the glass opposite him. "Where are we going?"

"Restaurant at the top. They serve a great jalapeno salmon with Jack Daniels honey sauce." He hadn't moved at all, except to follow her with his eyes. "You really are, you know."

"What?"

"Beautiful."

She gave him the frostbite stare, but it didn't seem to affect him at all. "Gee, so are you. Are we finished with the high school flattery?"

The elevator dinged arrival. Jarod reached past her to hold the door open.

"Hope not," he said as she passed.

When they were seated, he stared past her out the window at the sunset. "If this were really a date, Miss Parker, what would we be talking about now?"

"In this day and age, probably our HIV tests."

"Really."

She sighed, shook her napkin out and put it in her lap. It tended to slide on leather. "You'd ask about her day, her job, her family. Stay away from the subject of old girfriends or boyfriends, don't talk about your problems, don't talk about her problems. There. That's all the Sydney I'm doing for you."

"How was your day?" he asked. He wasn't joking. He really was that clueless. She took a drink of red wine.

"Fabulous. That's why I'm here in nature's paradise talking to you." It was too easy to hurt him, and herself. She forced a smile. "I hate this place."

"Why?"

"No reason."

"Everything has a reason," he said. "Come on, Miss Parker. I'd tell you."

Yes, she imagined he would. She looked away from him, out toward the tequila smear of sunset. "We came here when I was fifteen. I thought it was the most wonderful place in the world. My father -- my father had to leave. He left me here with nobody but two sweepers for company, and they hated me. So I hate Cozumel."

"This is where he abandoned you," Jarod said. "For the last time."

"Don't get in my head."

"I'm not. It just seems -- " He traced a fingertip line on the tablecloth. "He abandoned you when your mother died. He kept bringing you in and disappointing you, Parker, you think I didn't see it? See how much it hurt you?"

It was hard to swallow the lump of pain in her throat. She'd never realized it before, why she hated Cozumel so much, why it made her feel so empty and alone. It wasn't the heat, or the beaches, or the tourists. She turned her face away, looking for the waiter, and jerked her head at him to refill her wine glass. She didn't even remember drinking it.

"Past," she said.

"It's never past. Past is always here." Jarod touched his chest, right where her heart ached. His eyes were so dark, so warm. "Why don't you sleep naked?"

"What?"

"It's a valid question. Why don't you? I know because I have the same problem. We can't sleep naked because we know there are cameras watching us, even when they're no longer there. We were raised in the Centre." He smiled faintly. "I can do it when I'm Pretending, but any other time I wake up screaming. It's always harder to be who we really are."

"I told you to stay out of my head!" She threw her napkin down and started to get up; he reached out and took her hand, and the contact was startling enough to make her knees buckle. She sat.

"Parker," he said, "You never answered my question. How was your day?"

She laughed, saw his smile spark in reaction.

"Fine," she said. Surprisingly, it wasn't really a lie. "Yours?"

"Good. How's the job going?"

The absurdity of it was too much for her. She began to laugh, pressed her lips together to hold it in, failed. Jarod scooted his chair closer to hers, bent near, and said, "Look at it this way, you've won. You've found me."

"Yes." She swallowed hysteria. "I have. For all the good it'll do."

Grilled salmon was every bit as delicious as he'd promised. Wine followed, and margaritas, two of them, and Parker was feeling mellow and newly at ease when Jarod's hand touched her cheek, brushing her hair back, and he said, "Dance?"

She glanced up, unguarded, caught his look. She wondered if he saw through her, saw the heat growing deep inside, and didn't care if he did.

"Dance," she agreed, and slid out of her chair to take his hand. He led her past the tables to the dance floor, where a slow, sexy mix was playing. Once there, he looked at her and said, "I don't know how."

"You don't know -- " It had never occurred to her. Of course he didn't, and if he did, it was something he'd studied with deadly seriousness, like ballet. He wouldn't know how to simply move. "Follow me."

She put her hands on his shoulders, stepped back, stepped forward, showing him the beat and the way to let it inside. Ten seconds later, his hands slid around her waist, holding her lightly as they moved, up and back, fast at first, then slower, smaller movements, and she let herself begin to dance.

His breath huffed out in surprise when let the music move her hips, gently at first, then provocatively. She remembered Jarod's reaction to the word sex from her lips. He was blushing again, watching her, fascinated and intent. Not imitating, but taking it in, drinking it like a Pretender. Or a man. She hadn't danced like this in years, but wine and margaritas made her brave, and as they moved closer and touched she let him feel her pressed against him, every muscle full of power, full of tension, and she felt it humming through him like an electric current. Their lips were close enough to touch, but she didn't move, and neither did he. She pressed harder, rotated her hips, felt his hands slide down the leather in a way he probably wasn't even aware of. You are a quick learner. Her heart was beating hard, and the fire in her had become a bonfire, flushing her cheeks, her lips. Every tiny brush against him fed it. She turned her back to him, pressed hard, felt him press back and knew how aroused he was. Even if she hadn't been close enough to feel it, she would have known from the rhythm of his breath in her ear.

He kissed her neck, feather-light, and she felt herself go weak against him, desperate, out of control. His hands were hot through the leather, holding her pinned against him, and as incredible as it seemed she thought it wouldn't take much for either one of them to climax right here on the dance floor, in these moving, liquid shadows.

Ten ways to a better orgasm, she thought, as much as she could think. Number one with a bullet, dance with Jarod.

"Parker," he whispered. Voice lower now, deeper in his throat, a purr like velvet on her skin. "Turn around."

She did, never moving away from him, and the two of them were so close all that stopped them were the clothes, the people around them. He was a black consuming fire and she wanted to throw herself in. His hands left her hips, slid up between them, leaving trails of heat where they passed.

"You wanted to know what people did on dates." Her lips were touching his now, not quite a kiss, an unbearable tease for both of them. "Now you know."

He kissed her, and it wasn't a kiss like she was used to, no sleek technique, no practiced ease. This was him, his heart, his soul, and it shook her badly. Jarod had no barriers. She was used to control, games, pain and pleasure in equal parts. There was no pain in this, but the pleasure was so intense it might as well have been.

I can't do this. She didn't know where the panic came from, or why, it bubbled up like magma from shattered rock. I can't. I can't. No!

She tried to pull away. He was stronger than her, but when he realized she was withdrawing he let go, let her step away. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, choked on self-loathing, and said, "It's not that easy."

Her voice sounded so wrong to her, so cold, so steady. Where was it coming from? It wasn't what she wanted to say, wasn't what she felt.

Jarod's hands fell back to his sides. He was breathing fast, and now the shine in his eyes was equal parts need and fear. Don't do this, oh please, don't do this --

"First rule of dating," she heard herself say. "Never let the woman know how much you want her."

She turned her back on him and walked away, weak-kneed, screaming inside, bleeding from a self-inflicted mortal wound.

When she reached the door she looked back. He was still standing where she'd left him, lost in the shadows.

"Scotch," she snarled at the bartender. He lost his smile, pulled down a bottle and a glass. "No, Pablo, not the Wal-Mart brand. Single malt. Neat."

He gave her the sort of look underlings always gave her, if they thought they could live through the experience. She ignored him and watched the door. No Jarod. Nothing. Every man in the room, single or other wise occupied, was focused on her like bees on a pot of honey, but Jarod hadn't followed.

Oh God oh God oh God, why? Why did I do that?

"Hurry it up!" she snapped. The bartender slid her glass over, not a drop spilled, and she gulped it in one long chug. Slid it back. "Hit me."

He looked as if he wanted to. She slugged down the second drink, and the third, and finally began to feel some of the panic retreat. Jesus, what was that? What the hell?

Jarod could have told her, if she hadn't just torn his heart out and speared it with a spike-heeled pump. She needed him. She needed him in ways nobody had ever made clear before, wild and unrestrained ways. She didn't know how she would ever forget how that felt, how terrifying, how wonderful.

"Buy you a drink?" A man's voice. She didn't even glance up.

"Fuck off."

He left. Others came, kamikaze bombers. She let the fifth one buy, then told him to fuck off.

No Jarod. Oh, Jesus.

"Excuse me?" This one was American, younger than the others, probably barely old enough to drink at all. Brown hair, narrow almond eyes, high cheek bones. Probably thought he was every girl's wet dream. "I noticed you -- well, you seemed upset. Is it okay if I take this seat?"

"Not my seat," she said. "Bartender."

He ignored her, continued wiping down the other end of the bar. The college kid played with a napkin, the umbrella in his drink, and finally said, "Uh, really, are you okay? I mean, it's cool if you want me to go, I just didn't know if you'd, you know, like a drink or something."

Jarod came in the bar. Their eyes locked, and his were blank and black again, the chameleon shifted to another pattern, nothing of the real man there at all. He sat down at a table in the corner, smiled and chatted with the waitress.

Come over here. Come over here, you bastard.

"Is that the guy?" She swung around on College Boy; he flinched like Broots would have, very satisfying. "Uh, I just meant -- look, if he hurt your feelings, maybe you should let me buy you a drink. Beautiful lady like you -- might teach him a lesson."

"Scotch," she said. "Single malt, don't let him pour the cheap shit."

The boy committed himself to the drink. She didn't watch the exchange, focused on watching Jarod without appearing to watch him at all. He was alone now, staring down into his drink. Come on, what are you waiting for?

"Here." The boy slid Scotch in front of her. She picked it up, took a quick, biting hit, then another. I'm going to be sick tomorrow. Well, screw it. She was on vacation, what was vacation without a hangover?

"Thanks." It was as charitable as she could get. She looked through the kid for an instant, not really seeing him, but it seemed to make his day.

"This may sound stupid, but -- my buddies over there, they all made fun of me, they didn't think I could get you to talk to me. I don't suppose you'd -- kiss me, would you? Just once?" He blinked at the expression on her face. "Might make him feel bad over there."

College Boy had a point. Parker finished her drink, turned to look at Jarod and made sure she got his attention.

And then she reached over, grabbed College Boy's collar, and kissed him. Hard. Long. Slow. As manipulatingly and seductively as she could manage with that much booze and desperation carbonating together.

In the middle of the kiss, she felt the world slip out from under her, a weird liquid sensation, and felt the boy brace her up when she faltered.

She pushed away, put her hands flat on the bar and fought to get herself steadied again.

Jarod was gone. No one at his table, the umbrella still swirling slowly in his drink.

Happy now? Did it feel good to destroy him? Or were you just burning out the last few shreds of your self-respect?

She started to slide down. Her feet, numbed, wouldn't support her. College Boy grabbed her by the arm and pulled her against him, said, "Whoa, lady, if you can't get help at Schick ..."

She mumbled something, felt sick and dizzy, grabbed for the bar as it moved. Other hands around her now, other faces.

His buddies. Oh, Jesus, what was --

She distantly heard College Boy tell the bartender, "Lady's had enough. It's okay. I'll just get her to the elevator."

She raised her head and looked at the bartender, desperate, hunted. Begged him silently for help. Saw a glass shield go down between them.

"Vaya con Dios," the bartender said, shrugged, and began wiping the bar.

Blackness.

Flashes of light. Glass elevator. Clinging to someone, not even sure who it was, a tongue in her mouth, a hand up her skirt. Jarod? No transition. On her back, lights flaring in her eyes, the weirdly clear sound of her zippered top being unfastened. Hands on her. Too many hands.

Oh, man, feel this. We get you this hot, baby?

She tried to say a name, remembered dark eyes, gentle touches so different from this. Jarod.

Blackness.

Jarod came back, sat down at his table, and pulled the umbrella out of his drink to sip it. He avoided looking at the bar, at the dark magnificent pain that was Miss Parker. Sydney was right, she couldn't allow herself to surrender to anyone, for anything. It's a pathology, Sydney had told him. In some ways, she is crippled, Jarod. Unable to love. Unable to trust.

He didn't know what had hurt him worse, the cruel words or the sick terror in her eyes. He'd frightened her. She'd frightened herself. And she'd fled here, to re-establish control.

He took another sip, sighed, and looked up. He'd never been able to help himself with her.

She was gone. Gone like a ghost, except for a half-empty glass of scotch with blood-red lipstick on the rim.

Jarod went to the bar, leaned over and asked the bartender, "The lady who was here? The one in black?"

"Yeah?" She hadn't made friends, that much was clear.

"Where'd she go?"

The bartender shrugged. "Some guys."

Guys? No. It was part of Parker's need to be dominant, to have the upper hand - he didn't need Sydney to tell him the math didn't add. Parker wouldn't go willingly.

"Which guys?" Jarod asked. Another shrug. The bartender started to turn away, drawn by a customer with a gold card; Jarod grabbed his shirt and held him in place. "Which. Guys."

"Look, buddy, you're better off without her. That lady was a stone cold killer."

"I'm not going to ask politely again." He let it show, saw the shift in the bartender's reaction. "The drinks. Did they charge to a room?"

"I can't tell you that, man. I'll get fired."

Jarod shoved him back, reached behind the bar and picked up a haphazard pile of receipts. Too many possibilities. Wait, the last one with her -- college age, if that. He flipped back through again, found one that mainly consisted of low-budget beer and the cruder mixed drinks.

And single-malt scotch.

"Parker," he whispered.

Room 1743.

"Room service." Jarod held the tray at chin level, champagne prominently displayed. He knocked again, got a guarded command to wait. He felt his pulse in his temples, anxiety in his stomach. How long? How long had she been gone?

"Yeah?" The door creaked open, guarded by the chain, and a bloodshot eye peered through. One of the college boys, this one blond, acne scars still climbing the line of his jaw. "Uh, wrong room, man. We didn't order."

"1743?" Jarod made a show of checking the ticket. "The champagne's compliments of the bar downstairs. From the bartender."

"Oh," the boy said. There was a whispered exchange, and a door shut. "Yeah, okay, bring it in."

The chain rattled off. Jarod carried the tray in, looked around the room (which looked exactly like the hotel room of college frat boys on vacation) and took the important things in at a glance.

The other door, to the second bedroom, was closed. Two boys in this room. No Parker.

A black high-heeled shoe discarded near the couch. A zip-up leather bodice.

He didn't have to think. He met the boy's eyes, felt himself go completely cold inside, and kicked him, kicked him again, took the bottle of champagne and put him out with it, a hard tap to the head, just hard enough not to kill. I know that. I know these things. You should never have made me remember.

The second boy had turned milk-white, pressed against the kitchen counters. His eyes met Jarod's, and he shook his head. "I didn't -- I didn't want to. I swear. I stayed out here -- "

Jarod hit him, hit him again, forced himself to stop when the boy wasn't moving. He dumped the tray and champagne on a table, swallowed rage and fear, and eased open the bedroom door.

Closed his eyes for a single heartbeat, then opened them a different person. Jarod the Pretender had no place here. This called for something else, something darker.

He closed the door softly behind him as he walked into the room, pulled the brown-haired boy away from Parker, threw him hard enough to shatter the mirror he landed against. The last one came at him with a knife.

Jarod smiled, stepped into the swing, took the boy's arm and snapped it effortlessly out of the socket, muffled the boy's scream with a hand over his mouth.

"You're lucky," Jarod whispered to him. "I'm going to let you live. While you're healing, think about this: I just might come back."

He let the boy go, shoved him away. The kid staggered aimlessly, weeping, screaming. Jarod watched him with no particular emotion.

"Then again," he said, "Why put myself to the trouble?"

He dislocated the other arm, put the boy's throat in the bend of his elbow, and choked him unconscious.

Quiet now, except for the fast scrape of his own breathing. I left them alive. It had a sense of wonder to it. He'd always wondered if he would, if it became personal for him.

He let Pretender Jarod out, let him feel again. And began to shake. He looked down at his bloodied hands and couldn't get his breath, washed them in the sink until the only blood was his own.

And then he went to where Parker lay on the bed. He pulled her skirt down, took off his jacket and put it around her, picked her up in his arms. She didn't wake. The smell of her, so close, made him almost too weak to stand, the reality of it too great, but he picked up her left shoe from the floor, went into the other room, gathered up her bodice and the right shoe.

She didn't wake. He was glad she couldn't see his face.

"Dr. Welby?"

Jarod looked up from the battered copy of Vogue he was reading and saw a Hispanic woman in lab coat and stethoscope standing at the waiting room entrance. He stood up, and she jerked her chin in a follow me gesture.

"I think you could use some coffee," she said as they walked down the bright, sparsely peopled hallway. Four in the morning, the night's emergency rush exhausted, the morning's not yet arrived. "I know I could. Doctor Elena Vasquez."

He shook the hand she offered. "Jarod Welby. How is - "

"Miss Parker is fine, physically. Some bruises, but nothing more." Vasquez hip-bumped open a door and led him into the doctor's lounge, where she poured them both cups of inky, thick coffee. "We completed the rape kit while she was unconscious."

"And?" He tried the coffee. Thick enough to eat with a spoon, it was strong enough to animate a day-old corpse just on smell alone.

"You understand that I shouldn't be discussing this with you, but as a professional courtesy - " Vasquez added sugar and milk to her coffee. "All the results were negative. No semen on any of the swabs, that is good news for her. Everything else was inconclusive at best. But if you say she was assaulted - did you witness enough to testify?"

"No," Jarod said. "How long before she wakes up?"

Vasquez raised eyebrows as dark and smooth as the coffee. "An hour ago."

"And you discussed it with her?"

"As much as it's possible to discuss it with her. Your Miss Parker is - formidable, I think is the English word. Not perhaps the best patient I have ever seen."

"How long are you planning to keep her?"

Vasquez sank into a threadbare armchair with a sigh and rested her head against the back. "I don't. Miss Parker is not in urgent need of any medical care, and she seems to be dealing with her trauma in her own way."

"What way?" he asked, and took another sip of coffee, enough to jangle his already-scrambled nerves.

"Aggressively." Vasquez tilted her head to one side. "I hope you understand, Doctor, she asked this of me."

He looked the question at her, already disturbed by the guilt in her eyes.

"She asked me to keep you here. She had called a cab. By this time, she is gone."

Jarod put the coffee down fast enough to spill drops hot as blood over his hand and turned for the door. Behind him, Vasquez said, "You should let her go. I have seen many victims of violence, but never one like this. Let her deal with her - "

The closing door cut her off.

He found her outside, pacing, smoking. She was still wearing the leather skirt and bodice. Makeup all but erased the bruise at the corner of her mouth and the pallor of her face.

She gave him a look that seared right through him and kept pacing. Sucked smoke. "Well, if it isn't my white knight."

Her contempt scorched and frightened him. She couldn't stand still, couldn't meet his eyes; her heels tapped concrete like drumming fingers.

"You should come back inside." He realized he'd fallen back into the comfort of a doctor's quiet tone.

"Why? So you can be my shoulder to cry on?" She made a retching noise. Her eyes searched the darkness. "Damn cab drivers. Cozumel."

"Miss Parker - "

"Don't." The word was a shaft of steel driven through him. She dropped her cigarette to the ground, lit another before the first one died. "I don't need your pity or your comfort or your patronizing attitude. Whatever fantasy you have about me falling into your arms, you can forget it. You're not Lancelot, and Guinevere's got a gun."

He said nothing. He'd never seen her like this, so hard, so brittle. Her eyes shone silver in the dim moonlight, a hard, metallic color that it took him a while to realize was a film of tears.

"I want their names," she said. A low, dead quiet voice. Not a request.

"It's been taken care of," he said. Her eyes grabbed and held him in cold, merciless stare.

"Are they still breathing?" Her voice was ice on velvet. "Then it hasn't been taken care of."

He spotted a cab rambling toward them, its engine rattling unevenly, one headlight flickering. She paced at the curb. "Parker, wait. What are you going to do?"

"Let's see, my choices are, stay in beautiful Cozumel and let every other prick screw me, or go back to the Centre. Tough choice." She finished her cigarette. Her fingers were shaking. "Hasta la vista. Next time I see you, I'll try not to kill you."

The cab pulled up. He reached forward to hold the door for her, but wouldn't let her pull it shut.

"I'm sorry I left you. I should have stayed," he said. Her smile was the edge of a knife, her lipstick the color of blood.

"What's wrong, Jarod, missed your shot?" She hesitated just long enough for the contempt to burn in. "Oh, maybe I'm wrong. There I was, stripped and helpless, who could tell the difference between four and five -- Is that how it was? Finally got to live out your little fantasy?"

She succeeded in hurting him, a knife to the heart. Jarod breathed out the pain she'd driven so deep into him and said, "Please, don't go alone. You need somebody."

"I don't need anybody," she said. "Get out of my head."

She slammed the cab door, and he let go just fast enough to keep his fingers from being crushed. He watched the cab cruise away, listened to the hollow sound of tires whispering on gravel, and thought Sydney, I need you. I can't do this alone.

As if he was standing behind him, Sydney came - the one Jarod remembered from childhood, careful and correct and analytical. She's decompensating, Sydney said in his rich, faintly accented voice. It's common for someone of Miss Parker's personality type to act aggressively toward those whom she most needs. She cannot be weak, Jarod. She cannot allow it.

What can I do to help her?

Nothing. Let her exhaust herself. Intervention is unnecessary and unwise.

He started walking, hands in his pockets, knowing Sydney was - or would have been - right. But that didn't make it any easier.

He looked up at the coughing approach of a motor. The cab was coming back.

Parker opened the back door, leaned out, and said, "Get in."

They didn't speak during the drive. Jarod didn't look at her, a mercy she was grateful for; she concentrated on holding herself together, smoking fiercely, obsessively, in spite of the fact that she was gagging on the taste of tobacco and aching in every muscle from the combination of the drug she'd been slipped in the bar and the shot to counteract it. Her tongue tasted like ash.

The cab arrived at the Hilton, and she left Jarod to pay the fare, walked on her own into the cheap faux-tropical lobby. She paused at the elevators, then went past them to the bar.

Closed now. Behind the iron gate, lights glimmered on bottles and stacked glasses, and everything looked kaleidoscopically brilliant in the lens of her tears.

She heard Jarod behind her, blinked hard, and said, "Come with me."

She took him back to her room. He stopped when she sat down on the bed and removed her shoes - no underwear to worry about now, no hose, they were gone, decorating some frat boy's rear view mirror. The thought made her sick enough to want to kill. She remembered her father saying, apropos of nothing, sometimes you count coup, sometimes coup gets counted on you.

"Come here," she said to Jarod. He sat down next to her, and suddenly it was real to her, they were alone and it was so achingly real, and she knew how much it hurt him to see her like this. Not as much as it hurts me. He wanted her to cry, he wanted her to fell into his arms, because that would give him something to do, something to fix. Jarod the healer.

But that wasn't the way to heal Miss Parker. There was only one thing she knew to do, one blind grab to put the past behind.

She needed to make him, make all of them, pay.

She put her hand on Jarod's shoulder, got to her knees, pressed him back to the bed. Kissed him, the way she'd kissed that boy in the bar, smooth, controlled, all technique and no passion except the sense of her own power over him. Jarod was trembling, as if he'd caught her chill. His hands slid into her hair, drawing tingles of distracting warmth, damn him, and she threw herself into it, seducing him with precise moves, perfect kisses, her hands timed to touch him when and where she knew he most wanted. You like this? You want this? It means nothing to me.

She was cold inside, getting colder, all the fires going out, but that was all right, she needed to be cold to do this. She moved her mouth away from his, down his neck, opened the buttons on his shirt and teased his nipples with her tongue, continued down, thinking this is no different. It's never any different. It'll never be any different.

He shook her. Shook her. She realized he was calling her name and telling her to stop.

"What's the matter," she said. In the center of all that chill, her voice sounded falsely bright. "Don't you want to fuck me, Jarod? Come on, we both know it's why you followed me here. Might as well get it over with you, because I promise you, it'll never happen again."

He held her there, suspended over him. After a long time, he let her go. She sat up and unzipped her top, no ceremony to it, no feeling at all. Go ahead. Look.

He didn't. He never looked away from her face.

"You can't make this meaningless, Parker," he said. "No matter how hard you try."

"Get out," she said. Trembling again, the rock cracking under her, all that volatile heat and chaos boiling up.

Jarod reached out and pulled her bodice back together; where his fingertips brushed her, she thawed, and that hurt, oh God that hurt.

"Don't let them do this to you. You can take control away from the cameras, Raines, all the monsters that make you afraid. Take it."

"Do you want to fuck me or not?" she demanded.

He leaned forward and kissed her, gentle and warm. She reached for control and felt it fail her. She couldn't keep him out. Couldn't. All the others she'd held at skin level, and inside her lonely strong place she'd never been at risk. But she couldn't keep him out at all.
He finished the kiss, pressed his cheek to hers, and whispered, "I can't hurt you like this. You don't deserve it."

She curled up on the bed as the door closed, drawing her hurt close, holding it in like a child.

You bastard, she thought.

It broke her heart.

Jarod packed in silence, unable to forget the look in Parker's eyes, the fear, the desire. You could have just done it. Maybe she's right, get it over with, that's what you both need.

No. He couldn't. Parker was the other half of him, separated by cameras and glass and their own pain. He couldn't let her turn them into another thing to forget.

He picked up the silver suitcase with its weight of history and DSA disks, all his past, every hour of every day, pressed for public viewing. He thought about what he'd said to Parker about the cameras, and knew he'd been right. She couldn't forget them. It was at the darkest root of both of their needs to take control.

It cut him to the heart to leave her, but he knew he had to. If there were ever any chance of either of them healing, it had to be done, now, before he forgot why it was more important than the taste of her mouth, the touch of her hands.

He started to close up his laptop and realized the message light was blinking. He logged on, read the hotmail message, and knew it had come from within the Centre, probably from Broots or Sydney.

SWEEPERS COMING TO CLEAN OUR MUTUAL FRIEND'S ROOM. VACATION HAS BECOME PERMANENT.

The message self-destructed as soon as he read it. He stared at the screen for several seconds before he realized what the date had been.

Last night. They were already here.

Parker stirred at the sound of a knock on her door, combed hair back from her face and wiped away tear-tracks. She needed a shower to get the feel of sticky hands off of her. She needed makeup and nail polish, a shiny coat of lacquer against the world. She slid off the bed, belted her robe more tightly, and walked to the door to look out the peephole.

She didn't even consciously understand why she couldn't see anything, but her body knew; it wrenched her out of the way, diving for the carpet, as the peephole exploded in a shower of glass and a silenced bullet hissed across the room to snap into the far wall.

At that second, she didn't know what was worse, having no gun, or having next to no clothes.

She got to her feet just as the door shuddered and flew open, propelled by a kick. Three men, in standard don't-notice-me Centre suits. She didn't recognize them.

They all had guns.

No conversation. She knew that from the look in their eyes. She dived into them, the only possible place to go, snapped the heel of her palm hard into a kneecap and heard the snap of fracture. He went down screaming. She grabbed the gun on the way and fired almost blind, point-blank, felt the hot burn of a bullet along her shoulder, just a crease, a near miss, please.

The third man took a step back as the second one fell, half his brains on the wall. She took steady aim, saw him aiming too, and knew they were probably both going to die.

Jarod dived from the door, slammed into the man and took him to the carpet. The gun went off with a muffled thump, and when Jarod got up his shirt was blood-soaked. He held a hand to his side.

Not for her, please -

The blood was from the other man, who'd taken a bullet in the guts and was bleeding heavily. Jarod got back on his knees and put pressure on the wound, twisted to look at Parker and say, "Ambulance. Hurry."

The man whose knee she'd shattered was out like a light. She stepped over him to the phone and realized that the one she'd shot was dead, and she did know him, his name was Pryce, they'd shared a table at lunch two weeks ago.

She dialed the emergency number. By the time she'd finished, Jarod was sitting back, covered in blood, his face ashen. He looked at her and shook his head.

"He tried to kill me," she said. It sparked something in her. Rage. She walked back to the only man still living, put the gun to his head, and hesitated, poised on the edge of murder.

Jarod pulled her back. "He didn't see me."

"You want to bet both our lives?"

"He didn't." His hand reached out for the gun, but she stood and put it in the pocket of her robe. "We should go."

"Wash up," she said, falling automatically into the role, into Miss Parker. "And I'm not going anywhere in a robe."

While Jarod was in the bathroom, water running, the sweeper woke up, biting back a fresh scream. Parker put her hand on the shattered knee and squeezed until she had his full attention.

"Who?" she asked. His lips were the color of old oatmeal.

"Raines," he whispered.

"It's your lucky day." She slammed her elbow into the point of his jaw and put him out again just as Jarod came back.

In front of Jarod and any damn cameras anywhere in the world, she dropped the robe and put her underwear on, briskly efficient, and it wasn't until she'd buttoned up the shirt and zipped the pants that she realized she hadn't thought once about the bar, and the boys, and her own vulnerability.

Jarod found a town seventy miles away, near Chichen-Itza, with an ornate old Spanish inn that appealed to Parker's love of history. They took separate rooms, connected by a door, and for a while she sat with her feet propped up at the window and looked out at the clear curving sky, the hot gold sun, the lush green treeline.

It was beautiful. All this time, and she'd never been able to see it, she'd been looking through the lens of her own disappointment and anger.

Jarod tapped at the door between their rooms. She leaned over to open it as he carried in two tall margaritas, the glasses frosted with sweat and crusted with salt.

"I was thinking we could start again," he said, and handed her one. "Hello. How was your day?"

She didn't say anything, just watched as he sat down opposite her. Wind ruffled his hair. He'd traded his faintly blood-streaked shirt for something loose and white that made his eyes even darker.

"Did you know they were going to try to kill me?" she asked, and sipped. The lime and tequila washed away the bitter taste of gunpowder, the last bits of humiliation and fear.

"You were sent away from the Centre. If they were going to try it, it was the perfect opportunity. Are you going back?"

"No, I thought I'd let Raines sweat about it for a while. His men dead, me free - you never know what kind of mileage that sort of thing has. I'll do my whole sentence in Cozumel Hell, there's no point in going back now." When he didn't say anything, she closed her eyes, tilted her head toward the cooling breeze, and said, "This just gets more complicated, doesn't it?"

"Life does."

He put his hands on her bare feet, startling her into opening her eyes. His skin was cool and faintly moist from the margarita he'd been holding, and he massaged her arches with gentle, slow strokes, right where it hurt. Right where it always hurt.

"I'm afraid of you," she said. She surprised him, she could see that, and hurt him a little, too. "When I'm with you - I can't find myself."

"Maybe you're just afraid you'll find out who you really are."

"Profound," she said with a trace of her usual ice. "Not helpful."

They sat in silence for a while, watching the sunset layer the sky, and after a while she said, "I was trying to make you something that didn't matter to me. You knew that, didn't you?"

He smiled. "Do I matter?"

"Do I?"

The smile faded. "I grew up in a room with only Sydney for company. The only girl I ever knew, the only one I ever touched, was you. Does that answer your question?"

"Let go of my foot," she said. He did. She lowered her legs and sat for a long moment, looking at him, the wind passing between them like secrets. "I have three weeks, Jarod. And then we go back to what we were before. This can't change that. I have to come after you, and I have to try to put you back where you belong."

"I know." He meant either I forgive you or take your best shot. "I won't give up either."

"Just so we're clear."

And then she leaned forward and put her lips on his. Like she'd never done it before, no agenda, no technique, nothing but instinct. Inside her, rock shattered, and this time she let it go, let the chaos bubble up. There was nothing between them now, no glass, no walls, no controls.

And that was, for now, all right.