12

Tumbling down,

The rain comes down like a victory,

In sheets of shining memory,

Over and over

The rain had stopped and given way to a sudden unexpected silence. Parker closed her eyes, frozen to the spot, feeling her heart contract painfully. Images were blurring inside her mind again. Pictures ripped from newspapers of a bloodied corpse covered by a sheet, the fuzzy black and white video of a DSA showing her mother’s motionless body inside an elevator, Thomas’ empty face and the bullet-wound on his forehead.

She felt his body cooling in her arms again as she was waiting for the ambulance, felt the Sweeper’s restraining hands hurting her arms while trying to keep her away from her mother’s body.

When she dared to open her eyes again, Jarod was kneeling next to the child, his hands on her throat to feel her pulse.

A loud hissing noise that seemed to fill her head drowned out his words and she felt another sharp pain in her chest. Pressing her hand again her upper body, she stumbled forwards and sank down to her knees next to Jarod.

His hand came up to her cheek and he made her look at him. Still she couldn’t make out his words and only when she concentrated on his lips, she realized what he was saying:

“She’s alive.”

She took a deep breath and looked at the little girl whose eyes were open now and so filled with agony that Parker felt it must come pouring out of her any minute. The girl reached her hand out for Parker and she slowly took it. She suddenly felt weak with shock and relief at the same time.

“Amanda...” she whispered and wrapped her arms around the child, pulling her towards her.

Despite the cold Amanda’s body felt warm in Parker’s arms and she almost sobbed at the feeling of the girl’s hands clinging to the back of her jacket.

Jarod stood next to them and felt his legs tremble with sudden relief. They had found the child alive and although there was blood, it didn’t seem to be hers.

He watched Parker’s face that showed all kinds of feelings for once. It was like a puppet come alive after all that had moved it in the past -at least in his presence- had been a raised eyebrow. Now she seemed to be close to tears although she was still holding up.

She opened her eyes and looked straight into his, giving him just the hint of a small smile.

Parker then straightened up and took Amanda with her who clung to her neck, burying her face in her shoulder. They both knew that even now the girl wouldn’t be ready to talk and somehow, after all they had endured, they weren’t either. Wordlessly, they headed for the door, Parker walking slowly and carefully as opposed to her usual stride.

“Oh my god!”

Jenny’s screaming had alerted Angela immediately and they both came running towards Parker and Jarod when they walked in from the hallway.

Jenny looked positively horrified as she reached out for her protegee while Angela looked more relieved than anything.

“Where did you find her?” she asked Jarod, who from the corner of his eye saw Parker stiffen and give poor Jenny a raised eyebrow that was very much herself compared to the softness she’d been showing earlier.

“She was up in the attic,” Jarod explained, voice raised slightly as to alert Parker to what he was saying so that their stories wouldn’t differ from each other. She gave him an acknowledging nod that was lost on Angela and on Jenny who was busy preparing a warm cup of hot chocolate for Amanda, who was still refusing to let go of Parker.

“We went there because we heard funny noises when we were in the offices looking for Amanda’s file. Susanne was going to have a look at it.”

Angela nodded and nudged his cheek affectionally. “I am so glad you found...” she trailed off when she realized the implications of what Jarod had just said.

“You mean the person who kidnaped her was inside this building? Do you think the other children are in danger?”

Jarod placed a calming hand on her arm. “I doubt it. I think all this has to do with Amanda in some way.”

Angela shook her head and touched her hand to her forehead. “I can’t believe it. We have to call the police.”

She gingerly walked over to the counter to get the phone and Jarod felt bad for the woman who was trying to appear strong, squaring her shoulders while he realized she rather felt like crying.

While Angela was on the phone he directed his attention at Parker and Amanda. Parker had sat down on the small couch that stood in one corner and was whispering to Amanda who seemed to be even more frightened than she had been earlier. Maybe now that reality had sunk in and that there was somebody who was protecting her, she had only realized how much of a horror the past days had been.

Jenny was still busy with the hot chocolate. Her hands were shaking and she looked close to tears. Jarod marveled at how different she and Parker were. While Jenny was barely holding back her emotions, Parker had turned to stone again, shutting her own pain away while trying to be there for Amanda. They were both attractive in their own ways. Parker’s allure came from her icy elegance while Jenny was cute and somewhat clumsy. She had noticed that Jarod was watching her and gave him a timid smile while she poured the hot chocolate and carried the mug over to Amanda.

“Who would do such a thing?” she asked in a little voice when she sat down next to Miss Parker who gave her another dirty look in response. Jarod felt a little embarrassed for her, since it was obvious that Jenny was only seeking advice or even some sort of protection from the older woman. Strange enough that anyone would pick Parker as a guardian of all people. She didn’t seem to understand the phenomenon either so she simply left the question unanswered and went back to smoothing Amanda’s hair back.

“I mean... a little girl! Up there!”

Jarod was about to tell her to stop because Amanda was still in the room, but was interrupted by a familiar figure suddenly filling the doorframe.

“Marcus!” Angela who had finished her phone-call ran towards the good-looking dark-haired doctor who had just come in. Jarod saw the panic that registered on Parker’s face but couldn’t think of a reason for her sudden discomfort. Marcus’ face lit up at the sight of her and he smiled at her, positively mesmerized, while hugging Angela.

“You remember my cousin Marcus, Jarod? Marcus, this is Susanne Sommer. She is a children’s psychologist from Germany. They have just found Amanda...”

Miss Parker felt her muscles tighten. She would have made a dash for the door, hadn’t she been holding Amanda. Vaguely she reckoned she now knew just how Jarod must have felt every single time she had nearly caught him.

“Susanne?” Marcus asked. The obvious besotted look in his eyes had given way to confusion and just the hint of vigilance.

She opened her mouth to explain but couldn’t really come up with anything. She had given him her business-card with her real name, she had told him that she was from Delaware and she had spoken to him in perfect English without the slightest hint of any accent, let alone the heavy German one she used around here. What was she to do? And how could she have been so dumb?

“I thought your name was Miss Parker!” Marcus exclaimed and she could see in Jarod’s face that even boy-genius was slowly realizing what was going on.

Angela now looked confused, too and so did Jenny. Damn!

“No, Marcus. You must be confusing something. Jarod brought her here a few days ago to help Amanda.”

“So Amanda was the child you were looking after in the hospital?” Marcus asked Miss Parker and she was so out of words to say that she shot a pleading look at Jarod who cleared his throat.

“I guess this is my mistake...” he began, but Marcus didn’t allow him to finish.

“I should have known there was something weird about you! First you keep nosing around trying to find out who killed Stella and then you frame...” He covered his mouth with his hand and looked at Amanda apologetically. The girl had looked up from Miss Parker’s shoulder and was now looking at him.

Slowly he approached her and dropped to his knees next to her not without giving Miss Parker a warning look that told her that he would get back to her soon.

“I am sorry, baby,” he whispered and touched her shoulder lightly. Amanda just looked at him, then lay her head back on Miss Parker’s shoulder.

“I suggest you bring her upstairs, Jennifer,” Angela said in a commanding voice. “There is a lot to be cleared up down here, I suppose.”

Miss Parker was very unwilling to hand Amanda over to Jenny and the little girl went into something of a shocked rigor when the other woman took her. Amanda gave Miss Parker a frightened look.

“It’s okay, honey,” Parker soothed. “I will come up to say goodnight later.”

She wasn’t so sure whether she would be allowed to after having faced the inquisition of these two. Why did she have to meet Angela’s cousin of all people? She might have come up with that earlier after learning that they were both called Jones, but she hadn’t really noticed since the name was pretty common.

Jarod was very much aware of the fact that he had to save Miss Parker. Her dark gaze cleared up when he approached her and Marcus Jones and turned almost sheepish.

“I can explain.”

“Right now I feel a little bit like killing you, Jarod,” Miss Parker said after a long deliberate silence that had not just recently started to become quite awkward. “If I had my gun with me I would very much like to practice my aim on you.”

“And here I went thinking that you didn’t need to practice because it was perfect anyway,” he replied calmly.

Miss Parker turned her head towards him, taking her eyes off the windscreen wipers for the first time since they had gotten in the car.

“It is. That is the whole point, Jarod.”

They stared at each other for a moment, then the corners of Miss Parker’s mouth began to twitch slightly. Since he knew that she was used to hiding all kinds of feelings, but never held back on her amusement, he knew that she wouldn’t be able to resist for too long.

And he was right. Only moments later, a light chuckle escaped her lips, then a second followed and Jarod found himself joining into what was the closest thing to a laughing fit that he had ever seen Miss Parker in.

“You...” she gasped between fits of laughter. “... are completely nuts!”

“I just saved your ass, that is,” he answered, gaze directed at the dark driveway they were turning into. He stopped the car in front of the house and turned towards a still laughing Miss Parker who was clutching her handbag fiercely as if to prevent herself from laughing any harder.

“Yeah just how. I knew in theory that you were a genius, but I never expected you to think that far outside the box.”

She was still laughing with her head thrown back and the raindrops landing on her face, but she didn’t seem to care when she walked ahead, her trousers still sprayed with mud from their earlier odyssey through the gardens and her handbag swinging back and forth in her hand. She looked so adorable that he had a hard time not lurching forward and grabbing her to...

“Jarod. Stop staring into space and open the door,” Parker called cheerfully from the door. With watching her he had completely forgotten to move his legs to get to the door. Feeling sheepish, he hurried after her and unlocked the front-door.

“I’ll go upstairs and run a bath,” Miss Parker told him, filling his head with unwelcome images.

“Get a grip, Jarod!” he told himself.

She just shook her head, gave him another amused smile and went upstairs. A moment later he heard the sound of running water and the unmistakable sound of chuckling.

He hadn’t found his story quite that amusing, though, but Miss Parker had already had a hard time holding back when they had still been sitting in the kitchen. He himself, used to crafting exotic stories when his cover was close to being blown, had made up a story in a matter of seconds and also been able to keep a somber face through all of it.

He had first shot a snide remark at his “colleague” for being so careless, to which Miss Parker had responded with a regretful shake of her head, then he had, along with pacifying gestures, had placidly told the others the story of Stella’s old friend from school that, horrified by the news of her death, had come over from Germany where she now lived, to see Amanda.

He then elaborated that Miss Parker who worked with kids that had been left orphans because of murder cases in Germany had wondered whether she could use her expertise to help Amanda overcome her trauma. She had chosen to give herself a fake-identity to cover-up her connection to the child whom she’d never met in order to avoid people keeping her away for reasons of protocol.

He had went on to describe how Miss Parker had tearfully admitted the whole fraud to him only one nights prior to today, expressing her regret on how she had had to pretend to be someone else in front of all those lovely people.

When he had said the word "lovely", Miss Parker had been forced to fight back laughter for the first time and he had shot her a warning look that had not gone unnoticed.

“I am so terribly sorry, but Stella was such a good friend at school and I just felt I owed it to her to try to help Amanda. I was so afraid you’d do some research and make the connection immediately,” Miss Parker had added then, her voice quivering.

Angela had frowned, then shaken her head while Jenny had looked positively puzzled. Marcus hadn’t looked as if he bought it until Miss Parker gave him a look that was accompanied by a very strategically placed flutter of her eyelids that had done the trick.

“Why’d you say you were from Delaware then?” he asked her and Parker shrugged.

“My Daddy lives there.”

Whatever, they had bought it, if grudgingly.

And although Jarod knew that his story had been a far cry, it had come in handy for him that Stella had indeed had a high-school friend by the name of Parker that had moved to Europe. He had come across that bit of information during a nightly visit to the crime-scene, when he had raided her drawers for information that might somehow lead him to her killer.

They wouldn’t have the means to follow up far on his story, but if they actually tried to find out about it, they would probably be satisfied with the picture of the little black haired girl named Lisa Parker that he himself had come across weeks earlier.

Although he was relieved at how things had turned out, he couldn’t quite push the thought aside that Amanda’s kidnapper was still at large. The story hadn’t been clarified and although keeping the girl safe was more important than everything else now, he still felt uneasy about that particular fact.

The water upstairs had stopped running and promptly his mind returned to his second current problem. Miss Parker’s close proximity continued to make him dizzy and the many different sides that she had displayed over the last days simply served to make everything worse. He had always had a soft spot for her but now that they had been spending that much time together he had to admit that, as cheesy as it sounded, he loved everything about her, from her strange sense of humor, to her impossible demeanor, to her occasional smiles.

Earlier he had told himself that, set aside their personal history, he couldn’t possibly be with a woman that was that callous and heartless. Now he had to come up with other excuses to not come to the inevitable conclusion: Even if she wanted him, too, they were both broken people. They couldn’t be together, because you couldn’t fight fire with fire. Their lives had always been entwined and it had never brought them anything else than heartache.

Should they ever be able to get away from the Centre, the scars would still be there and though not impossible, it was highly unlikely that they’d ever fade away.

The images from the night just a few days ago invaded his mind with force, her bare shoulders and raised leg haunting him. Besides himself he suddenly made a decision that he knew to be completely wrong if not possibly fatal.

Miss Parker opened her eyes when there was a knock at the bathroom door.

“Jarod?” she called and when his muffled voice confirmed it was him, added: “Come in.”

She sank a little deeper into the foam that filled the tub when he stepped in and shyly peeked around the door.

“Don’t be bashful on me. I bet you’ve seen a lot more than that.”

He finally walked in and she was surprised to discover he was holding a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

“You brought wine?”

“Thought you enjoyed a glass in the tub.”

“You bet.”

She watched as he poured them each a glass and sat down on the toilet seat. She cocked an eyebrow at that but decided that she would wait for whatever this would lead to. Sipping the wine she was once again surprised.

“Nice choice. This one is really good. I didn’t know that you were an expert on wine.”

“Thanks. I was a winemaker once on a pretend.”

She smiled. “Why didn’t you send leads so we’d end up there?”

He grinned back. “Because I knew you’d get dead drunk and I was afraid you’d frighten Broots.”

She snorted and took another sip. “I am never dead drunk, Jarod. It would take a barrel of that to actually get me tipsy.”

“I’ve seen you pretty drunk before.”

“On scotch. A bottle of that suffices.”

He gave her a worried look and she rolled her eyes at him. She felt as relaxed as you can only feel after a real fit of hysterical laughter. Thinking back to the disbelief in Angela’s, Marcus’ and Jenny’s face she started to smile again. There she’d been, thinking that she had blown it, when Jarod had come to her aid, bailing her out with his usual vigor. She had to admit she had felt a bit impressed- a fact she would never tell Jarod.

“I am so glad Amanda’s back. She’ll be safe with Angela and Jenny taking turns sleeping in her room.”

“Think so,” Parker answered thoughtfully. “Tell me, you saw me with Marcus in the hospital -why didn’t you tell me he had something to do with Angela? I would have been more careful then.”

Jarod began to look evasive and only when she turned her famous Parker glare on him, admitted: “I didn’t really see him in that hospital corridor. I just saw you.”

Surprised at his honest words that held a multitude of possibilities, Miss Parker even forgot to be rude.

“What?” she asked softly.

Jarod didn’t answer but simply sipped his wine. A gesture that Miss Parker found very alluring without consciously allowing herself to. And then she realized how ridiculous their situation was. They were sitting here, drinking wine, her naked in the bathtub and Jarod saying things that pointed towards deeper feelings for her.

She suddenly began to feel very uneasy. If this was leading where she thought it was, she didn’t know whether she wanted to go along with it or not.

Yesterday she had wanted to kiss Jarod so badly that his rejection had hurt her worse than she had thought possible and when he had pulled her into him in the hospital she had felt herself plagued by the famous butterflies in her stomach that other people welcomed with open arms.

Miss Parker hated being in love. It just brought about sorrow and mayhem.

“Turn around,” she commanded when a familiar panic rose up inside her. He obeyed in silence and she got up, wrapping a towel around her with frenzied hands that had suddenly started shaking.

Jarod turned back when she had almost reached the door.

“What...?” he began, but she silenced him with a raised hand.

“I am going home.”

“You’re what?”

He followed her into the bedroom and put the wineglass down on the dresser with some force.

“Why so suddenly?”

“We found Amanda and you could only bail me out with a story that is bound to be proven to be a lie sooner or later. I’d better get going now before they arrest me for some exotic crime.”

He frowned. “But we didn’t solve the mystery yet.”

She turned around to him again when she was sure he couldn’t see the confusion in her eyes anymore for she had hidden it well enough to go undetected.

“I don’t care about the mystery, Jarod. This is not some novel that will only end when all secrets have been cleared. It’s just our twisted life and I never asked to be pulled into one of your pretends.”

He shook his head and suddenly looked a lot like Sydney.

“What is it you are really afraid of, Miss Parker?”

“Like I told you, I am just sick of all this.”

“You’re not. You want to find out who is doing this to Amanda as well as I do and you want to help her get over her trauma even more than I do because you’ve been through it yourself.”

Parker’s eyes narrowed with her growing anger, but Jarod continued anyway. He wouldn’t let her get away with this. It was time for her to face her demons or she’d forever be haunted by them- just like Amanda if they didn’t find a way to help her.

“And you know what? I think you’re just sick of me!”

There was a momentary silence that was also filled with a bristling electricity that foreshadowed the outburst that was to follow.

“Of course I am sick of you! You cannot even once get off your high horse and level with me. Why do you always have to try to show me that you’re superior in one way or another?”

Jarod was stunned. He had no idea what she was talking about since in this matter he was not a single step ahead of her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re playing games and I am truly sick of it!”

“What games?” he asked, helplessly.

She approached him, one hand holding on to the towel, the other colliding with his cheek in a thundering slap in his face. But her hand strangely remained on his face afterwards, cupping his cheek and cooling off the heat that she had inflicted along with the pain.

Her eyes were blazing with fury when she finally pulled him towards him and crushed his lips in a violent kiss.

Jarod was too taken aback to resist her demanding lips and shared a kiss with Miss Parker that couldn’t have been more different from that first innocent kiss they had shared many years ago.

There was an almost triumphant if still angry look in Miss Parker’s eyes when she pulled back a minute later.

“Damn you. I’m leaving now.”

“Wait!” Jarod called after her when she was about to walk out into the hall.

“What?” she stopped in the doorway.

“Shouldn’t you get dressed first?”

... to be continued ...