19

Angela? Jarod froze and leaned further into the door. One thing was for sure: He wouldn’t move an inch just in case anyone decided to go for Amanda and Miss Parker just now.

“Is it Angela?” Miss Parker asked, her voice almost down to a whisper.

Amanda’s eyes widened even more, the fear more evident than ever.

“No, no. Not Angela. It’s Jennifer!” She started to sob and buried her head in Miss Parker’s sleeve. She looked up at Jarod and he could see that she was just as surprised as he was. Cute goofy Jennifer? Why would she have a grudge on anyone? Let alone little Amanda?

“Why are you afraid of her? Why wouldn’t she allow you to talk?” Miss Parker inquired carefully, but the girl’s sobbing just increased.

“Can’t... can’t... tell you,” she managed but dug her fingernails into Miss Parker’s back. She winced but looked up at Jarod again.

“Believe me. You are safe with us,” Miss Parker ensured her and patted her back. “I’ll rip the little bitch to shreds.”

Jarod didn’t really approve of Miss Parker using dirty language around children, but this time she simply spoke aloud what he himself was thinking. He turned on his heel, resting in the knowledge that Amanda was indeed safe with Miss Parker.

Although he was sure Miss Parker wanted badly to be the one to confront Jenny, he decided that the girl had obviously been underestimated by them and Miss Parker wasn’t really in the best of physical states right now. Taking on an opponent didn’t feel like the best idea for her although he knew she would make him suffer later for forcing her to stay behind the front line.

He walked downstairs and found Angela in the kitchen, soaking wet as she had proclaimed earlier, but making coffee nonetheless. The lines around her face seemed to have increased since he’d last seen her. He was hoping to be able to tell her soon that Marcus wasn’t really the one who had committed all these crimes, but finding out Jenny was guilty unfortunately didn’t automatically make Marcus a good guy.

“Have you seen Jenny?”

“She’s upstairs with the kids,” Angela replied. “Would you like...?”

But Jarod had already made for the stairs.

When he arrived at Amanda’s room, already out of breath, his worst fears turned out to have come true. Miss Parker was on the floor, a broken chair next to her motionless body. Dark strands of hair had fallen in her face and his heart broke at the look of that. There were streaks of blood across her cheek and he fell to his knees next to her still form, close to panic now. It was that moment when he realized what was the second element that made their relationship a hazard to both of them: Dangerous games weren’t as risky when you only had yourself to worry about. If there was someone else, that other person was necessarily going to become a nuisance.

What was even worse was that to him Miss Parker wasn’t just any person that was in danger because of his actions. Up until now he had discerned his strong physical attraction to her and the fact that he wanted to bury his face in her hair whenever he got a whiff of her scent. Now in fear for her well-being he noticed for the first time that it was actually more. They hadn’t exchanged I love you’s yet and he hadn’t given a thought to it up until now. Now that he carefully turned her around in order to check for a heartbeat all he could think of what that he hadn’t told her. What if it was too late?

Her pained groan seemed like the sweetest sound he’d ever heard and he gave in to the impulse to crush Miss Parker to his chest.

“Are you... insane?” her speech was clear although her voice carried all the pain she must be feeling.

“Oh god... I am so sorry!” he whispered and waited until she nodded her okay before he picked her body up and gently carried her to the bed where he set her down.

Miss Parker blinked, dazed, and touched her hand to her forehead, then stared at the red liquid covering her fingers. Her facial expression went from confused to alarmed in just one second and she had swung her legs over the side of the bed before Jarod could intervene.

“Amanda!”

“Parker, you need to stay here and get some rest.”

“Rest?” she spat. “Stop talking nonsense and help me walk, ratboy!”

He didn’t even have time to feel hurt that she had returned to her old ways and insults once that she was angry with him because she was already standing, one hand against the wall for support.

“Jenny that little bitch!” she groaned, hand to her forehead. “I just guess she underestimated the Parkers’ notoriously hard head.” She gave a short snort of laughter but the pain she was feeling was evident even in that.

Jarod couldn’t help but blurt out what he had been dying to say since he had found her on the floor. “Oh god- I love you!”

She looked at him, half puzzled half annoyed. “You know, this is really not the moment! Come on!”

Jarod decided that she would only get herself in even more serious trouble if left on her own so he slung his arm around her waist and walked her to the door. Her walking improved after the first few steps and once they were out in the hallway she tried to free herself of his arm. Jarod shook his head forcefully and applied his arm more firmly.

“Let’s do this on my terms at least this one time, okay?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You should know that I am not the type of person who would leave the terms of anything so important to someone else.”

He grinned despite all the fear he was feeling for Amanda. “I do know that, but you’re hardly in the position to make any demands. I will not allow you to endanger yourself and your hard Parker head any further, are we clear?”

Her face darkened at first but was then lit up by a small smile. “I can’t help but find you sexy when you’re talking like that,” she stated huskily.

“You’re impossible,” he told her while they walked towards the stairs as quickly as his arm around her waist would allow.

“Where do you think she went?” Parker asked.

“You were the one who has last seen her,” he replied.

Parker snorted in annoyance. “Yeah but I was kinda hit over the head, you know?”

“I bet she is trying to get away. She hasn’t crossed the main hallway, though. She must have gone down to one of the other exits.”

“Her car is parked in front of the house,” Miss Parker said. “No way anyone would miss that horrid little thing.”

Jarod smirked. He had known that Miss Parker would not be impressed with Jenny’s shrieking pink little car.

They hurried downstairs where Angela was already waiting, a puzzled look on her face.

“Oh my god, Miss Parker! What’s happened to you?” she asked, alarmed, when she saw the woman’s desolate state.

“Just an encounter with your sweet-faced employee,” Miss Parker answered and finally managed to free herself of Jarod’s arm. She would let him support her when nobody was around alright, but there was no need to be seen assisted by Jarod when anyone she knew was watching.

“Excuse me?” Angela’s kind face was crossed by a look of horror, then she whirled around, smart enough not to ask any more questions. She opened the door with so much force that the doorknob slipped from her hands and wood crashed into stone.

“Jennifer!” she called with more fury in her voice than Miss Parker would have imagined the kind woman to possess.

The blond young woman turned around, her face illuminated by a flash of lightning that slashed through the dim light of another rainy day. What a picture, Miss Parker thought. So B-movie indeed. Courtesy of the second blow to her head she wasn’t able to focus her gaze enough to actually be able to recognize the changes in the younger woman’s face. Jarod was, though, and icy water seemed to suddenly be trickling down his back.

It wasn’t only determination he could see in her face. It was more. It wasn’t madness, though. He knew madness better than he would have liked and what he saw was closer to evil. Or maybe it just came of stronger because it was flickering from a face that was designed to be sweet. He took in her small sweet nose, those full lips whose smile had been replaced with a sneer and the heart-shaped face that was surrounded wavy blond hair.

Angela bolted the moment the flash of lightning died down. Jarod followed a split second later while Miss Parker had to admit that she was forced to cling to the stairs’ post while a wave of dizziness had her in its grip.

Outside Jenny struggled with the door of the car, her heart filled with determination. It had felt good to swing that chair down on Miss Parker’s head. Much, much better than when she had only thrown the stone. She had actually meant to have it graze Jarod just so he would stop nosing around, but having it hurt Miss Parker was just as well. Maybe better even. That bitch had waltzed in here, making fun of her and she had got Amanda to talk. How had she done that? Hadn’t she, Jenny, scared the little girl into oblivion?

She looked down at the frightened child that was to horrified to even cry.

“Now I’ll show you what happens when you don’t obey me!” she hissed, loud enough to be heard by the approaching Angela. It had been so damn easy to fool that unbelievably gullible woman. Jenny had learned early in her life that kindness could usually be equaled with stupidity, so she was good at taking advantage of it.

Only now did she realize that she didn’t have her car keys with her. What was she to do? The rain was coming down more forcefully than ever and she wouldn’t manage to drag Amanda along with her on foot. Angela had almost reached her now and for the first time during the whole game she had been playing for months, Jenny was overwhelmed with panic. She felt Angela grab her wrist, she felt herself being pushed against the car firmly and was reminded of how Miss Parker had been in that very same position, but with a delicious Jarod on top of her. She felt hysterical laughter that she couldn’t place bubble up inside of her.

Why was she always the one who got the beating instead of the hungry kisses? Maybe that had been why she had hurled the stone at them in the first place. Maybe it hadn’t mattered whether they were alive or dead. Maybe she had just tried to suffocate Miss Parker with the pillow to make herself believe that she had been trying to get rid of her as a danger to her plan concerning Amanda. She hadn’t noticed that her laughter had been replaced with a howl that sounded as if it was erupting from a hurt animal instead of coming from her, a sweet delicate blonde.

Angela was stronger than she looked and Jenny struggled in her firm grasp but couldn’t free herself. A moment later Jarod was next to them, looking down at her with anger in his eyes.

He gently squeezed Angela’s shoulder. The older woman was panting with the effort that it took from her to keep Jenny still. Before she knew it, Jarod had taken her place and nodded at her.

“I guess it’s time to call the police, Angela.”

She walked away from them, the rain soaking her, but she wasn’t feeling the chill.

Jenny looked up at Jarod’s face that was darkened with anger. The shadows were playing on his face, making it all the more handsome. She felt his hands pin her to the car and tried to imagine as hard as she could the darkness in his eyes to be desire. Hadn’t it been just like that the last time?

“Jennifer? What are you doing?”

She whirled around, her hands sweaty and her heart pounding with the shock she was feeling at being discovered. She didn’t know where to hide her hands, where to put the pills she had just acquired. But what could she do anyway? He had surprised her in front of the hospital’s open medicine cabinet, her hands all over its contents. How could he not know even if she denied it?

“Jennifer are you going to return that?”

He almost gently took the pills from her hands.

“I should have known you were an addict as badly as you were shaking when you assisted me last week.”

“Dr Kerley, please...” she began. “Don’t tell anyone. I was going to stop taking those... I really was... I...”

He looked at her, his face dark. “I am forced to report this to the chief of medicine, Jennifer. We can’t allow an addict among our nursing staff.”

She started to shiver when she thought of that perspective. No job, no money, no pills. Back to the street where she’d come from.

“Please, Dr Kerley!” She started to walk past him, but he grabbed her arms and brought her closer to the wall.

“How could you do that, Jennifer? I read your file. You’ve come so far and now you ruin it all because of an old addiction flaring up?”

She sobbed, feeling her deprivation from the drugs. It had been too long since she’d swallowed that last pill and she knew she wouldn’t be able to go any further without the next. “Let go of me!” It was the fury again. Whenever she’d gone too long without she started to become violent and she couldn’t avoid it. There was no amount of willpower that could keep her down, only the pills served to calm her. She started to struggle, to try to kick him so he had to use the whole weight of his body to restrain her.

“Please, Jennifer. This is not the way...” he trailed off, his face now close to hers and she could see the confusion in his eyes. She had to use that confusion, had to turn his anger into desire.

“You don’t have to tell anyone...” she whispered, masking her rage with an inviting purr. Dr Kerley suddenly seemed unsure about what to do but she could see his gaze change. She lurched forward and crushed her lips to his, causing him to let go of her. Finally free, she ran for the door, but then paused and looked back at him. He was handsome, he was strong and he wanted her. Why go away now? Her hand on the doorknob, she turned the key instead. Her hand was still cramped around the container of pills and she slowly, seductively placed one in her mouth and then returned to the doctor and looked into his eyes that were filled with desire for her.

“Let me go...” she asked Jarod in the same tone of voice she had used on Edward Kerley back then. She slowly arched her back and tried to reach his lips with hers. “Let me go and you can have me...”

Her attempt at seduction of her captor was interrupted by a sarcastic jolt of laughter.

“Would you please refrain from that pathetic little attempt at freeing yourself?” Miss Parker snarled. She looked like the goddess of revenge with her wet hair and the semi-dried blood on her face.

“Do you ever die?” Jenny spat.

“Not courtesy of you, I suppose, you little twit,” Miss Parker replied and crouched down next to little Amanda who was pressed against the side of the car, crying.

“Come here.” The little girl clung to Miss Parker like a lifeline when she picked her up and leaned at the car for support.

“It’s alright,” Miss Parker whispered. “You’re safe now. She can’t hurt you anymore.”

Lights began flashing a moment later when the police cruiser turned into the driveway.

“Why do people keep getting away with faking their deaths? Nobody really dies. Give him a second and Elvis is going to walk through the door,” Miss Parker growled.

Jarod couldn’t help but laugh. He felt a little as if he had had too much coffee. His whole body was buzzing with the energy that he usually associated with a finished pretend.

“Can’t be that hard. Jenny seems to just have crashed her car after Dr. Kerley was arrested, then changed her last name and came back to work here. Damn risky actually.”

“Stop pacing. It annoys me,” Miss Parker interrupted, reaching out a hand for him to contradict her strict tone of voice. Jarod sighed and joined her on the couch. She still looked a mess, the blood now washed from her face, but her hair still only half-dried and ruffled. At least after she had put Amanda to sleep she had agreed to be wrapped in a blanket and sit down on the couch. Miss Parker leaned over to him and lifted her legs to half sit in his lap.

“I told you that little...” He cut her off. “You’ve sworn enough today, don’t you think?”

She grinned. “Well I told you that girl was up to no good.”

“Her cheerfulness just annoyed you.”

Miss Parker shrugged, a little smile now on her face. The good thing about leading a life filled with as much horror as theirs were was that not much could shock you. Consequently they had quite quickly recovered from the shook of today’s events.

“There’s one more thing,” she said, pulling him towards her. “I am sorry for snapping at you when you said you loved me today.”

He grinned at the memory. “You were right. It really wasn’t the right moment.”

She smiled, then murmured almost incomprehensibly. “Love you, too.”

“Excuse me?” he asked, teasing her.

Her head snapped up and she found his gaze again. “You heard very well what I said. You know how I am. I can’t say this straight out or I have to throw up.”

He chuckled, then pulled her close, ready to leave her alone on that topic.

“I still don’t understand what she was here for though? Dr Kerley was already in jail. His trial was set and they didn’t need Amanda’s testimony to pin that murder on him. You took care of that. Why would Jenny want to shut Amanda up?” Miss Parker lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at Jarod quizzically.

“I don’t know. We should ask him.”

“So you don’t think she was acting on her own accord?”

“She admitted to having an affair with him and when you look at her closely she seems to be quite the dependent personality. I don’t believe she’d do it on her own.”

Edward Kerley couldn’t help but grit his teeth at the sight of Jarod who was the one who had doomed him to lead a life in captivity. His companion was a welcome sight, though. She looked good in her tight outfit and those lips were... he called himself to order. No need to lust after Jarod’s girl even if she was the first woman he had seen in weeks.

She gave him a look that conveyed more disgust that he had been prepared for. Inside himself he sought regret but came up empty-handed.

Kerley had always had a strong sense of justice, at least when it came to himself. His thoughts went back to the day when that sense of justice had first led him to the path to the dark side which he had never left again...

“It’s just a little prick, baby. You’ll be fine in a minute.”

“Sure, daddy?” Amanda asked, wide-eyed.

“Very sure. You’re my daughter, remember? You’re strong.”

He could feel the bile rising in his throat at the memory of that conversation now that he sat here in his office, on his own, staring at the results from Amanda’s blood test and the one he had ordered later.

The scientist that he was could usually not be convinced by a hunch alone, he needed proof. This time his conviction that there was foul play had lead him into the right direction. He glanced at Amanda’s chart again. The blood test had been a routine examination that he had performed on her. Her normal doctor had been on maternity leave so he had decided to do it himself and had been faced with the results for the first time. Things were fine. They always were. Amanda was a strong little girl, a quality he had usually prided himself as coming from his genes. And maybe it did. Just not the way he had thought it had.

She had the wrong blood type. She could not be his daughter.

He had been in denial at first, had believed the lab technician to be a dumbass, to have got it wrong. Then he had run a DNA-test on them and found out that things were even worse than he’d first believed: He was clearly not her father, but he was also clearly related to her. Truth had struck him like lightning: Marcus.

They had never got along well, half-brothers that they were, but things had gone from bad to worse when Marcus had first met Stella. They had developed some kind of friendship that Edward had only become aware of later when Marcus had slipped and called his wife Maria in his presence. He had then inquired with the then pregnant Stella who had confessed to him that she had been meeting with Marcus a few times but that they had fallen out somehow. When Edward had expressed his confusion at his half-brother calling his wife Maria, a look of regret had crossed her face that he only now understood. They had ended their affair when she had become pregnant. Had she known back then that Marcus was the father?

Edward had then laughed sarcastically at her simple explanation, but now it felt nauseatingly appropriate. She’d told him that Marcus had been calling her Maria for a movie they’d once watched together. Too bad that Edward’s google search had turned up the little detail that said movie had featured a woman named Maria who had a daughter called Amanda.

It was then that he had decided to kill Stella.

“So you killed your ex-wife to avenge your ego?” Miss Parker asked, disgusted.

“I killed her because she betrayed me. In history betrayal was often sanctioned with death. It still is in some places, nowadays.” His statement was accompanied by a gaze that seemed to cut through Miss Parker’s skin.

“It still is in some places...” Like the Centre. If they found out about her relationship with Jarod, she wouldn’t even have the privilege to rot away in the sublevels. They would kill her. And they wouldn’t do it despite her being the chairman’s daughter, but because of that fact. She swallowed. Was that worth it?

She looked at Jarod with his kind face and then down at their hands that were joined below the table where Kerley couldn’t see them. It was worth it. She would be careful and being with Jarod she was more alive than she had ever been when chasing him.

“So you had Jennifer fake her death and keep Amanda quiet. About what?”

“I was alright telling you about my killing my ex-wife, but you don’t honestly think I will incriminate myself on that crime that stupid girl committed? I had nothing to do with it.”

“Just like you had nothing to do with the killing of Marcus Jones’ lawyer when he was sent to warn Angela and us?”

There was a glimmer behind Kerley’s eyes, but it vanished quickly. “Of course not.”

“Then I bet I can tell you what you did,” Jarod said. Miss Parker saw a look of conviction in his face that told her that he had given a lot of thought to what he was going to say. And if a pretender gave a lot of thought to something it usually meant that he had simmed it.

“After you found out that Marcus was Amanda’s father you went to your ex-wife’s house and killed her in front of Amanda. You told them that you were punishing them both for the betrayal. Stella for committing it and Amanda for being the outcome. And then Stella was dead and you were going to turn on Amanda...”

Edward’s hands were full of blood, everything spattered with it. He turned away from his ex-wife’s battered corpse and faced the trembling child. She wasn’t even crying anymore. He had loved her as much as he was able to. He wasn’t a person who could really love, but he had thought that that little girl was the one person he could love at least a bit.

Now she stood there, her teddy bear in her arms and looked up at him with frightened eyes. He lifted the knife but he couldn’t do it.

“And you hated yourself for being unable to kill Amanda, but she knew that Marcus was her father. She knew that her mother loved another man and didn’t give into her feelings because she was too afraid that you would find out and harm them. So you asked Jenny to take care of the problem.”

Edward Kerley motioned for the guard and smiled at Jarod when the handcuffs were applied. He stood up and was walked towards the door where he stopped one last time, then turned around and smirked at the couple on the other side of the glass: “You’re one smart man, Jarod. Of course I didn’t do it, but if I had... it would have exactly been like that.”

And from those words Jarod and Miss Parker knew that the scenario Jarod had laid out was exactly what had happened.

For the first time since Miss Parker had arrived in Portland the sun was shining and turned the children’s home into a warm and welcoming place. They were sitting outside on the lawn while the children were all around them, playing and laughing. They were unaware of the evil that Jenny had brought into the place and Angela preferred it to stay that way. She didn’t want to frighten them now the danger was no longer looming over them.

She looked first at Amanda who was sitting on a bench next to the rabbit-shed, holding a brown specimen, Marcus sitting next to her. He was telling her something and she gave him a careful smile. When Marcus had been told about his being the little girl’s father and about Edward’s terrible plan, Jarod had been forced to hold him back so he wouldn’t go straight to the jail and kill Edward. Instead he and Angela had been talking all night, weighing options and then had decided that Amanda should stay with Angela until she was ready and willing to live with her father. Things were going well, obviously.

Angela turned to speak to Jarod and Miss Parker but found that it wasn’t a good moment. Grinning, she got up and crept away so she wouldn’t disturb them.

Miss Parker had closed her eyes against the sun and enjoyed the warm light on her face. Her hand was still in Jarod’s and whenever she surfaced from the happiness that seemed to intoxicate her, she hated herself and Jarod for just being so awfully.... in love. She wasn’t used to it and it scared her more than she would have admitted. Love was weakness. That was what she had always been told and since she seemed to have lost her mind since she had given in to her feelings, she could understand what they meant.

“How’s your head?” Jarod whispered into her ear and she opened her eyes to look at him.

“Blown,” she said truthfully as she brushed a strand of hair from his forehead.

He grinned and kissed her. They both knew that their time here was up. Amanda was safe and had started to build a relationship with her father and Angela had found new staff already.

Still sitting there in the sun and enjoying each other’s company they couldn’t imagine going back to their lives.

Miss Parker woke from a deep nightmare-free sleep and rose from the bed to make some coffee. Jarod was still fast asleep, snoring slightly so she padded to the door and walked downstairs carefully to be quiet and not wake him. He had stayed awake when she had already gone to bed to catch up on some things but he had obviously grown tired before he had finished it all, because his laptop was still on the table, switched off but still opened. The DSA-player stood next to it, accompanied by a closed red notebook.

Miss Parker couldn’t resist but pick the notebook up. Was it about his next pretend? She opened it and frowned. It contained the same newspaper clippings that she had read before when Jarod had handed her the red notebook on Amanda and her mother. This couldn’t be the same one though, since the other one was upstairs on her bedside table. She began to flip through it, encountering the familiar headlines.

When she got to the last page, though, she paled and stumbled backwards, holding on to a chair not to faint. It were two sheets of blood tests, one looking rather new, one old and yellowed. Her heart was pounding when she read the note Jarod had scribbled next to the newer one: Kerley is not Amanda’s father. But who is? Must be one of his family-members.

He had known about that all along? He had obviously not known that Marcus was Kerley’s estranged half-brother. So he had kept that from her... but the older sheet of blood tests was still a mystery. She picked it up and skimmed it, then felt as if her head had been hit again.

The Centre logo was visible in one corner. It had faded with time but could still be recognized when looked at closely. Miss Parker raised an eyebrow to herself and read on. She couldn’t really make sense of all the numbers and details that were type-written on the page but she recognized her name identified as subject 1 and another familiar one as subject 2. She frowned, then turned the page and her breath caught. Subject 2 was the father of subject 1 with a certainty of almost 99 per cent.

And subject number 2 was one Dr. Sydney Greene.

She ran her fingertips over the name, the data, the scientific truth. Her whole body went numb with the revelation and she suddenly seemed unable to stay standing. Trembling, she sank to one of the chairs and flipped another page. She had seen her father’s signature so often accompanied by his abbreviation for “acknowledged” under her own reports that she recognized it right away. And here it was, too. Next to a date. A date she had seen very recently as a code on a surveillance tape from a super-market.

The image of her mother’s beaten face came back to her. She saw Sydney’s pained look that she sometimes wondered about when she caught him secretly looking at her. Sydney was her father and Mister Parker knew. Jarod knew. No. He had known all along.

He had sent her the tape as a first clue, had her find out that Marcus was Amanda’s father. He had played another game, rubbed something else in her face and he had betrayed her again by not telling her. Had he been going to tell her at all?

She felt the stabbing pain in her chest that had plagued her while Amanda had been kidnapped. It was stronger now that it had been before and became overwhelming before she knew it.

Sydney was her father and Jarod had not told her...