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22

Miss Parker impatiently listened to the dial tone for a minute while she imagined the phone on the other end ringing endlessly through Sydney’s empty house. Or maybe it wasn’t empty at all and he simply still refused to talk to her.

Rejection still stung although she should have been used to it by now. Jarod had gone out to buy some groceries, remarking on her empty freezer and the lonely box of rice in the cupboard whose expiry date had been before the new millennium.

With him away, she could finally succumb to the only thing that she claimed to herself would keep her sane. Truthfully, it would probably do more damage than good, but she couldn’t have cared less when she took a hearty sip of the clear liquid. It had taken her a trip to Moscow to learn to appreciate the taste of fine vodka, so she didn’t bother with the stuff she could buy around here and always ordered directly from the Russian capital.

The dial tone went on and on with no answering machine picking up. Centre employees didn’t need answering machines, she mused. Being friendless and workaholic was a job requirement.

She looked around her living-room and sighed. It was a nice house and she had refurnished it partially when she had moved in here after college, but memories of past times spent here were still lurking in the corners and coming at her whenever she dared to lower her defenses.

Her mother, on the one hand, smoothing her hair back and throwing her head back laughing, when they accidentally dropped a piece of cake onto the clean white carpet. Thomas, on the other hand, lying motionless on her front-porch, the life drained out of him, his eyes staring upwards at her, somewhat accusingly.

She had vowed to herself back then never to get involved with anyone again. Being with her was hazardous, if not deadly and she simply wasn’t worth it. The problem was, that she was unable to resist Jarod even if she wanted to, as well as he couldn’t resist her.

They were drawn to each other like magnets and there was nothing she wanted or could do to stop it. She was longing for him even now that he had simply dropped out to the supermarket and she wondered whether it was the alcohol or her predicament with Sydney that made her want to rip the bags of calorie-loaded junk food from his arms when he returned, and throw him back against the wall to kiss him.

She chuckled and took another sip of Vodka while the dial tone went on and on. Why was she doing this to herself? Why didn’t she do what Sydney wanted her to and just forgot about it? Because she wanted answers. She needed answers.

She needed to go away from here.

With a sudden urgency she threw the phone down and leaped to her feet. Looking around the room, she did a check of what she would need to take with her if she wanted to just escape right now, but came up empty-handed. She had read all the books in this room and she didn’t care for the expensive pillow-cases or the golden clock on the wall that she had not inherited but bought in a small antiques shop. The interior of this house had been designed by her to be lived in comfortably, but it had never felt like a home.

She got up and set the glass down hard, the half-melted ice-cubes jingling inside.

Taking two steps at a time on the stairs, she went upstairs to her bedroom and began to stuff clothes inside suitcases in a frenzy. There went her favorite clothes, the toiletries, her mother’s picture. She gave the book she had been reading before Jarod had shown up that night a fleeting look. It seemed as if she had started reading it in another lifetime. She picked it up and looked at the cover. A thriller and good one by Val McDermid starring a clinical psychologist named Tony Hill. She snorted and picked the novel up just to throw it down into her suitcase with some force. Psychologists, psychiatrists. Sydney. Damn the whole lot of them.

She grabbed her suitcase and made for the stairs, piling luggage in front of the door, her own voice echoing inside her head: “I’ve got more luggage than an airport.”

Had she really been talking about the insane amount of designer clothes she owned? Or had she tried to warn Thomas about the emotional baggage she would never get rid of?

She paused for a brief moment and stared at the assortment of bags and suitcases that were strewn across the hallway. The baggage was still there and just like her clothes she would be taking it with her if she left now. She could leave, but she could never escape the Centre. Slowly and suddenly drained of all the frenzied energy that had been fueling her before, she sank down to the floor and buried her hands in her hair, tugging at the roots until it hurt.

There needed to be a way out. She had been supposed to leave when Thomas had died. She had been supposed to have a better life in Portland.

Miss Parker knew that she could not rely on Jarod to get her out and she knew that she didn’t want to. He would get her out alright, would take her away and protect her from the Centre. But they would be chased. And Miss Parker wouldn’t be chased. Wouldn’t be defeated.

She had been doing this for far too long now and it would stop right here.


“Mister Parker.”

The name was familiar, but had never been spoken by that voice before, neither could he recall having heard that particular voice address him with that kind of vigor ever before.

He stepped away from the window, his hand sliding off the pane and coming to rest on his desk and he turned round to face her.

“Angel.”

She stood in the doorway, pale and somber but with features that seemed to have suddenly come to life.

“So how was your vacation?” he asked, once again cheerful.

“Good.” She approached and he took in the imposing black suit, the heavy watch on her wrist and the perfectly styled hair. Business as usual- yet something was different.

“I know your dirty little secret,” she said evenly. “Or should I say- mine?”

He knew what was coming, he had known since Sydney had called.

“I am not a Parker after all and I was crushed at first.” She gestured around the room. “All this has never been mine. I would have never been able to live up to the legacy that you have been telling me about ever since I was a little girl. But do you know what? I don’t care anymore.”

He tilted his head, mildly surprised by what he heard. From the way he knew her, he would have expected hysteria and uproar. He would have expected to be able to calm her and take her back into the confines of the family. But this was very different.

Why would she be glad to be an outcast? This family was everything she had. And he certainly wasn’t happy to have her break free, because despite her parentage she had become a very powerful Centre player and was living up to the genes she didn’t possess after all.

She stepped closer to the desk, placing both hands on its shiny surface.

“You have your son, Mr Parker. So just let me go.”

He was stunned for a moment. Why would she make such an outrageous request? Didn’t she know that she could easily be shot for this in the Centre’s harsh system of what they liked to call justice?

“You mean you want me to allow you to leave?” He gave a distracted, yet humorless little laugh. “You are not serious, are you?”

“Why would I barge in here to play a silly prank on you?” she replied and held his gaze firmly. He really had no idea where she wanted this to lead.

“If you try to walk away from the Centre you will be killed. You know that as well as I do.”

“Not if you order them not to. Raines is powerful but he will not be able to undermine your orders. You know that as well as I do,” she mimicked his earlier sentence.

“But why on earth would I allow you to leave? Especially before you have managed to catch Jarod?”

“Catch Jarod?” she gave a snort. “Why would I want to catch him anymore? Nothing ties me to this place and he can be damned happy if it’s the same with him.”

Where had his Angel gone? And why did he instinctively know that this wasn’t just a phase?

“Look, Angel. Maybe we can talk this through.”

“Oh, yes we can,” she mocked. “Here I go.”

She brought her face closer to his and he could feel her breath on his skin.

“You found out that Sydney is my father and you beat my poor mother half to death. After she died you kept me. Why? As a pet?”

He was silent for a moment, then looked away from her blazing eyes that he only now realized resembled Sydney’s. He turned back towards the window and watched the raindrops run down the glass with wondrous grace. She waited, more patiently than he would have expected her to and when he turned back around, a small teardrop on her cheek mirrored the raindrops on the window. She hadn’t noticed it and he refrained from remarking on it.

“You were still my little girl to me,” he said with the first open display of emotion towards her that she could recall having seen in ages. “I used to call you my little angel and I was proud to have such a pretty intelligent child. When I found out that I wasn’t the father, but that your mother had been unfaithful with Sydney, my world fell apart.”

She remained in silence and he hoped that she would believe what were possibly the first honest words he had said to her in years.

“You were never mine, but I felt like your mother had taken you away from me when she admitted to what the blood test had already given proof of. I looked at you that day and I wondered what you might have become if I had continued to believe you to be my daughter.”

He paused and braced himself for what would come next: “I feel that you were actually the only person I have ever loved. You know...” He wondered whether he should tell her about her paternal grandparents, about their ways, their coldness, their lack of any emotion at all. About how he had left them to go to university, how he had been a loner until he had met her mother who had given him warmth for the first time in his life.

Still, he had never loved her. He hadn’t been able to, although he had liked her a great deal. Could he tell Miss Parker that? He decided against it, fearing her to be angry with him because she believed him to try to get pitied by her. What he was even more afraid of, however, was actually being pitied by her. He had tried to raise her to be what had always held him together: tough and cold. Now he saw that it had been wrong and that it had not worked.

“When you were born and I held you in my arms for the very first time, I... I suddenly realized that there was a whole other world of feelings than I had been able to produce until then. I looked into your face and I realized that I loved you.”

He tried to catch her eye, but she looked away, tears shining in her eyes. He had never told her he loved her before and now that it didn’t matter anymore, he did.

“When I learned the truth, I couldn’t bear looking at you anymore because the only true love I’d ever felt for a human being had been a farce. So I avoided you, but I didn’t have the heart to do anything about it. Then your mother died and I was left with a choice. I could have abandoned you but I chose not to. I just couldn’t because feelings don’t die with truths. All I was capable of doing was to send you to boarding school so I wouldn’t have to be faced with the evidence of that betrayal every day.”

And with the fact that love was, after all, a lie.

He grew silent and looked at the beautiful woman she had become. In many ways she looked like her mother but he knew that she there were also traces of her father in her, that he had forced her to repress: Compassion, intuition, insight.

“I made his life hell,” he went on besides himself. “I told him I would have you killed if he ever told you about the fact that he was your father.”

Miss Parker snorted and although she tried to keep her composure, it sounded tearful.

“So you loved me,” she whispered, then cleared her throat. “Or at least you loved a little girl you believed to be yours.”

Everything inside the old man writhed against what he was going to do next, but still somehow he couldn’t help it. He stepped around the desk and did the closest to a gesture of love he could produce. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently.

“I loved what you represented to me: Unconditional love. And that you have given me all these years although I was unable to give it back to you.” She looked up at him, but he knew he had to go on. He was too old to change and he knew he never would. “I am not able to love you now, Angel. I will never be.”

He could see in her eyes that she didn’t know whether she should be crushed or not. On the one hand he was the father she had loved for years, on the other hand, he wasn’t her father at all, nor was he in any way lovable as a person. But as he had just said, feelings didn’t die with the truth.

“The best thing I could do to you, was send you away when you were a little girl, Angel. I sent you far away from the Centre. My mistake was to let you return.”

He looked straight into her eyes again. Curious, he was able to do something now that he hadn’t done during all these years.

“I would like to atone for that now.” He tried to smile, but failed. Smiling wasn’t in his repertoire. Too late to change.

“See it as you will. A gift, more rejection, but I will now send you away.”

She furrowed her brows. “What...?”

“Go. You’re free. But make it quick and do it silently. Don’t say goodbye. We don’t want people on your case. There’s only one condition: Sydney doesn’t know that I have learned about your knowledge of your parentage. He still thinks I’ll kill you if I find out. I want it to stay that way.”

Miss Parker was silent, weighing her options. “That means I will never talk to him again?”

Mr Parker nodded, the hunger for revenge still as strong as it had been on the day he had found out that Sydney was the father.

“Or he’ll die. You know the drill in life. That is the one thing I have taught you: Nothing’s free. Your own freedom is all I can give you.”

She hesitated for a moment, then gave him a defeated look. Her voice was raspy as she said: “Thank you... Daddy.”

And there was nothing else to be said between them. He watched her walk out, then turned towards the man in the dark corner.

“Now, Sydney. Did you hear it all properly?” he asked wearily and followed Sydney with his eyes as he came towards him.

“I didn’t know you were able to express your feelings so thoroughly, Mr Parker.”

“Only once in a while.” Mr Parker felt that the impenetrable mask on his face was back, as if his features were paralyzed again, unable to move to express emotion.

“Still, you know what you’ve promised me,” he reminded Sydney and the old psychiatrist nodded.

“Of course, Mr Parker. Her freedom for mine. I’ll stay as long as you want me to and I’ll work with Lyle to get Jarod back.”

Mr Parker nodded and gestured towards the door. “You know, I have some paperwork to do now.” He wondered, whether he should not feel that detached from everything, but then realized that it was not detachment that he was feeling. It was... contentment. He had spent so much time deliberately making the wrong choices that he had forgotten that it felt good to do the right thing.

Sydney turned around at the door and looked at him: “And Mr Parker... Thank you.”

Mr Parker bit his lip and hoped that Sydney wouldn’t notice. “Not for that, Sydney. She didn’t feel herself a part of the family anymore. With that she would have been a nuisance rather than a good employee.”

The two men both knew that he was lying, but they also knew that he was doing it for his own sake, so Sydney let it pass: “Of course, Sir.”


Sydney sat at his desk and watched Lyle pace the length of the room.

“Why on earth can’t we find him?” The younger man raged. “So all his little leads and tricks were just down to the fact that it was a hot brunette in a short skirt chasing him? What am I supposed to do? Put on a leather mini and rotate my hips?”

Sydney made a sympathetic face and felt the sheet of paper that lay on his desk, shielded from Lyle’s gaze by his hand.

“Anyway. I’ll have these idiots get the jet ready to chase after that hideously ridiculous lead that Broots idiot has come up with. See you in ten.”

Lyle marched out and slammed the door behind him, leaving Sydney to his own devices.

He picked up the sheet of paper on his desk and ran his finger along it, smiling sadly to himself. It was Miss Parker’s handwriting scrawled across the page as if she had been in a hurry. “Sydney,” it read. “I know what you did for me. I cannot thank you enough. All my love.”

She had obviously overheard his and Mr Parker’s conversation when she’s left, due to an old instinct of preservation.

You don’t have anything to fear, little one, he thought. As long as I am here to take care of that.

Miss Parker sat on her front-porch watching the rain grow weaker until only a few drops were falling from the branches of the trees. She closed her eyes briefly, enjoying the sound and the heavy metallic smell of the summer rain mixed with the scent of the soil.

She remembered the honest look in Mr Parker’s eyes, the pained expression he had worn during those seconds that he had been silent as if memories were playing inside his head. She instinctively knew that they had been painful and that it hadn’t been about her. Why couldn’t he love? She would never know. And she would never see Sydney, her real father, again. Of course she wanted to, but if she was endangering his life by doing so, she wouldn’t. It had been the only condition to her freedom and she had willingly gone for it.

Maybe it was because she was willing to look into the future now, instead of reliving the horrors of her past over and over again. She opened her palm and traced the scar with her finger. Somehow she knew that it would finally heal now. It would always be there, but she wouldn’t have to stare at it anymore, only look at it when she wanted to remember from time to time.

Since she had returned to Thomas’ house in Oregon, she had felt peace settle on her. She was free. Free to do whatever she wanted with her life. She had enough money to live comfortably until she decided what she wanted to do as a profession.

The rain clouds were slowly dissipating and a piece of blue sky began to show over the old apple tree at the other end of the driveway. She nestled into her chair and sipped the glass of red wine that she had previously abandoned for her thoughts.

“Need a refill?”

She looked up into Jarod’s eyes and grinned. “Not yet.”

“That comes from the woman who told me she could easily drink a barrel!”

“Only when she needs to. And she doesn’t now.”

She reached over and took the bottle from his hand, pulling him closer to her.

“So you’re okay?” he whispered.

“I am okay.”

They had been talking about the scene in Mr Parker’s office for hours at length. Jarod had raided the Centre mainframe to find out whether a search had been instigated for her, but there was nothing. Her records had been deleted, only a file saying “terminated” coming up when he typed her name into the search engine.

Gradually, they had given up asking question. No reason to give up vigilance, but for now they seemed safe. Free at last.

“Are you going to taunt Lyle from now on? Seems as if he is my successor in being your hunter.”

Jarod grinned. “Maybe from time to time. I was thinking about looking for a flat here in Portland.” He searched her eyes for a reaction, knowing that she was still not ready to dive headfirst into a relationship with him. She had just for the first time in her life acquired something that resembled emotional stability, so she would have to learn to deal with herself before she would be able to deal with a relationship that involved living together. Rushing things might destroy what they had built up and that was the last thing Jarod wanted.

“That’s a good idea,” she said, placing a kiss in the corner of his mouth. “Make sure it is very close to my place, will you?”

“I’ll be like some character in a sitcom, always hanging around your living...”

“... bedroom,” she corrected, winking at him.

He savored the slow kiss she gave him, then put his arms around her and enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine on his arms that had finally broken through the clouds. And with Miss Parker in his arms, and his head in the clouds, he decided it had all been worth it.

Miss Parker rested her head on Jarod’s shoulder and looked out into the garden to watch fresh sunlight make the rain drops sparkle.

She would finally find peace. Here, in her Rain City.

The End





Chapter End Notes:

Wow, I have been struggling with that ending. I had written a completely different one, but then realized that it wouldn’t do this story justice.

Thank you everybody for your kind reviews, for your patience with me when real life kept me from updating and for your enthusiasm that made writing this story pure joy to me!

Oh, and if you like, check out the song that inspired me to write this story: "Rain City" by Turin Brakes






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