Broots was still shaking when The Centre was out of view. "They're gonna come after us, Syd!" he said, wiping his brow with a quaking hand then reaching down to clutch onto the side of the leather seat. 'They're gonna come after us and they're gonna kill us!"

"Boom," Angelo said from the back, and Broots slouched down in his chair, moaning.

"Calm down, Broots," Sydney said in an even-toned voice, patting his friend on the shoulder. "You need to keep calm, or we will be caught."

Without warning or slowing down, Sydney suddenly took a fast, sharp turn off to the to right, screeching onto a back road. Broots yelped as he jerked forwards against his seatbelt.

"What the HELL was that?" he cried. "Have you lost your mind?"

"I'm sorry, Broots, but we need to get as far off of the main road as possible," Sydney explained. "Look in the glove compartment, I think there's map. We need to get to an airport and go find Miss Parker. She's in even more danger than we are."

"Or Jarod," Broots said as he fumbled with the map. "If we can find Jarod, maybe he could help us!"

Sydney chuckled a little bit. "Broots, if we could find Jarod, none of us would be in this predicament." He leaned back in his seat, adjusting his hands on the steering wheel as they turned onto a narrow, winding road. "Besides," he sighed, slowing down as the began to cross a rickety bridge, "I have a feeling that if we find Miss Parker, we'll find Jarod."

"You mean, you think she's helping him?" Broots asked, still turning the map over in his hands.

"Their best chance of surviving – let alone learning anything – is with each other. Hopefully they can put the last few years aside and help one another, because it might be the end of both of them if they don't."

Broots opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was nothing to say. He studied the map for several minutes, finally finding an airport and tracing a route with his finger. "We could be there in a couple hours," he told Sydney. "Maybe less. I'll call and see if I can find us a flight."

He took his phone out of his pocket, then his eyes widened. "Damn!" he said, rushing to punch in a number. "I need to tell Debbie."

"NO!" Sydney said suddenly. He snatched the phone from Broots and threw it out the window, sending it into a trash can set out at the bottom of a large dirt driveway. "We can't use these phones! They'll be tracking us. When we stop next you can arrange for someone to watch Debbie, but you can't tell her what's going on. The Centre will go after her if you do."

"All right," Broots sighed, looking out the window. "All right. I'll arrange for Debbie's nanny to have Debbie go to her house till I come b…" Broots' voice trailed off. "Oh, God, Syd, what's going to happen?"

"I don't know Broots," Sydney said. He reached out and patted him on the shoulder. "But make sure your daughter is safe…and we'll make sure you'll both be safe when we get back…from whatever it is we're doing."

The sound of knocking on a back window made both men jolt in their seats. Broots spun around to see Angelo, his seatbelt unlatched, sitting on his knees and tapping at the window. "Angelo!" Broots asked, his voice cracking. "What are you doing?"

Angelo repeatedly knocked at a small dot on the window, grinning as it scurried away from his pounding knuckles.

"Oh, for God's sake, Angelo, that's a bug," Broots said impatiently.

The knocking continued.

"Angelo, knock that off!" Broots snapped. "Syd," he wailed, clapping a hand to his forehead, "what are we gonna do with him?"

Sydney looked back at Angelo thoughtfully for a moment, then shrugged sadly. "We certainly can't take him all the way with us. We need a place where he can be safe, but not get us all into trouble."

"No!" the rapping on the back window ceased immediately and Angelo spun to look at Sydney and Broots. "Angelo wants to come!" he said with the expression of a left-out child on his face. "Please!"

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Miss Parker was sitting exactly where he had left her, her eyes squinted in the light of Jarod's flashlight as he reappeared from the behind the trees. She opened her mouth to say something but Jarod held up a hand to silence her.

"Listen, Miss Parker," Jarod said, "I know you're used to being on the other end of this chase, but you're in my boat now, and the way I see it, you're going to be stuck with me for a long time. That means you play by my rules, and the first rule is when we move, we move fast. Knowing Lyle and Rains, they're probably right behind us."

Miss Parker blinked blankly up at him, then got to her feet. Her legs trembled a little and she looked down at her high heels, wondering if she should take them off and then how long her exposed feet would last in the snow, ice, and rocks. Jarod's flashlight beam followed her gaze shined a light on her shoes. "You can't run in those," he said. "Take them off and give them to me."

"Excuse me?"

"Hurry up."

Miss Parker reluctantly slid her shoes off her feet and handed them to Jarod. He unzipped his backpack and shoved them inside, then opened another compartment and began digging around. Smiling, he seemed to find what he had been looking for, and out of the backpack came a pair of sneakers that would be too small for him

"Put them on, fast!" he said, he said, thrusting them into her hands.

Not wanting to be told one more time to hurry, Miss Parker tied on the sneakers on as fast as she could. Not surprisingly, they fit perfectly.

Without another word, Jarod was off, pushing branches out of his way as he ran, and Miss Parker ran just behind him, scrunching up her face to avoid getting her eyes scratched. She swore under her breath as she ran, trying desperately trying to keep up with Jarod. For his part, he tried to keep his pace a bit slower than usual, but he knew they had to be safely away from whoever The Centre was sure to be sending after them.

Second turned to minutes, minutes to hours. It was an hour before Jarod's pace slowed to a jog, and many more before he stopped to rest for a few minutes. "The longer we rest," he would remind Miss Parker between pants while she scowled at him, "the more tired...we get."

Miss Parker lost track of time when the sun rose and stopped trying to catch up to Jarod. She let him run ahead of her, far enough that she lost sight of him around corners. She almost didn't see him when he stopped, and she would have kept running if he hadn't put out a hand to stop her.

"Now," he said between his deep breaths, "we rest until...the sun goes down. It's already noon; we should be hiding when it's this bright out. If The Centre's on our tail, our wasting a second here might be what costs us our lives." He motioned for her to follow him and led them deep into the trees. Miss Parker didn't know exactly what he was looking for, and why he thought hiding in the woods was going to be effective, but then, he was Jarod, and she wasn't going to question him.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Sydney and Broots led Angelo through the crowded Delaware Airpark. They had driven well into the day and were now hurrying to catch the 1:00 pm flight to Scotland. There would be a single stopover in Boston and then it was straight to Scotland, and, hopefully, Miss Parker and Jarod.

Several people turned their heads as Angelo, Sydney and Broots passed – Angelo kept running away from the little carts that sped around carrying airport employees, Broots would jump at the slightest touch, and Sydney had giant suitcase that clinked like metal. All in all, they weren't the most inconspicuous group.

"Rains and Lyle wouldn't come to a public airport," Sydney reassured Broots. They had made it to their gate and were sitting on the hard, blue, plastic chairs. An escaped toddler had run past them and trodden on Broots's foot and he had let out a particularly shrill scream, making the mother and father, who were chasing after their child, stop, turn and frown.

"I know, they wouldn't, I just..I'm just a little edgy, is all," Broots said, adding sarcastically, "Of course, it's totally irrational, my being nervous when Lyle and Rains want us all dead!"

"Keep your voice down!" Sydney hissed. "You're making this worse for everyone."

Broots ran his hands over his sweaty bald head and made a face, but he shut his mouth for the next fifteen minutes while the waited for the plane to begin boarding. Finally, a line began to form at the turn-gate. Heaving a sigh, Sydney dragged Angelo and Broots to their feet and marched them into the line. They waited in silence while a flight attendant collected the tickets from the other passengers. Once she had taken theirs, Broots seemed to come back to his senses and when they'd gotten in the plane, he help Sydney find their seat and then wrestle Angelo into one.

"Angelo, you must be very quiet," Sydney told him, buckling Angelo's seatbelt and his own, then pressing a finger to his lips. Angelo nodded and said, "Shhh."

"That's right," Sydney said, settling back into his seat. "Shhh."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"We...made...it." Jarod could barely muster up the breath to speak. He was doubled over, hands on his knees, staring at the seaside village in front of him. The lamps along the pier illuminated the water, and the shadows of the town rippled over the waves. It was the most beautiful sight he had seen in a long time. "Miss Parker? Miss Parker, we made it."

He turned, wiping his forehead, and saw her just emerging from the trees. She spotted him stopped up ahead and immediately slowed till she reached him, then dropped to her knees.

She opened her mouth, clutched her hands to the stitches in both her sides and managed the wheezed groan of, "Mother of God, finally."

The two waited, side by side, for their breathing to slow. After several minutes, Miss Parker could no longer hear the pounding of her heart inside her ears and decided it was time to try standing. As she began to push herself off the ground, Jarod extended a hand to help, but she brushed it away. He chuckled, and she glared at him. "Always the gentleman," she sneered.

"Always the bitch," he retorted, and when her glare intensified, he added, "No, not always. Just lately. You were sweeter when you were young."

"I wasn't a damn bit near as smart."

Jarod sighed, then took a step back as she reached into her jacket and pulled out a gun. "Just in case," she told him as she caught him looking warily at it. He nodded understandingly and reached into his leather jacket's pocket to get a gun of his own.

"Good. I was hoping you were past trying to shoot me," he said, smiling wryly at her.

"Don't test me," she growled, but the corners of her mouth turned up slightly and he knew she was joking.

"Follow me," he said, giving her a playful shove on the shoulder.

Miss Parker had no idea where he was taking them. When she asked, he only shook his head and told her, "You'll see." She didn't like that he had established himself as 'in charge' of their little mission - whatever that mission was, she wasn't even sure of that. But she was beyond fearing that this was a trick and too exhausted to argue with him. Eventually she stopped asking and just followed him, her legs shakily carrying her into the village.

When Jarod stopped walking, at first she had no idea where they were. She looked back and forth between the small cottages on either side of the street, frowning. Then Jarod held a photograph out in front of her and suddenly she knew. Miss Parker's eyes darted from the picture of her mother and Jarod's sitting together to the very house where their mothers had been so many years ago. She could feel her breath catch in her throat.

As Jarod stepped forward and opened the door, her eyes started stinging, and she quickly clamped her jaw shut and pushed past him into the cottage. She stopped in her tracks after she stepped over the threshold. She could almost see the two little girls sitting on the rickety kitchen chairs, laughing together, smiling. One girl had red hair, the other was dark, but, nonetheless, Margaret and Catherine looked similar in their youth. Before Miss Parker's eyes, little Catherine disappeared, and it was only Margaret left, crying as she rested her head in her arms on the hard, wooden table.

"Miss Parker?"

As Jarod pulled her out of her...she wasn't sure what to call it - imagination? Hallucination? - she realized that there were wet tracks running down her cheeks. Turning to Jarod, she could see his eyes shining as well. "I can see them," she said faintly, her voice cracking mid whisper.

"So can I," he said, and she let his hand on her shoulder give a firm squeeze before she shook it off. "We'll find my mother," he said, assuring himself as much as Miss Parker . "And she can tell us all about your mother – all about everything. And then this whole crazy mystery - this whole nightmare - will be over."

"But The Centre won't be," said Miss Parker hoarsely, falling into a chair. She stared up at the ceiling, taking a shuddering breath. "And as long as there's The Centre, I'm…we're prisoners to it."

Jarod's face was pained as he reached out to replace his hand on her shoulder. This time, he didn't let her brush it away. "It's time to rip down the barbed wire fences."