Miss Parker’s face was illuminated by the light that the screen cast across it and she didn’t even bother to look up when the snow began to fall. Big snowflakes quietly descended upon the earth, enveloped every branch in the garden and piled up on the window sills.

She remained motionless as she watched how our lives had touched each other so long ago and I could see tears brimming in her eyes. Tears that she quickly blinked away as soon as she realized they were there.

Something had changed in her posture since this morning and I could see a determination that she had lacked since that day she had turned up in my ER. Not that she had been passive or anything, but she had never looked this calm and efficient again. Not as if she knew where she was heading.

When she had demanded to see the DSAs I carried around with me, I had hesitated, but she had insisted. Broots had told her about my whole life being recorded and she wanted to know what it had been like.

She had never said that she wanted it to trigger her memories, but I knew it anyway. Weird, how I had to remind myself all the time that she was just pretending to have lost her memory. The truth was that in weak moments I had admit to myself that I did believe her.

Watching her, I noticed that the color she had tried to restore her dark haircolor with, had worn off a little. From a very amusing pretend as a hairdresser I knew that this was common when you applied a much darker color on bleached hair. I somehow liked the soft brown she now sported since it nicely accented her face.

As she watched the one and only moment we had shared after she had returned from University in Europe, I remembered how she had always seemed like such a wonderous creature to me. Subconsciously at first, and very aware of it later, I had compared every woman I had ever met to her although none had ever met her standards.

That day we had walked into each other by accident as I had been accompanied back to my room by two Sweepers. Even not looking at the screen I remembered exactly what she had worn and how her hair had brushed her shoulders with every graceful step she took.

She had been in her mid-twenties then and her long absence from the Centre had done her good. I remembered the light grey suit she had worn and the almost playful smile she had given me before she had realized who I was.

I had been smitten with her immediatley, but I had never seen that flirty smile again until she had flashed it at me back in those good days we had spent at the lawyer’s cottage. Maybe it had been what had made me drop my guard.

I sighed inwardly. As beautiful as love was, it could hurt badly- and be a true disadvantage…

Broots

Thomas Gates didn’t treat me cruelly. When we stopped at a diner to get food, he asked me how I drank my coffee and what I would like to eat. Except for the crisp suit and the absence of a stubble on his face, he looked exactly the Thomas Gates I had met in the past.

On the long way North he listened to the new Dixie Chicks album which I found not exactly the right choice if you wanted to appear villaneous. After the fourth song, I was confused enough by the mixed signals I was receiving, to actually boldly go forward.

“Why did you make Miss Parker believe you were dead?” I asked as casually as I could and he took his gaze off the road only to give me a curteous smile.

“Couldn’t stay forever, could I?”

It is not easy to listen to a man who has had everything you have never even dared to dream about and being so indifferent about it, you know.

“Then why didn’t you just leave her?” I asked.

“You don’t just leave Miss Parker,” he replied in a voice that would have been suitable to announce tomorrow’s weather report, hadn’t there been a slight amusement.

His casual behaviour began to annoy me, so I pressed on.

“Did you love her?”

He looked at me again, but without the sinister gleam in his eyes, that I would have expected.

“That is too personal a question for the two of us,” he said. “We haven’t been friends too long.”

I snorted and answered the question for him. “You didn’t. If you just left her and like that... you didn’t.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t. But even if I had, I wouldn’t have had much of a choice on that matter. The Centre can be quite adamant when it comes to fulfilling your end of a bargain.”

“You said you had been defrauded. Is that why you want to find her? Kidnap her and have the Centre give you what you have been deprived of?” I asked, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

“Very good, Broots. I can see why Parker regards you so highly.”

Weird enough he actually said it without sarcasm.

Then he grinned at my dumbfounded stare.

“Would be typical of her not to show you how she felt about you. Really appreciated your loyalty and found you quite sweet when you tripped over your own feet to please her.”
My throat went dry with both embarassment and excitement, but I tried not to show it, so instead I watched him, concentrating on the side of his head so hard that my vision began to blur. And suddenly I saw it. Something seemed to click inside my head when the pieces finally came together.

I had seen whom I had assumed to be a Sweeper on the DSA from Mister Parker’s office only from behind, so his face had been obscured by the ever present shadows of the Centre. But now that I heard his voice and watched the way he slightly bowed his head when he spoke, I understood that the man whom Mister Parker had paid to participate in a “delicate matter” had in fact been Thomas Gates.

So far I had believed that they had paid him to walk away from Parker, even faked his death to have her concentrate on the Centre again, but what if… I was filled with disgust at the thought.

“They paid you to begin a relationship with her, didn’t they?” I asked. “They didn’t just pay you to leave her… it was just part of something else!”

My voice had risen with the fear I suddenly felt. What was that thing they'd wanted so dearly?

“Yes.” He stated simply.

“What was it they wanted?”

He smiled. “Do you think they would let some stranger they have work for them in on their secret plans?”

“You must know something! Why that period of time? Why didn’t you stay with her longer? What was behind it?” I didn’t care any longer that the urgency was ringing in my voice and showing in my face. I just needed to know!

“Well, you might as well know,” he said just as if he had just decided that it wasn’t a problem, but I suspected that he was actually taking pleasure in telling me so casually.

“They told me I could leave when she was pregnant.”

I suddenly felt very very sick.

The gun that was being pressed to my temple only a second later didn't help matters.

Mister Lyle

Mister Raines’ eyes seemed to bulge out of his face and the prominent vein on his forehead was throbbing with flourish.

“How do you know about Project Cassandra?” he wheezed, sounding as if he was choking on something. We both knew that his question was rhetoric, so I went on without answering it.

“I want in on that. It looks as if it was our last chance to save the Blue Cove Centre branch. The authorities are swarming the place. If we don’t succeed this time, the Triumvirate will decide that we are too much of a risk to be upheld any longer.”
I knew that this scenario would kill Raines. The Centre was his life and we both knew it.

He finally dropped his hunched shoulders and took a deep rattling breath presumably to calm himself.

“The project is in serious jeopardy,” he began, still reluctant, but I could sense that this was heading my way. “Gates is back and blackmailing us. He knows where Parker is and he is on his way to get her.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why would he have a grudge on us? According to my favourite file…” I waved the folder to him. “…we paid him more than enough to knock her up.”

Raines’ nonexistant eyebrows served to make his frown even more sinister.

“We left it to him how he wanted to walk out. Of course he was stupid enough to pick a method so dramatic that she was devastated.” He made a gurgling noise that made my stomach turn. This guy really wasn’t pleasant company.

“You might have noticed. She got herself so worked up that she miscarried.”

“So I gathered,” I replied and enjoyed watching his face turn scarlet. Although he hated me with all his heart, he knew that he needed me. Ideal situation. I so loved being me.

“So we paid him a visit and deprived him of the money he did not rightfully earn.”

He paused, staring at me with hatred, then nodded.

“Get her back, eliminate Gates and you are in on Project Cassandra.”

I smiled. “Is it so easy? Wouldn’t you like me throw a tapdance on top of that so it won’t be that boring?”

Raines growled and I raised my arms in mock defeat.

“Fine… you are a man of business.”

I gave him a beaming smile as I walked past him.

“Consider it done.”

Miss Parker rubbed her eyes and leaned back against the sofa. Dusk was falling outside the windows and it would soon be time for dinner.

She had not noticed my presence yet and so I watched her lay her hand against her stomach which made a smile flicker over her face. I wondered whether that could be the smile of a mother who would willingly give her child up to an evil corperation. Somehow it just didn’t seem likely.

I finally made my presence known by clearing my throat and she slowly turned towards me.

“Hey Jarod.” Her voice sounded tired.

“Have you found anything that could be of help?” I asked, implying that I was quite interested in the contents of her plan.

“No. Not yet.” There was a hint of disappointment in her voice that she could not mask with simple exhaustion.

“What about some dinner?” I asked, almost amused at my sudden wish to take care of her. She hesitated for a moment, then smiled at me and held up a DSA she had watched a mere minutes before.

“Like that time I brought honey sandwiches?”

I remembered that day when we had still been kids and she had brought some badly wrapped sandwiches, dripping with honey. They had actually tasted horrible, but I remembered eating them anyway because I knew that Miss Parker had gone to lenghts to smuggle them into the Centre.

“They were dreadful,” I said and smiled.

“Then I suppose we should make something nicer tonight.”

“We?” I mocked her. “Should I be worried?”

She laughed. “You should really stop reminding me of the fact that I am…” she paused briefly, as if catching her breath before she went on. “… a failure in the kitchen.”

The pain in her eyes lasted for only a second until it disappeared and was a little too quickly replaced with mischief.

“Bad for you, so you always have to cook.”

“I like it. I used to cook on a pretend in a five star hotel in Las Vegas.”

She laughed. “Very cool. Jarod the chef.”

“I was good,” I said. “They begged me to stay when I left.”

She leaned slightly forward. “I can imagine that.”

I wondered whether she consciously put that look in her eyes or whether her desire just showed on its own accord, but the intensity of her gaze almost made me shudder.

“I made the best lobster in town,” I said, my voice surprisingly raspy.

I only realized that I had started leaning into her when I could feel her breath on my face as she whispered: “I am craving that.”

The way we were lingering over each other made it pretty clear what else we were both craving.

“Jarod, do you believe me?” she asked in the same tone of voice. She probably knew that she had caught me in a weak moment because all I could say was “Yes”.

My reward was a slow and loving kiss that I felt I did not deserve because I still held the tiniest bit of doubt against her. Still I could not gather up the willpower to end the kiss.

That was why I was caught off balance when she suddenly pulled away. The look in her eyes was terrifyingly close to those of the merciless huntress she had been for those past years. Her eyebrow jerked upwards in a familiar intimidating way.

“You are lying, Jarod.”
I stared at her. How came I always forgot that she was far more perceptive than one would assume?

“I believe far too much of what you say for my own liking, Parker.”
”But that’s not enough for me.”

Only when her eyes clouded over I realized how much it took from her to produce that cold look in her eyes. She was clearly out of practice.

I looked into her eyes, noticed for the first time how frenzied she had scattered the DSAs around her. This woman was fighting for every ounce of control she still had over her life. And she was losing out.

The problem was that I could not help her. I did love her, but I could simply not allow myself to trust her. Lacking her memories, she could not possibly understand how crucial it was to not trust anybody associated to The Centre.

“You can believe me or not, Parker. Trust…”

“… can kill you or set you free.”

Tic toc tic toc.

“The clock is ticking, Angel. Get him back.”

Tic toc tic toc.

My heels click violently against the marble floor as I walk down the Centres corridors.

Lyle almost imperceptibly caresses my hand with his thumb as he removes it from the elevator door. He grins wickedly at me, as the doors close.

“I love you, Thomas.”

Pain explodes in my back as the bullet hits and the last thing I register is that my father catches me in midfall. For once my Daddy is exactly where I need him.

“Michelle. My name is Michelle.”

I have lost control over my car and in a very weird way it feels good to know that you could not gain control, even if you wanted to. It helps you to accept it.

“Parker!”

“Parker!”

Suddenly Jarod was next to me on the sofa and tilted my chin to make me look into his eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked, while the voices were still echoing inside my head.

“I… I just remembered a few things.” My voice was husky and I cleared my throat.

“Don’t worry,” I added. “I am okay. It’s just that it was a lot...”

I rubbed my forehead and looked up into Jaod’s calmly watching eyes.

“I want to know why I crashed that car and how I ended up with amnesia,” I said and could feel anger rise inside me, knowing that if I wasn’t careful, I would snap at Jarod for entirely no reason. Sometimes having the temper of an erupting vulcano really sucks.

“The human brain is a complex thing,” he answered, sounding scientific already. “There are many fit reasons for that amnesia of yours. Maybe even more than the ones we could come up with.”

His words sounded like the prologue to a longer lecture and I caught myself being surprised at how I always seemed to forget that he was a genius and that he possessed more knowledge than I would ever acquire although I was the one with the university degrees.

“Sometimes I wonder whether I wanted to forget something. Something that hurt me terribly or scared me…” I trailed off. “I am not sure what it might have been because as far as I know I have gone through so much in my life, that what finally makes me snap must be something quite horrid…”

I watched the pained grimace distorting his features and realized that we were now looking at what joined us despite all our many differences.

We had suffered so much in that place and we were both trying to make our lives work in spite of it. While my reaction to such sadness and pain had been to hurt everybody before they got a chance to hurt me, Jarod had taken up helping people to make up for what evil had been caused by his simulations.

I suspected that his goodness had always disgusted me, but on some level that I was only now willing to acknowledge, it had also fascinated me.

Suddenly I felt the urge to pull him into my arms and hold him. I tried to envision the little boy I had watched in all his loneliness on the DSAs all afternoon. I had been able to give him comfort back then and I knew that I was capable of chasing the sadness away from his eyes right now.

Without thinking I pulled him into a tight embrace and held him, as he held me.

“I love you, Parker,” he murmured softly.

“That might as well be the only thing I have never forgotten.”

And then the annoying tune of the theme song to a completely ridiculous tv-show called “The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.” began to play. When we pulled apart I understood that it was his cell-phone. Well of course. He probably changed his ringtone every day just to try them all.

I could hear a terrified voice on the other end of the line, but couldn’t understand what it was saying. Jarod’s face, however, darkened considerably as he listened.

Then, before he could say anything, the other person had hung up.

“Who was that?” I asked, perching on the edge of my seat with worry.

“It was Broots.”

“Broots?” I asked. “How would he have your cellphone-number?”

“Very good question indeed. Maybe he got it from his kidnapper.”

I could feel my knees weaken although I was still sitting.

“He’s been kidnapped? By whom?”

“I don’t know but they want you to meet them. Otherwise Broots will be dead by dawn.”