Jarod and Ethan had spent the last half hour catching up. Ethan had listened to everything Jarod told him, since he was feeling that his big brother needed to get out of his system some of his feelings for Miss Parker.

In a normal family, explaining to your brother that you feel something for his sister would be nonsense, but they were no normal family.
They would never be.
Ethan internalized everything with calm. He was a very good listener, and he had perceived every emotion Jarod was feeling while blurting out the last months events. At first, the panic when Jarod had found Miss Parker on the island, then the rage for losing his mother, again. The growing necessity of declaring his affection for the woman who had been chasing him for years, but who was also the only one who understood him. Affection that soon had become desire and, slowly, declared itself to be love; a love born years before.
Ethan had joined Jarod’s laugh when he had told him how he had finally conquered Miss Parker, basically by kissing her by surprise. He had been glad to know that Miss Parker had let herself go and admitted her true feelings; and he had also shared Jarod’s feelings when he had spoken about Catherine’s house and the DSAs they had found in the attic.
“Your mother…she wanted us to find them. And she wanted us to join you again, brother.”
“I know. That’s what she told me every day in the last couple of months.” Ethan explained, closing his eyes, trying to hear her voice.
Jarod understood it was time to switch places. Now, it was the Ethan’s turn to tell him what happened to him and where he had been all that time.
“Why did you run, Ethan? We were so worried about you; your sister was getting crazy for the fear that anything would happen to you.”
Ethan opened his eyes slowly and looked at his older brother solemnly. It wouldn’t be easy to make him understand his point of view.
“Jarod…When we talked for the last time, I realized you would protect my sister with your life, if necessary. But I also knew you were looking for your mother desperately, and that you needed to see her again. I understood that, because of me, the search of Margaret had suffered a setback.”
Jarod shook his head, “It’s not different from any other day of my life. Every time I find a piece of truth, every time your sister and I succeed in answering to one question…ten others come out. That’s how the Centre works.”
Ethan knew what he meant. He was looking for answers, too, and he rarely found them.
“You were one of those secrets, but one of the good ones. I’m sorry you never met my brother, Kyle. I didn’t really get a chance to know him, either. But I loved him, and I miss him very much. It was a gift to find out that I had another brother. A gift from your mother, who was a wonderful woman.”
“This is why I left. You know, Jarod, it wasn’t easy for me to live without knowing who I really was. I wrote a few words to my sister, but I didn’t know what to say. I needed to leave; I had questions, too. And I felt I had to disappear for a while, to let things…evolve.”
Jarod was looking at him uncertain, “What do you mean, evolve?”
Ethan smiled, “Since you and Miss Parker found out about my existence, your relationship changed. She eventually accepted the fact that our mother trusted you and loved you. She found out that she knew Margaret and she started to look at you with a different attitude. To save me, you joined forces and got closer. The voices had already told me. So, I felt that your connection was getting stronger.”
“Actually it wasn’t getting stronger, it just…reignited, again.” Jarod pointed out.
“Precisely! But it had to happen in that very moment, not sooner, nor later. After years of running in circles, you rebuild your relationship and it’s no coincidence if those DSAs came out now. My sister is expanding her inner sense, mostly because of you; you encouraged her, otherwise she’d never had accepted it.”
“You should have stayed, to help her understand it and improve it.”
“She didn’t need me, she just had to follow our mother’s voice.”
Jarod remembered when he had told Miss Parker the very same thing, years before.
Her voice is inside you
Back then, he couldn’t actually know how much those words were true.
“What did you do on your own?”
“I hid and thought, a lot. I tried to follow my mother’s will; she encouraged me to reconcile with my past to face my future. I cannot change what happened when I was younger. Mr. Raines kept me hostage all my life. But I’ve changed, because of you. I can use my gift to help people. I’d love to do help you, too, big bro.”
Jarod smiled, “We will, Ethan!” he said, patting him dearly, “Right now we’ve got to finish a very important work, and we only do it together.”
“My mother’s plan.” Ethan continued, while Jarod nodded.
“Miss Parker and I will work together to destroy The Centre, once and for all. No more secrets, no more pretenders, no more prophecies…”
To the sound of that word, Ethan put a hand to his temple, hearing the voices increasing in intensity. He felt disoriented and started to moan with pain.
“Ethan!”
“It’s…nothing…”
Actually the young man was shivering, and when Jarod touched his forehead, he felt it was burning, just as Miss Parker’s the night before.
Were these just consequences of the inner sense, or was it something else, something more dangerous?
“We’ve gotta get out of here.” Jarod whispered, noticing that people not far from them were looking their way. “Can you walk?”
Ethan nodded with difficulty but kept walking. Jarod headed in the direction of his car, hoping that his brother would make it.

Raines hated Sydney because he had the luck to be Jarod’s trainer, but mostly because he often antagonized him. Sydney was the cause of Gemini’s escape and Raines suspected that he had helped Jarod setting Ethan free, the most precious project he ever had. But this time, Raines knew that Sydney couldn’t interfere anymore; there was no more Mr. Parker to act as a mediator. He had the power in his hands. If Sydney was still breathing, it was just not to lose the feeble connection between Jarod and the Centre, in the hope that one day they would succeed in catching him.
Sydney entered the office of the man who had hampered him the most in the last decades. Sure, the psychiatrist never had a great relation with Mr. Parker, but Raines had always been his nemesis.
The new chairman sat at his desk, contemplating Sydney’s theatrical entry in amazement.
“What brings you to my door, Sydney?” he asked with his hoarse voice, which made him sound like a cartoon-villain.
“I know you and Lyle are up to something, but I’m here for something different. Something involving my children.”
Raines smiled, “Your children?” he asked, laughing. “And when did you start considering yourself as mother hen, Sydney? What about the professional detachment?”
Sydney replied, “You and I…we never stood each other, but you know how much I care about Jarod and Miss Parker. It’s useless to go on and pretend that I don’t.”
Raines would love to answer in kind, but he could not show his hand, yet.
“What do you want?” he asked with arrogance.
“I want to know everything about Project Mind Rain.”
To Raines, that question felt like a ice water bucket over his back. How could Sydney possibly have found out about that project? And why was he bringing it up in after all those years?
“I want to make things easy for you, Raines.” Syd remarked through clenched teeth and bending on his desk. “Tell me what it was and who authorized it…And I’ll avoid persuading Miss Parker to finish the work she started when she discovered Catherine’s murderer.”
Raines didn’t fear Sydney’s threats, and he knew that Miss Parker would never kill him, she didn’t have the guts. But in the end, Mind Rain was a project terminated years before. It wouldn’t hurt if he spoke about it. And most of all, the three stooges would be committed to another hunt throughout the past, instead of the future.

At the same moment, Miss Parker was in the corridor she had been watching through the surveillance video. Broots was at her side and, as usual, he was shivering from head to toe.
“Broots, don’t be a chicken.” she taunted him.
“If they find us, it’s the end, Miss Parker.”
“Then try not to chatter your teeth, or they’ll hear you.”
Hidden behind a wall, they were waiting for their chance to get through the armored door. Broots had created a loop for the cameras, they had ten minutes to act. Sydney was in Raines’s office to distract him, allowing Broots and Parker to look for the baby. Miss Parker couldn’t accept the thought that they were exploiting her little brother, who wasn’t even two years old, yet. Every time she had seen him, before he got secluded, she had felt a strong connection to him. Since she had helped Brigitte giving birth, actually.
The last time she had visited him, they had played, and she had noticed that he had two beautiful brown eyes that reminded her vaguely of Jarod’s, maybe because he also had that lost-puppy look.    
A technician came out of a room and walked to the door, giving Miss Parker the opportunity she was waiting for. She and Broots flattened themselves against the wall, waiting for the man to leave the corridor. As soon as he opened the door, Parker and Broots infiltrated the corridor in silence, trying not to get noticed. When the door closed behind them, Broots dried the sweat from his forehead and sighed in relief, while Miss Parker dragged him with her.    

“I don’t understand why you want to reopen cases buried years ago, Sydney.”
“Indulge me, will you?” he answered, ironically.
“In the end, Mind Rain started because of you, Sydney. We all told you that you were too indulgent, with those children. You always let Miss Parker wander freely inside The Centre to make friends with Jarod, you even allowed them to play together!”
“I wasn’t the one who let the girl in here!” he replied, furious.
“A mistake made by a weak woman and carried out by her husband.” Raines was referring to Catherine. “But I was a witness, too. Children that often escaped our control, sometimes they managed to discover secrets they weren’t supposed to ever find out.”
“Like Faith.” Sydney interrupted him.
“If it were for me, Miss Parker would have never set foot inside The Centre anymore, after her SIM with Jarod. We wanted to find out the effects of a girl on a pretender, but the thing got too serious a few years later.”
“It was the only possibility we had to persuade Jarod to go ahead with his simulations. And we always kept an eye on them, there were cameras everywhere!”
“Yeah” Raines continued, “And the videos were always catalogued and sent to the Triumvirate.”
“They were just kids, Raines. Jarod worked better, after spending some time in Miss Parker’s company.”  
“You have no idea.” Raines said, standing up. “What happened between those kids. You were never around, during Christmas holidays, you needed to be elsewhere, didn’t you?”
Sydney refrained from speaking. Visiting Jacob was the only freedom he took in the golden era of The Centre, when he was in charge of Jarod’s training.
“You never watched those videos. But I did, and Mr. Parker, too.”
“And what did I miss, exactly?” Sydney asked.
Raines was smiling, almost naughtily. “Two young teenagers kissing and cuddling as a couple of school sweethearts. They had to be stopped. The Triumvirate didn’t like the relationship between them, and neither did I. Mr. Parker, on the other hand, had different plans for his daughter, and the more he tried to get her far from The Centre, the less he succeeded. She cared too much for Jarod, and the thing got embarrassing.”

Miss Parker and Broots walked through the corridor, confident that the cameras wouldn’t show them. They overcame the first two doors, beyond the glasses there was anything but empty rooms. They got lucky with the third room. Behind a huge window, there was something that looked like a nursery. And Baby Parker was inside a crib, playing with some cubes.
His sister got excited when she saw him. She immediately realized how much he had grown. It didn’t look like he had mistreated. On the contrary, the boy was smiling.
“Broots, stand guard.” Miss Parker said, opening the door.
As soon as she was inside, her little brother felt her presence and turned his attention to her. She smiled and took him in her arms, noticing again those beautiful brown eyes. She didn’t know why, but something inside her push her to smell the baby’s head. She grimaced, feeling that she was getting spineless.
“Hello!” she told the baby.
“Hi!” he answered. Miss Parker was surprised when she heard him talk, but she knew that, by two years, babies start saying simple words and short sentences. Baby Parker was almost eighteen months old. He had grown so much, since the last time she had taken him in her arms.
“Mmm, you don’t have a name yet, little boy. Would you mind if I call you Michael?” she asked the baby, wondering where the hell that name had come from. Maybe she had always liked it and, unconsciously, she would have always wanted to call her son that. Assuming that she ever had a son.
“Yes!” the baby answered, smiling. Parker couldn’t figure where that lovely smile came from. How could this baby be Brigitte’s son, since he didn’t look like her at all? The more Miss Parker looked at him, the less she recognized any resemblance to Brigitte.
“I won’t allow them to hurt you, kiddo.” she whispered, putting her face next to his soft and hot little head. “You’re my brother, and I’m going to protect you. I promise.”
“Miss Parker, we gotta go!” Broots intervened, realizing that the looping time of the cameras was almost over.
“I will get back to take you away.” she said, giving the baby a kiss as she put him back to his crib.
Then she ran out the room and gave a last glance at Michael, running with Broots towards the exit of SL-19.

“The Triumvirate gave orders.” Raines told. “We had to perform Mind Rain to erase the relationship between Jarod and Miss Parker.”
Sydney thought about the mail that Broots had found.
“But what kind of project was this? Why didn’t you inform me?”
Raines smiled. “And when exactly have we ever revealed our plans for Jarod to you, since we knew that you would never agree?”
Sydney felt his hands itching and had to tighten them not to jump over Raines and punch him.
“You erased their memories, didn’t you?”
Raines wondered how in hell he had guessed, he got silent for a while. Then he continued. “It was one of the most successful experiments in the whole history of the Centre. We used a mixture of hypnosis, hallucinogens, and mental inceptions. One day they were two kids, friends for life; the following day, Miss Parker was removed of her squalid memories connected to her relationship with Jarod. We couldn’t afford getting too deep, because the memories linked to childhood were too much intense, they had to remain to preserve their brains. None of us would risk wrecking Jarod’s skills.”
“Why?” Sydney shouted. “Why did you take those memories away from them?”
“At that time we weren’t authorized to discuss orders. The Triumvirate had good reasons to separate them. In those videos, Miss Parker talked more and more about escaping, about freedom. That was unacceptable for Jarod. She was convincing him that they would run away together, that they would get old together. Their bond was a risk for Jarod’s safety, and most of all for The Centre. We had to destroy it!”
Sydney didn’t waste another second. “You’ve always been a psychopath, Raines. You took the only light Jarod ever had during those years at The Centre.”
“I thought it was the pseudo-paternal relationship with you that gave him strength, wasn’t it, Sydney?” he replied, with a malice that would have destroyed almost anyone, but not Sydney. He always took strength from his connection with Jarod, nobody could break it, not even Raines’s manipulations.
“Anyway, Mind Rain had such a positive outcome that many governments bought it and used it to erase memories from political prisoners, soldiers, troublesome persons. I must say, it was our little masterpiece.”
Sydney wanted to reveal that Jarod and Miss Parker were now remembering everything, and they had found the disks stolen from The Centre. But obviously, he couldn’t betray his pupils’ trust like that. He would have found another time to get revenge. He reached for the door.
“Why are you so interested in discovering things that happened almost thirty years ago?” Raines asked him. He couldn’t understand the man’s will to hurt himself like that.
“As you said, Raines…I’ve always had a flaw in my character. I’ve always been too much indulgent, with those kids. I won’t lie to Jarod. If he’s ever going to ask, I’ll tell him the truth. He’s got the right to know what you did to him. Not only you took his childhood, his family, his identity…You even took the memories of the only friend he ever had.”          
Raines seemed satisfied. “Miss Parker became a skillful huntress, after the training, and she never gave any sign of remembering anything. She always hated Jarod, and as far as we know she still hates him. Mind Rain is portentous.”
Sydney smiled. “So is Jarod. What are you going to do when he finds out?”
“It won’t be necessary for him to know.” Lyle voice intervened, as he got inside the office.
“You knew about this?” Sydney asked.
“This is not the right moment to complain about the past. We just received a tip on Jarod’s whereabouts. Somebody saw him in Blue Cove, he was in a park. We’re going right now, where’s Miss Parker?”
“Somebody asked for me?” she said, materializing in that very moment, followed by Broots. Her glance made Sydney understand that her mission had gone as expected.
“Your prey is waiting, let’s go!” Lyle ordered.
“What do you mean?” she asked, starting to sweat.
“Jarod was seen in a park not far from here. They say he wasn’t alone, we’re going to make a run for it, if we’re lucky, he might still be around.”   
Lyle was reaching for the door, but his colleagues were stuck. Parker couldn’t fight the nausea and she felt like she was fainting. Jarod had been identified. He was in danger.
Recognizing her symptoms, Sydney helped her. “You go ahead, I’ve got some other business here.”
Parker understood that Sydney would stay back and contact Jarod with his new mobile phone, so she regained control of herself. “Broots, let’s go, our lab rat is not likely to waste time as our Dr. Freud!”
While the group exited Raines’s office, Sydney gave him a look full of hate.
“As you see” Raines said through clenched teeth. “Miss Parker seems to be still completely subjugated. Don’t you think the truth would destroy her and make her lose that bit of trust she has in you?”
Sydney wanted to scream that Miss Parker already knew everything, he wanted to say that she had changed her life and was now together with the man they had taken away from her. But he couldn’t do that. He could just feel glad at the realization that Raines was convinced that Mind Rain had been a success.
He couldn’t know that it was becoming his greatest failure.
Sydney pretended to be pondering about his words, then answered. “I won’t tell her. But should she start remembering, one day, I won’t be the one who lies to her. Not to her, nor to Jarod!”
So said, he went out the office.
Sydney couldn’t imagine that Raines was developing a new wish.
He wanted to kill Sydney and get rid of him.
For good.

Jarod was still in the car, driving as fast as he could to reach Miss Parker’s house. Ethan lay on the passenger seat, leaning his head to the window, holding it with both his hands to moderate the ache.
“Hold on, Ethan, we’re not far!”
“Where…are…we going?” he asked him, within a moan and the other.
“Your sister’s home. We’ll be safe, there!”
At that moment Jarod’s phone rang and he took it in a hurry, answering without ceremony, “What?!”
“Jarod, thank God, I got you! Miss Parker is going to the park with Lyle and a sweeper team, somebody spotted you. You found Ethan?”
“Yes.” he answered, giving his brother a glance. “He’s not feeling well, I’m taking him home. He needs some rest.”
“I’ll let Parker know that you’re both safe. In the meantime, don’t go out and keep checking the streets, they could see you!”
“Thanks, Sydney.”

At the same time, Miss Parker was in the car with Lyle, who was driving at a frenetic speed. He was hoping to reach the park before Jarod would disappear, as usual.
Her phone rang, the official one. Miss Parker took it and answered, “What?!”
If he didn’t believe this before, Sydney realized at that precise moment that Jarod and Parker were meant for each other.
“It’s me. The situation is under control.” he said.
“All right, Sydney. We’re taking care of Jarod. I just hope he’s still there. I’m so tired of his Houdini disappearances!”
Sydney smiled to himself, thinking that those years spent at The Centre had transformed her in a very good liar. At least, for once, she was using that talent in the right way.
Miss Parker ended the call and heard her twin brother saying, “Well said, sis!”
Broots gnashed his teeth. Maybe, after all, Miss Parker could handle the situation even better than he thought.

MISS PARKER’S HOUSE
7.45 p.m.

Ethan had been sleeping for a couple of hours, now. His fever had lowered, and Jarod was relieved. For a few seconds, he had feared that it would get so worse that they would need to take Ethan to the hospital, but his brother had explained that this was a common reaction. Fever always got him when his inner sense had to deal with something very important. Jarod was now worried about Miss Parker. It was late and she hadn’t come back, yet. He hadn’t got news from her, nor Sydney.
Around the house there were no movements, Jarod had shut the windows and turned the lights off.
He was checking on Ethan’s temperature, when the entrance door opened, and a breathless Miss Parker entered the living room. Jarod looked at her without uttering a word, waiting to see if they could talk. She locked the door behind her, making him understand that now they were safe. He ran to hold her, and she hugged him tight in response, as she had never done before. That afternoon she had been really worried for him. This fear of losing the pretender felt dramatically new.
“Did you have any problems with Lyle?” Jarod asked, stroking her face rapidly, almost to check on her.
“No, he doesn’t suspect at all. Broots and I were good, Lyle was furious when we got there and we didn’t find you. By the way, where is he?” She asked, impatient to see her brother.
Jarod indicated the couch and Parker reached it, bending close to Ethan.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“I don’t know exactly. He has the same symptoms you had last night, just more intense. A very high fever and headaches.”
“Nausea?” she asked.
“Not that I know of.”
Parker wondered why she was so lucky to throw up, too, but that wasn’t the time to think about her sickness. Now Ethan was the who needed cures.
“We talked for a while.” Jarod explained. “Then he suddenly started to feel sick, the voices became insistent.”
“What were you talking about?” Parker asked, knowing that even a word could stimulate a certain status of trance.
“I was telling him about our plan. We were talking about…uhm, the future, The Centre…”
Jarod thought again about the conversation and then stared at Miss Parker as he recollected the last words he had said.
“The Scrolls…” He whispered.
Parker looked at him worried. So, Ethan’s attack had started when Jarod had mentioned the Scrolls. Surely, that was no coincidence.
“Miss Parker…” Ethan whispered.
She smiled and stroke his face, a teardrop falling from her wonderful eyes. “Ethan…I missed you so much.” she confessed.
“You too, big sister. It’s good to see you, you look beautiful, but I feel you’re also happy.”
She smiled and turned her glance to Jarod. “I reckon you guys gossiped behind my back like two girls.”
Jarod chuckled and so did Ethan. “I missed your sarcasm, Miss Parker. It’s so good to hear a voice so similar to our mother’s. Mostly because it’s not in my head, but it comes from my ears.”
“Ethan, did Jarod tell you that she…”
“Yes, he told me about the videos. Do you really think mama is still alive?”
“I’d love to…what do you feel?” she whispered, hoping in a positive answer. Ethan closed his eyes and listened to the voices, by now calm and quiet.
“It’s so difficult to understand. Her voice guided me since I was a kid, but I’ve never posed myself the question. Now, everything is different…and her voice seems clearer. I don’t know if that’s only suggestion…”
Jarod was listening in silence to that important conversation. He couldn’t interfere because he didn’t have the inner sense that the two siblings shared. But he trusted it, more than any other thing in the world.
“It’s not just suggestion. I hear it too, now.” Parker explained. “I hear it better, I mean.”
Ethan nodded and squeezed his sister’s hand.
“Rest again for a while, will you?” She asked him, with all the affection she had. Ethan smiled and closed his eyes with a nod. Jarod and Miss Parker moved discreetly towards the kitchen, where she hugged him again.
Since she needed desperately to feel his lips on hers, she kissed him.
“Mmm…you taste salty.” He whispered, making her laugh. “I like it.” He said, smiling at her.
“Jarod we need to talk. I’ve got news.”
“I’m listening…” he sighed.
“Broots and I made a visit to my brother down to SL-19. We found out that Raines and Lyle have plans for him, the same they always have.”
“Simulations…training…exploitation.” Jarod said, while a fit of anger went through his spine. Every time The Centre tried to hurt a kid, he felt his will to get vengeance getting stronger.
“Fortunately, he’s still too young. Michael is not even two years old.”
“Michael?” Jarod asked, “That’s what they named him?”
Parker was now a bit embarrassed. “Uhm, no…I thought…it would be nice for him to have a name.”
Jarod smiled at her. “After all, you’re his sister. Who better than you?”
“I was wondering if there is some…legal way to stop all of this. His mother is dead, his father is missing, I’m his only relative. I could adopt him, ask for his custody. You know the law; do I have rights, as his older sister?”
Jarod was touched by her sense of responsibility. But he knew that the problem was not the law, but The Centre.
“Lyle, Raines, the Triumvirate…they know one law, theirs. I’m afraid The Centre doesn’t have to subject itself to official rules, Parker.”
She nodded. “Then we’re doing this the old-fashioned way. We rescue him, as we’ve already done…in the past.” She concluded, glancing at her other brother, the one who was sleeping on her couch.
Jarod nodded, much more determined. “This means a declaration of war to The Centre. There’s no going back.”
Parker felt even more convinced. “We’ve found Ethan, another step forward to the end. Do you remember what my mother said?”
“That with him, we can survive. That he will help us to find them.” Jarod recited, remembering the video by heart.
“Ethan knows much more than he wants us to believe, Jarod. He might have discovered something while he was away.”
“What should we do?” He asked her.
How could they end The Centre, if they didn’t even know what those damned Scrolls said?
“Do you still have contacts at the F.B.I., Jarod?”  
“I know many agents I can trust. People I’ve worked with.” He nodded.
“Fine. It’s time to act. The Centre has powerful friends, but its strength comes from the Triumvirate. Apparently, the Triumvirate power comes from the Scrolls, or at least that’s what they believe.”
“It seems a circle. How can prophecies written hundreds of years ago control our destiny?” He asked her, in rage.
“Do you remember what my father said? The important thing is that they believe. If they found them, if they found my father…Well, then they read them and interpreted the texts.”
Jarod shook his head. “I don’t think we should only be talking about Scrolls and prophecies, but also of real life and sins of The Centre. Do you know how many projects are paid directly from the Government or the Army? We can’t expose the ones behind them, I’ve been trying for years!”
“In fact, the only way we have to destroy them is to make it collapse from the inside, with the help of persons that we can trust.”
Jarod was very proud of Parker. After all the years spent as a chess piece of The Centre, manipulated and lied to, she had finally realized the truth.
“They destroyed our lives, the lives of dozens of families, Jarod. But they made the mistake to underestimate us. We still have proof of their misdeeds, it’s all in your videos. Now, we must get to the Triumvirate, uncover its business. To help us, the F.B.I. must be in the right place at the right time, when we bring everything to light.”
Jarod got more serious. “Have you thought…that those videos could lead to Sydney’s involvement? Without counting all the laws Broots has broken to find me.”
Parker was wordless. She had never considered their pursuit from that point of view.
“Why do you think I’ve never spoken about The Centre to the authorities? Why do you think I never gave those DSAs to the police? I couldn’t allow Syd, Broots, or you…to get hurt. You’re victims of The Centre as much as I am, but the police wouldn’t understand that.”
Parker nodded imperceptibly. “Well, we’re going to think about it when it’s time, Boy Wonder. Now I need some rest, because my head is exploding.”
Suddenly Jarod remembered that she wasn’t feeling well the night before. “Did you have any other nausea attacks, today?”
“A bit, it happens to me every time I see Raines walking across The Centre corridors.”
Jarod stopped her, ignoring her irony for once and taking her chin with his right hand. “Don’t neglect yourself, Parker.”
“I’m fine, Jarod. And now, let’s go to bed. But you must be aware that I have no intention to give you any attention, not with my brother sleeping under our same roof.”
Jarod smiled. “Our brother…” He specified. “Who is a grown-up…” He continued, kissing her neck, and holding her. “…as well as deeply asleep thanks to the gentle sedative I gave him to make him rest better.”
Parker smiled. “You’re an evil genius.” She whispered, letting him kiss her.
“Well, everybody has a dark side. And mine always turns up, when it’s up to you.”