Chapter 2


    Miss Parker left her father's office, running and crying. She wanted to get away from him as fast as possible. And she soon would be for good. Her father was sending her abroad to a boarding school.

    He wanted to get rid of her. He had told her she should see this as an opportunity to make new friends, to learn a new language and to discover a new country, but she knew that he just didn't want her to stay with him anymore.

    She reminded him too much of her mother; he had told her a couple of times before. She didn't need him to say the words to know that it was the reason why he didn't want to see her anymore. He tried to reassure her that he would come see her as often as he could, but it was just a lie; if he didn't have time for her now, how could he make time for her when she was away?

    Her feet brought her to a familiar corridor, and this was when she saw it: the door behind which Faith died a year before. If tears weren't already running down her face, they would have started to fall. She had barely known her, but another loss, so soon after her mother's, had been hard to take. For a couple of days, she had found a friend in Faith, and she knew the four of them would have been great together. But they didn't have enough time.

    She sat down on the floor next to a vent; it wouldn't be long now until they found her. She hugged her knees to her chest, and kept crying for what she had lost, for what she would soon lose.

    She didn't know how long she had been here when she heard footsteps coming her way, and someone crawling towards her in the vent. Soon, Jarod was sitting next to her and Angelo was looking at them from the vent.

"Sad...," Angelo whispered. "So sad..."

"Why are you crying, Miss Parker?" Jarod said in a soft voice.

"Daddy is sending me away."

"What? Why?"

"Because he doesn't love me anymore," she replied, shrugging.

"I'm sure that's not true," her friend tried to reassure her, but she couldn't let herself believe him.

"It doesn't matter anyway, I'm leaving. We won't see each other again."

    Saying these words out loud brought new tears in her eyes. Jarod put his arm around her shoulder and she buried her face against his chest. As always, his presence was comforting, but it would be the last time.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," she revealed between two sobs.

    Jarod tightened his arm around her, and Angelo left the vent to curl up against her other side. She didn't know how long the three of them stayed huddled together, not speaking. She didn't want to let go of them. She didn't want them to let go of her. She wished they could hide here forever, never to be found, but she knew it wasn't possible.

"I don't want to say goodbye," she said.

"Then, we won't say goodbye," Jarod replied. "It's not because you won't be here that we can't still be friends."

"We can write to each other," she suggested.

"Yes, we will do that. And you will be back for school holidays, and you can come see us."

"I will. I promise."

"Then, we will never say goodbye."

    Jarod took Parker's hand in his, and Angelo put his hand on top of theirs. Without a word, they sealed their promise to never say goodbye.

    Miss Parker was losing her patience.

    As soon as Broots had arrived, she had ordered him to look for any information on the man in the picture. It was already the middle of the afternoon, and he still didn't have anything for her. His search on the Centre's mainframe had been unsuccessful, but she hadn't been surprised; if there had been any information there, Jarod wouldn't have needed them to identify the man.

    All that was left to search were Lyle and Raines' computers. Broots had tried to protest at first, but he quickly relented when he saw the determination on Parker's face. Still, they couldn't do anything until both of them had left for the day, which meant that they had to wait, and she hated waiting.

    Tired of being able to do nothing, she left her office, and walked towards the labs where she knew she could find Sydney. When she rounded a corner, she stopped; her brother was there, at the end of the corridor, talking with none other than Cox. She had wondered where he had disappeared after he failed to stop Jarod from finding Ethan and taking him away from the Centre's clutches. She had hoped that the Triumvirat had dealt with him, but it looked like she had been wrong.

    Cox was the one to notice her presence, and tell Lyle. They moved down the corridors, further away from her, and Cox smiled in her direction before they disappeared around another corner. Just like every other time, it made her shiver. Whatever they had been discussing, they obviously didn't want her to know about it, and this made her even more curious. She made a mental note of having Broots look around for it once he was done with the man in the picture.

    She continued on her way to Sydney and found him in an observation room, looking at a pair of twins. Even though they couldn't see each other, they were doing the exact same gestures at the same moment. She found it really frightening.

    He turned away from the glass when he heard her enter, and smiled at her.

"What brings you here, Miss Parker?"

    She didn't answer; she didn't want to tell him she was pacing like a caged lioness in her office while waiting for Broots' search results. He would want to talk about it, and would try to bring the discussion to what was really the problem for him: her filiation. And for her, it wasn't a problem, it was just further proof that her life was screwed up.

"Let's go to my office," he offered, gesturing to a scientist that he was done for the day.

    She followed him, even though she knew he would try and make her talk about things she wanted to forget. But it was better than having to wait alone for Broots. At the very least, she could let the psychiatrist talk and tune him out.

    They entered his office, and he closed the door behind them. It only served to give them a false sense of privacy; the security cameras in the corners of the office would still record everything. Nothing could ever really stay private in the Centre.

"Any news?" he asked, making sure to leave out the particulars.

"Not yet, but soon I hope. Broots is working on it."

"Let me know if I can be of help."

"I just saw Lyle and Cox talking in a corridor," she said, needing him to know if only because Lyle's ally was dangerous.

"He's back? Do you know what they were talking about?"

"No. But I'm pretty sure we'll find out soon enough. Whatever these two are working on, this can only mean trouble for us."

"You think Cox is helping Lyle with his search of Jarod?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. Though I doubt two idiots can do any better than one," she replied with a grin.

    Sydney smiled good-naturedly, but she could see that he wasn't really amused. She wasn't either. They both knew that alone, Cox and Lyle could be defeated, but together, they were really dangerous. She had no idea why Cox was back at the Centre, but whatever it was for, she knew it spoke of trouble.

"Did Jarod contact you, recently?" Sydney asked, changing the subject to talk about his protégé.

"No. Why would he? You know he only calls to torture me with some big secrets about my family. Though I doubt he could find anything worse than Raines being my…"

    She couldn't bring herself to say the word, and Sydney noticed it. This time though, he resisted asking her if she wanted to talk about it; he knew better than that. If she wanted to talk, she would come to him, but Miss Parker rarely needed to talk to someone. At least, she didn't need to talk to him.

"I was just asking because since you came back from Carthis, I hear some tiredness in his voice. He had never been like this."

"I guess the chase is finally wearing him down. Maybe he will soon understand that he needs to come home."

    It was something she had said many times before, but this was the first time she didn't believe it, and they both knew it. This confirmed to Sydney that something had changed between them when they were on the island. He didn't think it was a big change, but it made Parker realise that, just as much as she didn't want Lyle to be the one to bring Jarod back to the Centre, she didn't want to bring him back either.

    He wanted to question Parker about what had happened on Carthis, but he knew that she would never answer his questions. She had told him about their quest to find the scrolls, about Mr Parker, Raines and Lyle arriving just when they acquired them, about what happened on the plane, but she had carefully left out the parts when she and Jarod were alone.

    Miss Parker herself had changed too since she came back from the island. Only a few could see it; only people who knew her well could see the changes. And Sydney was one of the two people who could. The tiredness he heard in Jarod's voice could be seen in her eyes. They were both growing tired of this chase, and this meant that one way or another, it would soon come to an end. Sydney could just hope that it wouldn't end tragically for the two children of the Centre.

    Cynthia had asked Jarod to stay and have lunch with them, and he agreed. It gave him the opportunity to continue observing Lucy. Even though she was quiet, she finished her plate without being asked to. She had a good appetite and it reassured him; it proved that what Lucy really needed was time. She would be fine.

    The others were quiet too, which gave Jarod time to forge an opinion about them. John was a good man, and even though he had yet to see him in action, he had no doubt that he was a good sheriff for the town. He and Cynthia were obviously shaken about the whole ordeal, although they hid it well for their children and Lucy's sake.

    Of the two, Jarod would say that Cynthia was the strongest; he remembered Rachel, and to what length she went to protect her daughter, and he had no doubt Cynthia would do the same for her children. He could see that the children, although they were young, were very protective of Lucy, a trait they inherited from both their parents.

    All in all, this family was just like any other family, right down to the house with the white picket fence, which Jarod had learned during his time away from the Centre was a dream for every American.

    For a moment, he imagined his own family in their place. The family he would have had had the Centre never come into their lives. A mom, a dad and three children, two boys and a girl; this could be them. But then, as Parker told him, they would never know how their lives would be without the Centre in the picture; it was their life, and somehow, neither of them would ever really escape it.

    After lunch, Jarod and Brody went to the Schaeffers's house. Jarod wanted to see the crime scene for himself. He entered the house first and stopped on the threshold of the living room. He looked around, taking in every little detail, knowing that anything could be important. As he had already seen on the photos, the entire room had been trashed. It was obvious that whoever had been there, they were looking for something.

    He didn't need the body silhouettes on the floor to know it was where they had found Lucy's parents; there were two pools of dry blood marking the place. He knelt down before them and closed his eyes, taking a moment to grieve the loss of two lives.

    Getting up, another look around confirmed the gut feeling he had upon seeing the pictures that there had been only one killer. The room had been searched methodically: first the bookshelves, then under the cushions of the couch, and finally in the potted plants. Jarod couldn't see any footprint in the soil that had fallen on the floor, but it didn't mean it had never been there.

"Did the forensics find anything?"

"No. We didn't find any prints. The killer had taken the time to clean after himself."

    This didn't surprise Jarod; to him, everything in this room sounded professional. There was nothing personal in the murders or the way the room had been searched. Either someone had hired a contracted killer for this job or the killer had only one thing on his mind. He didn't share his thoughts with Brody yet, though. He was sure that the Sheriff wouldn't believe in his theory if he didn't have evidence to back it up.

    Leaving the living room, Jarod looked into the other rooms of the ground floor. They had been searched too, but not as thoroughly. When he entered the kitchen, he checked the back door, and noticed faint traces on the lock.

"This is where the killer entered the house," Brody started to explain. "He picked the lock. Our first guess had been that he hadn't wanted his presence in the house to be known, but when he couldn't find what he had been looking for without disturbing anything, he didn't care anymore."

    Jarod had to admit that this theory could be true, and it fit with his own. A contracted killer could have been hired to find something, and to eventually kill the Schaeffers if nothing could be found.

    He climbed the stairs, Brody following close behind, and entered each room of the first floor to find that they had all been searched too. Contents from the drawers had been thrown on the floor, mattresses were overturned. Not one square inch had been spared. They had searched everywhere, and he had no way of knowing if the killer had found what he was looking for. And if he didn't, Lucy might still be in danger, and with her, Brody and his family.

    Jarod stopped on the threshold of Lucy's room on his way back to the stairs. Like the rest of the house, it had been searched. He didn't know what the killer had been looking for, but whatever it was, it was important to the person who hired him. To go as far as to trash a little girl's room, it had to be.

"What are you thinking about?" Brody asked, interrupting his thoughts.

"I'm wondering what we don't know about the Schaeffers and that would explain all this."

    From the look on the sheriff's face, Jarod could see that he was considering his words, and that he realised that he might not know his friends as well as he thought. This opened up a new realm of possibilities for them.

"We need to look into Don and Julia's past, from when they were in Boston."

    Jarod nodded, having already thought about it himself. He didn't think that the killer was from around here, and the only other possibility was Boston, where Don went to university and met Julia.

    With that on both of their minds, they left the house, and went back to the office.

    While Brody shared what little progress they made with Peter, Jarod settled in front of a computer, and started to search about Don and Julia's lives in Boston. Maybe it would be a dead end, but maybe it would finally provide them with the information they would need to find their killer.

"What do you know about Julia's past?" Jarod asked Brody after yet another fruitless search on the woman.

"Not much, I have to admit. I'm not even sure Cynthia knows more than me. Julia always said that we should leave the past behind us and never talk about it again. Why do you want to know?"

"I didn't find anything of importance in Don's past, and I haven't found anything for Julia."

"This is certainly a dead end, but you were right to look there."

"No, you didn't understand me. I didn't find anything about Julia at all. It's like she had started to exist only six months before she met Don."

"Witness protection program?"

"It's certainly a possibility. I've probably raised a few red flags during my search. The Marshalls should pay us a visit soon." He paused, before voicing the feeling he had about this. "But to be honest, this is too sloppy."

"What do you mean?"

"If the Marshalls created Julia a new identity, they would have covered all bases. This isn't the case here. It looks like she did it herself."

"Isn't that complicated to create a whole new identity on her own?"

"Not really," Jarod replied, thinking about what he was doing every time he needed it.

    And really, it was his experience that told him that Julia wasn't in the Witness Protection Program. Everything looked like something he would have done himself, something he did a few hours before. But he wasn't about to tell Brody this.

"Did Julia have a friend from Boston that she kept in touch with? It would be someone who came from time to time."

"No. She has no one. Had no one," he corrected himself. He almost asked why Jarod wanted to know this before realising. "If she was in the Witness Protection Program, someone would have come to check on her."

    Jarod nodded, not saying anything. Now, they just needed to figure out why she created herself a new identity. At the very least, they were now almost certain they were looking in the right direction; someone from her past, the past she had tried to hide from, was probably responsible for all this.

    When she finally closed the door of her house, Miss Parker let out a sigh. This had been another tough day for her at the Centre. She was beginning to realise that every time she stepped into the House of Horrors, she was wearing a mask. And with every passing day, it was harder and harder. But she couldn't stop hiding because the moment she did, she knew it would be the end for her.

    Since Mr Parker died, she knew she was standing on the edge of a cliff, and she didn't know what was waiting for her below. Or rather, she didn't want to think about it. But one day, she knew she would have to jump or fall off the cliff, and this would either be the end for her or a new beginning.

    Shaking these thoughts out of her head – now wasn't the time for these kind of thoughts if she wanted to keep her head attached to her neck – she went to the cabinet and took out a bottle of scotch and a glass. She poured herself a drink, more than she probably should have, and downed it in one gulp. She wasn't hungry, but she could do with a bath, if only to metaphorically clean her skin of the filth she could find in the hallways of the Centre.

    Going into the kitchen first, she opened a bottle of wine and poured herself a glass, before finally making her way up the stairs. Just as she was about to take off her clothes, a knock sounded on her door. She was tempted to just ignore it, but then remembered that Broots said he would come by if he found anything about the mysterious man on the picture.

    She opened the door to find Broots on the other side, nervous and holding an envelope in his hands.

"Well?" she asked as he stepped inside without a word.

"I found something. It was on Mr Raines' computer. His name is Matt Anderson and he works for NuGenesis."

"NuGenesis? What are they plotting now?"

"I don't know. I haven't found anything else but the name of a Project: Renewal. That's all I have, but whatever it is, I already don't like it."

    Once she closed the door behind Broots, the envelope now in her hands, she admitted to herself that she understood him. Nothing was good when it came to the Centre, but add in NuGenesis and it was even worse. This new project, codenamed Renewal, intrigued her. She had no idea what this project was or when it started, but something told her it was important for Raines and Lyle; just the fact that Anderson met with Lyle proved it.

    Back in her room, she took off her clothes and let them fall to the floor. Clad only in her underwear, she entered the adjoining bathroom, put the glass on the rim of the tub and the envelope on the counter. She turned the tap and let the water fill the tub, adding bathing salts before picking up the envelope.

    She opened it, but inside, there was barely more information than what Broots already told her. There was a picture though, and she could finally see Anderson's face more clearly than in the security camera shot. There was just a mention of Project Renewal, as the technician had said; it wasn't a lot, but she knew that it was enough for now. Soon, they would know more, she was sure of that.

    Taking off her underwear, she finally stepped into the tub, and sighed when she sat in the hot water. She grabbed the glass of wine she had sat on the tub, and took a sip. Closing her eyes, she slipped a little further down in the water and rested her head against the rim.

    She didn't know how long she stayed like this when the phone ringing interrupted the silence. She didn't need three guesses to know it was him.

"What?" she answered, tiredness in her voice, but she didn't care if he could hear it at the moment.

"Are you enjoying your bath?" he asked, amusement in her voice.

"I swear Jarod, if you have found a way to spy on me, I'm going to put a bullet between your eyes," she said, a bit angry, but her voice lacking her usual venom.

    She heard him chuckling and realised that she had reacted exactly the way he expected her to. She rolled her eyes, and barely held back a sigh; it was better not to let him know that she was annoyed by him, he would only be more amused.

"Did you find something?"

    He didn't need to say more for Miss Parker to know what he meant. Of course, he was talking about the photograph he had sent her. She didn't even wonder how he could know that she had received the package.

"Only three things: Matt Anderson, NuGenesis and Project Renewal."

    She was succinct, but there wasn't more she could tell him: these were after all the only things Broots could find.

"I thought we were done with NuGenesis."

"Nothing is really over with the Centre, you should know that," she replied. "Where did you find this photo?" she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

"I snooped around. You know I have a knack for doing that."

    Oh, that she knew. Since he escaped from the Centre, he had snooped around, as he put it, and had found secrets about her family. She had resented him for it in the past; she still did in some ways. Life would have been easier for her if she didn't know what horrors her family had done in the past and was still doing.

"Still no news of our brother?" Miss Parker asked, changing the subject.

"No. Nothing yet. But I'm sure he is fine, hiding somewhere."

"He better be, otherwise I'm going to kill him myself."

"I'll help you."

"I thought you were defending people who need it," she replied, smirking.

"I can make an exception for him." He paused, and the silence between them felt so heavy that she already knew what he was going to say. "Parker..."

"No."

    She had interrupted him before he could go any further; it wouldn't do them any good to voice it. He hung up straight after that, and she put the phone down on the floor. She sank a little bit further into the lukewarm water until only her head was out of it.

    She didn't know how long she stayed in her bath, but when she finally got out, the water had almost gone cold. Taking her bathrobe, she put it on and tied the sash. In an instant, she was reminded of another moment, a moment that happened no so long but so far away from Blue Cove and the Centre. She still remembered the look on Jarod's face when she left the privacy of the folding screen. As it turned out, though, it hadn't screened much from his view. Even in the dim light, she had seen the blush on his face, something she had never thought she would see on his face.

    Thinking about this moment pushed another one to the front of her mind, but she didn't let it linger. It was something she shouldn't think about, a moment of weakness that shouldn't have happened.

    She went back into her bedroom, and closed the drapes, noticing that dark clouds had made their appearance over the city. She took off her bathrobe and lay down in her bed, hoping that sleep would come soon, and that she wouldn't spend half her night tossing and turning.

    As soon as he hung up with Parker, Jarod turned to his laptop and started to search information on Matt Anderson. Using a program of his design, he accessed every database he could at once, and started gathering everything there was on the man. Some of it would no doubt be useless, but he had learned over time that any piece of information, no matter how small it was, could end up being important.

    Even though he could easily do both at the same time, he knew that he should be focusing on his current pretend. A little girl had lost both of her parents, and he had promised he would find the person who was responsible for this. But something told him that this Matt Anderson, this Project Renewal were important. And he usually trusted his gut instinct.

    As the search continued on his laptop, he took his Pez dispenser and popped one into his mouth. He didn't have anything to do but wait for the results. But he wasn't one to stay idle while he waited. Grabbing the file on the Schaeffer's case he had brought back from the office with him, he read one more time what they had, which wasn't much to say the least. They had nothing interesting, no evidence to lead them to the killer and eventually to the one who ordered the hit.

    He knew what he had to do, though: he had to keep looking into Julia's past. He knew that the key to solve this double murder case was there. But he didn't know where to look for it. The only little clue he had was when the then Julia Miller first appeared. It wasn't much; well, it was nothing actually, seeing as how it was a fake name. Jarod wasn't one to be stopped by one little bump in the road, though.

    His laptop beeped, jolting him out of his thoughts, and signalling that the search on Matt Anderson was complete. As he had suspected, there wasn't much to work with; it tended to be this way with anyone linked with the Centre. Him working at NuGenesis meant that Jarod couldn't access files that might have told him what he was working on. The clinic was the one place with the Centre that he would rather not set foot in; one time was enough. And while he knew the Centre's hallways and security system, it wasn't the same with NuGenesis. He had to find another way to find more information.

    Sighing, he saved the results of his search before starting a new one, this time on Julia. He set his program to start searching through the newspapers published some time before she arrived in Boston. He had no doubt that her having to change her identity was because she had to hide. Something must have happened to her or to someone close. Or at the very least, she had witnessed a crime. He was certain that whatever it had been, he would find an answer in the newspapers.

    He stood up from the chair, and took the silver case before going to sit on the bed. Opening it, he looked through the DSA, before finding the one he needed and placed it into the player. The black and white video started playing, and he saw his younger self and Sydney appear on the screen. The DSA had started in the middle of the scene, but he didn't need to rewind to know what it had been about; he remembered all too well.

    The younger Jarod was looking at the picture of a young woman. She had been nineteen at the time, and even now, through the grainy video, he could see the fear in her eyes. Her name was Clara Siler, and she was dating the son of a Mafioso, although she hadn't known about it at first. She had made the mistake to overhear a conversation and make a recording of it.

"She was afraid for her life. This is why she ran away," the Jarod in the video said. "But she knew that it didn't matter where she went, he would always be able to find her."

"So what did she do, Jarod?"

"She blackmailed him. She recorded him talking about the murders he committed and threatened to send it to the police if he came after her."

"What happened then?" Sydney asked when Jarod paused for a second too long.

"He couldn't let her go. He found her, and he had her killed. But she got him in the end," the younger Jarod added with a smile.

"Why is that?"

"He didn't find the recording because she hid it. And I know where," he concluded, turning towards Sydney.

    Jarod paused the DSA. From what his mentor had told him, they had found the recording exactly where he had told them it would be. But he had learned years later, after he escaped from the Centre that the recording hadn't been given to the police, as he had thought at the time, but to the Mafia. Her murderer, a contract killer from what little information he had found, had never been found.

    After having watched this DSA, Jarod was now surer than ever that Clara and Julia had a similar past. He didn't know if the Mafia was involved this time, and for everyone's sake, he hoped it wasn't the case, but Julia had definitely run away from her previous life, just like Clara did some thirty years before. Now, they only needed to find out the reason why.

    From where he was sitting against the headboard of the bed, he took a look at his laptop and saw that the search was still ongoing. There wasn't much for him to do for now, except getting some sleep to be well rested to continue the investigation the next day. Closing the silver case, he put it on the floor, and lied down on his back.

    Sleep was about to claim him when he had a sudden thought that made him sat up in bed. Taking his cell phone from the bedside table, he quickly dialled Sheriff Brody.

"Yes?"

    It was only when he heard Brody's sleepy voice on the other side of the line that he looked at the hour. It was late, already past midnight, and he had probably woken him up. He should have waited until the morning, but this might be important.

"This is Jarod," he replied. "I'm sorry, I hadn't realised it was this late."

"It's ok. Is there a problem?"

"No. I just had a thought. Have you checked Julia's fingerprints?" he asked, and he could hear the other man sitting up in his bed.

"We didn't have any reason to," Brody replied confirming Jarod's intuition. "Do you think she might have a record?"

"I don't know, but we'll have to check. But that can wait until tomorrow morning," Jarod reassured the Sheriff.

"I'll call the ME first thing tomorrow morning to have him take her prints."

    They said their goodnights, and Jarod hang up. He didn't know what he hadn't thought about it before when it was so obvious. But it was because it was that obvious that it hadn't come to his mind. Now, he just had to hope that they could find her real name with her fingerprints, and finally understand why she was hiding.

    She couldn't sleep. A storm was raging outside, but it wasn't what was keeping her awake. No, what was keeping her awake was the constant buzzing in her mind. She knew where it was coming from; her inner sense was trying to tell her something, but she couldn't make out the words. She tried to ignore them, but it didn't work. She sighed and sat up in bed, knowing that she wouldn't be able to sleep until she listened to what they had to say.

    She closed her eyes and tried to focus on only one voice: her mother's. It slowly became clearer and clearer, until she finally heard it, her mother's voice, repeating the same thing over and over again.

"Hide them, hide everything. Protect yourself."

    She opened her eyes, confused about her mother's words. She didn't know what she meant; she wondered why her inner sense couldn't be any clearer just this once. A lightning bolt illuminated the room, and her eyes fell upon her closet.

    As the thunder rolled outside, she realised with sudden clarity the meaning of the words. The letters she had written to Jarod when she was at boarding school, the ones he had written to her and she had never received, everything he had ever sent directly for her and she kept in the back of her closet: this was what she had to hide.

    The voices died down as she finally understood them. She would do that first thing tomorrow, she decided as she lied back down in bed. But as soon as she thought that, the buzzing became louder. She didn't have to concentrate on only one voice to know what they wanted: she had to sacrifice the few hours of sleep she could have had to deal with it now. She didn't know why it was so important, but as she finally made it out of bed, the voices calmed down once more.

    She was almost tempted to roll her eyes as she opened the door of her closet. She grabbed the box containing the letters she had Jarod had written to each other, and grabbed the other, larger, box that was sitting beside it. This one was filled with everything he had sent to her home, including her mother's diary. She wondered for a moment where she could hide them before the answer came to her.

    Going down the stairs to the ground floor, she opened the door to her mother's study. She remembered she had stashed the cardboard boxes Thomas had brought after she had decided to move to Oregon with him. As strange as it was, she had never been able to throw them away. She paused for a moment, memories of him coming back to the front of her mind; the day he died was still the worst day of her life, but since she had found out that Brigitte had killed him, she found some kind of appeasement and happy memories were supplanting sad ones.

    Finally locating them in a corner, she brought one back with her upstairs. She quickly transferred the contents of the other two boxes to the larger one. She wasn't sure what prompted her to add some clothes and a couple of other things inside before she closed it but she trusted her instinct. She wrote an address on it, the one place she was sure it wouldn't be found, nor opened as she added a little sign in one corner. Actually sending it to the recipient would have to wait until the morning, but at least, when she went back to bed, the voices stopped nagging her. She had done what they wanted her to do.

    She couldn't find sleep right away, though. Her mind couldn't shut down, wondering why it became too dangerous to keep these things in her house, now. There had to be a reason, and whatever this reason was, she was sure she wouldn't like it.

    The truth was, even though she had never admitted, not even to herself, she wasn't feeling safe since she came back from Carthis. The dynamics had changed, and Mr Parker's death wasn't the only reason why. Raines and Lyle had never trusted her, and they never hid it. She knew that if they had the opportunity, they would get rid of her. Only one little mistake on her part, and she would end up dead in the Centre's morgue.

    And they was no doubt they would see the contents of the boxes as a mistake. The voices, by telling her to hide everything, were trying to keep her safe; she was sure of that now. She realised that she might have to make a decision, sooner than she had expected.

    Even though Jarod wasn't one to sleep much, the perspective of finally finding a lead in the case made him wake up even earlier than usual. He took the time to check the search he had started the night before, but without a name or a place to start with, he was left to go through the articles one by one, in the hope that there was a photo on which he could identify Julia. After having copied everything onto a USB flash drive, he left for the Sheriff's Office.

    He was the first one to arrive, but Peter arrived soon after with coffee. He handed a cup to Jarod, before opening the doors. Jarod immediately went to the desk he was assigned and turned on his computer. While he waited, Jarod informed Peter of the thought he had the night before and of the search he had run on his own time.

"Let's split it between the two of us. We'll go through them faster this way."

    Jarod nodded in agreement, and handed the USB flash drive to Peter. When the deputy saw the number of articles the search had found, he whistled in surprise; he certainly hadn't expected this, and the Pretender wondered for a second if he regretted offering his help. But Peter said nothing and handed him back the USB flash drive.

    They started working in silence, slowly going through each article and checking the photos some contained against Julia's. By the time Brody arrived, they had gone through a quarter of the files between the two of them, and nothing matched for the moment.

"Sorry for arriving only now, but I stopped by the coroner's office to get Julia's prints," he explained, showing them the card. "Let's scan it and see if we can get some answers."

    Trusting the Sheriff with this search, Jarod resumed his work on the articles. The one he was currently reading had probably nothing to do with Julia, but it reminded him of one of his SIM. And the more he read, the more he was sure that he had run a SIM along the same lines. He had run it a few years before he escaped. From what he had known at the time, they had needed him to make sure a lab would be well protected; from what he was reading now, it had been used to infiltrate this lab and steal the research, with a scientist being killed as collateral damage.

    He wanted to call his old mentor; he wanted to cry his rage at being responsible for yet another death. But as quickly as anger rose up in him, it faded away. He didn't have time for any of that now, and a phone call wouldn't change anything. What was done was done. Once the Schaeffer's case was closed, he would make sure that the people who infiltrated the lab and killed this scientist were behind bars. And if they weren't, he would find the necessary evidence to put them away. But for now, he needed to bring answers to a little girl.

"I got it," Brody said, and Jarod and Peter went to join him at his desk. "Looks like Julia had a criminal record. Her real name was Anna Carver and she was from Chicago. There are a bunch of arrests for some minor thefts, but nothing of importance. Wait, there is warrant for her: she was involved in an armed bank robbery."

    To say that none of them had been expecting this would be an understatement. Ever since Jarod had found that she had been living under a false identity, they had thought that she had been in hiding. And they hadn't been wrong; she was just hiding from the authorities instead of a bad guy. She hadn't been witness to a crime; she had committed one along with two accomplices. Julia Schaeffer, previously known as Anna Carver, had been a fugitive.

"How could we have not known this?" Brody asked out loud.

"You never had to take her prints, otherwise you probably would have found out earlier," Jarod said, trying to reassure him. "She never did anything that could have led you to suspect anything."

"He's right, John. We couldn't have done anything different."

"I guess," Brody had to admit. "Now, we just need to find more about this bank robbery."

"I think that I stumbled upon an article about it," Peter said, going back to his desk and looking for it on his computer. "Here it is. They were three and managed to escape with half a million dollars, but the other two got arrested a couple of hours later when they wanted to pawn the jewels they stole from the employees and the clients. Julia, Anna," he corrected himself, "got away and the money was never found."

"What do we know about her two accomplices?" Jarod asked.

"Let's see," Peter said, entering their names on the database. "There were two of them, Paul McCauley and Frank Rivers; from what I'm reading here, this isn't the first bank robbery they did, but it was only the second time the three of them worked together. McCauley and Anna Carver were romantically involved from what I'm reading here. I guess they met Rivers and decided to work with him."

"How many years did they get?" Brody asked wanting to cut to the chase.

"Paul McCauley was sentenced to ten years of prison while Frank Rivers died in prison a month after he was arrested, killed by a fellow prisoner during a fight. Paul McCauley was paroled for being an 'exemplary prisoner' and released two weeks ago. Oh, and it gets better and better, his parole officer has no idea where he is, he missed his last appointment and he is nowhere to be found in Chicago."

"It looks like we have a winner," Brody said.

    Jarod nodded absent-mindedly; he was deep in thought. Now that he had this new information, he was almost certain he knew what happened. It was time to share it with Brody and Peter.

"If it is indeed Paul McCauley who entered the Schaeffer's house and killed them, I can think of only one thing he could look for: the money. If it had never been found, I guess that McCauley and Rivers left it with Anna when they went to pawn the jewels."

"And she took it with her when she ran away," Brody finished for him.

"That's what I'm thinking."

"Yes, but, even though they never had any money problem, Julia and Don weren't rich," Peter countered.

"It would have been too risky to use this money" Brody replied. "She had no way of knowing if this money was marked, and she couldn't justify having this much cash. She has just probably hidden it somewhere."

"In the house?"

"I don't think so," Jarod answered Peter's question. "If it was in the house, Don or even Lucy could have stumbled upon it. And McCauley would have found it too."

"What makes you think he didn't?"

"My instincts," Jarod replied simply. "But the only way to confirm it would be to find where McCauley is."

"Do you think he is still around?" Brody asked.

"Yes. And in spite of the murders, or maybe because of them, seeing as he has nothing to lose, I think he will stick around until he has found the money. This is important to him. This is about settling the score." Jarod paused, thinking about what he had just said. "I wonder... Peter, can you tell me how the cops located McCauley and Rivers?"

"Anonymous tip," he replied, after a few clicks on the computer. "Someone called to tell where the bank robbers could be found if they wanted to make an arrest."

"I see. If only the three of them knew where McCauley and Rivers would be at this moment, I wonder who called the police and left this anonymous tip."

    It wasn't exactly a question though, and Brody and Peter immediately understood. But the young deputy was the first to talk.

"Well, the answer is easy: it was Anna Carver. Wasn't it?" he asked, when he saw the sceptical looks the other two men were giving him.

"Like you said, it would be easy to think it was her," Brody said. "But why would she have done it?"

"Maybe she wanted to keep the money all to herself; it wouldn't be the first time. Or maybe something happened with the other two and she just wanted out."

    Peter's explanations were all right, but to Jarod they didn't sound right. She definitely got away with the money in the end, but if it was what she wanted from the beginning, she would have found a way to use it. Instead, she had kept it hidden all this time. Brody could be right in saying that it would have been risky to use it, but something didn't fit.

"Peter, can you find me anything there is on Frank Rivers?"

"I'm on it."

"You think Rivers might have been the one to call the police, too?"

"Yeah, but I can't figure out what he got out of it. Certainly not a reduced prison sentence, as they both got ten years. But what then?"

"Uh, I think we have a problem. I tried to access Rivers' record and got this," Peter said, pointing at the screen where they could see 'restricted access' in bright red letters.

"Do you think you can access it with your FBI credentials? Jarod?" Brody prompted when he didn't reply right away.

"Yes, I might if my level of clearance is high enough," he lied, knowing full well that to have access to this file, he would have to hack into the database. "Is there anything else beside this? What about his social security number?" he asked, following the thought he had.

"Let's see... It doesn't exist!" he exclaimed when his search came back empty.

"What does it mean?" Brody asked, turning towards Jarod.

"You said that he was killed in prison a month after he was arrested, before the trial even started, right?" When Peter nodded, he continued. "Can you find me his death certificate?"

"Easy," Peter replied, as he typed on his keyboard. "There isn't one," he continued, without real surprise in his voice. "But you already knew that, didn't you?"

    It was a statement more than a question, and Jarod didn't say anything. He hadn't been surprised by what Peter hadn't found, because that was what he had been expecting. Ever since he understood that Anna Carver hadn't been the one to tip the police about McCauley and Rivers' whereabouts, his mind had been focused on the latter.

"I'll have to check later, but unless I'm mistaken, I wouldn't be surprised if Rivers turns out to be a cop."


To be continued...