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Lyle parked the black sedan in front of the house that he had reached after following Jarod’s directions – the pretender had contacted him a few hours before to list his conditions. Lyle wasn’t one to quietly follow someone else’s orders, let alone orders coming from Jarod or his sister. But actually, this wasn’t something that happened to him everyday.

Driving for hours, making sure that he wasn't followed by the Centre... And especially with his sound asleep nephew comfortably nestled in a child seat that Lyle had bought the night before.

Of course, he had something of his sister, too. Her eyes. And probably that was the main reason he was so cute.

For being a two years old child, the boy was more intelligent than the average. When he’d seen Lyle entering the room, he had pointed his little index finger at him exclaiming, “Uncle!”

Lyle wasn’t sure if that depended on the fact the boy had inherited his twin sister’s inner sense, but it had certainly felt weird. Like the boy already knew him.

A few seconds later he felt the barrel of a gun touching his back.

Lyle grinned as he powerless watched Jarod appearing at his side to open the car door and retrieve his son. The pretender smiled as he held the boy in his arms, trying to avoid to wake him up. In the meantime, Miss Parker searched Lyle for hidden weapons, without finding any.

“Almost”, Miss Parker answered, stepping aside to let Lyle see her, “I need one last thing.”

Lyle started to sweat. Every wasted second was dangerous. If anyone had followed him, he would soon be a dead man.

“What would it be?”

Both Jarod and Lyle gazed at Parker, then they scowled at each other.

“I have no idea where he…”

Jarod held his son more tightly, willing to avoid all the shouting to wake him. He looked down at the boy, noticing a silver bracelet pending from the child’s wrist. It caught the pretender’s attention because it had a long metallic bend with an ornament at both sides: Two tiny upright-eights representing his favorite symbol, infinity. Intrigued by the weird coincidence, Jarod turned the bracelet to get a better look at it.

In the meantime, Major Charles was safely hiding behind the bushes like a pro-sniper, with a rifle in his hands aiming directly at Lyle’s head. Margaret was looking at the scene right next to him, rubbing her hands in nervousness.

“Come on, Jarod... You have the boy, what are you waiting for?” the Major murmured more to himself than to his son, who couldn’t obviously hear him.

Lyle was practically panting in fear, “Sis, if I knew, I’d tell you. Only thing I’ve heard was that Raines wants to use the body to test Ethan’s blood, he wants to find out if his DNA can be duplicated.”

“That filthy son of a bitch... betraying what thirty years ago he was so willing to create!”

Miss Parker turned around, “What’s going on?”

Parker stared at him in astonishment, “Sydney bought that bracelet himself, Jarod, it was a gift for the baby.”

“What?”

Parker’s head moved slowly at Lyle’s direction. She glared at him in hatred.

Jarod was in hysterics, “Lyle, you’re disgusting.”

Jarod looked at Parker. Her expression made him realize that she was thinking what he was thinking. Incredibly, Lyle was telling the truth.

Jarod shook his head in response, “I don’t know. Are you sure you weren’t followed?” he asked Lyle. The man shrugged, a questioning look appearing on his face.

 

As soon as he heard the sound, the Major exclaimed, “Oh no...”

“What’s going on?” Margaret asked her husband.

The Major stood up, willing to approach Jarod, but a glare of his son made him change his mind.

“I won’t leave without Jarod! I lost him three times already, I won’t lose him again!”

When another black sedan with a Centre numberplate stopped right next to Lyle’s one, Jarod started to panic, but Miss Parker was much more resolute. She stared at Lyle and whisper so that only her brother could hear her, “I want my answer, Lyle. If you want to save your sorry ass, I want your word that you will help me to get Ethan’s corpse.”

Car doors opened all around them as four sweepers and Mr. Raines got out of the vehicle. Parker noticed the smirk on her father’s face: She’d never seen him so satisfied before.

“You’ve been following me?” Lyle asked him. He looked disappointed, almost offended.

Lyle grimaced, glaring at Raines. Jarod felt the soft bundle in his arms starting to move so he looked down to see the child opening his eyes. The baby yawned, looking carefully at the man above him, smiling as he saw his father for the very first time. Jarod managed to smile in answer. “Hello, Little Monkey”, he murmured to his child.

Parker didn’t want Raines to see her cry, but she couldn’t help it. That was the first time their son was with both of them, and they were about to lose him again. The Centre had found them, there was nothing else they could do. Jarod lifted the baby so that the boy could watch around him; his eyes immediately fell on Mr. Raines.

As two sweepers moved past the bald man, Miss Parker put herself in the middle and aimed her gun against them, “On my dead body.”

 

A million thoughts crossed Lyle’s mind in the next thirty seconds.

He thought about Jarod’s youth, growing up as a prisoner, caged at the Centre.

He pondered the results of Raines’ experiments that had caused Angelo’s actual state of empathy but also the traumatic loss of his mind.

For the first time in his life, Lyle felt that, no, it wasn’t fair.

The kid turned his head to look at him, with a worried expression on his face.

If it was for the word pronounced by the boy or for the look of terror in his sister’s eyes, Lyle would never know.

Parker looked back at Lyle in disbelief, opening her mouth as Lyle nodded in silent agreement.

“You know what, Raines? I have no intention to let you put your filthy hands on my baby anymore.” Jarod said. Then he waited a couple of seconds and raised his voice, “A father has to protect his son, for better or for worse.”

Still hidden behind the bush, Major Charles heard Jarod’s last statement and held the rifle even more firmly in his arms.

“Stay back, Maggie. I don’t think you’re going to like this...” he warned his wife.

“Sorry, daddy. I guess bloodlines ain’t as strong as they used to be.”

Raines' smirk changed into a grimace of surprise and incomprehension as Jarod raised his right arm to give the signal his father was waiting for.

The Major started to shoot at the Centre sweepers, trying to aim at their arms and legs. He didn’t want to kill, but he was ready to do it, should it become necessary.

Raines didn’t move and took out his own gun, willing to shoot at Jarod to stop his escape at any rate. Lyle noticed his movement and anticipated Raines, stealing the gun from his hand and pointing it at Miss Parker’s nape. He dragged his sister against his chest and shouted, “No way to go, Jarod. Not if you want her to live another day!”

Major Charles kept shooting against the sweepers, preventing the enemies to come closer to the group beside the cars. He was doing what Jarod had ordered him to a few hours ago. He had to keep the sweepers far from the baby, no matter what happened to him or Miss Parker.

 

Parker clenched her teeth and cursed herself for even thinking of trusting Lyle. But her brother’s intention wasn’t to kill her. She felt his mouth next to her hear whispering, “You have to hit me, now. Take the gun and shoot me, it’s your way out.”

“Why should I trust you?” she hissed back at him.

“You have no other choice, Sis.”

Parker squeezed her eyes.

“Sorry, genius, but your little honeymoon is over. Maybe you can have adjoining cells at the Centre!”

The pretender sighed in relief and moved fast to put his son in the child seat in Lyle’s car.

At these words, Miss Parker was brought back to another place and time.

“Who was that, uh, playwright with the white beard? Your mother used to read him all the time-with all that punctuation...”

“Yeah, well, whatever. Listen, there’s a quote I want you to remember. ‘A family is a tyranny ruled over by its weakest member’. Its weakest member. Don’t forget that.”

“‘Baby Parker’. Wh-What was that?” she’d asked him.

“It looked like a medical record.”

“It is mine, or Lyle’s?”

But he never had. He’d died after jumping from that plane, taking with him all the secrets Catherine kept talking about during her visions.

“I do know...this...is the only thing that really matters. It’s the future of our family. It’s the heir to the Parker name, and it’s growing inside Brigitte. The baby’ll be here soon.”

“Well, the key is still Jarod. Bring him back, and it’ll be just like it was.”

Parker swallowed hard, trying to forget that she’d been following her father’s rules for too long. But that *was* ancient history.

So she made a step towards Raines.

Lyle was recovering but didn’t move from his laying position. He needed to corroborate appearances and make Raines believe that he was too hurt to move.

Jarod moved closer to Parker, panting and willing to run away ASAP.

Jarod grinned in satisfaction.

Raines’ look of terror was the last expression they saw on the old man’s face. Parker hit him with the gun and knocked him out. Then she grinned, too, “Consider this my letter of resignation.”

 

The Major looked at his son and future daughter-in-law standing together in front of Mr. Raines. He smiled when he saw Miss Parker hit him, then looked back at Margaret, “Our job here is over. Let’s go to the rendezvous point.”

Margaret chuckled in relief and took her husband’s hand in hers. They still had a long journey in front of them, but they were finally facing it together. And she was looking forward to meet her daughter Emily and Jeremy.

“Parker!” Lyle called his sister, finally standing up. The last survived sweeper was running towards them now that the gun fire had stopped.

“We have to go, Parker, please!” Jarod admonished her. She nodded at him, walking backwards, still looking at her brother.

Lyle stared at the car as it disappeared from view.

 

The last sweeper reached him, screaming in exasperation. He couldn’t believe the pretender had run away, again.

Lyle smirked, “Call the cleaners, we have a lot to do.”

“What about the others?” he asked his boss.

“Yes, sir.” The man replied, suddenly happy that he wasn’t wounded as his colleagues.

His life wouldn’t be easy without Jarod a the Centre, and he surely needed to find a damned good explanation for his weird behavior. But if he played it well, Raines would appear as the real failure in a perfect plan. Yes, he would explain the Triumvirate that he’d pretended to make a deal with his sister only to find her and bring her back to the Centre with Jarod. Then Raines had decided to show up to ruin what he’d so carefully planned.

And without Miss Parker to spoil the party, everything would be just great.

And he knew exactly where to find it. As soon as Raines came to his senses, of course.