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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Truth and Consequences - by MMB
Chapter 13: A Hint of Dawn
"Are you going to want me to come into the Centre with you today, Miss Parker?" Kevin asked quietly, mindful that Sydney had yet to awaken from his deep slumber.
"No." She sipped at her coffee half-heartedly after popping the rest of her toast into her mouth. "I've sent the same information I sent to Jarod yesterday to your email address as well. Since you're pretty well needed here with Sydney, I want you to use any free time you get and study the information and run the SIM you were starting to prep yesterday. Let's see if you can come up with any new ideas as to where Davy and Deb could have been taken. I've got Jarod doing the same thing in California, for what it's worth." She reached out a hand and patted Kevin's forearm. "But most importantly, you need to be here, keeping an eye on Calamity Clyde in there."
"Who?!" Kevin blinked in complete confusion.
She shook her head, having forgotten that Kevin had no idea of how to handle either her sense of humor or her many epithets. "Just keep Sydney from going crazy with nothing but watching his leg go up and down all day," she told him by way of explanation, then looked over at Ikeda. "As soon as the relief sweeper team gets here, you take off and get a good rest. Be back here at seven this evening - but if you want, stop by the Centre earlier and I'll get you properly put on the payroll."
"Hai, Parker-sama," the ninja bowed.
Miss Parker glanced yet again in the direction of the den, but didn't move toward it at all. "Tell Sydney I'll call him later, OK?" she told the young Pretender as she rose from the kitchen table. "With Sam gone, I'm going to have to go in early and probably work late tonight as well, so don't wait supper for me. Order in - and I'll munch on what's left when I get here."
"Yes, ma'am." Kevin nodded at her. "Have a..." He paused, as if realizing that such a leave-taking cliché was inappropriate under the circumstances. "I'll see you when you get back."
"And CALL if you have any inspiration, understand?" She was gathering purse and keys.
"Yes, ma'am."
With that, Miss Parker sighed and headed for the door and another day trying to pull the Centre onto its new path.
Kevin turned and eyed with unapologetic curiosity the Japanese who stood deceptively calmly at the doorway into the den. "Sydney said that you could make even Sam look like an amateur," the young Pretender stated carefully. "Is this true?"
Ikeda turned the majority of his attention to this young man who moved and spoke with the air of a sheltered and naïve innocent. "My training in the martial arts is highly specialized, Green-san," he hedged, not entirely sure how much Miss Parker wanted his actual background known. "Atlee-san is probably very skilled in the areas he has studied, but my training required I master many more topics of study. It is a rigorous program - not many finish."
"But you did?" The blue eyes were direct and without any guile.
"I did." Ikeda made the statement without either pride or flinch. It was nothing more or less than the truth. "And for a time, I was a teacher."
"In Japan?"
Ikeda smiled inwardly, remembering the isolated setting and traditional architecture of his teacher's dojo. [training center] "Hai. The particular kind of martial arts I trained in is taught nowhere else."
Blue eyes blinked. "Never?"
Ebony eyes gazed calmly and steadily. "There is more to the training than just learning the moves and use of the weapons, Green-san. There is an entire mental discipline and practice that is involved. The setting in which the teaching takes place becomes very important to the success of the student."
"So if I asked you to teach me, you couldn't?" Kevin tipped his head to the side, but his expression was very serious, very deliberate. "Because this isn't Japan?"
Ikeda could see that this young man was not just asking a question to kill time. There was a genuine interest behind the request. "That would depend on your motives for asking for teaching," he replied carefully, "and ultimately whether such a thing would meet with Parker-sama's approval. I am her servant in all things - if you wish me to represent your desire faithfully, you will need to convince me that the time will be well-spent."
"I want to be able to protect my family," the young man announced firmly, with conviction. "I don't ever want to be in a position of NOT being able to do that properly ever again."
"Gomen nasai, Green-san," Ikeda shook his head slowly, "but from the description of the fight that you put up a night ago, it seems you were quite effective at protecting your uncle. He was one of the kidnap targets, neh?"
"Yeah, but..." Kevin grimaced in frustrated complaint. "Deb still was taken."
"Ah. Let that be lesson number one then," the Japanese stated firmly and quietly. "This lesson in mental discipline I can give you anytime. And that is: be as prepared as possible, but be aware that the unexpected will happen anyway. A ninja is trained to let Karma be Karma..."
"Say what?" The Pretender frowned. "I don't get it."
Ikeda sighed. "The circumstances and situations in the world around us do not always progress in an obviously logical manner. We do not understand all the elements involved that will influence a situation from a distance in either time or space or relationship. One can only do one's best, but within that that framework, still be flexible to handle what seems to come from a tangent."
Kevin nodded. "That doesn't sound too hard..."
The ninja laughed out loud, and found the release actually refreshing. "No, it doesn't, young Green-san. But it is exquisitely difficult to put into practice with any kind of regularity. Even the best of us will practice our whole lives and never have that one simple lesson completely mastered."
A grunt from the den signaled that Sydney had awakened at last, and Kevin walked past the Japanese bodyguard with a very thoughtful look on his face to help his mentor rise and then hop slowly toward the bathroom. Good, Ikeda thought to himself. The mental lesson will give the boy plenty to work on until Parker-sama had rendered her decision as to whether he was to be trained and in what discipline.
Certainly the last thing he had expected to be asked was to begin teaching ninjitsu again. But then, as he had just told Green-san, he too needed to let Karma be Karma. This was a new life for him - and some of the old rules of the dojo may not matter anymore.
~~~~~~~~
One of the benefits of driving to the Centre every morning was that the drive was made at that hour on a relatively empty road that allowed the driver plenty of time to think. Miss Parker had driven this road thousands of times and knew every twist and turn, every break in the pavement. This morning she found herself thinking through the tentative schedule for the day as she slowly donned her Lyle façade. Too much was happening that depended on her remaining strong. She had meetings with department heads who had yet to have space in which to work until access to the sublevels was returned, to be followed by meetings with construction foremen to get an update on just exactly WHEN access to those sublevels could be expected. And somewhere in her day after that, she had three more personal interviews with satellite supervisors who still retained their positions.
If, in the midst of all that, the call came in that she was dreading, she would need the façade to fall back on - to get her through the day and out of there before she fell apart again. Frankly, she expected a call from Sam around mid-morning to bring her up to speed on what efforts were being made on the other side of the country - hopefully that call wouldn't be too upsetting. She made the ninety-degree turn into the gate of the Centre and waited for the guard there to give her access to the grounds. During those few short moments, she allowed herself one quick, fervent and frantic moment of wishful thinking that she would receive a call telling her that Davy and Deb had been found safe and sound sometime during the day. The moment passed, and she pasted the Lyle mask firmly onto her psyche and drove forward past the rapidly diminishing pile of wreckage that used to be the Tower to the parking area and her new designated spot.
"Miss Parker! Miss Parker!" The voice calling out to her was excited in a most satisfied manner. She turned from fetching her briefcase from the back seat to find herself face to face with a construction foreman.
"Yes?" she asked coolly. "Something that just can't wait until our meeting?"
"We all know how much you wanted access to the sublevels back," the man fairly danced in front of her in glee. "Well, access is restored. The elevator installers just informed me that they have repaired the damaged braking rail, removed the demolished elevator car and installed a construction elevator to handle all traffic. SL-1 is stabilized, and the structural engineers have ruled that the underground complex is ready for regular access on those days when the heavy equipment topside isn't rolling around too much." The worker's face beneath his hard hat beamed with accomplishment. "Harry saw you driving in and thought you'd rather have the news now than wait until this afternoon..."
The mask slipped. These people had worked twenty-four hours a day and double shifts to accomplish this much this quickly - quite a bit ahead of schedule actually - all because of the good will she'd built up in bringing her people out of the ground safely. Like Broots the day before, they didn't deserve the cold response of a monster.
"You're right," she beamed back, "I would rather know now. Limited or full occupation?"
"Limited for now on the upper levels - we still have the big truck moving heavy debris - but the lower levels can be used now."
"How about electricity? Is power fully restored?"
The man nodded. "Yup. As of two days ago." He beamed at her again. "Good news, huh?"
She shook her head in amazement. "You're right, that IS good news - something I haven't had a whole lot of lately..."
The worker immediately sobered. "Yeah. We all heard about that... we're all real sorry for your troubles, Miss Parker..."
"I appreciate that," she told him sincerely, wiping at the bottom of her nose to prevent any undue emotional outburst while she struggled to at least slip some of the mask's strength back into place without seeming too schizophrenic. "Look, everyone who's been working on restoring underground access gets a paid day off - with a healthy bonus on the next check - but I want everyone to be back to work bright and early the next day so we can get the rest of this mess cleaned up. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am!" The worker beamed, as much from knowing that the news had lightened his boss' day slightly as from knowing the substantial benefits of pleasing that boss like that. "And thank you, Miss Parker! I'm sure I speak for all the guys when I tell you that if you ever need us..."
"I'll call you, don't you worry," she smiled at the man. "Go on now, go give your crews the good news and let me get back to work here." The foreman saluted her casually and began walking away. "And thanks again!" she called after him, to have him wave at her again and continue on his way back to the site.
She sighed, this time with a feeling of accomplishment. Lower sublevels ready for occupation meant that a number of those department heads whose projects were just going to be postponed again that morning would now be told they could actually come back to work again, increasing the cash flow once more as goals could be met and progress made.
It also meant that the archives could finally begin to be excavated. THAT could be an interim task assigned to the many workers from the top few sublevels that would have to wait a while before being able to fully resume their duties. And Mr. Raines' former residence outside of town would make for an ideal temporary storage facility until the massive collection had been carefully gone through by someone trustworthy. Not all of that paperwork was needed any longer after all.
PLEASE let this be a hint of what the rest of the day will be like, she thought to herself as she squared her shoulders and turned from the clean-up site back toward the annexes that were now the operational hub of the Centre.
~~~~~~~~
"Gentlemen, I have good news for you - some of you will be able to go back to your laboratories starting tomorrow."
Miss Parker's announcement at the very beginning of the department heads meeting astounded everyone there. It took her a while and finally a two-fingered whistle from Tyler to get their attention again. "And for your information, gentlemen, your tours underground will be ending as soon as we can get new labs built for you. The Centre is coming up into the daylight, and we're bringing you all with it."
"Which of us can call our people in to work tomorrow?" The question that made the rest turn to her for her answer was made anonymously.
"You all can." She looked down at her notes, taken as she and Tyler had quickly reviewed the department assignments for the sublevels. "Bio-technology, Software R&D, Chemistry, Psychogenics, Renewal - which is going to be called Medical from now on, by the way - you all have finished prioritizing and purging your project files of the kind of work that the Centre will no longer be doing. What's more, you've all reviewed your conclusions with my assistant and received your go-aheads. As the departments most ready to move forward, you can all resume your duties in your established facilities. Physics, Pharmacology, we're still waiting for your prioritized lists."
"Our project load in Pharmacology was huge," Dr. Barnett complained bitterly, "and so much of it was need to know or classified at a higher level than I was granted as department head. I may have held the position on paper, Miss Parker, but most of the projects in my department were under the direct supervision of Mr. Raines himself. I'm having to read completely through the mountain of material you gave me - AND I'll need to visit our labs to gather up some of the hard-copy data that never made it into the computers before I can give you that list."
"I was only stating fact," Miss Parker assured the research pharmacologist, "not making a value judgement based on work finished or no. What I was meaning by mentioning this fact was that while you and Dr. Scheidler finish your analysis and prioritization, I have another task that can be assigned to your personnel to give them something to do besides sit at home now."
"What's that?" Scheidler, a short and squat little man with a tuft of white hair on his chin and no other hair to speak of, asked in a heavy German accent.
"We will be removing the hard-copy archives from SL-26 and transporting them to a new location for sorting. After all these years, you all can well imagine the amount of dead paper this place has amassed, so this is going to be no small task in itself. Be glad the elevator is working again - hauling all that junk up the stairs would be no fun." Miss Parker looked over at Tyler and winked, and the two of them shared a chuckle and a wince at the memory of climbing all the way to the bottom of the underground complex and then back up again.
"Where we gonna put all this paper?" Scheidler demanded to know.
"One of former Chairman Raines' houses will be turned into a processing center where initial sorting will take place. It isn't going to take rocket science to do this - anybody with a high school diploma and reading skills should be able to..."
"It's better than sitting around on our thumbs, Otto," Barnett shushed at his colleague. "And I don't know about you, but I'm starting to HATE soap operas..."
That brought a collective laugh to the room. "Very well," Miss Parker said to bring the meeting to a close. "If there are no other questions, I suggest that you all get on the phone to your respective people and have them make their car pool arrangements and be punching in bright and early in the morning. Any questions?" She waited. "That's it, gentlemen - thank you for coming. We'll meet again next week at this time."
"I got a question for you," Tyler said, leaning toward her as they collected their paperwork.
"What's that?"
"What are you going to do about the morgue - and the bodies that were still there when the bomb went off?"
Miss Parker blinked. "Bodies? Oh God..." Her mind suddenly brought back the image of Raines' sheet-covered body being rolled over next to a wall - the arm and hand partly dangling below the plastic sheeting - what was it, over two weeks ago?
"Yeah," he saw that she understood exactly what he was talking about. "It's GOTTA be a bit ripe down there, don't you think?"
"What other departments were situated on SL-8?" she demanded, swallowing hard against the idea of what it must be like down there at the moment and not exactly willing to ask any of her people to go back to work when...
"Mostly clerical, actually - data entry."
"Good - most of those folks are back at work up here in the annexes already." She thought for a moment. "I wonder if the gas is still on for the cremation furnace?"
Tyler looked at her steadily. "I'd think that if the concrete didn't buckle down there, most of those pipes should still be sound..."
"Something to run past the structural engineers at lunch," she pointed out and immediately noted the thought on her pad before tucking it away in her briefcase.
"As long as I'm not the one that has to go down there and take care of the mess," Tyler told her in no uncertain terms. "I like my top-side job."
"No more jockeying stiffs around for you, eh?" she asked, one eyebrow cocked jauntily.
"No, ma'am!"
"Well, we'll need to think of SOMEbody to take care of it for us - unless we intend to hand over THOSE bodies to the police as well..."
She could tell that thought wasn't at all acceptable Tyler either. "Give me an oxygen mask, then," Tyler sighed heavily - and one helluva good bath afterwards and the rest of the day off to get the stench out of my lungs - and I'll do the honors of vaporizing those poor bastards. We don't need any more law enforcement entanglements..."
She agreed. "How many were down there?"
"Three - including the friend you came down to visit," he answered with a sideways glance.
"That was no friend of mine," she informed him stiffly. "That was one of the biggest monsters the Centre ever knew. Ikeda did the world a favor when he put a bullet in that man's head." She looked over at her assistant. "And I'll be even happier when that man's stinking carcass is shoved into the fire. Good riddance to bad rubbish - at last."
"I'll take care of it..."
"No," she told him firmly. "You weren't the only morgue assistant back then. We'll get the report of the structural engineers, and then we'll get one of the others to take care of the mess. Remember, you're not a stiff-jockey anymore. Whoever does the job, gets a healthy bonus, so choose well - but that's not your job anymore. I need you HERE."
Tyler smiled up at his boss. "Yes, ma'am."
~~~~~~~~
Manuel Rodriguez yawned as he aimed the old pickup down the dirt road into the vast pastureland and then down a pair of barely-visible dirt tracks that led toward the windmill that was barely visible over the horizon. His once-a-week job for this day of the week was to make sure the watering troughs for the range cattle were full with fresh water. It usually took him the better part of the morning just to circumnavigate the ranch and check each of the four troughs and associated windmills. Provided he got started no later than an hour after sunrise, that was - and he'd long since learned to be attentive to that time frame. The old Ford had no air conditioning other than open windows and could become like an oven in mid-afternoon if he ran late.
He stuck his head out of the window and gazed up into the cloudless sky and nodded companionably at the slowly circling buzzards overhead. This day promised to be another scorcher, just like the day before and the day before that. The weather had been brutal lately - the wind, what there was of it, had been from the open desert. Still... Rodriguez sighed. That many buzzards circling already at that hour of the day meant something sizeable down - and from the looks of the circling, whatever was down was not far from the trough. It would be easy enough for him to check out, and hopefully not end up being bad news for el patrón. [the boss]
The old Ford bounced uncomfortably across the dry ground and Rodriguez reached for one of the wrapped breakfast burritos his Clarita had packed for him that morning. The spicy chorizo juices squirted into his mouth and brought a smile. She knew what he liked. He was just easing the truck over the top of the hill, burrito once again poised at his lips, when he saw it, or at least a glimpse of it.
Frowning, he put the burrito back down on the dashboard and twisted the steering wheel to bring the truck closer to the trough. This wasn't right. He'd been expecting to see a cow or a steer down, not... Was that PINK flowers?
He pulled the truck up short and climbed from behind the wheel, then limped over so that he could see behind the trough - and his mouth fell open. "¡Madre de Diós!" he gasped, barely able to believe his eyes.
~~~~~~~~
"Miss Parker?" Mei Chiang announced over the intercom, "Sam on two for you."
"Thanks." She closed the file folder on her desk and picked up the receiver after tipping her wrist and looking at her watch. "Sam. You're up awfully early..."
"Yeah, well I wanted to get an early start on things this morning." The ex-sweeper cast his eyes around the satellite office of the Centre that his key had unlocked only a little while before. "The FBI didn't leave us much to work with - the SAC here says he took it all."
"I'm not surprised. I'm sure Flores' files alone will have more than enough evidence to keep a dozen courtrooms busy for the better part of a year when all's said and done." She paused, not exactly knowing what to ask or how to ask it. "Any news?" she settled for finally.
"Crandall has APBs out on the kids and Duncan and Cordoba all over the place here - police, fire, hospitals - and Mayeda said he'd be getting his men right on it too." Sam had seen the sincerity of the man's expression. "And if the Yakuza catch them, they'll do the interrogation while I supervise - then turn what's left over to us to hand over to the law."
"I can live with that," Miss Parker commented coolly, leaning her chin into her palm and putting the face of her Security Chief in her mind as she spoke to him. "What about the FBI? Have they got anything tangible yet?"
"Crandall says there have been a number of reported sightings of Duncan and Cordoba, but nothing about the kids. AND there was a homicide last night that looks suspiciously like the work of our two winners." Sam hated reminding her of the nature of those two, but she needed to know...
"Damn!" The hand at her chin covered her eyes as if that would protect her from the vision of what might have happened to... NO!
"Anything from Jarod or Kevin yet?" Sam asked back. He knew that both Pretenders were going to be enlisted to SIM the situation from a number of perspectives, hopefully to come up with ideas that would occur to nobody else.
"Nothing yet. Jarod just got his information last night after I spoke to him - Kevin had his most of the day, but was involved with helping me get Syd home and taken care of."
"How IS Sydney?" Sam inquired carefully. "He gonna make it?"
She nodded. "It'll be a while before he'll be able to get around by himself, but he'll mend. And with Ikeda in the house last night..." She sighed.
"You keep Ikeda with you..." he began.
"The man has to sleep sometime, Sam," she countered. "I had Chet and Tad relieve him at nine this morning so he could go home and rest, so Kevin and Syd aren't without protection - and I'm HERE and surrounded by sweepers. And Tyler's not without skill."
Sam nodded. He'd made his way slowly through the various rooms of the suite and had finally found the office that had been Flores'. It was the most demolished of the lot. "Well, I'm in Flores' sanctum, and it looks like I'll have my hands full getting this place up and running properly again. I'd better let you go."
"Call," Miss Parker told him in no uncertain terms. "If you have news..."
"Trust me," he promised darkly, "You'll hear what I hear two seconds after I hear it."
"Thanks, Sam."
Sam closed the cell phone and put it back in his pocket and surveyed the mess that had been a supervisor's office. If Flores was anything, he was sneaky - and while the FBI had been thorough in their raid, they may not have taken the extent of that “sneaky” into full account.
He could hear the first of the office staff starting to trickle through the door and make exclamations at the disaster that overtaken their workplace. It would take an hour or two to get everyone organized into recovery mode - and then he would come back here and tear this office to pieces himself. There was something else here - he could smell it.
~~~~~~~~
Jarod yawned and made his way to the kitchen to turn on the coffeemaker for another day. Then he turned and stared out the kitchen window at the ocean beyond, his thoughts so scattered that it was easier to just turn them off for a moment and enjoy the peace of the morning for its own sake. So much had happened... For one thing, he had slept better that night than he had for a very long time - and he knew that the shift in his mother's attitude had played a major role in that.
During the seven years that they had had since he'd turned his back on the Centre and everyone involved in it, they had been close - closer than he'd ever dared dream. That closeness and the chance to capture that closeness for the entire clan had been the reasoning behind the purchase of the several homes on this narrow lane. After keeping them apart for all those years, Jarod had thought it only appropriate that Centre funds be used to give each of the clan families a place distinctly its own while still maintaining the ability for close ties of love and mutual dependence to thrive. Margaret had helped Jarod in the establishment of his psychiatric practice after graduation - and Jarod had cooked almost as many meals in his home for his parents as his mother had for her son in hers.
But in all those years, he had cautiously hidden his regrets at having to leave such a large part of his life behind utterly. The love and familial happiness that had surrounded the Russells had been very real - but in the privacy of his own mind, only Jarod had known how superficial that happiness had been in so many ways. When Charles had died, it had suddenly no longer been enough - but he hadn't prepared his mother for the depth of emotions that he still held for those on the East Coast. No wonder she'd snapped in a way.
Now, miraculously, Margaret had come to understand the importance of those ties to her son - finally seeing them as something other than simply remnants of a sick and twisted upbringing. How the change had come to pass was really unimportant as far as Jarod was concerned. The reality was that he had his mother back as a loving and supportive member of his family, equally concerned about the loss of his son. They had sat for hours the previous night, talking as they had used to, and at long last Jarod had cautiously brought forth the pictures he'd brought back from Delaware and handed them over to her.
The one Jarod had had framed and had kept safely hidden in his bedroom was the family portrait taken by Ben at the Inn during that quiet time of refuge before all Hell had broken loose. But the others safely stored in a photo album were very telling, and it was they that Margaret studied most closely: the candid shot of Jarod, Missy and Davy, one of Sydney and Kevin, and another of Sam, Broots and Debbie. Margaret's hand had lingered over the face of the grandson she barely knew, searching for and finding all the little facets that were Jarod in the boy's face and then, finally, all the facets that were Missy.
At long last she had looked into the face of the man who had raised her son - and done a damned fine job of it too, she'd finally admitted to Jarod - and in the family portrait seen the loving and protective way he'd held his arm around Davy. The pride that shone in his eyes knowing Jarod and Missy stood directly behind him, her hand resting comfortably on his shoulder, was one with which she was well acquainted. She and Charles had felt very much the same way when their family portrait had been taken, little Sammy on his grandfather's lap and their grown children arranged behind them, Jarod's hand on her shoulder.
The long talk between mother and son had healed many wounds, but left the Pretender too exhausted to return to his SIM, and so he'd simply stripped and fallen into bed and a deep and dreamless sleep. Now he faced the new day, one in which he had a few patients to see and a SIM to complete.
Jarod pulled a mug of coffee from the pot the moment there was enough dark liquid in it to pour off, and he carried the mug with him as he headed back toward the bathroom. It was after eight already - he needed to be at the office at nine. He showered quickly while his coffee cooled to where it could be gulped, and then shaved. He rushed back into the kitchen, rinsed the mug and left it in the sink and was just pulling the last package of Pop Tarts from the box when his phone rang.
"Yes?"
"Dr. Russell, this is Tony Rizzo from CPS. I'm sorry to disturb you this early in the morning..."
Jarod tore open the flimsy foil wrapper around his breakfast. "You caught me on my way out the door to work. What can I do for you?"
"Well," Rizzo seemed to be in a fairly good humor that morning, "you can tell me if you could come down to the courthouse at around... two this afternoon to sign some paperwork?"
"You mean..."
"Your status as emergency foster parent has been approved, and we're hoping you'd be willing to take custody of Ginger Simmons immediately following finishing the paperwork."
Jarod's face slowly broke into a smile. "I'll MAKE the time, Mr. Rizzo. Two o'clock?"
"We'll see you there then."
The Pretender stood with the handset in his hand, suddenly presented with the mental image of both children - Ginger and Davy - and the sickening feeling that he would have to choose between them. NO! Ginger was coming home today - and Davy would be found. They would all be family soon.
He bit into his Pop Tart and grabbed up his briefcase determinedly. He couldn't let himself believe otherwise. Otherwise was simply not acceptable.
~~~~~~~~
Clarita stared at her husband in consternation, and then looked back down at the bed of the pickup as if hardly believing the story that these two proved was true. How in the world did a boy and a woman, in torn and filthy bed clothes that had dark blotches that looked suspiciously like blood, end up unconscious at the side of a cattle trough out in the middle of a million square acres of infierno [Hell]? Were they even alive? She reached out a hand and touched the wrist of the boy and easily found a pulse. The woman's pulse wasn't so easily found, and Clarita moved her hand to the forehead and then flinched back from the heat.
"She has fever - and they both look like they're almost dead..."
"What are we going to do, Rita? Do you know how to help them?"
Clarita shook her head. "We don't know what's wrong with them, Manuel. They need a real doctor."
"We can't take them in," Manuel complained. "If anybody asks for our identification..."
"Ya sé," [I know] his wife answered, "but if we don't do something, they'll both die."
The two stared at each other for a long moment. "What about Father Luís in town. He won't turn us in, and maybe he'll know what to do," Clarita finally said.
"You call the padre, I'll drive them in," Manuel nodded, finding the idea the most logical and the one that kept their existence in the country a secret. El patrón wouldn't like having word of his using illegals for his ranch work spread - and that would mean the end of the money for la familia in Guanajuato.
"Que tengas cuidado, mi vida," [Be careful, my love] Clarita told him as she watched him pull the blue tarp over the motionless bodies and climb back into the old Ford. "¡Pobrecitos! [Poor little ones] Who did this to you?"
~~~~~~~~
"You're sure you know how to do this?" The young Pretender sounded unconvinced.
Sydney nodded his head at Kevin, sitting in the easy chair in front of his couch, trying to convey confidence. "Kevin, I did this for Jarod for more years than you've been alive, my boy - as a matter of fact, I'd imagine I pioneered many of the techniques that Vernon used with you later. I promise you I know how to do this."
"It's just..." Kevin blinked down the length of his body at his new mentor - a man whom he admired and trusted. "...I've never done this without feeling..."
"Used?" Sydney supplied the word easily. He remembered the night that he and Jarod had gone over much of this same ground, only on a much more personal basis. Getting reacquainted with his former protégé had not been a painless process for either of them. They had had to sort slowly and patiently through a tangled relationship nearly thirty years old, building new understandings in place of the dominance and authority that had been the basis of that relationship. Sydney had come away from those long evening talks with a more complete understanding of just how thoroughly he had been used to torture a young man - it was a lesson that had never left him, and could still give him nightmares.
"Yeah. It made me angry, deep down where I didn't dare show it, that Vernon would treat me like I were just a machine." Kevin shuddered at the thought. "I hated it. And now I need to do it to help Davy - and I don't know if I can anymore."
Sydney moved as best he could so that he was sitting up as straight as possible while strapped to a machine that slowly flexed his damaged leg. "Then we'll work to use your discomfort with the SIMming process as part of the process itself. You have a right and a reason for those feelings, Kevin - you can't just turn your back on them."
"How about if I Pretend to be Jarod, Pretending to be Duncan," Kevin suggested with a hopeful tone of voice.
"We'll try that if nothing else works," Sydney shook his head. "But frankly, I'd rather you learned to deal with the negativity you developed for your former mentor so that it doesn't remain an obstacle for your mind. Now close your eyes," he told the young man, his voice dropping into the hypnotic tone and rhythm he had habitually used with Jarod almost without thinking about it. "Take deep breaths. Feel the chair beneath your body, the air moving in and out of your lungs."
Kevin did as he was told, and for the first time in his life, felt himself move smoothly through the preliminary grounding and cleansing meditation that preceded a SIM without resentment or bitterness as the background emotional medium. With the corner of his mind that played the referee to a SIM - that part of his dominant personality that would watch over the internal proceedings to make sure nothing harmful happened - he wondered if the difference was the fact that it WAS Sydney running the SIM with him? Then again, perhaps it was because he was doing this of his own free will for a change - after all, Miss Parker HAD taken the time to ASK if he would be willing to do the SIM, not merely ordered him to do it. So many of the facets of the situation were different, not the least of which being the fact that by SIMming this man, he was hopefully helping find Deb before anything more terrible happened to her. SIMming was what he was best at - the only real talent he had to lend to this situation. He HAD to be able to do this!
Sydney continued the talk-down meditation, watching the responses and unconscious expressions that flitted across his new protégé's face with fascination. It had been years since he'd last led Jarod through a SIM - years since he'd actively participated in the stretching of a human mind into realms of intuition and reasoning that most never imagined existed - and only now did he realize just how much he'd missed it. That realization was followed almost immediately by a wave of revulsion and guilt. How could he possibly justify feeling sentimental about a process that had caused Jarod so much pain and suffering? How selfish was that?
He shook himself and focused his mind on the matter at hand. Kevin, while a talented Pretender in his own rights, had obviously not had from Vernon the deeper meditative training that he had given Jarod as the boy grew into a man. Neither did Kevin recognize many of the shortcuts and trigger words that he and Jarod had eventually worked out together over the years of collaboration. From the looks of the young man's face, his new Pretender was struggling hard to keep up with the instructions he was getting now. He couldn't afford the distraction of mental self-flagellation - not if he intended the SIM to be successful at all.
So Sydney slowed down the meditative process even further to allow himself time to take Kevin into the SIM in a more prepared state that would allow for less stressful extraction when the SIM was at an end. The confused and stressed expression on Kevin's face smoothed away.
~~~~~~~~
Cordoba hauled himself out of bed, squinting as the light of the morning sun already well above the horizon blinded him through the ripped drapes. He then shuffled out of the extra bedroom and into the bathroom scratching at his crotch and his dingy tee shirt absently. Once he'd taken care of business, he shuffled down the short hallway past the door to his sister and brother-in-law's bedroom and into the apartment's tiny living room. Duncan hadn't made it past the couch before passing out, and the man was still noisily sawing logs, legs and arms draped exactly where they had landed at two o'clock in the morning.
Sandra was the only member of Cordoba's family still speaking to him - the only person with which he still had a good enough relationship that she could be called upon in this way. Rick, her husband, had argued with her about letting the two drunken men in standing there in the front door, but he had finally relented. Had it been anybody but Rick, Cordoba would have killed the man right then and there - but Sandra was two weeks shy of having her first baby, and Cordoba was NOT about to sentence his niece or nephew to a life without a father. Even if the man was a stupid fry-cook at a fast food place.
"Oye," he bumped Duncan's outstretched leg deliberately with his bare foot. "Abre los ojos, cabrón." [Open your eye, asshole.] We can't stay here too long. Sandra wants us out before Rick goes to work, and I wan..."
"Fuck off," Duncan mumbled semi-coherently and turned his head away from his tormentor.
Cordoba sighed and bent over, keeping a hand on the back of the couch so his own dizziness wouldn't get the better of him, and placed his lips close to the sleeping man's ear. "ANDY!" he shouted and backed away quickly as Duncan came roaring up off the couch.
"Shit!! Jesus, man, you didn't have to do that," Duncan blinked bloodshot eyes and looked around dazedly while trying to keep his heart from busting a rib or two. Finally he looked up at his disheveled associate. "What the Hell you do that for - you ain't even dressed yourself."
"Look at the time, cabrón," Cordoba shoved his filthy arm under Duncan's nose, the digital watch's light depressed to make the numbers stand out more clearly. "Time to go get the money."
Duncan rolled over so that he could sit properly on the couch, his head down and leaning his elbows on his widespread knees. "I wanna try to reach Flores one more time..."
"Fuck Flores, man. You didn't say nuthin' about needing Flores' permission to pay me when you called me in," Cordoba hissed. "I done what you said - even when my guts said that you were being estúpido - and now I want my money. I got business that can't wait much more."
The Anglo raised angry blue eyes to his Hispanic cohort. "You ain't gonna get squat if you don't let me try Flores one more time, got that?" He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket for his cell phone and punched buttons. "Flores holds the key to the next part of this - and without it..."
"Don't you tell me you won't give me my money, man," Cordoba threatened the Anglo, not caring that he was standing with the cell phone to his ear.
"Damn!" Duncan closed the device with an angry snap. "STILL not answering." He turned bloodshot eyes on his associate. "Alright, alright," he threw up his hands in frustration. "Get me down to the Bank of America on Sepulveda near the airport, if you're so damned hot to get your dough. Whatcha got," he shot at the man with wicked leer, "a hot tamale on the side with the rent due?"
"Ain't none of your business, cabrón." Cordoba grabbed up his shirt from where he'd thrown it over the back of the couch and slid arms into the sleeves, then parked his behind on the arm of the couch while he inserted his filthy stockinged feet into his boots. "Just keepin' you honest, my man."
"What's the matter, don't you trust me?" Duncan asked as he slid the security chain aside and opened the apartment door.
"No more than you would me in my place," Cordoba made sure the doorknob was locked when he pulled it closed, then tossed his jacket over his shoulder confidently. This was a rough neighborhood, and he wasn't going to leave his sister open to some homeboy looking for a quick score with a burglary.
~~~~~~~~
"Again, Doctor Jarod?" Cindy asked her boss as he leaned over her shoulder and took a look at his appointment calendar for the afternoon. He'd done the same thing the morning before, and she knew what that had been about...
"Yup," he grinned at her. "CPS called me to come in and sign some paperwork - and then I get to take Ginger home with me."
"Can I say “way to go, doc,” now?" she grinned back at him.
"I think so," he nodded.
"Way to go, Doctor Jarod!" She raised her hand and gave him a high-five, which he returned enthusiastically. "That little girl gonna get better now fast, I bet."
"I hope so, Cindy," Jarod nodded, then reached for the stack of mail that had been delivered to the office just a little earlier to sort through it. "Ah-HAH!" he gave a triumphant crow as three of the envelopes were addressed in the way he'd specified prospective new partners for Ethan submit their applications and resumes. "I'll take these," he waved the envelopes at his receptionist and headed down the hall to his brother's office. Ethan's car had already been in its parking place when he'd gotten there.
"Either you got here REAL early, or you burned the midnight oil and never went home, little brother," Jarod commented slyly, tucking the envelopes away in his breast pocket until later as he watched his brother flinch in surprise at the interruption.
"Didn't want to go home until REAL late, and didn't want to stick around this morning at all," Ethan explained shortly - "Mom and I..."
"I heard," Jarod responded, flopping on the comfortable leather couch.
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Mom came by last night."
Ethan gave his brother a guilty grimace. "Sorry about that. I couldn't help it..."
"Nah," Jarod waved his hand. "Actually, I think your temper did some good finally - Mom came over to apologize."
"Say what?" Dark chocolate eyes, so much like those of his brother, were wide.
"Granted that it holds and wasn't just a momentary lapse, she's realized that Parker and Sydney are going to be important parts of my life from now on - AND she seems genuinely worried about Davy."
"Speaking of whom, anything new on that front?"
Jarod shook his head. "I was just getting ready to get into the meat of the SIM Missy wants me to do on that Duncan character when Mom got there. Barring any news as the day goes by, I'll try the SIM again tonight."
"Want some help?" Ethan offered.
"Couldn't hurt," Jarod replied with a nod. "Especially since I'll have someone else in the house with me after today. We'll have to wait until after supper and bedtime..."
"Jarod..." Ethan looked at his older brother in expectation.
"It's considered “Emergency Foster Care” for the moment," Jarod replied. "Got the call this morning to come in later to sign paperwork."
"Can't say I'm surprised," Ethan said, folding his arms over his chest and glaring at his brother, but he was actually more frustrated with himself than anybody else. "I suppose it was my verbal report that knocked things loose for you. I went into the shelter to see her last night after work - anything to keep from mixing it up with Mom again - Ginger's a mess, Jarod. Not quite catatonic, but definitely very shocky."
Jarod nodded. "That's kind of what I was expecting, after hearing what happened over at the Thatcher's. I'm hoping that figuring out that she's staying with me will help snap her out of it a bit."
"You're hoping for a lot," Ethan cautioned. "She may be too damaged now to..."
"No. Children are resilient, if given a reason to be." In his mind's eye, he was replaying the many ways in which Angelo had demonstrated that his reasoning powers hadn't been completely demolished by the horrendous procedures that Mr. - then Dr. - Raines had subjected him to. "She just needs to be in a completely safe and supportive environment on a continual basis."
"Your ten o'clock appointment is here, Doctor Ethan," Cindy poked her head inside the office, "and yours called to say that they'd be just a few minutes late, Doctor Jarod."
Jarod rose from the couch. "Look, I have some applications to go over with you when we have a free minute," he said, patting his shirt pocket with the envelopes in it. "Talk to you after a while."
"Catch you later," Ethan answered and then rose as Jarod opened the door for a little boy and his mother. "Hey there..."
~~~~~~~~
Father Luís Beltran was a short and almost painfully thin man who stood at the driveway of the Church of the Sacred Heart in Adelanto and watched the dusty brown Ford pickup lumber down the street. Manuel nosed the vehicle carefully over the sidewalk apron into the parking lot, whereupon Father Luís grabbed the passenger door handle and hopped up on the running board. "A la residencia," [To the residence] he directed, then hung on as the truck shuddered forward again across the smooth blacktop toward the low Spanish-style residence at the back of the property.
"Show me," he directed in terse Spanish after the truck had come to a complete halt. Manuel climbed from behind the wheel again and pulled the tarp back.
"¡Diós!" the priest whispered, appalled at the condition that both were in and the amount of blood that stained their clothing. "Help me get them inside," he ordered, pulling on the arms of the young woman and glancing up at the farm worker when he felt the fever through the thin fabric that was more than would be expected from the severity of sunburn she'd suffered. "She's burning with fever!"
"I know," Manuel replied, lifting the boy easily in his arms. "Clarita was afraid that if we didn't do something, or get them some help, they'd die."
"She's right," Father Luís replied, pulling the screen door open with a little difficulty and then letting them both into the cool interior of the residence. "Where in the world did you find them?"
"In the pastures, Father," Manuel responded, depositing the boy on an easy chair and pulling a footstool up to support his legs. "They were next to one of the cattle troughs."
"They were probably looking for water," Father Luís commented, carefully laying the young woman down on the couch and noting the parched and cracked lips that both were sporting. "Why didn't you just take them on in to the hospital?"
Manuel backed away from his finds, hat in hand and shaking his head. "I couldn't, Father. We... I mean I... don't have... If anybody asked..."
The priest had ignored the man's distress in favor of heading to the bathroom for a damp towel and a glass of water. "Did you at least try to give them some water?"
"No, Father. All I wanted to do was get them into town where they could get help." He twisted his hat in his hands. "Now, if you don't need me anymore, el patrón will be very angry with me if I don't check the other pastures..."
Father Luís simply nodded. "Diós te benediga," [God bless you] he pronounced almost absently while he lifted the young woman's head and tipped a tiny bit of water into her mouth. He didn't even turn to look when the farm worker cautiously took his leave, and only vaguely noted the sound of the door closing gently. "Come on, preciosa, drink..." His heart started beating again when the throat finally worked to take the water, and he quickly wetted the towel and placed it on her forehead and hurried to the boy. "You too, chico," he urged quietly, tipping another small amount of water into the second set of cracked and blistered lips and feeling relief when the second throat worked at taking in the life-giving liquid.
Straightening, he moved quickly to his desk and picked up the telephone and dialed 911. This was more than he was prepared to handle. He gave his address, explained his emergency and then hung up and went back to alternating between the two invalids, giving each another tiny sip of water and finding their efforts to swallow a continual relief. As he worked, he prayed for the lives of these two desperately lost souls that had somehow found their way to his doorstep.
~~~~~~~~
Cordoba watched with narrowed eyes as Duncan came out of the glass doors of the bank and waited until the traffic had cleared on the wide boulevard enough that he could sprint his way back to the aging Cadillac. "Here," he barked in a sour tone, handing over a thick envelope. "Be sure to count it - I don't want you to come back at me later telling me you got shorted some C-notes."
The Hispanic opened the envelope and lifted one end of the green bundle so that he could lick his fingers and flip through them quickly. It was all there - all twenty thousand dollars that he'd been promised. "I knew you were good for it, man," he complained, sliding the thick envelope into an inside pocket of his jacket, which had remained across his lap the entire trip from East LA to the airport district. "I just didn't figure Flores as that important to the payday."
"Yeah, well, my payday doesn't come at the same time or from the same place that yours does," Duncan informed his cohort tightly. He turned on the ignition and put the car in gear. "Where you want me to drop you off?"
"Back at Sandra's - some of the business I got, I got with them."
"Listen," Duncan warned as he eased the Cadillac onto the 405 again, "Stay away from the warehouse district and bars for a while. Just in case somebody saw us go in with them broads yesterday."
"Nobody saw us," Cordoba shook his head confidently. "And even if they did, their heads are so screwed up with one batch of shit or another that they couldn't testify to it without getting laughed out of town."
The Anglo was shaking his head. "Don't count on it, cabrón. I'm telling you, lay low for a while - and don't flash the money around much. Don't call attention to yourself, whatever you do. Go see your parole officer before you get your ass reported."
"Shit," Cordoba spat out the open window. "I don't need you to tell me how to lay low."
"LISTEN TO ME," Duncan shouted. "If the Parker bitch is onto us, you'll have the whole fuckin' Centre staff watchin' for your sorry ass to pop up somewhere in town. And if Flores has ratted us out, she'll be SURE to have them swarming all over the place very soon." Duncan grabbed the man's arm painfully. "You play choirboy for a while, you got me?"
"When I'm done with my business," Cordoba told him in a stubborn tone. "THEN I'll lay low."
Duncan let go and took the next off-ramp, knowing it to be the one closest to Ricky and Sandra's place. He couldn't play Cordoba's keeper for long - and he intended to make tracks and get as far away from the quirky Hispanic as he could as soon as the man got out of the car. Cordoba was good for laughs and a good time with whores, but he was too damned cock-sure of himself to stay out of trouble for long. Duncan had no intention of being anywhere in the vicinity when that trouble came down.
~~~~~~~~
Mioda Soichi noted the license number of the Cadillac before it could get too far down the street, and then pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
"Hai. The sighting is confirmed - Duncan and Cordoba. They're still together, moving nouth on Sepulveda toward the 405. 1990 Cadillac, metallic brown, license number 1TIQ942."
He snapped the cell phone shut. The word was going out, and the noose would soon begin to tighten. It was only a matter of time now.
~~~~~~~~
"No," Kevin was shaking his head vigorously, his eyes tightly closed. "I wouldn't take them to my uncle's ranch - if they figure out I'm involved, it would be the first place they'd look."
"Then where?" Sydney demanded urgently. Kevin had been much harder to guide into a full personality SIM than Jarod - partly because of his natural reluctance to step into the mind of a monster, and partly because of the poor training the younger Pretender had received in the process of SIMming itself. Kevin's successes had been the luck of the very talented - a level of success that could have been doubled or even trebled had Vernon only taken the proper time to train his protégé properly. Sydney's consideration for the psychiatrist/mentor that Raines had inflicted on Kevin had slipped even further.
"Somewhere close - I was raised here. I know lots of places to hide that nobody would expect, but I'd choose one I'm very familiar with. Somewhere just as isolated as my uncle's ranch..." Kevin shook his head and then suddenly opened his eyes, letting the monstrous personality that he'd been wearing like a tight suit slip away from his mind like water. "I can't see it, Sydney. I don't have enough information about Duncan's younger years to know what parts of the area he was most familiar with to postulate a possible place to search." The blue eyes filled with tears. "I can't help her... Deb..." His calling her name trailed away painfully.
"Kevin," Sydney soothed, once more frustrated that he was tied to this damned contraption with his bad leg and unable to move to comfort the young Pretender who had tried so hard. "It isn't your fault. Where would we go to get more information?" He waited, then repeated his question again in an attempt to break through Kevin's attitude of hopelessness.
The young Pretender sat up and swung the footrest of the easy chair back down. "Flores' records maybe?"
The psychiatrist pointed to the telephone handset on the coffee table, brought from the kitchen to save them both steps should a call with news come while they were working. "Call Tyler - get him to put all the information in Flores' file in your email. We need to take a break now anyway." He finally allowed himself to sink back against his pillows, surprised at himself for how tired he was. "We've been at this for hours now."
"But we didn't accomplish anything - we still don't know..."
"Kevin!" Sydney's voice grew firm and authoritative. "We've accomplished enough for the moment. We've learned we need more information." He pointed at the telephone again. "Call Tyler."
"Everything OK in here, Dr. Green?" Chet stepped into the den from the kitchen, where he'd been sitting at the table working the crossword puzzle in the morning paper. These two had been so quiet in the den until just moments ago...
"Fine," Sydney assured the sweeper while watching critically as Kevin finally rose from his chair and came over to pick up the phone and follow his instructions. "We're just both a bit on the worried side, and we've let it get to us a little more than we needed to for a moment there."
Frantic blue met solid chestnut while Kevin waited for Tyler to pick up his cell phone. Kevin's heart, which had been pounding hard in his chest at the idea of having actually failed to SIM properly, at having failed Sydney, began to slow a little. His mentor wasn't angry with him, wasn't berating him or belittling his abilities; there was no reason for him to become defensive or testy in response. For the first time since coming to stay with Sydney as a mentor, the full difference between the elder psychiatrist and Vernon Grey as mentors was readily and painfully clear.
"I'm sorry, Sydney," the young man said softly, still waiting for the call to connect.
"There's nothing to be sorry about," the psychiatrist soothed, his mind racing to evaluate the session itself before all the responses and events were lost. It had become obvious as the SIM had progressed that Kevin's mismanagement as a Pretender under Vernon Grey's aegis was having all sorts of repercussions. His mood at exiting a SIM was fragile and defensive, as if expecting abuse from his trainer. In fact, his entire personality when functioning AS a Pretender was fragile, ephemeral, VERY unstable. There was no sense of self-confidence in the process or in the talent that had justified his training. This lack of self-confidence had been only hinted at in previous mainstreaming situations and at the time assumed to be merely the consequence of ignorance. Obviously, the self-esteem and self-confidence issues ran much deeper than he'd expected.
Sydney knew that, as far as he was concerned, it would be better if Kevin never ran another SIM in his life. For one thing, he himself was too old to undertake the process of completely restructuring Kevin's conditioning as a Pretender from the ground up. The damage to the young man through mismanagement and probable abuse had been allowed to go on for too long to ever fully heal. There had to be another use to which that kind of powerful intellect could be put - Pretending, for Kevin, was to stretch his mind almost past the breaking point and, if continued, could do irreparable harm to the entire psyche.
No, the psychiatrist decided, his task in regards to this exceptional young man would be to mentor him back into finding a niche within mainstream society where his intellect would eventually find its own comfortable avenue through which to find expression. He then closed his eyes and gnashed his teeth as the first twinges that told him his pain medication was beginning to wear off completely echoed through the knee and radiated upward through his thigh. Having his mind partially clouded with a fog of pain medication wasn't helping matters either. Part of Kevin's difficulties with this SIM could easily have been his own mentoring skills having fallen into disuse, combined with slow reaction times from the drugs.
The CPM therapy machine continued to hum and extend his leg upwards into the air slowly, each inch of movement becoming a new adventure in pain. "Kevin," Sydney ground out finally as he saw rather than heard the phone get put back down again, "I could use some more pain meds fairly soon now."
Kevin blanched when his mentor actually ASKED for the medication, then looked at his watch and sprinted to the kitchen for a glass of water and the pill bottle. Sydney was right - the SIM had gone on for hours, at least one hour longer than the older man should have gone without taking another dose. "You should have had us take a break sooner," he chided the older man gently, putting one of the tablets into a now-shaking hand.
"Didn't want to break your concentration," Sydney told him tightly. "And if you'd discovered something, it would have been worth it." He tossed the pill into his mouth and immediately began drinking the water to wash it down.
"Please don't do it again," the young man begged him. "Remember the doctor told you that the pain is something you don't need to go through."
"I'll remember," the psychiatrist promised both his protégé and himself. He patted Kevin's shoulder as the young man crouched next to him. "Go take a walk in the back yard for me, will you? At least one of us deserves to take time to stretch his legs and breathe some fresh air."
"Are you going to be OK?"
He patted the Pretender's shoulder again. "I will be as soon as that pill kicks in, and your standing over me won't help that along. Go on now - go relax for a bit while Tyler ships you that material."
"He told me that Jarod had called last night for the same material," Kevin announced as he headed for the arcadia door. "Jarod hit the same dead end - just a bit earlier than we did."
"See?" Sydney closed his eyes and concentrated on feeling the medication start to work the moment it hit his system. "You didn't fail - if Jarod hit the same brick wall, it wasn't you."
Kevin didn't answer, but walked slowly across the back yard until he could rest a hand on one of the bottom rungs of the cobbled ladder into Davy's tree house. Somehow, even knowing Jarod had had the same trouble didn't help the feeling that he'd failed Deb somehow.
~~~~~~~~
"Thanks. I owe you HUGE!" Tyler smiled largely and disconnected his call. He leaned back in his chair and sighed in relief. The dirty job was done - he'd talked one of his former co-workers into taking a trip down into the morgue and firing up the old furnace to take care of very ripe and probably very messy human remains that had sat there unattended in the weeks since the explosion. Phil knew the probable state of affairs down there and had NOT been at all eager, but with a promise of a steak dinner Friday night and all the beer he could drink after work tonight, he'd finally agreed.
At least the engineers at the meeting earlier had confirmed that the natural gas piping to the underground complex hadn't suffered greatly -that any breaks in the line had been at ground level and were already repaired. This meant that the vast furnace could be fired up at any time safely. And if he knew Miss Parker's intent about such things at all, this was probably the LAST time the cremation furnace would see any action at all. Not that that bothered HIM any...
Completely at loose ends for the moment and growing curious by the moment, Tyler picked up the phone again and dialed another set of numbers.
"Sam Atlee here."
"Sam - it's Tyler. Just thought I'd check in and see how things were going over there on the other side of Creation."
Sam let out a tired burst of air. "Well, other than trying to make some sense of what we have left here, I'm standing in Flores' office tearing the place apart bit by bit."
"I thought the feds had already done that..."
"They did," the ex-sweeper admitted, "but knowing Flores for the loose cannon that he was, there has to be SOMETHING that we've missed."
"Like what?" Tyler leaned back in his chair and tried to imagine Sam and his surroundings.
"I'm not sure - I suppose I'll know it when I find it," Sam answered tiredly. "How are things going on that end?"
"As smoothly as they can, I suppose. Our Pretenders seem to be in sync so far - Jarod called last night and now Kevin called today for all the information we have on Flores, personal notes confiscated after the bombing from his hotel room - that kind of thing..." Tyler took a breath. "How'd things go delivering Fujimori?"
"Fine. Mayeda promises his best efforts. I'm hoping that by the end of the day..." Sam pushed the heavy leather chair out from behind the massive desk so that he could examine the seams.
"I hate just sitting around and waiting - I feel like I should be out DOING something..." Tyler grumbled as he rose and stomped over to the small casement window and stared out at the demolition work at once was the Tower.
"Just keep Miss Parker's day running smoothly," Sam suggested. "And make sure that she has adequate sweeper coverage, no matter where she goes - even within the Centre itself."
"You suspect something?" Tyler demanded in a worried tone.
"Not really, but I'm not taking chances anymore," the Security Chief told his colleague soberly. "I'm going back to tearing this place apart. You keep in touch, and I'll be talking to you when we get news from here."
~~~~~~~~
"This is Crandall."
"The information sheet we got from the Police Department this morning said that YOU were to be notified in the event of two people matching the description of a little boy and young woman were admitted to the hospital?" a woman's voice inquired in a professional tone.
"That's right... Wait a minute - who is this?" Crandall sat up straighter and waved madly for his assistant to pick up the phone and listen in, then pulled paper and pen close enough to use.
"My name is Doctor Shirley Dannings, and I'm the attending ER physician at Adelanto General. A few minutes ago, an ambulance delivered two patients to our ER that appear to match your description." The doctor turned slightly and watched her team working over the young woman on the bed nearest to her. Just beyond the cream-colored curtains she knew that another team was working just as feverishly over the young boy.
"What is their condition?" Crandall demanded as he wrote a quick “CALL ATLEE AT CENTRE OFFICE - HAVE HIM COME HERE NOW” and flashed it at another agent standing close.
"Dehydration, severe exposure - the young woman has a fairly deep cut on one foot and some indication of physical or sexual assault. Both are currently on IV saline to rehydrate and topical anesthetic creams to relieve the pain from the sunburns - the woman we've put on antibiotics for the infection in both the foot and the bite marks. We'll run a rape kit, just to be sure..." Doctor Dannings read from her notes. "Do you have any instructions for us?"
"No, no, not at the moment." Crandall was rising from his chair. "Are the patients conscious?"
"Not yet, but we're hoping the boy will revive soon. His condition is the most stable of the two."
"We're on our way, Doctor. And THANK YOU!" Crandall hung up the phone with force. "Did you get a hold of Atlee?"
"He's on his way," Javitz replied immediately, still in the process of hanging up the phone from making the call. "Is it the kids?"
Crandall was sliding into his sports coat. "God, I sure as Hell hope so. It's about time for the good guys to score at least one, dontcha think?" He pointed. "Get a car ready - we're outta here the moment Atlee arrives!"
Chapter 13: A Hint of Dawn
"Are you going to want me to come into the Centre with you today, Miss Parker?" Kevin asked quietly, mindful that Sydney had yet to awaken from his deep slumber.
"No." She sipped at her coffee half-heartedly after popping the rest of her toast into her mouth. "I've sent the same information I sent to Jarod yesterday to your email address as well. Since you're pretty well needed here with Sydney, I want you to use any free time you get and study the information and run the SIM you were starting to prep yesterday. Let's see if you can come up with any new ideas as to where Davy and Deb could have been taken. I've got Jarod doing the same thing in California, for what it's worth." She reached out a hand and patted Kevin's forearm. "But most importantly, you need to be here, keeping an eye on Calamity Clyde in there."
"Who?!" Kevin blinked in complete confusion.
She shook her head, having forgotten that Kevin had no idea of how to handle either her sense of humor or her many epithets. "Just keep Sydney from going crazy with nothing but watching his leg go up and down all day," she told him by way of explanation, then looked over at Ikeda. "As soon as the relief sweeper team gets here, you take off and get a good rest. Be back here at seven this evening - but if you want, stop by the Centre earlier and I'll get you properly put on the payroll."
"Hai, Parker-sama," the ninja bowed.
Miss Parker glanced yet again in the direction of the den, but didn't move toward it at all. "Tell Sydney I'll call him later, OK?" she told the young Pretender as she rose from the kitchen table. "With Sam gone, I'm going to have to go in early and probably work late tonight as well, so don't wait supper for me. Order in - and I'll munch on what's left when I get here."
"Yes, ma'am." Kevin nodded at her. "Have a..." He paused, as if realizing that such a leave-taking cliché was inappropriate under the circumstances. "I'll see you when you get back."
"And CALL if you have any inspiration, understand?" She was gathering purse and keys.
"Yes, ma'am."
With that, Miss Parker sighed and headed for the door and another day trying to pull the Centre onto its new path.
Kevin turned and eyed with unapologetic curiosity the Japanese who stood deceptively calmly at the doorway into the den. "Sydney said that you could make even Sam look like an amateur," the young Pretender stated carefully. "Is this true?"
Ikeda turned the majority of his attention to this young man who moved and spoke with the air of a sheltered and naïve innocent. "My training in the martial arts is highly specialized, Green-san," he hedged, not entirely sure how much Miss Parker wanted his actual background known. "Atlee-san is probably very skilled in the areas he has studied, but my training required I master many more topics of study. It is a rigorous program - not many finish."
"But you did?" The blue eyes were direct and without any guile.
"I did." Ikeda made the statement without either pride or flinch. It was nothing more or less than the truth. "And for a time, I was a teacher."
"In Japan?"
Ikeda smiled inwardly, remembering the isolated setting and traditional architecture of his teacher's dojo. [training center] "Hai. The particular kind of martial arts I trained in is taught nowhere else."
Blue eyes blinked. "Never?"
Ebony eyes gazed calmly and steadily. "There is more to the training than just learning the moves and use of the weapons, Green-san. There is an entire mental discipline and practice that is involved. The setting in which the teaching takes place becomes very important to the success of the student."
"So if I asked you to teach me, you couldn't?" Kevin tipped his head to the side, but his expression was very serious, very deliberate. "Because this isn't Japan?"
Ikeda could see that this young man was not just asking a question to kill time. There was a genuine interest behind the request. "That would depend on your motives for asking for teaching," he replied carefully, "and ultimately whether such a thing would meet with Parker-sama's approval. I am her servant in all things - if you wish me to represent your desire faithfully, you will need to convince me that the time will be well-spent."
"I want to be able to protect my family," the young man announced firmly, with conviction. "I don't ever want to be in a position of NOT being able to do that properly ever again."
"Gomen nasai, Green-san," Ikeda shook his head slowly, "but from the description of the fight that you put up a night ago, it seems you were quite effective at protecting your uncle. He was one of the kidnap targets, neh?"
"Yeah, but..." Kevin grimaced in frustrated complaint. "Deb still was taken."
"Ah. Let that be lesson number one then," the Japanese stated firmly and quietly. "This lesson in mental discipline I can give you anytime. And that is: be as prepared as possible, but be aware that the unexpected will happen anyway. A ninja is trained to let Karma be Karma..."
"Say what?" The Pretender frowned. "I don't get it."
Ikeda sighed. "The circumstances and situations in the world around us do not always progress in an obviously logical manner. We do not understand all the elements involved that will influence a situation from a distance in either time or space or relationship. One can only do one's best, but within that that framework, still be flexible to handle what seems to come from a tangent."
Kevin nodded. "That doesn't sound too hard..."
The ninja laughed out loud, and found the release actually refreshing. "No, it doesn't, young Green-san. But it is exquisitely difficult to put into practice with any kind of regularity. Even the best of us will practice our whole lives and never have that one simple lesson completely mastered."
A grunt from the den signaled that Sydney had awakened at last, and Kevin walked past the Japanese bodyguard with a very thoughtful look on his face to help his mentor rise and then hop slowly toward the bathroom. Good, Ikeda thought to himself. The mental lesson will give the boy plenty to work on until Parker-sama had rendered her decision as to whether he was to be trained and in what discipline.
Certainly the last thing he had expected to be asked was to begin teaching ninjitsu again. But then, as he had just told Green-san, he too needed to let Karma be Karma. This was a new life for him - and some of the old rules of the dojo may not matter anymore.
~~~~~~~~
One of the benefits of driving to the Centre every morning was that the drive was made at that hour on a relatively empty road that allowed the driver plenty of time to think. Miss Parker had driven this road thousands of times and knew every twist and turn, every break in the pavement. This morning she found herself thinking through the tentative schedule for the day as she slowly donned her Lyle façade. Too much was happening that depended on her remaining strong. She had meetings with department heads who had yet to have space in which to work until access to the sublevels was returned, to be followed by meetings with construction foremen to get an update on just exactly WHEN access to those sublevels could be expected. And somewhere in her day after that, she had three more personal interviews with satellite supervisors who still retained their positions.
If, in the midst of all that, the call came in that she was dreading, she would need the façade to fall back on - to get her through the day and out of there before she fell apart again. Frankly, she expected a call from Sam around mid-morning to bring her up to speed on what efforts were being made on the other side of the country - hopefully that call wouldn't be too upsetting. She made the ninety-degree turn into the gate of the Centre and waited for the guard there to give her access to the grounds. During those few short moments, she allowed herself one quick, fervent and frantic moment of wishful thinking that she would receive a call telling her that Davy and Deb had been found safe and sound sometime during the day. The moment passed, and she pasted the Lyle mask firmly onto her psyche and drove forward past the rapidly diminishing pile of wreckage that used to be the Tower to the parking area and her new designated spot.
"Miss Parker! Miss Parker!" The voice calling out to her was excited in a most satisfied manner. She turned from fetching her briefcase from the back seat to find herself face to face with a construction foreman.
"Yes?" she asked coolly. "Something that just can't wait until our meeting?"
"We all know how much you wanted access to the sublevels back," the man fairly danced in front of her in glee. "Well, access is restored. The elevator installers just informed me that they have repaired the damaged braking rail, removed the demolished elevator car and installed a construction elevator to handle all traffic. SL-1 is stabilized, and the structural engineers have ruled that the underground complex is ready for regular access on those days when the heavy equipment topside isn't rolling around too much." The worker's face beneath his hard hat beamed with accomplishment. "Harry saw you driving in and thought you'd rather have the news now than wait until this afternoon..."
The mask slipped. These people had worked twenty-four hours a day and double shifts to accomplish this much this quickly - quite a bit ahead of schedule actually - all because of the good will she'd built up in bringing her people out of the ground safely. Like Broots the day before, they didn't deserve the cold response of a monster.
"You're right," she beamed back, "I would rather know now. Limited or full occupation?"
"Limited for now on the upper levels - we still have the big truck moving heavy debris - but the lower levels can be used now."
"How about electricity? Is power fully restored?"
The man nodded. "Yup. As of two days ago." He beamed at her again. "Good news, huh?"
She shook her head in amazement. "You're right, that IS good news - something I haven't had a whole lot of lately..."
The worker immediately sobered. "Yeah. We all heard about that... we're all real sorry for your troubles, Miss Parker..."
"I appreciate that," she told him sincerely, wiping at the bottom of her nose to prevent any undue emotional outburst while she struggled to at least slip some of the mask's strength back into place without seeming too schizophrenic. "Look, everyone who's been working on restoring underground access gets a paid day off - with a healthy bonus on the next check - but I want everyone to be back to work bright and early the next day so we can get the rest of this mess cleaned up. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am!" The worker beamed, as much from knowing that the news had lightened his boss' day slightly as from knowing the substantial benefits of pleasing that boss like that. "And thank you, Miss Parker! I'm sure I speak for all the guys when I tell you that if you ever need us..."
"I'll call you, don't you worry," she smiled at the man. "Go on now, go give your crews the good news and let me get back to work here." The foreman saluted her casually and began walking away. "And thanks again!" she called after him, to have him wave at her again and continue on his way back to the site.
She sighed, this time with a feeling of accomplishment. Lower sublevels ready for occupation meant that a number of those department heads whose projects were just going to be postponed again that morning would now be told they could actually come back to work again, increasing the cash flow once more as goals could be met and progress made.
It also meant that the archives could finally begin to be excavated. THAT could be an interim task assigned to the many workers from the top few sublevels that would have to wait a while before being able to fully resume their duties. And Mr. Raines' former residence outside of town would make for an ideal temporary storage facility until the massive collection had been carefully gone through by someone trustworthy. Not all of that paperwork was needed any longer after all.
PLEASE let this be a hint of what the rest of the day will be like, she thought to herself as she squared her shoulders and turned from the clean-up site back toward the annexes that were now the operational hub of the Centre.
~~~~~~~~
"Gentlemen, I have good news for you - some of you will be able to go back to your laboratories starting tomorrow."
Miss Parker's announcement at the very beginning of the department heads meeting astounded everyone there. It took her a while and finally a two-fingered whistle from Tyler to get their attention again. "And for your information, gentlemen, your tours underground will be ending as soon as we can get new labs built for you. The Centre is coming up into the daylight, and we're bringing you all with it."
"Which of us can call our people in to work tomorrow?" The question that made the rest turn to her for her answer was made anonymously.
"You all can." She looked down at her notes, taken as she and Tyler had quickly reviewed the department assignments for the sublevels. "Bio-technology, Software R&D, Chemistry, Psychogenics, Renewal - which is going to be called Medical from now on, by the way - you all have finished prioritizing and purging your project files of the kind of work that the Centre will no longer be doing. What's more, you've all reviewed your conclusions with my assistant and received your go-aheads. As the departments most ready to move forward, you can all resume your duties in your established facilities. Physics, Pharmacology, we're still waiting for your prioritized lists."
"Our project load in Pharmacology was huge," Dr. Barnett complained bitterly, "and so much of it was need to know or classified at a higher level than I was granted as department head. I may have held the position on paper, Miss Parker, but most of the projects in my department were under the direct supervision of Mr. Raines himself. I'm having to read completely through the mountain of material you gave me - AND I'll need to visit our labs to gather up some of the hard-copy data that never made it into the computers before I can give you that list."
"I was only stating fact," Miss Parker assured the research pharmacologist, "not making a value judgement based on work finished or no. What I was meaning by mentioning this fact was that while you and Dr. Scheidler finish your analysis and prioritization, I have another task that can be assigned to your personnel to give them something to do besides sit at home now."
"What's that?" Scheidler, a short and squat little man with a tuft of white hair on his chin and no other hair to speak of, asked in a heavy German accent.
"We will be removing the hard-copy archives from SL-26 and transporting them to a new location for sorting. After all these years, you all can well imagine the amount of dead paper this place has amassed, so this is going to be no small task in itself. Be glad the elevator is working again - hauling all that junk up the stairs would be no fun." Miss Parker looked over at Tyler and winked, and the two of them shared a chuckle and a wince at the memory of climbing all the way to the bottom of the underground complex and then back up again.
"Where we gonna put all this paper?" Scheidler demanded to know.
"One of former Chairman Raines' houses will be turned into a processing center where initial sorting will take place. It isn't going to take rocket science to do this - anybody with a high school diploma and reading skills should be able to..."
"It's better than sitting around on our thumbs, Otto," Barnett shushed at his colleague. "And I don't know about you, but I'm starting to HATE soap operas..."
That brought a collective laugh to the room. "Very well," Miss Parker said to bring the meeting to a close. "If there are no other questions, I suggest that you all get on the phone to your respective people and have them make their car pool arrangements and be punching in bright and early in the morning. Any questions?" She waited. "That's it, gentlemen - thank you for coming. We'll meet again next week at this time."
"I got a question for you," Tyler said, leaning toward her as they collected their paperwork.
"What's that?"
"What are you going to do about the morgue - and the bodies that were still there when the bomb went off?"
Miss Parker blinked. "Bodies? Oh God..." Her mind suddenly brought back the image of Raines' sheet-covered body being rolled over next to a wall - the arm and hand partly dangling below the plastic sheeting - what was it, over two weeks ago?
"Yeah," he saw that she understood exactly what he was talking about. "It's GOTTA be a bit ripe down there, don't you think?"
"What other departments were situated on SL-8?" she demanded, swallowing hard against the idea of what it must be like down there at the moment and not exactly willing to ask any of her people to go back to work when...
"Mostly clerical, actually - data entry."
"Good - most of those folks are back at work up here in the annexes already." She thought for a moment. "I wonder if the gas is still on for the cremation furnace?"
Tyler looked at her steadily. "I'd think that if the concrete didn't buckle down there, most of those pipes should still be sound..."
"Something to run past the structural engineers at lunch," she pointed out and immediately noted the thought on her pad before tucking it away in her briefcase.
"As long as I'm not the one that has to go down there and take care of the mess," Tyler told her in no uncertain terms. "I like my top-side job."
"No more jockeying stiffs around for you, eh?" she asked, one eyebrow cocked jauntily.
"No, ma'am!"
"Well, we'll need to think of SOMEbody to take care of it for us - unless we intend to hand over THOSE bodies to the police as well..."
She could tell that thought wasn't at all acceptable Tyler either. "Give me an oxygen mask, then," Tyler sighed heavily - and one helluva good bath afterwards and the rest of the day off to get the stench out of my lungs - and I'll do the honors of vaporizing those poor bastards. We don't need any more law enforcement entanglements..."
She agreed. "How many were down there?"
"Three - including the friend you came down to visit," he answered with a sideways glance.
"That was no friend of mine," she informed him stiffly. "That was one of the biggest monsters the Centre ever knew. Ikeda did the world a favor when he put a bullet in that man's head." She looked over at her assistant. "And I'll be even happier when that man's stinking carcass is shoved into the fire. Good riddance to bad rubbish - at last."
"I'll take care of it..."
"No," she told him firmly. "You weren't the only morgue assistant back then. We'll get the report of the structural engineers, and then we'll get one of the others to take care of the mess. Remember, you're not a stiff-jockey anymore. Whoever does the job, gets a healthy bonus, so choose well - but that's not your job anymore. I need you HERE."
Tyler smiled up at his boss. "Yes, ma'am."
~~~~~~~~
Manuel Rodriguez yawned as he aimed the old pickup down the dirt road into the vast pastureland and then down a pair of barely-visible dirt tracks that led toward the windmill that was barely visible over the horizon. His once-a-week job for this day of the week was to make sure the watering troughs for the range cattle were full with fresh water. It usually took him the better part of the morning just to circumnavigate the ranch and check each of the four troughs and associated windmills. Provided he got started no later than an hour after sunrise, that was - and he'd long since learned to be attentive to that time frame. The old Ford had no air conditioning other than open windows and could become like an oven in mid-afternoon if he ran late.
He stuck his head out of the window and gazed up into the cloudless sky and nodded companionably at the slowly circling buzzards overhead. This day promised to be another scorcher, just like the day before and the day before that. The weather had been brutal lately - the wind, what there was of it, had been from the open desert. Still... Rodriguez sighed. That many buzzards circling already at that hour of the day meant something sizeable down - and from the looks of the circling, whatever was down was not far from the trough. It would be easy enough for him to check out, and hopefully not end up being bad news for el patrón. [the boss]
The old Ford bounced uncomfortably across the dry ground and Rodriguez reached for one of the wrapped breakfast burritos his Clarita had packed for him that morning. The spicy chorizo juices squirted into his mouth and brought a smile. She knew what he liked. He was just easing the truck over the top of the hill, burrito once again poised at his lips, when he saw it, or at least a glimpse of it.
Frowning, he put the burrito back down on the dashboard and twisted the steering wheel to bring the truck closer to the trough. This wasn't right. He'd been expecting to see a cow or a steer down, not... Was that PINK flowers?
He pulled the truck up short and climbed from behind the wheel, then limped over so that he could see behind the trough - and his mouth fell open. "¡Madre de Diós!" he gasped, barely able to believe his eyes.
~~~~~~~~
"Miss Parker?" Mei Chiang announced over the intercom, "Sam on two for you."
"Thanks." She closed the file folder on her desk and picked up the receiver after tipping her wrist and looking at her watch. "Sam. You're up awfully early..."
"Yeah, well I wanted to get an early start on things this morning." The ex-sweeper cast his eyes around the satellite office of the Centre that his key had unlocked only a little while before. "The FBI didn't leave us much to work with - the SAC here says he took it all."
"I'm not surprised. I'm sure Flores' files alone will have more than enough evidence to keep a dozen courtrooms busy for the better part of a year when all's said and done." She paused, not exactly knowing what to ask or how to ask it. "Any news?" she settled for finally.
"Crandall has APBs out on the kids and Duncan and Cordoba all over the place here - police, fire, hospitals - and Mayeda said he'd be getting his men right on it too." Sam had seen the sincerity of the man's expression. "And if the Yakuza catch them, they'll do the interrogation while I supervise - then turn what's left over to us to hand over to the law."
"I can live with that," Miss Parker commented coolly, leaning her chin into her palm and putting the face of her Security Chief in her mind as she spoke to him. "What about the FBI? Have they got anything tangible yet?"
"Crandall says there have been a number of reported sightings of Duncan and Cordoba, but nothing about the kids. AND there was a homicide last night that looks suspiciously like the work of our two winners." Sam hated reminding her of the nature of those two, but she needed to know...
"Damn!" The hand at her chin covered her eyes as if that would protect her from the vision of what might have happened to... NO!
"Anything from Jarod or Kevin yet?" Sam asked back. He knew that both Pretenders were going to be enlisted to SIM the situation from a number of perspectives, hopefully to come up with ideas that would occur to nobody else.
"Nothing yet. Jarod just got his information last night after I spoke to him - Kevin had his most of the day, but was involved with helping me get Syd home and taken care of."
"How IS Sydney?" Sam inquired carefully. "He gonna make it?"
She nodded. "It'll be a while before he'll be able to get around by himself, but he'll mend. And with Ikeda in the house last night..." She sighed.
"You keep Ikeda with you..." he began.
"The man has to sleep sometime, Sam," she countered. "I had Chet and Tad relieve him at nine this morning so he could go home and rest, so Kevin and Syd aren't without protection - and I'm HERE and surrounded by sweepers. And Tyler's not without skill."
Sam nodded. He'd made his way slowly through the various rooms of the suite and had finally found the office that had been Flores'. It was the most demolished of the lot. "Well, I'm in Flores' sanctum, and it looks like I'll have my hands full getting this place up and running properly again. I'd better let you go."
"Call," Miss Parker told him in no uncertain terms. "If you have news..."
"Trust me," he promised darkly, "You'll hear what I hear two seconds after I hear it."
"Thanks, Sam."
Sam closed the cell phone and put it back in his pocket and surveyed the mess that had been a supervisor's office. If Flores was anything, he was sneaky - and while the FBI had been thorough in their raid, they may not have taken the extent of that “sneaky” into full account.
He could hear the first of the office staff starting to trickle through the door and make exclamations at the disaster that overtaken their workplace. It would take an hour or two to get everyone organized into recovery mode - and then he would come back here and tear this office to pieces himself. There was something else here - he could smell it.
~~~~~~~~
Jarod yawned and made his way to the kitchen to turn on the coffeemaker for another day. Then he turned and stared out the kitchen window at the ocean beyond, his thoughts so scattered that it was easier to just turn them off for a moment and enjoy the peace of the morning for its own sake. So much had happened... For one thing, he had slept better that night than he had for a very long time - and he knew that the shift in his mother's attitude had played a major role in that.
During the seven years that they had had since he'd turned his back on the Centre and everyone involved in it, they had been close - closer than he'd ever dared dream. That closeness and the chance to capture that closeness for the entire clan had been the reasoning behind the purchase of the several homes on this narrow lane. After keeping them apart for all those years, Jarod had thought it only appropriate that Centre funds be used to give each of the clan families a place distinctly its own while still maintaining the ability for close ties of love and mutual dependence to thrive. Margaret had helped Jarod in the establishment of his psychiatric practice after graduation - and Jarod had cooked almost as many meals in his home for his parents as his mother had for her son in hers.
But in all those years, he had cautiously hidden his regrets at having to leave such a large part of his life behind utterly. The love and familial happiness that had surrounded the Russells had been very real - but in the privacy of his own mind, only Jarod had known how superficial that happiness had been in so many ways. When Charles had died, it had suddenly no longer been enough - but he hadn't prepared his mother for the depth of emotions that he still held for those on the East Coast. No wonder she'd snapped in a way.
Now, miraculously, Margaret had come to understand the importance of those ties to her son - finally seeing them as something other than simply remnants of a sick and twisted upbringing. How the change had come to pass was really unimportant as far as Jarod was concerned. The reality was that he had his mother back as a loving and supportive member of his family, equally concerned about the loss of his son. They had sat for hours the previous night, talking as they had used to, and at long last Jarod had cautiously brought forth the pictures he'd brought back from Delaware and handed them over to her.
The one Jarod had had framed and had kept safely hidden in his bedroom was the family portrait taken by Ben at the Inn during that quiet time of refuge before all Hell had broken loose. But the others safely stored in a photo album were very telling, and it was they that Margaret studied most closely: the candid shot of Jarod, Missy and Davy, one of Sydney and Kevin, and another of Sam, Broots and Debbie. Margaret's hand had lingered over the face of the grandson she barely knew, searching for and finding all the little facets that were Jarod in the boy's face and then, finally, all the facets that were Missy.
At long last she had looked into the face of the man who had raised her son - and done a damned fine job of it too, she'd finally admitted to Jarod - and in the family portrait seen the loving and protective way he'd held his arm around Davy. The pride that shone in his eyes knowing Jarod and Missy stood directly behind him, her hand resting comfortably on his shoulder, was one with which she was well acquainted. She and Charles had felt very much the same way when their family portrait had been taken, little Sammy on his grandfather's lap and their grown children arranged behind them, Jarod's hand on her shoulder.
The long talk between mother and son had healed many wounds, but left the Pretender too exhausted to return to his SIM, and so he'd simply stripped and fallen into bed and a deep and dreamless sleep. Now he faced the new day, one in which he had a few patients to see and a SIM to complete.
Jarod pulled a mug of coffee from the pot the moment there was enough dark liquid in it to pour off, and he carried the mug with him as he headed back toward the bathroom. It was after eight already - he needed to be at the office at nine. He showered quickly while his coffee cooled to where it could be gulped, and then shaved. He rushed back into the kitchen, rinsed the mug and left it in the sink and was just pulling the last package of Pop Tarts from the box when his phone rang.
"Yes?"
"Dr. Russell, this is Tony Rizzo from CPS. I'm sorry to disturb you this early in the morning..."
Jarod tore open the flimsy foil wrapper around his breakfast. "You caught me on my way out the door to work. What can I do for you?"
"Well," Rizzo seemed to be in a fairly good humor that morning, "you can tell me if you could come down to the courthouse at around... two this afternoon to sign some paperwork?"
"You mean..."
"Your status as emergency foster parent has been approved, and we're hoping you'd be willing to take custody of Ginger Simmons immediately following finishing the paperwork."
Jarod's face slowly broke into a smile. "I'll MAKE the time, Mr. Rizzo. Two o'clock?"
"We'll see you there then."
The Pretender stood with the handset in his hand, suddenly presented with the mental image of both children - Ginger and Davy - and the sickening feeling that he would have to choose between them. NO! Ginger was coming home today - and Davy would be found. They would all be family soon.
He bit into his Pop Tart and grabbed up his briefcase determinedly. He couldn't let himself believe otherwise. Otherwise was simply not acceptable.
~~~~~~~~
Clarita stared at her husband in consternation, and then looked back down at the bed of the pickup as if hardly believing the story that these two proved was true. How in the world did a boy and a woman, in torn and filthy bed clothes that had dark blotches that looked suspiciously like blood, end up unconscious at the side of a cattle trough out in the middle of a million square acres of infierno [Hell]? Were they even alive? She reached out a hand and touched the wrist of the boy and easily found a pulse. The woman's pulse wasn't so easily found, and Clarita moved her hand to the forehead and then flinched back from the heat.
"She has fever - and they both look like they're almost dead..."
"What are we going to do, Rita? Do you know how to help them?"
Clarita shook her head. "We don't know what's wrong with them, Manuel. They need a real doctor."
"We can't take them in," Manuel complained. "If anybody asks for our identification..."
"Ya sé," [I know] his wife answered, "but if we don't do something, they'll both die."
The two stared at each other for a long moment. "What about Father Luís in town. He won't turn us in, and maybe he'll know what to do," Clarita finally said.
"You call the padre, I'll drive them in," Manuel nodded, finding the idea the most logical and the one that kept their existence in the country a secret. El patrón wouldn't like having word of his using illegals for his ranch work spread - and that would mean the end of the money for la familia in Guanajuato.
"Que tengas cuidado, mi vida," [Be careful, my love] Clarita told him as she watched him pull the blue tarp over the motionless bodies and climb back into the old Ford. "¡Pobrecitos! [Poor little ones] Who did this to you?"
~~~~~~~~
"You're sure you know how to do this?" The young Pretender sounded unconvinced.
Sydney nodded his head at Kevin, sitting in the easy chair in front of his couch, trying to convey confidence. "Kevin, I did this for Jarod for more years than you've been alive, my boy - as a matter of fact, I'd imagine I pioneered many of the techniques that Vernon used with you later. I promise you I know how to do this."
"It's just..." Kevin blinked down the length of his body at his new mentor - a man whom he admired and trusted. "...I've never done this without feeling..."
"Used?" Sydney supplied the word easily. He remembered the night that he and Jarod had gone over much of this same ground, only on a much more personal basis. Getting reacquainted with his former protégé had not been a painless process for either of them. They had had to sort slowly and patiently through a tangled relationship nearly thirty years old, building new understandings in place of the dominance and authority that had been the basis of that relationship. Sydney had come away from those long evening talks with a more complete understanding of just how thoroughly he had been used to torture a young man - it was a lesson that had never left him, and could still give him nightmares.
"Yeah. It made me angry, deep down where I didn't dare show it, that Vernon would treat me like I were just a machine." Kevin shuddered at the thought. "I hated it. And now I need to do it to help Davy - and I don't know if I can anymore."
Sydney moved as best he could so that he was sitting up as straight as possible while strapped to a machine that slowly flexed his damaged leg. "Then we'll work to use your discomfort with the SIMming process as part of the process itself. You have a right and a reason for those feelings, Kevin - you can't just turn your back on them."
"How about if I Pretend to be Jarod, Pretending to be Duncan," Kevin suggested with a hopeful tone of voice.
"We'll try that if nothing else works," Sydney shook his head. "But frankly, I'd rather you learned to deal with the negativity you developed for your former mentor so that it doesn't remain an obstacle for your mind. Now close your eyes," he told the young man, his voice dropping into the hypnotic tone and rhythm he had habitually used with Jarod almost without thinking about it. "Take deep breaths. Feel the chair beneath your body, the air moving in and out of your lungs."
Kevin did as he was told, and for the first time in his life, felt himself move smoothly through the preliminary grounding and cleansing meditation that preceded a SIM without resentment or bitterness as the background emotional medium. With the corner of his mind that played the referee to a SIM - that part of his dominant personality that would watch over the internal proceedings to make sure nothing harmful happened - he wondered if the difference was the fact that it WAS Sydney running the SIM with him? Then again, perhaps it was because he was doing this of his own free will for a change - after all, Miss Parker HAD taken the time to ASK if he would be willing to do the SIM, not merely ordered him to do it. So many of the facets of the situation were different, not the least of which being the fact that by SIMming this man, he was hopefully helping find Deb before anything more terrible happened to her. SIMming was what he was best at - the only real talent he had to lend to this situation. He HAD to be able to do this!
Sydney continued the talk-down meditation, watching the responses and unconscious expressions that flitted across his new protégé's face with fascination. It had been years since he'd last led Jarod through a SIM - years since he'd actively participated in the stretching of a human mind into realms of intuition and reasoning that most never imagined existed - and only now did he realize just how much he'd missed it. That realization was followed almost immediately by a wave of revulsion and guilt. How could he possibly justify feeling sentimental about a process that had caused Jarod so much pain and suffering? How selfish was that?
He shook himself and focused his mind on the matter at hand. Kevin, while a talented Pretender in his own rights, had obviously not had from Vernon the deeper meditative training that he had given Jarod as the boy grew into a man. Neither did Kevin recognize many of the shortcuts and trigger words that he and Jarod had eventually worked out together over the years of collaboration. From the looks of the young man's face, his new Pretender was struggling hard to keep up with the instructions he was getting now. He couldn't afford the distraction of mental self-flagellation - not if he intended the SIM to be successful at all.
So Sydney slowed down the meditative process even further to allow himself time to take Kevin into the SIM in a more prepared state that would allow for less stressful extraction when the SIM was at an end. The confused and stressed expression on Kevin's face smoothed away.
~~~~~~~~
Cordoba hauled himself out of bed, squinting as the light of the morning sun already well above the horizon blinded him through the ripped drapes. He then shuffled out of the extra bedroom and into the bathroom scratching at his crotch and his dingy tee shirt absently. Once he'd taken care of business, he shuffled down the short hallway past the door to his sister and brother-in-law's bedroom and into the apartment's tiny living room. Duncan hadn't made it past the couch before passing out, and the man was still noisily sawing logs, legs and arms draped exactly where they had landed at two o'clock in the morning.
Sandra was the only member of Cordoba's family still speaking to him - the only person with which he still had a good enough relationship that she could be called upon in this way. Rick, her husband, had argued with her about letting the two drunken men in standing there in the front door, but he had finally relented. Had it been anybody but Rick, Cordoba would have killed the man right then and there - but Sandra was two weeks shy of having her first baby, and Cordoba was NOT about to sentence his niece or nephew to a life without a father. Even if the man was a stupid fry-cook at a fast food place.
"Oye," he bumped Duncan's outstretched leg deliberately with his bare foot. "Abre los ojos, cabrón." [Open your eye, asshole.] We can't stay here too long. Sandra wants us out before Rick goes to work, and I wan..."
"Fuck off," Duncan mumbled semi-coherently and turned his head away from his tormentor.
Cordoba sighed and bent over, keeping a hand on the back of the couch so his own dizziness wouldn't get the better of him, and placed his lips close to the sleeping man's ear. "ANDY!" he shouted and backed away quickly as Duncan came roaring up off the couch.
"Shit!! Jesus, man, you didn't have to do that," Duncan blinked bloodshot eyes and looked around dazedly while trying to keep his heart from busting a rib or two. Finally he looked up at his disheveled associate. "What the Hell you do that for - you ain't even dressed yourself."
"Look at the time, cabrón," Cordoba shoved his filthy arm under Duncan's nose, the digital watch's light depressed to make the numbers stand out more clearly. "Time to go get the money."
Duncan rolled over so that he could sit properly on the couch, his head down and leaning his elbows on his widespread knees. "I wanna try to reach Flores one more time..."
"Fuck Flores, man. You didn't say nuthin' about needing Flores' permission to pay me when you called me in," Cordoba hissed. "I done what you said - even when my guts said that you were being estúpido - and now I want my money. I got business that can't wait much more."
The Anglo raised angry blue eyes to his Hispanic cohort. "You ain't gonna get squat if you don't let me try Flores one more time, got that?" He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket for his cell phone and punched buttons. "Flores holds the key to the next part of this - and without it..."
"Don't you tell me you won't give me my money, man," Cordoba threatened the Anglo, not caring that he was standing with the cell phone to his ear.
"Damn!" Duncan closed the device with an angry snap. "STILL not answering." He turned bloodshot eyes on his associate. "Alright, alright," he threw up his hands in frustration. "Get me down to the Bank of America on Sepulveda near the airport, if you're so damned hot to get your dough. Whatcha got," he shot at the man with wicked leer, "a hot tamale on the side with the rent due?"
"Ain't none of your business, cabrón." Cordoba grabbed up his shirt from where he'd thrown it over the back of the couch and slid arms into the sleeves, then parked his behind on the arm of the couch while he inserted his filthy stockinged feet into his boots. "Just keepin' you honest, my man."
"What's the matter, don't you trust me?" Duncan asked as he slid the security chain aside and opened the apartment door.
"No more than you would me in my place," Cordoba made sure the doorknob was locked when he pulled it closed, then tossed his jacket over his shoulder confidently. This was a rough neighborhood, and he wasn't going to leave his sister open to some homeboy looking for a quick score with a burglary.
~~~~~~~~
"Again, Doctor Jarod?" Cindy asked her boss as he leaned over her shoulder and took a look at his appointment calendar for the afternoon. He'd done the same thing the morning before, and she knew what that had been about...
"Yup," he grinned at her. "CPS called me to come in and sign some paperwork - and then I get to take Ginger home with me."
"Can I say “way to go, doc,” now?" she grinned back at him.
"I think so," he nodded.
"Way to go, Doctor Jarod!" She raised her hand and gave him a high-five, which he returned enthusiastically. "That little girl gonna get better now fast, I bet."
"I hope so, Cindy," Jarod nodded, then reached for the stack of mail that had been delivered to the office just a little earlier to sort through it. "Ah-HAH!" he gave a triumphant crow as three of the envelopes were addressed in the way he'd specified prospective new partners for Ethan submit their applications and resumes. "I'll take these," he waved the envelopes at his receptionist and headed down the hall to his brother's office. Ethan's car had already been in its parking place when he'd gotten there.
"Either you got here REAL early, or you burned the midnight oil and never went home, little brother," Jarod commented slyly, tucking the envelopes away in his breast pocket until later as he watched his brother flinch in surprise at the interruption.
"Didn't want to go home until REAL late, and didn't want to stick around this morning at all," Ethan explained shortly - "Mom and I..."
"I heard," Jarod responded, flopping on the comfortable leather couch.
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Mom came by last night."
Ethan gave his brother a guilty grimace. "Sorry about that. I couldn't help it..."
"Nah," Jarod waved his hand. "Actually, I think your temper did some good finally - Mom came over to apologize."
"Say what?" Dark chocolate eyes, so much like those of his brother, were wide.
"Granted that it holds and wasn't just a momentary lapse, she's realized that Parker and Sydney are going to be important parts of my life from now on - AND she seems genuinely worried about Davy."
"Speaking of whom, anything new on that front?"
Jarod shook his head. "I was just getting ready to get into the meat of the SIM Missy wants me to do on that Duncan character when Mom got there. Barring any news as the day goes by, I'll try the SIM again tonight."
"Want some help?" Ethan offered.
"Couldn't hurt," Jarod replied with a nod. "Especially since I'll have someone else in the house with me after today. We'll have to wait until after supper and bedtime..."
"Jarod..." Ethan looked at his older brother in expectation.
"It's considered “Emergency Foster Care” for the moment," Jarod replied. "Got the call this morning to come in later to sign paperwork."
"Can't say I'm surprised," Ethan said, folding his arms over his chest and glaring at his brother, but he was actually more frustrated with himself than anybody else. "I suppose it was my verbal report that knocked things loose for you. I went into the shelter to see her last night after work - anything to keep from mixing it up with Mom again - Ginger's a mess, Jarod. Not quite catatonic, but definitely very shocky."
Jarod nodded. "That's kind of what I was expecting, after hearing what happened over at the Thatcher's. I'm hoping that figuring out that she's staying with me will help snap her out of it a bit."
"You're hoping for a lot," Ethan cautioned. "She may be too damaged now to..."
"No. Children are resilient, if given a reason to be." In his mind's eye, he was replaying the many ways in which Angelo had demonstrated that his reasoning powers hadn't been completely demolished by the horrendous procedures that Mr. - then Dr. - Raines had subjected him to. "She just needs to be in a completely safe and supportive environment on a continual basis."
"Your ten o'clock appointment is here, Doctor Ethan," Cindy poked her head inside the office, "and yours called to say that they'd be just a few minutes late, Doctor Jarod."
Jarod rose from the couch. "Look, I have some applications to go over with you when we have a free minute," he said, patting his shirt pocket with the envelopes in it. "Talk to you after a while."
"Catch you later," Ethan answered and then rose as Jarod opened the door for a little boy and his mother. "Hey there..."
~~~~~~~~
Father Luís Beltran was a short and almost painfully thin man who stood at the driveway of the Church of the Sacred Heart in Adelanto and watched the dusty brown Ford pickup lumber down the street. Manuel nosed the vehicle carefully over the sidewalk apron into the parking lot, whereupon Father Luís grabbed the passenger door handle and hopped up on the running board. "A la residencia," [To the residence] he directed, then hung on as the truck shuddered forward again across the smooth blacktop toward the low Spanish-style residence at the back of the property.
"Show me," he directed in terse Spanish after the truck had come to a complete halt. Manuel climbed from behind the wheel again and pulled the tarp back.
"¡Diós!" the priest whispered, appalled at the condition that both were in and the amount of blood that stained their clothing. "Help me get them inside," he ordered, pulling on the arms of the young woman and glancing up at the farm worker when he felt the fever through the thin fabric that was more than would be expected from the severity of sunburn she'd suffered. "She's burning with fever!"
"I know," Manuel replied, lifting the boy easily in his arms. "Clarita was afraid that if we didn't do something, or get them some help, they'd die."
"She's right," Father Luís replied, pulling the screen door open with a little difficulty and then letting them both into the cool interior of the residence. "Where in the world did you find them?"
"In the pastures, Father," Manuel responded, depositing the boy on an easy chair and pulling a footstool up to support his legs. "They were next to one of the cattle troughs."
"They were probably looking for water," Father Luís commented, carefully laying the young woman down on the couch and noting the parched and cracked lips that both were sporting. "Why didn't you just take them on in to the hospital?"
Manuel backed away from his finds, hat in hand and shaking his head. "I couldn't, Father. We... I mean I... don't have... If anybody asked..."
The priest had ignored the man's distress in favor of heading to the bathroom for a damp towel and a glass of water. "Did you at least try to give them some water?"
"No, Father. All I wanted to do was get them into town where they could get help." He twisted his hat in his hands. "Now, if you don't need me anymore, el patrón will be very angry with me if I don't check the other pastures..."
Father Luís simply nodded. "Diós te benediga," [God bless you] he pronounced almost absently while he lifted the young woman's head and tipped a tiny bit of water into her mouth. He didn't even turn to look when the farm worker cautiously took his leave, and only vaguely noted the sound of the door closing gently. "Come on, preciosa, drink..." His heart started beating again when the throat finally worked to take the water, and he quickly wetted the towel and placed it on her forehead and hurried to the boy. "You too, chico," he urged quietly, tipping another small amount of water into the second set of cracked and blistered lips and feeling relief when the second throat worked at taking in the life-giving liquid.
Straightening, he moved quickly to his desk and picked up the telephone and dialed 911. This was more than he was prepared to handle. He gave his address, explained his emergency and then hung up and went back to alternating between the two invalids, giving each another tiny sip of water and finding their efforts to swallow a continual relief. As he worked, he prayed for the lives of these two desperately lost souls that had somehow found their way to his doorstep.
~~~~~~~~
Cordoba watched with narrowed eyes as Duncan came out of the glass doors of the bank and waited until the traffic had cleared on the wide boulevard enough that he could sprint his way back to the aging Cadillac. "Here," he barked in a sour tone, handing over a thick envelope. "Be sure to count it - I don't want you to come back at me later telling me you got shorted some C-notes."
The Hispanic opened the envelope and lifted one end of the green bundle so that he could lick his fingers and flip through them quickly. It was all there - all twenty thousand dollars that he'd been promised. "I knew you were good for it, man," he complained, sliding the thick envelope into an inside pocket of his jacket, which had remained across his lap the entire trip from East LA to the airport district. "I just didn't figure Flores as that important to the payday."
"Yeah, well, my payday doesn't come at the same time or from the same place that yours does," Duncan informed his cohort tightly. He turned on the ignition and put the car in gear. "Where you want me to drop you off?"
"Back at Sandra's - some of the business I got, I got with them."
"Listen," Duncan warned as he eased the Cadillac onto the 405 again, "Stay away from the warehouse district and bars for a while. Just in case somebody saw us go in with them broads yesterday."
"Nobody saw us," Cordoba shook his head confidently. "And even if they did, their heads are so screwed up with one batch of shit or another that they couldn't testify to it without getting laughed out of town."
The Anglo was shaking his head. "Don't count on it, cabrón. I'm telling you, lay low for a while - and don't flash the money around much. Don't call attention to yourself, whatever you do. Go see your parole officer before you get your ass reported."
"Shit," Cordoba spat out the open window. "I don't need you to tell me how to lay low."
"LISTEN TO ME," Duncan shouted. "If the Parker bitch is onto us, you'll have the whole fuckin' Centre staff watchin' for your sorry ass to pop up somewhere in town. And if Flores has ratted us out, she'll be SURE to have them swarming all over the place very soon." Duncan grabbed the man's arm painfully. "You play choirboy for a while, you got me?"
"When I'm done with my business," Cordoba told him in a stubborn tone. "THEN I'll lay low."
Duncan let go and took the next off-ramp, knowing it to be the one closest to Ricky and Sandra's place. He couldn't play Cordoba's keeper for long - and he intended to make tracks and get as far away from the quirky Hispanic as he could as soon as the man got out of the car. Cordoba was good for laughs and a good time with whores, but he was too damned cock-sure of himself to stay out of trouble for long. Duncan had no intention of being anywhere in the vicinity when that trouble came down.
~~~~~~~~
Mioda Soichi noted the license number of the Cadillac before it could get too far down the street, and then pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
"Hai. The sighting is confirmed - Duncan and Cordoba. They're still together, moving nouth on Sepulveda toward the 405. 1990 Cadillac, metallic brown, license number 1TIQ942."
He snapped the cell phone shut. The word was going out, and the noose would soon begin to tighten. It was only a matter of time now.
~~~~~~~~
"No," Kevin was shaking his head vigorously, his eyes tightly closed. "I wouldn't take them to my uncle's ranch - if they figure out I'm involved, it would be the first place they'd look."
"Then where?" Sydney demanded urgently. Kevin had been much harder to guide into a full personality SIM than Jarod - partly because of his natural reluctance to step into the mind of a monster, and partly because of the poor training the younger Pretender had received in the process of SIMming itself. Kevin's successes had been the luck of the very talented - a level of success that could have been doubled or even trebled had Vernon only taken the proper time to train his protégé properly. Sydney's consideration for the psychiatrist/mentor that Raines had inflicted on Kevin had slipped even further.
"Somewhere close - I was raised here. I know lots of places to hide that nobody would expect, but I'd choose one I'm very familiar with. Somewhere just as isolated as my uncle's ranch..." Kevin shook his head and then suddenly opened his eyes, letting the monstrous personality that he'd been wearing like a tight suit slip away from his mind like water. "I can't see it, Sydney. I don't have enough information about Duncan's younger years to know what parts of the area he was most familiar with to postulate a possible place to search." The blue eyes filled with tears. "I can't help her... Deb..." His calling her name trailed away painfully.
"Kevin," Sydney soothed, once more frustrated that he was tied to this damned contraption with his bad leg and unable to move to comfort the young Pretender who had tried so hard. "It isn't your fault. Where would we go to get more information?" He waited, then repeated his question again in an attempt to break through Kevin's attitude of hopelessness.
The young Pretender sat up and swung the footrest of the easy chair back down. "Flores' records maybe?"
The psychiatrist pointed to the telephone handset on the coffee table, brought from the kitchen to save them both steps should a call with news come while they were working. "Call Tyler - get him to put all the information in Flores' file in your email. We need to take a break now anyway." He finally allowed himself to sink back against his pillows, surprised at himself for how tired he was. "We've been at this for hours now."
"But we didn't accomplish anything - we still don't know..."
"Kevin!" Sydney's voice grew firm and authoritative. "We've accomplished enough for the moment. We've learned we need more information." He pointed at the telephone again. "Call Tyler."
"Everything OK in here, Dr. Green?" Chet stepped into the den from the kitchen, where he'd been sitting at the table working the crossword puzzle in the morning paper. These two had been so quiet in the den until just moments ago...
"Fine," Sydney assured the sweeper while watching critically as Kevin finally rose from his chair and came over to pick up the phone and follow his instructions. "We're just both a bit on the worried side, and we've let it get to us a little more than we needed to for a moment there."
Frantic blue met solid chestnut while Kevin waited for Tyler to pick up his cell phone. Kevin's heart, which had been pounding hard in his chest at the idea of having actually failed to SIM properly, at having failed Sydney, began to slow a little. His mentor wasn't angry with him, wasn't berating him or belittling his abilities; there was no reason for him to become defensive or testy in response. For the first time since coming to stay with Sydney as a mentor, the full difference between the elder psychiatrist and Vernon Grey as mentors was readily and painfully clear.
"I'm sorry, Sydney," the young man said softly, still waiting for the call to connect.
"There's nothing to be sorry about," the psychiatrist soothed, his mind racing to evaluate the session itself before all the responses and events were lost. It had become obvious as the SIM had progressed that Kevin's mismanagement as a Pretender under Vernon Grey's aegis was having all sorts of repercussions. His mood at exiting a SIM was fragile and defensive, as if expecting abuse from his trainer. In fact, his entire personality when functioning AS a Pretender was fragile, ephemeral, VERY unstable. There was no sense of self-confidence in the process or in the talent that had justified his training. This lack of self-confidence had been only hinted at in previous mainstreaming situations and at the time assumed to be merely the consequence of ignorance. Obviously, the self-esteem and self-confidence issues ran much deeper than he'd expected.
Sydney knew that, as far as he was concerned, it would be better if Kevin never ran another SIM in his life. For one thing, he himself was too old to undertake the process of completely restructuring Kevin's conditioning as a Pretender from the ground up. The damage to the young man through mismanagement and probable abuse had been allowed to go on for too long to ever fully heal. There had to be another use to which that kind of powerful intellect could be put - Pretending, for Kevin, was to stretch his mind almost past the breaking point and, if continued, could do irreparable harm to the entire psyche.
No, the psychiatrist decided, his task in regards to this exceptional young man would be to mentor him back into finding a niche within mainstream society where his intellect would eventually find its own comfortable avenue through which to find expression. He then closed his eyes and gnashed his teeth as the first twinges that told him his pain medication was beginning to wear off completely echoed through the knee and radiated upward through his thigh. Having his mind partially clouded with a fog of pain medication wasn't helping matters either. Part of Kevin's difficulties with this SIM could easily have been his own mentoring skills having fallen into disuse, combined with slow reaction times from the drugs.
The CPM therapy machine continued to hum and extend his leg upwards into the air slowly, each inch of movement becoming a new adventure in pain. "Kevin," Sydney ground out finally as he saw rather than heard the phone get put back down again, "I could use some more pain meds fairly soon now."
Kevin blanched when his mentor actually ASKED for the medication, then looked at his watch and sprinted to the kitchen for a glass of water and the pill bottle. Sydney was right - the SIM had gone on for hours, at least one hour longer than the older man should have gone without taking another dose. "You should have had us take a break sooner," he chided the older man gently, putting one of the tablets into a now-shaking hand.
"Didn't want to break your concentration," Sydney told him tightly. "And if you'd discovered something, it would have been worth it." He tossed the pill into his mouth and immediately began drinking the water to wash it down.
"Please don't do it again," the young man begged him. "Remember the doctor told you that the pain is something you don't need to go through."
"I'll remember," the psychiatrist promised both his protégé and himself. He patted Kevin's shoulder as the young man crouched next to him. "Go take a walk in the back yard for me, will you? At least one of us deserves to take time to stretch his legs and breathe some fresh air."
"Are you going to be OK?"
He patted the Pretender's shoulder again. "I will be as soon as that pill kicks in, and your standing over me won't help that along. Go on now - go relax for a bit while Tyler ships you that material."
"He told me that Jarod had called last night for the same material," Kevin announced as he headed for the arcadia door. "Jarod hit the same dead end - just a bit earlier than we did."
"See?" Sydney closed his eyes and concentrated on feeling the medication start to work the moment it hit his system. "You didn't fail - if Jarod hit the same brick wall, it wasn't you."
Kevin didn't answer, but walked slowly across the back yard until he could rest a hand on one of the bottom rungs of the cobbled ladder into Davy's tree house. Somehow, even knowing Jarod had had the same trouble didn't help the feeling that he'd failed Deb somehow.
~~~~~~~~
"Thanks. I owe you HUGE!" Tyler smiled largely and disconnected his call. He leaned back in his chair and sighed in relief. The dirty job was done - he'd talked one of his former co-workers into taking a trip down into the morgue and firing up the old furnace to take care of very ripe and probably very messy human remains that had sat there unattended in the weeks since the explosion. Phil knew the probable state of affairs down there and had NOT been at all eager, but with a promise of a steak dinner Friday night and all the beer he could drink after work tonight, he'd finally agreed.
At least the engineers at the meeting earlier had confirmed that the natural gas piping to the underground complex hadn't suffered greatly -that any breaks in the line had been at ground level and were already repaired. This meant that the vast furnace could be fired up at any time safely. And if he knew Miss Parker's intent about such things at all, this was probably the LAST time the cremation furnace would see any action at all. Not that that bothered HIM any...
Completely at loose ends for the moment and growing curious by the moment, Tyler picked up the phone again and dialed another set of numbers.
"Sam Atlee here."
"Sam - it's Tyler. Just thought I'd check in and see how things were going over there on the other side of Creation."
Sam let out a tired burst of air. "Well, other than trying to make some sense of what we have left here, I'm standing in Flores' office tearing the place apart bit by bit."
"I thought the feds had already done that..."
"They did," the ex-sweeper admitted, "but knowing Flores for the loose cannon that he was, there has to be SOMETHING that we've missed."
"Like what?" Tyler leaned back in his chair and tried to imagine Sam and his surroundings.
"I'm not sure - I suppose I'll know it when I find it," Sam answered tiredly. "How are things going on that end?"
"As smoothly as they can, I suppose. Our Pretenders seem to be in sync so far - Jarod called last night and now Kevin called today for all the information we have on Flores, personal notes confiscated after the bombing from his hotel room - that kind of thing..." Tyler took a breath. "How'd things go delivering Fujimori?"
"Fine. Mayeda promises his best efforts. I'm hoping that by the end of the day..." Sam pushed the heavy leather chair out from behind the massive desk so that he could examine the seams.
"I hate just sitting around and waiting - I feel like I should be out DOING something..." Tyler grumbled as he rose and stomped over to the small casement window and stared out at the demolition work at once was the Tower.
"Just keep Miss Parker's day running smoothly," Sam suggested. "And make sure that she has adequate sweeper coverage, no matter where she goes - even within the Centre itself."
"You suspect something?" Tyler demanded in a worried tone.
"Not really, but I'm not taking chances anymore," the Security Chief told his colleague soberly. "I'm going back to tearing this place apart. You keep in touch, and I'll be talking to you when we get news from here."
~~~~~~~~
"This is Crandall."
"The information sheet we got from the Police Department this morning said that YOU were to be notified in the event of two people matching the description of a little boy and young woman were admitted to the hospital?" a woman's voice inquired in a professional tone.
"That's right... Wait a minute - who is this?" Crandall sat up straighter and waved madly for his assistant to pick up the phone and listen in, then pulled paper and pen close enough to use.
"My name is Doctor Shirley Dannings, and I'm the attending ER physician at Adelanto General. A few minutes ago, an ambulance delivered two patients to our ER that appear to match your description." The doctor turned slightly and watched her team working over the young woman on the bed nearest to her. Just beyond the cream-colored curtains she knew that another team was working just as feverishly over the young boy.
"What is their condition?" Crandall demanded as he wrote a quick “CALL ATLEE AT CENTRE OFFICE - HAVE HIM COME HERE NOW” and flashed it at another agent standing close.
"Dehydration, severe exposure - the young woman has a fairly deep cut on one foot and some indication of physical or sexual assault. Both are currently on IV saline to rehydrate and topical anesthetic creams to relieve the pain from the sunburns - the woman we've put on antibiotics for the infection in both the foot and the bite marks. We'll run a rape kit, just to be sure..." Doctor Dannings read from her notes. "Do you have any instructions for us?"
"No, no, not at the moment." Crandall was rising from his chair. "Are the patients conscious?"
"Not yet, but we're hoping the boy will revive soon. His condition is the most stable of the two."
"We're on our way, Doctor. And THANK YOU!" Crandall hung up the phone with force. "Did you get a hold of Atlee?"
"He's on his way," Javitz replied immediately, still in the process of hanging up the phone from making the call. "Is it the kids?"
Crandall was sliding into his sports coat. "God, I sure as Hell hope so. It's about time for the good guys to score at least one, dontcha think?" He pointed. "Get a car ready - we're outta here the moment Atlee arrives!"
