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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Truth and Consequences - by MMB
Chapter 7: Quicksand
"This is nice," Deb said, looking around the restaurant. The décor was western, with the walls in unfinished wood branded at irregular intervals with what she imagined were the brands of major ranches out west. Here and there were mounted horns, branding irons, and framed displays of barbed wire. "A little out of place over here on the East Coast..."
Tyler smiled and picked a peanut out of the little metal pan that sat between them. "I found it a few years back and try to come in every once in a while. I think that I would have been very comfortable living life as a cowboy a hundred years ago..."
"You're nuts," she replied wrinkling her nose a bit. "Life expectancy was barely into the forties or fifties for men, younger for women. Very little medical help available, sanitation non-existent..."
"You're just spoiled by civilization," he smiled back at her slyly. "I bet that if you had a chance to be out on the open range, in the fresh air with nothing to worry about except finding a decent place to build a fire and camp for the evening under the stars, you'd learn to like it."
"Have you? Spent time that way, I mean?" Deb reached out for a peanut of her own.
"My grand-uncle had a ranch down near El Paso, and after my folks died I spent a year there with him." Tyler sat back with a contented smile on his face. "Spent most of that year on the back of a horse or mending fences - but I loved it."
"Are you from Texas originally?"
"Yes, ma'am," he replied with a slightly more pronounced drawl. "Born and raised in San Antonio until I was sixteen, then spent a year on the ranch - on my own after that."
They both sat back as the waitress brought them their salads and waited until she had walked away before leaning forward again. "What happened to your folks? IF you don't mind my asking..." Deb asked gently.
Tyler shrugged. "Car accident. We were comin' back from a picnic in the country and had a head-on with a drunk who forgot what side of the road he was supposed to be on." He busied himself with cutting a bite from his steak.
"I'm sorry - I didn't mean to pry..."
"It's OK," he replied, looking up again. "It just hit me that you've got your daddy in the hospital - and this might be a bit of a touchy subject for you." He waved his hand. "Anyway, after the ranch, I kinda bounced from one thing to the next - about three years ago ended up here. I applied for a job as a sweeper - thought I had it made with my black belt and such - but couldn't cut it when it came to guns." At her wide-eyed look, he pointed to his head. "Punctured eardrums. Target practice is agony."
"Is that how you ended up in the morgue instead?" Deb shuddered. "How could you work down there?"
"It ain't that bad," he said with a shake of the head. "I wasn't no coroner - my job was just to keep track of the bodies coming in and making sure they got released to the right folk in time. It was the only other opening at the time, and I was ready to stop roaming for a while. Besides," he shot her a grin, "I figured that I might be able to move into something more interesting if I stuck around. And now just look..."
Debbie smiled back at him. "You're lucky you met Miss Parker now - you should have known her years ago, before she adopted Davy..."
Tyler frowned. "I thought Davy WAS her son."
"He is." Deb sighed. "It's a REAL long story, but when she adopted him, she THOUGHT he was her little half-brother. She didn't find out he was really hers until just a little while ago."
"How the hell does a woman NOT know if a child is hers?" Tyler's brows were curled together in real confusion.
Deb looked at him directly. "How much do you know about the Centre? REALLY?" she asked back.
Tyler immediately thought of his shock as Miss Parker had laid out the way the Centre had been run during his days as morgue assistant. "How much do YOU know?" he retorted.
"A lot more than you might think," she said dryly, carefully taking a bite of her baked potato. "My Dad has worked for Miss Parker for twelve years, and I'm not dumb. I heard him talking on the phone to Miss Parker and Sydney off and on for years - and I finally was able to put two and two together. I figured I had it right when I started to chime in every once in a while and none of them ever told me I was wrong. For one thing, were you aware that Miss Parker's job for years was to try to track Jarod down and haul him back to the Centre to work like a virtual slave? Did you know that Grandpa Sydney raised Jarod from a very young boy not knowing that he wasn't an orphan but rather had been stolen from his family because of his kind of genius? Did you know that Uncle Jarod has been CLONED?"
The Texan put his knife and fork down carefully on his plate and stared at the pretty girl across the table from him. "WHAT??"
Deb shrugged. "If an organization is willing to do that kind of stuff, I bet you can use your imagination and figure out how a woman becomes a mother without her knowledge - or how a man can father a child without knowing it either."
"Holy guacamole!" Tyler shook his head in disbelief. "Miss Parker told me a few things - but nothing like THIS."
"Yeah, well, she's worked long and hard to put those days behind her," Deb defended her friend and surrogate mother, "as have both Sydney and my Dad. Even Jarod is letting bygones be bygones. And now Miss P's got a chance to turn the Centre around. Knowing her, she's probably got her mind focused on that and nothing else. For “the rest of the story,” you'll have to talk to Sydney or Jarod - or my Dad."
"Or Sam?"
The pretty blonde shrugged. "He's pretty protective of her, you know..."
"I'm not wanting to hurt her, Deb, I promise - just know what the hell I've got myself in the middle of."
"Go ahead, then, talk to him," Deb suggested evenly, sipping at her ice tea. "He can't do much worse than tell you to take a hike. He's a pretty honest guy - even if he can't play checkers worth beans - ask him in the right way, and he'll give you an earful."
Tyler busied himself with his meal for a while, struggling to wrap his mind around the idea that the history of the Centre was far more convoluted and unpleasant than he'd already been told. "What about Kevin?" he asked finally. "Where does he come in?"
"Kevin's like Jarod - he was raised by the Centre because of the kind of genius he has. Sam and another guy rescued him from where he was being kept about a week before the Tower blew up." Deb looked down at her steak. Kevin was NOT on her list of preferred topics of discussion. "Grandpa and I are working with him - trying to get him used to living out here in the real world."
"And you're living with Sydney now too?"
She nodded. "Only until my Dad comes home, though," she added. "I just don't want to be alone all by myself in the house - and Grandpa is still mending from his surgery. Kevin and I make sure he keeps getting better and not doing too much anymore."
Tyler tipped his head. "And what about you?"
"Me?"
"I'd think a smart and pretty girl your age would be headed off to school and a life of her own by now."
Deb looked up and then back down again, and Tyler knew he'd touched another nerve. "I was, until the explosion and my Dad was hurt. I'm hoping everything works out that I can go for the next term."
"What's your major?"
She smiled at him. Now THIS was much more like it. "I want to be a counselor," she announced. "I like helping people."
"I can see that," Tyler commented quietly, then smiled as a light blush spread across her face. He'd successfully steered the conversation back to much safer territory, for which he was grateful. One thing was for certain, he'd not underestimate her understanding of situations or consequences having to do with the Centre again. Evidently when it came to the Centre, even Deb wasn't as much of an innocent as he'd thought.
~~~~~~~~
Ikeda peeked out of the supply room door and then strolled out into the hospital hallway as if he belonged there. With the cultural diversity of Dover, it wasn't hard to look as if he did - in Tokyo it would have been far more difficult for a gai-jin to wander about the hallways of a hospital in medical garb without causing some comment. He draped the stethoscope about his neck casually and proceeded down the hallway to the nurse's station and the rack of charts there. With an eye well-trained to pick up on clues quickly, he located Ngawe's chart and noted the room number from the rack, then strolled down that hallway.
Yes, there it was - unmistakable with the burly African bodyguard standing at alert ease by the doorway. Ikeda centered himself, as his ninja sensei had trained him to do all those many years ago, and then stopped in front of the hulking man - who gazed down at him like a prized bull eyeing a Spanish toreador. Ikeda bent forward as if he wished to speak to the man, and then when the man bent forward to him, sent his fingers directly into the man's larynx and then slammed his nose straight up into his skull.
The slight Japanese managed to toe open the hospital room door and aim the body's staggering fall to inside the room expertly, with the door closing quickly behind him before anybody noticed any commotion. Ikeda eased the man into a nearby chair to slowly choke to death on his own blood in agonized peace while he himself stepped closer to sleeping man in the bed completely unimpeded. Carefully he removed the summons button that would call the nurse so that it would be completely out of reach for the patient. Then, with a quick glance around the room to make sure that he wouldn't be observed, he then placed his hand over Ngawe's nose and mouth and pressed - hard.
Ngawe came awake immediately and groped wildly for the button to summon help, his eyes wide and panicked at his inability to breath. Ikeda's eyes glinted coldly in the dim light of the room. "Don't bother, Ngawe-san. The button is out of reach, and your guard is in no shape to be of assistance any longer." He moved just enough so that the frightened old man could see his bodyguard, the front of his shirt and suit jacket now streaked with blood. "If you attempt to cry out, I will kill you as you lie here. Do you understand me?" The elderly man in the bed nodded beneath Ikeda's hand, which then slipped from over the mouth and nose to a dangerous position over the larynx.
"What do you want of me?" Ngawe whispered as that was all he could do with what little air the hand at his throat was giving him. All pretense of autocracy had evaporated with the knowledge that this short and slight man literally held his life in his hand - and was capable of snuffing it out like a candle flame.
"To give you a warning, Ngawe-san. My name is Ikeda - Ikeda Katsuhito. You know me - or OF me, at any rate."
Ngawe stared. "Yo... you're our inside man in the Yakuza."
"WAS your inside man in Tokyo - the past tense being the operant concept here," Ikeda corrected boldly. "Were you ever made aware of my function within the Yakuza, Mr. Ngawe?" The African man shook his head fearfully. "I am an assassin - but no ordinary crude killer. I'm the man they call when others fail." The Japanese grinned coldly when he began to see the whites of his victim's eyes. "So you may rest assured that if I WANTED to kill you, you would already BE dead."
"What... what do you want of me?" Ngawe asked again in an even softer, more strangled tone.
"Tonight, I am only a messenger - I want only your complete and absolute attention. Do I have it?" Ngawe nodded desperately. "Good. Then here is your message. Consider yourself now duly informed that, in response to your ordering the murder of Tanaka Setsuo and raid on the Yakuza warehouse in LA, a contract has been issued on your life."
"I thought you said you weren't going to kill me..." the African whimpered.
"I told you that if I wanted you dead, you already would be," Ikeda repeated coldly, "and right now, I don't care one way or the other. However, our long and profitable business arrangement has bought you one incidence of moderate allegiance. Despite my order, I am NOT going to kill you." The Japanese assassin then grinned again, showing his predatory white teeth. "This does not mean, however, that when my Yakuza superior finds out that I've not carried out his order, that another like me cannot be engaged and dispatched for the same purpose. While my skills are highly specialized, I am by no means unique - and the next assassin sent to you WILL succeed, I promise you."
"What must I do..."
"Listen to me. Your stupid attacks on the Yakuza must cease. The man who set this disaster into motion has already been sent to his ancestors through his own stupidity, as has his father through your need for revenge. Two lives in exchange for your permanent discomfort seems a fair bargain." Ikeda eased up on the man's throat. "Any more deaths at this point would be of men on either side who had no part in what happened - and so their deaths would be without purpose or honor."
"Many of my men died that day," Ngawe began, massaging his throat with a shaking hand.
"Many Yakuza died that day as well," Ikeda hissed, "including the head of the Tokyo clan. And believe it or not, but I tried to avert the bombing - I was only seconds too late dispatching the man whose finger pushed that button."
"You! You killed the bomber?"
"On Tanaka-sama's orders," Ikeda informed him bluntly. "This war is a stupid and honorless waste of time, money, resources and lives. Neither your organization nor the Yakuza can afford it."
"I... we will consider what you've said," the African agreed reluctantly. Feeling a tiny bit more secure, he had unconsciously slipped back into his habitual speech patterns.
Ikeda's eyebrows worked subtlely as if amused by Ngawe's ridiculous attempt to reassert his dominance. "You will, or you won't - it is as the gods and karma would have it. But you have been warned, and given a temporary stay of execution. My advice to you is to use your borrowed time wisely. Sayonara, Ngawe-san."
Ngawe's eyes widened again as the slight Japanese man stepped back from the bed, bowed deeply, and then turned and seemed to almost evaporate from the room. As if coming out of a trance, he pushed himself up on first one hand and then another looking for the summons button, only to find it far out of reach.
Resigned to being left in a room with a slowly dying bodyguard and no way to summon help, he settled down in his bed until the next time the nurses would come and check on him, pondering what Ikeda had told him. And getting angrier by the moment.
~~~~~~~~
"What?"
"How was your day today?"
Miss Parker curled her feet up on the couch and leaned into the cushions against the arm. "Took care of some of my problem supervisors today - and Sam has the worst of the lot on ice. Mostly busy work." She debated telling him about WHY Sam had taken Flores and put him “on ice,” but decided not to worry him. After all, what could he do from California besides worry? "How about you?"
"Not bad." Jarod sprawled on his bed, one arm behind his head and the other holding the handset to his ear. "Actually did some therapy sessions today - amid planning sessions with Ethan about getting him a new partner for the practice for when I leave." He closed his eyes and pictured her lying on the bed next to him. "How was Davy today?"
"Much more manageable. He even helped put together a lunch for me."
Jarod chuckled. "Sydney's got a good system of discipline - you gotta admit."
"Speaking of whom... Guess who decided to start calling in to work so that he could get a handle on things a little better?"
"Are you really surprised?" He rolled and put the handset beneath his ear. "Sydney is a workaholic from way back - I'm amazed we've managed to get him to slow down as much as we have."
"Well, I told Kate to feed him the kind of stuff that will keep his mind occupied without worrying him too much about nut and bolts logistics." Miss Parker ran her fingers through her hair and pulled it back from her face. "Oh, and guess who is out to dinner in Dover with a certain handsome young assistant?"
Jarod blinked. "Deb? Oh boy! I bet Kevin wasn't happy about that!"
"Not in the least!" She laughed. "I brought pizza home for supper so that Deb wouldn't be cooking, and Kevin spent most of the meal pouting and surly. Syd took me aside later and told me that Kevin had thought that since I was the first girl YOU saw, and our relationship seems to be going gangbusters, that since Deb was the first girl HE saw..."
"It's not funny, Parker," Jarod chided gently. "I remember those days all too well - and you were VERY hard to get out of my mind. In a way, Kevin's lucky that his experience with girls will take place in a far more normal manner and setting."
Miss Parker sat up straighter. "I know it isn't really funny, Jarod. It's just that he's such a little boy about her."
"Deb just knocked a little bit of stability out of his brand-new world," Jarod explained patiently. "Being cooped up like we were, and so totally out of control of our world, it's only instinct that we crave having things easily understood and constant once we find ourselves out here in the “real” world. Deb's been a part of Kevin's world “out here” from the get-go." He thought for a moment. "How IS Sydney doing - healing on schedule still?"
"So far, so good - and, like I say, he's starting to get cabin fever." Miss Parker leaned again. "I think that I'm going to set him to sorting through the archives the moment we start getting that stuff out of the sublevels." She put a hand over her eyes. "Considering that there are a lot of questions that we need answered - not the least of which being where Kevin came from - I figure that Syd would be the most logical choice in archivist for a while. It will give him something to do at work without being too strenuous."
"I like that idea." Jarod nodded agreement, then thought for a moment. He REALLY needed to talk to her... "Parker, there's something else I want to run past you..."
"What's that?" she asked, stretching her legs out on the couch.
"Uh... Do you remember me talking about that little girl I'd been working with?" he began lamely, grimacing at his own inadequate strategy.
"I think so - the one that was so withdrawn? The one you worried about?"
"Yeah."
"How are things with her? Have you seen her yet?"
"Things aren't so good with her, Parker." Jarod paused, still not entirely sure how to approach the subject. "Her foster parents are starting to talk institutionalization for her."
A tiny voice spoke in the back of her mind, and Miss Parker sat up again abruptly. "Jarod..." Then she considered just whom she was talking to. "OK. What's going on, and what are you planning?"
He blinked. She must have had the voices helping her again, damn it, because that was a very big leap in the discussion accomplished with nothing said. "You should know that I was thinking this long before I went back to Delaware," he explained in a slightly defensive tone.
"Alright," she accepted warily. "But just what is this “this” you're talking about?"
"She reminds me of you... in a way... or me, or even Angelo..."
"Jarod..." The exasperation was growing noticeable.
"She needs a good home - and people who love her." Jarod barreled ahead, knowing that he'd passed the point of no return on the discussion. "I want to give her that home."
She pulled her hair out of her face again. "Are you talking adoption, or just legal guardianship?"
"I'd like it to be adoption, Parker."
She stared into the empty and dark hearth for a long moment. "Adoptions take months to be finalized. I know - Davy's took almost a year. I thought..."
"Missy, I don't know how long it is going to take before I can leave this place anyway," he told her gently. "I still have a mother who is fighting me tooth and toenail over this - a house to sell, a new partner for Ethan to find..." He sighed. "I've talked to a lawyer, to get some of the preliminaries going - but I wanted to talk to you before I'd done anything else... I need to know if you'll support me on this."
"Jarod," she sighed, "what do you want me to say? We already have a child - one who misses his daddy very much. And besides, where would we put her? We don't exactly have a spare bedroom here..."
"Davy would be better for having a little sister," Jarod presented his arguments to counter hers. "And as for the house - we can add a room, or buy a bigger place. Those are really minor considerations, and you know it."
"Would it really be fair to that little girl to pull her all the way across the continent, to live with a bunch of strangers?"
Jarod sighed again. "She's already living with a bunch of strangers - and has been for years. Her parents are both addicts and in jail for God knows how long, and she was part of the reason they landed in jail because they abandoned her after abusing her. Believe me, Missy, moving cross-continentally is a very small thing."
"Then let's get to the more important stuff - like I'm not sure I could handle a special needs child, Jarod," Miss Parker finally admitted reluctantly. "Face it. Both of us are intending to work at the Centre when you get back - and both jobs are going to be fairly time-intensive for quite a while. This little girl sounds like she needs some constant one-on-one nurturing for a long time to help her recover. I don't know that either you or I will be able to give her that." She listened and could almost hear the disappointment pouring through the phone line at her. "I know you really want to help her - I can appreciate the urgency too. Why don't you work on finding her a family THERE who would want to take care of her the way she deserves?"
"I love her, Missy."
"I know you do, or you wouldn't be thinking this way. But you're not thinking clearly right now - your emotions are clouding your judgement." She put her head in her hand. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're a Pretender - ACT like one. You need to SIM this out properly, Jarod - work the SIM the way you're supposed to, without letting your feelings for the girl become part of the equation. You need to honestly and frankly consider all the variables and possible obstacles and potholes of what you're suggesting we do. I think you'll come to agree with me. Help her, yes - but keep her yourself? I don't think so." She lowered her voice. "Besides, when the time comes for us to give Davy a sister or brother, there are other more interesting ways to do that."
She could hear the long sigh on the other end of the line. "I was really hoping I could convince you..."
"I know you were, Jarod - and if the circumstances were different, I might be more amenable. But... SIM it out, Jarod. We'll talk about it again when you have, I promise."
"I miss you," he sighed at her forlornly.
"I miss you too," she sighed back at him. "And Davy misses you dreadfully."
"Where is he, anyway?"
"He and Kevin found a game they can play over the Internet - he's on the computer at the moment. Do you want to say hi to him?"
"Sure." Jarod rolled onto his back again, his eyes staring at the spackling on the ceiling. She was right, he needed to SIM out the situation with Ginger properly - setting his own personal feelings aside entirely - something he HADN'T done before. But not having her agreement immediately was still a disappointment. Maybe talking with Davy for a moment...
"Hi, Daddy!"
~~~~~~~~
Flores was definitely getting tired, and his feet were aching painfully now. The monsters behind the one-way glass weren't even letting him lean against a wall. The hours had crept by, and each one had sapped him of some of his self-assurance. He had been given two trips to the restroom - episodes of humiliation where his keepers with their fingers on the button stood directly next to him at the urinal or in front of him as he relieved himself in a stall. He had reluctantly made what could have proven to be a great rest for him into as short a time as possible - sitting in front of two cold-eyed sweepers on a toilet with his pants about his ankles was NOT restful in the least.
He glanced down at his wrist and frowned again as he rubbed where his watch used to be and shifted his weight from one foot to the next again. There was no way to tell the passing of time - this particular little room had no windows and just a bare light bulb that didn't flicker at all. He sighed and lifted one sore foot after another from the floor to rest it and the leg it was attached to, his arms now folded around himself and tucked under each other in an attempt at self-comfort.
And yet, his determination to keep his mouth shut was still strong. For as long as that bruja didn't know what “do it” meant - to him, or to HER - he held the high cards in this poker game. The thought of her face when the deed was done was all that was holding him together now - and only barely at that. Certainly Duncan had figured out that something was wrong when he hadn't called him back with further instructions, and was smart enough to have packed up and found somewhere else to hole up while the surveillance was going on. And the men Duncan had acquired to do the surveillance - and the snatch later - he, Flores, didn't know. It had been planned that way - the less he knew, the less likely the plan was to be foiled.
The door in the little room opened, and Sam and another sweeper bearing a single chair came in. From the look in Sam's face, the day was getting pretty long for the bruja's Security Chief - and Flores threw up a rebellious sneer. "You look tired, poor baby," he snickered as the large man settled into the chair.
Sam merely gazed at the obviously hurting former supervisor, not a trace of a single emotion floating behind that dark gaze. "I was just in the area, and stopped by before I left for the day to see if you had changed your mind about telling us what “do it” is all about."
Flores carefully shifted his weight to the other foot, grimacing as he put it back down on the floor and picked up the other foot for its brief rest against the other ankle. "I think the way I put it the last time you asked was “fuck you”," he growled as he swayed. Damn! Keeping his balance on one foot was getting harder now too.
The ex-sweeper had seen that slight wobble, and it confirmed the state Flores had gotten to - just as anticipated. With a nod at the one-way glass, the door opened again and another pair of sweepers came into the room. They roughly hauled Flores' arms out of their comfort zone and around his back, where they handcuffed them. The movement brought the other foot back down to the floor - and as one sweeper held the man still, another set of handcuffs was attached around the ankles. When the sweepers stepped back, Flores knew that his balance was now severely compromised should he try to lift a foot to rest it - not to mention that doing so would pull the other foot right out from under him.
"Well, then, let me tell you how things go from here, Mr. “Fuck you”," Sam said dangerously, rising from his chair to once more tower over the Hispanic. "We're going to add another dimension to our game of cat and mouse. Not only will you receive a shock if you attempt to rest at all, but you will now receive one minute of shock every fifteen minutes. Those shocks will start at a very low level and then grow as time passes. If you lose your balance and fall, my men will simply lock the button in "shock" position and come in to put you back on your feet - so I suggest you NOT fall."
Flores merely glared up at him, knowing that anything he said would only make the new conditions of his confinement more onerous. He knew that eventually his arms would begin to cramp from being held behind him, and that if he DID fall while being shocked, he stood a good chance of hurting himself.
It was only a matter of time before he broke. He was exhausted and his muscles brutally sore from what had gone before. The bruja and her diablo knew their business well.
Damn them!
~~~~~~~~
Tyler pulled his coupe to a halt in front of Sydney's front yard - and for the first time noticed the dark Centre sedan parked across the street with a man sitting in the car. "Deb," he touched the arm of the woman next to him and pointed. "Look."
"That's Dave," Deb answered easily, unbuckling her seat belt. "He's the night sweeper."
"Miss Parker has you under surveillance?" Tyler folded his brow in confusion again.
"No," Deb explained patiently. "They're there for protection." She smiled at her companion. "Thank you for a lovely evening, Cody. The food was great, just as you promised."
"My pleasure, ma'am," Tyler drawled as he climbed from the car and came around the front to open the door for her and hand her out. "Thank you for coming with me. It's so much more pleasant eating out with such charming company."
Deb smiled and felt her cheeks warm slightly as her companion tucked her arm into the crook of his elbow and escorted her to the front door of the house. "I'd like to see you again," Tyler said as he released her hand from his elbow and took both hands in his.
"I think I'd like that too," she said softly. "I had a good time."
"Can I call you?" he asked, smiling widely.
"Sure. I'm usually either at Oggie's or here - unless I'm on my way to Dover to see my Dad." She smiled back. "I'll tell Sydney that you might call for me."
"Good." He still held her hands warmly in his.
"Yeah."
"Well, then, I suppose I should let you go in."
She looked over her shoulder at the lit porch light. "Yeah. I have to work in the morning..."
"Goodnight then," he said, still holding her hands.
"Goodnight, Cody."
Taking a chance, Tyler leaned in and dropped an awkward kiss on her cheek, then let go of her hands. "See you."
"Yeah. Take care."
Deb had her hand on the doorknob and watched him walk down the sidewalk to his car and climb in after giving her a jaunty wave of the hand. With a happy sigh, she opened the door and let herself into the house, then shut the porch light off after locking the door behind her.
Tyler drove off, feeling as if on top of the world - not noticing at all the second dark car parked just around the corner from the other. It, too, had a man sitting patiently in the dark - taking notes.
~~~~~~~~
"Harrison here."
"You're working late tonight, Chief..."
The Police Chief leaned back comfortably in his chair. "So are you, for that matter, FBI-man. What can I do for you?"
"It's more what I can do for you for a change." Gillespie looked down at the report in his hand with a photo attached. "I have a name for you: Damien Winwood."
Harrison sat up straight, and his feet hit the floor with a thump. "You got an ID on the John Doe in the morgue??"
"Yup. And a rap sheet that is VERY interesting. Seems our Mr. Winwood trained as a demolitions expert and spent three years in the CIA in black ops until his bosses decided they didn't like the way he ENJOYED his job and canned him. He's been free-lancing as an arsonist and demolitions man for the last twelve years - no arrests, but plenty of cases that he was a suspect..."
"Demolitions, eh?"
"Yeah." Now it was the FBI agent's turn to lean back comfortably. "With enough contacts left over from his CIA days to keep him on top of the latest developments in technology - whether it be here in the States... or in Japan."
"He's our bomber, then," Harrison nodded.
"It also may explain the gardener's body too. Getting into the Tower was going to take real planning. My guess is that the gardener was killed to give Winwood the cover he needed to slip in without drawing attention." Gillespie closed the folder and tossed it on his desk. "That explains why none of the gardeners you interviewed noticed anything."
"OK," the Police Chief scratched his head tiredly. "That still leaves us with who killed the bomber - and why."
Gillespie closed his eyes. "Considering the way he was killed, it was a hit - it HAD to be. So whoever killed him knew what she or he was doing."
"We're back to mob connections, then?" Harrison asked in frustration. "Shit - everywhere we turn, we bump into one mob or another here lately."
"I know." The FBI agent shared the Police Chief's frustration on that score. "And the Yakuza guy in the hospital isn't talking either."
"The answer to all of this has to be in the Centre itself somewhere," Harrison growled. "That place gives me the creeps."
"Let me see what I can pry out of the Centre now," Gillespie cautioned the Police Chief. "Miss Parker and I are on slightly better terms than we were a day ago - maybe I can talk her into telling us a little more of what she knows."
Harrison laughed a short and dry cough. "Miss Parker, give you a straight answer? The day a Parker gives a lawman a straight answer, you can be sure Hell has frozen over. I saw that lady in action years ago when a man she was involved with was murdered. She's a real piece of work, that one..."
"Nonetheless," Gillespie stated patiently. "Give me a day to see what I can pry out of her. In the meanwhile, I'll see if I can get any of our mob snitches to nose out word about Winwood's last job."
"Keep me informed," Harrison sighed, and then ended the call. He rose from behind his desk and went over to the bulletin board and looked at the photograph of the formerly unidentified body found near the Centre on the night it exploded. "Winwood, eh? Just who'd you piss off, anyway?"
~~~~~~~~
Rodriguez was in the lead car of a three car team driving along the Long Beach waterfront heading for the Port Authority and Customs warehouse. It had taken the better part of a day to arrange and pay the bribes that were going to get them through the gates so that they could intercept Lot 83 before it was logged in. The dark cars stayed in the shadows as they drew close to where the Toru Maru was docked and brightly lit with halogen floodlights. The cranes pulling the cargo containers from the belly of the cargo ship were moving slowly and gracefully as usual.
Not many knew about the back gate to the Customs warehouse - but Rodriguez's money had bought both the location and a conveniently unchained gate. At a gesture, a ski masked associate slipped from the lead car and pushed the gates open so as not to leave marks on the dark sedan. The three cars slipped through the gate and headed toward the back of the warehouse, where that door had been left unlocked as well.
Ski masks were pulled into place as the men poured from the cars and found the darkest shadows that lay waiting for them along the metal walls of the building. A silent signal from Rodriguez had the man closest to the door testing the knob, then pushing it open just enough that he and those who followed could slip in unobserved.
All was as expected until the back door of the warehouse quietly clicked shut - and suddenly the interior of the building was flooded with light. "Federal agents, gentlemen. Freeze!" The sound of numerous weapons being cocked and readied to fire filled the air - and the main group of Rodriguez' men found themselves surrounded by men in dark flack jackets and helmets.
Praying with all his might that he was still unobserved, Rodriguez reached behind him for the knob of the door. He twisted it and, still watching the spectacle taking place in front of him as one by one his gang brothers dropped to their knees and then face-down on the cement floor, started to ease out the door.
"Nice try," a deep voice announced as a heavy hand landed on his shoulder, propelling him back into the building and toward the knot of agents handcuffing the rest of the gang. "Join the party, ése..." Rodriguez grimaced as he, too, was forced to first endure a thorough body search, then get pushed first to his knees and then face-down on the floor. His mind was ablaze.
Flores was the only one who had known what was going to go down - that little prick must have set him up. But why? No matter - when and if he ever got out of the juzgado, he'd see to it that Flores' outfit paid the price. Nobody but NOBODY messed with Los Cabrones de Los Angeles and was allowed to get away with it!
Not for long, anyway...
~~~~~~~~
Gilbert Flores was in agonizing pain. The muscles in his legs were so tired now that they were cramping without the need for the electrical stimulus, and it was getting harder and harder to stay erect. Twice now he had fallen - and as promised, the current to his calf muscle had been turned on again while the silent and forbidding hulks responsible for his “care” had come and dragged him back to his feet. He'd lost count of the quarter-hour shocks that had been administered since the bruja's Security Chief had left the room, but he knew several more hours had elapsed.
His nose had bled profusely after the second fall, for he'd forgotten to roll and landed with his face impacting the floor, and now it was another source of agony. The first fall he'd been wise enough to twist slightly so as to land on his shoulder - not realizing that with his hands cuffed behind him, the impact on the shoulder was even more painful than it would have otherwise been.
And now he knew the time was drawing near for the next minute's worth of electricity running through his leg. Just the thought of the cramping in the one was enough to get a hum of sympathetic cramp in the other beginning, and he began to whimper. He shuffled very slowly and painfully until he was standing facing the one-way glass straight on, and then said in a voice that cracked from dryness and disuse, "Alright. Alright. I'll tell you what I know." When no sound, no movement resulted after his announcement, he shifted nervously and tried again louder. "I said I'll tell you what I know!"
The door to the room opened, and again Sam and other sweeper bearing a chair entered. The sweeper deposited the chair near the wall, and Sam settled himself tiredly into it. The hour was very late, and he was long past the end of his patience with this fool. "So," the hulking ex-sweeper began skeptically. "Talk."
"Can I please..."
"Talk first - THEN we'll decide if you've earned a reward." Sam's dark eyes were hard - and Flores knew he'd get neither sympathy nor quarter from him. "Where's Duncan?"
"Somewhere..." Flores began, but when he paused he saw the serious lack of patience in his audience, so he hastened to continue, "here in Delaware. He came yesterday."
Sam felt the pit of his stomach grow tight, but he didn't allow a single hint of that disquiet to shadow his features. "Alright - he's somewhere here in Delaware. That's a start. Now, what does “Do it” mean?"
The Hispanic moved painfully from one leg to the next. "C'mon. I've given you something - why won't you..."
"The longer you take in giving me what I want to know, the longer you get to stand," Sam stated flatly. "Would you like another short shock to remind you of what that means in practical terms?"
"NO!" Flores was almost sobbing as he began to sway on extremely unsteady footing.
"So. What does “Do it” mean?"
The Californian's mind raced. He was going to have to give the man something reasonably believable or have to suffer through more of the torture - but what could he say that Sam would buy? "I... instituted a set of procedures... in case I ever was detained... procedures that would safeguard any classified information in the offi... ARGHHHH!!"
The Security Chief raised his finger to put a halt to the shock that he'd started the moment the blatant lies had started to spill - and motioned for the sweeper that had kept Flores erect during that shock step back again. "Next time, I'll let you fall, asshole," Sam hissed in impatience. "Maybe you'll manage to break your nose next time."
"Fuck you..." Flores managed after he'd controlled himself to the point that he wasn't violently trembling anymore.
Sam shrugged. "Fine by me. If we're back to that again..." He rose and turned to his accompanying sweeper. "Call me again if he decides to be a little more reasonable..."
"No! No! Damn you!" The tears were flowing down Flores' face now. "Duncan... and a team of California sweepers... are watching... looking for openings... The plan is... to snatch... the boy, and maybe even the good doctor... in a day or so..."
Sam was already in motion. "Get those leads off him and clean him up, then throw him into another room until the feds come for him." He was pulling his cell phone from his pants pocket and punching up a programmed number and then waiting. "C'mon, Dave, pick up!" It was taking too long.
When there was still no answer after a few more moments, he cut off that call and punch up another number, that was picked up almost immediately. "On your toes, gentlemen, we've got us one shit-load of trouble. I want a full security team at Dr. Green's and another at Miss Parker's NOW. We've just learned of a kidnap attempt, and it's probably in progress as we speak." He listened as he began moving swiftly toward the garage. "Shut up. MOVE IT!! DON'T ask questions. We don't know when these bozos are going to move, and the sweeper in charge of surveillance at Sydney's isn't answering his page." He disconnected and then hit another preprogrammed number - and waited.
"C'mon, Texas-boy. Pick up..."
"Tyler here..."
"Thank God!" Sam closed his eyes briefly in relief.
"Sam?!" Tyler frowned as he one-handedly steered his coupe into his garage and switched off the motor. "What gives, big guy? It's a little late..."
"No shit, Sherlock. Flores just broke - and “Do it” was setting a kidnap plan into motion."
"Kidnap?" Tyler's eyes opened wide. "Oh shit! The kid!"
"AND Sydney..."
"But... I just left there a while back," the Texan frowned. "The night sweeper was in place - Deb pointed him out to me."
"Well, he ain't answering his cell NOW..." Sam told him grimly.
Tyler was already reaching for the key in the ignition. "I'm there as fast as I can get this thing moving." He disconnected the call and tossed the cell phone into the passenger seat next to him and twisted around. The coupe was out of the driveway in a third of the time it had taken to get into it.
Sam disconnected and thrust the cell phone into his trousers pocket as he reached his own vehicle and opened the door. God, don't let us be too late, he thought desperately - then another thought occurred, and he dragged the cell out of his pocket again and punched in the one number he should have punched first. And waited for an answer. And waited.
"Shit!" The key was in the ignition, and the car was in gear and moving FAST.
~~~~~~~~
"Are you SURE we're supposed to hit this second place too?" Smith looked at his boss from the passenger seat. "I mean, we got the kid..."
"Flores wanted both the kid and the old man," Duncan's voice was determined.
"You'd think he'd have wanted us to snatch the woman too..." Smith continued to question the wisdom of their orders. "I mean, she's the one..."
"Shut up and stop thinking too much," Duncan snapped impatiently. "We're already on the edge, moving the plans up and doing the snatches tonight without direction on what to do next. We can't afford any mistakes. The folks we're going up against will EAT US FOR LUNCH if we screw up." He extinguished the headlamps on the car and steered it into the darkened driveway, behind the little sports car belonging to the girl.
Immediately, two figures emerged from the shadow of the topiary bushes near the front entrance and approached the car. Duncan got out. "Sweeper all taken care of?"
"All he's good for now is pushing up daisies," a self-assured voice came from one of the shadowy figures. "Not a problem."
"Jones, stay with the car and watch for trouble. "Smith, Cordova, you're with me..."
The three moved silently up the walk and onto the porch. Duncan removed a paper from his jacket pocket and, shining a light on it, punched in the security code with a gloved hand and grinned when it, like the one at Miss Parker's home, turned green and disarmed. "That's it," he announced, so that Smith could crouch and begin picking the lock.
~~~~~~~~
Sydney sighed as he heard Kevin give another grunt of frustration and bang at the keys of the computer just that much harder. "Kevin," he sighed again, sitting up against the pillows of the day bed that had been his resting place for far too long now, "give it a rest."
"But I can't find them!" the young Pretender growled angrily, pushing the keyboard away in a fit of pique and scowling at the system as if it were deliberately trying to thwart his efforts.
"You've only just started your search," the psychiatrist reminded him in a voice modulated to calm and soothe. "Be patient. You have twenty-some years of dust to sort through first."
"But, you'd think..."
Sydney's head whipped around as he heard something from the front of the house. "Deb? You're up a little late, ma petite," he called gently. "Can't you sleep?"
Even Kevin's head pivoted around when there was no answer to Sydney's call. "What the..." Then he ducked down into the shadows when three men stomped into the den with guns drawn, hoping he'd not been seen.
"You're coming with us, Gramps," Duncan announced in a threatening voice, waving his gun in Sydney's face. "Up and at 'em." Sydney eyed the intruders carefully and began shifting his bedclothes so that he could rise and do as they asked. Duncan watched the older man's careful and slow movements - and his nervousness got to him at last. He reached down and dragged painfully on the old man's arm. "C'mon, MOVE it, old man!" he growled.
"Leave. Him. ALONE!" Kevin barked at Sydney's surprised yelp of pain as the movement pulled hard on his stitches. The young Pretender pushed hard at his desk chair and crashed it into the back of the legs of the man hurting Sydney.
Sydney, seeing help coming from Kevin, threw the covers of his bed in front of himself as he moved to try to land a punch on the second intruder's face and succeeded, staggering the man back.
"Grandpa? What's..." Deb's voice came from the front of the house.
"RUN DEBBIE!" Sydney howled loudly, then collapsed in a senseless heap as the third man managed to kick his knees out from under him and then deliver a round house blow to the chin.
The toot of a car horn warned the intruders that their time was rapidly running out. Jones could hear the sound of screeching tires in the distance - and they were coming closer. The front door of the house flew open, and a pajamaed girl ran pell-mell down the walk and right into his arms. "I've got the girl!" he called out, landing a fist to the side of her face and knocking all the fight out of her immediately. He popped the trunk of the large sedan and dumped her senseless body in with that of a trussed and muted and very frightened young boy, then slammed the lid shut on them both. "C'mon, guys, we need to go NOW!" he yelled, no longer worried about making a racket.
Duncan whipped his gun hand back and caught Kevin on the cheek with the barrel as he rose to tackle the intruders invading his home, a blow that sent the young man reeling. "Let's get out of here!" he yelled to his companions, knowing that taking the old man was impossible now. The girl would just have to do.
Smith grabbed Cordoba's arm and steered him around and toward the door. The four men piled into the car and backed out of the drive quickly, then sped off onto an even smaller and darker street on which they could hide out until the security force from Centre Headquarters had passed and was busy investigating at the old man's.
~~~~~~~~
Sam's car skidded to a stop in front of Miss Parker's, his heart sinking to his toes when he saw the front door standing wide open and the interior of the house depressingly dark. Barely waiting to off the car motor, and being the first of the sweeper team dispatched to his location to arrive, he was out of the driver's seat and dashing up the front steps, yelling into the darkened house for Miss Parker and Davy at the top of his lungs. When he received no answer, he dashed up the dark staircase.
After his eyes adjusted to the very low level of light, he could see that the doors to both of the bedrooms in the summerhouse were wide open. Sam flicked the light on in the first, and winced both at the stab of light as well as at the dreaded sight of an empty bed with mussed covers in a little boy's otherwise neat room. "Davy!" he yelled again, then backed out and entered the other bedroom and flicked on the light there. Miss Parker lay, apparently still asleep, in her bed - but at the sight of a cloth tossed down on the floor at the foot of her bed, Sam knew that it wasn't a natural sleep. He picked up the cloth and sniffed at it - then held it at arm's length when the stench of the ether immediately made him dizzy.
He dropped the cloth back on the floor where it had been and dug in his pocket for his cell phone. He punched a button and waited for the voice to answer on the other end. "What have you got?" he demanded brusquely.
"Three men broke in - pistol-whipped Kevin and knocked Dr. Green unconscious. But it looks as if..."
"Where's Deb?" Sam could hear Kevin's voice in the background, sounding panicked.
"Where's the Broots girl?" Sam demanded of his associate.
"Shit!" he heard the man spit, and then move the phone away from his mouth to growl an order to one of the others there.
"No, no!" he heard Kevin argue with the sweepers, "she ran out the front door..."
"Check it out!" Sam yelled into the cell phone desperately. "Find her!" He disconnected the call and thrust the little device in his pocket again as Miss Parker began to moan very softly and stir. "Wake up, Miss Parker," Sam called gently, sitting down next to her on the bed and tapping gently on her face to try to bring her to again. "C'mon..."
The lashes fluttered a few times, and then the eyelids slid back to expose very confused and unfocused grey. "Uh..." she moaned, a hand moving slowly to her forehead and then rubbing her eyes. "Wha..." She blinked again several times and worked on focusing on the man seated at the edge of her bed. "Sam? What the hell..."
Sam looked down at her with a combination of remorse, anger and frustration. "We broke Flores, but it was too late. He put a kidnap scheme in motion."
"Kidnap?" She struggled to sit up, and then blinked again as her drugged mind began to register small details of her surroundings - like the fact that Sam - Sam!! - was sitting on the edge of her bed in the middle of the night. "What the hell do you think you're doing here?" she asked, her mind still partly fogged.
"I'm sorry." Sam didn't know how else to explain to her what he feared had happened.
She looked at him long and hard, obviously working at getting her mind to function through the fog, and then she stared out into the hallway. "Davy?" she called, softly at first, and then a little louder and more desperately - "David Thomas, you answer me!" Only when the silence was all that answered did she turn a frightened look back to her friend and Security Chief. "Oh God, Sam, noooo..."
Sam could hear the heavy footsteps of the rest of his team tromping through the front door - and as much as he wanted to stay and comfort his boss and friend, he had a job to do. He smoothed a hand down her arm, catching her gaze with his own, and then rose to walk to the bedroom door. "Check around outside - there have to be clues. Be careful too - we don't want to ruin any evidence for the cops."
The cell phone in his pocket chirped at him, and he extricated it and punched the receive button. "Talk to me."
"They got the girl," the man on the other end announced grimly with no preamble at all. "And the sweeper posted outside here is dead - a bullet to the brain."
"DAMN IT!" Sam disconnected and dropped his hand from his ear in shock and dismay - and found himself facing an angry and frantic Miss Parker.
"Where is my son, Sam?" she asked in a lethally soft voice.
"Andrew Duncan has him," he told her, knowing that sugar-coating the truth would do no good whatsoever, "and he has Deb too."
"D... Deb?" The grey eyes blinked again in shock. "Why Deb?"
"God, I don't know," the Security Chief shook his head sadly at her. "But I damned well am going to find out."
"What about Sydney?" she demanded, catching at his arm before he could move out of reach and nearly stumbling as the effects of the anesthesia still hadn't entirely worn off yet.
"He's unconscious," Sam replied, an arm whipping around her waist and supporting her as he led her back to sit on the bed. "If it's what we suspect, they were after Sydney - taking Deb must have been an afterthought when Syd and Kevin put up a fight."
For a moment, Miss Parker wilted visibly - she bent forward at the waist and put her face in her hands and fought against the urge to just howl her pain and grief. But then, as Sam looked on in amazement, her back straightened and stiffed, she wiped at her face to remove all trace of tears, and then stared up into his dark eyes with a coldness and strength that was awful to behold. "I need to get dressed, and I need to make a phone call - and then you will take me to Sydney's. Wait for me downstairs."
"Yes, ma'am." The look in her eye was getting frightening - it was as if the last seven years' worth of animation and warmth that had turned a boss into a good friend had been rinsed away in seconds, leaving behind the old “Ice Queen” herself. Sam backed away uneasily, backed all the way out into the hallway and closed the bedroom door behind him - then turned around and grimly ordered one sweeper to stand guard at the head of the stairs while he went down to oversee the investigation.
Once Sam was out of the room, Miss Parker's façade wavered slightly - and then she put herself under the most brutal discipline she'd used on herself for years to stand and move to her briefcase and extract the little black book to look up the phone number for the FBI. Now was not the time for sentiment, for emotion. She was a Parker - the time had come for her to act like one.
Even as she waited for Gillespie or one of his flunkies to answer, she pulled every last memory she'd ever had of her so-called “twin” out of storage at the back of her mind. She remembered, relived and examined his sociopathic behavior patterns as she'd observed them over the years. She sorted through quickly until she'd distilled the essence of emotional distance that he'd managed to maintain between himself and everyone else around him - and then she adapted it. With deliberate concentration and the talent she'd always possessed for Pretending but never really used before, she overshadowed herself with that essence completely.
She could not be herself - not now. She could not allow herself to feel - not yet. Not until she had the government called in and working hard to help find and rescue her son and Broots' daughter. Not until she'd seen Sydney and made sure he was OK. And most definitely not until she'd had a chance to rip the heart and throat out of a certain Gilbert Flores.
Then she would call Jarod. THEN she could let herself begin to feel again. THEN she could fall apart for little bit - just enough to vent the pain to the point she could continue to function.
But she could not be herself now. For now, she had to be Lyle.
~~~~~~~~
Ethan had been sitting and writing at an article based on one of his case studies when the voices in his mind had suddenly gone absolutely wild. He dropped the pen and held his temples between the palms of his hands, moaning as the internal volume kept ratcheting up until it was almost unbearable. Then, suddenly, the screams in his head went almost silent - and the sudden extinguishing was almost more painful than the screams themselves had been. Only one voice remained, whispering softly and desperately.
Still blinking hard against the experience and feeling as if he was headed for a massive migraine, he reached out a shaking hand and fought the nausea as he dialed his older brother's phone number. The ringing on the other end was almost more than he could bear, but he held the receiver away from his ear slightly, which made it a little better.
"Hello?" he heard Jarod answer.
"Something's happened," he announced to him without any preamble, "something really bad."
"Ethan?" Jarod's brow furled. "It's late - middle of the night back there. What..."
"I'm telling you," the younger Russell insisted, "something has happened. Something is VERY wrong - I heard her voice, screaming in my head, and now it's gone completely silent."
"Parker?"
"Who else?"
"Damn!" Jarod propped himself up on an elbow and gazed at the clock. It had been a long day. "I'll call - and I'll let you know what's going on as soon as I know anything."
"Thanks." Ethan sounded miserable.
"You gonna be OK?"
"I will once I take enough pain medicine to put down the entire percussion section of the LA Philharmonic," Ethan cracked, then grunted as a stabbing pain shot through a temple.
"Do you want me to call Mom and have her go over to your place and..."
"Hell no! The moment she knows that this has something to do with “back there,” she'll be rumbling louder than the timpani in my head is." Ethan shook his head VERY carefully. "I'll be OK eventually. Just find out what the hell is going on, and keep me in the loop."
"Got it." Jarod hung up the phone and swung his long legs out from under the blankets, then retrieved the receiver and punched in a number only to find it busy. He hung up and tried again - still busy. He hung up and punched in the number for Sydney's - if something had gone wrong, Sydney would know about it the quickest. His brows slid into a solid line of worry when THAT line was busy as well. He tried it again, with no more success.
"Damn it," he swore softly and climbed out of bed and walked across the house to his study, where he'd left his briefcase and the little book of all the cell phone numbers from home. He plopped the book down on his desk and sat down in the leather chair, ignoring that uncomfortable feeling of posterior skin meeting clingy leather, and dialed again.
"Talk to me," Sam's voice growled in a thoroughly intimidating tone.
"It's me - Jarod. What the hell is going on back there?"
Sam cursed under his breath. "Look, Lab-rat, now isn't the time. Things are in a complete uproar. I'll get back to you as soon as I can." Then he disconnected the call - not really knowing how to tell a man a continent away that his son had just been stolen. How did he tell a man who had put the safety of his family into his hands that he'd failed them all?
"The feds are here..." Sam heard a nameless sweeper announce from Miss Parker's front porch.
"That was fast," he growled to himself and then started putting one foot in front of the other to go out and meet the people with whom, it seemed, he would now be working very closely.
Chapter 7: Quicksand
"This is nice," Deb said, looking around the restaurant. The décor was western, with the walls in unfinished wood branded at irregular intervals with what she imagined were the brands of major ranches out west. Here and there were mounted horns, branding irons, and framed displays of barbed wire. "A little out of place over here on the East Coast..."
Tyler smiled and picked a peanut out of the little metal pan that sat between them. "I found it a few years back and try to come in every once in a while. I think that I would have been very comfortable living life as a cowboy a hundred years ago..."
"You're nuts," she replied wrinkling her nose a bit. "Life expectancy was barely into the forties or fifties for men, younger for women. Very little medical help available, sanitation non-existent..."
"You're just spoiled by civilization," he smiled back at her slyly. "I bet that if you had a chance to be out on the open range, in the fresh air with nothing to worry about except finding a decent place to build a fire and camp for the evening under the stars, you'd learn to like it."
"Have you? Spent time that way, I mean?" Deb reached out for a peanut of her own.
"My grand-uncle had a ranch down near El Paso, and after my folks died I spent a year there with him." Tyler sat back with a contented smile on his face. "Spent most of that year on the back of a horse or mending fences - but I loved it."
"Are you from Texas originally?"
"Yes, ma'am," he replied with a slightly more pronounced drawl. "Born and raised in San Antonio until I was sixteen, then spent a year on the ranch - on my own after that."
They both sat back as the waitress brought them their salads and waited until she had walked away before leaning forward again. "What happened to your folks? IF you don't mind my asking..." Deb asked gently.
Tyler shrugged. "Car accident. We were comin' back from a picnic in the country and had a head-on with a drunk who forgot what side of the road he was supposed to be on." He busied himself with cutting a bite from his steak.
"I'm sorry - I didn't mean to pry..."
"It's OK," he replied, looking up again. "It just hit me that you've got your daddy in the hospital - and this might be a bit of a touchy subject for you." He waved his hand. "Anyway, after the ranch, I kinda bounced from one thing to the next - about three years ago ended up here. I applied for a job as a sweeper - thought I had it made with my black belt and such - but couldn't cut it when it came to guns." At her wide-eyed look, he pointed to his head. "Punctured eardrums. Target practice is agony."
"Is that how you ended up in the morgue instead?" Deb shuddered. "How could you work down there?"
"It ain't that bad," he said with a shake of the head. "I wasn't no coroner - my job was just to keep track of the bodies coming in and making sure they got released to the right folk in time. It was the only other opening at the time, and I was ready to stop roaming for a while. Besides," he shot her a grin, "I figured that I might be able to move into something more interesting if I stuck around. And now just look..."
Debbie smiled back at him. "You're lucky you met Miss Parker now - you should have known her years ago, before she adopted Davy..."
Tyler frowned. "I thought Davy WAS her son."
"He is." Deb sighed. "It's a REAL long story, but when she adopted him, she THOUGHT he was her little half-brother. She didn't find out he was really hers until just a little while ago."
"How the hell does a woman NOT know if a child is hers?" Tyler's brows were curled together in real confusion.
Deb looked at him directly. "How much do you know about the Centre? REALLY?" she asked back.
Tyler immediately thought of his shock as Miss Parker had laid out the way the Centre had been run during his days as morgue assistant. "How much do YOU know?" he retorted.
"A lot more than you might think," she said dryly, carefully taking a bite of her baked potato. "My Dad has worked for Miss Parker for twelve years, and I'm not dumb. I heard him talking on the phone to Miss Parker and Sydney off and on for years - and I finally was able to put two and two together. I figured I had it right when I started to chime in every once in a while and none of them ever told me I was wrong. For one thing, were you aware that Miss Parker's job for years was to try to track Jarod down and haul him back to the Centre to work like a virtual slave? Did you know that Grandpa Sydney raised Jarod from a very young boy not knowing that he wasn't an orphan but rather had been stolen from his family because of his kind of genius? Did you know that Uncle Jarod has been CLONED?"
The Texan put his knife and fork down carefully on his plate and stared at the pretty girl across the table from him. "WHAT??"
Deb shrugged. "If an organization is willing to do that kind of stuff, I bet you can use your imagination and figure out how a woman becomes a mother without her knowledge - or how a man can father a child without knowing it either."
"Holy guacamole!" Tyler shook his head in disbelief. "Miss Parker told me a few things - but nothing like THIS."
"Yeah, well, she's worked long and hard to put those days behind her," Deb defended her friend and surrogate mother, "as have both Sydney and my Dad. Even Jarod is letting bygones be bygones. And now Miss P's got a chance to turn the Centre around. Knowing her, she's probably got her mind focused on that and nothing else. For “the rest of the story,” you'll have to talk to Sydney or Jarod - or my Dad."
"Or Sam?"
The pretty blonde shrugged. "He's pretty protective of her, you know..."
"I'm not wanting to hurt her, Deb, I promise - just know what the hell I've got myself in the middle of."
"Go ahead, then, talk to him," Deb suggested evenly, sipping at her ice tea. "He can't do much worse than tell you to take a hike. He's a pretty honest guy - even if he can't play checkers worth beans - ask him in the right way, and he'll give you an earful."
Tyler busied himself with his meal for a while, struggling to wrap his mind around the idea that the history of the Centre was far more convoluted and unpleasant than he'd already been told. "What about Kevin?" he asked finally. "Where does he come in?"
"Kevin's like Jarod - he was raised by the Centre because of the kind of genius he has. Sam and another guy rescued him from where he was being kept about a week before the Tower blew up." Deb looked down at her steak. Kevin was NOT on her list of preferred topics of discussion. "Grandpa and I are working with him - trying to get him used to living out here in the real world."
"And you're living with Sydney now too?"
She nodded. "Only until my Dad comes home, though," she added. "I just don't want to be alone all by myself in the house - and Grandpa is still mending from his surgery. Kevin and I make sure he keeps getting better and not doing too much anymore."
Tyler tipped his head. "And what about you?"
"Me?"
"I'd think a smart and pretty girl your age would be headed off to school and a life of her own by now."
Deb looked up and then back down again, and Tyler knew he'd touched another nerve. "I was, until the explosion and my Dad was hurt. I'm hoping everything works out that I can go for the next term."
"What's your major?"
She smiled at him. Now THIS was much more like it. "I want to be a counselor," she announced. "I like helping people."
"I can see that," Tyler commented quietly, then smiled as a light blush spread across her face. He'd successfully steered the conversation back to much safer territory, for which he was grateful. One thing was for certain, he'd not underestimate her understanding of situations or consequences having to do with the Centre again. Evidently when it came to the Centre, even Deb wasn't as much of an innocent as he'd thought.
~~~~~~~~
Ikeda peeked out of the supply room door and then strolled out into the hospital hallway as if he belonged there. With the cultural diversity of Dover, it wasn't hard to look as if he did - in Tokyo it would have been far more difficult for a gai-jin to wander about the hallways of a hospital in medical garb without causing some comment. He draped the stethoscope about his neck casually and proceeded down the hallway to the nurse's station and the rack of charts there. With an eye well-trained to pick up on clues quickly, he located Ngawe's chart and noted the room number from the rack, then strolled down that hallway.
Yes, there it was - unmistakable with the burly African bodyguard standing at alert ease by the doorway. Ikeda centered himself, as his ninja sensei had trained him to do all those many years ago, and then stopped in front of the hulking man - who gazed down at him like a prized bull eyeing a Spanish toreador. Ikeda bent forward as if he wished to speak to the man, and then when the man bent forward to him, sent his fingers directly into the man's larynx and then slammed his nose straight up into his skull.
The slight Japanese managed to toe open the hospital room door and aim the body's staggering fall to inside the room expertly, with the door closing quickly behind him before anybody noticed any commotion. Ikeda eased the man into a nearby chair to slowly choke to death on his own blood in agonized peace while he himself stepped closer to sleeping man in the bed completely unimpeded. Carefully he removed the summons button that would call the nurse so that it would be completely out of reach for the patient. Then, with a quick glance around the room to make sure that he wouldn't be observed, he then placed his hand over Ngawe's nose and mouth and pressed - hard.
Ngawe came awake immediately and groped wildly for the button to summon help, his eyes wide and panicked at his inability to breath. Ikeda's eyes glinted coldly in the dim light of the room. "Don't bother, Ngawe-san. The button is out of reach, and your guard is in no shape to be of assistance any longer." He moved just enough so that the frightened old man could see his bodyguard, the front of his shirt and suit jacket now streaked with blood. "If you attempt to cry out, I will kill you as you lie here. Do you understand me?" The elderly man in the bed nodded beneath Ikeda's hand, which then slipped from over the mouth and nose to a dangerous position over the larynx.
"What do you want of me?" Ngawe whispered as that was all he could do with what little air the hand at his throat was giving him. All pretense of autocracy had evaporated with the knowledge that this short and slight man literally held his life in his hand - and was capable of snuffing it out like a candle flame.
"To give you a warning, Ngawe-san. My name is Ikeda - Ikeda Katsuhito. You know me - or OF me, at any rate."
Ngawe stared. "Yo... you're our inside man in the Yakuza."
"WAS your inside man in Tokyo - the past tense being the operant concept here," Ikeda corrected boldly. "Were you ever made aware of my function within the Yakuza, Mr. Ngawe?" The African man shook his head fearfully. "I am an assassin - but no ordinary crude killer. I'm the man they call when others fail." The Japanese grinned coldly when he began to see the whites of his victim's eyes. "So you may rest assured that if I WANTED to kill you, you would already BE dead."
"What... what do you want of me?" Ngawe asked again in an even softer, more strangled tone.
"Tonight, I am only a messenger - I want only your complete and absolute attention. Do I have it?" Ngawe nodded desperately. "Good. Then here is your message. Consider yourself now duly informed that, in response to your ordering the murder of Tanaka Setsuo and raid on the Yakuza warehouse in LA, a contract has been issued on your life."
"I thought you said you weren't going to kill me..." the African whimpered.
"I told you that if I wanted you dead, you already would be," Ikeda repeated coldly, "and right now, I don't care one way or the other. However, our long and profitable business arrangement has bought you one incidence of moderate allegiance. Despite my order, I am NOT going to kill you." The Japanese assassin then grinned again, showing his predatory white teeth. "This does not mean, however, that when my Yakuza superior finds out that I've not carried out his order, that another like me cannot be engaged and dispatched for the same purpose. While my skills are highly specialized, I am by no means unique - and the next assassin sent to you WILL succeed, I promise you."
"What must I do..."
"Listen to me. Your stupid attacks on the Yakuza must cease. The man who set this disaster into motion has already been sent to his ancestors through his own stupidity, as has his father through your need for revenge. Two lives in exchange for your permanent discomfort seems a fair bargain." Ikeda eased up on the man's throat. "Any more deaths at this point would be of men on either side who had no part in what happened - and so their deaths would be without purpose or honor."
"Many of my men died that day," Ngawe began, massaging his throat with a shaking hand.
"Many Yakuza died that day as well," Ikeda hissed, "including the head of the Tokyo clan. And believe it or not, but I tried to avert the bombing - I was only seconds too late dispatching the man whose finger pushed that button."
"You! You killed the bomber?"
"On Tanaka-sama's orders," Ikeda informed him bluntly. "This war is a stupid and honorless waste of time, money, resources and lives. Neither your organization nor the Yakuza can afford it."
"I... we will consider what you've said," the African agreed reluctantly. Feeling a tiny bit more secure, he had unconsciously slipped back into his habitual speech patterns.
Ikeda's eyebrows worked subtlely as if amused by Ngawe's ridiculous attempt to reassert his dominance. "You will, or you won't - it is as the gods and karma would have it. But you have been warned, and given a temporary stay of execution. My advice to you is to use your borrowed time wisely. Sayonara, Ngawe-san."
Ngawe's eyes widened again as the slight Japanese man stepped back from the bed, bowed deeply, and then turned and seemed to almost evaporate from the room. As if coming out of a trance, he pushed himself up on first one hand and then another looking for the summons button, only to find it far out of reach.
Resigned to being left in a room with a slowly dying bodyguard and no way to summon help, he settled down in his bed until the next time the nurses would come and check on him, pondering what Ikeda had told him. And getting angrier by the moment.
~~~~~~~~
"What?"
"How was your day today?"
Miss Parker curled her feet up on the couch and leaned into the cushions against the arm. "Took care of some of my problem supervisors today - and Sam has the worst of the lot on ice. Mostly busy work." She debated telling him about WHY Sam had taken Flores and put him “on ice,” but decided not to worry him. After all, what could he do from California besides worry? "How about you?"
"Not bad." Jarod sprawled on his bed, one arm behind his head and the other holding the handset to his ear. "Actually did some therapy sessions today - amid planning sessions with Ethan about getting him a new partner for the practice for when I leave." He closed his eyes and pictured her lying on the bed next to him. "How was Davy today?"
"Much more manageable. He even helped put together a lunch for me."
Jarod chuckled. "Sydney's got a good system of discipline - you gotta admit."
"Speaking of whom... Guess who decided to start calling in to work so that he could get a handle on things a little better?"
"Are you really surprised?" He rolled and put the handset beneath his ear. "Sydney is a workaholic from way back - I'm amazed we've managed to get him to slow down as much as we have."
"Well, I told Kate to feed him the kind of stuff that will keep his mind occupied without worrying him too much about nut and bolts logistics." Miss Parker ran her fingers through her hair and pulled it back from her face. "Oh, and guess who is out to dinner in Dover with a certain handsome young assistant?"
Jarod blinked. "Deb? Oh boy! I bet Kevin wasn't happy about that!"
"Not in the least!" She laughed. "I brought pizza home for supper so that Deb wouldn't be cooking, and Kevin spent most of the meal pouting and surly. Syd took me aside later and told me that Kevin had thought that since I was the first girl YOU saw, and our relationship seems to be going gangbusters, that since Deb was the first girl HE saw..."
"It's not funny, Parker," Jarod chided gently. "I remember those days all too well - and you were VERY hard to get out of my mind. In a way, Kevin's lucky that his experience with girls will take place in a far more normal manner and setting."
Miss Parker sat up straighter. "I know it isn't really funny, Jarod. It's just that he's such a little boy about her."
"Deb just knocked a little bit of stability out of his brand-new world," Jarod explained patiently. "Being cooped up like we were, and so totally out of control of our world, it's only instinct that we crave having things easily understood and constant once we find ourselves out here in the “real” world. Deb's been a part of Kevin's world “out here” from the get-go." He thought for a moment. "How IS Sydney doing - healing on schedule still?"
"So far, so good - and, like I say, he's starting to get cabin fever." Miss Parker leaned again. "I think that I'm going to set him to sorting through the archives the moment we start getting that stuff out of the sublevels." She put a hand over her eyes. "Considering that there are a lot of questions that we need answered - not the least of which being where Kevin came from - I figure that Syd would be the most logical choice in archivist for a while. It will give him something to do at work without being too strenuous."
"I like that idea." Jarod nodded agreement, then thought for a moment. He REALLY needed to talk to her... "Parker, there's something else I want to run past you..."
"What's that?" she asked, stretching her legs out on the couch.
"Uh... Do you remember me talking about that little girl I'd been working with?" he began lamely, grimacing at his own inadequate strategy.
"I think so - the one that was so withdrawn? The one you worried about?"
"Yeah."
"How are things with her? Have you seen her yet?"
"Things aren't so good with her, Parker." Jarod paused, still not entirely sure how to approach the subject. "Her foster parents are starting to talk institutionalization for her."
A tiny voice spoke in the back of her mind, and Miss Parker sat up again abruptly. "Jarod..." Then she considered just whom she was talking to. "OK. What's going on, and what are you planning?"
He blinked. She must have had the voices helping her again, damn it, because that was a very big leap in the discussion accomplished with nothing said. "You should know that I was thinking this long before I went back to Delaware," he explained in a slightly defensive tone.
"Alright," she accepted warily. "But just what is this “this” you're talking about?"
"She reminds me of you... in a way... or me, or even Angelo..."
"Jarod..." The exasperation was growing noticeable.
"She needs a good home - and people who love her." Jarod barreled ahead, knowing that he'd passed the point of no return on the discussion. "I want to give her that home."
She pulled her hair out of her face again. "Are you talking adoption, or just legal guardianship?"
"I'd like it to be adoption, Parker."
She stared into the empty and dark hearth for a long moment. "Adoptions take months to be finalized. I know - Davy's took almost a year. I thought..."
"Missy, I don't know how long it is going to take before I can leave this place anyway," he told her gently. "I still have a mother who is fighting me tooth and toenail over this - a house to sell, a new partner for Ethan to find..." He sighed. "I've talked to a lawyer, to get some of the preliminaries going - but I wanted to talk to you before I'd done anything else... I need to know if you'll support me on this."
"Jarod," she sighed, "what do you want me to say? We already have a child - one who misses his daddy very much. And besides, where would we put her? We don't exactly have a spare bedroom here..."
"Davy would be better for having a little sister," Jarod presented his arguments to counter hers. "And as for the house - we can add a room, or buy a bigger place. Those are really minor considerations, and you know it."
"Would it really be fair to that little girl to pull her all the way across the continent, to live with a bunch of strangers?"
Jarod sighed again. "She's already living with a bunch of strangers - and has been for years. Her parents are both addicts and in jail for God knows how long, and she was part of the reason they landed in jail because they abandoned her after abusing her. Believe me, Missy, moving cross-continentally is a very small thing."
"Then let's get to the more important stuff - like I'm not sure I could handle a special needs child, Jarod," Miss Parker finally admitted reluctantly. "Face it. Both of us are intending to work at the Centre when you get back - and both jobs are going to be fairly time-intensive for quite a while. This little girl sounds like she needs some constant one-on-one nurturing for a long time to help her recover. I don't know that either you or I will be able to give her that." She listened and could almost hear the disappointment pouring through the phone line at her. "I know you really want to help her - I can appreciate the urgency too. Why don't you work on finding her a family THERE who would want to take care of her the way she deserves?"
"I love her, Missy."
"I know you do, or you wouldn't be thinking this way. But you're not thinking clearly right now - your emotions are clouding your judgement." She put her head in her hand. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're a Pretender - ACT like one. You need to SIM this out properly, Jarod - work the SIM the way you're supposed to, without letting your feelings for the girl become part of the equation. You need to honestly and frankly consider all the variables and possible obstacles and potholes of what you're suggesting we do. I think you'll come to agree with me. Help her, yes - but keep her yourself? I don't think so." She lowered her voice. "Besides, when the time comes for us to give Davy a sister or brother, there are other more interesting ways to do that."
She could hear the long sigh on the other end of the line. "I was really hoping I could convince you..."
"I know you were, Jarod - and if the circumstances were different, I might be more amenable. But... SIM it out, Jarod. We'll talk about it again when you have, I promise."
"I miss you," he sighed at her forlornly.
"I miss you too," she sighed back at him. "And Davy misses you dreadfully."
"Where is he, anyway?"
"He and Kevin found a game they can play over the Internet - he's on the computer at the moment. Do you want to say hi to him?"
"Sure." Jarod rolled onto his back again, his eyes staring at the spackling on the ceiling. She was right, he needed to SIM out the situation with Ginger properly - setting his own personal feelings aside entirely - something he HADN'T done before. But not having her agreement immediately was still a disappointment. Maybe talking with Davy for a moment...
"Hi, Daddy!"
~~~~~~~~
Flores was definitely getting tired, and his feet were aching painfully now. The monsters behind the one-way glass weren't even letting him lean against a wall. The hours had crept by, and each one had sapped him of some of his self-assurance. He had been given two trips to the restroom - episodes of humiliation where his keepers with their fingers on the button stood directly next to him at the urinal or in front of him as he relieved himself in a stall. He had reluctantly made what could have proven to be a great rest for him into as short a time as possible - sitting in front of two cold-eyed sweepers on a toilet with his pants about his ankles was NOT restful in the least.
He glanced down at his wrist and frowned again as he rubbed where his watch used to be and shifted his weight from one foot to the next again. There was no way to tell the passing of time - this particular little room had no windows and just a bare light bulb that didn't flicker at all. He sighed and lifted one sore foot after another from the floor to rest it and the leg it was attached to, his arms now folded around himself and tucked under each other in an attempt at self-comfort.
And yet, his determination to keep his mouth shut was still strong. For as long as that bruja didn't know what “do it” meant - to him, or to HER - he held the high cards in this poker game. The thought of her face when the deed was done was all that was holding him together now - and only barely at that. Certainly Duncan had figured out that something was wrong when he hadn't called him back with further instructions, and was smart enough to have packed up and found somewhere else to hole up while the surveillance was going on. And the men Duncan had acquired to do the surveillance - and the snatch later - he, Flores, didn't know. It had been planned that way - the less he knew, the less likely the plan was to be foiled.
The door in the little room opened, and Sam and another sweeper bearing a single chair came in. From the look in Sam's face, the day was getting pretty long for the bruja's Security Chief - and Flores threw up a rebellious sneer. "You look tired, poor baby," he snickered as the large man settled into the chair.
Sam merely gazed at the obviously hurting former supervisor, not a trace of a single emotion floating behind that dark gaze. "I was just in the area, and stopped by before I left for the day to see if you had changed your mind about telling us what “do it” is all about."
Flores carefully shifted his weight to the other foot, grimacing as he put it back down on the floor and picked up the other foot for its brief rest against the other ankle. "I think the way I put it the last time you asked was “fuck you”," he growled as he swayed. Damn! Keeping his balance on one foot was getting harder now too.
The ex-sweeper had seen that slight wobble, and it confirmed the state Flores had gotten to - just as anticipated. With a nod at the one-way glass, the door opened again and another pair of sweepers came into the room. They roughly hauled Flores' arms out of their comfort zone and around his back, where they handcuffed them. The movement brought the other foot back down to the floor - and as one sweeper held the man still, another set of handcuffs was attached around the ankles. When the sweepers stepped back, Flores knew that his balance was now severely compromised should he try to lift a foot to rest it - not to mention that doing so would pull the other foot right out from under him.
"Well, then, let me tell you how things go from here, Mr. “Fuck you”," Sam said dangerously, rising from his chair to once more tower over the Hispanic. "We're going to add another dimension to our game of cat and mouse. Not only will you receive a shock if you attempt to rest at all, but you will now receive one minute of shock every fifteen minutes. Those shocks will start at a very low level and then grow as time passes. If you lose your balance and fall, my men will simply lock the button in "shock" position and come in to put you back on your feet - so I suggest you NOT fall."
Flores merely glared up at him, knowing that anything he said would only make the new conditions of his confinement more onerous. He knew that eventually his arms would begin to cramp from being held behind him, and that if he DID fall while being shocked, he stood a good chance of hurting himself.
It was only a matter of time before he broke. He was exhausted and his muscles brutally sore from what had gone before. The bruja and her diablo knew their business well.
Damn them!
~~~~~~~~
Tyler pulled his coupe to a halt in front of Sydney's front yard - and for the first time noticed the dark Centre sedan parked across the street with a man sitting in the car. "Deb," he touched the arm of the woman next to him and pointed. "Look."
"That's Dave," Deb answered easily, unbuckling her seat belt. "He's the night sweeper."
"Miss Parker has you under surveillance?" Tyler folded his brow in confusion again.
"No," Deb explained patiently. "They're there for protection." She smiled at her companion. "Thank you for a lovely evening, Cody. The food was great, just as you promised."
"My pleasure, ma'am," Tyler drawled as he climbed from the car and came around the front to open the door for her and hand her out. "Thank you for coming with me. It's so much more pleasant eating out with such charming company."
Deb smiled and felt her cheeks warm slightly as her companion tucked her arm into the crook of his elbow and escorted her to the front door of the house. "I'd like to see you again," Tyler said as he released her hand from his elbow and took both hands in his.
"I think I'd like that too," she said softly. "I had a good time."
"Can I call you?" he asked, smiling widely.
"Sure. I'm usually either at Oggie's or here - unless I'm on my way to Dover to see my Dad." She smiled back. "I'll tell Sydney that you might call for me."
"Good." He still held her hands warmly in his.
"Yeah."
"Well, then, I suppose I should let you go in."
She looked over her shoulder at the lit porch light. "Yeah. I have to work in the morning..."
"Goodnight then," he said, still holding her hands.
"Goodnight, Cody."
Taking a chance, Tyler leaned in and dropped an awkward kiss on her cheek, then let go of her hands. "See you."
"Yeah. Take care."
Deb had her hand on the doorknob and watched him walk down the sidewalk to his car and climb in after giving her a jaunty wave of the hand. With a happy sigh, she opened the door and let herself into the house, then shut the porch light off after locking the door behind her.
Tyler drove off, feeling as if on top of the world - not noticing at all the second dark car parked just around the corner from the other. It, too, had a man sitting patiently in the dark - taking notes.
~~~~~~~~
"Harrison here."
"You're working late tonight, Chief..."
The Police Chief leaned back comfortably in his chair. "So are you, for that matter, FBI-man. What can I do for you?"
"It's more what I can do for you for a change." Gillespie looked down at the report in his hand with a photo attached. "I have a name for you: Damien Winwood."
Harrison sat up straight, and his feet hit the floor with a thump. "You got an ID on the John Doe in the morgue??"
"Yup. And a rap sheet that is VERY interesting. Seems our Mr. Winwood trained as a demolitions expert and spent three years in the CIA in black ops until his bosses decided they didn't like the way he ENJOYED his job and canned him. He's been free-lancing as an arsonist and demolitions man for the last twelve years - no arrests, but plenty of cases that he was a suspect..."
"Demolitions, eh?"
"Yeah." Now it was the FBI agent's turn to lean back comfortably. "With enough contacts left over from his CIA days to keep him on top of the latest developments in technology - whether it be here in the States... or in Japan."
"He's our bomber, then," Harrison nodded.
"It also may explain the gardener's body too. Getting into the Tower was going to take real planning. My guess is that the gardener was killed to give Winwood the cover he needed to slip in without drawing attention." Gillespie closed the folder and tossed it on his desk. "That explains why none of the gardeners you interviewed noticed anything."
"OK," the Police Chief scratched his head tiredly. "That still leaves us with who killed the bomber - and why."
Gillespie closed his eyes. "Considering the way he was killed, it was a hit - it HAD to be. So whoever killed him knew what she or he was doing."
"We're back to mob connections, then?" Harrison asked in frustration. "Shit - everywhere we turn, we bump into one mob or another here lately."
"I know." The FBI agent shared the Police Chief's frustration on that score. "And the Yakuza guy in the hospital isn't talking either."
"The answer to all of this has to be in the Centre itself somewhere," Harrison growled. "That place gives me the creeps."
"Let me see what I can pry out of the Centre now," Gillespie cautioned the Police Chief. "Miss Parker and I are on slightly better terms than we were a day ago - maybe I can talk her into telling us a little more of what she knows."
Harrison laughed a short and dry cough. "Miss Parker, give you a straight answer? The day a Parker gives a lawman a straight answer, you can be sure Hell has frozen over. I saw that lady in action years ago when a man she was involved with was murdered. She's a real piece of work, that one..."
"Nonetheless," Gillespie stated patiently. "Give me a day to see what I can pry out of her. In the meanwhile, I'll see if I can get any of our mob snitches to nose out word about Winwood's last job."
"Keep me informed," Harrison sighed, and then ended the call. He rose from behind his desk and went over to the bulletin board and looked at the photograph of the formerly unidentified body found near the Centre on the night it exploded. "Winwood, eh? Just who'd you piss off, anyway?"
~~~~~~~~
Rodriguez was in the lead car of a three car team driving along the Long Beach waterfront heading for the Port Authority and Customs warehouse. It had taken the better part of a day to arrange and pay the bribes that were going to get them through the gates so that they could intercept Lot 83 before it was logged in. The dark cars stayed in the shadows as they drew close to where the Toru Maru was docked and brightly lit with halogen floodlights. The cranes pulling the cargo containers from the belly of the cargo ship were moving slowly and gracefully as usual.
Not many knew about the back gate to the Customs warehouse - but Rodriguez's money had bought both the location and a conveniently unchained gate. At a gesture, a ski masked associate slipped from the lead car and pushed the gates open so as not to leave marks on the dark sedan. The three cars slipped through the gate and headed toward the back of the warehouse, where that door had been left unlocked as well.
Ski masks were pulled into place as the men poured from the cars and found the darkest shadows that lay waiting for them along the metal walls of the building. A silent signal from Rodriguez had the man closest to the door testing the knob, then pushing it open just enough that he and those who followed could slip in unobserved.
All was as expected until the back door of the warehouse quietly clicked shut - and suddenly the interior of the building was flooded with light. "Federal agents, gentlemen. Freeze!" The sound of numerous weapons being cocked and readied to fire filled the air - and the main group of Rodriguez' men found themselves surrounded by men in dark flack jackets and helmets.
Praying with all his might that he was still unobserved, Rodriguez reached behind him for the knob of the door. He twisted it and, still watching the spectacle taking place in front of him as one by one his gang brothers dropped to their knees and then face-down on the cement floor, started to ease out the door.
"Nice try," a deep voice announced as a heavy hand landed on his shoulder, propelling him back into the building and toward the knot of agents handcuffing the rest of the gang. "Join the party, ése..." Rodriguez grimaced as he, too, was forced to first endure a thorough body search, then get pushed first to his knees and then face-down on the floor. His mind was ablaze.
Flores was the only one who had known what was going to go down - that little prick must have set him up. But why? No matter - when and if he ever got out of the juzgado, he'd see to it that Flores' outfit paid the price. Nobody but NOBODY messed with Los Cabrones de Los Angeles and was allowed to get away with it!
Not for long, anyway...
~~~~~~~~
Gilbert Flores was in agonizing pain. The muscles in his legs were so tired now that they were cramping without the need for the electrical stimulus, and it was getting harder and harder to stay erect. Twice now he had fallen - and as promised, the current to his calf muscle had been turned on again while the silent and forbidding hulks responsible for his “care” had come and dragged him back to his feet. He'd lost count of the quarter-hour shocks that had been administered since the bruja's Security Chief had left the room, but he knew several more hours had elapsed.
His nose had bled profusely after the second fall, for he'd forgotten to roll and landed with his face impacting the floor, and now it was another source of agony. The first fall he'd been wise enough to twist slightly so as to land on his shoulder - not realizing that with his hands cuffed behind him, the impact on the shoulder was even more painful than it would have otherwise been.
And now he knew the time was drawing near for the next minute's worth of electricity running through his leg. Just the thought of the cramping in the one was enough to get a hum of sympathetic cramp in the other beginning, and he began to whimper. He shuffled very slowly and painfully until he was standing facing the one-way glass straight on, and then said in a voice that cracked from dryness and disuse, "Alright. Alright. I'll tell you what I know." When no sound, no movement resulted after his announcement, he shifted nervously and tried again louder. "I said I'll tell you what I know!"
The door to the room opened, and again Sam and other sweeper bearing a chair entered. The sweeper deposited the chair near the wall, and Sam settled himself tiredly into it. The hour was very late, and he was long past the end of his patience with this fool. "So," the hulking ex-sweeper began skeptically. "Talk."
"Can I please..."
"Talk first - THEN we'll decide if you've earned a reward." Sam's dark eyes were hard - and Flores knew he'd get neither sympathy nor quarter from him. "Where's Duncan?"
"Somewhere..." Flores began, but when he paused he saw the serious lack of patience in his audience, so he hastened to continue, "here in Delaware. He came yesterday."
Sam felt the pit of his stomach grow tight, but he didn't allow a single hint of that disquiet to shadow his features. "Alright - he's somewhere here in Delaware. That's a start. Now, what does “Do it” mean?"
The Hispanic moved painfully from one leg to the next. "C'mon. I've given you something - why won't you..."
"The longer you take in giving me what I want to know, the longer you get to stand," Sam stated flatly. "Would you like another short shock to remind you of what that means in practical terms?"
"NO!" Flores was almost sobbing as he began to sway on extremely unsteady footing.
"So. What does “Do it” mean?"
The Californian's mind raced. He was going to have to give the man something reasonably believable or have to suffer through more of the torture - but what could he say that Sam would buy? "I... instituted a set of procedures... in case I ever was detained... procedures that would safeguard any classified information in the offi... ARGHHHH!!"
The Security Chief raised his finger to put a halt to the shock that he'd started the moment the blatant lies had started to spill - and motioned for the sweeper that had kept Flores erect during that shock step back again. "Next time, I'll let you fall, asshole," Sam hissed in impatience. "Maybe you'll manage to break your nose next time."
"Fuck you..." Flores managed after he'd controlled himself to the point that he wasn't violently trembling anymore.
Sam shrugged. "Fine by me. If we're back to that again..." He rose and turned to his accompanying sweeper. "Call me again if he decides to be a little more reasonable..."
"No! No! Damn you!" The tears were flowing down Flores' face now. "Duncan... and a team of California sweepers... are watching... looking for openings... The plan is... to snatch... the boy, and maybe even the good doctor... in a day or so..."
Sam was already in motion. "Get those leads off him and clean him up, then throw him into another room until the feds come for him." He was pulling his cell phone from his pants pocket and punching up a programmed number and then waiting. "C'mon, Dave, pick up!" It was taking too long.
When there was still no answer after a few more moments, he cut off that call and punch up another number, that was picked up almost immediately. "On your toes, gentlemen, we've got us one shit-load of trouble. I want a full security team at Dr. Green's and another at Miss Parker's NOW. We've just learned of a kidnap attempt, and it's probably in progress as we speak." He listened as he began moving swiftly toward the garage. "Shut up. MOVE IT!! DON'T ask questions. We don't know when these bozos are going to move, and the sweeper in charge of surveillance at Sydney's isn't answering his page." He disconnected and then hit another preprogrammed number - and waited.
"C'mon, Texas-boy. Pick up..."
"Tyler here..."
"Thank God!" Sam closed his eyes briefly in relief.
"Sam?!" Tyler frowned as he one-handedly steered his coupe into his garage and switched off the motor. "What gives, big guy? It's a little late..."
"No shit, Sherlock. Flores just broke - and “Do it” was setting a kidnap plan into motion."
"Kidnap?" Tyler's eyes opened wide. "Oh shit! The kid!"
"AND Sydney..."
"But... I just left there a while back," the Texan frowned. "The night sweeper was in place - Deb pointed him out to me."
"Well, he ain't answering his cell NOW..." Sam told him grimly.
Tyler was already reaching for the key in the ignition. "I'm there as fast as I can get this thing moving." He disconnected the call and tossed the cell phone into the passenger seat next to him and twisted around. The coupe was out of the driveway in a third of the time it had taken to get into it.
Sam disconnected and thrust the cell phone into his trousers pocket as he reached his own vehicle and opened the door. God, don't let us be too late, he thought desperately - then another thought occurred, and he dragged the cell out of his pocket again and punched in the one number he should have punched first. And waited for an answer. And waited.
"Shit!" The key was in the ignition, and the car was in gear and moving FAST.
~~~~~~~~
"Are you SURE we're supposed to hit this second place too?" Smith looked at his boss from the passenger seat. "I mean, we got the kid..."
"Flores wanted both the kid and the old man," Duncan's voice was determined.
"You'd think he'd have wanted us to snatch the woman too..." Smith continued to question the wisdom of their orders. "I mean, she's the one..."
"Shut up and stop thinking too much," Duncan snapped impatiently. "We're already on the edge, moving the plans up and doing the snatches tonight without direction on what to do next. We can't afford any mistakes. The folks we're going up against will EAT US FOR LUNCH if we screw up." He extinguished the headlamps on the car and steered it into the darkened driveway, behind the little sports car belonging to the girl.
Immediately, two figures emerged from the shadow of the topiary bushes near the front entrance and approached the car. Duncan got out. "Sweeper all taken care of?"
"All he's good for now is pushing up daisies," a self-assured voice came from one of the shadowy figures. "Not a problem."
"Jones, stay with the car and watch for trouble. "Smith, Cordova, you're with me..."
The three moved silently up the walk and onto the porch. Duncan removed a paper from his jacket pocket and, shining a light on it, punched in the security code with a gloved hand and grinned when it, like the one at Miss Parker's home, turned green and disarmed. "That's it," he announced, so that Smith could crouch and begin picking the lock.
~~~~~~~~
Sydney sighed as he heard Kevin give another grunt of frustration and bang at the keys of the computer just that much harder. "Kevin," he sighed again, sitting up against the pillows of the day bed that had been his resting place for far too long now, "give it a rest."
"But I can't find them!" the young Pretender growled angrily, pushing the keyboard away in a fit of pique and scowling at the system as if it were deliberately trying to thwart his efforts.
"You've only just started your search," the psychiatrist reminded him in a voice modulated to calm and soothe. "Be patient. You have twenty-some years of dust to sort through first."
"But, you'd think..."
Sydney's head whipped around as he heard something from the front of the house. "Deb? You're up a little late, ma petite," he called gently. "Can't you sleep?"
Even Kevin's head pivoted around when there was no answer to Sydney's call. "What the..." Then he ducked down into the shadows when three men stomped into the den with guns drawn, hoping he'd not been seen.
"You're coming with us, Gramps," Duncan announced in a threatening voice, waving his gun in Sydney's face. "Up and at 'em." Sydney eyed the intruders carefully and began shifting his bedclothes so that he could rise and do as they asked. Duncan watched the older man's careful and slow movements - and his nervousness got to him at last. He reached down and dragged painfully on the old man's arm. "C'mon, MOVE it, old man!" he growled.
"Leave. Him. ALONE!" Kevin barked at Sydney's surprised yelp of pain as the movement pulled hard on his stitches. The young Pretender pushed hard at his desk chair and crashed it into the back of the legs of the man hurting Sydney.
Sydney, seeing help coming from Kevin, threw the covers of his bed in front of himself as he moved to try to land a punch on the second intruder's face and succeeded, staggering the man back.
"Grandpa? What's..." Deb's voice came from the front of the house.
"RUN DEBBIE!" Sydney howled loudly, then collapsed in a senseless heap as the third man managed to kick his knees out from under him and then deliver a round house blow to the chin.
The toot of a car horn warned the intruders that their time was rapidly running out. Jones could hear the sound of screeching tires in the distance - and they were coming closer. The front door of the house flew open, and a pajamaed girl ran pell-mell down the walk and right into his arms. "I've got the girl!" he called out, landing a fist to the side of her face and knocking all the fight out of her immediately. He popped the trunk of the large sedan and dumped her senseless body in with that of a trussed and muted and very frightened young boy, then slammed the lid shut on them both. "C'mon, guys, we need to go NOW!" he yelled, no longer worried about making a racket.
Duncan whipped his gun hand back and caught Kevin on the cheek with the barrel as he rose to tackle the intruders invading his home, a blow that sent the young man reeling. "Let's get out of here!" he yelled to his companions, knowing that taking the old man was impossible now. The girl would just have to do.
Smith grabbed Cordoba's arm and steered him around and toward the door. The four men piled into the car and backed out of the drive quickly, then sped off onto an even smaller and darker street on which they could hide out until the security force from Centre Headquarters had passed and was busy investigating at the old man's.
~~~~~~~~
Sam's car skidded to a stop in front of Miss Parker's, his heart sinking to his toes when he saw the front door standing wide open and the interior of the house depressingly dark. Barely waiting to off the car motor, and being the first of the sweeper team dispatched to his location to arrive, he was out of the driver's seat and dashing up the front steps, yelling into the darkened house for Miss Parker and Davy at the top of his lungs. When he received no answer, he dashed up the dark staircase.
After his eyes adjusted to the very low level of light, he could see that the doors to both of the bedrooms in the summerhouse were wide open. Sam flicked the light on in the first, and winced both at the stab of light as well as at the dreaded sight of an empty bed with mussed covers in a little boy's otherwise neat room. "Davy!" he yelled again, then backed out and entered the other bedroom and flicked on the light there. Miss Parker lay, apparently still asleep, in her bed - but at the sight of a cloth tossed down on the floor at the foot of her bed, Sam knew that it wasn't a natural sleep. He picked up the cloth and sniffed at it - then held it at arm's length when the stench of the ether immediately made him dizzy.
He dropped the cloth back on the floor where it had been and dug in his pocket for his cell phone. He punched a button and waited for the voice to answer on the other end. "What have you got?" he demanded brusquely.
"Three men broke in - pistol-whipped Kevin and knocked Dr. Green unconscious. But it looks as if..."
"Where's Deb?" Sam could hear Kevin's voice in the background, sounding panicked.
"Where's the Broots girl?" Sam demanded of his associate.
"Shit!" he heard the man spit, and then move the phone away from his mouth to growl an order to one of the others there.
"No, no!" he heard Kevin argue with the sweepers, "she ran out the front door..."
"Check it out!" Sam yelled into the cell phone desperately. "Find her!" He disconnected the call and thrust the little device in his pocket again as Miss Parker began to moan very softly and stir. "Wake up, Miss Parker," Sam called gently, sitting down next to her on the bed and tapping gently on her face to try to bring her to again. "C'mon..."
The lashes fluttered a few times, and then the eyelids slid back to expose very confused and unfocused grey. "Uh..." she moaned, a hand moving slowly to her forehead and then rubbing her eyes. "Wha..." She blinked again several times and worked on focusing on the man seated at the edge of her bed. "Sam? What the hell..."
Sam looked down at her with a combination of remorse, anger and frustration. "We broke Flores, but it was too late. He put a kidnap scheme in motion."
"Kidnap?" She struggled to sit up, and then blinked again as her drugged mind began to register small details of her surroundings - like the fact that Sam - Sam!! - was sitting on the edge of her bed in the middle of the night. "What the hell do you think you're doing here?" she asked, her mind still partly fogged.
"I'm sorry." Sam didn't know how else to explain to her what he feared had happened.
She looked at him long and hard, obviously working at getting her mind to function through the fog, and then she stared out into the hallway. "Davy?" she called, softly at first, and then a little louder and more desperately - "David Thomas, you answer me!" Only when the silence was all that answered did she turn a frightened look back to her friend and Security Chief. "Oh God, Sam, noooo..."
Sam could hear the heavy footsteps of the rest of his team tromping through the front door - and as much as he wanted to stay and comfort his boss and friend, he had a job to do. He smoothed a hand down her arm, catching her gaze with his own, and then rose to walk to the bedroom door. "Check around outside - there have to be clues. Be careful too - we don't want to ruin any evidence for the cops."
The cell phone in his pocket chirped at him, and he extricated it and punched the receive button. "Talk to me."
"They got the girl," the man on the other end announced grimly with no preamble at all. "And the sweeper posted outside here is dead - a bullet to the brain."
"DAMN IT!" Sam disconnected and dropped his hand from his ear in shock and dismay - and found himself facing an angry and frantic Miss Parker.
"Where is my son, Sam?" she asked in a lethally soft voice.
"Andrew Duncan has him," he told her, knowing that sugar-coating the truth would do no good whatsoever, "and he has Deb too."
"D... Deb?" The grey eyes blinked again in shock. "Why Deb?"
"God, I don't know," the Security Chief shook his head sadly at her. "But I damned well am going to find out."
"What about Sydney?" she demanded, catching at his arm before he could move out of reach and nearly stumbling as the effects of the anesthesia still hadn't entirely worn off yet.
"He's unconscious," Sam replied, an arm whipping around her waist and supporting her as he led her back to sit on the bed. "If it's what we suspect, they were after Sydney - taking Deb must have been an afterthought when Syd and Kevin put up a fight."
For a moment, Miss Parker wilted visibly - she bent forward at the waist and put her face in her hands and fought against the urge to just howl her pain and grief. But then, as Sam looked on in amazement, her back straightened and stiffed, she wiped at her face to remove all trace of tears, and then stared up into his dark eyes with a coldness and strength that was awful to behold. "I need to get dressed, and I need to make a phone call - and then you will take me to Sydney's. Wait for me downstairs."
"Yes, ma'am." The look in her eye was getting frightening - it was as if the last seven years' worth of animation and warmth that had turned a boss into a good friend had been rinsed away in seconds, leaving behind the old “Ice Queen” herself. Sam backed away uneasily, backed all the way out into the hallway and closed the bedroom door behind him - then turned around and grimly ordered one sweeper to stand guard at the head of the stairs while he went down to oversee the investigation.
Once Sam was out of the room, Miss Parker's façade wavered slightly - and then she put herself under the most brutal discipline she'd used on herself for years to stand and move to her briefcase and extract the little black book to look up the phone number for the FBI. Now was not the time for sentiment, for emotion. She was a Parker - the time had come for her to act like one.
Even as she waited for Gillespie or one of his flunkies to answer, she pulled every last memory she'd ever had of her so-called “twin” out of storage at the back of her mind. She remembered, relived and examined his sociopathic behavior patterns as she'd observed them over the years. She sorted through quickly until she'd distilled the essence of emotional distance that he'd managed to maintain between himself and everyone else around him - and then she adapted it. With deliberate concentration and the talent she'd always possessed for Pretending but never really used before, she overshadowed herself with that essence completely.
She could not be herself - not now. She could not allow herself to feel - not yet. Not until she had the government called in and working hard to help find and rescue her son and Broots' daughter. Not until she'd seen Sydney and made sure he was OK. And most definitely not until she'd had a chance to rip the heart and throat out of a certain Gilbert Flores.
Then she would call Jarod. THEN she could let herself begin to feel again. THEN she could fall apart for little bit - just enough to vent the pain to the point she could continue to function.
But she could not be herself now. For now, she had to be Lyle.
~~~~~~~~
Ethan had been sitting and writing at an article based on one of his case studies when the voices in his mind had suddenly gone absolutely wild. He dropped the pen and held his temples between the palms of his hands, moaning as the internal volume kept ratcheting up until it was almost unbearable. Then, suddenly, the screams in his head went almost silent - and the sudden extinguishing was almost more painful than the screams themselves had been. Only one voice remained, whispering softly and desperately.
Still blinking hard against the experience and feeling as if he was headed for a massive migraine, he reached out a shaking hand and fought the nausea as he dialed his older brother's phone number. The ringing on the other end was almost more than he could bear, but he held the receiver away from his ear slightly, which made it a little better.
"Hello?" he heard Jarod answer.
"Something's happened," he announced to him without any preamble, "something really bad."
"Ethan?" Jarod's brow furled. "It's late - middle of the night back there. What..."
"I'm telling you," the younger Russell insisted, "something has happened. Something is VERY wrong - I heard her voice, screaming in my head, and now it's gone completely silent."
"Parker?"
"Who else?"
"Damn!" Jarod propped himself up on an elbow and gazed at the clock. It had been a long day. "I'll call - and I'll let you know what's going on as soon as I know anything."
"Thanks." Ethan sounded miserable.
"You gonna be OK?"
"I will once I take enough pain medicine to put down the entire percussion section of the LA Philharmonic," Ethan cracked, then grunted as a stabbing pain shot through a temple.
"Do you want me to call Mom and have her go over to your place and..."
"Hell no! The moment she knows that this has something to do with “back there,” she'll be rumbling louder than the timpani in my head is." Ethan shook his head VERY carefully. "I'll be OK eventually. Just find out what the hell is going on, and keep me in the loop."
"Got it." Jarod hung up the phone and swung his long legs out from under the blankets, then retrieved the receiver and punched in a number only to find it busy. He hung up and tried again - still busy. He hung up and punched in the number for Sydney's - if something had gone wrong, Sydney would know about it the quickest. His brows slid into a solid line of worry when THAT line was busy as well. He tried it again, with no more success.
"Damn it," he swore softly and climbed out of bed and walked across the house to his study, where he'd left his briefcase and the little book of all the cell phone numbers from home. He plopped the book down on his desk and sat down in the leather chair, ignoring that uncomfortable feeling of posterior skin meeting clingy leather, and dialed again.
"Talk to me," Sam's voice growled in a thoroughly intimidating tone.
"It's me - Jarod. What the hell is going on back there?"
Sam cursed under his breath. "Look, Lab-rat, now isn't the time. Things are in a complete uproar. I'll get back to you as soon as I can." Then he disconnected the call - not really knowing how to tell a man a continent away that his son had just been stolen. How did he tell a man who had put the safety of his family into his hands that he'd failed them all?
"The feds are here..." Sam heard a nameless sweeper announce from Miss Parker's front porch.
"That was fast," he growled to himself and then started putting one foot in front of the other to go out and meet the people with whom, it seemed, he would now be working very closely.
