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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Truth and Consequences - by MMB
Chapter 8: Darkness Falls
Miss Parker stared about her as she finally stepped from her bedroom fully dressed and without a hair out of place. Her house - her refuge against the Centre and all the chaos and upheaval it had represented for years - was beehive of activity. Several agents were kneeling inside and outside Davy's room, carefully spreading dust over any surfaces that might have been touched in search of fingerprints. Another agent with a tackle-box full of what she assumed was forensic tools nodded patiently at her and then made his way into HER bedroom the moment she'd left it. There was a hum of voices downstairs - and she could occasionally make out Sam's tired and frustrated tones through the cacophony.
Calmly surveying the bedlam, Miss Parker walked down the stairs and made her way towards her Security Chief, now huddled with another, unfamiliar, Special Agent near her front door. "Well?" she asked shortly, her calm and nonchalant tone of voice and bland facial expression almost non-sequitor to the events of the evening.
Sam eyed her carefully. What he'd seen upstairs as those few moments of shock had penetrated had shaken him. Never - not once - had he before given any credence to the fact that his boss' name had been on one of those infamous “Red Files” that had been kept on all the Pretender candidates years ago, at least, not until now. Now the only resemblance the woman speaking to him held to his boss and friend was purely superficial - something very different and very dangerous now look out at the world through those grey eyes of hers. He'd always respected her strength and even her capable powers of intimidation. Tonight, he genuinely feared her as he had feared no man since Mr. Parker had vanished.
"From the evidence, it looks like we have two, maybe three, intruders. The alarm was disarmed - somewhere, somehow, someONE got a hold of your security code. From there, it was up the stairs and into your room to dope you up with ether, and then on to collect Davy."
The federal agent nodded as the Centre security man had given her a brief but thorough report. "From the looks of things, Miss Parker, the people who did this were professionals. We're dusting for prints - but, to be honest, I'll be damned surprised if we find any."
Miss Parker was listening, carefully, and she nodded. "Then there's very little I can add to the investigation. I never even knew I'd been knocked out."
"They probably just held the rag near your face without touching you," Sam theorized. "The fumes were strong enough that one sniff had ME reeling."
"Then leave a couple of sweepers here to watch over Gillespie's people and make sure nothing sprouts legs and walks away that shouldn't - and to lock up and stand watch until I get back," she ordered brusquely. "Sam, get me to Sydney's NOW. I want to know what's going on over there."
"Miss, there's nothing you can..." the federal agent put a lightly restraining hand on her arm, then flinched when hard and cold grey eyes glared at him.
"Do you need me here for some reason? I've told you all I know - which is precious little - how many times and different ways do I need to explain the same lack of information to you?"
The man blinked. "That's not it..."
"Then are you telling me that there's a logical, rational, LEGAL reason why I can't go THERE?" she asked in a very soft, very restrained voice. She looked first down at the hand on her arm and then up again in an obvious suggestion to the man to move his hand or risk losing it.
The agent got the message and immediately pulled his hand away. "Of course not..."
"Then get the HELL out of my way, little man, before you get stepped on!" she hissed and pushed violently past him and onto her front porch.
"Geez!" the federal agent looked over at Sam in shock. "Is she always like this?" he asked with a shake of the head.
"Nope," Sam said with a slightly thoughtful look on his face, "sometimes she can get pretty upset. You don't WANT to see her at those time, believe me!"
He patted the agent on the shoulder and took a hint from his employer to make tracks outside. She was waiting for him at the top of her porch steps, looking out over the moonlit lawn and driveway - now crawling with investigators. "You gonna be OK, Miss Parker?"
She glanced at him and nodded shortly, and the glance was flat - emotionless. "Just get me to Syd's, Sam. NOW."
~~~~~~~~
In the darkness of the trunk, Davy shifted against the hard floor and tried to move to take some of the pressure from his shoulder. When the man had dumped Deb in on top of him, she had landed hard against his chest and stomach, both of which were now one solid ache. But what had frightened him more than anything else was the short time when the movement of the car had stopped and the trunk had been opened in order to bind Deb as he'd been bound. There had been quiet conversation just outside the trunk after the lid was slammed down again - and the soft laughter and tone of voice of one of the men had been dangerous - ugly - and the discussion had focused on Deb.
So now the two of them lay almost curled next to each other, hands and feet bound tightly with duct tape and with a healthy swatch over their mouths. The car had been moving for a long time now - Davy hoped that eventually Deb would awaken. Even if they couldn't talk, they could know they weren't alone in the darkness.
And somehow, someway, there would be a time and an opportunity for them to get away - and it would be essential that the both of them be prepared to take advantage of such a moment. At least he knew how to watch for such things.
Many times over the years, when he'd stayed overnight with Grandpa Sydney while his mother was busy, the older man had patiently dug out what he had always called his “special games” for the two of them to play. These games were nothing like Scrabble or Monopoly - games played on a board for fun - THESE games had been played entirely in the mind, as exercises in logic and deduction and extrapolation. Given circumstances and a set amount of information, it had been Davy's task to see if he could figure out the answer to the situation within a set amount of time. Davy had become very adept at these games - and his fun had eventually come in seeing just how much under Grandpa's time limit he could manage his task. Over the last year or so, the games had been getting downright complicated - the emotional and psychological factors had been getting more and more subtle, and the answer to the puzzle more and more intricate.
Grandpa had warned him not to talk to his mother about their “special games” - that she wouldn't understand, that Grandpa had long ago developed these games to help train other quick minds to understand and function faster and with more accuracy. To prove his point, Grandpa had indirectly talked about those games with Mommy in front of him once - and Mommy had been not happy at all at the very idea that young minds could be so cultivated. She'd argued in favor of “letting a child BE a child as long as possible” - whatever THAT had meant in connection to the games. A long and meaningful look between the two males after that statement had been all it had taken to convince Davy of the wisdom of keeping his grandfather's gentle lessons very much to himself. The “special games” were a special time to be shared only with the two of them - nobody else.
Now he was going to need every last ounce of mental power that Grandpa had so carefully fostered in him. He might be a small boy, but he could THINK big, thanks to those “special games” he'd been playing for years. Somehow he'd get himself and Deb out of this mess - and the only worry he had now was whether what they'd find themselves in afterwards would be better, or worse.
~~~~~~~~
"Whaddya mean you're going to leave us off in New York?"
Duncan frowned at Jones' silhouette in the rear-view mirror. "Look - we made enough noise at the old man's place that somebody just MIGHT have looked out the window and gotten a description of the car and how many of us there were. We get to New York, we split up."
"Yeah, right," Smith obviously wasn't buying the line. "And just how are you going to handle two kids trussed up like Christmas turkeys all by yourself, asshole?"
"That ain't none of your concern," Duncan insisted, wishing for a moment that he wasn't driving so he could turn around and simply punch the man. "You three have been extremely well-paid for your evening's efforts - and you each have tickets back to Los Angeles within the next three days. What the hell do you care what I have to deal with?"
"I just thought..."
"That's the problem, Smittie, you think too much." Duncan sighed. "Now shut up and let me drive. We don't need to get in a wreck and kill the goods before we can get any serious mileage outta them."
"It was a mistake bringing the girl," Cordoba remarked quietly from his spot behind Jones. He'd been fairly quiet the whole trip. "She isn't close enough to the Parker woman to matter. Flores wanted us to get the old man."
"Well, the son of a bitch fought back - and had help we didn't know about," Duncan snapped. "That's something we wouldn't have tripped over if we'd had the time to do the casing like we were supposed to..."
"You mean like we would have known about if you hadn't gotten antsy and decided to go ahead with the job ahead of schedule rather than wait for Flores," Smith piped up again.
It was the big man's bad luck that he'd taken the front passenger seat, for Duncan's hand suddenly whipped across from the steering wheel and backhanded him hard. "Listen, shit for brains, I KNOW Flores - the reason he missed his call-in is because something has gone wrong, and so the BEST thing we could do for him under the circumstances was give him his leverage early."
"That's granted that he's still alive to enjoy it," Cordoba offered again from the back seat. "For what it's worth, I'll be GLAD to lose you guys in New York. If you've miscalculated, Duncan, I wouldn't WANT to be in your shoes when the Parker bitch blows into your little crib to rescue her boy and then tears you into little tiny pieces."
"Shut up," Duncan hissed at the quiet man, unnerved at the thought of Miss Parker chasing him down like a dog. "This is gonna work. It's GOTTA work."
"Famous last words," Smith grunted, holding his aching nose tenderly and leaning decidedly towards the window and away from the driver.
~~~~~~~~
The scene in front of Sydney's house looked very familiar - sweepers and investigators were swarming all over the place looking for clues as to who had invaded the house, attacked two men and snatched a young woman. Sam halted the car in front of the house and let Miss Parker out so that he could drive down the street farther to find a parking spot.
"You can't go in there, ma'am," a federal agent stepped in front of Miss Parker.
"Get out of my way!" she hissed at him and tried to push around him, only to have him grab her arm. "SAM!!"
"Let her go!" the Security Chief called to the agent before Miss Parker could think of using her martial arts abilities to put the man's face in the dirt. "Gillespie! Call off your hounds here!"
Gillespie turned around quickly from his serious discussion with another agent and gestured to his man the moment he saw who had arrived. "Let her through, Nick," the SAC said quietly, then nodded in return as Miss Parker gave him a nod of gratitude and walked steadily and determinedly up the walk and into the house. "How's she doing?" the special agent asked the very tired looking security man. "I would have thought they'd have sent her to the hospital to make sure..."
"This is Miss Parker we're talking about here," Sam told him with an eye to the open front door of the house. "When she decides something, a man has two options: get the hell out of the way, or get run over."
"Mmmm..." the FBI man nodded. Somehow, finding out she had that kind of personality wasn't all that surprising. "Still, see to it she gets checked out - for her own good - willya? Our lab guys still aren't sure what kind of chemical was on that rag that put her to sleep. We don't want to take chances."
Sam shrugged and then nodded. "I'll do what I can," was about all he could promise, and then he too was headed up the walk and through the door.
Inside, the forensics investigators were all over the house, just as they had been at Miss Parker's. From the back Sam could hear Kevin's voice, tense and obviously quite upset, and then Tyler's voice answering in a similarly upset tone. He hurried to the den to see what the heck...
The two young men were squared off - Tyler standing over Kevin as the latter was having a butterfly bandage carefully applied to the wound on his face where he'd been pistol-whipped, and Kevin glowering up at him while trying not to move away from the painful process.
"What do you mean, it's all my fault?" Tyler was demanding in exasperation. "Going to a steakhouse in Dover had NOTHING at all to do with..."
"But if she hadn't been all worked up and out late to begin with, she'd have been asleep hours ago - and then they wouldn't have..."
"Oh, for God's sake, Kevin! Stuff a sock in it!" Tyler's voice lowered as his worry and frustration began to make him angry. "From the looks of things, you two would have made more than enough noise to wake her..."
"Tyler! Kevin! Stop it!" Sam barked from the door before Miss Parker could really and truly lose her patience with either of them. "Kevin, Tyler's right. Nothing about their dinner tonight would have made a difference. You're a Pretender - SIM it out for yourself. And Tyler, don't lay blame where it doesn't belong. Kevin's fairly naïve and new to the idea of interpersonal stuff - but he did protect Sydney from being taken. Speaking of whom..."
Sam turned his head and saw Miss Parker reach out and carefully smooth aside a stray strand of silver hair out of the unconscious man's face while the emergency medical people worked over him. It was as if she hadn't heard any of the testosterone-powered bickering behind her, so focused she was on the man Sam knew she loved very deeply as the father she'd never really had. At least for the time being, her expression was the closest to the Miss Parker he knew that she'd shown all night; and with a sigh of almost relief, he turned his attention to Sydney.
There was blood on his shirt, and Sam realized that some of Sydney's stitches had probably been torn in the melee - yet another set-back in what had been a troublesome recuperation from the fracas that had seen Angelo killed. The older man's lower left chin also wore a brilliant red mark where the invader's fist had connected, a mark that promised to be a nasty and painful bruise in time. He was pale and still, lying there on the floor between the couch and the coffee table - but finally, it seemed, the eyelids were starting to flutter as Sydney began to come to.
"Shhhh, Syd, don't try to move," Miss Parker cautioned him gently with a hand to his shoulder to keep him from moving much. He groaned deeply in response. "Do you hurt anywhere?" she asked before the medical technician could get a word in edgewise.
"M...my knee..." he managed with difficulty, whereupon the young blue-garbed paramedic began carefully palpating the man's leg. Sydney opened his eyes wide and gasped noisily as the capable fingers found the place that hurt worst of all.
"I'll put a brace on it now, sir," the young medical technician announced matter-of-factly, "and they'll need to x-ray it when you get to the hospital."
"Parker..." Sydney suddenly seemed to realize that she was there beside him. "What are you doing here? Who called you at this hour of the night? What..."
"Hush, Sydney. We'll talk later..."
"Where's Debbie?" The older man became increasingly agitated when he looked over at Kevin and saw the deeply distressed expression on the young man's face. "DEBBIE!"
"She's gone, Syd." Miss Parker's voice was bleak. "They took her. And Davy too."
Stunned chestnut stared in disbelief into agonized grey. "Noooo... Not Davy too..." The older psychiatrist began to struggle again. "I can't just lie here, or be hauled off to the hospital. I need..."
Miss Parker kept her hand on his shoulder and used just enough force to keep him from doing himself any more harm. "Sydney. Listen to me. It is very important to ME that you let them help you - you've torn your stitches in your side and your knee needs tending too, that's obvious. I need you well and safe, so I can concentrate on Davy and Deb." A single tear fell to her cheek. "Please."
"God, Parker..." Sydney's eyes filled as he thought of his little grandson and pretty granddaughter in the hands of those callous men.
Miss Parker felt a warm and gentle hand at her back. "Miss Parker?" Sam began softly, not wanting to intrude, but knowing that time was of the essence. "Let's let the paramedics get Sydney situated, so that Gillespie's men can debrief him at the hospital. There's nothing..."
"What about..." Sydney's eye didn't miss the bandage on Kevin's cheek as he began looking around and taking in the details of his surroundings. "What happened to HIM?"
"Pistol-whipped. He'll be riding with you to Dover in the ambulance, just to make sure that nothing got broken other than skin," Sam explained.
Miss Parker leaned down and kissed Sydney's cheek above the bruising mark. "I'll be picking you up later, when they release you." Her grey eyes bore into his. "I need you, Syd - I am REALLY going to need you with me. Let them take care of you so..." It had become hard for her to speak.
Slowly the silvered head nodded agreement. "We'll get them back, Parker..." he said brokenly.
She nodded, kissed him again, and then got to her feet and turned to Sam, grey eyes turning hard and cold even as he watched. Again the hackles rose at the back of the ex-sweeper's neck to watch the process of another personality entirely taking over his boss. "Tyler, I want you to get the lines of coordination set up with Gillespie and his people - make arrangements to give the man an office at the Centre if he wants one. He's to have full and unobstructed cooperation on this. Is that understood?"
"Yes, ma'am! I'll get right on it."
A hand whipped out and caught Tyler as he began to move past her. "But give Sam and me about two hours before starting our new “open door” policy with the law. There are a couple of items that the two of us need to see to BEFORE we start having FBI haunting our corridors. Got it?"
Tyler looked at Sam. "Tell you what, big guy - you call me when you're ready to bring the FBI into the Centre. I won't move on that part of things until I hear from you."
Sam and Miss Parker nodded in unison, and Tyler hurried off to find Gillespie. "Alright, Sam," Miss Parker now turned to face Sam directly. "Get me to the Centre. NOW. I think we need to have a few, choice, words with Mr. Flores."
"Yes, ma'am."
Sam couldn't summon up even one iota of sympathy for the Hispanic whom he'd pushed so hard that afternoon. And something told him that by the time Miss Parker finished with him, Flores would be wishing he still had that electrode still strapped to his calf.
~~~~~~~~
Unaccustomed to having to be patient, and feeling the nauseating sense of helplessness at being a continent away from where he wanted - no, NEEDED - to be at that moment, Jarod leaned heavily against the balustrade. Below him he could hear the pounding surf crashing rhythmically against the rocks, and watched the waves sparkling and dancing in the waning moonlight without really seeing them. The sound of the ocean had long been a source of solace and calming on those troublesome days when nothing seemed to go right. But tonight, the power of Nature itself to comfort him while he waited for news was completely lacking.
Not for the first time, he straightened and considered trotting back into the house, picking up the phone and calling Sam and DEMANDING to be told what was going on, regardless of how much of an interruption he'd be. But there had been fondness and more than a little warning in the big man's use of his nickname, enough to tell him that Sam - always a man of his word, even in the dark days of the hunt - WOULD call him back and bring him up to speed when he had a moment to spare. If Ethan's near-panic was any sign, Sam's abruptly ending the call was because he was busy - and more than likely busy in Miss Parker's service.
What was most frustrating was the inability to reach out to ANYBODY back there. Syd's phone had been just as busy as Miss Parkers - which meant that whatever had disrupted Missy's life had touched Sydney's as well. Jarod rubbed his beard and forced himself NOT to try to picture what was going on. It could only drive him nuts.
And then it was his phone calling him back indoors. He wasn't surprised to hear Ethan's voice on the other end. "Any news?"
"Nope. Her line and even Syd's lines are busy - and Sam cut me off almost immediately." Jarod sighed, his frustration and impatience getting the best of him for a moment. "You're right - something is very wrong. And here I am, stuck on the wrong damned side of the country..."
"Calm down, big bro, before you give yourself a stroke!" Ethan's voice modulated into a soothing voice that he often found useful with his patients.
"You sound like Sydney used to," Jarod said eventually, after a long moment when he struggled to get himself back into control.
"I sound like you do every once in a while," Ethan corrected him with a smile. "I copied it from you."
Jarod shook his head. "I keep running into signs that I've been emulating Sydney in a number of ways, even though I did my best to put him and everything about my years in the Centre behind me."
"Bullshit," Ethan started to chuckle. "All you did was try to turn your back on a part of yourself - and it found new and different ways of coming back to the same point. It's just that now that you've been back there, you see all the little ways you could never entirely run away from who you are inside - and how much that who you are was shaped by Sydney."
Jarod groaned. "Just what I needed at this hour of the night - a stunning bit of psychobabble aimed in my direction by my younger brother."
"You sounded like you could use it," Ethan countered.
"You're right there too," Jarod admitted in chagrin, then took a breath and changed the subject. "You sound like you're feeling better."
"Yeah, the acetaminophen has the whole percussion section down to a tambourine. And I took a quick nap - that helped."
"Well look, as much as talking to you is helping me keep from jumping out of my skin, Sam said that he'd call me back the moment he had some time. And I don't want to keep the line occupied for too long..."
"Just keep me in the loop, OK?" Ethan reminded him. "She's my sister too, you know."
"I know, little brother. I'll call the minute I have word."
"Hang in there..."
"Easier said than done, Ethan. Talk to you later."
"Later, bro."
Jarod disconnected the call and waited with the receiver in his hand for a long moment as if inviting Sam to find the time to call - in vain. He then sighed, dropped the cordless receiver on the coffee table and walked slowly back out onto his balcony over the ocean to wait for however long it would take to get that call. He knew there was no way that he'd be able to get any sleep now. He'd survived for over five years on the run on two to four hours of sleep - doing so tonight wouldn't be that difficult. Would it?
~~~~~~~~
"What do you intend to do?"
Miss Parker glanced at Sam, walking solidly at her side. "I intend to convince him to tell us where the plan said they were going to keep Davy and Sydney. That's probably where the men who took him are heading."
"And if he doesn't know for sure?"
She stopped and, with a hand at his arm, halted Sam as well. "What do you mean?"
"Flores built in a lot of safeguards to this little scheme of his - pretty crafty for someone who is more loose cannon and fast talk than anything else." Sam looked at her cautiously. "He deliberately didn't know where Duncan was staying once the man got here to Delaware. It's possible that he was sneaky enough not to know precisely where Duncan was going to keep them until whatever he wanted was accomplished, much less whether Duncan was ever really going to release them when he got what he wanted."
Miss Parker just shook her head. "We'll function as if Flores knows everything. If he doesn't, he DOES know how to contact Duncan himself. We have a trace on that cell phone of his already - we hand over our trace to the FBI and have Flores call Duncan."
"Not bad," Sam nodded. "It might even work. Maybe. Then again, maybe Flores' getting a chance to rest up a bit from our little games this afternoon will have his back up so that he's not cooperating again."
Miss Parker's eyes twinkled in a very cold, very dangerous way. "That's OK. We can handle that, too." She looked at him and almost laughed at his expression of disapproval. "Oh, come now! After all, it was you who decided to push the envelope as far as the legalities of your interrogation methods. We may just need to bump it up a notch or two..."
"And you're willing to explain this to the FBI when they come looking for their man - like you KNOW they will, sooner or later?"
"What I'm thinking of doesn't leave marks either," she whispered, one hand at the doorknob.
"I don't like the sounds of that," Sam complained quietly.
"I don't give a damn what you like or don't like," she suddenly snapped at him. Sam was quickly and efficiently reminded that this was NOT his old boss, but that new and unpleasant creature that he'd watched overshadow his boss twice now. "Go to the infirmary and bring me a backboard and enough duct tape to hold that bastard down tight. I'll see if I can sweet-talk him first, while you're gone."
"Let me call another sweeper to keep an eye..."
"No." The hand at his arm held tightly - almost painfully. "And when you come back, knock first and wait until I call and tell you to enter. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Miss Parker. You are crystal."
"Good." She turned away from him and, after punching in the security code, opened the door. She slipped through and pushed the door shut after her. There was a moment of silence, and then a loud thump and a cry of surprise and considerable pain. "Ah, Mr. Flores. Good to see that you're awake again."
Sam walked away with an odd feeling that he'd best hurry to get what she'd asked for - as much for Flores' continued health as anything else. Then, suddenly, he remembered a promise he'd made earlier. He cussed and dug in his pocket for his cell phone and brought up the number.
"Sam, tell me what the hell is going on over there!" Jarod didn't even bother with a “hello” or even Miss Parker's brittle “what.” "And don't tell me it isn't really all that much. I have a half-brother worried sick, and he's got me worried sick."
"Slow down, Lab-rat." Sam paused on his trek to the infirmary and leaned tiredly against a wall. "Are you sitting down?"
"No, of course I'm not!" Jarod shouted, pacing back and forth on his balcony. "You've got to be..."
"Sit down, Jarod. I won't talk to you until you do." Sam's voice was quiet, and Jarod's fit of frustration froze in its tracks.
"What aren't you telling me yet?" he asked, feeling around for a deck chair and sinking into it involuntarily as his legs wouldn't hold him up anymore. "It's bad, isn't it?"
"Are you sitting down?"
"Yes, damn you, I'm sitting down. Now will you PLEASE..."
"OK." Sam closed his eyes and wished with all his might that he'd never reached this point in his life. "You knew that we've been trying to outwit a bunch of shady supervisors?"
"Yes, Miss Parker told me about them a couple of nights ago. Sam..." The Pretender's voice was getting ragged with emotion.
"One of them, Gilbert Flores, decided to take matters into his own hands. We worked the better part of the last two days trying to undo all the things he set into motion..."
"SAAAM!! For God's sake..."
"I finally broke him this afternoon, after he'd made a cell phone call to his assistant and told him to “do it.” “Do it” was the order to kidnap Davy and Sydney."
"Oh God..." Jarod could feel the blood draining from his head. "BOTH of them?"
"He got Davy..." Sam started, then backtracked. "They got the security codes for both houses somehow - and knocked Miss Parker out with ether before taking Davy. They came for Sydney, but he and Kevin put up a fight."
"Good!" Jarod breathed out in satisfaction. "So they just got my son?" His voice broke on the last words.
"No. They got Deb too."
"Deb!"
"Yeah. She woke up and heard Sydney yell for her to run. They must have caught her outside." Sam paused as his own emotions, held down firmly for so long, suddenly threatened to explode. "I'm SO sorry, Lab-rat. I tried..."
"What about the sweepers watching everybody? You were getting that all lined up before I left..." Jarod shook his head - it was almost too much to take in all at once.
"They killed the sweeper in front of Sydney's."
"And the one in front of Parker's?"
Sam was quiet for a while. "She wouldn't let me put one at her place, Jarod. She said it could be interpreted as a sign of weakness."
"DAMN!!!" Jarod thought for a moment. "What's the word with Sydney, then? Is he..."
"Sydney's back in the hospital - the attempted kidnapping tore some of his stitches, and one of the kidnappers may have hurt his leg some. We'll know more about that after some x-rays. Kevin got pretty badly pistol-whipped trying to protect Sydney, and he's in having his face x-rayed too, to make sure nothing got busted with that. Miss Parker's called in the FBI - and we're going to be cooperating with them in trying to take care of this..."
"The feds??" Jarod almost smiled. "She's using them to do the work for her and keep it all legal." Very good, Parker, he thought to himself, then closed his eyes as a stab of grief shot through him. Davy!
"Everything but what we're up to right now," Sam agreed cryptically. "Look, I gotta go. She wants me to bring some stuff from the infirmary. But before I go, I want you to know that I don't know what else I could have done... but I feel I've let you down." Sam's voice shook slightly. "I promised you I'd keep them safe... I'm SO sorry..."
"Stop that." Jarod's voice was frighteningly calm. "If they killed the sweeper at Sydney's they'd have killed the sweeper in front of her place too. And you did what you could. It isn't your fault."
"Yes, it is." Sam sounded defeated even in the midst of contradiction, then shook himself. "But I can't think of that right now. She needs me to do things for her. When this is done, however..."
"Do me a favor?"
Sam closed his eyes. Jarod was letting him off far too easily, as far as he was concerned. "Name it, Lab-rat."
"Call me around your lunchtime tomorrow with an update. Keep me in the loop. And if you need me to come home, don't pussy-foot around..."
"I will," the ex-sweeper promised. "You'll know everything I do when I call you tomorrow."
"Later, then." Jarod disconnected the call, and at last let the phone drop from numb fingers. He sat in the deck chair for a long time, not even hearing the pounding of the surf below him, wishing with all his might that he was back home where he was desperately needed.
Finally he got chilled enough in the night ocean air to rise and shuffle into the house and back towards his bed. There was no chance he'd sleep more than a wink or two now. And somewhere in that time, he'd decide whether he needed to make an emergency trip home, or whether he could afford to stay put and wait things out from here.
It was something to occupy his mind, and he lay back into the comfortable pillows and took a deep breath and began the mind-cleansing exercises that Sydney had taught him all those years ago. He'd SIM through the best option, keeping in mind all the variables involved both in Delaware and in California.
Missy had been right. He was a Pretender - it was high time he began acting like one again.
~~~~~~~~
Flores blinked against the sudden brightness of the overhead light and tried to glare convincingly at Miss Parker, standing over him with a satisfied look on her face. "You didn't have to do that," he complained. "A nudge would have sufficed to awaken me."
"For you, perhaps - but I feel remarkably refreshed seeing you on the floor," she rejoined in a very cold tone, dropping with a resounding thump the side of the cot she'd lifted to dump him on the floor.
The Hispanic swallowed back a quick insult. His was not the best position to be in while tweaking the Centre Chairman. "What do you want from me? I've already told your Inquisitor all I knew..."
"Oh, I don't think so." Miss Parker stalked slowly around the man sitting uncomfortably on the floor and then took a seat on the edge of the bed not far from him. "I think you know a great deal more than you're telling anybody." She smiled at him, and the expression brought the hackles up on Flores' neck. The last time anybody had smiled at him like that, it was Lyle - just before he'd watched the man kill a competitor for thrills and carve him up for supper as if he'd been a side of beef. "And I think you would be well-served to tell me all these wonderful little secrets of yours before my Inquisitor, as you call him, gets back."
"I have nothing to say to you," the man on the floor spat, then moved slowly and very painfully to try to get to his feet. All would go well until he got to a particularly precarious point - at which Miss Parker would nudge him none too gently with her foot and set him right back down on the floor where he started. After the third time, he growled at her, "Is that the best you can do, bitch - kick a man while he's down?"
Miss Parker's smile only got colder and more lethal. "I'm dealing with a cockroach - a cucaracha, I believe you call them - not a man. A REAL man would stand up to me face to face from the start, not hide in the shadows of a child and an old man like a coward."
Flores' momentary grin of pride at his accomplishment despite his current situation touched a match to what little was left of her volatile fuse. She was on her feet in a second with her heeled foot knocking the man flat to the floor and holding his face into the dirt with a spiked foot at the back of his skull. "You ARE an insect, Flores - a spineless, ball-less, good-for-nothing-but-compost worm. And the only way you'll ever see daylight again will be to tell me where Duncan has taken my son."
"Why would I want to tell you THAT, puta?" he grated from beneath her foot. "Seems to me that the only way you'll ever see your son again is for you to sign over complete control of the Centre to me. And then MAYBE I'll tell Duncan to return him to you - alive - but I'll hang onto the old man, just to make sure you keep yourself out of trouble from now on."
Miss Parker laughed outright, and it was one of the most frightening sounds that Flores had ever heard in his life. "Sign control of the Centre over to YOU? Tell me, what color IS the sky in your world? This is MY Centre - my family founded it, built it, died for it. And you think you're going to force me to just sign it over? You pathetic..." She looked up as a knock came on the door. "Ah good. My loyal assistant has returned, and right on time." Taking her foot from the back of Flores' head, she stalked over to the door and called, "OK Sam."
Sam pushed the door open and leaned the backboard against the wall and raised his hand so she could see him wearing the fresh roll of duct tape like a cumbersome bracelet. The dark ex-sweeper took in the sight of Flores struggling to right himself into a seated position on the floor, and the craggy face broke into a wide smile. "Well, well, if it isn't Mr. Fuck-you himself - right down scrabbling in the dirt again where he belongs."
"Mr. Flores here is of the opinion that I should just meekly sign over control of the Centre to him - and THEN, maybe, he'll return Davy to me. He'll keep Sydney, however, as collateral against my continued good behavior." Miss Parker announced to Sam with a look of not quite sanity that made his skin crawl. "What do you think?"
"I think maybe it's time we laid the turkey out and get the information we want from him the only way he seems to be open to being convinced," Sam replied, playing along. He looked down into Flores' face with a similarly cold expression, watching what little color that Hispanic face had had drain away as his meaning became clear. "Ready when you are, Miss P."
Miss Parker reached behind her and pulled out her 9mm chrome-plated Smith & Wesson. Sam worked hard not to stare - he'd been around when she'd spoken of putting that away in her bedroom closet, up very high and behind plenty of other stored items so that Davy would never know it was even there. She'd firmly announced at the time that she'd never handle the thing again for any but the best of reasons. This, evidently, qualified - it would have, even in HIS book.
She fondled the chrome piece, slowly chambered a round for the effect knowing the weapon was loaded would have on the quaking Californian. Then after stroking the man's cheeks and throat with the cool metal almost seductively, she put the muzzle of the gun against Flores' forehead and pressed it into the skin a bit. "You're not going to give me any problems, little man, are you?" She glanced up at Sam. "Lean the board against the bed and get him on it. Tape him down tight so that he can't move at all."
Flores took one look at the eager expression on Sam's face as the sweeper positioned the backboard as directed and tried to scoot across the floor away from him. Miss Parker didn't flinch - she just moved the gun from his forehead and pulled the trigger next to his ear, sending the bullet into the linoleum only an inch or so from his hand, giving him reason to freeze his movements. "I suggest you not struggle, insect, or you'll look like Jesus on Good Friday and STILL end up taped down to that board so you can't move. Then again," she waved the gun nonchalantly before putting it back to his forehead, making him flinch away from the heat of the metal, "it's your choice."
Sam moved efficiently around Miss Parker and grabbed hold of the man on the floor beneath the armpits, dragging him roughly up and depositing him none too gently against the hard surface of the backboard. Miss Parker moved with Flores, keeping the gun to his forehead while Sam began the job of duct taping the man to the backboard.
"What are you going to do to me?" Flores whimpered, his ear still ringing from the percussion of the gunshot. "If you kill me, you'll never know..."
"Whoever said anything about kill?" Miss Parker smiled her lethal smile down at him as the duct tape got wrapped about his forehead several times, making it impossible for him to move his head at all. "I'm going to test out a schoolyard legend and see just how effective Chinese Water Torture is after all." She pointed. "Make sure he has no movement at the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrist, chest, hips, knees and ankles. And leave the hand holds on either end of the board available. We'll have to carry him to the infirmary when we get him trussed up."
"At least let me call another sweeper to help carry him," Sam asked her while taking care of the arms and chest.
"Nope," she answered easily. "This is for you and me to do, Sam. I don't want any of the others involved."
"Chinese Water Torture, eh?" The ex-sweeper nodded at her. "I've always wondered about that one myself." Sam bent and patted Flores' shoulder through the duct tape. "Don't worry, it's going to be research in a good cause - trust me!"
~~~~~~~~
Jarod eased himself out of the funk he'd been in for the last half-hour, still desperately torn and wanting to dash back to Delaware where he wanted to be. He'd been hard put to think of reasons to sit on his hands a continent away letting Parker and Sam handle things for him. He also REALLY wanted to take his own turn at working a proper payback on the bastard that had done this to people he loved in the first place. He'd not been able to achieve a meditative state at all - all he'd been able to focus on was his worry about Davy and, to a slightly lesser extent, Deb. But eventually, what had begun as a slight nudge at the back of his mind had turned into a small bell that announced that he'd forgotten something in his upset. He took a long, deep breath and opened his eyes, and he suddenly knew exactly what was bothering him - what he'd forgotten.
With a sigh of regret, he picked up the receiver and dialed his brother's number.
"Jarod?" Ethan sounded very tired, as if he'd possibly just awakened.
"I'm sorry if I woke you." Jarod truly did feel badly now - he should have called Ethan much earlier.
"No," Ethan said then grunted. "I just dozed off here in my chair. Did you finally talk to somebody?"
"Yeah." Jarod pinched the bridge of his nose as if that would keep the tears from threatening again as they had every time he thought of his son in danger. "Some fruitcake back there decided to snatch Davy and Sydney in order to force Parker to do something she didn't want to do."
Ethan frowning. One of the flashes he'd received from his sister before everything had shut down violently had concerned her son - the image of the little boy with the dark hair and grey eyes and his father's grin was burned into his mind - but not the psychiatrist. "Sydney wasn't part of what I got..."
"I know." Jarod sighed. "Seems Sydney had help defending himself - he and Kevin fought the men off. They got a bit dented in the dust-off, but are otherwise OK. But..."
"But..."
"Looks like the kidnappers snatched Deb Broots instead."
"Oh boy." His younger brother was very quiet. Then: "What are you going to do? Go back?"
"I don't know," Jarod let his conflict show in his voice. "God, I want to. I've spent the better part of the last half-hour trying to decide whether to jump the next plane back East or hold off for a bit yet. If I went now, I'd be completely involved and able to help out - and Parker's called in the feds, so it isn't as if she doesn't have plenty of quality people back there working on this that I'd be working with too. I know Parker has Sydney back there, and Sam, for moral support - I'll call her this evening when hopefully things will have settled down to a dull uproar. But I'D rather be there too - to make sure SHE'S handling things OK and not just feeding me a line. She's very good at burying her feelings so deeply that it hurts her more in the long run uncovering them again. I know her better than anybody else does, except maybe Sydney - so I'd KNOW if she was just running from herself again and keep her from doing that."
"Jarod..."
Jarod didn't seem to hear him. "I mean, how do I know that somebody isn't going to make a colossal blunder that will cost Davy or Deb their lives? How do I know that the government folks Parker called in will be trustworthy - and not actively working with the scum that set this in motion? Sydney's hurt and so is Kevin - hell, Broots is still in a coma last I heard. If I were there, I could process the information faster than anybody else and SIM things..."
"And get in the way of the feds, maybe be too much of a distraction for my sister to be able to focus properly on her other problems at the Centre..."
Jarod's voice grew defensive. "He's MY son, Ethan. I have a right..."
"Calm down! I'm just saying the things that need to be considered too. Not to mention that you told me you were going to talk to that lawyer and put things into motion about Ginger. When is it that they're coming to inspect your home, did you say?"
The thought of the little girl brought Jarod up short. "Hell, I don't know. But this is an emergency, after all..."
Ethan just shook his head. "You know as well as I do that bureaucracies don't recognize emergencies. You have to make an appointment to die with some of them - croaking at the drop of the hat just isn't allowed."
"I can't just sit here, waiting..."
"THINK, Jarod - don't just run off half-cocked. Knowing what you do, have you done any SIMming on this at all?"
"That was that half-hour I spent when I should have called you first." Jarod admitted. "But I couldn't get my mind clear enough..."
"Well, at least you're making a stab at doing things the right way - even if you're not being very successful or objective about it." Ethan thought for a moment. "Who'd you finally talk to back there, anyway?"
"Sam. He called me, evidently in the middle of getting something for Missy at the Centre."
Ethan closed his eyes and concentrated. It had been a long time since his therapy sessions, when he'd finally learned how to reach out to the voices in the back of his mind. He pushed gently, first in one direction and then in the next - searching for something that had no name and he couldn't explain. "I tell you, Jarod, things feel... disjointed... about this whole thing. Something's really off."
"What do you mean - disjointed?"
"Like things are tumbling around randomly, unorganized..." Now it was Ethan's turn to sigh. "You know how every once in a while, everything around you just kinda goes FUBAR for a time? Like that."
"And that's why you think I should stay put?"
"I'm not sure... To be honest, I almost wish that Pretending had been a part of what I could do. I could help you see through the SIMs, instead of feed you hunches..."
"What kind of hunches?" Jarod was sincerely curious - Ethan's hunches had an uncanny habit of being borne out.
Ethan answered, hearing again that very quiet voice. "That you need to be here when things break loose..." He searched for words to explain feelings that couldn't be described, then let go an explosive burst of frustrated air. "God, I wish I could tell you more.
"What breaks loose?" Jarod demanded. "Who? Parker? Davy?"
"Good question, bro. I don't understand it all that well myself."
The Pretender was quiet for a moment, still feeling very tempted to throw together an overnight bag and hop the next plane for the East Coast, but now faced with the unhappy hunch that Ethan's hunch might just be right. "Well, I'll let you get back to your nap. You wanted to stay in the loop..."
"Let me know when you know anything new," Ethan asked quickly, before Jarod could do one of his abrupt disconnects that still could be quite irksome. "And for God's sake, if you DO decide to hop a plane, call me first so I can try to calm down Mom and Em when they find out you took off again without telling them."
Jarod sighed. "I suppose I can do that. Sleep well, little brother."
"Goodnight, Jarod. Try to get some rest, willya?"
Jarod pinched the bridge of his nose again. "Yeah. Sure thing," he replied wryly, more than aware that he'd be able to do just about anything BUT that. "Goodnight, Ethan."
~~~~~~~~
Tyler sat in his coupe, to which he'd retired after sticking around inside Sydney's long enough to see the government investigators finish collecting their evidence and drive off and then set sweepers in place to guard the place until the psychiatrist's return. In his hand was the one item that he wanted most to hand to Gillespie at that moment - and yet didn't have a clue how to do it without getting Miss Parker and Sam into a lot of hot water. He gazed down at the picture of Andrew Duncan and frowned in frustration.
How was he to tell the FBI man in charge that THIS was the man to be watching for? He couldn't just say, "well, he's the guy hired by the man who dreamed this thing up - we have a tape of the call Flores made to him setting up the kidnapping. Oh, and by the way, we're taking care of Flores ourselves, so all YOU have to do is find Duncan..." Nope. That wouldn't fly. Gillespie would want access to Flores immediately - and Miss Parker had asked for time to weasel the information out of him in her own way.
He could say, "well, this is the assistant to the man who was involved in all those dealings with the crime syndicates that we just turned over to you - and we suspect that he's probably involved in setting up the kidnappings too. Where is he? We're not exactly sure..." Nope. All it would take would be an interview with one of the other supervisors, and the FBI would know full good and well that Centre personnel knew where Flores had gone. Then not only would they want immediate access, but they'd want to know why the Centre had lied after promising full and unobstructed cooperation.
With a yawn he looked down at his wristwatch - it was three in the morning. Much as he'd just as soon drive home and rest up a bit, he knew Miss Parker was probably wanting him out at the Centre when he finished here. He put the photo of Duncan on the passenger seat and fired up the motor of the coupe. Maybe SHE would have some idea how to introduce Duncan to Gillespie without causing more problems than he solved.
He sure hoped so...
~~~~~~~~
Flores looked on in growing amusement as Miss Parker and Sam, using the materials at hand in the infirmary and other places, began to construct an odd scaffold about his head. They had carried him down the hallway with very little effort, even though he had tried with all his might to move his weight around and make the burden difficult. At one point, however, Miss Parker had called for them to halt, then leaned over his head - near the end of the board she was carrying - and hissed, "Keep it up and we'll drop you. Feel like seeing if three feet of freefall will make you more cooperative?" Looking into her cold, dead, grey eyes, he knew that she'd do it - order that they drop him - and probably not just from the waist-high level he was at.
The scaffolding was as creative as it was functional. A metal supply shelf unit - shelves held on either end by essentially a metal ladder - had been placed at his head. Then Sam had vanished for a short time and came back with a set of bottles of sterile water and an IV control unit. The two of them had been happily creative from there on - hanging the two rather large bottles of water to feed the control unit and then connecting that to a regular IV tube. Then they took a scalpel and cut the plastic tubing just beneath the drip controller and finally, with deliberate care, rigged it so that the cut end of the drip unit hung approximately three feet above his head.
"Are you ready for this?" Sam asked Miss Parker with a twinkle in his eye. With a nod she plugged in the control unit. Sam waited until the reservoir behind the drip controller had a fair bit of liquid in it before easing back on the drip controller. The first drop impacted on the duct tape, so Sam moved the shelf unit just inches closer. Just enough so that the next drip landed right where they wanted it to - on the bridge of the nose just between the eyes.
Flores began to chuckle. "You call this incentive?" he chortled. "I figured you'd be doing something..." he paused as the next drip hit him and made him blink, "...more intimidating."
Miss Parker merely smiled coldly. "For your information, a single drop of water, repeated often enough, can wear away a mountain. Let's see how well you do after about an hour of that thing dripping onto your face - or maybe even a day or so."
"A day?" Sam looked over at her. "Are we going to be willing to hold him like this for that long?"
"I honestly don't think it will take that long," Miss Parker said to him. "Fully part of the torture Hippolytus de Marsiliis developed had to do with the power of anticipation turning to annoyance turning to dread turning to insanity. That's why we don't want it dripping on him any faster than four or five times a minute - he needs the time between drops to watch it grow until it just can't hang on anymore, and then it hits him in exactly the same time after time after time."
"You are so full of shit, lady," Flores snarled.
"You're the one getting wet," she reminded him sweetly. "We'll check up on you in about an hour - if nothing else, to make sure there's plenty of water still waiting to drip onto you drop by drop by drop." She took Sam by the arm, insinuating her hand into the crook of his elbow. "C'mon - let's see if we can get any news from Tyler."
Flores couldn't turn his head to see them leave nor make out any movement in his peripheral vision, but he heard the door close. All he could see was the clear plastic orifice above him that slowly was growing the next drop that, as it hit his face, scattered droplets painfully into his eye making him blink hard. And again. And again.
He tried closing his eyes and ignoring the drip, but the waiting was almost worse than having it drop unexpectedly. Time had never moved so slowly in his life, measured a single drop of water at a time.
~~~~~~~~
Kevin sat stoically on the edge of the examination table as the ER physician put three stitches into the cut on his cheek from blow from the gun. Sydney had warned him to be patient and cooperate fully, and he was determined to follow his mentor's directions to the letter. The physician who attended him was a personable man, not a lot older than Kevin himself, who was trying to engage his nervous patient in some light conversation. But Kevin's shyness had made a sudden and fierce reappearance because so much of what the doctor was asking about made very little sense to the young Pretender. He didn't even know anybody by the last name of either Spears or Carey - so how could he say which girl or woman he “liked” better? He LIKED Deb - but she was... No. He wouldn't think of that now - it still hurt too much.
"When will I be able to see my... When can I see Sydney?" he finally asked when the doctor seemed to be finished and reaching for a new bandage.
"I'm not sure - let me go check on him for you." The physician applied the butterfly bandage and rose from his little stool. "Hang on."
Kevin looked around him at the emergency room - still reeling from finding himself a patient in one. The entire intake process had been frightening - out of sheer lack of creativity and growing panic, he'd claimed Sydney's last name as his own on the admitting form. He didn't think Sydney would mind much - the mentor HAD told him at one point that he was a part of the family after all. But he'd learned in the short time he'd been out of that little house and away from Vernon that sometimes saying a thing and actually meaning it could be two different things. He'd have to apologize to Sydney later, just in case.
"Your friend will be staying overnight with us at the very least," the doctor announced as he pushed through the curtains surrounding Kevin's examination table. "Seems that he has some torn ligaments in his right knee that the orthopedist wants to tackle with orthoscopic surgery in the morning. We're done here - why don't you go visit with him a bit before they take him to the ward? I can finish up the paperwork here." The doctor moved the curtain at the end of the examination table aside so that Kevin could see out, then pointed to a closed-in space at the end of the line. "He's down there."
The young Pretender walked down to the curtain and pulled it aside just a little to peek inside. Sydney was propped up against some comfortable-looking pillows and saw the movement. "Come on in, Kevin," he called gently. "My doctor is taking care of setting things up for them to fix my knee in the morning."
"How are you feeling?" Kevin asked awkwardly. After years of wondering what they were like, he was starting to hate hospitals - and, more specifically, hate seeing Sydney laid up in one so often.
"Not too bad now," the older man admitted. "They gave me a shot for the pain a while back, and it's kicking in pretty good now."
"I... didn't know what to put down for my last name," the young man confessed with a small voice. "I... gave them yours..."
Sydney smiled at his young protégé. "I don't mind, Kevin. It's actually a pretty good idea for us to establish some sort of kinship - at least publicly. So from now on, if anybody asks, you're... my nephew."
"Are you sure?" Kevin gazed with uncertainty into his mentor's face.
"As a matter of fact, I am," Sydney answered confidently. "I had a twin brother - and only I would know whether he had any children or how old they'd be. Oh, and you also work for the Centre - and that much IS true - which means you can claim their insurance." The older man chuckled. "I'm sure Miss Parker would approve."
"But what am I going to do when they take you off to a room?" the young man asked, feeling more insecure as every moment passed. "I mean, they aren't admitting me, and I don't have any place to go..."
Sydney frowned. "I hadn't thought of that..." He saw the look of almost terror that had finally developed on Kevin's face and reached out a comforting hand to the young man. "Now, now - this is nothing to get so upset about. As soon as I'm able, I'll call Miss Parker and have her send someone for you - or have her make arrangements for you to spend the night at a motel and then have someone pick you up in the morning."
"I'd be alone..." The thought was paralyzing.
"Better still..." Sydney pointed to a plastic bag on the floor near the foot of his examination bed. "Dig through there and see if I still had my cell phone on me."
Kevin bent and brought the bag up to the foot of Sydney's bed and pawed through it, finally pulling the cell phone out with a look of triumph.
"I know I'm not supposed to do this, but..." Sydney dialed quickly.
"What?" Miss Parker sounded very much as she had years ago - frustrated and tired.
"I need someone to take care of Kevin, Parker. They're hanging onto me for the night, but have released him - and he's a bit at loose ends and nervous."
"I'll send someone to pick him up." Miss Parker paused. "What are they holding you for?"
"They want to work on my knee in the morning. And I need to end this before I get into trouble for using a cell phone in here." Sydney told her quickly.
"I'll be by in the morning, and someone will be there for Kevin as soon as they can get from here to there, I promise. Tell him not to worry - I'll make sure it's someone he knows."
"Goodnight, Parker."
"Take care Syd - see you later."
"Here," Sydney handed Kevin the cell phone. "Put it in your pocket and hang onto it. It has everybody's phone number in it - even Jarod's in California."
Kevin slipped the thin little device in his jeans pocket as a nurse came through the curtains with brisk efficiency. "They tell me you get to stay with us for a while," she chirped far too cheerfully for this late at night. "So let's get you into this wheelchair..."
"Can I come along?" Kevin asked plaintively.
The nurse eyed him critically. "Have you been released?"
"I think so..."
"Then I DON'T think so. Did you come in together?"
"Nurse, he's a little unsure of himself being left alone - and the ride he called for won't be here for a while," Sydney explained quickly. "Are you sure you can't bend the rule just a little bit..."
"Now, now, none of those European charms work on me," the nurse smiled down at her patient, now safely housed in the wheelchair. He was a handsome and cosmopolitan-sounding gentleman - and if it had been closer to the end of her shift, she might have conceded... She tucked the blanket from his examination table about his legs. "Tell you what," she turned to Kevin. "Your ride will probably come in this entrance here - so why don't you wait for them in the ER waiting room. There's plenty of reading material, and you can see everyone who comes in."
Sydney reached out and took his protégé's hand and patted it. "You'll be fine, Kevin. They'll be here for you soon. Don't worry." Then the nurse had released the brakes and was wheeling him quickly from the ER.
Kevin turned and headed slowly for the waiting area the nurse had pointed out, silently telling himself over and over again "I can do this." He chose the seat that gave him the best view of the entrance and reached for the first magazine on the stack next to him. "I can do this," he recited, the words of the article about changes in the environmental laws not even beginning to penetrate.
And for the first time in his whole life, Kevin found himself truly alone - and he didn't like it one bit.
~~~~~~~~
Davy roused as the movement of the car ceased, and then the car shook as the passengers all climbed out. Beside him, he could feel Deb stirring at last - either she was just coming to or she, like him, was waking up after a fitful nap. There was no warning when the trunk popped open and sets of hands reached in for the two captives.
"We gonna take 'em on the plane like this?" one voice asked incredulously.
"It's our own plane, you nitwit. Nobody cares what they look like," growled the voice the one Davy had pegged as the leader of the kidnappers. "Get them aboard. NOW."
"So this is farewell," Smith sighed in relief after dumping his charge into one of the seats and fastening the seatbelt about the boy. His nose still ached, and he would be glad to get as far away from the man who had hired him. "Can't say I'm sorry to see you go."
"Just get the hell outta here," Duncan growled again, "and don't let me see your face again." Smith gave him a glare of pure dislike, then headed for the plane's exit.
"I'll say goodbye too," Jones announced once Deb was similarly taken care of. Without further ado, he simply trotted down the stairs and sprinted off into the darkness.
Duncan turned to Cordoba. "So, are you going to take off too?"
The Hispanic shook his head. "You know me better than that, Andy. I got a call from Gil about the same time you did - and I was told to watch your back. Can't do that when you're in LA and I'm in New York."
Duncan smiled and slapped his boss' old friend on the shoulder. "Thank God we got rid of the two clowns. Get yourself belted in - we're outta here!
Davy swallowed hard - they were being taken all the way to Los Angeles?
How was he EVER going to get back to his Mommy and Grandpa Sydney from THERE?
Chapter 8: Darkness Falls
Miss Parker stared about her as she finally stepped from her bedroom fully dressed and without a hair out of place. Her house - her refuge against the Centre and all the chaos and upheaval it had represented for years - was beehive of activity. Several agents were kneeling inside and outside Davy's room, carefully spreading dust over any surfaces that might have been touched in search of fingerprints. Another agent with a tackle-box full of what she assumed was forensic tools nodded patiently at her and then made his way into HER bedroom the moment she'd left it. There was a hum of voices downstairs - and she could occasionally make out Sam's tired and frustrated tones through the cacophony.
Calmly surveying the bedlam, Miss Parker walked down the stairs and made her way towards her Security Chief, now huddled with another, unfamiliar, Special Agent near her front door. "Well?" she asked shortly, her calm and nonchalant tone of voice and bland facial expression almost non-sequitor to the events of the evening.
Sam eyed her carefully. What he'd seen upstairs as those few moments of shock had penetrated had shaken him. Never - not once - had he before given any credence to the fact that his boss' name had been on one of those infamous “Red Files” that had been kept on all the Pretender candidates years ago, at least, not until now. Now the only resemblance the woman speaking to him held to his boss and friend was purely superficial - something very different and very dangerous now look out at the world through those grey eyes of hers. He'd always respected her strength and even her capable powers of intimidation. Tonight, he genuinely feared her as he had feared no man since Mr. Parker had vanished.
"From the evidence, it looks like we have two, maybe three, intruders. The alarm was disarmed - somewhere, somehow, someONE got a hold of your security code. From there, it was up the stairs and into your room to dope you up with ether, and then on to collect Davy."
The federal agent nodded as the Centre security man had given her a brief but thorough report. "From the looks of things, Miss Parker, the people who did this were professionals. We're dusting for prints - but, to be honest, I'll be damned surprised if we find any."
Miss Parker was listening, carefully, and she nodded. "Then there's very little I can add to the investigation. I never even knew I'd been knocked out."
"They probably just held the rag near your face without touching you," Sam theorized. "The fumes were strong enough that one sniff had ME reeling."
"Then leave a couple of sweepers here to watch over Gillespie's people and make sure nothing sprouts legs and walks away that shouldn't - and to lock up and stand watch until I get back," she ordered brusquely. "Sam, get me to Sydney's NOW. I want to know what's going on over there."
"Miss, there's nothing you can..." the federal agent put a lightly restraining hand on her arm, then flinched when hard and cold grey eyes glared at him.
"Do you need me here for some reason? I've told you all I know - which is precious little - how many times and different ways do I need to explain the same lack of information to you?"
The man blinked. "That's not it..."
"Then are you telling me that there's a logical, rational, LEGAL reason why I can't go THERE?" she asked in a very soft, very restrained voice. She looked first down at the hand on her arm and then up again in an obvious suggestion to the man to move his hand or risk losing it.
The agent got the message and immediately pulled his hand away. "Of course not..."
"Then get the HELL out of my way, little man, before you get stepped on!" she hissed and pushed violently past him and onto her front porch.
"Geez!" the federal agent looked over at Sam in shock. "Is she always like this?" he asked with a shake of the head.
"Nope," Sam said with a slightly thoughtful look on his face, "sometimes she can get pretty upset. You don't WANT to see her at those time, believe me!"
He patted the agent on the shoulder and took a hint from his employer to make tracks outside. She was waiting for him at the top of her porch steps, looking out over the moonlit lawn and driveway - now crawling with investigators. "You gonna be OK, Miss Parker?"
She glanced at him and nodded shortly, and the glance was flat - emotionless. "Just get me to Syd's, Sam. NOW."
~~~~~~~~
In the darkness of the trunk, Davy shifted against the hard floor and tried to move to take some of the pressure from his shoulder. When the man had dumped Deb in on top of him, she had landed hard against his chest and stomach, both of which were now one solid ache. But what had frightened him more than anything else was the short time when the movement of the car had stopped and the trunk had been opened in order to bind Deb as he'd been bound. There had been quiet conversation just outside the trunk after the lid was slammed down again - and the soft laughter and tone of voice of one of the men had been dangerous - ugly - and the discussion had focused on Deb.
So now the two of them lay almost curled next to each other, hands and feet bound tightly with duct tape and with a healthy swatch over their mouths. The car had been moving for a long time now - Davy hoped that eventually Deb would awaken. Even if they couldn't talk, they could know they weren't alone in the darkness.
And somehow, someway, there would be a time and an opportunity for them to get away - and it would be essential that the both of them be prepared to take advantage of such a moment. At least he knew how to watch for such things.
Many times over the years, when he'd stayed overnight with Grandpa Sydney while his mother was busy, the older man had patiently dug out what he had always called his “special games” for the two of them to play. These games were nothing like Scrabble or Monopoly - games played on a board for fun - THESE games had been played entirely in the mind, as exercises in logic and deduction and extrapolation. Given circumstances and a set amount of information, it had been Davy's task to see if he could figure out the answer to the situation within a set amount of time. Davy had become very adept at these games - and his fun had eventually come in seeing just how much under Grandpa's time limit he could manage his task. Over the last year or so, the games had been getting downright complicated - the emotional and psychological factors had been getting more and more subtle, and the answer to the puzzle more and more intricate.
Grandpa had warned him not to talk to his mother about their “special games” - that she wouldn't understand, that Grandpa had long ago developed these games to help train other quick minds to understand and function faster and with more accuracy. To prove his point, Grandpa had indirectly talked about those games with Mommy in front of him once - and Mommy had been not happy at all at the very idea that young minds could be so cultivated. She'd argued in favor of “letting a child BE a child as long as possible” - whatever THAT had meant in connection to the games. A long and meaningful look between the two males after that statement had been all it had taken to convince Davy of the wisdom of keeping his grandfather's gentle lessons very much to himself. The “special games” were a special time to be shared only with the two of them - nobody else.
Now he was going to need every last ounce of mental power that Grandpa had so carefully fostered in him. He might be a small boy, but he could THINK big, thanks to those “special games” he'd been playing for years. Somehow he'd get himself and Deb out of this mess - and the only worry he had now was whether what they'd find themselves in afterwards would be better, or worse.
~~~~~~~~
"Whaddya mean you're going to leave us off in New York?"
Duncan frowned at Jones' silhouette in the rear-view mirror. "Look - we made enough noise at the old man's place that somebody just MIGHT have looked out the window and gotten a description of the car and how many of us there were. We get to New York, we split up."
"Yeah, right," Smith obviously wasn't buying the line. "And just how are you going to handle two kids trussed up like Christmas turkeys all by yourself, asshole?"
"That ain't none of your concern," Duncan insisted, wishing for a moment that he wasn't driving so he could turn around and simply punch the man. "You three have been extremely well-paid for your evening's efforts - and you each have tickets back to Los Angeles within the next three days. What the hell do you care what I have to deal with?"
"I just thought..."
"That's the problem, Smittie, you think too much." Duncan sighed. "Now shut up and let me drive. We don't need to get in a wreck and kill the goods before we can get any serious mileage outta them."
"It was a mistake bringing the girl," Cordoba remarked quietly from his spot behind Jones. He'd been fairly quiet the whole trip. "She isn't close enough to the Parker woman to matter. Flores wanted us to get the old man."
"Well, the son of a bitch fought back - and had help we didn't know about," Duncan snapped. "That's something we wouldn't have tripped over if we'd had the time to do the casing like we were supposed to..."
"You mean like we would have known about if you hadn't gotten antsy and decided to go ahead with the job ahead of schedule rather than wait for Flores," Smith piped up again.
It was the big man's bad luck that he'd taken the front passenger seat, for Duncan's hand suddenly whipped across from the steering wheel and backhanded him hard. "Listen, shit for brains, I KNOW Flores - the reason he missed his call-in is because something has gone wrong, and so the BEST thing we could do for him under the circumstances was give him his leverage early."
"That's granted that he's still alive to enjoy it," Cordoba offered again from the back seat. "For what it's worth, I'll be GLAD to lose you guys in New York. If you've miscalculated, Duncan, I wouldn't WANT to be in your shoes when the Parker bitch blows into your little crib to rescue her boy and then tears you into little tiny pieces."
"Shut up," Duncan hissed at the quiet man, unnerved at the thought of Miss Parker chasing him down like a dog. "This is gonna work. It's GOTTA work."
"Famous last words," Smith grunted, holding his aching nose tenderly and leaning decidedly towards the window and away from the driver.
~~~~~~~~
The scene in front of Sydney's house looked very familiar - sweepers and investigators were swarming all over the place looking for clues as to who had invaded the house, attacked two men and snatched a young woman. Sam halted the car in front of the house and let Miss Parker out so that he could drive down the street farther to find a parking spot.
"You can't go in there, ma'am," a federal agent stepped in front of Miss Parker.
"Get out of my way!" she hissed at him and tried to push around him, only to have him grab her arm. "SAM!!"
"Let her go!" the Security Chief called to the agent before Miss Parker could think of using her martial arts abilities to put the man's face in the dirt. "Gillespie! Call off your hounds here!"
Gillespie turned around quickly from his serious discussion with another agent and gestured to his man the moment he saw who had arrived. "Let her through, Nick," the SAC said quietly, then nodded in return as Miss Parker gave him a nod of gratitude and walked steadily and determinedly up the walk and into the house. "How's she doing?" the special agent asked the very tired looking security man. "I would have thought they'd have sent her to the hospital to make sure..."
"This is Miss Parker we're talking about here," Sam told him with an eye to the open front door of the house. "When she decides something, a man has two options: get the hell out of the way, or get run over."
"Mmmm..." the FBI man nodded. Somehow, finding out she had that kind of personality wasn't all that surprising. "Still, see to it she gets checked out - for her own good - willya? Our lab guys still aren't sure what kind of chemical was on that rag that put her to sleep. We don't want to take chances."
Sam shrugged and then nodded. "I'll do what I can," was about all he could promise, and then he too was headed up the walk and through the door.
Inside, the forensics investigators were all over the house, just as they had been at Miss Parker's. From the back Sam could hear Kevin's voice, tense and obviously quite upset, and then Tyler's voice answering in a similarly upset tone. He hurried to the den to see what the heck...
The two young men were squared off - Tyler standing over Kevin as the latter was having a butterfly bandage carefully applied to the wound on his face where he'd been pistol-whipped, and Kevin glowering up at him while trying not to move away from the painful process.
"What do you mean, it's all my fault?" Tyler was demanding in exasperation. "Going to a steakhouse in Dover had NOTHING at all to do with..."
"But if she hadn't been all worked up and out late to begin with, she'd have been asleep hours ago - and then they wouldn't have..."
"Oh, for God's sake, Kevin! Stuff a sock in it!" Tyler's voice lowered as his worry and frustration began to make him angry. "From the looks of things, you two would have made more than enough noise to wake her..."
"Tyler! Kevin! Stop it!" Sam barked from the door before Miss Parker could really and truly lose her patience with either of them. "Kevin, Tyler's right. Nothing about their dinner tonight would have made a difference. You're a Pretender - SIM it out for yourself. And Tyler, don't lay blame where it doesn't belong. Kevin's fairly naïve and new to the idea of interpersonal stuff - but he did protect Sydney from being taken. Speaking of whom..."
Sam turned his head and saw Miss Parker reach out and carefully smooth aside a stray strand of silver hair out of the unconscious man's face while the emergency medical people worked over him. It was as if she hadn't heard any of the testosterone-powered bickering behind her, so focused she was on the man Sam knew she loved very deeply as the father she'd never really had. At least for the time being, her expression was the closest to the Miss Parker he knew that she'd shown all night; and with a sigh of almost relief, he turned his attention to Sydney.
There was blood on his shirt, and Sam realized that some of Sydney's stitches had probably been torn in the melee - yet another set-back in what had been a troublesome recuperation from the fracas that had seen Angelo killed. The older man's lower left chin also wore a brilliant red mark where the invader's fist had connected, a mark that promised to be a nasty and painful bruise in time. He was pale and still, lying there on the floor between the couch and the coffee table - but finally, it seemed, the eyelids were starting to flutter as Sydney began to come to.
"Shhhh, Syd, don't try to move," Miss Parker cautioned him gently with a hand to his shoulder to keep him from moving much. He groaned deeply in response. "Do you hurt anywhere?" she asked before the medical technician could get a word in edgewise.
"M...my knee..." he managed with difficulty, whereupon the young blue-garbed paramedic began carefully palpating the man's leg. Sydney opened his eyes wide and gasped noisily as the capable fingers found the place that hurt worst of all.
"I'll put a brace on it now, sir," the young medical technician announced matter-of-factly, "and they'll need to x-ray it when you get to the hospital."
"Parker..." Sydney suddenly seemed to realize that she was there beside him. "What are you doing here? Who called you at this hour of the night? What..."
"Hush, Sydney. We'll talk later..."
"Where's Debbie?" The older man became increasingly agitated when he looked over at Kevin and saw the deeply distressed expression on the young man's face. "DEBBIE!"
"She's gone, Syd." Miss Parker's voice was bleak. "They took her. And Davy too."
Stunned chestnut stared in disbelief into agonized grey. "Noooo... Not Davy too..." The older psychiatrist began to struggle again. "I can't just lie here, or be hauled off to the hospital. I need..."
Miss Parker kept her hand on his shoulder and used just enough force to keep him from doing himself any more harm. "Sydney. Listen to me. It is very important to ME that you let them help you - you've torn your stitches in your side and your knee needs tending too, that's obvious. I need you well and safe, so I can concentrate on Davy and Deb." A single tear fell to her cheek. "Please."
"God, Parker..." Sydney's eyes filled as he thought of his little grandson and pretty granddaughter in the hands of those callous men.
Miss Parker felt a warm and gentle hand at her back. "Miss Parker?" Sam began softly, not wanting to intrude, but knowing that time was of the essence. "Let's let the paramedics get Sydney situated, so that Gillespie's men can debrief him at the hospital. There's nothing..."
"What about..." Sydney's eye didn't miss the bandage on Kevin's cheek as he began looking around and taking in the details of his surroundings. "What happened to HIM?"
"Pistol-whipped. He'll be riding with you to Dover in the ambulance, just to make sure that nothing got broken other than skin," Sam explained.
Miss Parker leaned down and kissed Sydney's cheek above the bruising mark. "I'll be picking you up later, when they release you." Her grey eyes bore into his. "I need you, Syd - I am REALLY going to need you with me. Let them take care of you so..." It had become hard for her to speak.
Slowly the silvered head nodded agreement. "We'll get them back, Parker..." he said brokenly.
She nodded, kissed him again, and then got to her feet and turned to Sam, grey eyes turning hard and cold even as he watched. Again the hackles rose at the back of the ex-sweeper's neck to watch the process of another personality entirely taking over his boss. "Tyler, I want you to get the lines of coordination set up with Gillespie and his people - make arrangements to give the man an office at the Centre if he wants one. He's to have full and unobstructed cooperation on this. Is that understood?"
"Yes, ma'am! I'll get right on it."
A hand whipped out and caught Tyler as he began to move past her. "But give Sam and me about two hours before starting our new “open door” policy with the law. There are a couple of items that the two of us need to see to BEFORE we start having FBI haunting our corridors. Got it?"
Tyler looked at Sam. "Tell you what, big guy - you call me when you're ready to bring the FBI into the Centre. I won't move on that part of things until I hear from you."
Sam and Miss Parker nodded in unison, and Tyler hurried off to find Gillespie. "Alright, Sam," Miss Parker now turned to face Sam directly. "Get me to the Centre. NOW. I think we need to have a few, choice, words with Mr. Flores."
"Yes, ma'am."
Sam couldn't summon up even one iota of sympathy for the Hispanic whom he'd pushed so hard that afternoon. And something told him that by the time Miss Parker finished with him, Flores would be wishing he still had that electrode still strapped to his calf.
~~~~~~~~
Unaccustomed to having to be patient, and feeling the nauseating sense of helplessness at being a continent away from where he wanted - no, NEEDED - to be at that moment, Jarod leaned heavily against the balustrade. Below him he could hear the pounding surf crashing rhythmically against the rocks, and watched the waves sparkling and dancing in the waning moonlight without really seeing them. The sound of the ocean had long been a source of solace and calming on those troublesome days when nothing seemed to go right. But tonight, the power of Nature itself to comfort him while he waited for news was completely lacking.
Not for the first time, he straightened and considered trotting back into the house, picking up the phone and calling Sam and DEMANDING to be told what was going on, regardless of how much of an interruption he'd be. But there had been fondness and more than a little warning in the big man's use of his nickname, enough to tell him that Sam - always a man of his word, even in the dark days of the hunt - WOULD call him back and bring him up to speed when he had a moment to spare. If Ethan's near-panic was any sign, Sam's abruptly ending the call was because he was busy - and more than likely busy in Miss Parker's service.
What was most frustrating was the inability to reach out to ANYBODY back there. Syd's phone had been just as busy as Miss Parkers - which meant that whatever had disrupted Missy's life had touched Sydney's as well. Jarod rubbed his beard and forced himself NOT to try to picture what was going on. It could only drive him nuts.
And then it was his phone calling him back indoors. He wasn't surprised to hear Ethan's voice on the other end. "Any news?"
"Nope. Her line and even Syd's lines are busy - and Sam cut me off almost immediately." Jarod sighed, his frustration and impatience getting the best of him for a moment. "You're right - something is very wrong. And here I am, stuck on the wrong damned side of the country..."
"Calm down, big bro, before you give yourself a stroke!" Ethan's voice modulated into a soothing voice that he often found useful with his patients.
"You sound like Sydney used to," Jarod said eventually, after a long moment when he struggled to get himself back into control.
"I sound like you do every once in a while," Ethan corrected him with a smile. "I copied it from you."
Jarod shook his head. "I keep running into signs that I've been emulating Sydney in a number of ways, even though I did my best to put him and everything about my years in the Centre behind me."
"Bullshit," Ethan started to chuckle. "All you did was try to turn your back on a part of yourself - and it found new and different ways of coming back to the same point. It's just that now that you've been back there, you see all the little ways you could never entirely run away from who you are inside - and how much that who you are was shaped by Sydney."
Jarod groaned. "Just what I needed at this hour of the night - a stunning bit of psychobabble aimed in my direction by my younger brother."
"You sounded like you could use it," Ethan countered.
"You're right there too," Jarod admitted in chagrin, then took a breath and changed the subject. "You sound like you're feeling better."
"Yeah, the acetaminophen has the whole percussion section down to a tambourine. And I took a quick nap - that helped."
"Well look, as much as talking to you is helping me keep from jumping out of my skin, Sam said that he'd call me back the moment he had some time. And I don't want to keep the line occupied for too long..."
"Just keep me in the loop, OK?" Ethan reminded him. "She's my sister too, you know."
"I know, little brother. I'll call the minute I have word."
"Hang in there..."
"Easier said than done, Ethan. Talk to you later."
"Later, bro."
Jarod disconnected the call and waited with the receiver in his hand for a long moment as if inviting Sam to find the time to call - in vain. He then sighed, dropped the cordless receiver on the coffee table and walked slowly back out onto his balcony over the ocean to wait for however long it would take to get that call. He knew there was no way that he'd be able to get any sleep now. He'd survived for over five years on the run on two to four hours of sleep - doing so tonight wouldn't be that difficult. Would it?
~~~~~~~~
"What do you intend to do?"
Miss Parker glanced at Sam, walking solidly at her side. "I intend to convince him to tell us where the plan said they were going to keep Davy and Sydney. That's probably where the men who took him are heading."
"And if he doesn't know for sure?"
She stopped and, with a hand at his arm, halted Sam as well. "What do you mean?"
"Flores built in a lot of safeguards to this little scheme of his - pretty crafty for someone who is more loose cannon and fast talk than anything else." Sam looked at her cautiously. "He deliberately didn't know where Duncan was staying once the man got here to Delaware. It's possible that he was sneaky enough not to know precisely where Duncan was going to keep them until whatever he wanted was accomplished, much less whether Duncan was ever really going to release them when he got what he wanted."
Miss Parker just shook her head. "We'll function as if Flores knows everything. If he doesn't, he DOES know how to contact Duncan himself. We have a trace on that cell phone of his already - we hand over our trace to the FBI and have Flores call Duncan."
"Not bad," Sam nodded. "It might even work. Maybe. Then again, maybe Flores' getting a chance to rest up a bit from our little games this afternoon will have his back up so that he's not cooperating again."
Miss Parker's eyes twinkled in a very cold, very dangerous way. "That's OK. We can handle that, too." She looked at him and almost laughed at his expression of disapproval. "Oh, come now! After all, it was you who decided to push the envelope as far as the legalities of your interrogation methods. We may just need to bump it up a notch or two..."
"And you're willing to explain this to the FBI when they come looking for their man - like you KNOW they will, sooner or later?"
"What I'm thinking of doesn't leave marks either," she whispered, one hand at the doorknob.
"I don't like the sounds of that," Sam complained quietly.
"I don't give a damn what you like or don't like," she suddenly snapped at him. Sam was quickly and efficiently reminded that this was NOT his old boss, but that new and unpleasant creature that he'd watched overshadow his boss twice now. "Go to the infirmary and bring me a backboard and enough duct tape to hold that bastard down tight. I'll see if I can sweet-talk him first, while you're gone."
"Let me call another sweeper to keep an eye..."
"No." The hand at his arm held tightly - almost painfully. "And when you come back, knock first and wait until I call and tell you to enter. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Miss Parker. You are crystal."
"Good." She turned away from him and, after punching in the security code, opened the door. She slipped through and pushed the door shut after her. There was a moment of silence, and then a loud thump and a cry of surprise and considerable pain. "Ah, Mr. Flores. Good to see that you're awake again."
Sam walked away with an odd feeling that he'd best hurry to get what she'd asked for - as much for Flores' continued health as anything else. Then, suddenly, he remembered a promise he'd made earlier. He cussed and dug in his pocket for his cell phone and brought up the number.
"Sam, tell me what the hell is going on over there!" Jarod didn't even bother with a “hello” or even Miss Parker's brittle “what.” "And don't tell me it isn't really all that much. I have a half-brother worried sick, and he's got me worried sick."
"Slow down, Lab-rat." Sam paused on his trek to the infirmary and leaned tiredly against a wall. "Are you sitting down?"
"No, of course I'm not!" Jarod shouted, pacing back and forth on his balcony. "You've got to be..."
"Sit down, Jarod. I won't talk to you until you do." Sam's voice was quiet, and Jarod's fit of frustration froze in its tracks.
"What aren't you telling me yet?" he asked, feeling around for a deck chair and sinking into it involuntarily as his legs wouldn't hold him up anymore. "It's bad, isn't it?"
"Are you sitting down?"
"Yes, damn you, I'm sitting down. Now will you PLEASE..."
"OK." Sam closed his eyes and wished with all his might that he'd never reached this point in his life. "You knew that we've been trying to outwit a bunch of shady supervisors?"
"Yes, Miss Parker told me about them a couple of nights ago. Sam..." The Pretender's voice was getting ragged with emotion.
"One of them, Gilbert Flores, decided to take matters into his own hands. We worked the better part of the last two days trying to undo all the things he set into motion..."
"SAAAM!! For God's sake..."
"I finally broke him this afternoon, after he'd made a cell phone call to his assistant and told him to “do it.” “Do it” was the order to kidnap Davy and Sydney."
"Oh God..." Jarod could feel the blood draining from his head. "BOTH of them?"
"He got Davy..." Sam started, then backtracked. "They got the security codes for both houses somehow - and knocked Miss Parker out with ether before taking Davy. They came for Sydney, but he and Kevin put up a fight."
"Good!" Jarod breathed out in satisfaction. "So they just got my son?" His voice broke on the last words.
"No. They got Deb too."
"Deb!"
"Yeah. She woke up and heard Sydney yell for her to run. They must have caught her outside." Sam paused as his own emotions, held down firmly for so long, suddenly threatened to explode. "I'm SO sorry, Lab-rat. I tried..."
"What about the sweepers watching everybody? You were getting that all lined up before I left..." Jarod shook his head - it was almost too much to take in all at once.
"They killed the sweeper in front of Sydney's."
"And the one in front of Parker's?"
Sam was quiet for a while. "She wouldn't let me put one at her place, Jarod. She said it could be interpreted as a sign of weakness."
"DAMN!!!" Jarod thought for a moment. "What's the word with Sydney, then? Is he..."
"Sydney's back in the hospital - the attempted kidnapping tore some of his stitches, and one of the kidnappers may have hurt his leg some. We'll know more about that after some x-rays. Kevin got pretty badly pistol-whipped trying to protect Sydney, and he's in having his face x-rayed too, to make sure nothing got busted with that. Miss Parker's called in the FBI - and we're going to be cooperating with them in trying to take care of this..."
"The feds??" Jarod almost smiled. "She's using them to do the work for her and keep it all legal." Very good, Parker, he thought to himself, then closed his eyes as a stab of grief shot through him. Davy!
"Everything but what we're up to right now," Sam agreed cryptically. "Look, I gotta go. She wants me to bring some stuff from the infirmary. But before I go, I want you to know that I don't know what else I could have done... but I feel I've let you down." Sam's voice shook slightly. "I promised you I'd keep them safe... I'm SO sorry..."
"Stop that." Jarod's voice was frighteningly calm. "If they killed the sweeper at Sydney's they'd have killed the sweeper in front of her place too. And you did what you could. It isn't your fault."
"Yes, it is." Sam sounded defeated even in the midst of contradiction, then shook himself. "But I can't think of that right now. She needs me to do things for her. When this is done, however..."
"Do me a favor?"
Sam closed his eyes. Jarod was letting him off far too easily, as far as he was concerned. "Name it, Lab-rat."
"Call me around your lunchtime tomorrow with an update. Keep me in the loop. And if you need me to come home, don't pussy-foot around..."
"I will," the ex-sweeper promised. "You'll know everything I do when I call you tomorrow."
"Later, then." Jarod disconnected the call, and at last let the phone drop from numb fingers. He sat in the deck chair for a long time, not even hearing the pounding of the surf below him, wishing with all his might that he was back home where he was desperately needed.
Finally he got chilled enough in the night ocean air to rise and shuffle into the house and back towards his bed. There was no chance he'd sleep more than a wink or two now. And somewhere in that time, he'd decide whether he needed to make an emergency trip home, or whether he could afford to stay put and wait things out from here.
It was something to occupy his mind, and he lay back into the comfortable pillows and took a deep breath and began the mind-cleansing exercises that Sydney had taught him all those years ago. He'd SIM through the best option, keeping in mind all the variables involved both in Delaware and in California.
Missy had been right. He was a Pretender - it was high time he began acting like one again.
~~~~~~~~
Flores blinked against the sudden brightness of the overhead light and tried to glare convincingly at Miss Parker, standing over him with a satisfied look on her face. "You didn't have to do that," he complained. "A nudge would have sufficed to awaken me."
"For you, perhaps - but I feel remarkably refreshed seeing you on the floor," she rejoined in a very cold tone, dropping with a resounding thump the side of the cot she'd lifted to dump him on the floor.
The Hispanic swallowed back a quick insult. His was not the best position to be in while tweaking the Centre Chairman. "What do you want from me? I've already told your Inquisitor all I knew..."
"Oh, I don't think so." Miss Parker stalked slowly around the man sitting uncomfortably on the floor and then took a seat on the edge of the bed not far from him. "I think you know a great deal more than you're telling anybody." She smiled at him, and the expression brought the hackles up on Flores' neck. The last time anybody had smiled at him like that, it was Lyle - just before he'd watched the man kill a competitor for thrills and carve him up for supper as if he'd been a side of beef. "And I think you would be well-served to tell me all these wonderful little secrets of yours before my Inquisitor, as you call him, gets back."
"I have nothing to say to you," the man on the floor spat, then moved slowly and very painfully to try to get to his feet. All would go well until he got to a particularly precarious point - at which Miss Parker would nudge him none too gently with her foot and set him right back down on the floor where he started. After the third time, he growled at her, "Is that the best you can do, bitch - kick a man while he's down?"
Miss Parker's smile only got colder and more lethal. "I'm dealing with a cockroach - a cucaracha, I believe you call them - not a man. A REAL man would stand up to me face to face from the start, not hide in the shadows of a child and an old man like a coward."
Flores' momentary grin of pride at his accomplishment despite his current situation touched a match to what little was left of her volatile fuse. She was on her feet in a second with her heeled foot knocking the man flat to the floor and holding his face into the dirt with a spiked foot at the back of his skull. "You ARE an insect, Flores - a spineless, ball-less, good-for-nothing-but-compost worm. And the only way you'll ever see daylight again will be to tell me where Duncan has taken my son."
"Why would I want to tell you THAT, puta?" he grated from beneath her foot. "Seems to me that the only way you'll ever see your son again is for you to sign over complete control of the Centre to me. And then MAYBE I'll tell Duncan to return him to you - alive - but I'll hang onto the old man, just to make sure you keep yourself out of trouble from now on."
Miss Parker laughed outright, and it was one of the most frightening sounds that Flores had ever heard in his life. "Sign control of the Centre over to YOU? Tell me, what color IS the sky in your world? This is MY Centre - my family founded it, built it, died for it. And you think you're going to force me to just sign it over? You pathetic..." She looked up as a knock came on the door. "Ah good. My loyal assistant has returned, and right on time." Taking her foot from the back of Flores' head, she stalked over to the door and called, "OK Sam."
Sam pushed the door open and leaned the backboard against the wall and raised his hand so she could see him wearing the fresh roll of duct tape like a cumbersome bracelet. The dark ex-sweeper took in the sight of Flores struggling to right himself into a seated position on the floor, and the craggy face broke into a wide smile. "Well, well, if it isn't Mr. Fuck-you himself - right down scrabbling in the dirt again where he belongs."
"Mr. Flores here is of the opinion that I should just meekly sign over control of the Centre to him - and THEN, maybe, he'll return Davy to me. He'll keep Sydney, however, as collateral against my continued good behavior." Miss Parker announced to Sam with a look of not quite sanity that made his skin crawl. "What do you think?"
"I think maybe it's time we laid the turkey out and get the information we want from him the only way he seems to be open to being convinced," Sam replied, playing along. He looked down into Flores' face with a similarly cold expression, watching what little color that Hispanic face had had drain away as his meaning became clear. "Ready when you are, Miss P."
Miss Parker reached behind her and pulled out her 9mm chrome-plated Smith & Wesson. Sam worked hard not to stare - he'd been around when she'd spoken of putting that away in her bedroom closet, up very high and behind plenty of other stored items so that Davy would never know it was even there. She'd firmly announced at the time that she'd never handle the thing again for any but the best of reasons. This, evidently, qualified - it would have, even in HIS book.
She fondled the chrome piece, slowly chambered a round for the effect knowing the weapon was loaded would have on the quaking Californian. Then after stroking the man's cheeks and throat with the cool metal almost seductively, she put the muzzle of the gun against Flores' forehead and pressed it into the skin a bit. "You're not going to give me any problems, little man, are you?" She glanced up at Sam. "Lean the board against the bed and get him on it. Tape him down tight so that he can't move at all."
Flores took one look at the eager expression on Sam's face as the sweeper positioned the backboard as directed and tried to scoot across the floor away from him. Miss Parker didn't flinch - she just moved the gun from his forehead and pulled the trigger next to his ear, sending the bullet into the linoleum only an inch or so from his hand, giving him reason to freeze his movements. "I suggest you not struggle, insect, or you'll look like Jesus on Good Friday and STILL end up taped down to that board so you can't move. Then again," she waved the gun nonchalantly before putting it back to his forehead, making him flinch away from the heat of the metal, "it's your choice."
Sam moved efficiently around Miss Parker and grabbed hold of the man on the floor beneath the armpits, dragging him roughly up and depositing him none too gently against the hard surface of the backboard. Miss Parker moved with Flores, keeping the gun to his forehead while Sam began the job of duct taping the man to the backboard.
"What are you going to do to me?" Flores whimpered, his ear still ringing from the percussion of the gunshot. "If you kill me, you'll never know..."
"Whoever said anything about kill?" Miss Parker smiled her lethal smile down at him as the duct tape got wrapped about his forehead several times, making it impossible for him to move his head at all. "I'm going to test out a schoolyard legend and see just how effective Chinese Water Torture is after all." She pointed. "Make sure he has no movement at the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrist, chest, hips, knees and ankles. And leave the hand holds on either end of the board available. We'll have to carry him to the infirmary when we get him trussed up."
"At least let me call another sweeper to help carry him," Sam asked her while taking care of the arms and chest.
"Nope," she answered easily. "This is for you and me to do, Sam. I don't want any of the others involved."
"Chinese Water Torture, eh?" The ex-sweeper nodded at her. "I've always wondered about that one myself." Sam bent and patted Flores' shoulder through the duct tape. "Don't worry, it's going to be research in a good cause - trust me!"
~~~~~~~~
Jarod eased himself out of the funk he'd been in for the last half-hour, still desperately torn and wanting to dash back to Delaware where he wanted to be. He'd been hard put to think of reasons to sit on his hands a continent away letting Parker and Sam handle things for him. He also REALLY wanted to take his own turn at working a proper payback on the bastard that had done this to people he loved in the first place. He'd not been able to achieve a meditative state at all - all he'd been able to focus on was his worry about Davy and, to a slightly lesser extent, Deb. But eventually, what had begun as a slight nudge at the back of his mind had turned into a small bell that announced that he'd forgotten something in his upset. He took a long, deep breath and opened his eyes, and he suddenly knew exactly what was bothering him - what he'd forgotten.
With a sigh of regret, he picked up the receiver and dialed his brother's number.
"Jarod?" Ethan sounded very tired, as if he'd possibly just awakened.
"I'm sorry if I woke you." Jarod truly did feel badly now - he should have called Ethan much earlier.
"No," Ethan said then grunted. "I just dozed off here in my chair. Did you finally talk to somebody?"
"Yeah." Jarod pinched the bridge of his nose as if that would keep the tears from threatening again as they had every time he thought of his son in danger. "Some fruitcake back there decided to snatch Davy and Sydney in order to force Parker to do something she didn't want to do."
Ethan frowning. One of the flashes he'd received from his sister before everything had shut down violently had concerned her son - the image of the little boy with the dark hair and grey eyes and his father's grin was burned into his mind - but not the psychiatrist. "Sydney wasn't part of what I got..."
"I know." Jarod sighed. "Seems Sydney had help defending himself - he and Kevin fought the men off. They got a bit dented in the dust-off, but are otherwise OK. But..."
"But..."
"Looks like the kidnappers snatched Deb Broots instead."
"Oh boy." His younger brother was very quiet. Then: "What are you going to do? Go back?"
"I don't know," Jarod let his conflict show in his voice. "God, I want to. I've spent the better part of the last half-hour trying to decide whether to jump the next plane back East or hold off for a bit yet. If I went now, I'd be completely involved and able to help out - and Parker's called in the feds, so it isn't as if she doesn't have plenty of quality people back there working on this that I'd be working with too. I know Parker has Sydney back there, and Sam, for moral support - I'll call her this evening when hopefully things will have settled down to a dull uproar. But I'D rather be there too - to make sure SHE'S handling things OK and not just feeding me a line. She's very good at burying her feelings so deeply that it hurts her more in the long run uncovering them again. I know her better than anybody else does, except maybe Sydney - so I'd KNOW if she was just running from herself again and keep her from doing that."
"Jarod..."
Jarod didn't seem to hear him. "I mean, how do I know that somebody isn't going to make a colossal blunder that will cost Davy or Deb their lives? How do I know that the government folks Parker called in will be trustworthy - and not actively working with the scum that set this in motion? Sydney's hurt and so is Kevin - hell, Broots is still in a coma last I heard. If I were there, I could process the information faster than anybody else and SIM things..."
"And get in the way of the feds, maybe be too much of a distraction for my sister to be able to focus properly on her other problems at the Centre..."
Jarod's voice grew defensive. "He's MY son, Ethan. I have a right..."
"Calm down! I'm just saying the things that need to be considered too. Not to mention that you told me you were going to talk to that lawyer and put things into motion about Ginger. When is it that they're coming to inspect your home, did you say?"
The thought of the little girl brought Jarod up short. "Hell, I don't know. But this is an emergency, after all..."
Ethan just shook his head. "You know as well as I do that bureaucracies don't recognize emergencies. You have to make an appointment to die with some of them - croaking at the drop of the hat just isn't allowed."
"I can't just sit here, waiting..."
"THINK, Jarod - don't just run off half-cocked. Knowing what you do, have you done any SIMming on this at all?"
"That was that half-hour I spent when I should have called you first." Jarod admitted. "But I couldn't get my mind clear enough..."
"Well, at least you're making a stab at doing things the right way - even if you're not being very successful or objective about it." Ethan thought for a moment. "Who'd you finally talk to back there, anyway?"
"Sam. He called me, evidently in the middle of getting something for Missy at the Centre."
Ethan closed his eyes and concentrated. It had been a long time since his therapy sessions, when he'd finally learned how to reach out to the voices in the back of his mind. He pushed gently, first in one direction and then in the next - searching for something that had no name and he couldn't explain. "I tell you, Jarod, things feel... disjointed... about this whole thing. Something's really off."
"What do you mean - disjointed?"
"Like things are tumbling around randomly, unorganized..." Now it was Ethan's turn to sigh. "You know how every once in a while, everything around you just kinda goes FUBAR for a time? Like that."
"And that's why you think I should stay put?"
"I'm not sure... To be honest, I almost wish that Pretending had been a part of what I could do. I could help you see through the SIMs, instead of feed you hunches..."
"What kind of hunches?" Jarod was sincerely curious - Ethan's hunches had an uncanny habit of being borne out.
Ethan answered, hearing again that very quiet voice. "That you need to be here when things break loose..." He searched for words to explain feelings that couldn't be described, then let go an explosive burst of frustrated air. "God, I wish I could tell you more.
"What breaks loose?" Jarod demanded. "Who? Parker? Davy?"
"Good question, bro. I don't understand it all that well myself."
The Pretender was quiet for a moment, still feeling very tempted to throw together an overnight bag and hop the next plane for the East Coast, but now faced with the unhappy hunch that Ethan's hunch might just be right. "Well, I'll let you get back to your nap. You wanted to stay in the loop..."
"Let me know when you know anything new," Ethan asked quickly, before Jarod could do one of his abrupt disconnects that still could be quite irksome. "And for God's sake, if you DO decide to hop a plane, call me first so I can try to calm down Mom and Em when they find out you took off again without telling them."
Jarod sighed. "I suppose I can do that. Sleep well, little brother."
"Goodnight, Jarod. Try to get some rest, willya?"
Jarod pinched the bridge of his nose again. "Yeah. Sure thing," he replied wryly, more than aware that he'd be able to do just about anything BUT that. "Goodnight, Ethan."
~~~~~~~~
Tyler sat in his coupe, to which he'd retired after sticking around inside Sydney's long enough to see the government investigators finish collecting their evidence and drive off and then set sweepers in place to guard the place until the psychiatrist's return. In his hand was the one item that he wanted most to hand to Gillespie at that moment - and yet didn't have a clue how to do it without getting Miss Parker and Sam into a lot of hot water. He gazed down at the picture of Andrew Duncan and frowned in frustration.
How was he to tell the FBI man in charge that THIS was the man to be watching for? He couldn't just say, "well, he's the guy hired by the man who dreamed this thing up - we have a tape of the call Flores made to him setting up the kidnapping. Oh, and by the way, we're taking care of Flores ourselves, so all YOU have to do is find Duncan..." Nope. That wouldn't fly. Gillespie would want access to Flores immediately - and Miss Parker had asked for time to weasel the information out of him in her own way.
He could say, "well, this is the assistant to the man who was involved in all those dealings with the crime syndicates that we just turned over to you - and we suspect that he's probably involved in setting up the kidnappings too. Where is he? We're not exactly sure..." Nope. All it would take would be an interview with one of the other supervisors, and the FBI would know full good and well that Centre personnel knew where Flores had gone. Then not only would they want immediate access, but they'd want to know why the Centre had lied after promising full and unobstructed cooperation.
With a yawn he looked down at his wristwatch - it was three in the morning. Much as he'd just as soon drive home and rest up a bit, he knew Miss Parker was probably wanting him out at the Centre when he finished here. He put the photo of Duncan on the passenger seat and fired up the motor of the coupe. Maybe SHE would have some idea how to introduce Duncan to Gillespie without causing more problems than he solved.
He sure hoped so...
~~~~~~~~
Flores looked on in growing amusement as Miss Parker and Sam, using the materials at hand in the infirmary and other places, began to construct an odd scaffold about his head. They had carried him down the hallway with very little effort, even though he had tried with all his might to move his weight around and make the burden difficult. At one point, however, Miss Parker had called for them to halt, then leaned over his head - near the end of the board she was carrying - and hissed, "Keep it up and we'll drop you. Feel like seeing if three feet of freefall will make you more cooperative?" Looking into her cold, dead, grey eyes, he knew that she'd do it - order that they drop him - and probably not just from the waist-high level he was at.
The scaffolding was as creative as it was functional. A metal supply shelf unit - shelves held on either end by essentially a metal ladder - had been placed at his head. Then Sam had vanished for a short time and came back with a set of bottles of sterile water and an IV control unit. The two of them had been happily creative from there on - hanging the two rather large bottles of water to feed the control unit and then connecting that to a regular IV tube. Then they took a scalpel and cut the plastic tubing just beneath the drip controller and finally, with deliberate care, rigged it so that the cut end of the drip unit hung approximately three feet above his head.
"Are you ready for this?" Sam asked Miss Parker with a twinkle in his eye. With a nod she plugged in the control unit. Sam waited until the reservoir behind the drip controller had a fair bit of liquid in it before easing back on the drip controller. The first drop impacted on the duct tape, so Sam moved the shelf unit just inches closer. Just enough so that the next drip landed right where they wanted it to - on the bridge of the nose just between the eyes.
Flores began to chuckle. "You call this incentive?" he chortled. "I figured you'd be doing something..." he paused as the next drip hit him and made him blink, "...more intimidating."
Miss Parker merely smiled coldly. "For your information, a single drop of water, repeated often enough, can wear away a mountain. Let's see how well you do after about an hour of that thing dripping onto your face - or maybe even a day or so."
"A day?" Sam looked over at her. "Are we going to be willing to hold him like this for that long?"
"I honestly don't think it will take that long," Miss Parker said to him. "Fully part of the torture Hippolytus de Marsiliis developed had to do with the power of anticipation turning to annoyance turning to dread turning to insanity. That's why we don't want it dripping on him any faster than four or five times a minute - he needs the time between drops to watch it grow until it just can't hang on anymore, and then it hits him in exactly the same time after time after time."
"You are so full of shit, lady," Flores snarled.
"You're the one getting wet," she reminded him sweetly. "We'll check up on you in about an hour - if nothing else, to make sure there's plenty of water still waiting to drip onto you drop by drop by drop." She took Sam by the arm, insinuating her hand into the crook of his elbow. "C'mon - let's see if we can get any news from Tyler."
Flores couldn't turn his head to see them leave nor make out any movement in his peripheral vision, but he heard the door close. All he could see was the clear plastic orifice above him that slowly was growing the next drop that, as it hit his face, scattered droplets painfully into his eye making him blink hard. And again. And again.
He tried closing his eyes and ignoring the drip, but the waiting was almost worse than having it drop unexpectedly. Time had never moved so slowly in his life, measured a single drop of water at a time.
~~~~~~~~
Kevin sat stoically on the edge of the examination table as the ER physician put three stitches into the cut on his cheek from blow from the gun. Sydney had warned him to be patient and cooperate fully, and he was determined to follow his mentor's directions to the letter. The physician who attended him was a personable man, not a lot older than Kevin himself, who was trying to engage his nervous patient in some light conversation. But Kevin's shyness had made a sudden and fierce reappearance because so much of what the doctor was asking about made very little sense to the young Pretender. He didn't even know anybody by the last name of either Spears or Carey - so how could he say which girl or woman he “liked” better? He LIKED Deb - but she was... No. He wouldn't think of that now - it still hurt too much.
"When will I be able to see my... When can I see Sydney?" he finally asked when the doctor seemed to be finished and reaching for a new bandage.
"I'm not sure - let me go check on him for you." The physician applied the butterfly bandage and rose from his little stool. "Hang on."
Kevin looked around him at the emergency room - still reeling from finding himself a patient in one. The entire intake process had been frightening - out of sheer lack of creativity and growing panic, he'd claimed Sydney's last name as his own on the admitting form. He didn't think Sydney would mind much - the mentor HAD told him at one point that he was a part of the family after all. But he'd learned in the short time he'd been out of that little house and away from Vernon that sometimes saying a thing and actually meaning it could be two different things. He'd have to apologize to Sydney later, just in case.
"Your friend will be staying overnight with us at the very least," the doctor announced as he pushed through the curtains surrounding Kevin's examination table. "Seems that he has some torn ligaments in his right knee that the orthopedist wants to tackle with orthoscopic surgery in the morning. We're done here - why don't you go visit with him a bit before they take him to the ward? I can finish up the paperwork here." The doctor moved the curtain at the end of the examination table aside so that Kevin could see out, then pointed to a closed-in space at the end of the line. "He's down there."
The young Pretender walked down to the curtain and pulled it aside just a little to peek inside. Sydney was propped up against some comfortable-looking pillows and saw the movement. "Come on in, Kevin," he called gently. "My doctor is taking care of setting things up for them to fix my knee in the morning."
"How are you feeling?" Kevin asked awkwardly. After years of wondering what they were like, he was starting to hate hospitals - and, more specifically, hate seeing Sydney laid up in one so often.
"Not too bad now," the older man admitted. "They gave me a shot for the pain a while back, and it's kicking in pretty good now."
"I... didn't know what to put down for my last name," the young man confessed with a small voice. "I... gave them yours..."
Sydney smiled at his young protégé. "I don't mind, Kevin. It's actually a pretty good idea for us to establish some sort of kinship - at least publicly. So from now on, if anybody asks, you're... my nephew."
"Are you sure?" Kevin gazed with uncertainty into his mentor's face.
"As a matter of fact, I am," Sydney answered confidently. "I had a twin brother - and only I would know whether he had any children or how old they'd be. Oh, and you also work for the Centre - and that much IS true - which means you can claim their insurance." The older man chuckled. "I'm sure Miss Parker would approve."
"But what am I going to do when they take you off to a room?" the young man asked, feeling more insecure as every moment passed. "I mean, they aren't admitting me, and I don't have any place to go..."
Sydney frowned. "I hadn't thought of that..." He saw the look of almost terror that had finally developed on Kevin's face and reached out a comforting hand to the young man. "Now, now - this is nothing to get so upset about. As soon as I'm able, I'll call Miss Parker and have her send someone for you - or have her make arrangements for you to spend the night at a motel and then have someone pick you up in the morning."
"I'd be alone..." The thought was paralyzing.
"Better still..." Sydney pointed to a plastic bag on the floor near the foot of his examination bed. "Dig through there and see if I still had my cell phone on me."
Kevin bent and brought the bag up to the foot of Sydney's bed and pawed through it, finally pulling the cell phone out with a look of triumph.
"I know I'm not supposed to do this, but..." Sydney dialed quickly.
"What?" Miss Parker sounded very much as she had years ago - frustrated and tired.
"I need someone to take care of Kevin, Parker. They're hanging onto me for the night, but have released him - and he's a bit at loose ends and nervous."
"I'll send someone to pick him up." Miss Parker paused. "What are they holding you for?"
"They want to work on my knee in the morning. And I need to end this before I get into trouble for using a cell phone in here." Sydney told her quickly.
"I'll be by in the morning, and someone will be there for Kevin as soon as they can get from here to there, I promise. Tell him not to worry - I'll make sure it's someone he knows."
"Goodnight, Parker."
"Take care Syd - see you later."
"Here," Sydney handed Kevin the cell phone. "Put it in your pocket and hang onto it. It has everybody's phone number in it - even Jarod's in California."
Kevin slipped the thin little device in his jeans pocket as a nurse came through the curtains with brisk efficiency. "They tell me you get to stay with us for a while," she chirped far too cheerfully for this late at night. "So let's get you into this wheelchair..."
"Can I come along?" Kevin asked plaintively.
The nurse eyed him critically. "Have you been released?"
"I think so..."
"Then I DON'T think so. Did you come in together?"
"Nurse, he's a little unsure of himself being left alone - and the ride he called for won't be here for a while," Sydney explained quickly. "Are you sure you can't bend the rule just a little bit..."
"Now, now, none of those European charms work on me," the nurse smiled down at her patient, now safely housed in the wheelchair. He was a handsome and cosmopolitan-sounding gentleman - and if it had been closer to the end of her shift, she might have conceded... She tucked the blanket from his examination table about his legs. "Tell you what," she turned to Kevin. "Your ride will probably come in this entrance here - so why don't you wait for them in the ER waiting room. There's plenty of reading material, and you can see everyone who comes in."
Sydney reached out and took his protégé's hand and patted it. "You'll be fine, Kevin. They'll be here for you soon. Don't worry." Then the nurse had released the brakes and was wheeling him quickly from the ER.
Kevin turned and headed slowly for the waiting area the nurse had pointed out, silently telling himself over and over again "I can do this." He chose the seat that gave him the best view of the entrance and reached for the first magazine on the stack next to him. "I can do this," he recited, the words of the article about changes in the environmental laws not even beginning to penetrate.
And for the first time in his whole life, Kevin found himself truly alone - and he didn't like it one bit.
~~~~~~~~
Davy roused as the movement of the car ceased, and then the car shook as the passengers all climbed out. Beside him, he could feel Deb stirring at last - either she was just coming to or she, like him, was waking up after a fitful nap. There was no warning when the trunk popped open and sets of hands reached in for the two captives.
"We gonna take 'em on the plane like this?" one voice asked incredulously.
"It's our own plane, you nitwit. Nobody cares what they look like," growled the voice the one Davy had pegged as the leader of the kidnappers. "Get them aboard. NOW."
"So this is farewell," Smith sighed in relief after dumping his charge into one of the seats and fastening the seatbelt about the boy. His nose still ached, and he would be glad to get as far away from the man who had hired him. "Can't say I'm sorry to see you go."
"Just get the hell outta here," Duncan growled again, "and don't let me see your face again." Smith gave him a glare of pure dislike, then headed for the plane's exit.
"I'll say goodbye too," Jones announced once Deb was similarly taken care of. Without further ado, he simply trotted down the stairs and sprinted off into the darkness.
Duncan turned to Cordoba. "So, are you going to take off too?"
The Hispanic shook his head. "You know me better than that, Andy. I got a call from Gil about the same time you did - and I was told to watch your back. Can't do that when you're in LA and I'm in New York."
Duncan smiled and slapped his boss' old friend on the shoulder. "Thank God we got rid of the two clowns. Get yourself belted in - we're outta here!
Davy swallowed hard - they were being taken all the way to Los Angeles?
How was he EVER going to get back to his Mommy and Grandpa Sydney from THERE?
