Jarod is implicated in a spate of homicides.
lol Miss Parker with no air conditioning. This is so like her. She's kind of spoiled but we love her anyway. All the warmth of a blizzard. That's my Miss Parker but only because the dude was hitting on her.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed
lol Miss Parker with no air conditioning. This is so like her. She's kind of spoiled but we love her anyway. All the warmth of a blizzard. That's my Miss Parker but only because the dude was hitting on her.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed I love the interplay between Brandt and Jarod. The bet, hand rolling dice gesture. Amazing. The detail you instill in this and the plausibility. I'm eternally in awe.
"and he couldn't quite determine when the shift had occurred, and the universe had faltered.".... The way you write. What you write. How you write. I didn't mean to let this story escape my attention for so long but I do love me a nice evening binge-read session.
I love the interplay between Brandt and Jarod. The bet, hand rolling dice gesture. Amazing. The detail you instill in this and the plausibility. I'm eternally in awe.
"and he couldn't quite determine when the shift had occurred, and the universe had faltered.".... The way you write. What you write. How you write. I didn't mean to let this story escape my attention for so long but I do love me a nice evening binge-read session.
I love the interplay between Brandt and Jarod. The bet, hand rolling dice gesture. Amazing. The detail you instill in this and the plausibility. I'm eternally in awe.
"and he couldn't quite determine when the shift had occurred, and the universe had faltered.".... The way you write. What you write. How you write. I didn't mean to let this story escape my attention for so long but I do love me a nice evening binge-read session.
I like how in one scene Jarod has a VCR and it's all outdated tech but in this Parker would rather have the outdated tech. Brilliant. I love her reaction to what she saw too.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed "The cries didn't make it out of her mind." OMG! Lots of cop talk in this and jargon. I love how noir it is but not overdone. I love Rachel's reaction to this having slept with him and never really having known who he is or what he is. lol. She totally fell for him on the show and being a fan of Profiler I was kind of dissapointed in her. I love all of this.
"Jarod Holliday (no relation to Wyatt Earp's old pal, Doc) had simply strolled out the front door of the station, in no particular hurry, the portrait of equanimity.
He had walked outside and simply vanished.
He could have driven up in a clown car (double-stuffed with clowns), or been dropped out of the sky by Dorothy (on her way back to Kansas), or deposited neatly by a UFO.
Hell, maybe he'd breezed up on an unicycle, or arrived via stilts, or had skitched up to the station door.
No one knew what his mode of transportation was. No one knew where he was or where he'd come from and had no clue as to where he might going next. Moreover, no one knew who Jarod was.
(Not even Jarod.)"
"Brandt turned suddenly to confront the thud behind him, met Rachel's forlorn gaze as she lunged ungainly on liquid legs and slumped against the reception desk."
"Incoherency and in-coordination had morphed into rage."
You're a superstar Mirage!
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed
Broots concern for Miss Parker is always so sweet. I like you how drop us right back to the Centre business part of the story. You transition well between scenes... so smooth I don't even notice.
"I would have thought, Miss Parker," rasped Raines (in a voice, Parker mused, that could grate Pecorino Romano), "that given the absence of alternatives—namely yours—you would be more appreciative of your brother's progress." Both Raines and Lyle (as well as the Director) had illustrated an unwillingness to countenance any alternatives, particularly hers. She was suspicious of the prevailing specious illusion of solidarity, impartiality, and inclusion (into the boy's club), was wary of the false Centre tenets. Their "way" was sacrosanct. She was an outsider.
"I've reviewed his plan," Raines continued in a laudatory tone, meeting Lyle's gaze, "and it's brilliant."
"Oh, yes," sang Parker bitterly, "it's a screaming success if the goal was multiple causalities," she said reproachfully. "Snitch to the Triumvirate, Sis, and it will be the last unilateral move you ever make."
This is my favorite part though of this chapter...
"It's odd, truly it is: you talk about people, and they show up— as if they were summoned"
Is that why you always say Jarod's player when somone mentions Michael and never call him Michael T. Weiss? Makes sense.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed OMG that is so like Rachel. She can be completely crazy and break down. Oooh I hope Jarod will be ok.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed Uhh wow!! WOW! DID NOT see that coming Mirage.
"He hated feeling vulnerable, relying on anyone, let alone her. And he detested the weapon in his hand almost as much as he detested Parker in that moment—that, however, did not prevent him from employing the weapon, fondling it obscenely in an attempt to gain her cooperation.
Hypocrisy. The new black."
Every word. Every word is brilliant.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed Oh no. No, poor Jarod. Godz! Mirage how do you do this?
"The cupboards were devoid of food. Wheeling to his left, he grasped the refrigerator door, and sagged against it briefly when the floor felt as if it were being tugged out from under him. Jarod mustered the strength, at last, to pull open the door.
He was disheartened by his findings: six unsuspecting grapefruit—stoic and flushed pink—occupied the middle shelf; a half-filled bottle of wine shared the top shelf with a single box of gunpowder tea.
In the attached freezer, an unopened bottle of Stoli lay, in chilled repose, on its side.
Just when did alcohol become a food group?
It was positively unfathomable.
No food? Even the Centre had food; crappy food, but food, nonetheless."
Amazing.
But that ending... I hope Jarod will be ok.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed LOL "desaturated Thomas" you are a hoot, mdear.
I love Parker's confusion and how she propositions Jarod for sex. Didn't expect him to walk away from that though.
Jarod in a dress. I love that more than I should.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed Oooh ho. You didn't watch Profiler then... oh wow. You're just that good from seeing Rachel the one time on the Pretender. Damn. Wow.
The ending. OMG!
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed Ooh aww. Poor Jarod. I love the way he just knew. Gotta love Parker's frustration at the women who described Jarod in detail. lol. So realistic and plausible. Characters are like they were on the tv series. Ahhh I just love this.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed Ooh aww. Poor Jarod. I love the way he just knew. Gotta love Parker's frustration at the women who described Jarod in detail. lol. So realistic and plausible. Characters are like they were on the tv series. Ahhh I just love this.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed OOoh. That ending. She knows Jarod will never leave her alone.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed OMG I love Broots reaction to Parker helping Jarod. Finally she admits it.
"Relax? Sydney," he hissed, "I falsified documentation and surveillance."
Parker lowered her wine glass abruptly and said in a tight, low whisper, "That's the last time you say those words aloud."
"Jarod and his family are grieving, Broots," explained Sydney softly.
"Yeah, and it's one thing for you and Miss Parker to pick up the tab for his mother's funeral arrangements but another thing altogether to lie to Cox's face or-or to create lairs, jobs, and newspaper articles. Orchestrating a diversion of this magnitude is- it's not feasible. And you're exhausted, Miss Parker. Admit it."
"We're buying him some time," Parker said succinctly.
"It's been three months," exclaimed Broots. "Between this and trying to track down the psycho serial killer Jarod clone—because hey, you know, one clone wasn't enough for the Centre—I'm losing it."
Etta and Merle. Noice. Nice nice. I love their music. I love that the police and feds have cool ringtones. I'm addicted to your writing Mirage.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed "Life goes on" Oh yeah life goes on... long after the trill of living is gone. That's a Mellencamp tune for the 80's anyway. It's also a Beatles tune.
I so totatlly agree with Jarod about how people laugh and carry on crazily when someone dies. That's not grief. Oh, so curious about what happens next. Glad I don't have to wait... teheheee
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed
"You can't be here," Parker informed him when the door closed.
"I can't be here? Hmm, now that's both odd and strangely ironic. You've spent the better part of your life trying to bring me back here and now that I am here you're telling me I can't be. Or are you implying I can't be here of my own volition? Is that it?"
Oooh. Jarod when we gets aggressive is a force that even Parker can't reckon with. He's just... sexy as hell too and being in control like that.. hmmmmm .OMG. I can't EVEN.
"Yes," affirmed Jarod. "The people to whom you gave your loyalties fled and left you indefensible. They didn't care about you or the people they've held prisoner and used for their own sordid purposes. You, Sydney—you're unwitting scapegoats. Fortunately, this was predictable. Fortunately," reiterated Jarod hotly, "the man you spent your adult life pursuing and distrusting prepared for every contingency. A Centre jet carrying Cox and board members was escorted to a private airstrip by two F-16s. Charges are pending."
"Can't say I wasn't warned," confessed Parker gracefully, averting her gaze.
"No," agreed Jarod coolly, sitting rigidly on the squat black leather sofa. "No, you can't. All of this," he said with a sweeping wave of hand, indicating her office, "will be gone in two weeks. This property and all subsidiaries of the Centre and Triumvirate are presently being seized."
"Seized? Brandt didn't say anything-"
"I asked him not to. I thought it might be a dealbreaker and I didn't want you to renege."
"You've been involved all this time," she murmured, unfolding her arms, dropping them at her sides.
"I have," confirmed Jarod with a frown. "It's still your office until the week's end, however," he soothed with an amiable smile. "You can sit if you'd like."
Just.... omg.
lol your notes again hilarious. "rope placement screams Jarod in every language." You're not wrong Mirage. I thought that too. Jarod tightened the rope right over her breast. OUCH. I wanted to know what happened during commerical break and now I know. Thank you for that.
Clement's story was so touching. I love that you give other Centre victims a voice too here and imply there are many more with stories too. Lots of exploration could have continued. You're a genius to think of it. I wish you were writing the pretender novels. I really do and It's a shame you aren't.
"I'm not going to hurt her," Jarod assured Parker, his anger tempered with compassion. "You should already know that. I'm going to give her a rather low dose of Diazepam to calm her," he explained didactically. "This will relax her, not sedate her. Once she's calmer, I will restrain her- if it's necessary- and assess her injuries and mental status and treat her. It's imperative also that I fingerprint her and take her photograph if she's unable to communicate. I'd like to return her to her family as soon as possible. Don't you want that for her?"
Parker regarded him blankly and adamantly refused to yield.
"You do realize that I could cuff you to an empty cell, don't you," he challenged and observed her stiffen. He believed she'd step aside then and actively participate in defusing the conflict. He was mistaken. "You and I are both rational adults," added Jarod. "I don't think either of us wants this to escalate."
Escalate? He's threatening me?
"I," declared Jarod gravely, "don't want to physically remove you from the premises."
Odd. He hadn't been too troubled when he'd locked her inside a shipping container with her brother or when he had her arrested in deliverance country.
Nor had he been all that dismayed in Florida when he'd dropped to a crouch beside her and gently albeit forcibly bound her wrists, entirely ignoring her objections. In the course of the struggle, she'd almost freed her shoulder from the leather jacket in his determined grasp and escaped him. She'd underestimated his strength and his ability to anticipate uppercuts and groin kicks. Jarod had effortlessly dodged her blows and fingernails and had all too easily succeeded in securing her to a support beam. Humiliating.
She would not underestimate him again. She didn't have to. Her 9mm was an adequate equalizer.
"I don't want to pull my gun on you, Jarod. You'll leave me no other option if you take one more step."
"If I take one more step, Miss Parker, you won't have an opportunity to draw your weapon."
His words wrenched her fully into the present moment. He was correct, realized Parker with a start. She'd made this mistake before and had found herself staring into the business end of her own gun.
He was close enough again, damn it to disarm her.
"You shouldn't have come back here," he asserted, his face darkening in anger. "As a matter of fact, you should have never been allowed access to this wing in the first place."
"It would've taken a helluva lot more than an order from you to stop me," she countered.
"I'm surprised that your bullheadedness hasn't gotten you killed."
"Surprises all around," rebutted Parker tartly. "I imagine being a prick has its disadvantages, too; I've been tempted, at times, to kill you myself."
Miss Parker calling Jarod a prick is a scene that should have happened on the show. They need to have sex. There is so much tension. I can see the muscles on their faces... your work here is perfect. In the missing scene you provide us she struggled to not be restrained by Jarod and fought him and still lost. That's hard for me because she's so strong but we saw Keys and she was tied up and that means Jarod got the upper hand on her. She's not that tough. Sometimes these things are staring me in the face and I'm like wanting to argue anyway though and tell you that no , Jarod could never be in control of her, he could never do any of that stuff in FON or Circles of Hell but he can and he has and he did on the tv screen he definitely tied her up. I concede it all to you Mirage. Jarod is a genius and he can be anything and he can do anything. Your brutal reminder of her tied up in the Keys was all I needed.
This is a chilling chapter that ... the things you explore, the darker parts of the Centre that we know exist because Ethan was created by a coerced insemination and pregnancy... coerced because Catherine was sedated. If she didn't agree to it or couldn't it was coercion.Still, we know it exists but don't want to see the in between or the collateral damage of it but you always go there and make us look and I think that's probably necessary even if it is scary and really dark. You really aren't afraid of the dark.
"Parker was en route to sublevel eleven. Jarod would have been too, had he been thinking clearly; he would have walked directly to the file room and explored the Requisitions and Expenditures files. Within minutes he would have deduced that pharmaceutical grade freezers and cryogenic tanks were delivered two years earlier. Armed with the date and time of delivery a brief stroll to the Surveillance Storage (just down the corridor from the Tech room) on sublevel five would have provided a vivid picture of the destination of aforementioned appliances: sublevel thirteen, corridor eight, a room with no name.
But Jarod was not only furious, he was agonizing over the question of whether or not he would—or could—destroy viable embryos. And if not then what?
In Wing G, he arrived much too late to prevent Parker from answering the questions that plagued his mind. She'd done everything short of dousing the room with gasoline and dropping a lit match. He processed the destruction with lips parted in shock.
Cryopreservation tanks had been unlidded and overturned. Every vial—all one hundred twenty of them—lay shattered on the floor. Forty or so cryocanes strewn across the room mingled with ruptured embryo straws, identification rods, stylettes, catheters, syringes and all of the usual stainless steel tools of the obstetrics and gynecology practice.
A crippled halogen examination lamp lay on its side, its absent casters no doubt liberated by the force of being thrust into a triptych of transparent OLED screens.
Parker had smashed state of the art microscopes, three embryo freezers, transabdominal and transvaginal ultrasounds as well as computers that monitored liquid nitrogen levels, and had raised the room temperature to stifling degrees.
Jarod shuddered, nonetheless.
Rage.
Unadulterated rage."
It made this scene that follows so much sweeter and sexier.Cherry on top of it all Mirage. Thank you. This is THE BEST romance I've ever read.
"She leaned into his touch, closed her eyes, murmured mutely when he kissed her chin, cheek, forehead, the corner of her mouth. Leisurely, he cradled her face in his hands, caressed her lips with his, parting them.
Her mouth tasted faintly of spearmint, no doubt chosen to conceal the quart of scotch she'd drank the prior evening and still appreciable enough to camouflage the lemonade he'd sipped at lunch. Jarod intended to taste her again, mint free- those were his final thoughts prior to forgetting to think.
Parker clasped his face with eager hands, kissed him deeply, danced him against a bare wall. She gasped into his mouth when his hands closed around her waist. Without any further ceremony, Jarod hoisted Parker off her feet. Her legs—and the rest of her—instinctively wrapped around him.
They were both in various stages of undress when, breathlessly, they drew back in astonishment from each other. Parker twisted herself out of his grasp, unwound her limbs from his body. The wall, fortunately, intercepted Jarod's collapse.
The pair straightened, slowed their respirations, and seemed to mutely agree that they were finished with each other- or that at least, for their own safety, should be.
"Dinner," he reminded, unbuttoning and turning up his shirtsleeves. "Seven thirty?"
"All right," she agreed with a curt nod. And then shook her head. "No," she said.
Jarod stiffened, frowned. "No?"
"No," repeated Parker firmly. With some urgency, she added, "Let's leave now."
YES!
You are the best smut writer, sex writer, romance writer, action writer, drama writer. I can't EVEN think after that. My favorite part was Jarod's thoughts about Parker's ""litle death."'" Just so wow. Mind=blown. Boom!
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed
lol. "No. Are you crazy?" GOLD. Miss Parker Classic Gold.
Please don't me that Parker had sex with Jarod's evil clone. oh gods. ugh.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed Awww. There are soo good together if she's with Jarod. Is she? I need to know. That HAS to be Jarod with her. He's so nice and tender and sweet just like Michael. OMG. Please!
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed
Jarod's all like yes i"m going to do this with the scalepl all ready to go. I'm so freaked out about this. Thanks for the warning too.
Please update.
Reviewer: d_el1 Signed