Sam tugged on the baseball cap Debbie was now wearing to lower the visor over her face. She’d already tucked her long hair up into it – combined with the oversized sports shirt she was now wearing, it would be hard to pick her out as a girl at all. Broots, too, had changed from the casual clothing he’d worn when he got on the plane into a natty suit so that he looked ever bit the businessman. Sam’s change of clothing had turned him into a tourist on vacation – with jeans and polo shirt and duffel bag replacing his sports coat and dress trousers.

It was the best he could do for them in the short time he’d allotted himself in the baggage compartment – he didn’t want to stay down there too long and attract attention. As it was, the stewards of the plane were frowning a little in confusion – it wasn’t often that passengers changed their clothing during the flight. The discarded clothing had been carefully folded and made to fit into his already overfilled duffel bag. The decision had been to let Debbie continue to carry her dark blue tote, but for Broots to take over custody of Sam’s briefcase to finish off his disguise as a businessman. In fact, it was Broots who would take off without the others, disembarking alone and meeting up with Sam and Debbie at the car rental booth in one half hour.

Luggage stowed overhead once more, and seatbelts fastened, all that was left for the three of them to do was to survive the landing and get the hell off the plane without catching the eye of the sweepers that were no doubt waiting for them in the terminal. Debbie was once more sitting next to Sam, and her nervousness was palpable. “We’re going to be fine,” the sweeper bent to his companion. “Just pretend I’m your dad and that we’re here to have a grand old time – and that you’re tired and want to get to your hotel.”

“I’m scared,” she whispered back, her knuckles growing whiter in her lap as the lights on the ground grew closer.

“I know you are, Short Stuff. Just hang in there, though – and don’t do anything suspicious. Remember…”

“Blend in, I know,” she finished his statement for him. Debbie took a deep breath and tried to let it slow down her frantic heartbeat. She bent forward a little, so that she could see her father across the aisle.

“Remember, he’s not related to you right now,” Sam nailed that too. “You can’t afford to keep looking at him anymore, Deb. He’s a stranger until we meet at the rental desk.”

“What if they figure out who we are anyway?” she wanted to know.

Sam’s expression grew hard. “Then we’ll just have to take care of the situation the hard way,” he said without any expression in his voice. “Either way, we’ll handle it.”

The sweeper looked down when he felt a much smaller hand slip into his for comfort, and he gave the hand a small squeeze. “We’re going to be fine, kiddo,” he soothed for the twentieth time in the last hour. “Just fine.”

Debbie closed her eyes as the wheels of the aircraft finally touched back down to earth and rumbled them down the runway. She could do this, she told herself over and over again. She could pretend, just as good as Jarod could.

Honest.

~~~~~~~~~*

The wind howled eerily through the pine trees and would occasionally push another puff of snow around the corners of the detached cabin. Already a second set of blankets had been distributed to each of the survivors, who were now mostly huddling against the wall of the fuselage in shivering pairs for warmth.

It had taken work, but the stewardess Natalie had finally been convinced to take the still nameless little girl up into her lap and hold her close. Neither of them had been eager to be close to anyone else, but eventually the prospect of sharing body heat and staying a little bit warmer was too much to resist. Bennings was on the floor lying next to the latest survivor find – the man was simply too badly injured to have sitting up. Sydney had eased Miss Parker down to a sitting position on the floor below the window and wrapped the two of them tightly together in the blankets allotted them. She had roused briefly, but quickly fallen back to sleep upon coming to rest on Sydney’s chest.

It was dark now – dark and desperately cold.

“We’ll have to block off that end of the plane,” Bennings called to Sydney, his teeth chattering. “We need to keep the wind out of here.”

“We’ll have to see about making a fire in the morning too,” Sydney replied, his teeth chattering as badly as Bennings’. “We can clear a spot on the floor, maybe bring in some small piece of sheet metal…”

“When it’s light out again,” Bennings agreed. “If we live through this.”

“We’ll live through this,” Sydney stated with as much vehemence as he could muster. “We can’t afford to let ourselves doubt that. Doubt can kill just as quickly as the cold.”

“Sydney…” Miss Parker’s voice was soft, obviously not meant to carry far at all.

“I’m here, Parker.” He tightened his arm about her waist and with the other hand adjusted the blankets so that all but just her eyes and forehead were covered.

“What are we going to do if they can’t get out into the storm and find us?” she asked with a shiver and pressed herself as tightly against one friend she’d had nearly all her life – the man she’d more than once wished had been her father.

“We’ll make do right here until they DO find us,” he replied, leaning his cheek against her forehead as if that would help keep her warmer. “There isn’t a whole lot more we can do than that, Parker.”

“You don’t suppose that either Lyle or Raines is responsible for…”

Sydney shook his head quickly. “I honestly don’t see either of them willing to kill over a hundred innocent people just to get to the two of us,” he told her honestly. “I mean, neither of them would think twice about killing one, maybe two – but to take down an entire 747 filled with people sounds like overkill, even for them.”

She lay still for a long moment, processing the logic in her old friend’s statement. “If we make it out of here…”

“WHEN we make it out of here…” he quickly corrected her.

“…what do we do about Jarod in San Francisco?” she continued her thought, ignoring his correction.

“It will be at least a day or so before any of us are released from the hospital,” he replied, thinking through the situation. “More than likely, they’ll want to hang onto you considerably longer than they’ll want to keep me. I can call the hospital in California and consult with the psychiatrist in charge of the John Doe, see whether I can give enough detailed description that he can tell me one way or the other and save us the trip.”

“We should have thought of that before,” Miss Parker commented between gritted teeth. “We could have saved ourselves time and money...”

Sydney shook his head. “And deny you of your chance to go dashing across the continent hunting Jarod again for the first time in months – and maybe avoid another t-board grilling in the process? C’mon now…”

She tried to chuckle and ended up sighing and shivering. “You know me too well, Syd,” she commented softly and closed her eyes. She was silent for a long moment, her thoughts moving to something she’d been thinking about earlier. “Do you know what?”

Sydney had closed his eyes too, wishing he could help her get and stay warmer so that she could sleep peacefully. “What?”

“I’m glad you’re here with me,” she replied. “I don’t know what it is, but I always feel safe and able to believe things will be OK as long as you’re around.”

Sydney’s eyes opened in surprise. Miss Parker was miserly with her praise or compliments in the best of times. “Thank you, Parker,” he eventually managed. He finally dared to kiss the forehead not far from his chin. “You’ll be OK, you know…”

No, she didn’t know such a thing – but it wouldn’t hurt to let him think she accepted his reassurance despite that, if for no other reason than the glancing kiss that had warmed her heart at a time when she needed it desperately. Sydney’s demonstrations of fondness were rare treasures never to be ignored. “I know.” She listened carefully until she could almost hear the beat of his heart against her ear despite the howling of the wind and came to a decision. “When I was a kid, I used to be so jealous of Jarod…”

“Jealous? Why?” This was a new side of Miss Parker – one he’d so often wished would reveal herself to him, one he’d so often despaired of ever uncovering. Whether it was because she thought she was dying or not, she was unburdening her soul to him NOW – and he gave her every ounce of his attention.

“Because he had you – and you were always paying attention to him. Even when it was Jarod and Angelo and me crawling through the vents, I knew that your thoughts were on Jarod and nobody else.” She turned her head slightly and pressed her cheek against his chest. “I always wondered what it would be like to have someone that interested in MY welfare. I mean Momma was dead, and Daddy didn’t give a damn…”

“Shhhhh…” he soothed. “Don’t think of those days,” he advised her, moving to try to settle her closer to him so that he could share more of his warmth with her.

“I can’t help it,” she shivered again and pressed closer still. “You were always so calm and wise, and every once in a while, you’d be willing to make time for me and listen to me the same way you always listened to Jarod. Even though I knew Jarod was the most important thing in your world, I used to love it when I’d manage to finally get your full attention. Even if only for a minute or two, I could pretend I was your daughter – and that you actually cared…”

“I always cared, Parker,” Sydney pulled her tighter still against him. “Never doubt that.”

“I’ve spent the last years of my life treating you like dirt,” she continued mournfully, “and I’m sorry…”

“Stop it, Parker,” he said suddenly in a sharp whisper. She was giving up – and trying to tie up loose ends. He’d be damned if he’d let her just slip away like that. “You’re going to be fine – we’re both going to be just fine. We just have to hang in there – and keep believing.”

“I’m not sure about that,” she answered him softly, honesty winning out at last, “and I don’t want to die without ever having said it.”

“It’s OK,” he told her gently. “Sometimes you don’t have to say…”

He could feel her head moving very slightly against him, negating what he’d been saying. “That’s the way the Centre teaches us to be – to bottle things up, to never say the things that need saying more than anything else. I should have told you a long time ago how I felt – how… fond… I am of you…” It was hard, making herself vulnerable to him after all this time; but it was oh, so necessary!

“You may not have said the words, but I knew. I knew, and I felt much the same way, and I never said anything either.” Sydney’s eyes stung with tears he’d never allowed to get very close to the surface. “But since we seem to be placing our cards on the table, so to speak, you should know I’ve always thought of you as the daughter I never had. I’ve always cared about you veerrrry much. You’ve just made it very difficult to show to you for a while now.”

She bit her lip at the idea that she’d never needed to pretend that Sydney cared after all – if only she’d known before now… “If we get out of here,” her voice steadied and took on a note of determination, “you and I are going to start over again with a clean slate – and we’re not going to play the game by Centre rules anymore.”

“WHEN we get out of here,” Sydney corrected her again. “We will survive, Parker. I won’t allow anything else to happen.” He kissed her forehead again. “Go back to sleep, ma petite cheri. I’ll take care of you, and we’ll both make it out of here – you’ll see.”

Slowly she relaxed as much as she could against him. Her inner voices had gone silent – and the loss would have been distressing had Sydney not been there. As much as she’d denied it for the greater share of her adult life, Sydney had been the anchor that had kept her sane for years now – and in this moment, in this horrible situation with no inner guidance to lean on, it was his steely confidence that they WOULD survive this nightmare that would keeping her from panicking. Neither of them had said the words, but their short and emotionally charged exchange had clearly communicated their mutual affection.

Miss Parker allowed herself to begin to doze, feeling more secure and loved than she had been in a very long time. Until the voices came back and began informing her life again, she’d trust in what Sydney insisted would be the truth. Although he’d lied and kept things from her before – always to keep his word to someone else given long ago – surely he wouldn’t lie to her about THAT…

~~~~~~~~*

Erin pushed open her apartment door and flipped on the lights before turning and making sure the deadbolt was locked tightly and the security chain AND hinge were both in place. There had been several break-ins in the area in the past three months, and the chain and hinge were a final capitulation to an increased need for security. Getting home after eleven at night always made her a little nervous – and getting her door closed, locked and secured like that was always a relief.

There was a frustrated meow from the kitchen area, and the black and white cat who’d been her constant companion for the past three years darted out to meet her with his demands. “I know, McGyver, I know,” she soothed at her pet, which hadn’t had anything but his plentiful supply of dry kibbles for the better part of the day. She toed her work shoes off and stood for a moment in silent appreciation of her feet’s freedom from constraint, and then ambled toward the kitchen.

With the cat contentedly feasting on his helping of canned food, she pulled a bottle of beer from the fridge and moved over to her answering machine. Odd, she thought to herself, Cherry was supposed to have called that evening – but there were no messages at all waiting for her.

Darn! Cherry had better have been in the library, doing research for the paper they were writing together, she thought to herself as she dialed her best friend’s phone number from memory.

“Hi there!” came Cherry Fu’s voice over the line. “I can’t talk right now, but you know what to do.” The beep that sounded was loud and obnoxious.;

“Say!,” she responded to the machine. “Where are you? You were supposed to call me and tell me when we were going to meet tomorrow between classes. I don’t care what time you come in tonight – call me!” She hung up the phone with some frustration.

She took a long swig from her beer bottle and flopped onto her couch, reaching over to the table for the remote and turning on the TV. A commercial was on, and one of the men in the commercial looked so much like Lyle that she just had to smile. She’d see him tomorrow too – provided Cherry didn’t wig out on her and their paper. She felt a delicious shiver of anticipation run through her system – Lyle was special, she just knew it.

Her time with him the other night had been beyond all expectations. He’d been polite, gallant, witty to the point of being outrageously funny at times, knowledgeable and, above all, pleasant. He seemed quite conversant on a number of topics, some of which she’d only barely been able to keep up with him. He hadn’t treated her like a child or an airhead – and his touch when he kissed her…

Erin sighed and slouched down even further. Lyle hadn’t tried to seduce her outright, but his kisses had been very arousing. It was obvious that he knew exactly what to do to get all of her nerve endings firing on all cylinders – and yet, he’d held back. Just before she’d climbed into her cab, he’d given her a prim and almost innocent kiss that had shaken her to the bottom of her toes and only managed to make her all the more curious.

She took another long swig of her beer. She’d be with him tomorrow afternoon – maybe even tomorrow evening. She closed her eyes and let the feeling of being attractive even to such a sophisticated and worldly man make her feel warm and pretty. That he had money was obvious in the way he dressed and the way in which he’d not even flinched at the cost of the meal they’d shared. Such a change from the college boys who still were fighting acne and trying to look manly! Lyle didn’t need to try – he was all man, and how!

For the first time since her breakup with Steve, Erin wondered what it would be like to spend the night with a man like Lyle. Would he be gentle – or passionate?

She drained her beer and turned off the TV in disgust at the lack of quality programming, and then rose to amble toward the bedroom. Would she invite him in here tomorrow?

It was enough to make her tingle with anticipation.

~~~~~~~~*

“Remember, just walk forward like always – don’t look around.” Sam’s warning voice sounded in her ear and his big hand landed reassuringly on her shoulder as they finished the last leg of the walk through the corridor toward the arrival gate waiting area. Beneath his hand, he felt the young woman straighten just a bit and then move forward confidently, her eyes straight forward.

It didn’t take much looking around to find the sweepers. There were two of them – one on one end of the waiting area, the other at the opposite end – and both of them were looking a little confused and more than concerned. So far so good, Sam felt a rush of satisfaction. Broots had already left the area with a brisk, business-like walk that Sam was certain he had borrowed from watching Mr. Lyle one too many times. Already the computer tech would be making his way to the rental desk to wait for them.

Debbie held her breath, but didn’t let her nervousness show. She was grateful for Sam’s hand on her shoulder, ostensibly a father’s way of steering a teenager through the madness that was a greeting committee for just about everyone but them. He moved her past the baggage carousel and held her there for a moment, until the sweeper closest to them had his attention caught by another group of people coming through the glassed doors from the plane. Taking the opportunity and not questioning it, Sam turned Debbie and steered her from the waiting area and down the terminal.

“Is that it?” she asked sotto voce.

“Don’t relax yet,” he cautioned in a low voice, his hand still on her shoulder. “Keep moving.”

The terminal was long, and finally he saw Broots standing at the rental car desk, signing a paper and getting ready to collect the key. He bent forward. “You need to go to the restroom,” he directed, his hand on her shoulder lifting a finger and pointing.

“No, I don’t,” she complained.

“I need to check the perimeter before we can join your dad,” he explained quickly. “Do as I say – and come out quickly!”

Debbie sighed and walked toward the door to the women’s restroom as if it were the most normal thing in the world. She went into the first available stall and stood there for a minute, then walked out again and exited the restroom, wiping her hands on her pants as if they were still damp. Sam was next to her dad, and he nodded to her and tipped his head for her to approach.

Broots took the keys from the rental agent’s hand and smiled his thanks. “That’s it,” he announced, and Sam caught Debbie’s elbow so that they could move very quickly through the swinging doors out to where the rental cars all waited in their respective ports. “This one,” he said, pointing to the car that had the same port number as the ticket the agent had given him. He opened the driver’s door and pushed the button to unlock the other doors. “Get in.”

Sam got into the front passenger seat, and Debbie into the back without a word. Broots tossed the briefcase over the driver’s seat as he got in and had the engine running only seconds later. He backed out of the port and was down the drive in just moments, turning on his headlamps only as he neared the busy access road that led to the city streets.

“Do you think we got away clean?” he demanded of his sweeper colleague.

Sam was continuing to watch out the back window of the car, but noticed no cars jumping to come after them at any speed. “I think so,” he answered slowly. “Make a circle of the terminal entrance, just to be sure. If we have a tail, we’ll see.”

Broots nodded and did exactly as Sam directed. The moments seemed to creep by almost as slowly as the traffic on the circle. Then: “We’re clear,” Sam announced with certainty. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”

“Getting the hell outta here – you got it,” Broots repeated grimly and put on his signal to exit the circle and head for the city street. “The Hilton is just down the road about a quarter of a mile, according to the map site on the Internet I used,” he announced as he made his left hand turn just as the light turned yellow – yet another precaution to see if anyone were following them.

Sam finally turned around in his seat. “Good. The sooner we can get into a room and get some rest, the better.”

“What do we do now?” Debbie asked in a small voice. “We’re here – now what?”

“Tomorrow we take a drive to Ogden, which is up in the Wasatch National Forest,” Sam stated firmly. “I declare myself as a close family friend of one of the passengers on the plane and get myself on the search and rescue team.”

“What about us?” she persisted, and even Broots turned to look at Sam questioningly.

“You two lay low in whatever hotel we find in Ogden,” he directed in an ominous tone, “and your dad keeps an eagle eye on what goes on in the Centre mainframe. If a memo floats by with either of our names on it, you call me.”

“And we pray the Centre doesn’t already have representatives on that search and rescue team,” Broots added grimly.

Debbie settled back against the cushion of the back seat and sighed. In this not-a-game they were playing, it seemed they were just getting a small respite before going back to this-is-dangerous. It wasn’t a very comforting thought.

~~~~~~~~~*

Clarence Evans was recovering from getting himself stinking drunk. This was as per usual, when he ended up in this part of the country.

And, as usual, he’d stopped on his way home at the Evening Star Motel and conned his old buddy Stu into letting him try to sleep it off in one of the budget rooms at the far end of the building. It was a pattern of behavior that went back for years, ever since the two of them had gotten out of the service at the same time. Stu got the job managing the motel, and Clarence became a traveling salesman. Clarence kept Stu supplied with free shoes, and Stu reciprocated whenever Clarence was in the area and had tied one on particularly tightly.

Normally, Clarence took the last room – the one on the end – but this night found himself dumped in the next to last room. Stu told him there was some couple who tended to make noise with their – ahem! – activities that had asked for the most remote room. Whatever the man had told Stu had been right – because there certainly WAS plenty of noise coming from the next room over.

The couple must have been indefatigable, for the rhythmic squeaking of bedsprings followed by the pounding of headboard against the wall had been going on for the better part of the night. It would only cease for short periods of time – maybe a half an hour or so, marked by the hiss of water running in the adjoining shower – before starting up all over again. And the moans and sighs that came through the paper-thin walls were eerie – if he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn they were more from pain than ecstasy.

Clarence was temped to pound on the wall and demand quiet as the squeak of the bedsprings became the headboard once more pounding rhythmically just behind his head, but knew better. Stu had warned him that these people had tried to move somewhere so that they wouldn’t bother anybody else – and after all, he WAS getting the room for free.

He rolled over on the bed and pulled the pillow over his ears. With any luck, the people next door would finally exhaust themselves soon. Surely they wouldn’t be able to keep going at it ALL night, would they?

~~~~~~~~~*

Jarod jerked himself awake and sat up straight in bed, the perspiration beaded on his forehead, his heart pounding madly in his chest, and dragging in huge, gasping gulps of air. It was the first nightmare of that intensity that he’d had in almost two years – and he knew immediately why he’d had it.

They were involved – Sydney, Miss Parker, the Centre and everything it represented. For the first time in three years, he was thinking of them, whether he wanted to or not, because their paths had crossed completely serendipitously. They hadn’t found him – he hadn’t left them any bread crumbs or clues to follow – he had found THEM.

After a very rough first year, when his temptation to put the “game” back into play had surfaced more times than he’d wanted to admit, he’d finally been able to start going through his days without wondering how she was or what his mentor was up to now. There was no picking up copies of Psychology Today to see if Sydney had published anything new – no tapping into think tank chat rooms to hear what the latest scuttlebutt about what the Centre was up to lately – no going to the library and picking up the latest edition of Securities Digest to see if Miss Parker’s name was still being mentioned as often as it had before.

As he managed to get through each day without even thinking about them, his nightmares had slowly begun to abate. No more vividly reliving the day Lyle had murdered his brother, no more sweaty recollections of being flatlined and then revived, no more haunting echoes of Kenny’s desperate screams when Damon had shot him. After a year of intense introspection and self-discipline, Jarod had left the Centre and everything it represented to him behind.

He’d thought.

But now they were back – lurking in the shadows of his mind and capable of popping into his thoughts at random – and he was discovering that burying a past didn’t mean that the past had been dealt with, only obscured and deliberately locked away. The nightmare had proven that he’d been fooling himself – the emotions were just as alive and vital when it came to Sydney and Miss Parker as they ever had been. The thought of them, alive and perhaps injured, up on that mountainside – along with Carl, whom he considered another mentor and friend – was almost crippling. The thought of any or all of them dead on that mountain was too painful to even consider.

Shivering in the chill of the dark apartment, drenched in perspiration, Jarod rose and stumbled into his bathroom to turn on the hot water faucet and bathe his face repeatedly in the warm, flowing water. Bleary-eyed, he lifted his face and stared at himself in the mirror. He’d done himself no favors by forcing himself to forget, to bury all thoughts of the Centre and people he’d known most of his life. Like a festering wound, now that it was lanced by the reality of the situation, all the emotions he’d been hiding from were spilling out in a haphazard and almost uncontrollable manner.

Jarod sighed deeply and reached for his face towel. He wiped away the drips from his impromptu bath and rubbed his short hair for good measure, then threw the towel in the general direction of the hamper. It would be no good trying to get back to sleep for the rest of the night – the pattern of his nightmares was that once one got started, it would take nearly five hours of waking time before he could dependably go back to sleep and not expect to dive right back into the horror at the precise point he’d left it.

He walked through the dark apartment with the sureness of a blind man in his home and sought out the easy chair that he’d placed close to his balcony window. He drew back the drapes and seated himself in the chair to stare out at the Philadelphia skyline and the few stars that were bright enough to penetrate the light pollution. It wasn’t something he wanted to do, but he knew he had to do. He had to pull out, examine, and find a place in his new life for old feelings and old friends, acquaintances, enemies – just what were they to him, anyway?

He’d start with the more difficult of the two.

His feelings for Sydney had always been conflicted. He had long held the old Belgian personally responsible for his nearly three decade long incarceration in the depths of the Centre – for his never being allowed to experience a snowfall, or know his family or even know if Sydney himself cared for him as anything more than just a human lab rat. And yet, after his escape, in their more relaxed telephone conversations, he’d begun to get glimmers of a kind of fondness in his mentor toward him – but it was something he’d never once tried to plumb, afraid that, like all other attempts to touch Sydney’s heart before then, he would only experience rejection.

After all, he’d finally met and gotten to know his real parents. He’d spent several months with them before moving to Philadelphia – Charles and Margaret had changed their names and moved to a very small community in the mountains of Virginia to raise Joseph, as his clone had decided to name himself. But even then, in his heart, Sydney had been there first. In his gut, he’d always thought of Sydney as his first father-figure – and Charles had realized that very quickly into their relationship and not battled the inevitable. Charles hadn’t even bothered to comment on the fact that when Jarod took on the job in Philadelphia, he’d taken the family name of his former mentor as his own rather than Charles’ last name – although he’d been offered the excuse that the Centre might be looking for a Jarod Russell, but wouldn’t be looking for a Jarod Green.

Even now, wishing there were some way he could comfort himself against the loss of his best friend, Jarod found himself wishing he could pick up his phone and call his mentor. Sydney had allowed the Centre to work incredibly cruel experiments upon him – and yet protected him almost fiercely at times before and been diligent and downright sympathetic after his escape. Had he been protecting his project, or a young boy he genuinely had feelings for? Had he continued to help him out of love and/or friendship, or out of guilt or a desire to once more ensnare? And if Sydney were dead on that mountain in Utah, would he ever get a chance to find out?

Miss Parker was a slightly less complicated issue. She was the yin to his yang, the huntress to his prey, the one person in the whole world who truly understood him – even better than Sydney did. He’d loved her when he was still very young, only to discover that the person she’d been in his youth had been schooled and trained out of her by the time she was grown. She’d become a worthy adversary, someone who had the talent to keep him on his toes or even, occasionally, surprise him.

He’d spent the first five and a half years of his freedom feeding her kernels of truth – about her mother, about the Centre, about the man who had raised her as her father – and in so doing, both alienated her and drawn her closer. In the end, there had been a trust between them that nobody – not even the two of them – fully understood. And in the end, it had been she that he’d run away from – she that he’d worked the hardest to bury in his past. It had been she who had turned her back on the option to walk away from the Centre and its horrific legacy, who had declared that the run and chase game they’d been involved in would necessarily continue ad infinitum.

Even having walked away from her, he couldn’t leave her behind entirely. She was the reason that his relationship with Zoe had never completely come together – how could he be with one woman and continually dream of another? Zoe had understood – she’d been enough of a will-o’-the-wisp herself to know that Jarod was not the kind of man she’d ever be able to tie down, not even after her cancer went into remission. They could be friends – very good and close friends, even intimate – but nothing more.

So what would he do now, with these ghosts from his past haunting his present again?

For a very brief moment, he allowed himself to entertain the urge to catch the very next flight to Salt Lake City – to be there, to participate, to be among the first to know for sure. Hendricks would understand, certainly, that Jarod needed to be sure – to be there as bodyguard if, by some miracle, Carl managed to survive this ordeal. His direct superior didn’t need to know that there were three people whose very beings would be of the utmost concern rather than just the one.

He would call Broots in the morning. That would be one thing he could do to assuage his drive to be doing something himself. Broots would know the latest news too – and from other just the media sources.

And the moment he had that, it would be time to set an intense manhunt into operations to uncover the whereabouts of George Stoller – and to investigate his modus operandi. If he hadn’t taken a potshot of Carl at the airport, where would he have likely gone to take up position? Jarod ran his hand down his face – he was too tired to be doing this now. He needed his sleep.

He rose and shuffled back into the bedroom, hoping against hope that enough time had passed that he could get back to sleep and not dream.

~~~~~~~~~*

Sam clenched his fist and struck the side of the mattress in futile frustration. He ached, but rest was eluding him. In the next bed, Broots snored away noisily – and in the adjoining room, he knew Debbie was out like a light as well – but after a couple of hours of only managing to barely doze, he was wide awake. It just wasn’t fair.

He rose quietly and padded into the bathroom, closed the door before turning on the light, and then rummaged through his toiletries bag for the bottle of painkillers he’d bought at the drugstore on the way home from the hospital. They were good for taking the edge from his sore shoulders and neck only – if his headache bloomed much worse, he’d be in serious trouble.

He had a long drive ahead of him – to take the three of them north toward the Wasatch National Forest. He’d studied the maps on the plane and decided the best place to leave Broots and Debbie would be in Ogden, a town in the middle of the mountains. With any luck – and if his injuries didn’t slow him down too much – he could be on a search and rescue team and on his way into the wilderness in thirty-six hours or so.

Thirty-six hours.

He turned the light off and left the bathroom to walk over to the window overlooking the parking lot of the hotel. Were they even alive, he wondered. If so, and if the weather was getting bad, as he’d heard, could they survive the days it would take until he got there?

Sam took a deep breath to calm himself. These were thoughts – questions – he didn’t dare ask himself. Right now his sole concern had to be to get into the search and rescue process and get himself up onto whatever mountain that plane had plowed into – and get to a place where he could help them as quickly as possible. Doubts about whether Sydney or Miss Parker had survived had to be shelved for both his welfare and theirs. Thoughts like those were far too painful to entertain and a distraction from the task at hand.

Still, his shoulders slumped. It was dark – the beginning of the drive to the Wasatch National Forest was still hours away – and he was awake. Thoughts he knew he would be better not thinking were all that he had for company, and he didn’t have either the energy or the determination to force them into the background. He could hide forever from the consideration of how he’d go on if he couldn’t hear his boss’ terse orders in his ears on an on-going basis. What would he do? He’d dedicated himself to being the best bodyguard, the best sweeper, for her that the Centre had ever seen – to lose Miss Parker would be to lose everything he’d worked so hard for.

He loved her, he realized, in his own way. It wasn’t a romantic type of love – he certainly knew better than to fantasize about the two of them making any kind of a life together in a family sort of way. But it was a love that had seasoned and deepened over the years – a love built of mutual respect and understanding that few had had the opportunity to have. He knew her better than almost anybody else, with the possible exception of Sydney and Jarod. And yet, of the three of them, only he gave her no grief. He didn’t poke or pry into her deepest emotions or tease or torture her with glimpses of an agonized, twisted past. He was the only one that was just THERE – the only one whose sole purpose in life was to be at her side and give assistance and follow where she might lead him.

And she understood him – knew his background and what had motivated him to seek out the Centre so long ago. She’d forgiven him most of that and then taken him under her wing, trained him in martial arts skills that few outside Japan ever had the chance to learn and then invested her trust in him always being at her back. She’d even fought a few of his battles for him at first – finishing the job of prying him loose from court system and the jails wherein he’d spent most of his youth. Because of her, his record was spotless. Because of her, he was tops in his field.

Hang on, Miss P., he thought out to that nameless mountain slope desperately. I’m coming for you as fast as I can.

~~~~~~~~*

“What do you mean, they didn’t get off the plane?” Phil was furious. “According to reports from our men in New York, they got ON the plane just fine…”

“We took the descriptions you gave us,” the nameless sweeper assigned to the Salt Lake City office complained bitterly. “Two men, both dressed in casual clothing, one balding and the other tall, dark and muscular; one girl with long mousy-blonde hair – travelling together. Right?”

Phil looked down at the report that he had from the sweepers in New York. “That’s right.”

“Well, nobody matching that description got OFF the plane. There were several bald guys, but all of them were dressed in business suits. As for a girl with long, mousy hair, they didn’t see one. There were a couple of teenagers – one wearing a baseball cap – but no girls.” The sweeper was very insistent. “I can’t help it if the guys on your end missed them getting OFF the plane there in order to throw the Centre off the trail…”

“We’re talking about the old Chairman’s daughter’s personal sweeper and her computer geek here,” Phil snapped. “These are men who would be rushing to her side as fast as they could. You can rest assured that they did NOT get off the plane. They probably saw the men in New York and changed their appearance somehow.”

“Hey, man, we can’t be responsible for that. I mean, you never even bothered to send out pictures of these people!”

“Oh, shut up and let me think!” Phil put his forehead in his hand. Lyle had left him to “handle” things – the very last thing he wanted to do was to botch the whole job. OK – the sweeper and the tech had slipped through the dragnet he’d laid for them. What next, then?

“I want your office to dispatch your best cleaner to the Wasatch National Forest to be a part of the search and rescue effort,” Phil directed the man on the other end of the line. “I don’t care what kind of whopper you have to tell to make sure that they get on the team, but I want a man involved. When the wreckage is found, I want to be notified immediately – and a team dispatched to make sure that the survivor’s list does NOT include Miss Parker and Dr. Sydney Green. Do I make myself clear?”

There was the sound of a throat clearing nervously from the Utah-based sweeper. “As crystal, sir. You’re sure you have Mr. Lyle’s personal permission to authorize such actions?”

“Do I sound like I’m worried about exceeding my authority?” Phil barked in frustration.

“No, sir…”

“Then get your goddamned asses in gear and GET UP ON THAT MOUNTAIN!” Phil slammed the receiver into the cradle, but the violence did little to satisfy his frustration.

The lastest report on the news was that the aerial search had been called on account of the weather. The longer this took, the more chances for things to go horribly wrong for him. What was more, the longer this took, the more chances HE was taking in Lyle’s name. These were chances that he’d sure as hell prefer Lyle took himself.

Where was that bastard anyway?

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