Disclaimer:
These characters aren't mine. Well, some of them are. But the important ones
are all property of MTM and NBC Productions and used without permission. I'm
not making any money out of this . . . . Blah, blah, blah. You know the drill.
"Do you love him, Parker? Are you in love with your prey?"
'YES!' she wanted to yell. 'I'm in love with him!
I've loved him my whole life.'
But she can't tell him. She
can't say that she's in love with the man they're chasing. She can't tell him how happily married she
is to their hunted. And she can't tell
him that man's about to make her a mother.
"I think we've spoken enough about me. It's your turn now," she says, trying
to change the subject. "I think
we've established that my being at the Centre wasn't exactly my choice. But how about you? What brought you to the Centre, Lyle?"
"Greed.
Power. Wealth. At first I was just in it for the
money," he admits. "I found
out about who my parents were and decided I wanted the Centre. I figured it was my birthright. So I went to take it. But now . . . I don't know. Looking back, I can see that it was more
than that. There are several places
where I can have even greater wealth and power. I needed to be at the Centre because I wanted a father who would
be proud of me. But Mr. Parker was
never proud. No matter what I had
done. Everything was all about
you. Angel this and Angel that. I could never compare to you."
"You were jealous of me?" she's shocked. "I can't believe this. Daddy's been playing us against each other
this whole time. He spouts off all
kinds of nonsense about us sticking together because we're family. But then he'll make me feel so inferior and
invisible. Once his precious son was
back, he didn't have any more need for me.
Everything has been about you, Lyle."
"So, he's been making me jealous of you and
making you jealous of me," Lyle realizes.
"Why? What's the
point?"
"Because he's a sick and twisted man who won't
be satisfied until I die miserably like our mother," she yells, starting
to get upset. But a small twinge in her
side causes her to settle back down quickly.
Tears threaten to fall, but she refuses to let her father make her cry
any more.
"The way I see it, we have two choices. We can either continue to play his game and
keep on stabbing each other in the back to get into his good graces. Or, we can play a game of our own," Lyle
says.
"Or, we can just get out of the game," she
whispers, still on the verge of tears.
Her hand unconsciouly moves to her stomach and gently rests there while
she vows silently to her unborn child that the days of the Centre were
numbered. "Jarod used to always
ask me why I stayed there. Why I stayed
and did whatever Daddy asked me. I used
to do it for his approval. I wanted
nothing more than to be Daddy's Angel.
But then you came into the picture.
And no matter what I did, it wasn't good enough for him. Because I wasn't you. I wasn't his son. Now, the only reason I stay is because with Jarod's help, I've
started to see some of the things that our mother wanted from the Centre. The good that she thought it would do. All the children she thought it would help,
not hurt. I want to make the Centre
that place, Lyle. But I can't do it by
myself."
"Are you asking me to . . ."
"I'm not asking you anything, Lyle. I'm just letting you know what I have
planned. I can't live the life I've
been living anymore. I can't let that
place hurt people anymore. I can't let that
place take away another person I love.
If you want to help, then I'll gladly accept. But if not, I'll find someone who will. I'll go to the ends of the earth to find Jarod if I have to. Because I know he'll help."
"You're going to betray the Centre?" he
asks wide eyed.
"They betrayed my mother. Our mother.
Think about that," she says, standing to her feet and walking
towards the bedroom of the suite.
"I've have a long day and I'm tired. I'm going to bed. Good
night."
She closes the door to the bedroom behind her and
leans wearily against the door. She
hears another door closing out front and realizes that Lyle has gone to his own
suite for the evening. She didn't
intend on getting so personal with Lyle, but she can't take back all that's been
said. She just has to hope that she
didn't just sign her own death warrant.
Jarod slowly counts to twenty in his head, trying to
time perfectly the sequence of the cameras in the hall leading to Mr. Parker's
office at the Centre. By his calculations,
he had exactly 20 minutes to get into the office, search it, and be out before
the cameras repeated their sequence.
Hacking into the security system to program the surveillance cameras on
this floor had been surprisingly simple.
Now, it was down to simple timing.
The timing was what it all hinged on.
Every single second counted.
Seventeen . . . Eighteen . . . Nineteen . . .
Twenty. He sprints down the hall to the
door leading to Mr. Parker's office. He
allowed himself 15 seconds to pick the lock, his fingers moving adeptly in the
lock as if it were second nature to him.
It only took 9 seconds before he heard the familiar click of the lock
slipping. He was inside and had the
door closed behind him with a few seconds to spare.
He glanced around the room, going to the place on
the blueprints Angelo outlined. He ran
his fingers under the bottom side of a portrait hanging on the wall behind the
chairman's desk, gently easing it away from the wall and revealing a wall safe
behind it.
He puts his bag on the floor and opens it, pulling
out the tools necessary to crack the safe.
Working quickly, his fingers nimbly put together the digital meter that
would decode the combination to the safe.
Ninety seconds later and the safe opens, revealing
all the dirty little secrets Mr. Parker was trying to keep hidden. Jarod had to work quickly, sorting through
the collection of valuables Mr. Parker was keeping safe and mentally noting
exactly where they came from the prevent suspicion the next time the safe was
opened. He found folders of documents,
containing mostly personnel records.
Not what he'd expect to find in the safe, but they obviously must be
important.
Jarod reaches into his bag of gadgets and pulls out
his laptop computer with portable scanner attached. He quickly scans each of the documents and saves them to the hard
drive to view later. The process is
almost instantaneous, yet Jarod impatiently checks his watch between each
document. Ten minutes had passed. His time was running out.
He finishes copying all of the documents to the
laptop and then returns his attentions back inside the safe. It appears to be empty, so he starts to put
everything back it's place when one of the folders hits up against the back of
the safe, making a hollow sound. He
realizes that there's another wall. A
hidden compartment in the safe that must hold something very important.
He reaches his hand back there and gently pries off
the wall. A tiny compartment opens,
only large enough to fit his hand into.
He reaches back, not sure what he'll find back there when his hand
brushes up against a box. The box
slides out easily and he's able to pull it out to get a better look at it. There's a lock on it that doesn't open
easily, and after a few minutes of trying to jimmy the lock, the alarm on his
watch beeps once as a reminder that his time is almost up. He can't get the lock open, so he makes the
decision to just bring the box along.
Whatever's in it must be important to be in a hidden compartment. He just had to hope that nobody noticed it
missing.
After quickly, but accurately replacing all of the
documents he removed and copied from the safe, Jarod closes the door to the
safe and then replaces the portrait in front of it. He gives a careful glance around the office to make sure nothing
else was disturbed before packing the computer back in the bag. Just before leaving he places a small
listening device on an inconspicuous corner of the desk. Whatever's in the files and box might be
better clarified with anything the bug picks up from Mr. Parker's
conversations.
Nineteen and a half minutes later after entering,
Jarod finds himself at the door of the office, counting slowly in his head to
twenty, waiting on the next programmed sequence of the cameras to start.
Sixteen . . . seventeen . . . eighteen . . .
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