Disclaimer: I don't even
Pretend to own the lovable Jarod, but I do like to consider the possibilities
of Miss Parker's wardrobe ::evil grin::
Ahem. Jarod and Miss
Parker. They're not mine, but boy do I
enjoy writing about them. Seriously,
the Pretender and all related characters and situations belong to NBC, Steven
Long Mitchell & Craig W Van Sickle.
No infringement is intended and, believe me, no money is being made.
Author's Chatter: Wow. This is my first Pretender fanfic...originally
developed for a creative writing assignment
for school. (I got an 'A'!) What else?
Gosh, I love Jarod. Muchas
gracias to Michael T. Weiss and Andrea Parker for allowing us one hour a week
to suspend reality and have a darn good time.
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"And I just don’t know who
to trust," the soft female voice
hardened on the last word.
There was a slight pause and the
airwaves fell silent.
"Amanda...you aren’t the
only one with that problem," the DJ
comforted from his end of the
phone line. With a deep breath,
he offered advice that he had
learned the hard way. "Trust
yourself."
Again, silence.
"You know only what is in
your own heart and what is in your own
mind...in the words of Thomas
Fuller, 'Trust yourself only, and
another shall not betray
thee'."
"Jarod...thank
you." He could hear the smile in
her voice.
And before Doctor Jarod Boyle
could respond, his caller was
gone. "Well, Dover, we have to take a commercial break now, but
we’ll be right back. Remember, you’re listening to Doctor Jarod
on the night spot. KWZU-come and see what the doctor can
do,"
Jarod finished, cutting to
commercial. He removed the headset
from his ears and motioned to
his producer that he needed some
water; he would be right back.
In the hall, looking out the
window, Jarod reflected on this
Pretend. He had discovered talk radio a week earlier
and had
been amazed-people called-in and
spoke about personal things in
front of a countless number of
listeners. Initially, he had
wondered if they were naive.
And then he had really listened.
They were not naive. Or stupid.
They were just afraid, or just
uncertain, or just discouraged.
Or just alone.
Just like him.
Jarod sighed, watching the
city’s lights seem to flicker in the
pouring rain. Becoming a radio personality was paying-off.
With each new caller, he felt
satisfaction in suggesting
solutions and offering comfort
or advice. He felt able to reach
many people.
He fingered the small leather
book that he had discovered two
days earlier. It was an old appointment book-from when
people
recorded their schedules
longhand instead of programming some
electronic pocket
organizer. And the book itself was not
all
that impressive, other than the
fact that it had belonged to his
mother from whom he had been
stolen as a young boy. The brown
binding was fading and some of
the pages threatened to crumble
to dust. The secrets it held, however, were a
personal Holy
Grail for himself and one
other. Tucked inside the volume were
two letters in flowery script,
nearly twenty years old. One
letter from his mother to
Catherine Parker. One letter from
Catherine to his mother. The warm, familiar dialogue in the
letters was like a homecoming of
sorts. Catherine Parker and
his mother had been dear
friends, and by learning about
someone’s friends, one could
learn a lot about that someone.
He had to tell Catherine’s
daughter, Miss Parker.
Lost in his thoughts, Jarod did
not notice his producer
approaching. "Fifteen 'til we're back, Jarod,"
she reminded.
"Yes-thank you." He carefully tucked the book back into his
pocket. He would find Miss Parker soon-or she would
find him.
* * *
In the darkness of Miss Parker’s
impeccable house, the only
sound was her rhythmic
breathing. And then her breath began to
come in more erratic gulps for
air...she was dreaming...
//...And she reached for her
mother’s hand. She could feel
their fingers brush lightly as
the rosy furnishings of her
childhood room seemed to melt
away.
"Mom!" Miss Parker’s
young voice called desperately.
But her surroundings were
completely different now-and their
hands farther apart...they were
in a box...a cold, silver
box...like a vault or an
elevator.
"Mom!" She wanted to freeze the scene-to keep the
next moment's
event from occurring, but she
knew it was useless. Miss
Parker's mother could not hear
her frantic warnings, and the
little girl knew that to be
par-for-the-course.
She already knew how this
nightmare ended.
Tears streaming down her cheeks,
the young Miss Parker tried to
close her eyes and cover her
ears-anything to block-out the
terror-to try and prepare
herself for what always came next.
"I love you, Mommy!"
she sobbed over and over.
The elevator doors opened. Catherine Parker's innocent gaze.
Shadow approaching. Gunshot.
Echoing...echoing...echoing...//
It rang from the walls inside
Miss Parker's mind for what seemed
like hours...until something
rang inside the walls of Miss
Parker's house.
Rubbing sleep from her eyes and
perspiration from her brow, Miss
Parker was relieved to be
awakened. She reached for the ringing
cell phone that lay on the
nightstand.
"What?" she answered
in her customary fashion, struggling to sit
up. The darkness hid her dried tears, but did nothing to mask
the quiver in her voice.
Her caller did not notice. "Miss Parker!"
"Broots." She recognized the breathless and frantic
exclamation
immediately.
"Miss Parker!" her
underling from The Centre nearly shrieked.
"Speak," she hissed.
"I-I-I'm sorry to wake
you...but, turn on your radio! I-I-I
think I found Jarod!"
Broots sputtered.
"You found Jarod by
listening to the radio...?" She
was alert,
now. This was work. She could
focus on this, and like always,
her ghosts would subside. Temporarily.
"KWZU, Miss Parker! It’s Jarod."
She turned on the radio at her
bedside and spun the dial until
she froze at the deep, familiar
voice coming from the little
appliance. "...often a personal loss causes one to
lose faith
in oneself..."
For two years, Miss Parker's job
at The Centre had been to bring
Jarod in-to return him to
captivity so that she might gain her
own freedom from the
corporation. And for those past two
years
after Jarod's escape from her
current prison, Jarod had traveled
the country and the world,
quietly fighting the battles of the
little people. He was winning those battles. Each battle won,
was a small retribution for the
lives that had been lost while
Jarod's prodigious mind had been
exploited when he was younger.
But now, here was genius-boy
Jarod flaunting himself over
Delaware's airwaves. "What are you thinking?" Miss
Parker
whispered as if Jarod could
hear.
"Well...uh...I was thinking
that maybe we could just ...uh...not
tell anyone about Jarod this
time..." Broots nervously answered
the question that hadn’t been
intended for him.
"Not you, Broots,"
Miss Parker snapped, immediately returning
her attention to the radio.
"...but it's during your
darkest times that it is most common to
push your friends farthest
away. In fact, I recently discovered
two pieces of correspondence one
letter from my mother to an old
friend of hers and one letter
from that friend, back to my
mother. They'd made an alliance-over twenty years
ago-they'd
had a common goal of rescue and
escape. They had been fighting
a very dangerous enemy and the
risk was not only their lives,
but the lives of their
respective families. I'd like to read a
bit of the letter from my mother
to her friend..."
Miss Parker inadvertently leaned
closer to the radio, her
curiosity building. What was Jarod up to this time?
"...Dear Catherine..."
Miss Parker's heart caught in
her throat. Mom.
"...I know that the time is
now and that our task is on the
horizon, but I remain
fearful. I have to give to you all my
gratitude again, for the journey
we are about to embark on-I
know that you do this risking
the dear life of your daughter, as
well as your own. I thank you with all my heart-my gratitude
is
endless...an emotion that can
only be surpassed by my desire to
see my son, my Jarod, again.
"I am uncertain,
though. Not of you-but of myself...If
am
discovered, surely they will
make my son pay for my
indiscretion..."
Jarod took a deep breath and
tried to imagine his mother writing
to Catherine Parker. His mind reeled with the implications of
this correspondence...Catherine
and his mother had been working
to free him...
Miss Parker took a deep breath
and tried to imagine her mother
writing to Sarah. Her mind reeled with the implications of
this
correspondence...Sarah and her
mother had been working to free
Jarod...
"Your mother?" Broots whispered over the forgotten phone
connection.
'Mom,' was all Miss Parker could
comprehend besides, 'Jarod.'
The absence of Jarod's timbre
that had previously floated
through her room, brought Miss
Parker to herself before the
annoying chatter of any
commercial was able to.
Leaping from the bed, Miss
Parker enunciated, "Broots. You have
tomorrow off. Do not tell anyone about Jarod. You talk, you're
dead." And she threw down the cell phone. Grabbing things from
the closet, she dressed quickly
and ran a brush through her
brown, silk-like hair. She ignored her make-up routine
completely, her only thoughts on
her mother and Jarod. Flying
towards the front of the house,
she grabbed keys and gun,
pausing only to confirm that it
was loaded before slamming the
door on her way out.
* * *
Miss Parker sped through the
winding roads that she'd always
called her escape route from
work to home. From hell to home.
But tonight, she cursed her
distance from civilization. She
needed to be in Dover. She needed to be at the radio station's
headquarters. She needed to know what her mother and
Jarod's
mother had done.
The rain splattered on her
windshield as the wind picked up, and
Miss Parker switched down from
her high-beams because their
reflection off the torrent was
blinding. More blinding than her
pain and her regret and her
fear.
What if, for all this time, she
had been hunting down the son of
her mother’s dearest
friend? Her mother’s only ally? In the
deep, dark past of the Parkers
at The Centre, what if she was
seeking to undo the crusade that
her mother had died for?
Gradually, her visibility
decreased even more, but not because
of the downpour. The drops were in her own eyes, now.
The screeching of her tires
brought Miss Parker back to her
senses and she swore at her own
stupidity, "Kill yourself before
you get there, and you'll never
know the truth."
But her near miss with the
guardrail at that last corner,
cleared her mind. What if Jarod was lying? What if he was
making it all up? Unknowingly,
she decreased her velocity.
Miss Parker reached to the small
of her back to feel the cold
reassurance of her pistol. 'I'll kill him,' she thought, quite
simply.
But what would Daddy say? The Centre wanted Jarod back alive.
They could not utilize his brain
otherwise.
'Daddy can just deal.' And the speedometer climbed back up past
its original position.
It was not until twenty minutes
later, when the lights of
Delaware’s capital blinked on
the horizon, that Miss Parker even
considered her radio. She jabbed the button and the pounding
rain concealed the whir of her
antennae rising, but Jarod's
voice was calm and clear as
usual.
"...Trust seems to be a
troublesome topic, tonight. Trust
yourself. Trust your heart. I can tell you from personal
experience, your heart will
always let you know if your trust is
misplaced." There was a pause and Miss Parker could
almost see
Jarod take a sip of coffee. "I've got a song for all of you who
keep calling in with questions
regarding this thread. Take it
away, Mr. Billy Joel..."
Miss Parker was about to roll
her eyes, when she recognized the
opening strains of the song.
"...Some love is just a lie
of the heart, the cold remains of
what began with a passionate
start...and they may not want it to
end, but it will-it's just a question
of when..."
Miss Parker screeched to a halt
at the station's curb, clenching
her teeth against the thoughts
that the old, familiar song
conjured.
"...I've lived long enough
to have learned the closer you get to
the fire, the more you get
burned. But that won't happen to us,
Because it's always been a
matter of trust..."
Despite her best efforts, Miss
Parker paused before getting out
of her convertible. She told herself it was because of the
rain, but it was really the
lyrics that held her back.
Silently, she cursed Jarod as
she bolted through the rain.
Aloud, she asked for her
mother's guidance.
At the doorway to the
broadcasting booth, Miss Parker pulled her
gun from its holster and peered
cautiously around the corner.
Through the glass window, she
saw Jarod. For the first time in
several months, she saw his
familiar dark hair and customary
dark clothing. He was bent over the desk, reading
something,
headphones covering his ears and
the microphone dangling inches
from his lips. He drained the cup of coffee that she had
known
he'd had. The last time she'd seen him...she tried to
recall
the moment she had tried so hard
to forget. The last time she'd
seen Jarod, she had almost shot
him...Sydney had stepped in the
way before she could take
aim...or was it before she could halt
logic long enough to kill him?
Pushing these thoughts away,
Miss Parker concentrated on the
duty at hand. 'Mom,' was the only thought required to
regain
her focus.
She opened the door, stepped in
the booth, shut the door, and
trained her gun on Jarod in one
fluid movement. "Doctor,
doctor, gimme the
news." Her gaze was flinty and her
tone
deadpan.
Jarod looked up, surprised. "Miss Parker. I was wondering when
you'd show up." He removed the headphones and stood.
"Well, I'm here." She regretted not wearing her heeled boots.
Jarod was taller than she
remembered. But, if she had stupid
regrets like that, she'd lose
her focus. She'd lose her chance
at the truth. Her eyes darted
around the room and she pressed
her lips together.
"Did you come with the
calvary?" He wasn't afraid or even
nervous.
Miss Parker wished that he was,
so she raised her gun slightly.
"No. But I came for something other than my
normal spoils.
Give me my mother’s
letters. Now."
Jarod was puzzled. This was not the Miss Parker he knew. The
only feature that he took a
little comfort in was, ironically,
her gun. Pointed at him. *This* was familiar. The
pale, edgy,
literally 'un-perfect' Miss
Parker before him, was
disconcerting. She looked like she hadn't slept in weeks.
"Not letters, Miss Parker.
*Letter*. Singular. The other is
from my mother to yours,
therefore, making it mine."
Her temper flared. "Give them both to me. Now."
Her gun
wavered a little as a tiny voice
inside of her head told her to
let Jarod keep his mother's
writing. She met his gaze for the
first time and froze.
She saw in his eyes the two
assets that she was most proud of in
herself. Passion and diligence.
Jarod's eyes found hers and what
he discovered there, was what
he always suspected. Passion and diligence.
Neither moved, nor breathed, it
seemed. In the silence, the
song still playing over the
airwaves, drifted to their ears.
"...I know you're an
emotional girl. It took a lot for you
to
not lose your faith in this
world...I can't offer you proof, but
you're going to face a moment of
truth..."
Jarod took a step toward her,
reaching into the pocket of his
leather jacket.
Miss Parker flinched, but
quickly steadied the gun.
He produced the letters and held
them out to Miss Parker.
Cautiously, she lowered her
weapon, not breaking their eye
contact. Slowly, she reached out and grasped the
letters.
Jarod covered her hand in
his. They stood motionless as the
music continued.
"...It's hard when you're
always afraid. You just recover when
another belief is betrayed. So break my heart if you
must...It's a matter of
trust..."
"Passion," Jarod
whispered.
"Diligence," Miss Parker whispered back.
'Our mothers shared the same
qualities.' No one needed to
vocalize the realization.
"Jarod...I-"
"Shhhh!" He pressed an urgent finger to her lips and
she
started. "Do you hear that? I thought you didn't bring the
calvary!"
"Jarod...I-"
He was at the window, searching
for signs of a Centre Sweeper
team after him. The black cars were already parked on the
street. Even through blinding rain, he would never
be able to
mistake the lackeys of the
Centre. "You brought them! How
could you?!"
Miss Parker was shocked. Her brain was still processing the joy
of holding the letters, and the
desire for the warmth of Jarod's
hand on hers. Her sub-conscience raised her gun, but the
pain
on Jarod's face engaged her
mouth. "I didn't bring them! I
swear. They must have tapped my house or tracked my cellular,"
she nearly growled. Miss Parker chewed her lip, deciding. "Go!
Get out of here before they find
you!"
When Jarod did not move, it was
Miss Parker's turn to express
pain. "They'll kill you *and* me for standing here talking to
you! Go, Jarod. Please,"
she implored.
He met her eyes again, and made
a decision of his own. "It's
too late. Give me your gun." He held out a hand.
Miss Parker's eyes grew
wide. "No."
Jarod wouldn't shoot
himself. Would he? Jarod wouldn't shoot
her. Would he?
"Miss Parker, *trust*
me. *Please*."
"...Some love is just a lie
of the soul, a constant battle for
the ultimate state of
control. After you've heard lie upon
lie,
there can hardly be a question
of why. Some love is just a lie
of the heart-the cold remains of
what began with a passionate
start...
"...But that cant happen to
us...Because it's always been a
matter of trust..."
With a prayer for her mother,
and one last look into his eyes,
Miss Parker handed Jarod her
gun.
Jarod grabbed Miss Parker,
pressing the barrel to her temple
just as the door burst
open. Mr. Raines and the Sweepers from
The Centre rushed into the room
until Jarod's booming voice
caused them to freeze. "Come any closer and she’s dead!"
Jarod's plan clicked in Miss
Parker's mind as the safety
clicked-off on her gun. Make it seem like he over-powered her.
Make it seem like she was doing
her job. Make it so they both
could escape with their lives.
He backed himself and Miss
Parker toward the window and pushed
it open with his elbow. With a mischievous grin at Mr. Raines
and the goons, Jarod said,
"Sorry gentlemen, the doctor's not
in." And he leaned out the window, pulling Miss
Parker over the
sill with him.
They landed on the KWZU awning
and Jarod jumped to the ground
first, closely followed by Miss
Parker. The rain was pouring so
hard that even as he bent his
lips to Miss Parker's ear, he had
to shout to be heard. "Read two and call me in the
morning..."
He motioned to the letters that
she clutched with white
knuckles.
A smile spread across her face
and she turned to see him
smiling, too.
"Jarod," was all Miss
Parker could manage.
He returned her gun and was
about to turn and run before the
Centre Sweepers could catch-up,
when Miss Parker grabbed his
arm. She said something that he couldn't make-out with the
thunder booming, but she
repeated it as she pressed something
into his hand.
"Jarod...thank you."
She'd given him the letter that
his mother had written.
"No, Miss Parker...thank
you."
As they escaped into the night
on their separate ways, they both
knew.
They each had someone to trust.
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