Title: Requiem III: Sacred Ground Author: Eva Parker Email:  eva_parker@yahoo.com Disclaimer:  Concepts, characters, scenery, and psychotic corporations from the television show The Pretender are protected trademarks of MTM Television, Pretender Productions, and NBC.  I lay no claim to them; I’m just taking them out for a little spin.  All escaped characters will be returned immediately to the Centre.  All other characters, scenery, etc. belong to me.  Please note that fanfiction is covered under the “Free Use” clause of the copyright law. Author’s Note:  Please begin with “Requiem” and “Requiem II: Ghosts and Strangers” before tackling Part Three.  Send comments and constructive criticism; these babies aren’t too shabby, but I can definitely polish my skill.  I’d also like to know how you feel about Jarod and Director Parker as they are portrayed in this series.  Keep your eyes peeled for “Requiem IV: Fields of Gold and “Requiem V: Fools and Children,” which will provide the finale.  Oh, and thanks to Maria, for the comments and help.  The extra-long vignette “Requiem” may have stood alone if she hadn’t prompted me to write a sequel.  Who would have thought there was so much story to tell?! ---   It was the last morning of the last day at Jarod’s house in the wilderness, and Parker was glad.  She’d been on edge since she’d seen his file, barely able to sleep, pacing his small cabin. She wanted to go.  Now.  She had waited a week while Jarod prepared—something, she guessed, that at one point she could never have managed.  But during that week she had tried to stuff down her anxiety, ignore it, endure it only as a tangential problem, and now it threatened to explode inside of her.   She was decent at managing matters of some delicacy.  She could never have risen to this position of she wasn’t.  But this was different.  This involved the Parker family.  Their continued existence, in all their twisted and bizarre glory.    Her father was dying.  She had often, in some strange way, hoped for the closure of that telephone call or alarm of a heart monitor.  But at the same time, she couldn’t let him go.  It hurt her to think of him dying without understanding or dignity, two things a terrible disease they could not yet cure had stolen from both of them.  And it terrified her to think that Lyle’s face was quite possibly the very last thing their father might see before…    There was a small chance that after his initial frustration, Lyle had forgotten Jarod even existed.  Jarod certainly hadn’t gone out of his way to make himself noticeable.  But Miss Parker had made herself a thorn in the Triumvirate’s side ever since she’d shot—and, she’d assumed, killed—her brother.  It was Miss Parker that had cut all the strings, Miss Parker who’d stopped taking orders, Miss Parker who’d told them they could take their representatives and cronies and put them where the sun don’t shine.    And Lyle had wormed his way back into a job there.  If she knew him, then he was probably running the place by now.  Even if he wasn’t he was in charge of something that was, in Triumvirate parlance, big.    A psychopath.  A killer.  A man with more than one reason to hate her and, after thirteen years of working for the Triumvirate, more than a dozen to be concerned about his position.  And all he would have to do to kill anyone she was close to was say the word, reach out with a metaphorical hand, and they would die.  For all her efforts, the Triumvirate still had plenty of sway in the Centre.  Enough to put Broots at the most immediate risk, and Sydney close behind.  Of course, he might prefer to reach out to his son and Nate’s mother, Kara.  Or his father.   To him, she guessed, it would be so much more gratifying to destroy the people who knew most intimately his secrets.    She sipped her hot black tea and looked out over Jarod’s lake.  The porch was one of those places she felt had been built specifically for her.  It was peaceful, and quiet.  And she could pretend that her hands weren’t trembling, that she wasn’t sickened with fear and doubt, and that she didn’t want to march back inside and tell Jarod to move his little lab rat ass, or she’d kill him.    Pretending.  What a crock.  Parker had never been that good at masking her emotions.  No; that wasn’t true.  A long time ago, she’d realized she had the best poker face of everyone who worked for the Centre.  She had, after all, learned deceit from her father.  What she wasn’t good at, really, was not feeling her emotions.  Despite her every effort to remain as cool and distanced as…as Daddy, her feelings were as real and overpowering as her mother’s.    Perhaps it would have been easier if Jarod didn’t try to do everything for her.  It had been presumptuous for him to choose clothing for her, even though she liked what he had chosen.  That, she told herself, made it worse.  She liked everything he had done for her:  her room, the homemade food, the entertainment—and the security.  He had given her a replica of her own weapon, good enough that it felt like part of her hand when she held it.  He had also made a few modifications, along the lines of what she’d been thinking herself.  Anything she wanted, he could get.  Anything she needed, he probably already had.   For a woman who’d spent every day since her mother was killed taking care of herself, it was absolutely infuriating.  She didn’t have a thing to do, and it was driving her crazy.    Maybe if she kept thinking about what was wrong with this delightful little journey into Pretenderland, Parker told herself, she wouldn’t have to worry about what Lyle was doing to those kids right now.  She wrapped her hand more tightly around the warm mug with the image of a Labrador on it—interesting, eh, Miss Parker?  I wonder why they make these things. It's kind of funny, don't you think? —brought it to her lips, and let its sweet liquid warmth run down her throat.  She closed her eyes.  The stuff almost, almost beat coffee.   She swept an errant piece of hair behind her ear.  She was a little hungry, this morning, though she hardly ever ate breakfast.    She could smile at that.  The world kept turning, whether you were miserable, depressed, grieving, angry, scared, or horrified.  Nature still worked generally the way it was supposed to.  Pump it in, pump it out.  That was life.    She turned away from Jarod’s sparkling blue lake and the chill outdoors.  Autumn may only have been beginning in Blue Cove, but winter was almost here in Canada.  The screen door slammed behind her.  The calming heat inside Jarod’s house made her skin feel like it was burning.  Parker waited for the feeling to leave her, then picked a bright red apple from the green bowl on the kitchen table.  She preferred the tart taste of the green apples to the sweet Red Delicious.