Miss Parker
looked down at the picture of the child that she had surreptitiously snapped
while he was playing in the lab. He
was a cutie, she thought, another innocent caught up in the labyrinth of the
Centre. Her mother would have
called him another one of the “little lost angels.” Given the same situation, Catherine
would have fought hard to save him, to rescue him from what was a certain
fate. She wondered if she had the
same kind of fortitude, and just how she was going to get it done, especially if
he were so sick.
The
illness mystified her. The tot
looked so healthy, but there, beneath the surface lurked a disease that she was
powerless to do anything about. The
answer had come back to her yesterday – she would not be the donor for the
life-saving tissue that he needed.
It didn’t make a whole helluva lot of sense to her, why not? Why Lyle and not herself? Theoretically, they were twins. Although not genetically a perfect
match, they still shared the same parents, didn’t they?
Around
midnight, awake (as usual) and alone (as always) in her bed, the thoughts had
come rushing in. Ben. Her mother’s friend, and lover? Jarod had intimated the fact years ago,
but she had forced herself to bury it away as just another of the Pretender’s
mind games. Could she possibly be
Ben’s daughter, and not the Chairman’s?
She ran over all the data that she had seen since then – the Red Files,
the tests that proved that Lyle was her brother – everything that had refuted
Jarod’s insane theory.
But
now, it just wasn’t enough.
She
had hurried to the Centre at dawn, the lack of sleep only partially covered by
makeup, and searched out Angelo.
She hated going to him constantly now, knowing that she was just winding
her way down Jarod’s maze, and dreading what she might find at its heart. Angelo had been excited to help her, as
much as he could show it in his own strange way. He had promised her information and she
knew intuitively that he already had it.
And so did Jarod.
Afraid
to read the papers in her office, she had shoved them into her attaché and taken
them home. Now she sat on the
couch, the eyes in the picture of the toddler the only other ones in the
room. She began to
read.
Lyle
stood in the middle of the medical lab and unhappily removed his jacket and
rolled up his sleeve. “What do you
mean the tests are wrong? So the
little brat is fine? No life
threatening illness, no need for the transfusion, or whatever the hell it
was?”
The
technician pulled her gloves on carefully and adjusted the mask over her mouth,
covering a small but relieved smile.
“Yes, Mr. Lyle. It seems
that there was an error in the control used in the blood analysis machine, and a
glitch in another computer diagnostic.
Your baby brother is going to be just fine.”
“Well
at least that is going right.”
He winced as the needle sliced into his arm. Pain could be fun, but this was not his
idea of a good time. It cheered him
a little, though, thinking that the newest Pretender, a vital part of his plans
for the Centre, was not going to be lost to something as stupid as a blood
abnormality. He looked down at the
technician’s green eyes, shielded behind a Plexiglas visor. These medical people could be so
paranoid. “So tell me again why you
need to have another sample of my blood.”
“Just
routine. There were some abnormal
results. We have to recalibrate the
CBC unit and get baselines for everyone.”
Bunch
of gibberish, Lyle thought as he unrolled his sleeve and buttoned it again, the
bloodletting done for the day.
Techno-babble bothered him – he wasn’t stupid by any means, but he hated
it when people talked about things that he didn’t know about. They were usually trying to hide
something.
“Daddy?” As she entered his office, the word
escaped her before she could stop it, and she hated herself for it.
The
older man looked up from the report that he had been reading. His smile was quick, but she could not
help but to think that it was as artificial as everything else. Her voice caught in her throat and he
gently prodded her on. “Yes,
Angel?”
“I
tried to find you at home, but you weren’t there.”
“Well,
with all these threats from Jarod…can’t be away from the Centre for too
long. Don’t want the place to be
like a ship without a captain.” He
waved the files in the air. “Some
damn fool is likely to do something irreversible, and then were will we be,
eh? Have to be here for guidance,
keep up the morale of the troops.”
The
memory of a thousand nights alone at home with her mother washed over her, and
then a thousand more spent with only the company of her nanny. He had always been at the Centre, always
put it first. She let the
pain and frustration build. It
would be so much easier to do this if she were angry.
“I
need to talk to you.”
Mr.
Parker rose, setting the files down and walking around the desk. “Of course, Angel, what is
it?”
Her
skin crawled as he set his hands on her arms paternally, and she turned
away.
“What
is it? What has upset you? It’s Jarod again, playing games with
you, isn’t it?”
“No,
not this time.”
“Then
what is it? Certainly you can tell
your father.”
Her
head whipped around, her auburn hair flying, and for a moment she merely stared
at him. “I guess that’s what this
is all about, isn’t it?”
His
eyes slid from hers, his head fell and he moved back around to the chair,
lowering himself into it slowly.
Sitting behind the desk, he seemed smaller to her than he had before, and
suddenly so much older. In an odd
way, she was happy that he had decided not to bluster, to attempt to harangue or
protest his way through the situation in his usual Parker way. For the first time in a very long time,
she felt that she was talking to the man, and not the
Chairman.
“How
long have you known?” His voice was
soft.
“Only
just now. You’ve proven it more
than any file or DSA that Jarod sent me ever could.”
“Damn
him!” Mr. Parker exploded onto his
feet, leaning across the desk. “He
had no right! What business of this
is his? This is PARKER
business! Arrogant fool! This is one of the reasons that I wanted
you to find him, to bring him back here, where he could be controlled,
before he ruined everything. I should have had him terminated when I had the
chance!”
The
outburst took her by surprise and she stumbled back against the door. Her chest heaved and she breathed
raggedly before she could find words.
“Terminate him? You mean
like you did to his wife, and that little girl? Is that what you do to people who get in
the way of ‘Parker business?’”
“I’m
sorry, Angel. I didn’t mean that,
I’m just…just upset. I was hoping
that this would never need to be brought up, and now Jarod has gone digging
where he doesn’t belong, and getting the dirt all over you. I’m sorry.”
She
smirked. “Is that what I am, your
dirty little secret?” He tried to
interrupt, but she continued, her voice rising in pitch and volume. “How long did you think that you could
keep this to yourself, the fact that I am NOT your
daughter?”
His eyes
blazed back at her. “I was hoping
to keep that a secret forever! Why
the hell do you think I’ve done what I have here, why I have kowtowed to the
Triumvirate all these years, why I have put up with Raines and Brigitte and Lyle
and any other idiot who thinks that they can run this place better than I
can. It was to protect you! If they
had found out, if they had realized that you weren’t my daughter, there
would have been nothing to keep them from using you like they used Jarod and
Angelo! You have the gene, the DNA
that they want! I’ve prostituted myself for years to keep you
safe.”
“But
why?”
Mr.
Parker walked over to an unobtrusive shelf along the wall of the office and
poured a tall glass of brown liquid.
He swallowed it in one but did not turn around when he was finished. “When you were born, it was the proudest
day of my life. Catherine and I
didn’t have a perfect marriage, no, not even close, and we hadn’t had much
success with her getting pregnant. Your mother of course, she really didn’t know
why I was so adamant, not until later, but she was trying her damnedest to be
the good wife she had been raised to be.
We needed a baby with the Pretender gene, you see, didn’t know what it
was at the time, but the scientists all clamored for it and they said that we
were the couple to do it.
“The
Tower wanted a baby, and I was pushing her, maybe a little too hard,” he snorted
quietly. “It looks like I pushed
her right into another man’s arms.
When she came back from that trip, she went through the in vitro, trying
to make it up to me.” Finally he
turned around, and the tears in his eyes sparkled in the late summer light from
the windows. “She tried so hard to
make me forgive her, I – I just had to.
And then the miracle happened; there she was, pregnant at
last.
“They
say the chances of two separate embryo implanting in that situation, one
naturally, one in vitro, are a trillion to one. But then again, I always knew that you
were special.”
He
sniffed and turned to pour another glass of bourbon. “Before you were born, I thought that it
would be easy to give you up to the Triumvirate, but when I saw you, when I held
your tiny body in my hands, I knew that there was no one who would take you away
from me. And when I found out that
you weren’t a Parker…” he paused, sipping again, and cleared his throat. “By then we had found Jarod, and you
were so much like my beautiful Catherine, it really didn’t matter whose genes
you carried, you were my daughter.
I decided to raise you myself to be tough, to be a Parker, to be prepared
for a different role in the Centre, as a leader.”
“So
how did you find out?” she asked.
“All the information in the Red Files, everything says that I’m your
offspring.”
He
smiled sadly. “Let’s just say that
I found out, and then I fixed it so that no one else
would.”
“You’ve changed all the files? But what about the people, the
doctors who had to know?” Slow
understanding dawned upon her. “Oh,
my God. What did you do to keep my
paternity a secret?”
“I’m
sorry, Angel, but I did what I felt was necessary. You and the baby, you’re the
most important-“
“Don’t
CALL me that! I’m not your angel,
and you are not my father.
Dear God, what kind of a monster are you?”
“Desperate,
that’s what I am. I swore to your mother that I would protect you, and damn it,
I did. It took difficult decisions,
but I did whatever was necessary, and I still will. Even…even Raines.” He walked toward her, his palms up in
supplication. “I owe your
mother that much. I couldn’t save
her from him and his demented plans, I had to save
you.”
“By
turning me into you?” She could
feel the bile rising in her throat, her stomach churning as she backed away from
him. “By sacrificing innocent
people? You bastard!” Stumbling, blinded by tears, she rushed
toward the glass doors and threw them open. “You insane
bastard!”
Jarod
was waiting for her when she came out of the bedroom, sitting on the couch as if
he owned the place. She took a
moment to react, to take in his eyes, dark and determined; his face, unshaven
and gaunt; his black clothing, now sinister. For a moment he looked more dangerous
than ever to her, then she realized that there was very little that he could do
to her that could hurt any more than what he had already
done.
“Why?”
she screamed, throwing the glass of vodka that she had just drained and smashing
it against a nearby table. “Why in
God’s name did you have to do this to me?
Do you realize what you’ve done?
You’ve taken my family away from me; you’ve left me without anyone! First my mother left me, then I
find out that my father, the man I thought was my father, is a selfish
son of a bitch. I can’t even say
that the baby is my family anymore, I am completely
alone!”
Jarod’s face
showed nothing while his voice was low and threatening. “How does it feel? The Centre has done it to me twice,
first taking me from my family, then taking my family from me. I know all about being alone, I realize
very well how it feels. Now you do,
too.”
Her
head fell back in exhaustion, her shoulders still heaving. “I told you, I had nothing to do with
your wife’s death, I swear to you.
And I’m sorry, sorry for hunting you all these years, sorry that I
couldn’t see past the lies that that bastard fed me. I didn’t know, Jarod, I didn’t realize,
oh, God, I’m sorry.” She pulled her
hand down her face as she fell into a chair, distorting the features already red
and mottled from emotion. “God,
Jarod, what can I do to make you realize?”
He
stood up slowly, watching her, his expression still blank while inside, his
feelings were in turmoil. He had
done it, finally brought the infamous “Miss Parker” to her knees, and part of
him enjoyed being able to gloat over it.
For all the times that she had forced her will upon his life, controlled
him by her pursuit, made him miss out on the day-to-day joys of freedom due to
her imminent arrival, she deserved this grief. For the blindness she had retreated
into, even when confronted with the grisly truth of the Centre and its
operations, she should pay.
“Emotional blackmail,” Hannah had called it. An apt term.
Yet
part of him pitied her in the deepest way.
He did realize just how she was feeling at that moment; he had lived with
the loneliness more than he cared to remember. The hole that he had carried around with
him in his heart was echoed in the depth of her eyes, and he felt sorry for
her. Part of him realized again
that the anger that had been burning like a coal fire in his mind was slowly
dying. Each step that he had taken
toward resolution quenched his thirst for revenge a little bit more. In a way, he missed it, this
single-minded purpose of destroying the Centre and everyone associated with it,
for when the deed was done, what would he have left? His freedom? To do what?
He
picked up the cell phone that sat on the nearby table. “You still have people who care for you,
people who won’t lie. “Sydney,
Broots, Debbie, they could be your new family, if you so choose. And the baby, he will lose his family,
too. He will need someone to care
for him. The decision is
yours.” Putting the phone back
down, he turned and walked toward the door
“Jarod?”
“What?”
“Once,
you cared. We were friends. After all of this, do you care at
all?”
He
thought about her for a moment, about the little girl who had been his friend,
his confidant, his partner in crime and his first love. Did he care now, after all that they had
been through, after all that they had done to each other? “Yes, Angela, I care. That’s why I had to do this, because you
had to know, and I was the only one who could show you.”
Without
another word, he opened the door and walked out into the
night.
The
thick file sat on the desk in front of the Chairman. The two Agents, Special Agents,
Mr. Parker reminded himself, stood smugly to one side as their superior
continued to read the charges.
Kidnapping, extortion, racketeering, arms sales, smuggling, biological
weapons, murder, and those were just the cases that they had proof of. Jarod sat in one of the chairs casually,
his face a mask, his eyes never moving.
“Special
Agent Ness has been extremely helpful in gathering evidence,” the FBI man
continued. “Through his continued
work-”
“Special
Agent, my ass,” Mr. Parker burst in.
“Have you checked this man’s credentials? He no more works for the FBI than I
do. He’s just pretending, I tell
you. He’s got some kind of vendetta
against me and my organization; this is all a fabrication of his. He’s turned my daughter against me and
now he’s trying to do this.”
Jarod
smiled and looked up at the other man with confidence. “I’d be careful, if I were you, Mr.
Parker. You might give away some
family secrets that you don’t want to.”
“Agent
Ness’s training may have been unorthodox in its approach,” the FBI man broke in,
“but I can assure you, Mr. Parker, that he is without doubt a Special Agent of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I, myself, taught one of his classes, and was attendant at his
induction. I suggest that you do
not impugn the honor of my Agents, sir.
It will get you nothing but trouble.”
“But
that’s not even his real name!”
Parker yelled over him.
“What?”
“His
name, his name, you fool. You don’t even know his real name. His name isn’t
‘Ness,’ it’s Charles, Jarod Charles!”
All
three of the FBI agents stared at Jarod, who continued to stare at Mr.
Parker. Slowly, very slowly, a
smile, no, more of a smirk, worked its way across his features. He breathed deeply. It was too late, of course; he had known
since he had found his father, Major Gene Charles. But the satisfaction of finally forcing
the once powerful man to admit to it, to confront the lies and deceit of the
past 30-odd years was still sweet.
“Thank you, Mr. Parker. You’ve finally given me the one thing that I
always wanted.”
It
took days to go through all of the levels of the granite and marble behemoth
that was formerly known as The Centre.
The National Guardsmen found him in a medium sized room that could only
be described as a cell in an abandoned area of Sub-Level 25, surrounded by boxes
of canned food, jugs of water, and a platoon of oxygen tanks. By the time they reached him his already
raspy voice was damaged beyond understanding. His mind, too, was unsalvageable; the
result of only he knew what horrors, and his attempts at talking to them came
out as hoarse gibberish. He stared
at them uncomprehending as they led him toward the elevator. From one cell to another, they thought,
the next one with padded walls.
The
Agent in charge of going through this area of the building stood in the room,
looking around him. Upon every wall
there was the same phrase written time and time again. “Rat in a cage, rat in a cage, rat in a
cage.” Wondering briefly to himself
who had written it, the captive or the captor, he stopped. He was fast learning that there were
some things about this place that it was better not to
know.
Lyle
breathed heavily in the late summer humidity as he leaned against the tree, his
shirt plastered against his skin, his Saville Row jacket and tie long gone. He pushed his thumbless hand through his
hair, berating himself for his rash actions so far. He had nearly rushed into the apartment
as soon as he had arrived, but instinct had taken over and pushed him into an
adjoining lot with at least some kind of coverage. His back pressed against the rough bark,
he tried desperately to force his mind into some kind of logical thought
pattern, to form some kind of a plan, but it was a daunting
task.
It
was all falling apart. Everything,
his work, his life, his world. It
had started with the trip down to the medical ward; the doctors, the tests, and
finally the indisputable results.
Shocked beyond comprehension, he had left Blue Cove in search of a
different opinion in New York City.
It hadn’t mattered.
There
had been only one thought in his mind after that – Joy. But even as single-minded as he had
been, some sixth sense had called to him as he returned to the Centre two days
later. The parking lot, he saw, was
filled with non-descript sedans.
Not the Towne Cars of Centre preference, not the myriad coupes and
convertibles of the employees, no, just plain black vehicles. Government cars – FBI, IRS, NSA – they
all looked the same, and he was staring at dozens of them.
At
that moment, things became even clearer, and he knew instinctively that Joy
would not be in to work today.
He
had spent more than one night over the last month outside his secretary’s
apartment, watching the shadows of her movements as she ate, watched television,
showered and prepared herself for bed.
He had spent long, enjoyable hours fantasizing about her as he sat in his
car across the street, his voyeuristic tendencies merely a prelude to what he
had planned for her. Now he once
again stared at the house, this time in broad daylight and masked by the trees
and shrubs. No time for voyeurism
now.
Reaching
into the waistband at his back, he pulled out the slim silver pistol. A Glock, like his dear sister’s. The weight of it in his one good hand
soothed him, calming the voices screaming inside. Things had to be done, but that did not
mean that he couldn’t enjoy them.
After all, what had he to lose now?
It
took nearly an hour before he was able to follow an elderly woman through the
locked doorway, smiling at her genteelly and offering to help with the bag of
groceries that she was carrying, an offer that she wisely refused. A nice young man, she thought, but she
wasn’t old enough that she needed help with such a little
bag.
The
manager’s quarters were near the door.
A knock, an open door, a quick look at the gun and at the determination
on Lyle’s face and the manager gladly handed over the master keys. A single swipe across the back of the
balding man’s head with the Glock ensured that he would not be calling 911 in
the near future.
Gliding
down the hallway silently, Lyle approached the door that he knew led to Joy’s
second floor apartment. The key
slipped in easily and opened with the tiniest of clicks. Abandoning all pretense then, he threw
open the door and walked in, as his startled secretary jumped up from her place
on the couch. His upper lip curled
back in disgust and he pushed the gun out in front of him. “You weren’t at work today, I thought
I’d come and check on you,” he snarled.
Joy’s
eyes widened in fear, then, to his amazement, she smiled, sat back down on the
couch and turned away from him to look out the nearby window. “I quit. Now
leave.”
“You
what?” Lyle moved the rest of the
way across the room to her, unable to believe her dismissal. “You goddamned bitch! I’m not about to leave. I should blow your Asian brains all over
the wall for what you did to me.”
Once
again Joy looked at him and smiled.
“And what do you deserve for what you did to me, huh, Boss.” Her heavy accent was now almost
completely missing as she once again rose from her seat. “What should I do to you to make you pay
for the women that you’ve forced onto their backs, demeaned, degraded, used and
thrown away? You and all the other men like you, you think that we don’t matter,
that we are just ‘whores,’ that we have no control. But we do, and now you
know.”
Enveloped
in fury, he was raising his hand to strike her when he heard the unmistakable
sound of a trigger being cocked.
“I
don’t think so, Mr. Lyle.”
Lyle
spun around to find Jarod walking out of a nearby bedroom, gun extended and
aimed at his heart. “Jarod. You son of a bitch, you set me
up.”
Jarod
raised a single eyebrow. “Yes, yes
I did. And you got everything that you had coming.”
“That
bitch infected me with AIDS!” Lyle
was screaming, frantic. “I’m going
to die!”
“We
all die, Mr. Lyle, some sooner than others. Some die even before they have a chance
to be born, like my son. But I
doubt that you were thinking of that when you were with Joy. Did you enjoy yourself? What were you thinking of, about what
you did to Mai Lyn, and all the others?
I would imagine that the horrors of HIV are nothing compared to what your
victims feel as they die. The only
saving grace is that they died faster than you will.”
Lyle
looked at the two of them, at the gun in his hand. Myriad emotions rushed over him, from
despair to rage. He had been duped,
set-up, put into a situation where his own desires had spelled out his death
sentence. There was only one person
truly responsible, he realized, and he was standing across the room. Killing Jarod would be easy, even
pleasurable, but not enough. If he
had to suffer, so should the Pretender, and there was only one sure way to make
him do just that – he had done it before…
He
turned toward the Asian woman, his face penitent. “Joy. I’m sorry, I’m just so upset.” Lyle stepped toward again her
slowly. “I’m sorry for what I said
to you, I’m just in shock. I don’t
know what Jarod told you-“
“Get
away from her, Lyle.”
Lyle
continued to move, ignoring the other man’s warning, “but I’m not the monster he
makes me out to be. I care about
you, and to find out that we share this dreadful disease-“
Jarod
hurried closer, his voice now ragged.
“I said get away!”
Joy
stood transfixed, watching the drama unfold in front of her. Where Jarod determinedly held the sight
of his gun upon the other man’s back, Lyle held his Glock out to the side, away
from both of them and defenseless.
For a fleeting moment, she wondered just who the murderer was, the
pleading man in front of her, or the nearly crazed one behind
him.
Without
warning, Lyle sprang at her, and it was only by reflex that she jumped up onto
the couch and away from him instead of against the window. With an animal scream, Jarod rushed
across the floor and tackled Lyle as he lunged, forcing them both against the
wall. They struggled as Joy scrambled away until, with a violent blow born of
sheer desperation, Lyle sent Jarod flying through the glass of the window.
For
an interminable second, Jarod hung suspended over the sill, until gravity seized
upon him and pulled him to the grass two stories below. Unable to control the fall, he landed on
his left leg and cried out as it collapsed underneath him, while the air was
simultaneously forced from his lungs.
Lyle
swung around from the window, a sneer of triumph on his face, but it was soon
gone. Joy had taken the opportunity
to race from the room, and he caught only a glimpse of her as she ducked down
the stairwell. He knew that by the
time he could follow her down the hall and to the first floor, she would be long
gone. But he didn’t think that the
Pretender would be able to move as fast.
Jarod
lay on the grass, the searing in his leg almost as horrible as his inability to
breath. It took long moments before
he could feel the air finally pulled into his lungs, and with that sensation
came the sharp familiar stab of broken ribs. It was all he could do to try to keep
from crying out in pain and fear.
Joy was still upstairs, and there was nothing that he could do about
it.
The
sound of a car pulling to a hurried stop on the street nearby barely registered,
but when he heard Broots’ familiar cry of dismay, he realized that he might
still be able to save her, with help.
“Up-upstairs,” he croaked out as the former Miss Parker came into view
above him. “Lyle –
Joy.”
The
look on her face surprised him. She
was drained, worn-down, with little in the way of makeup, but when he had named
Lyle and his intended victim, the old look of the huntress had returned. She lifted her gun from where it hung in
her hand beside her, dropped her cell phone on the grass near her companion and
edged her way toward the door of the building.
Broots knelt
near Jarod’s head, fussing like a nursemaid. “We came to check on Joy. Woody the gate man, you know, the one
with the artificial leg, he saw Lyle come onto the Centre grounds and then leave
like a bat outta hell. He called me
to warn me, thought that he might come after Miss Parker, I mean, Angela, but I
thought that he would be after Joy, too.”
He stabbed at the cell phone, punching the wrong numbers twice. “You sent her, didn’t you? Joy, I mean,” he babbled as he waited
for the 911 operator. “I thought –
Yes? Hello? I need the police!”
The
door to the apartment complex burst open without warning and Lyle ran out, the
Glock in his right hand already aimed at the Pretender on the grass. He halted just outside the doorway as
his eyes immediately lit upon Broots and then on his half-sister only a few
steps away. “Well, isn’t this a
pretty little sight?”
“Drop
the gun, Lyle. It’s over, the
Centre is dead.”
He
laughed out loud. “Didn’t you hear,
Sis? So am I – Jarod made sure of
that. I really don’t have anything
left to lose if I kill all of you, do I?”
Without warning, he lunged and struck her face with the back of the
pistol. She fell to the ground
stunned, her own gun skittering away across the sidewalk.
Weaponless
and with blood seeping into her mouth, she attempted to keep up the last shred
of bravado that she had left. “You’re insane.”
“You’ve
been saying that for years. Come up
with a new line, it could be your last.”
“You
want me, Lyle.” Jarod struggled to
sit up, the pain evident on his face.
“Take it out on me if you want to, but leave them
alone.”
“Always
the hero, aren’t you, Jarod? Seems
like I’ve heard that from you before, too.
You’re pathetic. Maybe I
should do the same thing I did last time, huh? Shoot the girl?” Lyle theatrically turned toward his
half-sister and aimed for her chest.
“Leave
her alone!” Broots jumped to his
feet, the gun that had fallen from Jarod’s grip during his fall now in his
shaking hands. “I swear, if you
hurt her, I’ll – I’ll kill you.”
In
a kind of slow motion, Lyle turned to look at the unexpected source of
bravery. “You’re a pathetic little
worm, too. You don’t have the
balls.” He turned again toward his
intended victim smiling, his finger leisurely squeezing at the
trigger.
The
explosion from the gun was nearly deafening, completely drowning out the
involuntary cry that escaped Angela’s lips. Her eyes were huge, her breath coming in
spastic gasps as she watched her half-brother spin away from her, his right
shoulder erupting in a bloom of brilliant red blood and flesh, the Glock
slipping from his hand even as he fell to the ground.
And
still Lyle refused to stop. His
right arm useless, he grasped at his gun with his undamaged arm, unable to get a
grip upon it with the thumbless hand.
Broots walked over purposefully and kicked both the hand and pistol. Suddenly, Lyle’s face turned from fury
to fear as he saw the programmer standing above him and the pistol barrel only a
few feet from his face. He squeezed
his eyes shut and cowered, waiting for the blast that did not
come.
Broots
stared down the sight for a long moment as the sound of sirens could be heard
approaching form the distance, and then smiled without humor. “Look who’s pathetic
now.”