This is my first piece of fanfiction for "Pretender", and one I wrote 
rather quickly, so any and all comments are appreciated.  The characters 
belong to their creators, "Pretender," NBC, Michael Weiss, and 
especially, since this mostly deals with Miss Parker's feelings after 
Jarod's recapture, Andrea Parker.  Copyright infringment was of course 
intended, but welcome to the era of free speech...

*          *          *

Catching Jarod
by Sarah Rogers

        
Two days since Jarod's recapture.

Jarod walked right into the trap she had set, an old woman in dire need 
of medical attention.  Jarod loved to play doctor; why wouldn't it have 
worked?  A stroke of genius on Miss Parker's part, though it certainly 
didn't feel like anything to celebrate once she got him back to the 
Centre.  

Jarod was bound hand and foot to a chair in an electronically sealed 
room with no windows or doors.  Parker knew immediately that he 
would go crazy because there was nothing he could do, especially after a 
taste of freedom.  He could only wait, in vain, for an opportunity to 
escape.

At first, she was glad to see he was, for once, the helpless one.  All of 
those tricks he used to keep her from catching him were either painful 
or humiliating and she felt it was only fair that he could feel as she did.  
Perhaps then it would be easier to have to hate him.  

But she was human, more so than her father or Mr. Raines, and 
images of the kiss she and Jarod had shared so many years ago came 
back to her in her dreams that night.  She hadn't been able to sleep 
because she knew what they would do to him--they would exploit him, 
make him a spectacle, the one thing which would drive Jarod insane.  

She had to live with the knowledge that she had killed Jarod's soul.  

The second day she went to talk to him.  Her father was the only one 
who knew the code to get into the room and accompanied her under 
the guise that Jarod might try to harm her.  Too late, she thought 
cynically.  Jarod hurt her in so many ways. 

Her father finally left her alone, standing outside the door, which had 
been locked again just in case Jarod was able to disarm Miss Parker and 
tried to escape.  She glanced at the door warily, wondering if it could be 
unlocked in time if...

Jarod was facing the wall and could not see her, but knew who it was 
and that she feared being alone with him. 

"I am not going to hurt you," he said, finally speaking.  

"You can't."  

"Drive the nail in the coffin, Miss Parker.  That's your way, isn't it?" he 
replied, and she flinched.  There was a long silence.

Jarod turned the chair around, the sight of him trying to manage it 
weighing heavily on her heart.  He looked awful, dark circles under 
each of of his eyes and a bruise on his jaw from where she had hit him 
trying to subdue him not forty-eight hours ago.  But what bothered her 
most of all were his eyes, empty of the freedom he had so enjoyed.  All 
that was left was anger, raw anger.  And it was directed at her.  

She tried to avoid his penetrating stare, her hand instantly moving to 
her weapon, but she knew she could not fire it at him even if he did 
attack her.  

"Are you all right?" was all she could manage saying.  

"Perhaps you should have taken up boxing," he replied icily.  The fight 
which had ensued before she knocked him out had left both of them 
bruised, but she had the element of surprise and won very easily. 

Jarod wondered why she was even here.  He suspected that she had 
made a deal with her father and Mr. Raines, that she would leave as 
soon as he was caught again.  But he didn't dare ask, though he 
certainly enjoyed taunting her.  He knew it would be too painful, like 
when he informed her about the abuse her mother endured and her 
elevator "suicide."  Jarod regretted it, not that he told her the truth but 
the suffering he caused, although seeing her pain almost made him 
feel better about everything the Centre had done to him.  But he did 
not hate her.   

She couldn't stay in the same room with him any longer and banged 
on the door frantically, her father finally opening it and letting her out.

"Good bye," he muttered, without his usual teasing.  It had been 
different when he hadn't felt like the hunted.  


Miss Parker went into her father's office, fingering the silver frames of 
the pictures of her and her mother on his desk.  

She hated him.  She hated him for what he did to her mother, she 
hated him for what he did to the Pretenders, she hated him most of all 
for what he was trying to do to Jarod.  

He came into the room whistling.

"I'm so proud of you!" he told her.  She did not acknowledge his 
presense.

"Can't believe you did it, honey!  I'm glad that's finally over, and soon 
we can go back to our normal lives."  What normal life? Miss Parker 
wanted to ask him.  Her father insisted Jarod occupy her mind 
constantly for so long. 

"What are you going to do with him now?" she asked her father.

"There will be further testing, I suppose, then we'll use Jarod's brain for 
something useful."

"Useful?  What are you going to do with him?" she demanded, 
turning and facing him in fury.

"Don't tell me you care about what happens to him."

She didn't answer.  


"Damn, where is that code," she muttered under her breath, and then 
mentally kicked herself for speaking out loud.  

It was dark in her father's office, too dark to see, but she was carrying a 
candle in hopes its light could not be spotted under the door.  Miss 
Parker was looking for something that would be inconspicuous, and 
was having no luck.

She had made the decision to leave the Centre, her father, Mr. Raines, 
everything... She could not remember any other time when something 
felt like it was all in order.  It was clear, finally, and for once her ulcer 
didn't bother her when she thought of Jarod. 

The door to the office opened, the draft blowing out her candle before 
the man who entered the room noticed.  Miss Parker scrambled behind 
a filing cabinet and waited, her breath laborious as she thought of what 
would happen if she were caught.

She heared the door shutting, and peaked out carefully.  No one was 
there.  She crept out of the crevice where she was hiding, tripped, and 
promptly fell on her face.  "Damn, damn, damn," she whispered, her 
eyes smarting.  

She grasped the carpet in trying to pull herself up.  She sensed 
something funny about the texture of the fibers and felt around the 
area carefully and deliberately.  The square had been cut away--and 
when she removed it, she revealed a paper with numbers on the hard 
wood floor.

It was the code to the room which imprisoned Jarod, it had to be.  


Silently she punched the numbers into the computer, praying it would 
work, because if it didn't an alarm would sound and she would be 
caught.  God only knew what they would do to Jarod.  The computer 
hummed as she anxiously waited...The door locks clicked open. 

Miss Parker pushed at the door till it finally gave way.  She entered the 
sterile room.

"Nice of you to visit," he said to her.  

"Shut up," she replied and bent down to undo the handcuffs around 
his wrists and ankles.  "If you try and hurt me, I'm going to blow your 
brains out," she threatened, tapping her handgun in its holster at her 
side.  

"What are you doing?  Where's your father?" Jarod asked her.  She 
clinked it the bracelets shut and thew them into the backpack she wore 
over her shoulder.  He rubbed his wrists. 

"Even I know that you can disjoint your thumb to get out of these 
things," she told her.  Jarod stood up and stretched his legs.

"What are you doing?  Answer me!" he said.  Miss Parker raised an 
eyebrow and pointed to her gun.  

"Say please."

"Please!  What are you doing!"

 "I'm leaving this place," she said, casting a disdainful glance around 
the room. "If you're coming with me or not."

He looked at her incredulously.  "Why should I believe that?" 

"What else can you think?" she shot back.  Miss Parker walked out of 
the electronic jail, and Jarod followed after her.  

She didn't stop until they reached the curb at the very back of the 
Centre.  

"Goodbye, Jarod," she said, and began to walk up the sidewalk.  She 
closed her eyes briefly, to blink back the tears.

"Wait!" he called after her.  She did not turn around.  "You're 
leaving?" he asked.

"I said I was."

"They're going to be looking for you, too."

"I know." 

"You can't hide from them by yourself."  

She shrugged her shoulders.  "I can try."

"They'll catch you, you know," he told her, and watched the wind 
blowing at her hair, as she thought of something to reply.

"Maybe, maybe not.  That's a chance I'll have to take."  And then she 
walked on, disappearing into the darkness.  

Jarod began to run.


THE END