Little Girl Lost
By Fewthistle

For Erin….anything for you, my dear. Anything at all.

Miss Parker watched as the black sedan rounded the corner on two wheels and disappeared, the faint outline of Jared's head just visible against the golden slant of winter sunlight.

She's lost him again. No, not lost. Lost suggested that she'd actually had him, and God knows, that had never happened. Missed. Didn't catch. Failed to apprehend. All much more concise. Not that the semantics really mattered. Not to the Centre. Not to her father.

The gun in her hand was cold and heavy and for the moment, the only real thing in a world awash in the cold, diluted light of a January day. Making her way back to her car, Miss Parker wondered, not for the first time, if there was some part of her that let him escape, some small part of her that remained that little girl Jared had met all those years ago, who couldn't allow it to happen. Who couldn't let them have him again.

Something inside of her that could only survive as part of the Pretender.