Parker's Sanctuary by Cooper West

Author:Cooper West
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cooper West

25

After an afternoon and evening grazing on room service deliveries and terrible 90s action flicks, Rebekah left them around nine p.m. for the room that had been put aside for her. It was a couple of floors down, obviously not a suite, but she made sure Greg had her number programmed into his phone just in case anything new and interesting came up. With a look at her brother that was both accusatory and amused, she left.

“She really thinks we’re going to get our freak on?” Greg said, staring at the door from where he was plopped on the couch.

“Not going to dignify that with a response,” Parker said, sniffing.

Greg watched as Parker settled back on the couch. He was curled up in the corner, his upper body slung over the arm rest as a support. If it weren’t for the plate of ketchup-drenched fries he was holding, he would have been a mirror of his alter-ego. It was still hard for Greg to think of him as “Elijah” instead of Parker, despite spending the evening in very familiar circumstances: watching TV, eating, and hanging out. There was so much of the dog in the man, down to his eyes, hair, coiled posture, and expressive eye rolling (which he did a lot with his sister). There had not been much talking during the evening, even as Rebekah fielded calls from their lawyer, their parents, her friends and her husband. Between the three of them, with Parker and Greg on the very short couch and Rebekah in an over-stuffed lounge chair, the talk had stuck mostly to which food to order, how weird the Guardsmen were, and how to keep Parker from over eating and making himself sick (mostly, that was Rebekah and Greg, with Parker frowning at them while shoving large bites of steak into his mouth).

Parker ate some more fries. He had been eating slowly and moving from dish to dish. Rebekah had ordered half the menu under the pretense of not knowing what was good, when it was obvious she wanted to give her brother everything he had missed out on during the past two years. They bickered a little, but it was clearly hard for her to do much more than stare at her twin with relief and happiness over the fact that he was still alive.

Marcus had called to say they planned to fly out around ten in the morning, meaning that Parker could sleep in a little. Greg figured on taking at least a half day, given that he’d need to go home to change clothes if nothing else before heading to work.

“I can’t believe this time tomorrow I’ll be in Missouri. At the Institute,” Parker said, sweeping more fries through the ketchup.

Greg shook his head. “It must be phenomenally weird for you. I mean, two weeks ago Marsha was overseeing your rescue from Howell’s house.”

“Tell me about it.” Parker slumped a little, placing the plate on the coffee table and then collapsing over the arm rest, folding his arms under him like paws and resting his chin on the back of his hands.

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