Love, page 2
Gaia suddenly found herself stopping in the middle of street, though she wasn’t sure why. It was almost involuntary. Like her body knew things that her mind didn’t. Had there been any cars on the road, she would have been mowed down. She bent over and clung to her knees for support, gasping for air and ignoring the razor-sharp cramps in her stomach. Run, goddammit! she chided herself. What the hell are you stopping for?
Her frustration mounted with every additional second she stood still, but she needed those few seconds to answer her own question. Ed. Ed was the reason she’d stopped running. What was it? Was it the thought of abandoning him—a sudden image of Ed alone that made her stop? Or was it the thought of not having him—of not having the one true friend she’d ever made in this life besides Mary? Leaving Ed without some kind of good-bye… it was simply too cruel. Sam knew the kind of danger Gaia was in. He knew why Gaia had to disappear. But Ed… Ed knew nothing. All he would know was that he’d put all his trust and all his faith into someone who’d simply vanished without the slightest explanation—without a word. She’d be no better than her father. That’s what it was.
That had to be what it was.
A note. She would write Ed a note and slip it under his door. Then she would disappear.
HIDE-AND-SEEK. THAT’S WHAT THIS was. Yes, Loki’s operation had been reduced to nothing more than a pitiful, simple-minded children’s game. The meticulous planning, the second-guessing, the manipulations—none of it mattered now. Loki’s controlled breathing was all that prevented him from slipping into a fit of rage. He had his driver cruising at a snail’s pace up Hudson Street as he stared intensely through the slim opening of his polarized window, squeezing the cell phone in his tightly clenched fist. He was searching the night for signs of Gaia aboveground, waiting for a report from his men underground. But he might as well have ordered them to traipse through the subways of New York, chanting “come out, come out, wherever you are…” like hapless little schoolboys. It was more than just infuriating; it was humiliating. Degrading.
Gambling
But of course he should have expected this pathetic state of affairs. Why should he have hoped for anything more than a child’s game when he’d left his plans in the hands of children? Incompetent children like Josh Kendall and Sam Moon?
Loki knew it had been a gamble to let so much hinge on Gaia’s deeply unimpressive boyfriend, and now he was relearning a lesson he thought he’d learned long ago: Gambling is for the unintelligent and the uninspired. One’s desired outcome should always be a forgone conclusion. Now he had no choice but to sit mired in the purgatory of his black Mercedes, waiting for confirmation of Gaia’s capture. And that call was long overdue.
“I’m sure they have her by now,” Josh offered. He squirmed next to Loki on the plush the seat of the limo.
Loki raised his finger to his lips, cutting Josh off with a vicious glance. “Don’t speak” he ordered. “You’re not sure of a thing, you idiot.”
Josh lowered his head and shut his mouth. He looked very much like a submissive dog. Which was fitting. The last thing Loki needed to hear was another presumptuous false promise from Josh. Frankly, he doubted he would let Josh live after the botched Sam Moon job. So they sat in silence as Loki continued his exercise in futility, scanning each city block with mechanical precision.
At long last, the shrill ring of the cell phone broke the tense silence. Loki flipped it open. “Yes?” he snapped, keeping his eyes glued on the passing streets.
“We lost her,” a deeply agitated voice moaned through the phone. The man’s voice was barely audible above the distorted rumble of a train booming in the background. “We got split up and I’ve been hit. I’ve been hit bad. I need medical assis—”
Loki crushed the phone shut. That was it. He could take no more. He hurled the sleek black plastic apparatus at a row of glass decanters on the minibar, spraying scotch and shattered glass all over Josh’s chest and legs. Josh flinched, but said nothing. He began to sweep the glass from his shirt, which somehow only further infuriated Loki.
“Leave it there,” he ordered.
Josh obeyed without a word. His hands fell back to his sides. A small drop of blood trickled down his face.
“Consider it your first punishment,” Loki added, sliding his window closed. He took a moment to try to regain his composure, but still could not contain himself. The frustration was like a hurricane inside him. “You told me you had Moon under control,” he spat. “What the hell have I trained you for?”
“I had every indication that he was under control,” Josh whined defensively. “I just wasn’t expecting that kind of bravery from him. I thought the kid was a total pushover. I should have just shot him the first time he gave me attitude—”
“Enough!” Loki shouted.
“I’m sorry…” Josh dropped his head back down toward his lap. “At least he’s out of the way now,” he said quietly.
“Yes, he’s out of the way, and that’s another month wasted,” Loki muttered. “One more useless dead body. And I’m still no closer to having Gaia. We don’t have any more time now. Do you understand that?”
“I know, I’m sorry—”
“Keep your mouth shut,” Loki commanded. “We’ll need to use someone else to get to her now. Someone as close to her as Moon was. I have a few ideas. Do you understand what needs to happen now?” His voice deliberately dripped with condescension. “Now we’ll have to initiate a full-fledged search for her with absolutely no time to work with. I need to secure her in the next twenty-four hours. That is an absolute deadline, do you understand? We’ll start with the basics. Or rather, I’ll start with the basics. I can’t have you screwing things up again. I’ll pay a visit to the Mosses first thing in the morning, and I will go alone.”
Josh acquiesced with a simple nod of his head, his eyes still glued to the car floor.
Loki glanced out the window. They’d reached the last corner before the West Side Highway.
“Here!” he barked at the driver. The car lurched to a halt. He reached over Josh and yanked the door open, then leaned back in his seat. “Now get out.”
Josh didn’t waste any time. Shards of glass tumbled to the floor and sidewalk as he climbed from the car and walked briskly away toward the deserted meatpacking district. It wasn’t long before he started running. A grim smile crossed Loki’s face. Josh understood the rules. Loki had just decided to give him a break. His last.
LOKI
There was a time, not too long ago, when I led by example. That was what set me apart from the other people in my peculiar field. I took care of everything— from wiring the smallest filament in an explosive to crawling for twelve hours through the muck of a Colombian jungle. I didn’t place myself above any job, no matter how lowly the task at hand.
I’ve wasted weeks, months even, blaming the incompetence of others for my own failures. I realize now that I’ve become lazy. I sit in overpriced leather thrones in palatial penthouses, doling out orders like some fattened king who’s never even served in an army.
That is not who I am.
From this point forward I am taking on all duties myself. Assuming full responsibility. It’s the only way I can be certain my plans will reach fruition. I’m not wasting any more of my precious time giving out orders to pea-brained idiots and watching them fail at the simplest of tasks. I’ll carry out my own orders. Because I have no choice. And because Gaia deserves it. She deserves better than these thugs and lackeys I’ve thrown at her—she’s so laughably superior to those drones. She deserves a captor with a genius equal to her own. She deserves me. And I her.
She’s been easy to track thus far because she hasn’t known she was under surveillance, but that is all going to change now. Now that she knows I’m looking, she will be absolute hell to find. And I would expect nothing less. Which is not to say that I won’t find her. I will, and I will have her on a plane to Germany by this time tomorrow night. Because I’m not about to watch years of planning go up in smoke. A few minor adjustments, and the pieces will fall back in place. Of course, there may have to be a few more casualties than I had planned. But when Gaia is the end, all means are justified.
So a children’s game it is. Hide-and-seek. A chance for Gaia and me to play the kind of game we should have played years ago.
glimpse of heaven
He already had an endless list of potential buyers in China, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Peru… anyplace on the planet where terrorism thrived.
GAIA COULDN’T TAKE THE EXERtion anymore. She had to slow down, even if just for a minute. To catch her breath. Maybe to regain some feeling in her legs. She must have run at least two miles up the Lower East Side at full throttle, through Chinatown and Tribeca, past Little Italy— hurtling down the sidewalk, nearly knocking over several people in the process. Now she was closing in on Ed’s apartment. And if she were really going to leave him a note, then it was time to stop and write it.
Words, words, words
Whatever the hell it was going to say. Not that it made any difference.
“Words, words, words.”
A grim smile crossed her face as she hobbled into an all-night deli on the Bowery. That was a line from some Shakespeare play—one of many her father had forced her to read long ago. She couldn’t remember which play it was. Othello? Hamlet? Whatever. She remembered loving that line, though, even then. It perfectly summed up the futility of trying to communicate anything of value. Like emotion, for instance.
She staggered down one of aisles, her shoulders brushing against the shelves of chips, cereal, and beef jerky. She squinted in the glaring fluorescent lights for any sign of pen or paper. Or at least a place to sit. There. Two torn chairs and a scuffed card table. Beautiful. Like a glimpse of heaven. She collapsed into one of the chairs, allowing her arms and head to sprawl across the rugged plastic tabletop. Her breaths were shallow and painful. Within seconds her body and mind were arguing over whether or not to give in to sleep. But her mind won out. Her mind knew she was probably still being hunted. She willed her aching head back up off the table and stumbled to the front counter.
“Can I please have a large coffee?” she asked hoarsely.
The young Korean woman behind the counter reached for a cup, then hesitated. “That’s one dollar,” she said. Her tone was suspicious.
Gaia blinked. Her stomach dropped. What was she thinking? She had no money. All she had was a subway card. Sam was supposed to have taken her to dinner, and then she’d planned on taking the subway straight back to the Mosses’. Now, that was an impossibility. Going back there would…but there was no point in rehashing the whole evening again. She didn’t need the pain. She’d had plenty already.
“You go home now,” the woman suddenly snapped, full of disdain. “Go on.” Her eyes drifted slowly from Gaia’s brown dress—skintight from all the sweat and wrapped awkwardly around her body—up to the damp mop of blond hair stuffed under the filthy black cap.
“I’m sorry,” Gaia began. “I didn’t—”
“Go home,” the woman repeated. She flared her nostrils and wrinkled her nose to indicate that Gaia stank. Then she turned her back.
Well. So much for coffee. Gaia allowed herself a brief fantasy of leaping over the counter, shoving the woman’s head into the ice machine, and pouring the stuff herself. But she could barely move. Her limbs were threatening to shut down on her completely. Besides, she knew she couldn’t blame the woman for being rude. Gaia probably looked like one of a hundred disheveled, penniless kids who wandered in and out of here every day.
Go home, the woman had said.
The only problem was that home didn’t exist.
Gaia shook her head. She had to maintain control. But she could feel herself slipping into a miserable tailspin. It was ironic in a way. She’d always felt homeless: alone, transient, without roots. But being homeless was something very different. She had no place to sleep, no money—just the clothes on her back. She didn’t even have a warm coat. And she certainly fit the image of a homeless person: she was smelly, exhausted, and desperate. Once she dropped the note off for Ed (if she ever even wrote it), she had no idea where to go. She could hop a train at Grand Central—and stick to the bathrooms until she jumped off—but again, the same question loomed: where would she go? The destination made no difference.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, the thought of being alone had begun to affect her. It had begun to hurt. She couldn’t just rewind her psyche to a simpler time when there were no attachments in her life whatsoever, and her only wish was to be left alone. It had something to do with Ed and Sam, and Mary. Important relationships had finally been introduced into her life, and now she wasn’t sure if she could live without them. True, she’d already learned how to live without Mary. She hadn’t had a choice. She was still learning how to live without Sam—to let him go. But why did she have to live without Ed? Ed had always been there, no matter how numb or depressed or bitchy she acted, no matter how dangerous the circumstances, and she couldn’t say that about another soul in her life—
Stop it, she scolded herself. Survival, remember?
A series of images flashed through her head: the look of terror on Sam’s face when he told her to run, the sinister eyes of that drunken idiot on the train… a man firing a bullet into his own head simply to escape the wrath of Loki. A jolt of energy shot through her. She’d already spent too much time in the deli. If Loki was tailing her, he could have caught up by now. And if he caught up, she was dead.
Don’t think about what you’re leaving or where you’re going. Just keep moving.
“Paper,” she whispered to the woman’s back. “Please. I need a piece of paper. I’m sorry I don’t have any money. But if you could just do me that favor, I’d really appreciate it.”
After several seconds, the woman finally sighed and shuffled over to the register. She tore a scrap of receipt paper from the top of it and shoved it in Gaia’s face.
Gaia forced herself to smile. “And could I trouble you for a pen?” she asked.
The woman scowled, but she pulled a pen from her shirt pocket and dropped it on the counter. Then she turned her back once more. The message was clear: do what you have to do, and do it fast. Then get out.
“Thanks,” Gaia breathed, fighting back anger. She snatched the pen and paper and started scrawling her good-bye even before the thoughts were fully formed in her head:
Ed,
I’m saying good-bye, but not for always. There’s just some stuff going on and I can’t be in New York right now. But I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye to you because you’ve been
Gaia stopped and stared at the paper. She knew that words didn’t matter. That was the whole point. And Ed would understand. But here she was, stuck. Her legs and feet began to shake with discomfort. No matter how loudly she screamed at herself to finish and get moving, no words seemed right.
everything
Everything? Her jaw tightened.
Everything what? “ Everything to me?” Her breath started coming fast. Was that the sentence? You’ve been everything to me? What the hell was that? It sounded nothing like Gaia Moore. It sounded like a Hallmark card reject. A million thoughts collided in her head—all the things she knew she had to do at that moment to be safe, to keep Ed safe, and to move on. But she couldn’t articulate them. Now her heart was pounding uncomfortably, and she was beginning to sweat again.
“Screw it!” she heard herself shout.
The woman behind the counter flinched.
Gaia hardly noticed. She slammed her fist on the counter and crumpled the piece of paper—unfinished sentence and all. That was the best she could do. And that was enough. She sprinted out of the deli, trying to shake every last confusing thought about Ed from her brain as the biting wind enveloped her. Funny: until that moment, she’d forgotten why she didn’t make friends in the first place.
It was so she wouldn’t have to lose them.
TOM MOORE AND GEORGE NIVEN FLEW through the door of George’s townhouse without a word. At this point, speech was not necessary. They were of one mind now, sharing one very clear and immediate goal: Find Gaia now. They did not bother to flip on any lights, nor did they remove their coats. Instead, they made a simultaneous beeline for George’s study—and within thirty seconds, they had begun their search. George logged on to his laptop while Tom placed a call on the secure phone line. Maybe one of the other agents had gotten a lock on Gaia, or at the very least, a more specific address for Loki’s current headquarters. All Tom knew was that his twin had once again relocated in Chelsea.
No Actual Meaning
“Enigma four-four-seven-Victor-Charlie,” he whispered quickly and deliberately into the phone. “I need a secure line.”
“Go ahead,” the operator replied in a flat, inhuman tone.
“We’ve got a potential national security breach and Gaia Moore is out-of-pocket. Repeat, Gaia Moore is out-of-pocket. Requesting assistance and an international APB effective immediately.” Tom spoke with clipped bureaucratic efficiency, but he could hear the uneven cracks in his own voice—the lack of breath at the end of each sentence. Panic was beginning to set in. His well-honed professional veneer was beginning to crumble. Loki had obviously been poised to put his plans for Gaia in full motion… at the very instant Tom lost track of her.
He had all kinds of excuses, of course. Loki had tricked him into chasing phantoms and decoys in Brussels. His flight back to New York had been delayed over and over again. But in the end, the cold truth was undeniable: Gaia was his responsibility, and he’d failed her yet again.
