The agents jumped into the struggle and ripped the two men away from each other-but one of them broke free long enough to break for the door. He bounced off two of the armed men, dodged the grip of another, and slipped through the door.
"Don"t shoot!" George cried.
Gaia could only stand and watch, immobilized. Never before had she felt like such a failure. And her exploits with Josh were beginning to take their toll. Her limbs grew heavy. Her vision dimmed.
Three agents raced chased after him.
"Dad?" Gaia called, staggering through the mob of agents.
"Don"t worry, Gaia." His voice echoed up through the stairwell. "It will be okay. I"ll come for you, I swear. I love you-"
"I"m here, Gaia," the other one interrupted. Gaia whirled. He was being shackled in handcuffs. "I"m right here, sweetheart. Just stay with me, Gaia. Stay close. I"m not letting you out of my sight again. Ever."
Gaia looked at him. She had absolutely no idea what to think. She was so sick of this-so sick of trying to figure out who was who. It was easier when she didn"t care. Easier when she"d despised them both.
"Gaia?" he said sweetly.
It was too much. It was all too much. There was no way she would be dragged to some G.o.dforsaken cell to answer questions from a bunch of clueless federal agents. Yes, Gaia saw her future from this moment. And it made her physically ill.
So she ran.
"Gaia, no!" she heard him pleading as she bolted for the stairs. "No! Stay with me, Gaia. Please...stay..."
Thankfully, his voice was drowned out by the clattering of her footsteps.
GAIA.
Sam is dead.
Sam, to whom I bared as much of my soul as I could. Sam, with whom there were so many perfect fantasies. Sam, with whom nothing ever truly worked.
I"d spent all that time dying to know that he was safe. And he was already gone. He died for me. And I can"t thank him. There"s no point in trying to describe what I feel, because that would only dishonor his memory. Words, words, words, right? Sam Moon deserves more than words. He deserves his life back.
And I can"t give that to him.
I had fallen out of love with him in so many ways. But now I can"t even remember why. All that"s left is the part of me that still loves him. The part of me that always will love him. I wish I"d known him better. I know that must sound strange to have loved someone so much and not really have known him, but I know now that it is possible. I fell in love with him without knowing him, and the catastrophe that is my life forced me to keep it that way. To really know him would have been an amazing privilege. Because Sam Moon was remarkable. And when all is said and done, there really are not that many remarkable people. There are even fewer heroes. Sam was a hero, as well.
But I"m using words, aren"t I?
I wish we"d just skipped each other at the chess tables that rainy day. I wish he was still just the beautiful mystery man I never knew. The one I hated, precisely because I found him so attractive.
So it"s time for me to leave. It"s like Heather said: it"s time to flush my past down the toilet. Because I"m sick of myself, too. I have to start from scratch somewhere else. I have no idea whether my father or Loki made it out of that loft, but I can"t think about that right now. I have to leave all my enemies and all my guardians behind.
It"s time to start the normal life I"ve been secretly dreaming about.
Of all the lives I could lead, I know I"d be happiest as a waitress. A waitress in some truck stop diner in Anywhere, USA, where everyone knows your name but no one asks you any big personal questions. It"s time to go do that now. I"m sure of it.
There"s only one other thing I know for sure. I want Ed to leave with me. Whatever that means. I don"t know what it means. Right now it can"t mean anything. Right now I need to grieve, and I know Ed will understand that. But Ed is the only friend I have left in this world. The only person I can absolutely trust. The only person who actually understands me. And somewhere, far down the line, that might mean everything.
So that"s where all my roaming is going to lead me. To Ed"s house. I"m going to go to Ed"s house, and I"m going to ask him to leave with me.
And I hope to G.o.d he says yes.
But I know he won"t.
him
The only thing Gaia was sure of was that she was not afraid. She just didn"t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
IT WAS NEARLY TWO A.M. BY THE time Gaia rounded the corner to Ed"s building.
No Fear She"d rehea.r.s.ed what she would say a hundred times as she"d roamed the streets, but nothing sounded right. It was a simple enough request: Ed, run away with me. But somehow, that didn"t sound right. Somehow, it didn"t convey what she truly felt. The real problem was, she couldn"t put her finger on the feeling. Only that it consumed her.
So she was going to have to wing it.
At least she"d kept her promise. She"d sworn she would come back, and here she was. They could go from there....
Gaia stopped walking.
She stopped thinking altogether. Her heart seemed to sink, then break, then seemed to disappear completely. She should have known what she would find just outside Ed"s lobby. Not Ed"s parents, or his sister, or Heather, or the FOHs-or Ed himself, out for a late-night walk. No, instead she found only what she had come to expect from life: something sad and dark and miserable... a reminder of the futility of hoping for the future.
There were three men in black ahead of her.
What had made her think she could get away? Why had she bothered to incorporate even the concept of hope into her life? It was always a mirage. Always. Loki was never going to let go, and Gaia was never going to have peace. These were the two commandments of Gaia"s existence.
It was only a moment before they spotted her and began to walk toward her. She didn"t bother to run. There was no point anymore. The running was over. But as they drew closer, she could not help but stare at their leader. Because he looked so very much like...
Josh.
She blinked. It wasn"t possible. He"d collapsed right in her arms. Dead. With a smoking bullet lodged in the center of his head. No. But whether he existed or not, he was closing in on her while she was wasting time deliberating. Whoever he was, Gaia needed to get away from him, and she needed to do it now. She finally turned herself around. But three more thugs approached her from the opposite direction, cutting her off.
Of course. Loki wasn"t about to make the same mistake twice. He wasn"t about to lose her again. He had her cornered and outnumbered. Not to mention haunted. Gaia came to a stop in the middle of the street, and tried to a.s.sess her options. She could fight them all off, but there were surely more of them around the next corner, and the next. Think! Loki had her in G.o.dd.a.m.n checkmate. He was about to win his own stupid endless cruel game, and there was nothing Gaia could do about it- A black Mercedes suddenly careened around the corner, screeching to a halt in the middle of the street. It swerved up onto the curb beside her. The pa.s.senger door swung open. She peered inside. It was him. Whoever he was.
"Get in."
Gaia hesitated. Josh and the mob were closing in.
"Gaia, it"s me," he said urgently. "You know it"s me."
She took a step closer, but it was so dark.
"There"s no time," he said. "You have to trust me, Gaia, please. Look in my eyes. You know I"m your father."
Gaia leaned forward and peered into the shadowy car. A pair of blue eyes stared back at her. They were soft, very soft... and glittering. They seemed to promise peace. It was a lie, to be sure, but she didn"t care anymore. Her body took charge. She leaped from the sidewalk into the car at the very moment Josh lunged for her legs, falling to the street. Her father slammed on the gas pedal. Fists pounded on the dark windows and roof as they sped away.
"Are you okay?" he gasped.
But Gaia didn"t answer. She swung her head around and watched helplessly as Ed"s building grew smaller and smaller, and then disappeared into the distance.
"Good-bye," she murmured. She had to be numb right now. Because if she let herself feel everything she"d just lost, she wouldn"t be able to live. She turned back to her father. Staring at his profile as the buildings zoomed by in the background, she truly wasn"t sure if he was her father or not.
The only thing Gaia was sure of was that she was not afraid. She just didn"t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
here is a
sneak peek of Fearless #19
TWINS.
GAIA.
I"ve never told anyone this before, but for the first five years of my life-before the specialists could figure out what the h.e.l.l was wrong with me-my parents considered the possibility that I might be mentally challenged. You know, "slow."
See, I kept doing all these things that seemed extraordinarily stupid, and my parents could not figure out why. My mother had been top of her cla.s.s at the University of Moscow. My father tested at the genius level. It wouldn"t make sense for their only child to be a moron.
Of course, certain signs pointed to the fact that I was smarter than I acted. I picked up languages really quickly; I was doing algebra when most girls are debating whether or not to give up playing with dolls. It was my behavior that baffled them. Like, when I was four, they took me to this hotel in Los Angeles. There was an Olympic-size swimming pool. I took one look at it, and then I dove headfirst into the deep end. I didn"t have the faintest inkling how to swim.
Needless to say, I almost drowned. But that wasn"t the disturbing part. The problem was, I dove right back into the deep end the next day. And the next. I"ll never forget the look on my father"s face every time he fished me out of the warm turquoise water and wagged his long finger in my face with anxious fury. "What is the matter with you?" he kept yelling.
I couldn"t answer him. I didn"t know.
There were a lot of incidents like that: diving into giant swimming pools, running past the shark warnings into the ocean, walking into traffic, pedaling my tricycle for six miles with no idea how to get back home....
It wasn"t until the Agency ran some tests on me that we all discovered that I was missing that pesky little fear gene. Oh, happy day! My ludicrous behavior could finally be explained.
I wasn"t stupid. I was fearless.
They"d just confused the two, which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense. I understood what I was doing; I just didn"t care about the consequences. So I kept making bad decisions. My ability to reason hadn"t caught up with my instincts yet.
And that"s really the problem. When you"re fearless and you"re only acting on instinct, you can do some pretty stupid things. I mean, think about it. How can you make the right choice when you don"t even fear the consequences of the wrong one? How can you even tell the difference between right and wrong, between sensible and idiotic?
Yes, there is a point I"m getting to here.
Three minutes ago I had to make a choice. A choice based entirely on instinct. Josh Kendall and Loki"s thugs were coming at me. (How Josh could have been there, given that I"d just seen him shot in the head a few hours earlier, is another story entirely-one I have yet to figure out, and one that is simply too twisted and inexplicable for me to deal with right now. So I will stick to what I understand.) I was basically cornered. And then a car pulled up to the curb, and a man opened the back door, begging me to jump into the car with him where I"d be safe.
I looked at his face, and I had two seconds to decide-was that man my father or my uncle? There was no time for quizzes or close consideration. No time to reason. I looked deep in his eyes, and my gut told me that he was my father. So I got in the car, and we took off down the street.
But I just don"t know.
I mean, someone actually capable of experiencing fear would know better than I would. Did I make the right choice or not? Have my instincts improved with age, or did I just dive into the deep end again? Here I was, sitting in the backseat of the car with my father, and the same thought kept running through my head over and over again: I should be afraid. I really wish I were afraid right now.
eyes
She wanted to be shouting, but her body was no longer capable of responding to her demands.
THE CHAOS AND CONFUSION ENDED so suddenly. Gaia couldn"t adapt to the serene white noise that took its place. Moments ago, her world had been utter cacophony: the stomps of the enemy closing in on her, the screech of burning rubber on asphalt, the insistent voice of her father (or her uncle) shouting for her to get in the car. Now it was nothing but the cool, sterile interior of a black Mercedes.
A Simple Hug But the silence made no difference. Gaia"s head was still pounding-her confused thoughts wailing like a jumbo jet in a dizzying tailspin.
She glanced out the window. She hadn"t even noticed they were on the FDR Drive. The East River ran just beside the highway, but it was too dark to see by night, especially through the tinted window. The starless sky was as black as the water. Gaia pressed a b.u.t.ton to open the window, allowing the dark gla.s.s to slide all the way down into the door. Then she leaned forward and closed her eyes, letting the wind pummel her face and eyelids. It roared thunderously in her ears. She hoped to numb her senses, to sandblast away all the horrors of the last twenty-four hours. Maybe the harsh wind could just strip her emotions away layer by layer, until she could no longer feel that rotten crust of guilt and disappointment that was hardening around her like a sh.e.l.l....
Yeah, right. The Winds of Change. When was the last time the wind had actually changed anything?
Nothing could alter the facts. Sam was dead. It was still basically her fault. And Ed was drifting further away with every revolution of the car"s wheels. If she"d made it into his building before the ambush, she would have asked him to leave with her. Tonight. Immediately. Not to go anyplace specific, but just to go. Away from where they were. Not as boyfriend and girlfriend, but not exactly just friends. Just as...whatever they were. Or whatever they might become.