Escape (24 page)

He turned his head back and walked off into the glare of the corner streetlight.

Gaia ducked her head and dragged herself upstairs to bed. She tried not to think of Ed. She pretended that Tatiana wasn't even there, and she collapsed onto her mattress fully clothed. She allowed herself only one thought as she drifted off to sleep.

The Ukrainian church on Eleventh Street. Tomorrow. 8:00
A.M.

I
had you figured for so many things, Gaia. A psycho. A freak. Thoughtless. Selfish. Misguided. Coldhearted. And it was still all so meaningless to me. I still loved you more than I've ever loved anyone or anything in my life.

But I never had you figured for a traitor, Gaia. Never.

I know you've lied to me before. But I'd always thought that the only lies you could tell were noble lies. At least noble in your own screwed-up head. All those stupid lies to protect me. Pretending you didn't love me. Pretending you didn't care. Thinking that would keep me safe. Thinking that made a damn bit of difference in either of our fates. . .

But now I know. Now I know you can tell real lies. The kind that destroy people. The kind that make people hate themselves for being such trusting, idiotic fools.

Or maybe that's wrong, too? Maybe all those “noble lies” were actually the truth? Maybe you
never did love me? Never cared? Never gave a crap?

I'm drowning in maybes again, Gaia. Drowning, suffocating, choking, dying. . .

Maybe this, maybe that, maybe the other thing. Maybe Sam never died. Maybe your father is fine and you've just been off on a romantic holiday with Sam while I've been sitting here like a freaking idiot, pining for the queen of maybes.

Maybe I'm so exhausted, Gaia. Maybe I am so utterly tired of being there for you when you have never been there for me. Maybe I'm beginning to realize that I've spent all of my will and all of my heart on you. . . and I have absolutely nothing to show for it.

I don't know, Gaia. I think maybe. . . just maybe. . . I'm ready to hate you.

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Time:
1:34
A.M
.

Re:
the blind leading the blind

I'm assuming they've got those voice-activated e-mail reading programs at your school. Otherwise you won't be able to read this, which would make me just as dopey as those devoted friends of yours who put a sign-in book at the entrance to the party without realizing that if you could actually read it, they'd be one idea short of a party theme.

Anyway, a bit of loving advice:

You might want to think about quitting the soothsaying business. because, with all due respect and love, you suck at it.

Sorry, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just taking my crap out on you. You're a good friend. Bad soothsayer. Good friend. You were right about one thing, though. It is definitely time to start my normal life. My normal life without anyone who is crazy and a liar to screw it up. I'm going to find me a normal girl and get started with that normal life first thing in the morning. Right after I pass out.

This has been the worst night of my life. No part of it was good.

Did I mention I was drunk off my ass? Yup.

But not so drunk that I can't do THIS. . .

* DELETED *

Cold Hollow Air

SHE HAD ONLY SLEPT FOR ABOUT
two hours. The other four had been spent waiting. Waiting for 8
A.M
. Waiting for another hint, a clue. Anything to lead her an inch closer to her father. Anything to give her life the remotest bit of purpose. She was doing everything in her power to block the rest out. She could do that for about an hour at a time. She could certainly do it at this very moment.

Gaia stepped out of the bright, glaring sunshine of Eleventh Street into the
cold, hollow air
of the church, listening as her footsteps echoed from the large wooden doors all the way down the aisle and through the pews.

The doors had been open, but the church was empty. She scanned her eyes across the dark pews and the shadows of the altar, searching for a sign of Sam, but there was nothing.

Minutes went by and still nothing. Not a soul had walked in or out of the church.

Gaia sat her aching body down in one of the front pews, trying to master her impatience—trying to give Sam as much time as he needed to show up.

And then finally she heard footsteps behind her.

“Sam?” she whispered, turning around. But there was no sign of him. Nothing. Just the sunlight obscuring
the doorway at the end of the aisle. Like they had been the footsteps of phantoms. Like there were ghosts roaming the Ukrainian church. Only Gaia didn't believe in ghosts. And she didn't like the uneasy feeling that had begun to build in the pit of her stomach.

This is wrong. Something about this situation is wrong. . . .

She shot up out of her pew and began to walk slowly down the aisle, back toward the wooden doors. But her instincts told her to speed up. She checked behind her more than a few times as she increased her speed, her rapid footsteps echoing louder as she came down harder with each step.

She was about a foot from the bright sun when someone slammed the doors in her face, trapping her in a
sudden pocket of total darkness.
She grabbed onto the handles of the door and shook with all her strength. But they were locked. Slammed in her face and locked.

Move, Gaia. It doesn't matter in what direction, just move!

The first gunshot whizzed right past her face, popping a hole in the wooden door as the sun shot through like a laser beam. And then another beam and another, as the deafening crack of gunshots exploded through the enclosed space, echoing like thunderclaps from the airy turrets of the ceiling.

Gaia leapt to her right in a series of consecutive
rolls, tumbling away from a string of gunshots that chased her into a corner of the church. And finally she heard footsteps. Running toward her faster and faster as the gunshots grew in volume and frequency. They had no intention of letting her make it out of this one. This one was clearly to be the successful assassination—the simplest of plans that would leave her with nowhere to run and no one to fight off.

She rose to her feet and sprinted back for the opposite side of the church as the bullet holes erupted closer and closer to her head. She wasn't sure this time. She wasn't sure how the hell she was going to make it out of this one.

Gaia suddenly realized that the shots were coming from
two
different places now. The shots from down on the floor and now another stream of shots raining down from somewhere up above. . .

Strength, Gaia. That's all you have left here. Your strength and your speed. Find a way out. Look for the light. . . .

She dropped down on her back behind the last row of pews and scanned the wall.

There. . . in the back corner. Light under the door. . .

She didn't hesitate. She shot up to her feet, took a running start down the aisle, and slid from the front of the church all the way to the back, ending with a forward roll to her feet and a leap to that back door. A barrage of shots followed her every step of the way as she kicked the door open and rolled through the doorway.

She found the light source above a decrepit wooden door. A filthy little window, just big enough for her to fit through. But there was no way she could jump high enough to reach it, and those footsteps were coming closer again.

Gaia grabbed a wooden chair from the corner and positioned it just below the window. She stepped back a few steps and then ran for it at full speed, pushing up off the chair and grabbing onto the window frame with both hands, hanging by her fingers.

A shot flew in below her feet, but Gaia hoisted herself up with the
sheer Strength
of her wrists and upper arms, shoving herself through the open window and landing on the rugged pavement outside, finally back in the glaring sunshine.

She took off at a full run, leaping all obstacles until she was on the crowded morning sidewalk, dodging the suits and briefcases as she ran quite literally for her life.

“Watch it!” she shouted, weaving her way farther and farther from the church. “Coming through!”

Alive
, she assured herself.
Still alive
.

She slowed to a fast walk at Eighth Street, panting for breath as sweat poured down her temples. It was as close to certain death as she had come in a long while, and escaping certain death had left her with an actual blip of appreciation for her life. But a moment more and
a dark rain cloud in her brain had blocked out the sun.
Given a few seconds to
think of anything but pure survival, Gaia's brain crashed up against the inevitable truth. The unbearable truth that she had pushed away so successfully in the last twenty-four hours. But now. . .

Sam was the only person on the planet who knew her cell phone number. He was the only person on the planet who could have written her that text message telling her to come to that death trap of a church. And when the shots had been fired. . . he'd been nowhere to be found.

Again.

Three strikes, Sam. That's three strikes.

Gaia slowed down on Sixth Street and collapsed on the stoop of a brownstone. She dropped her head in her hands and stayed in that exact position for what felt like hours.

Why, Sam? How could you possibly? What did they offer you? What did they make you believe?

But that wasn't really her question. Not for long.

The real question wasn't what they had told Sam to make him betray her. The real question was much simpler and of a far more pressing nature. The real question:

Who are they? Who the hell are they?

I
am so tired of hidden enemies. My whole life has been about hidden enemies, and I am done with it. I am so done with it.

I wish you would just show yourself. Whoever you are, just come out from behind the goddamn curtain and let's put our cards on the table already.

Do you work for Loki? That just wouldn't make any sense. He knows he's not my father now. That stupid battle for me is over. He's a goddamn vegetable.

Do you work for someone else? Who? And how did you get to Sam? How did you brainwash him? And what the hell have you done with my father?

I just want to understand why you're hiding. I want to understand why you're doing this to me. There has to be a reason. There's always a reason. People don't just assassinate for sport. There has to be an agenda. I can sense it now. Something floating high over my head that I'm not
even beginning to understand. Clue me in, you son of a bitch. Or is it sons of bitches?

Who
cares
? I don't even care.

All I really care about now is Ed. Ed and my father.

God, Ed, I wish you were here right now. I wish I could explain it all to you right now. Because you have it all wrong. You just have the whole thing wrong. I need to make you understand that. I need to sit you down and make you understand.

All we need is a car, Ed. And a diner for me to work in. And there's this house out there, waiting for us in some random suburban neighborhood that no one has ever even noticed. And we're going to put a down payment on it, and we're going to throw a couch and a bed in it, and we're going to live there, Ed. That's where we're going to live.

When I find my father. When this is all over. When I find the enemy.

here is a sneak peek of Fearless #27: SHOCK

GAIA

Some
mornings I wake up and everything seems okay. It's something my brain does. I suppose everyone's brain does it. You're in dreamland, and the wish-fulfillment fairies take over and douse you in their bogus happy-dust. Peek into your hidden desires and make you believe that you've satisfied them. Paint pictures that your eyes, flicking back and forth behind your closed lids, devour with an embarrassingly ravenous greed. And by the time you open your eyes, you're full of ill-gotten endorphins, convinced that all is well with the world.

Sometimes I can float there for thirty seconds, a minute, two minutes. I can will myself to believe I'm just a regular teenager whose biggest problem is figuring out how to sneak out after curfew. I can look at the sky outside my window and think, “Good morning, sunshine! Are we ready for another fabulous day?”

But reality always gets me in the end.

Before I can even wipe the
boogers out of my eyes, I start to remember.

That's when the fairies take off. The minute they see my eyelids flicker, they start laughing like a bunch of punky eight-year-olds and take off out the window. And all the good feelings they gave me get slowly squished by the lead-and-tar mixture of the very real mess that is my life. I sink under the weight of reality. And pretty soon the bright colors of my dream fade to a dismal black-and-white of facts.

Fact one: Ed, my boyfriend up until last night, but more importantly, the person who's been my closest friend through all of this—well, he hates me. Wants to keep distance between us, where there used to be nothing but the best of friendships.

Fact two: Sam, my first love-as in the person you never fully get over-turns up just long enough to ruin things with Ed, and then turns out to be a two-faced killer. Just like George Niven and everyone else I tried to trust.

And worst of all, fact three: My
dad is missing. A particularly gut-wrenching fact that should make all boyfriend troubles irrelevant. He's out there somewhere, and nobody seems to know the first thing about how to find him. I might be his only hope. Which only makes me that much more of a target for whoever is trying to kill me.

Oh yes. Trying to kill me. Shots fired, life in jeopardy. Someone actually wants to take this dismal life from me, and I'm damned if I'm going to let them. My father needs me too much.