Gone (20 page)

It was all suddenly chaos. All these men shouting at the same time. Loki was barking out orders; Ulrich and Skyler were desperately insisting that he put down the gun; Chris and Skyler were hollering at each other; Jake was calling out to Gaia to see if she was okay…. She could hardly separate one man's shouts from the others.

“I'm okay,” she uttered. “I am.” But her weak-voiced assurances were no match for the din of male voices in the room.

“You don't need to shoot!” Ulrich bellowed. “Please.” He placed his hands over his head.

“I said the floor!” Loki hollered. “Down on the floor, now!” He pushed the gun into Ulrich's head, and Ulrich followed orders. “Jake, undo those restraints.”

“Right,” Jake said. He rushed to the bed and finally relieved the aching pressure from Gaia's wrists and ankles. He took the IV needles out of her arm. Then he knelt at her bedside as she tried to rub the feeling back into her wrists. “Are you okay?”

Gaia finally got a good look at Jake's face, and her mouth dropped open in horror. He looked like he'd taken the beating of his life. He was covered in dark red bruises, and his hand was wrapped with a thick bandage. “Jesus, what happened to you?” she uttered.

“Don't worry about it,” he said, gripping her hand and smiling. “It doesn't matter now.”

She could tell he wanted to say more, but Skyler was screaming so loudly from behind him, she couldn't have heard him. Skyler was staring at his brother with the purest scorn.

“God
damn
it, Chris, you freaking screwup! What the hell have you done?”

“What are
you
doing?” Chris shot back. “What the hell were you going to do to her?”

“I
knew
it,” Skyler complained. “I
knew
you would find some way to screw this up. I
told
Dad, keep the dunce out of this—”

“Enough!” Loki barked, pointing the gun at Skyler. But Skyler's eyes were fixed on his brother's.

“You are so pathetic, Chris, you know that? You are so goddamn useless.”

“Shut your mouth!” Chris hollered. “I beat you both, and you know it.”

“
Beat us?
You just put us all in
jail
Chris.
All of us.
If you think you're not going with us, then you're an even bigger idiot than I thought you were. This is what we get for putting up with your pathetic pansy ass. This is what we get. God, you are
so
hopeless….” Skyler began to laugh with tragic futility. “Hey, does anybody here want a gay brother? Because we are so done with him.”

“I said,
enough,
” Loki ordered.

“Anyone?” Skyler laughed harder. “Gaia? Jake? No? Well, I'm sure they'll want you in prison, Chris. I'm sure you'll have a ball. I'm sure you'll be somebody's bitch by the end of the first day—”

“Shut your goddamn
mouth!
” Chris howled.

No one expected it. No one expected him to reach for Loki's gun. It all happened so fast, before anyone could really think.

Chris barreled into Loki, taking him by complete surprise, and he snatched the gun from his hand. He
thrust it in Skyler's direction, his eyes blazing with anger, and he began to fire off shot after wild shot. The window shattered into jagged pieces, holes exploded in every book, every picture frame. Skyler was knocked back against the wall as two shots clipped his right arm. Loki reached for Chris. Gaia pushed off from the bed to knock him down.

Jake was a step of ahead of her. He leapt up from the floor and flew for Chris's torso….

But two gaping bullet holes erupted in Jake's chest.

A rare sound fell from Gaia's mouth. A scream. Loud, and deep, and quick. Jake fell flat at Chris's feet as blood began to pour from his wounds.

All Gaia had left were her reflexes. She shot across the room and kicked the gun from Chris's hand. It dropped to the floor as Loki tackled him to the ground. Gaia turned back for the gun and realized that it had dropped right in front of Ulrich. He snatched it up from the floor and began to rise, and Gaia knew at that moment that she was prepared to kill him. There would be no remorse. She smacked the gun from his hands with a sweeping roundhouse kick, and then she riddled his body with a punishing combination of kicks and punches until his face was covered with blood. She grabbed his head with an animal instinct, ready to snap his neck….

But the booming voice from the hallway stopped her just short of murder.

“CIA!” the voice bellowed.

The sound of stampeding feet echoed through the hallway as a pack of black-suited agents suddenly stormed the bedroom. One of them pulled Ulrich immediately from her grip, tugging his hands behind his back and cuffing him.

“Ms. Moore? Are you all right?” The agent looked hard at her for some kind of acknowledgment. “It's over,” he assured her. “It's all over.”

Gaia didn't even look at him. She shoved him out of the way and dropped down next to Jake, grabbing hold of his hand.

“Jake?” She searched his eyes desperately. He was taking shallow, labored breaths. His body wasn't moving. Only his eyes. His eyes turned to hers, and she could see him trying to forge a reassuring smile with his lips as he stared at her. The entire front of his shirt was drenched in blood.

“We need an ambulance here!” Her voice cracked as she called out. “Somebody call nine-one-one….”

She felt Jake's grip beginning to loosen in her hand. The remnants of the smile were fading from his face.

“Stay with me, Jake,” she ordered. “Listen to me. Keep your eyes open. You stay with me.”

He forced his eyes open again and squeezed her hand. But she was losing him. She could feel it. She could see it in his shallow breaths and his dilating pupils. She was losing him.

JAKE STOPPED BREATHING. AND SO did Gaia. Gaia wasn't even sure what was keeping her from falling onto the floor right next to him. She couldn't feel her body anymore. She couldn't even feel his hand, still lying in hers, limp and without a pulse. She knew there were tears pouring from her eyes, but she wasn't crying. She wasn't there anymore. She was no longer in that room.

None of this was real. It was that simple. It was the only possible explanation for this uninhabitable moment. Jake wasn't lying on the floor. Agents weren't pronouncing him dead and prying his hand from her tight grip, lifting his body off the ground, and carrying it slowly down the hallway. Ulrich and Chris weren't being read their rights and escorted out of the room. Skyler wasn't having his bloody arm tugged brutally behind his back and cuffed. He wasn't growling about the pain as nobody listened.

It simply wasn't possible. Her curse couldn't have taken another victim. It had to be a dream. Loki was sitting next to her on the floor with tears in his eyes. That couldn't be real. Because he never cried.

He was kneeling beside her, watching as the agents carried Jake's body down the hall. “I am so sorry,” he breathed. She couldn't tell if he was talking to her or to Jake. He turned and spoke to her vacant profile as
her eyes stayed fixed on the empty hallway. “This never should have happened,” he said. “None of this.”

“It's not happening,” she replied in a detached monotone, shaking her head slowly. “None of this is happening.”

“Gaia—”

“
Shhh.
” She shut her eyes and wrapped herself deeper in a thick, impenetrable blanket of denial. She would just stay under the blanket until this moment went away—until Jake walked back through that door, alive and smiling, with those ungodly bruises erased from his face. He would walk back down the hallway and kneel down next to her, and she would kiss his handsome, clean-shaven face and thank him for barging through Skyler's bedroom doorway when he did—for saving her life, for leaping fearlessly from the ground to disarm Chris. She would thank him for everything, and then she would forgive him. For falling under Loki's spell and for not believing in her. After all, he had been right. She
had
needed him in that final moment. If he had listened to her, then she wouldn't be alive right now.

But Jake would have been. And that had been her point. It had been her point all along. They had both been right and they had both been wrong. But only one of them was gone now, and as far as she was concerned… it was the wrong one. But no,
no.
He was coming back. He'd be coming back in just a second. Just one more second…

The cold wet tears sealed her eyelashes shut. When she felt Loki's hand take hers, she didn't even pull away. That was how numb she was.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Gaia, please. I am so, so sorry. I never—”

“You did this!” she screamed. It had come roaring from out of nowhere. A wave of primitive anger. It sprang from deep in her chest like a hundred-year-old water pipe that had finally burst. Her eyes were wide open, shooting daggers through Loki, ripping the skin from his face. “
You
brought him into this….
You
…”

“I know,” he said. His voice quavered as another tear fell from his eye. “I know that. I—”

“This is
your
fault!”

“I know that….” It seemed to be all he could say.

Her anger dropped away just as quickly as it had appeared. It was like a death spasm, an aftershock. She had spewed out the last ounce of her strength, and now she was even weaker than before—sapped of all her remaining force. Her well of feelings had gone bone-dry. Even the tears had stopped. She could feel the air passing through her hollow frame.

“Gaia, I know what I've done,” he said. “And I will never be forgiven for it. Not for any of it, not by anyone. And I never should be. But I know… you will survive this. You need to understand that. That's the only thing that matters now—that you will survive all
of it. You're not like me. You haven't gone cold, you haven't given in to spite, you haven't lost faith. You survive. You survive everything. And you'll survive this too—”

“Shut up!” she snapped. “Stop talking.”

“I'm sorry.” He went silent. But he wouldn't stop staring at her. She would have done something to him—something violent—but she didn't have it in her anymore. She needed all her remaining energy to maintain her denial. She couldn't allow one more crack in her emotional armor. One more crack and there would be a chain reaction of geological proportions—volcanic fissures would spread across her frozen-over heart like wildfire and she would simply combust; she would be lying in molten pieces on the ground.

“If they had just gotten here sooner,” she breathed, staring down at the pool of blood on the floor. “If they had gotten here one minute sooner, he'd still be—”

Gaia cut herself off. It had all happened so fast, she hadn't even had a chance to think about it. She was going to call the Agency. That had been the plan. Once the Rodkes made their move, she had planned to take them down and then call in the agents. But she'd never gotten the chance. So then who…?

“Who called the Agency?” she asked herself. She hadn't even meant to say it out loud.

“I did,” Loki replied.

Gaia's eyes widened in spite of herself. She couldn't even stop herself from turning back to his eyes with sheer disbelief. “You called them…?”

Loki looked grateful just to have her attention again. “I called them,” he confirmed. “Gaia, this has to end. All of it, all the violence in your life, it has to stop. That's the key to your survival, and that's all I care about now. You can't survive with all these enemies hovering around you. Not just the Rodkes, but
all
of your enemies—all the people who have tried to hurt you…

“
I
have to stop,” he declared. “I can't be your enemy anymore. I won't. I'll never understand how it happens, I'll never understand why it happens, but I refuse to let it happen again.”

Gaia couldn't speak. If she attempted even one word, she was sure that would begin the internal combustion process.

“I need to repent,” he uttered quietly. “For so many crimes. More than I can even list. I need to repent for the attempted murder of your father and Sam Moon… for the murder of Josh Kendall… and Mary Moss.” Loki glanced at her. I won't be bothering you for a while. I need to disappear and repent.”

Gaia's spine dropped to subzero temperatures. The name hovered in the air like poison gas. If she breathed it in, she would surely die. But she wasn't breathing. Her lungs and her heart seemed to cease functioning. She was unable to blink or swallow. All
she could do was stare at Loki's darkly remorseful eyes as he nodded to confirm it.

Mary?
Loki killed Mary? Gaia had always thought it was Mary's dealer, Skizz. She had never thought anything else, ever. She had barely even
met
her uncle then—she hadn't even known he existed. But when he confessed it, she knew it was true. He had destroyed her life before she even knew him. He had stabbed Mary Moss in cold blood, and Gaia had watched it happen. A seventeen-year-old girl. Gaia's best friend in the world.

Now Gaia felt like the one who had been stabbed in the heart. Her eyes began to sting with pain and she could no longer close them. She watched in frozen silence as Loki touched her shoulder with one last glance of deep contrition. He offered more apologies, but she couldn't even hear them. It was like she was watching him speak with the sound turned off. He rose up off the floor, kissed her cheek, and then backed away from her slowly, backing farther and farther down the hallway… and then vanishing from sight.

Gaia still couldn't move. She could barely even focus her thoughts on Loki. She was cursed to keep seeing those images rerun through her head—playing, and rewinding, and then playing again, over and over. Images of blood-soaked shirts. Mary's and Jake's. So much blood pouring out of their chests, right where their hearts should have been. Images of Gaia clinging to each one of them as they
bled—knowing that she was the one and only reason that these remarkable people had endured so much pain… and lost their lives before they'd even started.