Killer (17 page)

Immediately Gaia was on her feet, fists raised in defiance.

The man in the ski mask greeted her challenge by raising his right fist and striking out at her with his left. Gaia recognized the move immediately. It was straight out of the
Go Rin No Sho.
Not only washer opponent strong, but he clearly had yearsof martial artstraining as well.
Not that she'd expected anything less.

Gaia met his fist with a successful block. Her entire body was buzzing now with adrenaline, primed to match him move for move. Out of the corner of her eye Gaia saw Ella stand up.

“Get away from her!” Ella screamed. She lunged forward and delivered a forceful kick to the side of his knee. On a person of regular size and strength the move could easily cripple an opponent, but the man in the ski mask just looked at Ella as if she were an annoying little flea. He clamped his hand around her throat, his fingers nearly reaching around the circumference of it, then threw her against the cement rim of the fountain as if she were a rag doll.

Not good. Not good . . .

Ella was writhing in pain—but she was also struggling to get back up.

“Just stay down!” Gaia ordered.

The man in the mask thrust his powerful fist in Gaia's face, just barely grazing the tip of her nose. Instinctively Gaia grabbed his thick wrist with both
hands and rammed the toe of her boot deep into his shin.
It waslike kicking a rock wall. He didn't even flinch.
His fists flew at her like bullets. Right jab. Left. Left hook . . . Gaia's arms blocked every hit with exhausting speed, accelerating in velocity as he quickened his moves. There was no time to think, only to react. He drove her back and kept coming up on her, keeping her on the defensive. This was bad. Very, very bad . . .

Gaia leaped back several feet to gain distance between her and her opponent. As he charged at her, Gaia grabbed his wrist a second time and bent it, using his own strength against him to push back his fingers. The man in the mask grunted in pain. In a fraction of a second Gaia delivered a strong roundhouse kick to the neck that knocked him slightly off balance. He staggered a little while Gaia took another leap backward to gain some distance.

She stared deeply into his eyes.

Who are you? What's your connection to my father?
But even as the inevitable questions surfaced, the attacker regained his balance, then leaped in the air and executed a flawless front snap kick aimed right for her stomach. Gaia dodged the assault, then took after him. Sailing into the air, she launched into a flying side kick, focusing all of her power and energy into her legs at the center of his chest. The bottom of her boot had just barely connected when the man
clamped his hands onto her foot, then twisted it. Her body followed the complete rotation, spinning her 360 degrees in the air.

She knew she had been defeated even before her head hit the pavement.

 

ELLA WATCHED FROM THE SAFETY
of the fountain, filled with a sense of horror and helplessness as Gaia's head hit the ground. Desperately she wanted to intervene, to help Gaia in any way she could, but her arm had been badly broken in the fall. Nausea and pain overcame her as she stared down at her lifeless arm, with its shard of gleaming white bone protruding from her broken skin. There was nothing she could do.

Brave

Gaia lay still. The assassin stood over her.

I can't take any more of this,
Ella thought as she looked away. A steady stream of tears poured down her face.
Why would Loki want his niece dead?
Anguish shredded her insides as she thought about how insanely foolish she had been, taking all of her frustrations out on Gaia. It was
her
fault that her life had turned out badly. And all the time she had been blaming her foster daughter.
They should have
been friends. Partners.
Allies instead of enemies—

Yes!

Miraculously Gaia leaped to her feet. Ella was amazed by her stamina, even though Gaia looked a little unsteady. She and the man circled each other, arms and legs flying in a tangled mass. The assassin moved with effortless grace, as if he had hardly broken a sweat, while Gaia fought fiercely, matching punch for punch, kick for kick.

Ella's heart throbbed with admiration. She had never seen anyone so brave in her entire life.

 

LUCKILY THE BLOW TO THE HEAD
disoriented Gaia for only a few seconds. The pain throbbed, but she was still able to fight. The pain also had the added benefit of enraging her.

Crash

The man in the ski mask came at Gaia with a knee strike. She turned, thrusting her elbow hard into his solar plexus.
She waspure, pulsating adrenaline now, operating at full throttle.
Her reaction times were instantaneous; the force of her kicks had doubled in strength. There was even a flicker of surprise in her opponent's eyes as she fought
on. Every last cell in her body was running at peak performance.

But Gaia knew she couldn't last too much longer. She was going to run out of gas very soon.

Furiously Gaia smacked him with an elbow to the jaw. He rammed his heel into her sternum with a back kick. Gaia gasped in pain. He followed with another knee strike and a kidney punch. Gaia spun and struck at his neck with one, two, three hits. With concentrated force she drove the heel of her hand up into his nose, sending the towering man reeling, with blood soaking into his ski mask.

Gaia's stinging lungs devoured the air.
Already the adrenaline rush was beginning to subside, and exhaustion was kicking in.
She had only a few seconds left before collapse. The man's eyes flared with anger as he plowed toward her.

Just hang on . . . just for a few more seconds . . . ,
she told herself. Her vision was getting dimmer, and the sounds of Ella's crying were growing more distant. As he barreled toward her, Gaia planted her feet firmly on the ground. He thrust out his arm. As soon as he was within striking distance, Gaia reached out for it. Using his own weight and momentum, she turned with her back to him and leaned forward, flipping him over her shoulder. He landed with a heavy, certain thud.

Gaia's muscles quivered in rebellion, begging for rest.

She turned slowly, prepared to fully immobilize her opponent, when suddenly she felt a pair of large hands reaching for the collar of her coat. Before she knew it, he'd planted his feet on her stomach. Rocking backward, he threw her clear over his head.

As Gaia sailed through the air, the last thing she noticed was that the snow had stopped.

 

GAIA DIDN'T GET UP THIS TIME.

The Sum Total of a Life

And now that she was lying on the ground unconscious, Ella knew she was going to be next.

Clutching her broken arm with her good one, Ella wobbled to her knees. Slowly she inched backward, her nerves screaming at her the entire time, in a miserable effort to get away.

But the assassin wasn't interested in her.

Instead he remained standing over Gaia, staring down at her unmoving body. The man then opened his coat and pulled out a gun.

In a flash of horror Ella finally understood what was really going on.

This wasn't one of Loki's men. This guy worked for Mr. Xi. He was the assassin Ella had hired herself to kill Gaia.

And he was about to finish the job.

The full weight of shame came collapsing down on her now, burying her like in the rubble of an earthquake.
Tears wrenched from the very depthsof her soul and fell on her arms in heavy drops.
So this was what her whole life had come to. Of all the things she could have done with it, this was its sum total.

Through the blur of tears she saw the assassin press the barrel of his gun to Gaia's forehead.

“Ella Niven sent me to kill you,” he stated.

“Don't!” A strangled cry rose up from Ella's throat. Maybe there was still a chance to do something right. Something honorable. “Don't shoot her!”

The assassin put his finger on the trigger.

“There's been a mistake!” she sobbed. “I'm the one you want! She's Ella Niven! I'm Gaia Moore!”

His cold black eyes flashed from Gaia to Ella.
Doubt flickered there, as though he didn't want to believe her.
But then he took the gun off Gaia's head. Ella crawled forward and tilted her own head up toward him. The barrel felt cold against her skin.

Gaia will be all right now,
Ella told herself as she squeezed her eyes shut. And that meant her own life hadn't been a waste. No. She'd salvaged it.

The man pulled the trigger.

 

RETURNING TO CONSCIOUSNESS WAS
usually like surfacing after a deep-sea dive, rising up out of the still, dark weightlessness and returning to a world of noise, light, and motion. But this time, as Gaia's limbs began to stir, there was a noticeable absence of movement around her. It was as if the whole world had been silenced.

Alone Again

Am I dead?

Maybe the man in the ski mask had gotten the best of her, and now her life was over. But if that were so, then why did she feel pain? Now just wasn't the best time for things to end.
She still needed to confront her father. And then there wasSam. There wasso much unfinished business with him, some things she needed to say.
And what about Ella? She seemed to have everything sorted out, but didn't she still need Gaia—

A sharp twinge wrenched Gaia's back.

She rolled onto her side. As her nerve endings slowly returned to their normal state, she began feeling the pull of gravity again and the rough, weathered edges of the pavement underneath her body. The muffled
whoosh
of distant cabs hummed in her ears. Streetlamps glowed orange from behind her eyelids. Gaia was still earthbound.

With a heavy groan she opened her eyes. For a moment she expected another round of blows.

But nothing happened. The man in the mask seemed to have disappeared. He could have easily finished her off if he had wanted to, but for some reason, she was spared.

Like a camera coming into focus, Gaia's eyesight sharpened as blurry forms took on crisp edges. There was a black swatch rising out of the ground that morphed into the leg of a park bench. A broad patch of gray curving into the edge of the fountain. A blotch of pearly white molding itself into the form of a hand.

A hand.

Gaia propped herself up as her eyes followed the hand to a wrist.
He must've beat up Ella, too.
Her eyes continued to travel farther up the broken arm to the shoulder. Ella had been knocked out. A deep moan rattled in Gaia's chest as she willed herself upright.
It could be bad.
She was going to have to bring Ella to the emergency room.

But then she saw the blood. It had poured into a thick black pool around Ella's head, almost like a halo. It was more blood than anyone could stand to lose. And then there was the bullet hole. A clotted black circle in the middle of her forehead.

Ella was dead.

Gaia didn't have to be conscious when the scenario unfolded to know what had happened. No, the aftermath seemed to spell it out clearly.
Ella had stepped in when the man wasgoing to kill Gaia. She had sacrificed her own life to save Gaia's.

The assasin's words rang through Gaia's head:
“Ella Niven sent me to kill you.”

But somehow, it didn't even matter that Ella had sent him. That had been the old Ella: a lost, confused, and tortured soul. That had been before she and Gaia had reached an understanding. In the end, Ella had redeemed herself. She had been a true friend and ally after all.

Gaia collapsed beside Ella and rested her head on her lifeless shoulder as convulsive sobs rocked the very core of Gaia's soul. She was drowning in waves of gratitude for Ella's sacrifice and overwhelming grief for her loss. And shame. Just yesterday she had actually debated whether or not she was going to step in and help Ella while she was fighting for her life. And now, twelve hours later, a dark, black void was opening in Gaia's chest, right next to the spaces that her mother and Mary used to fill.

Now there was a new one, and it belonged to Ella.

 

IT WAS ALMOST MORNING.

Nice Dream

As Sam walked through the small-scale Arc de Triomphe at the Fifth Avenue entrance of Washington Square Park, he could feel the darkness lifting. The black outlines of buildings against the sapphire sky began to take on color as the light of dawn slowly seeped across the city. The winds had come to a standstill, and the temperature had risen to humane levels. Weatherwise, it seemed like it was going to be a pretty nice day.

Sam's feet moved slowly, still refusing to bring him back to his dorm for some badly needed sleep. His head felt thick and heavy, fogged over, and hunger gnawed at him relentlessly. But he had no desire for sleep or food. The only thing in this world that he wanted was Gaia—and she was gone.

He wondered where she was right now, what she was doing. She was probably sleeping, like most normal people at this hour. He wished for her a deep, restful sleep . . . and maybe a few pleasant thoughts that included him.

That will never happen.

But wherever Gaia ended up in life, he wished the best for her.
He wanted her to be happy and well taken care of, to be surrounded by people who loved her.
He wanted her to feel secure. He would have gladly provided all of those things for her. But he couldn't. He could
only pray that Gaia would find someone who could.

Sam's thoughts seemed to exist outside himself. His mind was moving in directions he hadn't imagined possible. He knew he'd meet someone else someday and maybe even settle down and get married—and he might even be content—but it would never be the same. No matter what life would bring him, he would always know that he had glimpsed perfection. . . . He had seen what love really could be. And once you'd had a taste of that and lost it, you could never be truly happy again.