Killer (8 page)

It was funny how fear suddenly disappeared when you had nothing else to lose.

 

SO HERE THEY WERE. IN THE FLESH.
Just as she'd always envisioned.

Mission of Pain

Gaia couldn't believe how much this actually
hurt.

Her insides churned, bathed in bitter acid. She knew she would confront this very scene. She knew it. Sam and Ella—together. Those four words had been branded upon every moment of her consciousness like a neon sign that was never turned off. But somehow to actually see Ella's slimy tentacles wrapped around him . . . it wasn't just revolting.
It was a scene that approached grossness of astronomical proportions.

Gaia's chest rose and fell quickly. Her pulse increased. A lump welled in her throat. She'd never be able to forget this. She knew it. Even seconds ago a tiny and irrational part of her had been clinging to the wild hope that this could have all been some huge misunderstanding. That the e-mails were somehow fake. That Ella had made everything up. But no. God . . . what she wouldn't give to trade fearlessness for an inability to love. At least being fearless had a few perks. Falling in love never paid off. Ever.

Screw it.

She was going to take full advantage of her
condition—in a way she'd never done before. Her blood went from simmer to boil. She brazenly marched to their table and slammed her fist down on it—so hard that Ella's wineglass rattled and a few drops swished over the rim and onto the table.

Sam looked like he'd been punched. His face went pale. His hazel eyes bulged. He threw Ella's arm off his shoulders. “Gaia!”

“That's right,” Gaia hissed, her voice straining. Her cracked heart thundered in her rib cage. “So I guess it's true. You
are
the scum of the earth.”

Instantly he started shaking his head, his body jolting as though he had just been zapped by a cattle prod. His soft lips trembled. For a fleeting moment Gaia almost regretted the look of pain she had caused him. But not quite.
Pain was her mission.
She wanted to see a lot more of it.

“What are you doing here?” Ella whispered. “I thought you were gone.”

Gaia forced a brittle laugh. An electric fizz filled her body, the same sensation she always got before combat. She had a fleeting vision of cracking Ella's spine across her knee—snapping it in half like a piece of bamboo—and seeing Ella's face as she shrieked in pain. “I hope you brought your gun,” Gaia said. “Because you're gonna need it again.”

Sam's gaze flashed between the two of them. “What's
going on?” he whispered. “What are you talking about?”

“You didn't know?” Gaia asked, staring straight at Ella. “She shot at me.”

“
What?
” Sam shouted. “I don't believe—”

“Why not?” Gaia barked. “Ask her. Just go ahead and ask her.”

Sam blinked at Ella. “You . . . shot Gaia?”

Ella didn't answer. Her eyes narrowed into slits.

He turned back to Gaia. “Okay, look, Gaia, please,” he begged quaveringly. “This is all a big misunderstanding. I came here to meet you—”

“That's a lie,” Ella interrupted. Very calmly, she turned to Sam. “Tell Gaia the truth,” she commanded. “Tell her you sent me an e-mail telling me to meet you here so we could talk about our future together.”

Gaia's nostrils flared. For once she found she could actually side with Ella.
That
was how completely twisted this whole scenario had become.

“But I didn't do that,” Sam protested.

Without warning, Ella lurched out of the booth. “Fine,” she spat. Her eyes darted between the two of them. “You kids hash it out among yourselves, okay? I have better things to do. But I'm warning you, Gaia—you can't come home. You've run away. You're no longer welcome. So you better stay out of my life.”

And with that, she turned and fled.

 

THE MOMENT ELLA STALKED OUT
of the restaurant, Sam collapsed back in his seat, overcome by two simultaneous, powerful, and contradictory emotions. One was relief—relief that she was gone, relief that he could be alone with Gaia.
The other wasfear.
Ella hadn't left to give them privacy. Ella had left because she was up to something that very well might put either one of them in danger.

Checkmate

But he couldn't worry about her now. He could only focus on salvaging what he could with Gaia. If that was even possible . . .

Gaia was still standing in front of the booth. Her beautiful face had turned as cold and hard as marble. She looked just about ready to walk out, too. But he couldn't let that happen. He
wouldn't.

“I know what you must be thinking,” he forced himself to whisper, looking her in the eye. He reached for her hand, desperate to make some sort of connection. Gaia recoiled, as though she had been burned.“If you just let me explain—”

“Explain
what?”
Gaia hissed. “That you slept with my foster mother?”

Sam's mouth remained open, but the breath flowed from his lungs like air out of a punctured tire. There
was
no explanation for . . . what he did. But maybe he could explain what he was doing here with Ella. At least he could account for
that.

“This morning I got an e-mail from you to meet me here,” he said.

Miracle of miracles, she actually sat down. But it didn't look like she was giving in. It looked like she was sitting down to block his path so he would have a harder time escaping. Her expression was hardly conciliatory. It was threatening. This really
was
like a game of chess, wasn't it? Only he had already lost, long before this move....

“I never sent you an e-mail,” Gaia stated simply.

“Then Ella must have sent it,” Sam countered, his voice rising. “Because I got a message with your name on it. It's on my computer. I can show you.”

“Don't bother.” Gaia's voice wasn't cold. It was empty. Completely devoid of feeling. Somehow the emptiness was much more painful to Sam than a scream. It meant that she just didn't care.

“Listen, I wouldn't lie to you, Gaia,” Sam pleaded. “I swear.”

“Then why were you sitting here, all over Ella?” Gaia asked. “I mean, come on, Sam—”

“She
was all over
me!”
Sam cried, unable to control himself.

Gaia shrugged carelessly. “Oh. I didn't realize there was a distinction.”

Sam ran his fingers through his hair. This wasn't working. Of course not. He sounded impossibly lame. How could he defend himself when even
he
couldn't blame Gaia for not believing his story?
Surprisingly,
though, he wasn't nearly asnervousashe had been only secondsago. It wasfunny how fear suddenly disappeared when you had nothing else to lose.

“Look, Ella means nothing to me,” he stated. Sam flinched at the sound of his own words, which were far less eloquent than the ones rolling around feverishly in his head. “Whatever crazy stuff is going on between you two, I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

Gaia said nothing. Her eyes were distant. Was she even listening?

“Maybe I should've told you about that thing with Ella sooner, but I couldn't get the words out,” he added, plowing forward desperately.“I didn't want to hurt you.”

Still no response. Gaia seemed completely cut off from him in every way. So unlike every other time he'd been in her presence.
From the moment they met, Sam had felt an unspoken connection with her, a bond.
It was as though certain things never needed to be said between them—they were just automatically understood. Like the fact that he would never lie to her and would never do anything to hurt her. Was he crazy? Was that connection stuff only something he dreamed up? Why wouldn't she believe him now?

“Heather broke up with me. It's all over between us. I'm single now—”

“Forget it, Sam,” she interrupted. Her tone softened.
She laughed once. “You know, it's funny how the imagination works.”

“I'm not lying, Gaia,” he insisted. “This isn't a product of my imagination—”

“I'm not talking about
you
. I'm talking about me. Because I realize now that I never knew you. All these months . . . I mean, we've just been kind of passing each other, like planes in a big sky—each going our separate ways. And I'm glad. Because I realize now that you are the most vile human being I've ever met. Everything else was just in my imagination. I actually imagined I had feelings for you....”

A searing pain shot down Sam's spine. That was it. He'd blown it. He'd blown everything. To know that Gaia had felt something for him in the past . . . It was almost too much to bear. The truth had destroyed him. He might as well give up now. There was no point in going on. He'd been checkmated.

 

THE RESTAURANT SEEMED TO RECEDE
into the distance. Gaia stared at the tabletop, at Ella's glass of wine, sitting there before her. She felt her entire body shutting down.

Glowing Warmth

It was the exact same phenomenon
that happened at the end of an exhausting fight. First her eyesight began to dim, then her hearing faded. Her muscles and joints would weaken to the point of collapse.
It lasted for only a few minutes, but for that brief time she wasenveloped in a feeling of powerlessness.
Of vulnerability. Of being completely exposed.

And she hated it.

Still, being powerless after a fight wasn't nearly as miserable as being emotionally powerless. As
this.
At least when someone was pounding on you, you knew it was bound to end soon and your body would eventually heal. Or you'd die. Either way, it would end.

“...I didn't even know she was your foster mom.” Was Sam still talking? She could barely hear his voice. It was as if the painful words were being absorbed right through her pores, slipping into her bloodstream.

“. . . went to a bar and got drunk . . . She just kind of appeared out of nowhere—”

“Stop,” Gaia commanded, squeezing her eyes shut and slumping helplessly against the seat. “Just stop. I don't want to hear about this.”

“But I want you to know, I was depressed about you and your boyfriend,” Sam persisted.

Gaia's eyelids fluttered open. She scowled at
Sam. Now he was telling lies that had no
hope
of working. He was clutching at straws—bizarre ones, at that. “I don't have a boyfriend, Sam, okay? So stop. Nothing you're saying is making any sense. . . .” Waves of agony washed over her, reaching excruciating heights that rivaled even the mysterious murder of her mother.
Ever since she met Sam, Gaia felt that there wasa reason to go on with her miserable life.
For whatever reason, Sam had given her life purpose. He'd been . . . different.

But that was just a dream—an impossible dream of somebody who didn't even exist. Sam was a lot like her father in that way. Somebody who never delivered. He had done something cheap, just like every other guy looking for a good time. Gaia knew that there was no way she could be with him now. And without Sam, there was no point in caring about anything anymore. He had been her last hope.

More than anything, Gaia wanted to deaden the pain, but her body was wide awake. Her mind was alert—refusing to enter the bliss of unconsciousness. Almost without even realizing it, she found her fingers reaching for the base of the wineglass, for that heavy red liquid. Gaia remembered her dinner with Uncle Oliver, at that expensive restaurant, and how soothing the wine had been.
It had enveloped her in a glowing warmth. . . .

“Tell me, Gaia,” Sam begged, his voice growing more and more feverish even as it faded from her senses. “What do I need to do to make you believe me? Just tell me, and I'll do it.”

“Nothing,” she answered, raising the glass. “There's nothing you can do.”

 

PEARL FIERCELY KICKED THE POINTED
toe of her shoe into the base of a streetlight. What the hell was Ella
doing?
She shouldn't be walking. She should be convulsing. Never,
ever
had a target escaped once, let alone twice. Pearl might understand it if her target was exceptionally clever. But Ella was an egocentric fool. Annihilating her should have been easy.

Death Sentence

Pearl's pulse increased ever so slightly. Loki was not going to like this. At all.

She didn't fear him, of course. No. But he had powerful friends. He had an army of henchmen. Pearl was just one person . . . a freelancer, a lone operative. Sweat broke out on her forehead. She
didn't
fear him. She could always escape. But escape would end her career. Which wasn't an option.

Even as these thoughts raced through her skull, she knew that Loki was waiting for her to call to tell him the job was finished. By now he must have suspected that something was up. She couldn't call and lie to him; he'd see right through that.

No—she had to follow Ella. But she couldn't. Not just yet.

Why the hell didn't I bring a gun?
Pearl wondered angrily, watching Ella's retreating form vanish among the traffic and pedestrians. It would be so easy to pump a few rounds into Ella's back and vanish before anyone even knew what was happening....

The problem was that Loki's niece was still inside with Sam and that glass of poisoned wine. Loki had made it crystal clear that if anything happened to Gaia, the consequences would be dire. Sure, the chances of Gaia's drinking that wine probably weren't huge. But it was a risk Pearl couldn't afford to take. So in essence, she was faced with an impossible juggling act: Keep one person alive, and kill the other.