Missing (3 page)

“Gaia? Are you all right?”

“Stay away,” came the harsh reply.

Tom winced. There was such hatred, oozing from each word. “Gaia, please. I—”

“Get away from the door,
Loki!
“she screamed. “
I know who you are.
You . . . you killed her. You killed her! How
could
you?”

Tom staggered away from the door. It was as if a broadsword had been plunged through his chest. Even in the worst of his nightmares, he'd never imagined hearing his daughter speak those words. He knew very well which “her” Gaia meant.

Katia. His sweet Katia. Gaia's mother . . .

“Dear God,” he uttered involuntarily.

He's poisoned her mind. Oliver has poisoned her mind.

 

I've
always had a special place in my heart for rodents. I was obsessed with hamsters and gerbils when I was a kid. I was in love with my pet field mouse Jonathan.

I think everyone figured I'd grow out of it. But it hasn't happened yet.

The fact of the matter is, sitting there curled up in a pathetic little ball in that heinous, industrially perfumed airplane bathroom, I realized just how close I felt to all those poor hamsters and gerbils I'd mercilessly forced into pethood. Because when you boil it down to its essential elements . . . our lives are really exactly the same. Meaning mine and the average rodent's. We both live in the same ignorant hell.

See, that poor little furry bastard thinks he's free. He figures,
Hey. I've got free will. I can go wherever the hell I want. I can be whatever I want to be.

I'm just gonna climb right into this little metal wheel here and head for the hills.

Twenty minutes later that ignorant ball of fluff is sweating his ass off, panting like an Alaskan husky on a New York summer day. He figures he must be at least a mile farther in his life, maybe even two. Then he takes a look around and he sees the truth. He's right there in the exact same little piece of shit wheel, in the exact same little piece of shit box.

Free will? What a freaking joke. Sure, he's got the will. It's the
free
part that's the problem—see, because he's in a goddamn
box
. A big glass box. And sure, he can see the rest of the world. He can
imagine
being a part of the rest of the world. But a few steps forward and—
clank
—reality smacks him in his innocent little black-eyed face.

That's me.

I'm that hamster running my
ass off in Loki's little metal wheel, in Loki's little glass box.

How could I have been so blind? How did I not notice something when that demented sicko picked me up at the airport? How did it all slip right over my head?

I know the answer.

It's obvious. The only way I'd miss something like that . . . is if I wanted to.

I thought
I
had free will. I thought I'd broken free from my doom-saturated glue trap of a life and that I was going to change it. I thought I could change my life. What the hell was I thinking? I was never free from anything. I was never escaping anything. The whole time I was just being suckered into Loki's plans. He'd been controlling every move I made.

And my life will always be the exact same. Nothing will ever change. My fate was decided long
before I had anything to say about it. All I'm doing is scampering my little feet in my little wheel, mile after mile. And to tell you the truth . . . I'm tired. I'm exhausted.

Romeo (of William Shakespeare fame) was fortune's fool.

I'm fortune's hamster.

Fortune's sucker. Fortune's shit-for-brains.

I'll just be scampering my little feet forever until it's time for someone to flush me down this airplane toilet, with its beautiful crystal blue water and its reek of human feces and sweet perfume.

That's who I am.

Oh, well. At least I'm me again.

I
can't even begin to describe what it feels like to be free and clear.

There was a moment there about a month ago when I seriously thought I'd never be free again. I felt like every day would just be another day in hell. Gaia despised me. Her insane foster mom had lured me into bed one night when I was plastered, and I'd been paying for it every second since. Of course I had no idea at the time that she was any relation to Gaia. She just picked me up at a bar, and I was too drunk to say no.

Had I known Ella was a fatal attraction psycho who was going to kill my roommate, I probably would have made some adjustments to the beer goggles.

Ella haunted me every single day, bombarding me with phone calls, e-mails, surprise visits. But once I'd realized just how sick she was—once she'd forcibly injected an overdose of heroin
into my roommate Mike Suarez's arm just to threaten me . . . I knew it was probably only a matter of time before she went ahead and killed me.

I'd been walking the city streets for weeks, looking just like those vacant-eyed homeless junkies in Alphabet City. White as a sheet. Dark crimson circles under my eyes. The works. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't think. I couldn't do an ounce of work. My 3.85 average was taking a nosedive.

I was running from Ella. I was desperately searching for Gaia, trying to figure out how to tell her the truth, praying she could find it in her heart to forgive me. I felt like one of those lab rats we use for our tests in class, sitting in a cage while they just dosed me with electric shocks over and over—with nowhere to run.

No, you know what I really felt like?

I felt like Odysseus.

That ultimate of all kick-ass seafaring warriors from Homer's
Odyssey
.

I mean, Odysseus couldn't catch a break. He was out there in his creaky wooden ship, and everyone and everything was trying to take him down. He had to take on the Cyclops, gigantic multiheaded snake beasts; even the
gods
wanted out of the picture. And the whole time all he really wanted was just to get home to his ultrafine wife, eat a good meal, et cetera.

And that was really all I wanted. All these tortured weeks Ella was stalking me, with Mike dying in a hospital bed and my college career going down the toilet, all I'd really wanted the whole time—since the first day I'd seen her—was Gaia. Just to be with her in a quiet moment, and touch her skin, and tell her that I loved her.

And now . . .

I have her. My proverbial ship has come in.

And the worst is over.

Finally. Ella is gone. Mike is gone too, unfortunately, and that still makes me ill. But what I need right now is just some time to breathe like a regular NYU sophomore.

I am due for a nice long stint of normalcy. That's all I want. Just to play chess, write letters to Gaia in Germany until she comes home, and do some serious studying. I mean, I've been dreaming about the day when the biggest thing I had to worry about was an organic chemistry midterm. And that day is today.

I'm free at last. I can think again. I can eat again. I can sleep again.

It was like being trapped in a box with a thousand killer bees.

 

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

There was an annoying pounding on Sam's dorm-room door.

Knock knock knock.

“Mr. Moon?” an obnoxious voice shouted. “Hey, Mr. Moon, open up, please. Rise and shine.” Sam shook his head and squinted at his bedside clock: 3:43. He didn't have classes for the rest of the day. He'd just wanted to catch a few z's before going to the lab that night . . . and who the hell
was
that? He ripped his sheet off with a loud dissatisfied grunt, straightening out his boxers and running his hands through his unruly curls. He snatched a T-shirt off the floor and tried to pull it over his head with one hand as he went to the door.

“Who is it?” He groaned.

“It's the NYPD.”

Suddenly Sam was wide awake. His heart took a brief pause from beating as his neck went stiff and cold. This didn't make any sense. He'd already given his statement to the police. What were they doing back at his dorm? His hands began to shake as he fumbled with the lock on the door—
the lock he'd just recently installed for protection against Ella.
He cracked open the door. His insides squeezed.

The same two detectives who had interviewed him
before about Mike's murder were shoving their badges in his face yet again. As far as Sam could tell, they'd seemed to have learned their entire detective shtick watching too many episodes of
Law & Order
and
NYPD Blue
.

“Hello, Mr. Moon,” the heavyset one stated in an overly formal voice. His thinning hair seemed to be glued on his scalp with some industrial chemical compound. “You may remember us. I'm Detective Bernard. This is my partner, Detective Reilly. You think we might ask you a few more questions about the night of Mike Suarez's murder?”

Sam swallowed. This was not good. The more the cops asked, the greater the chance of uncovering something about Ella—about
him
and Ella.

“I thought I'd answered all your questions,” Sam said, trying to keep his lips moving normally as he spoke through the partially opened door. His mouth was dry. “I really told you everything I know. I mean . . . if I knew something else, I'd tell you.”

“Oh, we understand, son,” Detective Reilly said. Sam could detect the sourest reek of morning-after booze on Reilly's breath. He had the feeling Reilly's pores were always working overtime to excrete the excess Budweiser from his system. “We were just wondering if you'd remembered anything else from that night.”

“No,”
Sam stated. “I just said . . . if I remembered something else, I'd tell you—”

“Hey, did you ever find the movie ticket from that night?” Reilly asked with a feigned you're-my-pal grin.

That movie ticket.
Sam didn't think of himself as stupid, but when the cops had asked him where he was that night, he'd been so anxious to keep himself out of it that he'd offered up this moronic lie about a foreign film at the Angelika.

“Nope,” Sam answered with his own moronic grin and a shrug. “I checked all my pants, but you know, laundry and whatnot....”

There was a long, awkward pause. Sam could feel beads of sweat running down the back of his neck.

“So you don't remember anything?” Bernard asked again.

Were they deaf? Sam couldn't believe he was still having this inane conversation.

“Do you remember who else was in the dorm that night?” Bernard added quickly.

“Do you remember if anyone was smoking marijuana?” Reilly threw in. “Or using drugs of any kind?”

Sam cringed. “No, Detective,” he forced himself to reply. “Don't recall any drugs.” He was losing his patience, and his nerves were getting the better of him. His left hand was beginning to inch his door closed in spite of himself. “I'm sorry. But thank you . . . and . . . if I remember something, I'll call you first thing.”

“But you don't—,” Bernard started.

“I'm sorry,” Sam interrupted, slamming the door.

He'd had all he could take. He couldn't believe they were still hounding him. His life was supposed to be smooth sailing from now on—and this was what he had to deal with? He couldn't understand why they couldn't leave it alone.
Mike was dead, and Ella was dead.
There was nobody left to blame.
As far as the law went, he was in the clear.

The best thing to do was just to sleep it off. So they had a few more questions. He'd told them he didn't remember anything more. That was that. A few more hours of sleep and things would be back to normal. Maybe he'd even have another dream about Gaia.

Sam pulled off his T-shirt and walked back toward the bed. But somehow he didn't feel sleepy anymore.

“GAIA, PLEASE,” HER FATHER'S VOICE
begged through the bathroom door. “You have to listen to me. Oliver has told you so many lies. He's poisoned your mind, sweetheart; please listen—”

“Shut up!” Gaia screamed. Her ears couldn't stand to hear that voice. It was a voice she'd yearned to hear for so long . . . but it was too upsetting, too disconcerting, too confusing.

That kind voice belonged to a cold, calculating murderer.

“Gaia—”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Different scenarios began racing through her head:
Option 1: Subdue him until I can hand him over to the German authorities. Option 2: Just kill him now—avenge my mother's death. Option 3: Just kill myself now—put an end to the tragedy that is clearly my life. . . .

But she was kidding herself. She had no options. All she could do was sit in that bathroom and rot.
It was like being trapped in a box with a thousand killer bees.
Nowhere to run. Nothing to do but sit there and get stung over and over by her father's words.

“Don't you understand?” his voice pleaded through the door. “Oliver tricked you, Gaia. I'm not Loki. Oliver is Loki. Somewhere along the way his mind turned. He became mentally ill. His soul just . . . disappeared. He's evil, Gaia. Pure evil—”

“You're lying!” Gaia snapped.