Run (13 page)

JESUS! IF ED WEREN'T ALREADY
sitting down, he might have passed out. "Heather!"

She was standing there, holding the cell phone she'd just snatched out of his hand. He could hear the operator's voice coming through the mouthpiece.

"Hello? Nine-one-one emergency? Hello?"

Apparently Heather was oblivious. She punched the end button.

"How dare you feed me to the wolves like that!" Heather fumed, hands on hips.

He quite seriously wished he could strangle her. "Heather, listen. I'm not kidding around. You have got to get out of here!"

"You can't tell me what to do, Ed," she spat out, her eyes wild. "It's not like we're going out anymore."

Like he'd ever told her what to do when they were together. He decided to chalk that inane remark up to hysteria, which she was clearly on the verge of.

"Heather . . ."

"Where the hell is that little bitch?" she demanded. "And where is Sam? He'd better be all right, or I swear I'm holding you and Gaia responsible. Now, where are they?"

Ed clenched his teeth and jabbed his finger in the direction of a spot on the pathway, roughly twenty yards ahead. "There they are."

Heather looked.

Fortunately, he was able to reach up and flatten his hand over her mouth in time, or her shriek would have certainly given them away.

HE SLAMMED THE SILENCER ONTO
his .44, then stepped out onto the path in front of CJ, who skidded to a flailing halt. The kid had his gun now. He must have found it and grabbed it so that he could go back and finish Gaia off.

That wasn't going to happen.

Blood still gushed from his nose, and his bare chest was scraped raw. When he saw the gun, his dark eyes got huge. He lifted his hand and aimed at the gunman's chest. That was all that was needed.

Perhaps the last thought ever to register in CJ's brain was something along the lines of
He's got eyes like her.

The bullet hit him just above the bridge of his ruined nose, right in the place where all thoughts began.

And ended.

"He remained on his feet a good five seconds,
a tiny rivulet of crimson
trickling from the corner of his mouth, his eyes bulging with what looked more like surprise than anything else.

Then his knees buckled.

And he began to fall.

And with the soundless echo of the boy's last, unspoken plea raging in his mind, Tom Moore disappeared into the darkness before CJ even hit the ground.

GAIA HEARD IT, LIKE SOMETHING OUT
of a dream.

A song. What was it? She knew it. Her father used to like it. An oldie. The lead singer's intro over the sound system came floating through the cool night to reach Gaia.

"A classic from the seventies . . . 'Rescue Me,' by Aretha . . . Franklin . . . so let's boogie!"

Boogie?
Oh, please.

And then the bouncy tune, and in the singer's gravelly West Village voice, the lyrics: "Rescue me, I want your tender charms, 'cause I'm lonely . . ."

Great. So now the hostage rescue had a sound track.

A surge of memory nearly blinded Gaia as the familiar song wrapped itself around her. Her mother and father, one night in the cozy family room of their house. The radio blaring. It was a classic even then. "Rescue Me." She was six. Laughing. So were they. Dancing. All of them. They were dancing.

Rescue me. Rescue me.

The scream ripped itself from her throat, drowning out the distant melody. Gaia threw herself at the man with the gun, slapping his arm out of the way, sending the gun spiraling into the night sky. He lunged for her, and Sam, unsupported, slipped to the ground.

Her fist plowed into the guy's abdomen, lifting him off his feet. Her foot slammed into his rib cage. She heard him grunt. "Ugh!"

Ugh. We have an ugh. Do I hear an ummphff? She grabbed a handful of his hair and shoved his face down hard against her knee.

"Ummphff!"

"We have an ummphff, ladies and gentlemen!

The guy dropped forward, landing on his hands.

Gaia closed by giving him
a good oldfashioned kick in the ass
. His chin hit the pavement with a sound like breaking glass.

And then her own breaking began -- the breaking down, the shutting off, the surrender of all strength. She was familiar with the experience; it happened every time. She could fight like a machine, full force, pumped on fury and desire. Her might was boundless, but only as long as that fuel was in supply. This fight had sucked up every ounce of energy she possessed.

And now she was spent. Her knees softened. Her limbs tingled. Breathing took on an entirely
new caliber of effort.

And the lead singer of the band sang, "Rescue me." It wasn't just in her head, as it seemed. It was blasting through most of the park. She staggered toward Sam, fumbling in her pocket for his insulin, and went down on her knees beside him.

"Hang on," she whispered. At least she thought she whispered it. Maybe she just thought it. He opened his good eye -- just a slit, but still, it opened. "Hang on."

She prepared the syringe according to the directions she'd forced herself to memorize on her way from her house to the park. In her weakened state, the needle seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, and then it was entering Sam's flesh. Swift, smooth.
Strangely intimate.
She was injecting life back into him.

She withdrew the needle. The night spun in slow circles. The singer sang, "Rescue me." Gaia told herself to get up. Stand. Run. For help. But she couldn't seem to lift herself from the pavement.

As it turned out, she didn't have to. The guy in the black sweater was on his feet again. He grabbed Gaia and hauled her up. Her legs buckled. He was crushing her against him, her back to his chest.

Oh. A knife. At her throat. How inconvenient.

And Sam. On the ground, stirring now.

The shot came from behind her. An excellent shot, piercing her captor's shoulder but leaving her untouched. He went down, screaming.

She staggered forward a few steps and landed in the grass.

A man -- a golden-haired man -- thundered onto the scene. A police officer? No. The Incredible Hulk?

A knight. Yes. A valiant knight.

"To rescue me.

Gaia wanted to smile but couldn't seem to send the message to her face.

The knight was standing over her now. His face was so concerned, so familiar.
Dancing in the living room, and laughing with Mom. Rescue me.

The knight washer father.

He crouched beside her, lifted her head, stroked her hair.

Oh, God. Is this what forgiveness feels like?

"Gaia?" he whispered. "Gaia, I don't want you to misunderstand. I'm not who you think I am."

She squeezed her eyes shut.
Please don't say that.

"I'm not Tom. But I'm your family. I'm . . . your father's brother. His twin."

She finally made her mouth work.
His . . . brother?

The knight nodded. "I've wanted to find you, and take care of you. But I wasn't sure how you'd react. So I waited. Tonight I had no choice but to show myself. I'm sorry if this is painful, Gaia. I'm so sorry. But I'm here now. I'm with you. You're my brother's child. And I love you."

Gaia drank in his words. An elixir. A potion.

She had a family. She could feel the strength return-to her body, with the hope.
With the love.

"There's a lot to explain," he whispered, "but I can't now. I have to go. As long as you're safe . . ."

Gaia opened her eyes and looked at him. "No . . ." He nodded, stroking her hair. "It's all right. You'll understand soon. I promise, I won't be far. I'll come back for you. I swear it."

Gaia struggled to sit up. It was as though her nerves had turned into live electrical wires.

Then her uncle placed one
gentle kiss
on her forehead, and he was gone.

Don't cry, she told herself, greedily pulling air into her lungs in quick, sharp breaths. Don't.

Her uncle had saved her. Her family.

"Gaia!"

She turned. "Ed?" But before she could ream him for following her, she spotted a figure flinging itself toward Sam.

Her eyes widened."Don't . . . even . . . tell me." "She saw the whole thing," Ed said.

Gaia watched Heather pick up the nylon case from where it lay on the ground beside Sam. She watched her place her perfectly manicured hand on his forehead,
her perfectly glossed lips on his cheek.

And she watched Sam open his eyes.

She was a good twenty feet away, but even from that distance, Gaia heard his whisper. It seemed to explode in the deepness of the night.
Heather?

"Yes," sobbed Heather. "I'm here, Sam. I'm here."

Gaia saw him try to smile and she saw his grateful eyes move from Heather's face to the nylon bag and then back to her face. His voice was trembling with exhaustion and emotion when he asked, "Did you . . . save me?"

Gaia closed her eyes. This wasn't happening. To her credit, Heather didn't say yes.
But she didn't say no, either.

He was going to tell Gaia Moore that he loved her.

EVEN BACK WHEN HIS LEGS WORKED, Ed had never been fearless.

People who had seen him on a skateboard or a pair of inlines might have been surprised to hear it. There had been no stairs too steep to slalom, no handrail he wasn't willing to challenge, no traffic too thick to dare. Anyone would tell you, Ed Fargo was a wild man. He took more risks, and took them faster, than any other boarder in the city.

The dark secret was that all through those days, almost every second, Ed had been terrified. Every time his wheels had sent sparks lancing from a metal rail, every time he had gone over a jump and felt gravity tugging down at his stomach, Ed had been sure he was about to die.

And when it didn't happen, when he landed, and lived, and rolled on to skate another day, it had been
a thousand times sweeter
just because he had been so scared. It seemed to Ed that there was nothing better than that moment after the terror had passed.

Then he lost the use of his legs and grew a wheelchair on his butt, and everything changed. A wheelchair did not give the sort of thrills you got from a skateboard. There had been a few times, especially right after he realized he was never, ever going to get out of the chair, that Ed had thought about taking the contraption out into traffic -- just to see how well it played with the taxis and delivery vans. That kind of thinking was scary in a whole different, definitely less fun way.

Legs or no legs, Ed wasn't sure that any stunt he had pulled in the past had terrified him as much as the one he was about to attempt.

He was going to tell Gaia Moore that he loved her.

Ed had been infatuated with Gaia since he first saw her in the school hallway. He was half smitten as soon as they spoke, and all the way gone within a couple of days.

Since then, Ed and Gaia had become friends -- or at least they had come as close to being friends as Gaia's
don't-get-close-to-me force fields
would allow. To tell Gaia how he really felt would mean risking the relationship they already shared. Ed was horrified by the thought of losing contact with Gaia, but he was determined to take that chance.

For once, he was going to see what it was like to be fearless.