Chase (18 page)

Gaia smiled and looked down again, unsure of what to say next. Her legs were itching to run. She'd done what she'd come here to do, and now she was free to flee the hospital. But something made her stay right where she was. She didn't want to leave Jake alone. If she were honest with herself, she would have to admit that she didn't want to leave him, period.

There was this new but unmistakable pull between her and Jake. If she could, she would have made sure he was with her wherever she went. Having him around made her feel . . . safe . . . calm . . . almost normal.

“Gaia . . . how did you know?” Jake asked slowly.

“Know what?” Gaia asked, her face reddening as if he could hear her thoughts.

“That Tatiana was going to have those guys there?” Jake asked. “I mean, when I told you that the meeting was for the two of you and not the two of us, you knew right away that she was setting you up for something.”

“I just know her,” Gaia replied, realizing he'd want more than that. “Why did you tell me she asked you to bring me there? I'm sure she wanted it to be a surprise,” she added with a touch of sarcasm.

“I didn't trust her,” Jake replied. “When it came down to the two of you, I just . . . I knew she was in
trouble, but somehow I knew I had to believe you.”

Gaia's whole body warmed, and she looked away again. For all of Tatiana's flirting and damsel-in-distress routines, Jake had still seen who she really was. Gaia knew there was something great about this guy.

“Thanks,” Gaia said.

“Look, I don't want to . . . you know . . . stick my nose in or whatever,” Jake said. “But those guys tonight were pretty serious. I wasn't expecting . . .”

Gaia swallowed hard. “To get shot,” she said, fresh guilt welling up inside her. “I never meant for you to—”

“No. I don't care about that. I'll be fine,” Jake said. He looked her in the eye, and Gaia could tell there were a million questions he wanted to ask. She just wasn't sure if she could answer them. “I just . . . want to know if you're . . . if you're going to be okay.”

A smile pulled at Gaia's lips.
That
was the most important thing on his mind? “I will be,” she said. “Now that Tatiana is in custody . . . I'll be fine.”

“Good,” Jake said. He leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “God! She lied to me. Right to my face. All those fake, freakin' tears. She's insane.”

“Pretty much,” Gaia replied.

“So . . . you said she's in custody?” Jake asked, using his good arm to push himself up into a half-seated position. He let out a little groan as he settled back in.

Gaia took a deep breath and nodded. “She's been turned over to the proper authorities,” she said.

Jake simply stared at her for a moment. “You ever gonna tell me what that means?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

For a moment Gaia sat in silence, listening to the beeping heart monitor and the sounds of nurses and visitors walking past the room. She thought of all the secrets she'd kept over the last year, all the people she'd lost, all the people she'd tried to protect to no avail.
She thought of Jake's open, honest face
, of that afternoon when he'd readily offered to bring his friends to the dojo to help, of
the way he'd looked at her as he threw himself in the path of the bullet that was meant for her heart.

He cared about her. He wanted her to be safe. He wanted to be at her side.

Maybe it was time for a change in her life. Maybe it was time to stop protecting and let someone protect her. Let someone in. Let someone be a true friend.

And so she looked at Jake, smiled, and meant it when she said, “I will . . . someday.”

Dim

THE HANDCUFFS WERE LIKE ICE
against Tatiana's bare wrists. The cold of the metal chair stung her skin, even through her
clothes, and she felt like she was being refrigerated from the inside out. Even her bones were shivering. Her head slumped forward, pulling the muscles in her arms, which were secured behind her back. She sniffled, trying to keep her nose from running. Trying to keep that one sign of weakness at bay.

I've failed
, she thought, staring down at
the blood spatters on the thigh of her jeans.
I've failed you, Mother. I've failed myself.

She sat in the center of a
dim
, gray, cinder-block-walled room. A two-way mirror hung on the far wall; a single lightbulb swung overhead. The only two pieces of furniture aside from her own chair were a wooden table and a high stool that stood next to the leaden door. Tatiana had no idea where she was, but she'd never felt so alone.

I'm worthless. I hope they just let me die in here
, Tatiana thought, feeling her bruises throb, the cut across her left cheek sting. She'd gotten that just after the gun went off—just after Jake had slumped to the floor—dead, for all she knew. Not that she cared about him. He'd betrayed her. He'd ambushed her.
He was a traitor.

Gaia had launched herself over his prone body and landed a backhand across Tatiana's face that had exploded behind her eye and knocked her out for a few moments. Long enough for Gaia and the Karate Squad to tie her up. Long enough for Ms. Moore to call in the CIA.

If I ever see her again, I'm going to kill her
, Tatiana thought.
Next time I'll get it right.

A loud clang echoed through the room as the lock on the heavy door slid free. Suddenly alert, Tatiana snapped up her head. The interrogation was about to begin. She could not be weak in the face of her enemy. She knew they'd probably hit her with the good-cop, bad-cop routine. It was standard procedure. She waited for the appearance of a couple of suited CIA agents, ready and more than willing to break her. Tatiana would not be broken.

The door swung open slowly, and Tatiana's brain almost exploded at the sight before her eyes. Gaia Moore—hair slicked back into a neat ponytail, a clean black sweater over a clean pair of jeans, and her standard black boots. No sign of a fight anywhere on
her perfect little face.
She stepped into the room, her eyes locked on Tatiana's, and the door swung shut behind her.

Somehow Tatiana managed to stare right back at Gaia. Stare through the confusion, the shame, the pain, the anger, the hatred. Her blood boiled and raced and melted away the cold. She refused to be the first to look away.

Gaia turned and picked up the stool by the wall. She set it down about two feet from Tatiana and perched herself on top of it. Now Tatiana saw the benefit of the higher stool. Gaia could look down on her—she could feel taller and more imposing. Tatiana lifted her chin and met her eyes. She was not intimidated.

“I'm here to tell you that the CIA has decided to give
you a choice,” Gaia said slowly, deliberately. Tatiana seethed at her superior tone but refused to let slip the mask of bored defiance on her face. “If you tell me where my father is, they will let you join your mother in confinement,” Gaia continued. “If you don't tell me, they're going to throw you in solitary.”

Tatiana's eyes burned with instant tears. Her mother. She would get to be with her mother. She longed with every inch of her being to see Natasha again. It was all that mattered. It was all she had left. She ducked her chin so that Gaia wouldn't be looking right into her eyes when the first tear fell.

“Think about it, Tatiana,” Gaia continued. “Solitary means a room smaller than this one—darker than this one. All alone. For as long as you decide to remain silent.”

Oh God, I can't do this
, Tatiana thought, her mind racing as she stared at the floor.
What if I tell them everything and go to my mother and she turns her back on me? She'll know I failed. I could never handle that.

But she also wouldn't be able to handle solitary. She'd hardly been able to handle being alone for the last few days. She'd go crazy if they locked her up by herself.
She'd go mad.

“Well?” Gaia said. “What do you say?”

Tatiana looked up at her, vision blurred, the words on the very tip of her tongue. All she had to do was say it and she'd be in her mother's arms again. All she had to do was talk.

But then she saw the shame and disappointment that would be in her mother's eyes. She saw her mother turning away as she ran to her. And the pain of that simple image was excruciating.

Tatiana turned her profile to Gaia and squeezed her eyes shut. She wouldn't tell. Not now. Not yet. She had to think. And right now she was too tired, too confused. She needed some time to process everything.

“Fine,” Gaia spat, shoving the stool away from her. “You have twenty-four hours to make your decision.”

The door swung open again as Gaia approached it, and Tatiana felt her glare at her one last time. Then she stepped out, and the door swung shut behind her. The resounding clang sounded with the finality of death. Finally Tatiana tipped her head forward and gave way to silent tears.

Hyperawake

THE MOMENT GAIA WALKED INTO
the fourth-floor office at the brownstone, Oliver turned away from his computer and looked at her with a never-before-seen excitement in his light eyes. Against her will, Gaia's heart leapt crazily. Even after everything she'd been through that day—the good-bye with Ed,
the fight, the hospital, the one-on-one with Tatiana, she was suddenly
hyperawake.

“What is it?” she asked, dropping her stuff on the floor and crossing the room. She stood at his side and squeezed her arms over her chest. “What's going on?”

“We've got him,” Oliver said, smiling up at her. “We've found your father.”

Inside, Gaia jumped up and down . . . she yelped and hugged Oliver, tackling him to the ground . . . she did cartwheels and somersaults and danced a jig worthy of
Riverdance
. Outside, she remained the picture of intense concentration.

“Where?” she asked.

“He's in Siberia . . . in a hospital there,” Oliver said, sliding a few sheets of paper out of a large manila envelope. He handed over a glossy black-and-white photo of her father in a hospital bed, either sleeping or unconscious. His face was covered with a few days' beard. As expected, he did look exactly like Oliver had when she'd first seen him in the hospital. Lying on top of the blanket that covered his legs was a copy of a Russian newspaper, the date as clear as day in the top-right corner.
The picture had been taken two days ago.

Gaia felt her mouth go dry as her eyes traveled to the medical monitors to the right of her father's bed. They were alight with lines and squiggles and numbers. Her father was alive. Or was two days ago.

“Thank you,” Gaia said under her breath. “You found him. . . . Thank you.”

Oliver smiled slightly and handed over another sheet of paper. “This is the address of the hospital,” he said. “You'll have to fly to Minsk.”

“Great,” Gaia said, turning for the door. “I'm gone.”

“No!”

Oliver stood up from his chair, scraping it back so fast, it fell over and clattered to the floor. Gaia stopped short and closed her eyes. Nothing was going to keep her from leaving right this very second. How could he even suggest otherwise?

“Gaia, the second you book that ticket, there are going to be hundreds of agents on your tail,” Oliver said, each of his words hitting her back like tiny daggers. “I promise you, you will never make it to Russia alive. Never.”

“Well, then what am I supposed to do?” Gaia demanded, whirling around again, clutching the papers and the photograph in her hands. “Why give me this information if you expect me to do nothing?”

Oliver stepped over to her, reached out, and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I expect you to wait,” he said, eliciting an eye roll and a sigh from Gaia. “Just two days. In two days I can get you a legitimate passport with a new name for you to travel under. I can have a whole history made up for the new you in case anyone decides to check.”

He squeezed her shoulders, and Gaia looked down. She knew that he was right—that this was the only logical way to do things. But how could she? How could she wait two whole days?

“And I can have the same thing done for myself,” Oliver continued.

Gaia raised her chin and looked into his eyes,
her pulse thumping in her ears
–her heart a tangled mess of conflicting emotions. Had he really just said what she thought he'd said?

“I'm coming with you,” he added firmly. “You're not going anywhere alone. Not anymore.”

Two
days.

Forty-eight hours.

Two thousand, eight hundred and eighty minutes.

One hundred seventy-two thousand, eight hundred seconds.

And I'll be on my way to find my father. And this time I'm bringing him home. For good.

I
guess the only time most people think about blood is when it's gushing out of their veins and they need to find a Band–Aid–or an emergency room–to keep it from messing up the white carpet. But I'm thinking about it a lot lately. Little red platelets and big white corpuscles rushing through everyone's veins. Keeping us alive as long as it stays on its dark little course–but signaling weakness or death when it wanders off the path, out into the light, to spill on the ground.

Funny thing about blood–it also connects people. There it is, hidden inside your skin, yet it manages to call out to other blood, related blood, inside someone else's skin. You might have nothing else in common, but that red stuff really is thicker than water. There's nobody in the world I should have more cause to hate than Oliver. Or should I say, Loki. He has engineered more destruction–starting with my own mother, the
woman who created my own blood–than anyone else in my life. So a bout of postcoma confusion has forced his pre-Loki, kinder and gentler Oliver personality to emerge, and suddenly he regrets his evil ways.