Escape (21 page)

And the
car
. Where had Sam mysteriously disappeared to during the attack at the diner? Gaia had seen him walking back from the parking lot. He'd said he'd gone to check on the car. But it was right after Sam's visit to the car that it began to make that strange noise, like someone had tampered with the engine. . . .

And how convenient that the broken-down car would force them down the road to this seedy motel in the middle of the night. . . where there were probably no cops for miles. A perfect place to catch Gaia off guard, wasn't it? Asleep and confused in a strange motel room, in bed with Sam. Wouldn't that be when she was least prepared for another attack?

And how had those two thugs gotten into the motel room so easily, anyway? Without a noise? Without breaking a single window or a lock? Almost as if the door had been left open for them. Almost as if they'd been invited in. . .

The longer she stared at Sam's smiling face as he walked toward her, the more it all began to make a most disturbing kind of sense. Every single little puzzle piece seemed to fit together.

He could have been slowly and professionally brainwashed during all his unbearable isolation in Loki's compound. Loki's people could have offered him a deal. They'd set him free if he would just agree to do them the simple favor of leading Gaia directly into their trap—leading the lamb to the slaughter.

Even the psycho loyalists at the compound could have been a setup. . . .

Think about it. Sam disappears behind a corner, and you follow him straight into a three-man firing squad?

It was like another trap. Like they'd already known she was coming before she even got there. Like every other attempt on Gaia's life today. Sam had never made a move on them, and they'd never made a move on him.

And now here he was, walking out of that motel office. Why the hell would he have gotten out of bed right after he'd supposedly gone to sleep? And when exactly had he suddenly become best buds with that pervert in the office? What could they possibly have to discuss at this hour?

By the time Sam stepped up to her, she had completed his vilification in her head.

“Where were you
this
time?” she snapped, staring at Sam with
unabashed accusation.
“And don't
lie
to me, Sam. Whatever you do, do
not
lie to me.”

Sam nearly fell backward with a look of utter shock. First he seemed shocked by the sheer aggression and volume of Gaia's demands. But as his eyes dropped down to her hand, his shock tripled. He'd caught a glimpse of the large, bloody knife still gripped tightly in her fingers.

“What. . . what the hell is that? What the hell is going on?” He took a giant step into their room and flipped on the overhead light, darting his head from side to side before turning back to Gaia. “What happened?” he demanded again. “Where did you get that knife? Was there a fight? Jesus, did somebody try to hurt you?”

And suddenly Gaia was confused again. She was at a loss for words.

He stepped back up to her and grabbed her by the shoulders, probing her eyes with a desperate brand of concern. “Talk to me,” he insisted. “What
happened
, Gaia?”

She'd painted an entire picture of him in her head for a moment—a picture of pure, sadistic evil. A crystal clear picture of betrayal and coldhearted calculation. But nothing about the actual Sam matched that picture at all. As she stared at all the intense, heartfelt compassion in his eyes, and all that deep-rooted concern, and all that bright, hazel-colored innocence, she realized that she had simply fallen prey to a trauma-induced spasm of temporary insanity. That was all that had happened. She'd lost her mind. She was looking for someone to blame, and she'd patched together
a bunch of useless coincidences and blamed the first person she'd laid eyes on. But in reality, he was the last person in the world who would ever want to hurt her or even see her get hurt.

“Gaia? Why won't you talk to me?” he pleaded. “Are you injured? Should I call a—”

“No,” she said, finally snapping out of her insanity trance. “No, it's. . . there was a fight. . . but I'm fine. I'm fine, Sam.”

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hugged him tightly. It was her version of an apology—an apology for the batch of awful thoughts she had just stupidly indulged in. She pulled away from him and tossed the knife deep into the woods behind the motel.

“Gaia, I don't understand,” he said. “Whose knife was that? Whose blood? Why won't you tell me what happened? If something happened to you while I left you alone, I swear to God, I'll. . .”

“Calm down,” she told him. “Someone is after me, but it's not your problem.”

His eyes nearly popped out of his head. “
Of course
it's my problem! They're after both of us, Gaia. That's what this is all about. I should have been in the room with you. I shouldn't have left you alone for a second; that was so
stupid
. . . .”

She could see him going down the same
self-punishing road
she'd been down herself a hundred times before, and with each new word out of his mouth,
she regretted her ridiculous accusations more and more.

“Sam, stop it,” she insisted. “Everything's fine now. I'm fine. We're fine. Everyone is fine. But where
were
you? I still don't understand what you were doing out of bed.”

“I was in the office,” Sam explained, coming awfully close to slapping himself upside the head. “I just. . . I felt so crappy that we couldn't get you home. . . that your dad is still. . . out there somewhere. . . . I wanted to try to do something about the car before you woke up. . . .”

“You didn't need to do that—”

“I know, but. . . well, now it nearly got you
killed
—”

“No,” Gaia insisted. “No, it didn't. Nothing even close. Did you have any luck?”

“What?” He was clearly punishing himself again in his head.

“With the
car
,” she said, trying to keep his head in the right place. “Did you have any luck with the car?”

He looked down at her for a moment, and then a half smile finally appeared on his lips. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I did. The guy in the office. . . the pervert. . .”

“Yeah?”

“It turns out he's not such a bad guy.” He smiled. “And he knows something about cars.”

“What are you saying?”

“He checked the engine for us,” he explained. “Someone had drained all the coolant out of the car, Gaia. And they'd dropped a quarter in the tank just to really screw things up.”

“I
knew
it,” she said. “I knew someone had messed with the engine.”

“But all we had to do was get the quarter out of there. And then he filled it up with some coolant from the trunk of his truck and now we're good to go.”

Gaia stared at Sam for a confirmation. “Say that again,” she uttered.

“We're good to go.” He nodded firmly. “Without the traffic, I can get us back home in an hour.”

Gaia dropped her head for a moment. She gave thanks to the Fates for this one bit of good fortune they'd been kind enough to grant her on an otherwise
killer day.
Literally.

“Wake Dmitri,” she said. “We're going home. Right now.”

A dark rain cloud in her brain had blocked out the sun.

God-Awful Dizziness

HOW THE HELL DID ALCOHOLICS DO
it? Were they completely insane? Ed couldn't fathom feeling this ridiculously messed up and disoriented on a nightly basis. That would be like consigning oneself to some kind of
strange psychedelic hell
every single night and then waking up the next morning and doing it all over again.

Was it the next morning yet? Ed couldn't even find a clock amid the crowd that jammed Tatiana's apartment. He couldn't find anything. It was just an ugly whirlwind of disgustingly beautiful faces and bare midriffs and muscular arms. Bad pop music was blaring from the stereo, and then there were the screams. The constant screams. What was it with drunken girls and screaming? Why did drunken girls think that all emotions needed to be expressed with the high-pitched screech of a brutal murder?

“Shhh,” he found himself mumbling, basically to himself. “Quiet down, now.”

He stumbled over to the kitchen area, cutting through a crowd of what seemed like thousands, and ripped open the fridge. Somehow, in spite of his
god-awful dizziness
, and his increasing nausea, and the buzzing in his ears from all the whooping and
screaming, and the general sense that the world was soon to explode into a billion pieces. . . Ed had decided to have another beer. Because why the hell not? Because did it really matter, anyway? He'd probably never drink another drink for the rest of his natural-born life, but tonight. . . tonight required a numbness the likes of which he had not encountered since losing feeling in his legs.

Now there was even more to forget than there had been only hours ago. Not only did he need to forget about Gaia—forget that their relationship was melting like a nuclear accident and forget that she was out “there” somewhere for some indeterminate period of time, something between ten hours and ten years. But now he also needed to forget about Tatiana. He needed to forget about that stupid almost kiss. He needed to drown it out until its totally trivial, inconsequential nature revealed itself permanently. Until his brain had successfully placed it in the “total and complete nothing” category where it absolutely belonged.

But one thing was making that very difficult. How could he drown out that stupid drunken moment with Tatiana if Tatiana wouldn't stop following him around?

“I just wanted to apologize again,” she called into his ear from behind. She had developed this unfortunate habit of sneaking up on him. He nearly banged his head on the inside of the fridge as he searched for a decent beer.

He grabbed a Sam Adams and slammed the door closed, pressing his back up against the fridge to keep his
distance. “Don't” he said in a clipped tone, flashing his best approximation of a smile, given that he could barely feel his lips. “Don't apologize anymore. Because it's nothing.”

“Okay, but. . . are we cool?” She slurred her words slightly as she tilted her head back and swigged from her own beer. Ed couldn't even fathom the fact that she was actually ahead of him in drinks. If he'd had as much booze as Tatiana had imbibed tonight, he would already have been passed out somewhere beneath
the screaming midriff girls
and the hooting biceps guys.

“Sure, we're cool,” he replied, wishing he could just disappear into the crowd and not have her find him for a few hours. “We're totally cool. I just—”

“Hold on,” Tatiana said, holding her finger up in his face and looking at her pager.

“Do you always carry around your pager at parties?” Ed laughed.

“I'm waiting for news from my mother,” she said, reading her new message.

“About Gaia's dad?” he asked.

She looked back up at Ed, registering mild surprise. “Right,” she said.

“So she's not really at a UN function, is she?”

Tatiana rolled her eyes as if that was the most naive thing she'd ever heard anyone say. Ed took her point in stride.

“Well. . .? Any news?”

Tatiana dropped her head back down to her pager
and blew out a long, frustrated sigh. “No,” she complained. “Nothing yet.”

The beer suddenly fell from Tatiana's hand and spilled all over the kitchen floor.

“Oh,
no,
” she moaned, slapping her hands to her face. The crowd quickly made way for the spilled beer. Nothing got those girls moving like the threat of beer-stained shoes.

“It's okay,” Ed said, grabbing a few paper napkins from the counter and dropping down to the floor. “No big deal.”

“I know where there are more paper towels,” she said. “Wait here, okay? I'll be right back.”

“We don't really need. . .” Ed tried to stop her, but there was no point. Tatiana was already off on her hypercommitted quest for paper towels.

Caveman-like Moos

GAIA COULD BARELY BELIEVE IT,
but her eyes hadn't deceived her. The slim green signs overhead were real, lit up by the amber hue of a New York City streetlight.

Seventy-second Street and Madison Avenue.

They turned the corner and slowed down, pulling closer and closer. . . .

The limestone facade was real. And so was the uniformed doorman behind the latticed windows of the front door.

Home
. Gaia was finally home. After all the attempted murders and bizarre suspicions and romantic confusion. After thinking it might never really happen, here she was, pulling up slowly to her front door. Sam had done it. With a little help from the perverted desk clerk of the S-Stay Motel, he had finally gotten them home.

The car came to a halt in front of her door, and then Sam put on the brake and flipped off the ignition. Gaia and he both let out almost inaudible sighs and slid down slightly in their seats, leaving no sound in the car but the steady wheeze of Dmitri's snoring in the backseat.

In fact, Dmitri's snoring had really been the only sound in the car for the rest of the ride home. Sam had perhaps been too freaked out by the sight of that
bloody knife
to utter another word to Gaia. And she had been too freaked out by her own sudden suspicions to make any further conversation. Or perhaps it was just the deeply uncomfortable aftermath of their moment in bed that had left them speechless. Most likely it was a toxic combination of all the strange revelations of this day.