Gone (15 page)

Gaia. Gaia was stepping down the stairs, ready for Ed to escort her to the prom.

Cut. Stop the tape. Kill the music. Stop it, Ed. Drain it, flush it, stomp it out of your head.

Ed shook the stupid vision from his head and refocused his eyes on reality. On Kai. The lovely Kai.

“Are you okay?” Kai was staring at him with concern. “You look weird.”

“I'm fine,” he assured her. “I'm great! God, look at you. You look beautiful.”

Kai grinned from ear to ear. “Really?”

“
Hell,
yes,” he bellowed. He gave Kai an overly enthusiastic hug, trying to shake the Gaia demons from his subversive subconscious. “Are you ready to rock?”

“Oh my God,” she said, grabbing Ed's shoulders. “We are going to rock so hard.”

“I'll get us a cab,” Ed said. He grabbed Kai's hand and guided her down the street as she clomped in her platform shoes to keep up.

Get her out of your head,
he hollered at himself, keeping the smile pasted on his face.

He had to do it. He had to shake these stupid outdated visions of the end of high school. Wasn't that the point? That was the entire point of graduating. It was time to
stop
living in a high school world of adolescent fantasies and start learning how to live in the
real
world out there. Gaia and Ed together at the prom was no longer part of the real world.

Still, he couldn't help thinking….

Somewhere out there in the real world, there
was
a guy who was Gaia's date for the evening. And he was a lucky man.

CHRIS HAD DARED TO SNEAK OUT in public just so he could purchase himself a new outfit at Ralph Lauren. He wanted to look as manly, serious, and well tailored as possible for his meeting with General Colter. He'd obviously gotten the general's attention with his little demonstration, but now he needed to seal the deal against his father and Skyler. He needed Colter to take him seriously, and given their last meeting, where he'd “poured on the gay,” he needed an outfit to counter the image. Ralph Lauren was the most ungay designer he could think of without appearing completely unfashionable. A black jacket and turtleneck seemed to fit the bill.

He tried to dampen his excitement as he approached the vacant lot on West Twelfth Street, but it was hard to keep his swelling pride in check.

Because he was winning. His plan had worked.

What do you think, Dad? Beating you and Skyler at your own game? Man enough for you? Ever think there was a reason I was a two-time city chess champ? Checkmate, assholes.

He couldn't wait to watch their whole plan go public. He couldn't wait to watch them on the local news, trying to hide their faces from the cameras (for
once
) as they were hauled into custody by men in black suits and aviator sunglasses. He could hear the news report already….

Another shocking corporate scandal today as billionaire Robert Rodke and his son Skyler were indicted for serious drug crimes, including attempts to defraud the U.S. government…

It was all just beautiful. Maybe he would visit them a few times in white-collar prison—take a little walk with them on the fenced-in grounds, Chris in street clothes, his brother and father in those hideous orange jumpsuits. Perhaps he'd ask them who was the smart one now? Who was getting the respect now? Probably not the guy in the orange jumpsuit, right, Skyler?

Chris did begin to get a little spooked as he approached the vacant lot. He'd picked out this location in sunny daylight, but by 9 p.m., it was more than a little sketchy. He could just imagine Jake waiting for him in this little hellhole last night, spooked out of his mind. Though that was nothing compared to the
heart attack Jake must have had when that army of Droogs attacked. Chris knew it would have been too dangerous for him to be anywhere near the scene, and now he was glad he'd decided to stay at the hotel for the entire “demonstration.” It would have been too ugly to watch.

Poor Jake. Chris wondered who had found his body and hauled it off to the morgue. Colter had probably placed the 911 call anonymously. That's what Chris figured would have happened. He couldn't believe there'd been nothing in the news about the “brutal murder of an innocent teen.” Maybe the news folks were just getting tired of reporting another “ultraviolent” Droog crime. No matter. All that mattered now was getting Colter's attention. And Chris had done that quite successfully.

He walked into the center of the lot, trying to keep his fear in check. Now he could see the dark brown bloodstains all over the pavement. All that dried-up blood, just barely illuminated by the two shattered streetlights on each corner.
Ugh.
He could just picture last night's carnage. It was downright disturbing. Ordering a murder was one thing, but seeing the actual aftermath made him nauseous. Chris wanted out of this lot as soon as possible.

He checked his watch. 9:10. He was surprised. He couldn't believe that a man like General Colter would ever be late. It just went to show, you could never
judge a book by its cover. Even a buttoned-up military man like Colter could be a flake.

Finally Chris heard footsteps approaching. Thank God. This lot was just way too creepy to spend another minute alone in it.

“It's about time,” Chris called out, moving toward the corner to meet up with the general. But as the approaching figure moved into the light, Chris began to realize…

It wasn't the general.

“You're goddamn right, it's about time,” the figure said.

“Jake?” Chris's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. Jake was standing in the one shaft of light at the entrance to the lot. His face was covered in cuts and bruises. His left hand was wrapped in a heavy bandage. But he was unquestionably alive.

“Surprised?” Jake asked. He began to walk toward Chris at a brisk pace. “You look incredibly surprised to see me, Chris. Why is that?”

Suddenly a pack of men in gray suits came pouring out of the dark alley in the corner—every one of them with a gun pointed straight at Chris's face. His heart leapt into his throat. He took no time to think. There was no time to make sense of any of this. He just needed to run, and fast.

Chris swung around and took off for the street, his designer shoes pounding on the pavement as he heaved for breath. He whipped his head around to look behind
him as the men in gray closed in on him. He darted his eyes from side to side and tried to pick a direction to run. He took off down a side street and headed for the highway. He could find a tunnel down there—an alley to duck into, a trash bin to hide in, anything. He whipped his face back forward, and that's when it hit him.

The sound of a screeching car pierced his eardrums. A huge block of black metal flashed before his eyes , smashing into him like a freight train, sending shocks of excruciating pain through every bone in his body as he was hurled backward like a rag doll against the rock-hard street. He cried out in pain as his head bashed against the ground. He flattened his scraped-up hands against the street and tried to push his aching body back up, but there was already a man standing overhead, jabbing the cold metal of a gun barrel straight into the center of Chris's forehead.

“Do
not
move!” the man growled into his face. “If you even
attempt
to move, I will blow your head clean off.” Chris could barely make out the man's features. All he could see were his graying temples and his ice blue eyes, burning with rage.

The men in gray caught up and surrounded Chris on the ground, staring down at him with cold, heartless expressions, like a group of surgeons. And then Jake leaned in overhead, like the doctor who was about to make the first incision.

“All right, get up!” the man with the blue eyes ordered. He jammed his fingers into Chris's chest, bunching his shirt up in a fist and dragging him up off the street. Then he slammed Chris's back up against the side of a black limousine. Now Chris could see the open black car door he'd collided with.

“In the car,
now!
” the man ordered. It wasn't as if Chris had a choice. The man grabbed the back of Chris's head and shoved him into the car, scraping his face along the hard leather seat. Then he shoved Chris up against the window, keeping the gun to his head. Jake got into the car and slammed the door.

“Jake,” Chris croaked. “What's going—?”

“Don't talk!” the man hollered. He jabbed the gun against Chris's head, sending a bolt of exquisite pain down his neck. “You're done talking. You don't talk until I tell you to talk, do you understand?”

Chris shut his mouth and prayed silently for his life.

Gaia had to admit, it was good wine. At least they were trying to send her out in style.

GAIA WAS STARING AT A HIDEOUS pink flaky mass, also known as a pâté cracker. There were six of them on a plate sitting on Skyler's dining table, staring back at her like little pink demons beckoning her down to the underworld.

Poison? Was that how he wanted to do it? Poison pâté? Did he really think he could bump her off with appetizers?
Try again, Skyler. You'll have to do better than that.

He had enlisted every single romantic cliché in the book for their “big adult dinner,” also known as “Substitute Prom Night.” He had turned off all the lights in the apartment and lit a bunch of candles. He had laid out a big luxurious spread of fine wine and gourmet cheese and, of course, pâté. He'd even put on the soft R & B music. She was half expecting him to come out of the kitchen in a satin playboy robe, smoking from a long cigarette holder. She pitied the numerous girls who had probably fallen for this crap in the past. Naive freshman college girls who had spent their lives drinking wine coolers in the mall parking lot and thought that good wine and a good name somehow indicated a man they could trust.

But Gaia was as far from trusting as a girl could
possibly get. Her body and mind were on high alert. She was watching him like an eagle. Focusing her exceptional vision on every move he made, every gesture. When was it coming? How was it coming? She was waiting for it. She was waiting for him to make his move.

The more she looked around, the more she realized that it didn't even look like a date. The big spread on the dining table, all those flickering candles in the darkness… It looked like a wake. Her wake. Her “last supper,” they were surely thinking. God, did they really think she was this stupid? Did they really think she was so gullible that they could take her out without her even seeing it coming?

Of course they did. She hadn't given them any evidence to the contrary, had she? They'd successfully transformed her into a pathetic girlie-girl eating right out of the palm of their hands. Her face began to burn with embarrassment as she thought about that girl she'd become. Thank God that was over. Thank God she was
her
again, or they would probably be examining the internal organs of her corpse at this very moment.

Skyler floated out of the kitchen in his stretch black T-shirt and a pair of black silk pants. How polite of him to wear black to her wake. He placed two wineglasses on the dining table. “Hey,” he complained. “You haven't even tried the pâté yet. You've
got
to try this. My dad has it flown in from Paris. It's the best there is.”

He picked up the demon cracker, guarding it from dropping with his other hand, and he raised it to Gaia's mouth. Gaia sealed her jaw shut.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

Smile, Gaia. Smile, goddamn it.

She turned up the corners of her mouth. “Gee, I don't know,” she mumbled girlishly. “I'm not really a pâté person. I'm more of a Gray's Papaya girl.”

“What's Gray's Papaya?”

Jesus, she really had been out of her mind, hadn't she? She'd been spending days and days with a man who didn't even know what Gray's Papaya was.

She took the cracker in her hands and stared at it.

“It's delicious,” he assured her. “I promise.”

“I'm
scared
” She giggled. “Okay, if it's so delicious, prove it.” Translation:
If it's not poison, prove it.
She raised the cracker to his mouth to feed it to him.

He locked his eyes with hers for a moment. Then he grinned and opened wide, taking the entire cracker in one bite, letting his lips linger on her finger with voracious sexual fervor.

Gaia was dying inside. Her skin was crawling.
Ew. Just… ew.
But at least she had struck poison pâté from the list of potential murder weapons.

“Mmm,” he crooned. “Delicious. Here, try the wine.” He uncorked the bottle and poured them each half a glass, handing one to her. Fine. The wine had
been sealed. She would trust the wine. Besides, poison was most likely not the way they would go. “Wait,” he said. “A toast…”

This she wanted to hear. She grinned and held up her glass.

“To finally being free of the high school shackles,” he said. “To graduating to full-on adulthood. To your future…”

“No,” she corrected him. “To
our
future.” As in her continued heartbeat and his life behind bars.

“Yes,” he agreed. “To our future.”

They clinked glasses and took their sips, and then Skyler placed their glasses back on the table. Gaia had to admit, it was good wine. At least they were trying to send her out in style.

He suddenly grabbed her wrist with his strong fingers. Gaia's other hand instantly clenched into a fist at her side, armed and ready to dismantle his face.
I do hope you're kidding, she howled at him silently. You want to go hand-to-hand? That's the plan? You must be out of your mind. I'll break your neck in one blow.