Killer (2 page)

Gaia tore furiously through the dirty laundry scattered around her sparse bedroom, stuffing only the most essential pieces into her beat-up messenger bag.
Cargo pants—in. T-shirts and trashed sneakers—in. Black hooded sweatshirt—definitely in
.

Unworn Gap capris purchased in a moment of consumer weakness—hopelessly out.

What had ever possessed her to buy a pair of pants that emphasized her grotesque calves?

One wool cap, one bottle of Cockroach nail polish. If five years of being shuffled from one foster home to another had taught Gaia anything,
it washow to pack up her life in under six minutes.
The secret was always keeping your personal possessions down to a bare minimum and never owning anything you couldn't ditch at a moment's notice. That went for people, too
.
Not that there were very many people she was leaving behind.

Gaia had never been very successful at collecting friends. Unlike Heather Gannis, who was constantly swarmed with her own ego-bloating posse, Gaia could count the number of friends she had on one hand and still have enough fingers left over to go bowling.
Actually, she could count the number of friendsshe had on her thumb.

The only person she had left was Ed.

Ed Fargo. Shred. The good guy. Ed understood what it was like to be an outsider—a freak like her, in his own way. Ed's wheelchair was to Gaia's fearlessness as ... what? A sickness was to a disease? A boat was to a ship? Maybe not, but he had been loyal and
understanding, especially during the times when Gaia knew she wasn't so easy to understand. It crushed her to imagine a life with him. But it beat sticking around and getting killed.

Of course ... there
was
Sam.

Sam wasn't a real friend, though. Hardly. He was an enemy. He was an insect, fit to be squashed. The lowest form of vermin on the planet. But maybe Gaia should count him, anyway, because having just one friend on the entire planet was way too depressing for words. It was hard to know exactly what Sam was to her—the ultimate crush, a failed romantic possibility, the only person she had ever loved. Most important, Sam was the betrayer of her dreams. While she had been loving him from a distance, he had slept with Ella.

Even the thought of it stung like a slap. It hurt. Physically. Even if Ella hadn't tried to kill her,
that
was reason enough to get the hell out of town.

At four and a half minutes Gaia snapped the bag closed and slung it over her shoulder. A new record. Flying down the staircase at the speed of light, Gaia's tangled yellow hair brushed the expensively framed trash that Ella liked to refer to as her “work”—trite black-and-white photos of wide-eyed kittens, open-toed shoes, and the Flatiron Building. Vapid and tacky. But that pretty much summed up Ella in a nutshell.

“Psychoslut” summed her up pretty well, too, though.

If Ella's aim with a gun was as lousy as it was with a camera, staying healthy wasn't going to be a problem. But Gaia knew now that she couldn't take that risk. Ella's entire existence was an act. Ella was trained in several martial arts—just like Gaia. Oh, yes. After that combat in the front hall about a week ago, Gaia knew that Ella was one of the few people on earth who could kick her ass. So there was no reason to assume that Ella wasn't trained to be an expert marksman, either. This whole spandex, big-hair, trophy-wife thing that Ella played to the hilt was a cover.

The question still remained, however: What exactly was she covering up?

At the second-floor landing Gaia's feet came to an involuntary halt. As hard as she tried to look away, her eyes came to rest on the very last photograph. It wasn't one of Ella's travesties—but a snapshot that George had taken of Gaia with her mother and father five years ago.
Before her world had fallen apart.

Father
.

Those two single syllables fired like cannon shots through her mind. It
had
been him on the street, hadn't it? The one who had shot Ella? So why had he vanished? Why hadn't he come running to save her? Why had he ditched her ... again?

But his photo couldn't answer those questions. The sight of the clueless twelve-year-old girl with skinny arms and dirty friendship bracelets set in motion an endless chain of self-pity and burning anger. Gaia had been so trusting. She had actually been naive enough to believe her father would be there for her ... forever.

Gaia ripped the photo off the wall with such raw force that a three-inch chunk of plaster came off with it. She shoved it in the bag.

Whatever. She wouldn't try to guess at her father's motives. Her uncle was there for her now. That was all that mattered.

Go ... go ...

Racing down the hall and into George's office, Gaia was seized with a raw, gnawing guilt. The desktop was bare except for a computer, the way George always left it when he was out of town. She wouldn't be able to say good-bye. Despite his grotesque taste in wives, George was a good man. He had been a friend of her father's ....

Stop thinking of
—

From downstairs came the heavy
whoosh
of the front door opening.

Gaia's stomach soured at the familiar, nauseating
clack
of stiletto heels pounding on marble.

Ella
hadn't
been that hurt. No. She had clawed her way home.

 

“IT WAS A RARE MISCALCULATION,”
Pearl said, crossing her legs elegantly. “There was little I could do without seeming suspicious.”

Failed Experiment

Loki's cold blue eyes scanned the impeccable appointments of Pearl's Park Avenue co-op, the apartment she inhabited whenever she came to New York. Everything reeked of money—the priceless oil paintings, the lacquered oak table, the three-quarter view of Central Park . . .
and most especially, Pearl herself.
From her blond French twist to her Prada shoes, Pearl had flawlessly assumed the life of an Upper East Side socialite.

So it was that much more surprising to him that she could also be so horrendously unprofessional.

“I should have hired someone more competent,” Loki finally stated, his voice empty.

Pearl's manicured fingers absently brushed her Chanel suit. “You know these things don't always go as planned. They can take time.”

Loki's jaw hardened. “I don't have the luxury of time,” he said.

There was a silent pause as Pearl refreshed her teacup. “Loki, I'm not trying to second-guess your motives, but are you sure that's what you want?” she
asked. The flatness of her tone matched his. “You've been grooming Ella from a tender age in matters both professional . . . and otherwise.”

For a moment Loki glared at her, half tempted to lunge at her and crack her neck in half. Who was
she
to question what he wanted? To act with such insubordination. She was nothing, less than nothing—a freelance assassin . . . a
pawn
.
In hisgame.
But he was too tired—to attack or to deny her assertions, to do
anything
. The exhaustion ate at him like a virus.

“It's been a less than successful experiment,” Loki finally grumbled. “Ella's turned from a brilliant operative into an embarrassing joke. She's consistently defied me. I won't tolerate disobedience.”

Pearl shrugged. “I understand that. But she seems, well, rather harmless.”

Harmless
. Anger rose inside him again. “Ella almost killed my niece, right after you botched your mission,” he snapped. He shook his head as he thought about how close it had been. Much too close.
Close enough for him to realize how precious Gaia was to him.
Because Gaia was more than just a lure he could use to draw his brother out from hiding whenever he needed to . . . far more. She was also the only lasting legacy of her mother, Katia. His one true love.

Sweet Katia
.

A shudder passed through his bones.
Katia should have been his wife. Gaia should have been hischild. Tom should never have been in the picture.
And even though Katia was gone now, pieces of her still remained in Gaia. So Loki vowed to keep his niece—his daughter, really—close to him forever . . . to look into her beautiful blue eyes and see a glimmer of his beloved Katia. And far more.

“Gaia is the most important person in my life,” he found himself saying, almost to himself. “Are you aware of the implications her death could have had for you?”

The slender choker encircling Pearl's slender throat bobbed as she swallowed hard. “Give me another chance. I've gotten very close to Ella. No one would have an easier time neutralizing her than me.”

Loki's stare remained steely, focused. Normally he didn't believe in more than one chance. But time was far too short. He didn't have time to call in another hit. Besides, Pearl's otherwise spotless record redeemed her—for the time being.

“I'm sending an e-mail to Ella, which she'll think is from her little flirtation, Sam Moon,” he announced. “She'll think he's arranging to meet her at La Focaccia at one o'clock. Then I'll send one to Sam, which he'll think is from Gaia. They'll meet, and the confusion should give you enough time to
slip in there and get the job done.” His gaze hardened. “I want the situation taken care of by ten past.”

Pearl nodded, meeting his eyes unflinchingly. “It'll be done this time,” she said.

“It'd better,” Loki warned. “Because if anything happens to Gaia, you'll be held personally responsible.”

 

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Time:
11:42
A.M.

Re:
Lunch

Sam,

Meet me at La Focaccia at 1:00
P.M.
We need to talk.

—Gaia

 

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Time:
11:43
A.M.

Re:
Lunch

Ella,

Meet me at La Focaccia at 1:00
P.M.
We need to talk about our future together.

—Sam

 

For
a while I was hooked on those stupid reunion shows you see on TV. You know, the ones where some lame girl goes on
Jerry Springer
and carries on about how she hasn't seen her second cousin Bertha in
x
number of years because even though they only live a half an hour away from each other, neither one of them has enough cash for bus fare. First there's a lot of whining and tears and then
surprise!
Cousin Bertha walks across the stage and the loved ones are reunited while the audience disintegrates into a sloppy mess. I know it's total cheese, but what can I say? I seriously lived for that stuff.

I loved it because I used to imagine that
I
could be the one on TV, seeing my dad again for the first time in five years. This is how I thought our reunion would go: I'd be standing there with half a box of Kleenex wadded up in my fist while my father
walks across the stage to give me a huge bouquet of yellow roses. We'd hug and cry, then cry and hug some more. He'd tell me how sorry he was for dropping off the planet the night my mother was murdered and how he never stopped loving me all the years we were apart.

Every one of his excuses for missing my birthday, never picking up the phone, and forcing me to live with foster freaks would make complete, undeniable sense. I'd have no choice but to forgive him, and the audience would turn into a bunch of blubbering idiots. And when it was all over, he'd vow never to leave me again.

Of course, nothing in life goes the way you want it to—especially not in
my
life.

So the reunion with my father finally
did
happen—and it didn't resemble anything I'd seen on TV.

Not unless you count
Creature Feature
.

A sticky crimson stream of blood flowed down her fingers. It dribbled into a red puddle around her beat-up sneakers.

 

“DAMN YOU, GAIA!”

Ella yanked off the pointy, four-inch-high instruments of torture that had made her feet throb for the last five years and pitched them out the gaping window of Gaia's empty room. If the brat was still working her way down the drainpipe, with any luck she'd get a spiked heel through the skull.
It was an image that nearly brought a smile to Ella's battered face.

Blond Train Wreck

And to think she almost had her.

The range had been short, the gun perfectly aimed. But then someone else hiding in the trees shot at Ella before she could pull the trigger. Ella hadn't been able to see the gunman but figured it was some street vigilante . . . or maybe even a friend of Gaia's. Regardless of who it was, though, the bullet had only grazed Ella's left shoulder blade—knocking her off her feet and causing her to lose a bit of blood—but it was enough of a hit to let Gaia escape.

Fortunately, Ella had been able to avoid any trip to the hospital. She knew enough first aid to handle the wound herself. Hospitals meant police, which meant questioning, which meant that Loki would find out . . . which meant certain death.

Ella padded to the bathroom and peeled off her bloodied blouse. The wound was shallow. Just a scratch, really—
but a scratch that burned like fire as she cleaned it and dressed it with bandages.
Gaia was most likely on her way to Loki's. They'd probably be on the Concorde before noon. Ella bared her teeth at the mirror like a rabid dog.