Lust (2 page)

“I think they're great,” said Gaia.

“They are. But Nonna's a bit much.” He sighed and hit the down button so they could get on the next elevator.

“Are you sure you should be going home?” Gaia asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Jake said. “I fully expected my dad to show up and yank me out of here. He always says the best way to get sicker is to spend time in a hospital. This thing does ache, though.”

“Yeek.” Gaia peered at the big bandage. “I don't think you're going to be doing much intramural karate.”

Jake groaned. “I know,” he lamented. “You're off the hook, though. If I'm not competing, we won't win anyway.”

“God, you've got the fattest head!” Gaia complained. “You think I couldn't beat everyone single-handedly?”

“You could, but you won't,” he pointed out. “I was really looking forward to it, though. I was all revved up for the competition. Without it, the next few weeks are going to be so boring. And I'm going to get so out of shape.”

Gaia felt the bud of an idea fatten in her head. “Hmm,” she said.

“Hmm, what?” Jake asked, poking the button a few more times.

“Hmm, I was just thinking—when I was going
through my martial arts training, my dad showed me a bunch of techniques for working out that give various muscle groups a rest. I could teach them to you, just so your precious muscle mass doesn't evaporate during your recovery.”

Gaia couldn't believe the words that were coming out of her mouth. Was she actually being forthcoming? This Jake guy had a very unusual effect on her.

“Gaia Moore, are you offering to be my personal trainer?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. If you're going to be an idiot about it, I won't bother.”

Jake smacked her lightly on the back of the head. “Cut it out,” he said. “I'm sorry. I would be really grateful if you could show me your special commando workout.”

“Fine. I will,” Gaia said.

“But only if you go to school tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

“Of course, you're going to be gone within a day or two,” Jake pointed out as the elevator finally arrived and the doors creaked open. “Some 911 situation will come up and you'll be out of here. I'll be left with atrophying muscles and a gunshot wound.”

For a moment, Gaia had a vision of Sam Moon's scarred chest—another wounded friend, a romance destroyed by the life she was forced to lead. She had to
remember to keep her distance this time. She wouldn't let the same thing happen to Jake.

Gaia was silent, watching the numbers light up in descending order. This was the slowest elevator in the world. She noticed Jake giving her a look.

“What?” she snapped.

“I think it's funny,” he said.

“What?”

“The way every single thought in your head goes walking across your face before you shove it back in its closet,” Jake said. “You really think that because you don't say things out loud, you can deny they're there, don't you?”

“All right, smart guy—so what thoughts am I repressing?” she asked, crossing her arms and continuing to stare as nine flipped to eight with agonizing sluggishness.

“Oh, no. I'm not making things easier for you. You'll open your mouth when you're good and ready, and not before.”

Gaia clamped her mouth tightly closed, tucking her lips inside it for extra emphasis, and refused to look at Jake. He was so close to her, she could feel the heat from his body making the left side of her face flush. Without her permission, her eyes flicked toward him, then away again. The expression in his eyes—he seemed to
know
her in a way she wasn't sure was either good or bad. He was teasing her, daring her
to feel something for him. It was maddening, frustrating.

The doors finally opened. “Jake!” Mrs. Montone called out, her arms extended as if she were about to reach in and yank him out. “Why you sneak off like that? Come here.”

Jake shot Gaia one last look and joined his father and grandmother, who draped a coat carefully over his shoulders.

“Gaia, can you get home all right?” Mr. Montone asked. “Should we drop you somewhere? We've got a car service waiting.”

“Oh, no, it's all right,” Gaia promised. “I can take the subway.”

“Are you sure? It's no trouble.”

Gaia was touched. If Mr. Montone knew what she'd been through in her life, the guy wouldn't have been concerned about her being inconvenienced by the midday subway.

“I promise. It was nice to see you again. And nice to meet you, Mrs. Montone.”

“Yeah, I see you again,” she said, nodding cheerfully.

“So I'll see you tomorrow after school?” Jake asked. “You'll show me that stuff we were talking about?”

Gaia felt herself nod. Maddening, yes. Frustrating, yes. But whether it was out of guilt or some kind of unexpected fascination, she'd have to see Jake again.

Internal Hard Drive

OLIVER SEARCHED THROUGH THE
databases he had found stored on his computer—the ones that hadn't self-destructed when he'd gotten his login wrong the first time. It had taken him half a day just to get access to his own information. This was like trying to put together one of those all-black jigsaw puzzles. In the dark. During a windstorm. If something looked familiar, he had to then ask himself why, and what it might connect to, and how he should approach it. He felt like a blind man in a maelstrom.

Finding this information required the highest level of mental functioning. For someone so recently out of a coma, it was exhausting. And there was something else that was required: To access some of the memories he needed—passwords, log-in names, locations of files, meanings of notes—he had to force some of Loki's memories to the surface. And Oliver was not a computer; he couldn't just pull up one file out of a folder and leave the rest safely closed. If he exposed one memory to the light, others would try to bubble to the surface as well. And he could not afford to have that happen.

He was dancing a dangerous tango with his evil former self.

Oliver took a long drink of water and turned his eyes to the screen again. He had to secure transportation for them. Airline tickets. How did this work again? He had to get the passports in another name, the visas to match, enough tickets for everyone. . . . The screen began to swim in front of him. It seemed to morph into a television screen. On it he saw a man—a man dressed as a doctor—in an antiseptic room, a white room, but not a hospital. A loft of some kind . . . A young woman was there, a girl, a friend of Gaia's; something in him told him that. The scene was new but dripping with familiarity, like in dreams where some subconscious voice acts as a narrator for unfamiliar terrain.

The girl bent over and the doctor injected her with something. Oliver squinted to see more clearly. Then the screen split; on one side, he saw the beautiful young woman struck blind as a result of the injection. On the other side he saw the doctor raise his face. With horror, Oliver recognized his own eyes staring back at him from the television screen.

Jolted, he jumped back, knocking his chair to the floor with a clatter. The noise made him look down, and when he looked back up, the taunting television screen had become his computer again—his safe, familiar computer, quietly listing his old contacts for him to pore over.

“Loki,” he said out loud. “It was Loki, and I have control over him.”

He straightened the chair and placed it in front of his desk again, glanced nervously at the computer screen. But it was still covered in calm, static numbers. No more streaming video straight from his buried internal hard drive. Oliver took a deep breath and sat down again.

He needed to find a few contacts who would still do him favors. He needed to check those favors, to be sure he was not being scammed. He had to secure these passports and visas. His brother's life depended on it. Gaia's happiness depended on it.

He mustered his energy and forced himself back to work.

Outer-Borough Frat House

“WELL, LOOK, WE'VE INTERVIEWED A
bunch of guys, but you're the only one who seems normal. If you want the place, it's yours.”

Sam Moon took the hand extended to him and shook it. “That's great, man,” he said. “I appreciate it. You want the check now?”

“Yeah, if you've got it.”

Sam nodded and went into the room that was going to be his. The two guys—his new roommates—who already lived here seemed cool. They were students, but not at NYU, so Sam didn't have to worry that they'd know of his strange past.

This room—something about an empty room made it full of possibilities. The wide wooden slats of the floor invited him to plop a futon down. The cavernous closet, with nothing but two wire hangers and a baseball cap inside, awaited his meager wardrobe. The pale walls, painted an indiscriminate shade of greige, were made for dorm-style décor—black-and-white art posters, an Escher print, maybe an Anna Kournikova calendar. It was like a blank canvas.

He strolled to the windows and looked out. The windows were old and heavy. They rolled up and down on thick chains, and he could feel a palpable breeze where the frames met the jambs. They looked out on a busy Queens boulevard, filled with at least six different international restaurants, based on a quick count. Afghan, Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Greek, and something in a language he didn't even recognize. So he didn't live in Manhattan anymore. So he was going to have to work for a while before he could get back to school. That was okay. Because he finally had some kind of control over his life.

Of course he was worried. Of course he knew he could still be a target. But living in hiding, in Chinatown
with Dmitri, was no longer an option. He couldn't live like a caged animal anymore. Dmitri was great—it was a loan from him that was making this all possible, after all—but he was just one more reminder of that whole bizarre Gaia chapter of his life.

Gaia. She was the most fantastic, sexy, romantic, exciting person he'd ever known, but being with her had come with a price. Whatever mysterious forces she was connected to had destroyed Sam's life. Operatives bent on destroying Gaia had come after him, killing his roommate, framing him for the murder, and finally shooting and imprisoning Sam for months. He still wasn't fully recovered, physically or mentally. And Gaia hadn't come through for him. Yeah, she had rescued him, but when he'd tried to reconnect with her, she'd thrown up so many walls that he just hadn't been able to. Plus there was that boyfriend of hers. Obviously she was still stuck on him. There just wasn't room in her heart for Sam Moon.

That had been painful. So rather than be halfway in her life, he'd made the decision to cut himself off from her entirely. Make a fresh start. Hence the empty room in this outer-borough frat house.

Yeah, he was taking a chance. Whoever had hurt him the first time could be after him still. But he was as good as dead, hidden away in Dmitri's apartment. He had to take this chance.

“Dude, you okay in there? We were just going to get
some beers—you want to come with?”

“Yeah! I was just looking for my checkbook,” Sam said, scribbling out a check for a ridiculous amount of money and taking it out to the living room. “Here you go. First and last month's rent, plus a security deposit.”

The beers were going to cost Sam pretty much everything left in his account, but that was okay with him. Pretty much everything was okay with him right now. He was completely psyched to restart his life. All he had to do now was find a job.

So what could a guy with a back full of scar tissue and half a college education do to pull down some cash?

He followed his new friends to the dark Irish pub downstairs and watched three beers get ripped open in rapid succession. He took one and tipped it back, feeling the cool bubbles slip down his throat. Of course. Why hadn't he thought of it before? He had enough hard-luck stories of his own to know how to listen to everyone else's. He'd be a bartender.

I
see mountains. Snowy mountains. They're beautiful, cold, remote. I'm not a fool. I recognize them. I am in Siberia.

Siberia. Like some kind of Soviet Union-era dissident. I suppose it has its own romantic appeal. Except, of course, that most of those dissidents ended up dying of consumption.

I'm amazed at how calm I'm remaining. I know that I'm infuriated enough to bang my head against the wall of my jail cell, to grab the bars of my cell and pull on them until my knuckles break. This is unbearable.

I'm in Siberia, a region so remote it doesn't even have regular telephones, let alone cell phones.

My cell is eight by eight. Too small for a primate at the Bronx Zoo.

I can see the other prisoners exercising in the courtyard. I'm not even allowed to socialize with them. I'm locked up here like Hannibal Lecter.

And who's to blame for all this?

Loki. Once again, Loki.

The human mind cannot bear this kind of cruelty. Mere days ago, I was in the arms of my soon-to-be wife, enjoying the rosy glow of my new family. Watching Gaia become close to her new stepsister, Tatiana. Eyeballing Gaia's boyfriend, Ed. What made me think I could be a normal father with a normal family? What made me consider the idea of taking Ed aside to make sure he had Gaia's best interests at heart? I'm no father. I couldn't even stay clear of the evil creature who was once my brother long enough to finish dinner. Before it was done, I remember coughing . . . then choking . . . then blackness. Until I woke up here.

He did it to me again.

Perhaps my calm comes from the knowledge that this time I will destroy him. This time I will make Loki pay for the pain he has caused me, by eradicating him from the earth altogether. No matter what.

Even if it costs me my own life.