Run (5 page)

You've got a nice ass, for an angel.

CJ LEANED AGAINST THE OUTER
wall of the arch that led into the park. He liked that arch. It was this big, beautiful thing -- a knockoff of some bigger one from ... where? France, maybe. He'd probably know if he hadn't quit going to school.

Who cared what it was called, anyway? He just liked it. He liked to look at beautiful things.

Like her.

Weird. He hated her. But man, he had some pretty crazy fantasies about her. She pulled him. All that strength and power wrapped up in all that soft sexiness. It gnawed at something in him.

Sometimes he thought about killing her.

Sometimes he just thought about her.

There was one daydream in particular he returned to over and over. In it, he'd be chasing her through the park, and she'd be totally freaked-out scared, and he'd grab her from behind -- rough, but not enough to do any real damage. Maybe just a small bruise.
A lasting ache.

And he'd spin her around and her hair would get all tangled up in his fingers.

Then she'd look up at him with those intense eyes, those sky-colored eyes,
and she'd start begging.
First just begging him not to kill her, but then it would change.

She'd be begging him to kiss her. And damn, he'd kiss her right. And then . . . then she'd love him. And he'd have the power. All of it.

But CJ knew better. He knew to put hate in front of love every time. That was the way it was with him and his boys. Hate put you in control, but love controlled you. So he let his mind slither back to hating her.

And then, as if he'd conjured her, she was there.

Sun in her hair. And that body. Those lips . . . on his lips.

Shit! Enough of this bullshit. He had to breathe deep. Once. Twice. Steady. He had to remind himself that the one thing he wanted to do more than kiss her was kill her. He
needed
to kill her if he wanted to stay alive himself.

He adjusted the sling on his arm. The other asshole he wanted to kill was whoever the hell had shot at him Saturday night.

The bullet had punctured his biceps, and damn, it had hurt. Still hurt. One of his boys had cleaned it out and given CJ the sling. Can't go to the hospital with a gunshot wound. They report it to the cops.

But CJ was sure it had hurt even more when Tarick had twisted it that morning. That wasn't a pain CJ was going to forget anytime soon. And it was all because of the bitch.

CJ focused on Gaia.

She paused, tilting her chin in his direction, like maybe she could hear him thinking about her. His heart thunked in his chest. His hand clenched into a fist. But she didn't see him. She kept walking.

Why wasn't she in school? This chick was damned unpredictable.

He watched her walk for a moment, liking the way her hips moved,
imagining kicking her hard in the stomach.
In some remote recess of his mind, he knew this made him a damn sick dude. In the one remaining brain cell that could still tell good from bad, he understood his thinking was damaged.

But he'd turned on the world, and right now she was his closest target.

OKAY, NOW
THIS
WAS A PROBLEM.
There were, on this crisp October morning, eight -- count 'em, eight -- homeless people by the fountain in Washington Square Park. And five of them were the proud owners of shopping carts.

Why hadn't the kidnapper foreseen this possibility?

Maybe he had. Maybe he just needed a little comic relief, and watching Gaia try to find the correct one was it.
Will the real undercover operative for Sam's crazed kidnapper please stand up?

Well, at least she was able to eliminate the three cartless ones right off the bat. That left only five derelicts from which to choose.

The note had said a homeless
man
, hadn't it? Yes, it had. So the two bag ladies were out of the running.

Three remaining contestants.
Gaia would need a closer look.

She clutched the disk in her pocket. She should have copied it. But Ed was at the computer, and if the files really were about her, there was no way she could let him see the contents. It would have taken too long to get him out of there, get everything copied, and clear off the hard drive.

Too much time away from the task at hand.
Saving Sam.

She approached the first homeless man -- a guy who appeared disconcertingly young to her. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine years old at the most. In a perfect world, he'd be walking his kid to kindergarten right now, grabbing a cab to his corner office on Wall Street, making the upright decision not to sleep with his secretary.

But this was not a perfect world, this was New York. And the guy was rooting through a trash can in search of his breakfast.

"Excuse me . . ."

He kept digging.

Gaia stepped forward. She could smell him now, ripe with his own humanity.

"Excuse me."

The guy whirled. "Get the hell away from me, bitch!"

Well, that was uncalled-for. So much for charity. She frowned at him. "I'm supposed to --"

"This is
my
trash can," he thundered, shaking a half-eaten apple at her. "Mine! So go 'way. Go on! Get out! Mine!" He bit the apple, then placed it inside a filthy old tennis shoe in his shopping cart (presumably to snack on later).

Yummy.
Next?

Gaia made her way toward a slumped figure sitting on the ground. A crudely printed cardboard sign propped up in his lap read Desert Storm Veteran.

Well, that didn't take long, Gaia mused grimly. The Gulf War took place -- what? Seven, eight years ago? She would have imagined it took at least a whole decade for one's life to fall apart so completely.

Gaia approached him, then bent forward and whispered, "Are you . . . looking for me?"

The guy looked up at her. "Yes," he said.

Thank God. Gaia reached into the pocket of her jacket for the disk. She drew it out, then hesitated. How could she be sure this was the guy?

"Yes," the man said again. "I am looking for you!" He reached out and grabbed Gaia's hand, wrenching the disk from her grasp with his grimy fingers.

Please tell me this is the right guy, she pleaded to herself silently. He grabbed the disk for a reason, right?

"I've been looking for you for a long time," the guy said. "You're the angel of the Lord, ain'tcha?"

And the reason was ... he was
totally insane.

Oh, shit.

"You've come to take me on to the Promised Land. I knew it the minute I saw that hair. That's the hair of an angel, all right. Only the
Almighty Himself
makes that color hair."

"Yeah. The Almighty and L'Oréal," Gaia snapped. She leaned down toward him. "Give me back the disk."

"No!" he shouted, clutching the floppy. "You've come to save me!"

"No. I've come to save Sam."

"So call me Sam." He was full of logic. "Just bring me on to heaven. Lead me there, angel. Take me."

"Believe me, mister, if
I
brought you to heaven, we'd most likely get jumped on the way." Gaia made a grab for the disk, but the guy was quick. He stuffed it into his grubby shirt.

"Give it to me," she demanded evenly.

"No! Not until you bring me to meet my Maker." Gaia was starting to
see red.
Oh, he was going to meet his Maker, all right. He just wasn't going to like the method by which Gaia would send him there.

She pressed her fingers to her temples in frustration, demanding some patience from herself. She didn't want to have to pound the guy. He was already so pathetic as it was. She glanced around the park, hoping for inspiration, and found it.

"Okay," she said at last. "I'll bring you to meet your Maker. But if I do, you have to give me back my disk.
Deal?"

The man nodded.

Gaia helped him up and started walking. He followed.

"Hey. You've got a nice ass for an angel."

Gaia almost laughed in disbelief. How could she have come to this? If her situation hadn't been so totally dire, she would have allowed herself a long, cathartic laugh. "The Lord's a real stickler for fitness," she muttered.

Gaia led him straight to one of the homeless people she'd eliminated in the first round. He was taller than her Desert Storm vet, with long, flowing gray hair and mismatched sneakers. "There he is," she said, pointing.

"That guy? In the ripped-up overcoat?
That's God? "

Gaia nodded, hating to lie even under these circumstances. Hadn't somebody once said there's a little bit of God in every one of us?

"He don't even have a cart!" Gaia's companion was incredulous.

"Go figure."

The man scowled at her. "Listen, angel, you better not be shittin' me."

"Angels don't shit people." That much had to be true.

"He's drinkin' whiskey."

"Yeah, well . . ." Gaia shrugged. "He's been under a lot of pressure lately."

The homeless man hesitated, then reached into his shirt and withdrew the disk. Gaia snatched it before he could change his mind. She was about to run, but he spoke, and the emotion in his voice pinned her to her place. "Thank you, angel."

Gaia swallowed hard. "No sweat."

She took off for the fountain, putting her conscience on ice.

Her real contact was seated on a bench near it. She was beyond irritated at herself for not noticing the obvious signs before.
So much for maintaining her wits.

The guy was straight from central casting, with his dirt-streaked face half hidden beneath a tattered hat, the shabby clothes, the wire shopping cart filled with trash bags and empty cans. What differentiated him from the others was that, unlike "God" with his mismatched sneakers, this guy was wearing a brand-spanking-new pair of expensive lug-soled boots.

Gaia approached him, feeling hollow. This man was one of the kidnappers. This man was in some way responsible for what was happening to Sam. He or someone he knew had inflicted pain on the person she loved.

She could have killed him, but that might get Sam killed.

There was no choice. For now she would do as they said. She wouldn't ask questions.

She reached into her pocket and withdrew the floppy disk, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the visible lower half of the man's face. There was nothing recognizable. She memorized every detail in case she needed it later.

Cleft in the chin. Small scar on the jaw. Patchy stubble. Dark complexion.

Gaia moved closer, ready for even the slightest movement on his part. But he remained motionless, seemingly unaware of her.

She stepped up to the cart, dropped the disk into it, then turned to walk away.

"Tkduhplstkbg," the guy mumbled.

She stopped. "What?"

"Plastic bag. Take it."

Gaia squinted against the bright sunshine. On the handle of the shopping cart hung a small plastic bag from a Duane Reade drugstore. She reached for it cautiously. It was heavy.

She recognized the weight, and a surge of disgust filled her.

"No," she said.

The man lifted his eyes to her and glared. "Take it."

Gaia felt her free hand clench into a tight fist. One nice solid jab to the bridge of his nose and
this guy would wake up in the next zip code.

But she couldn't. She had to think of Sam.

So she took the bag with the gun in it.

GAIA SAT ON THE EDGE OF THE
fountain and placed the bag between her knees. She stuck one hand in, letting her fingers brush the butt of the gun for a moment before fitting her palm around it. It felt dead and weighty.

And familiar.

Gaia hated guns. But she knew how to use them.

Her father had taught her marksmanship. While other daddies were taking their nine-year-old daughters to toy stores and ice cream parlors, Tom Moore was bringing Gaia to the firing range, or far into the woods with a rifle and a rusty tin can for a target.

And she'd been a natural. From the start, she'd rarely missed, and by the time her father had finished training her,
she didn't miss at all.
Even now, years away from the experience, she could still hear the report of her last shot in the forest behind their home. The deafening explosion of the shotgun, the distant screaming
ping
of the bullet hitting the can.

It blended in her memory with another explosion and another scream.

Instinctively she let go of the gun. She pressed her fingers against her eyes to make the memory go away.

Think of Sam. Think of him.

She fished around inside the bag, in case there was something else. There was.

A note.

"Of course." Gaia withdrew the note and read it.

Within the next twenty minutes, you will commit a crime. You may choose your victim, but you are to limit your territory to this park.

"My territory?" Gaia snarled.

You are not to go easy on this victim. The enclosed is to assist you in this task. You will also be required to en-list the assistance of a young man named . . .

Gaia felt the presence beside her at the exact second she read the name.

Renny.

She looked up and blinked. Renny was standing there, staring at her.
This kidnapper had some major timing going on.

"Did I scare you?" he asked, taking a small step back.

"Not quite," she said.

He swallowed, gulped.

"Please tell me you're done with those skinhead assholes," Gaia said, looking Renny hard in the eyes, her mind leaping from one suspicion to the next.

"I am." Renny looked down at his sneakers. "But it's not that easy," he murmured. "You try living on the streets without anybody to watch your back."

"You don't live on the streets," Gaia said.

He met her gaze, his eyes almost black. "I don't
sleep
on the streets, Gaia. But I live here."

She considered his reasoning. It was true. Renny had nowhere else to go. From the sorry state of his clothes and the random bruises he was always sporting,
home seemed less than appealing.
So he lived for this park, those chess tables. And in how many places would a thirteen-year-old Hispanic poet be accepted? She sighed, remembering some of the verses he'd recited to her. That edgy, soulful poetry of his made her feel as though he'd scraped the words up off the sidewalk and strung them together into something that sang.

He straightened his shirt with his still small, wiry hands. Sometimes his obvious frailty pained Gaia -- especially when he was trying to
act tough.

She put her thumb beneath his chin and nudged it upward, so that he was looking her in the eyes. "Who sent you here?"

He shrugged.

"Don't bullshit me, Renny. This is important. Whoever sent me this . . ." She held up the bag, noting the sincerely puzzled expression in his eyes. "You really don't know?"

He shook his head hard -- a childlike gesture.
It made her heart feel empty.

"Tell me what happened."

He sat down on the rim of the fountain and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "I got a phone call at home."

"What were you doing at home on a Monday morning?" Gaia asked, trying to sound stern. She could barely pull it off.

"I go home for lunch sometimes," he said, shrugging. She narrowed her eyes at him. "Hey, you're not in school, either."

The boy had a point.

"Go on," Gaia said.

Renny took a deep breath. "Guy says, 'Go to the fountain in the park.' So I go."

"Did he threaten you?"

Renny gave her a lopsided grin. "Not really. 'Cept his voice sounded like he ate nails for breakfast, so I figure it's better if I do what he says."

Gaia was about to ask if the nail-eating voice had mentioned Sam, then thought better of it. The less Renny knew, the less danger he'd be in -- relatively speaking, anyway. If the kidnapper knew his name, not to mention his phone number, he was already in this up to his eye balls, based merely on the fact that he was associated with her.

"We have to pass a test," she said softly.

"A test?" He whistled low. "That doesn't sound good. That's what the guys told me just before they handed me that pistol to point in your face."

Gaia considered inquiring as to what sort of punishment Renny had faced in the wake of failing that test, but decided against it. She didn't think she could handle that at the moment.

"We have to, uh, commit a crime."

His big eyes got bigger. He said nothing.

"Something random. Something sort of rough." She held up the bag. "There's a gun in here."

"Damn."

"Yeah, damn," she said, staring across the park at a couple of fighting pigeons. "We've got to do it here. Now."

Renny mulled this over for a minute or so. "Why?"

"I don't want to tell you. Just trust me. If we don't . . ." She finished with a shrug.

"I'm in," he said.

Gaia nodded. She wasn't sure if that was good news or bad news. She had to think, to figure out the best way to go about this. Maybe there was a way to make the crime look real without actually harming anyone. She did know there was no way in hell she was going to fire that gun. She'd wield it, swing it around at whomever she ultimately chose to hassle, but
she would not pull the trigger.
The kidnapper would just have to settle for that.

Her eyes roamed the park, landing finally on the chess tables.

And there he was.

She recognized him immediately. The sleazebag. The well-dressed, self-important slimeball she'd played once -- and only once, because he kept grabbing her thigh under the chess table. His name was Frank, she believed. He was about forty-seven, forty-eight years old but looked at least sixty with all his wrinkles. Tanning-salon regular, diamond pinky ring, woven loafers, even in October.

Jerk.

Gaia despised him. He'd hustled Zolov once, taking advantage of one of the sweet old guy's less lucid moments. Gaia figured Frank had walked away with Zolov's entire Social Security check that day, then used it to pay Lianne.

Lianne. Another pathetic story. Lianne was fourteen and a prostitute. Gaia was repulsed by her, but somewhere in her heart she felt sorry for her, too. The girl must have had one horrifying life to resort to turning tricks. And Frank was her best customer. Illegal, and disgusting.

The more Gaia thought about it, the more she decided she wouldn't entirely loathe roughing up Frank.

All she could hope was that wherever the kidnapper was watching from was far away enough to make Frank look like an innocent citizen, undeserving of Gaia's attack.

Without a word, she stood and made her way toward the chess tables.

Without a word, Renny got up and followed her.