HEATHER HAD GOTTEN COMPLETELY lost in the world of Josh’s lips. And his hands, and his incredibly muscular arms, and the dent that ran down the center of his chest that she could even feel through his shirt, and …
* * *
Blurry
* * *
Yes, she was plastered, absolutely, but still … Josh had been right about Washington Square Park. Being wrapped up in his arms, straddling his legs, with his coat wrapped around her shoulders and his lips sending rich and glorious tingles through her entire body. The park at night did feel completely new. She and Josh had already created an entirely new memory for Heather, a whole new mental association with that park. Or in this case, more of a physical association, really. But it was a physical association that was, just as Josh had promised, unforgettable.
That was, until Josh quite suddenly jerked away from Heather and lifted her back onto the side of the park bench.
“Wh-What’s wrong?” Heather asked, trying to catch her breath as she did a quick mirrorless lipstick-smudge removal around the edges of her mouth.
“Nothing,” Josh assured her. “God, not you, definitely not you.” He shot out of his seat.
“Well, if not me, then who?”
“Oh, man.” Josh sighed, backing away from the bench. “I am so sorry, Heather, I totally forgot …”
“Forgot what?” Heather squawked in a state of pure, perhaps drunken confusion. “What did you forget at two in the morning?”
“It’s … Josh slapped his hands to his sides and sighed. “You know, it’s so complicated, if I tried to explain it to you now, it would take forever.”
“I have forever.”
Josh’s eyes darted out into the park and then to his watch. “Oh, damn hell damn hell. I’m so sorry, Heather, I’ve got to run. I’ll call you first thing in the morning, okay? I had an amazing time tonight. Amazing.”
“It is first thing in the morning.”
“Second thing, then,” he said, backing toward the bushes that led toward MacDougal Street. “I’ll call you second thing!”
And then he took off in a full sprint. Like a bat out of hell.
Heather was absolutely, unequivocally confounded. Had she done something wrong? Was it something about her kisses? Had she said something wrong? No, that wasn’t possible, given that neither one of them had said anything since they’d landed on that park bench together. What … the hell … was that about? How could he have just left her in the park alone that way?
“Heather!”
Heather looked out at the center of the park and saw a blurry figure sprinting toward her. It couldn’t be Josh, since he’d just taken off in the other direction. Besides, it sounded like a woman’s voice.
“Heather, wait there!” she hollered intensely.
Heather was indeed awfully drunk, and everything was awfully blurry, but it sure as hell looked a lot like …
“Gaia?”
FOR JUST A MOMENT, GAIA HONESTLY wished she hadn’t seen him. She wished that she didn’t possess nearly telescopic vision. Then she wouldn’t have had to know it tonight Then she wouldn’t have had to confront Heather with it tonight. Then she could have had just one ever so brief unhorrible moment to herself in her home away from home of Washington Square Park.
* * *
Nonathletic Drunk
* * *
But she had seen him, and she knew it. Just as much as she knew that he had seen her and taken off into the bushes. And she had once made the mistake of not confronting Heather about potential grave danger. It was outside this very park that she’d made that mistake. And she had promised herself that she would never make that mistake again.
The question of why wasn’t important now. That would surely present itself down the line. Right now, the only priority was speed. More speed. More speed to catch up with him. More speed to put an end to whatever kind of insane scheme this was, right now.
She stomped right up to the edge of the pavement just before the bushes, where Heather was sitting in an utterly dumbfounded state.
“Gaia?”
“Wait here,” Gaia ordered as she leaped into the bushes, breaking through branches and twigs, scanning her entire field of vision with robotic precision. “Josh?” she screamed out viciously. “Jesus, you freakin’ baby!” she hollered, her lungs filling up with the overwhelming purified hatred she had for him. “Running into the goddamn bushes? Are you kidding me? What is this, fourth grade? Olly, olly, oxen-free, you son of a bitch! Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
She came out of the bushes right to the edge of the park on MacDougal, and that was that. He’d made it out. Somehow. “Son of a bitch!” she hollered.
She quickly turned around, crashing back through the bushes and back to Heather, who was in the exact same position as when she’d last seen her. Utterly bewildered and perhaps … a little dizzy? She seemed to be swaying a bit from side to side as she suffered through what appeared to be her very intense confusion.
Gaia dropped down next to Heather on the park bench and twisted her body enough to put them face-to-face. “Heather, are you okay?”
“What are you doing here?” asked Heather with a catch in her voice, as she continuously looked back behind her into the bushes. It was clear that she considered Gaia’s presence an intrusion.
But Gaia didn’t care. She wasn’t going to waste any time on this one. She wasn’t going to be gentle about it or take Heather through it slowly, because Heather had to be one hundred percent crystal clear that this scam had to stop now, as in this minute, this hour.
“Okay, Heather, I need you to listen to me, all right? I need you to listen to what I tell you and then believe me. It’s very important that you believe me because this is not bullshit, okay? I am not bullshitting you. That guy you were just with … Josh …”
“Yeah …?”
“I know that guy, and he is bad news. He works for some horrible people, and he’s trying to set up some kind of trap with you. I don’t know what yet, but I won’t have to know if you just take my … no, it’s more than advice. You can’t see him, Heather. You can’t see him ever again, do you understand? You’ve got to call that thing off as of today. As of right now.”
Heather narrowed her eyes at Gaia as if Gaia had just delivered a speech in Portuguese. “Wait … what are you talking about?”
Gaia slammed her hands down on her lap and rolled her eyes heavenward. If Heather was drunk, then this was the worst possible time to have this conversation. But it wasn’t the kind of conversation that could be had tomorrow after she and Josh had gone out for a little lunch or something. The rules had to be established right now, and Gaia was willing to say anything necessary to set those rules. Including more of the truth.
“I’m talking about your date, Heather, or your boyfriend or whatever he is. You cannot trust him. He is plotting something against you, and against me, and even maybe against Ed—I have no idea. You have to stop seeing him. Do you understand?”
Heather rolled her eyes and began to fit her feet back into her shoes, which were on the ground. “Gaia, are you aware that you sound completely crazy right now?” She shoved the second shoe on and got slowly to her feet.
Gaia got up with her, not wanting to lose eye contact on this particular issue. Keep trying, Gaia. Try another approach. “Heather, please, I don’t want to make the same mistake with you twice. Think about this … If I had told you that night that there was a slasher in the park, would you have believed me?”
“Of course, I would have,” Heather snapped, giving her an evil glare.
“Well, then, will you believe me now when I tell you … that guy you were just here with on this bench … is a murderer.”
“What?” Heather squawked. “Okay, you know what, Gaia? I think that’s enough. I think I know what you’re doing, and if you stop now, then maybe I’ll just forget about this, okay? Now, I’ve had a little bit to drink tonight, and my boyfriend just went to bed, so if you don’t mind,
I think I’d like to go to bed as well.” Heather took a few stumbling practice steps before she removed her shoes again and began walking more quickly.
Of course, Gaia knew that the odds of getting through to Heather were practically nil, but she had no choice other than to try. “Heather, wait, please, just hear me out for one second. One second.”
Heather finally stopped and turned back to Gaia. “What?” She sighed dubiously.
“Look,” Gaia said, looking her as sincerely in the eye as she knew how or had ever done before. “I’m going to tell you this only because I don’t know how else to convince you of the kind of trouble you’re in. And this isn’t how I would have wanted to tell you at all, but Heather … that man … Josh. He killed Sam, Heather. Sam is dead.”
Heather went completely silent as she stared into Gaia’s eyes. Her hands slowly drifted up from her sides to her hips as she leaned her face closer to Gaia’s. “You … are … unbelievable.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know, I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt,” Heather said, her voice beginning to simmer with a very angry kind of manic energy. “And this is what I get?”
“What—”
“I see what you’re doing, Gaia,” Heather announced, shooting more and more anger through her eyes. “I just never thought you had it in you to stoop so low as that kind of a sick lie about Sam. I mean, what the hell is wrong with you? Is it really that important to you to ruin any relationship I have?”
“Heather, don’t be ridic—”
“Any relationship, Gaia! Any relationship!” Something in Heather had just snapped, and Gaia could see it in her eyes. “I mean, it’s uncanny! I love Sam, you take Sam. I love Ed, you take Ed. Now I love Josh, you get one glimpse of him and you’re jealous already! I mean, do you have any idea how sick that is? Are you just clinically jealous of me twenty-four hours a day? Have you seen a shrink about this? Because you really should, Gaia. And you should tell him that you actually have a sick enough mind to tell me not just that Sam is dead, but that Josh killed him, just so you can keep me away from both of them? Killing two birds with one disgusting lie? What is that, Gaia? What the hell is that?”
Gaia wanted to get one word in somehow. One word of sanity amidst Heather’s attack of total drunken insanity, but barring a slap in the face, the opportunity simply wasn’t there. “Heather—”
“You know, for a second there, I actually thought that we were becoming friends. How utterly idiotic of me was that?”
“We were bec—”
“Now I see that you’re the exact same. You’re the exact same person you were when you first came to this school. You’re just evil and conniving and jealous and sick in the freaking head! You’d say anything to take a man away from me. Anything! You’re a jealous, man-eating bitch, Gaia, and I just want you to do me one favor. I want you to stay the hell away from me. And stay the hell away from Josh.”
Heather grabbed her shoes and took off at a surprisingly fast sprint, for a nonathletic drunk in stocking feet.
Gaia stood in the middle of the park at a complete loss. All she could think of was the fact that she hadn’t been called a bitch this many times in one day since …
What the hell was she thinking? She’d never been called a bitch this many times in one day. That was what made today … so very special.
GAIA UNFOLDED THE NOTE AND squinted at the words for the twentieth time. She had to take a few steps down the sidewalk and hold the note up under a street lamp before she could see well enough to read.
* * *
Spider Gaia
* * *
TOM MOORE, APT. 1801, ABERDEEN BLDG.
Pretty sketchy note. Whoever had slipped the piece of paper under Natasha’s front door was a long way from Tolstoy.
Since finding the paper that afternoon, Gaia had folded and unfolded the sheet so many times that the little piece of paper was already starting to wear thin along the creases. Another couple of hours and she’d have nothing left but some ragged confetti.
Gaia raised the note and squinted at the sloping handwriting in the poor light, trying to see if there was some secret she might decipher from the six short words. Had her father written the note? Maybe. She couldn’t tell. The letters were scribbled, which could mean whoever had written the note was in a hurry. That could mean someone was after the note writer, and that could mean it had been written by her father. Sure. And it could have been written by Santa Claus. Maybe with a little help from his pal, the Easter bunny.
Gaia scowled at the letters until the message started to blur. Was this an invitation? Was her father asking her to meet him at this location? It was just as likely—probably more likely—that her uncle had written the note and the thing was nothing but an invitation to get herself neatly dissected under a microscope. That was, assuming her uncle really was the killer Loki. Gaia didn’t know that. Not for sure. She took one last look at the note, then jammed the paper into the pocket of her jeans. She wasn’t sure of a damn thing these days.
If mysterious people were going to drive her crazy with cryptic notes, Gaia wished they could at least leave a decent address. It had taken two hours at the library and the help of an old woman who smelled like mothballs before Gaia was able to locate the Aberdeen Building. By the time she climbed up the subway on the west side of Central Park and hunted through the maze of apartment buildings and brownstones, the sun was already long down. Even with an address, it took another twenty minutes to identify the Aberdeen as a skinny, twenty-story affair that looked out of place among a crowd of newer and much shorter duplexes.
Gaia stopped on the corner and watched the building as cabs rolled slowly by on the narrow street. Despite its height, the Aberdeen had a weary, worn-down look about it. The building was faced with some kind of gray stone, which had grown smeared and dark from years of air pollution. There were carvings at the corners. Big gray faces. They might have been faces of presidents, or famous explorers, or rich old farts who had put up the cash for the building. Whoever they were supposed to be, they all had a serious case of acid rain acne and were too eroded for Gaia to make out much more than hollow eyes and grim expressions.
She counted narrow balconies along the flat front of the building until she found the eighteenth floor. Some of the rooms were light. More were dark. One of them might hold her father. Or a killer. Or both.
Either way, Gaia hoped for some answers.
She hustled through the traffic and up onto the sidewalk in front of the Aberdeen. When she reached for the worn brass handle on the front door, it unexpectedly flew open, and a man in a dark red uniform stepped out. “Yes?” he said. “Can I help you?”
Gaia studied the man for a second. There was some kind of unwritten rule: the shoddier the building, the more elaborate the doorman. This guy looked like he was ready to lead French forces at the Ardennes. Or maybe the British in the Boer War. He looked almost old enough to have been at both battles. His red wool uniform was several sizes too big for his buzzard shoulders, and the long, sweeping coat brushed the tops of his boots. Gold braid spilled off the brim of a ridiculous felt hat. There were even some things that looked like medals jangling against the man’s pocket. Gaia wondered what kind of medals a doorman might get. The Silver Star in taxi hailing? The Purple Heart for bad Christmas tips?
The doorman stepped completely out of the old apartment building and let the door swing closed behind him. “You want something here?” he asked, folding his thin, uniformed arms across his thin, uniformed chest.
Gaia shrugged. “Just visiting.”
“And who is it you were visiting?”
“My father lives here. I was going up to see him.”
“Your father, is it? And what would his name be?” The doorman had an accent that sounded like Dublin by way of a decade in Brooklyn.
Gaia started to say something, stopped, and tried to think. What name would her father have used?
“What’s
wrong there, miss? Don’t you know your own father’s name?”
“Moore. His name’s Tom Moore.”
The doorman’s colorless lips puckered. “I’ve not heard of him.”
“What about Oliver?”
“Mr. Oliver?”
“No, Oliver Moore.”
The man shook his head, sending the gold braid on his cap into a dance. “Never heard that name, either.” He squinted at Gaia with pale gray eyes. “You sure you’ve come to the right building, miss?”
Gaia gritted her teeth and stared through the glass door behind the man. She could see a long, marble-floored hallway leading back to a pair of elevators and the old metal button between them that would take her up to her father. “This is the right building,” she said. “My father lives here, and I want to see him.” She started to move around the doorman, but the old man stepped back against the door and shook his head again.
“You can’t come in. Not unless someone inside says it’s okay.”
“My father—”
“I don’t know your father,” said the doorman. “You give me a name I know and I’ll ring a bell, see if someone wants you on the inside; otherwise you need to get out of my door.”
The muscles in Gaia’s jaw tightened into a painful knot. The pleasant idea of kicking the man’s bony ass down the street came and lingered for a few moments in her mind. Reluctantly she shoved it away. She had no doubt that she could take this guy out with both hands behind her back and blindfolded. But the doorman was just an old guy doing his job. A sour old guy, yeah, but that didn’t mean he deserved to get his ugly wrinkled face turned inside out.
Gaia turned away from the door without another word and marched back along the sidewalk. She heard the old man give a grunt behind her. He sounded awfully satisfied with himself. Maybe he would get another medal. The Medal of Doorman Honor for keeping ignorant kids out of the building.
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