NO BULLET"DON'T MOVE." Okay. Gaia's pupils sped to the corners of her eyes, but she didn't turn her head. Okay, it felt very much like the cold barrel of a gun pressed against her neck. Okay, if Gaia were to feel fear, now would be an obvious time.The drying leaves were rustling sweetly overhead, the picturesque little puddles cast the glow of the streetlamps back up into the sky, but there wasn't a soul in sight besides the heavy-breathing, perspiring young man crushing the gun into her trapezius muscle.He was standing behind the bench, but she could make out enough of him through her straining peripheral vision to recognize the nasty little hoodlum she'd seen in the park many times. His name was CJ Somethingorother. She'd not only beaten up his friends but identified him in a police lineup two weeks before as the gang member who'd stabbed Heather Gannis in the park. It didn't tax her imagination to think of why he wanted to scare her. Even hurt her.But kill her?"Don't freakin' move a
GAIATonight, as I sat on the park bench waiting for my head to explode, I had one moment of clarity in which I learned two things.1) I have to find my dad.I just have to. As angry as I am, as much as I hate him for abandoning me on the most awful, vulnerable day of my life, I don't want to die without seeing him one more time. I don t know what I'll say to him. But there's something I want to know, and I feel like if I can look in his eyes -- just for a moment -- I'll know what his betrayal meant and whether there's any love or trust, even the possibility of it, between us.2) I have to have sex.Oh, come on. Don't act so shocked. I'm seventeen years old. I know the rules about being safe. If my life weren't in very immediate jeopardy, maybe I would let it wait for the exact right time. But let's face it -- I may not be around next week, forget about happily ever after. Besides, I've been through a lot of truly awful things in my life, so why should I die without getting to experience on
DESPERATEShe hated that pale blond hair, a color you rarely saw on a person over the age of three.A BOMB"YOU SOUND WEIRD.""How do you mean?" Gaia asked."I don't know. You just do. You're talking fast or something," Ed said as he clenched the portable phone between his shoulder and his ear and eased himself from his desk chair to his wheelchair.Ed Fargo was honest with Gaia, and Gaia was honest with Ed. He appreciated that about their relationship. With most girls he knew, girls like Heather, there were many mystifying levels of bullshit. With Gaia he could just tell her exactly what he was thinking.Ed's mind briefly flashed on the hip-hugging green corduroys Gaia was wearing in Mr. McAuliff's class today.Well, actually, not everything he was thinking. There was a certain category of thing he couldn't tell her about. That's why it was often easier talking with her on the phone, because then he couldn't see her, which meant he had fewer of those thoughts he couldn't tell her about."I had
ONE SMALL COMMENTTHE TIME HAD COME. HEATHER Gannis felt certain of that as she slammed her locker door shut and tucked the red envelope into her book bag. She waited for the deafening late afternoon crowd to clear before striking out toward the bathroom. She didn't feel like picking up the usual half-dozen hangers-on, desperate to know what she was doing after soccer practice.Okay, time to make her move. She caught sight of Melanie Young in her peripheral vision but pretended she hadn't. She acted like she didn't hear Tannie Deegan calling after her. Once in the bathroom she hid in the stall for a couple of minutes to be sure she wasn't being followed.Heather usually liked her high visibility and enormous number of friends, but some of those girls were so freakishly needy some of the time. It was like if they missed one group trip to the Antique Boutique, they would never recover. Their clinginess made it almost impossible for Heather to spend one private afternoon with her boyfriend.H
LONELY HEARTSHe smiled at her. This time it was sweet, open, real.
REMARKABLE GIRL"THAT STUPID PUNK WILL NOT KILL Gaia!" he thundered. "Do you understand?"He strode to the far end of the loft apartment and kicked over a side table laden with coffee mugs. Most rolled; one shattered. One of the two bodyguards who hovered in the background came forward to clean them up.He spun on Ella. He hated her face at moments like this. "Do you understand?""Of course I understand," she said sullenly. "I wasn't expecting her to climb out the window," she added in a scornful mumble."Learn to expect it!" he bellowed. "Gaia is not an ordinary girl! Haven't you figured that out?"Ella's eyes darted with reptilian alertness, but she wisely kept her mouth shut."Gaia is no use to me dead. I will not let it happen. I don't care how crazy the girl is. I don't care if she throws herself in the path of a bus. I will not let it happen!" He was ranting now. He couldn't stop now if he wanted to. He'd always had a bad temper."Show me the pictures," he demanded of Ella.Reluctantly El
LIKE A DRUGSHE PROBABLY WOULDN'T EVEN BE there. Why would she? She'd be avoiding him if she had any sense.Sam Moon hurried into Washington Square Park with his physics textbook tucked under his arm. Then again, if he had any sense, he'd be avoiding her. Instead he was darting around the park at all hours like some kind of timid stalker, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.He approached the shaded area where the chess tables sat, surveying them almost hungrily. No. She wasn't there. It verged on ridiculous, the physical feeling of disappointment that radiated through his abdomen.He kept his distance, reviewing his options. He didn't want to plunge right into chess world because then all his cohorts would see him and he'd be stuck for at least a game or two. And he'd found out the hard way that when Gaia was on his mind (and when wasn't she?), he was a lot worse at chess.Maybe she had come and gone already. Maybe she'd caught sight of him from a distance and taken off. Maybe she really did
A LAME COME-ONSHE WAS A MESS.She was a nightmare.She should have her license to be female revoked.Gaia turned around to look at her backside in the slightly warped mirror that hung on the back of the door to her room. Earlier that day she'd picked up a pair of capri pants off the sale rack at the Gap in an effort to look cute and feminine. Instead she looked like the Incredible Hulk right after he turns green and bursts out of his clothing.What kind of shoes were you supposed to wear with these things? Definitely not boots, as she could plainly see in the mirror. Was it too late in the year to wear flip-flops?Sam was not going to fall in love with her. He was going to take one look and run screaming in the opposite direction. Either that or laugh uncontrollably.Why was she torturing herself this way? In her ordinary life she managed to pull off the functional style of a person who didn't care. She had no money, which occasionally resulted in the coincidental coolness of thrift shop dre
COLD BLOODHer adrenaline was pumping now. Her muscles were buzzing with intensity. She was an easy target this close.
CUNNING INTELLIGENCETHERE WERE MOMENTS IN LIFE WHEN words failed to convey your thoughts. There were moments when your thoughts failed to convey your feelings. Then there were moments when even your feelings failed to convey your feelings.This was one of those, Heather realized as she gaped at Sam and Gaia Moore sitting on the park bench together.They weren't kissing. They weren't touching. They weren't even talking. But Sam and Gaia could have been doing the nasty right there on the spot, and it wouldn't have carried the intimacy of this tentative, nervous, neurotic union she now witnessed between them.Maybe she was imagining it, Heather considered. Maybe it was a figment of her own obsessive, jealous mind.She'd almost rather believe she was crazy than that Sam, her Sam, was falling in love with Gaia. It was too coincidental, just too cruel to be real. Like one of those Greek tragedies she read for Mr. Hirschberg's class. Gaia was the person she most despised. Sam was the person she l
NOT YETWHAT GOOD WAS IT BEING A TRAINED fighting machine when you couldn't beat the hell out of a loathsome creature like Heather Gannis? Gaia wondered bitterly as she stomped along the overcrowded sidewalks of SoHo.What a catty piece of crap Heather was. No, that was too kind. Cats were fuzzy, warm-blooded, and somewhat loyal. Heather was more reptile than mammal -- cold-blooded and remote with dead, hooded eyes.Gaia was supposed to be smart. When she was six years old, her IQ tested so high, she'd been sent to the National Institutes of Health to spend a week with electrodes stuck to her f
orehead. And yet in Heather's presence Gaia felt like a slobbering idiot. She'd probably misspell her name if put on the spot."Oops. Sorry," Gaia mumbled to a man in a beige suit whose shoulder she caught as she crossed Spring Street.Trendy stores were ablaze along the narrow cobblestoned streets. Well-dressed crowds flowed into the buzzing, overpriced restaurants that Ella always wanted to go to. G
SAMSometimes I worry there's something wrong with me. Sometimes I worry I don't actually feel things like regular people do. Often I'm watching the world rather than actually living in it. It's not just that I feel distant from the world. The thing that worries me is that a lot of times, I feel distant from myself. I watch myself like I'd watch an actor in a movie. I think, I observe, I process, but I don't feel anything.Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever sat at the funeral of your great-aunt, for example, and worn a solemn expression on your face and tried to tell yourself all the ways in which it was sad, without actually feeling sad at all?Have you ever met somebody who said, "Oh my God, that's so funny!" all the time, but never actually laughed? I'm worried that's me.When my parents split up when I was in fifth grade, I said all of the things a sad kid says in that circumstance. I even wrung out a few tears. When they got back together ten months later, I shared in the happ
HAZARDSSam couldn't help smiling."Yeah, I'm getting lucky.Very lucky."
AN OCEAN AWAYGAIA IS IN DANGER.Tom Moore looked up from his laptop computer. He'd been thinking vaguely of Gaia all evening -- there was nothing unusual in that -- but this was the first time a specific thought coalesced in his mind.For most of his life he'd discounted notions of telepathy with a certain scorn, but his last five years in the CIA had opened him up to almost any possibility. Was Gaia truly in danger? He felt the familiar worry roiling his stomach.He looked out the window of the airplane. The plane was either crossing desert or ocean because the sky was almost clear of cloud cover and beneath him was blackness. There wasn't a single light or other sign of human life. He felt terribly lonely.He wasn't worried about danger in any ordinary sense. Gaia could get herself out of most situations. Tom, of all people, would know. He was the one who'd taught her. In the case of a mugger or purse snatcher going up against Gaia, Tom would frankly fear more for the criminal than her.
A THREAT"MAN, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR teeth?" Tarick asked. His eyes were bugged out the way they got when he was excited about something.Marty put his hand over his mouth. He was embarrassed. One front tooth was gone, and the smaller one to the side of it was cracked down the middle. "The girl got in a lucky punch."CJ snorted and leaned back against the fountain in Washington Square. "The girl laid him out for like five minutes," he explained. "The girl kicked his ass." He was relieved that Gaia had busted somebody else for once.Tarick turned cold eyes on him. He got up off the fountain wall and paced. "And you, my man. Not having a lot of luck, either?"CJ could feel his face fall. He'd been dreading this little talk with Tarick for a good reason. "She's tough, man. She's, like, supernatural. And now she's got somebody watching her back. I had a bead on her down on Mercer Street. I had her, I'm telling you, and somebody wearing a parka and a ski mask bagged me from behind and ran off.""
SEARCHSEARCH: THOMAS MOORENo Match FoundSearch: Special Agent MooreArlington, VirginiaNo Match FoundSearch: Federal Agent #4466No Match FoundSearch: Michael SageNo Match FoundSearch: Robert W. ConnellyNo Match FoundSearch: EnigmaNo Match FoundSearch: My goddamned father, you stupid morons.No Match FoundSearch:Gaia threw the mouse at the monitor. She was getting frustrated. She'd hacked her way into the files of the appropriate federal agency, but the search engine refused to recognize her father's name, his old badge number, or any of his old aliases.Was he with the agency anymore? Was he even still alive?She'd always told herself the government would notify her if he were dead. The agency was the only place that knew her whereabouts. She'd also told herself that her dad had to have been up to some pretty covert and important stuff -- like single-handedly saving the planet, for instance -- to have abandoned her this way.She told herself these things, but that didn't make them true.Gaia
GETTING LUCKYSAM LAY IN HIS LUMPY, STEEL-frame twin bed, considering Heather's note. He didn't need to look at the note to consider it because he had stared at it so long, he'd committed it to memory.Heather was ready. How long had he wanted to hear those words? How long had he fantasized about this very thing?God, and after seeing him with Gaia, he'd expected her to be pissed or at least suspicious. But she wasn't. She was angelic and totally trusting. And he was an undeserving bastard who was about to get unbelievably lucky. Almost too lucky to be true.So what was the problem?Forget it. There wasn't a problem. He wasn't going to get derailed by thinking about the problem.If there was a problem, that is. Which there wasn't.He was really, really happy as hell, even if he didn't realize it one hundred percent yet.Time to think about Saturday night. That was only two days away. Heather was coming here, to his dorm room, and they were going to . . .Oh, man. He was starting to feel tingly.
CAN HE RESIST?"SHE FOUND NOTHING, OF COURSE," Ella stated, her voice ringing shrilly through the wide-open loft space, bouncing around its few polished surfaces."I see. And you were there watching her for the duration of her search?"Ella's face showed impatience. "Certainly."He pressed his lips together to signal his own waning patience. Ella, with her sleek body, her colorfully revealing clothing, and her poorly concealed moodiness acted as much the angry teenager as his bewitching Gaia. But as potently as Ella annoyed him, she had a value far beyond the dog-loyal bodyguards who remained within fifteen feet of him at all times. "Did she display any knowledge of her father's whereabouts?""No. Nothing current."He flicked a tiny piece of lint from his dark blue slacks. "I see." He sipped coffee. "And he has made no attempt to contact her?" The question was rhetorical. He didn't even know why he'd asked it."No," Ella confirmed."How can he resist?" he mused in a quiet voice, mostly to hims
GAIAThere's one thing I want more than anything else, and I know I can never have it. I don't mean Sam or finding my dad. I'm talking about something inside myself.I want to be brave.And I'm not brave, in case you're wondering. Maybe I could have been brave, but I guess I'll never know.The reason is that you can't separate bravery from fear. This is something I've thought about a lot. The people with the most fear have the greatest opportunity to be brave. A woman who is terrified of the water would be braver sticking her big toe in the swimming pool than I would be surfing a thirty-foot breaker in the Pacific Ocean. She would be overcoming something. She would be challenging herself. She would experience the pleasure of expanding her world, the freedom of exercising her will. I would be surfing a wave.My mom used to say that a poor person who gave a dime to charity was more generous than a rich one who gave hundreds of dollars. In this example, I would be Bill Gates. Only richer.I kno
FRAGILE UNDERSTANDINGSam's long, beautiful body claimed all of her senses.
SENT MAILDEAR SAM,I have a very strange favor to ask you. I know you don't know me that well, and what you know of me you probably don't like. I am really, truly, sincerely sorry for what happened to Heather in the park and for the part I played in it. I know she's your girlfriend, so what I'm about to ask will sound particularly insane, butDear Sam,There's this guy named CJ, a friend and fellow neo-Nazi of Marco's, the guy who tried to kill us after slashing Zolov in the park. Well, would you believe Marco is dead and CJ thinks I did it? CJ has completely lost his mind and is now hell-bent on killing me. And I came to this realization that before I die, I really want toDear Sam,I know I must seem like trouble to you. I know it must seem like bad luck follows me around. I know you probably wish you'd never seen my face, which I can totally understand. And lucky for you, after this coming weekend you'll most likely never have to see me again. But before then, I was wondering if you woul
GAIA SIGHTINGTOM MOORE WAS CROSSING ANOTHER endless desert. For a man who traveled tens of thousands of miles every week of his life, he certainly spent a great deal of time in the same chair, studying the same screen. For a man who ha
dn't seen his daughter in five years, he certainly spent a great deal of time thinking about her.Hundreds, thousands of pages of briefings swam before his eyes. He closed the document and looked around him. He was so accustomed to the hum of jet engines, he could hardly sleep without it. The only other passenger, his personal assistant, was asleep.The ever present satellite connection allowed him to get on-line. He'd promised himself he wouldn't do this, but tonight, well, tonight his mind was once again burning with worry for Gaia, and he couldn't ignore it any longer.His first search for her name called up nothing. That was as it should be if the U.S. government was doing what they'd promised. Then he reduced the search to just her first name and conduc
URGENT LONGINGGAIA PADDED QUIETLY DOWN THE darkened hallway. She'd never been in a college dormitory before. When she reached the room number she'd gotten from the student directory, she paused. She combed her fingers through her hair, pushing long strands back from her face. She pulled self-consciously at the hem of her exquisitely soft red velvet tank dress. Taking a breath, she turned the heavy brass knob and swung open the door.Her breath caught. He was there. He lay on his bed, his strong arms folded behind his head, propping his upper body against the bed frame. The rest of the room was oddly indistinct, shadowy and blurred. Sam's long, beautiful body claimed all of her senses.He looked at her. He wasn't surprised. He wasn't upset. He wasn't happy, exactly, either. He looked ... serious. Had he known she would come now? Had he wanted it?His feet were bare and crossed at the ankles. His loose gray sweatpants were turned up a few times at the bottom. Keeping his eyes on her face, h
Fearless: No. 2 - Sam (Fearless) Page 13
