Blind

by Francine Pascal

The man stopped. He raised his hands slightly, like someone making a joke about being arrested. “I would appreciate it if you’d point that somewhere else,” he said.

  Gaia kept her aim. “I don’t think so, Uncle Oliver. Oops, I mean, Loki.”

  Oliver shook his head. “I’m not a killer.” He took another step.

  With one quick movement of her thumb Gaia brought back the hammer on the revolver. The chambers of the pistol turned, lining up a bullet to the barrel with a satisfying, solid click. “Stop. There.”

  Oliver stopped.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Gaia. “Looking for your partner? Your girlfriend?”

  “I was looking for you.” Oliver slowly lowered his hands. “I have something very important I need to tell you.”

  Gaia laid her finger against the trigger. It didn’t matter what he said. She knew Oliver was Loki. He had to be. This was the chance she had been waiting for. One pull of the trigger, and Loki was gone. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

  “It’s about your father.”

  The revolver was instantly twice as heavy in her hands, and the air in the room turned thick. Gaia let her hand drop a few inches as she struggled to get in enough air to talk. “Has something happened to my father?”

  “Not exactly.” Oliver looked at her with an expression that Gaia couldn’t begin to read. “Gaia, I know this is going to be hard for you, but things weren’t always perfect between Katia and my brother. I think they were truly in love at first, and at the end. But that love wasn’t constant through all the years of their marriage.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Gaia. “Is my father all right?”

  Oliver nodded. “So far as I’m aware, my brother is fine. I believe he’s right here in the city.”

  Gaia brought the gun back up. “Are you holding him hostage?”

  “Nothing of the sort.” The idea seemed to shock Oliver. “Gaia, you have some extraordinary ideas about me.”

  This was the time. If her father was safe, Gaia could take out Loki now and make sure he stayed safe. There might be more agents out there, but without Loki they wouldn’t be a threat. Cut off the head, kill the snake. She aimed carefully.

  “Gaia,” Oliver said slowly. “There was a period about eighteen years ago in which Tom and Katia were separated.”

  Her finger tightened on the trigger.

  “During that time I went to Katia. At first I was only trying to comfort her, but later…” He shrugged. “Later it became something more.”

  The hammer of the revolver began to pull back above the firing pin.

  “When Tom and Katia got back together, we were both very careful never to mention our time together. But Gaia, there’s something you have to know.”

  Squeeze evenly. Don’t jerk. Keep your aim.

  “Gaia,” said Oliver. “I’m your father.”

  The small sight at the front of the gun was centered on his chest. Her finger was tight against the trigger. One more pound of pressure. One more ounce, and Loki would be dead.

  Gaia closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

  GAIA

  There no shot. Just a hard, dry, worthless click as the hammer came down hard on the firing pin above an empty cylinder. I stood there with my eyes closed for a long time. I can’t say how long. It seemed like hours. Like eternity. It was probably more like thirty seconds. When I opened my eyes, he was gone. My chance to kill Loki, my chance to salvage my piss-poor excuse for a life, was over.

  It’s a lie. This Darth Vader thing he’s trying to pull. It absolutely, positively cannot be true. Not in this universe or any other universe. I know he’s the killer. I know he’s Loki. I know he killed my mother and my friends and ruined my life. There’s no way he can be my father.

  No way in hell.

  De Facto

  GAIA STEPPED OUT OF THE HOT AND sticky subway station and into an equally hot and sticky morning. She was in no mood for this pea soup weather, especially so early in the season. Lexington Avenue was already cluttered with strollers, nannies, and purebred dogs, and of course, its signature residents, the perfect people, spending wads of money on Lexus strollers and canine cologne.

  Downtown, where Gaia used to live, the buildings were smaller and the people a little more on the ball. Within blocks of her brownstone were immigrant neighborhoods with streets just brimming with personality. Exotic smells drifted out of shops whose signs were handwritten in different languages. Chinatown. Little Italy. Up here, everything looked as bland and generic as a J. Crew catalog. Gaia like to refer to it as Little Connecticut.

  She had a job to do this morning, and she wasn’t looking forward to it. Staying with Natasha and her daughter, Tatiana, was fine as a stopgap measure. It was a place to crash, and at this point that was all Gaia wanted. But her conversation with George Niven kept echoing in her skull, and she had to do something about it. According to George, Natasha was nothing but a snake whose sole purpose was nabbing Gaia’s father.

  Now she had to get her butt up to the apartment, confront Natasha, and get her the hell away from her dad.

  Of course, there was that nagging question of why she owed Tom anything. It was a question that held permanent residence in the back of her mind but also kept a rental in the forefront for just such an occasion.

  Then again, Gaia had to admit, the letters Tom had given her—sheaves and sheaves of paper dating back to when she was twelve, detailing how much he loved her, missed her, and hated to have to leave her, neatly typed and hand-signed every single day that they hadn’t been together—were pretty convincing evidence that he, at least, gave a crap where she woke up and who she hung out with, even if he had disappeared for most of her adolescence. So Gaia had to figure that even if he wasn’t her biological father, as her uncle had recently claimed, he at least had a stake in her well-being, despite the fact that it was Oliver who appeared, like magic, whenever she most needed him.

  She stepped into the ornate foyer of the building. Her sneakers made a squeaking noise on the marble floor as she headed toward the elevator button. She studied her reflection in the thin strip of brass behind the button. High forehead, dirty blond hair hanging to her waist, and an angry set to her jaw. This was the face that Tom thought about every day? Gaia wasn’t convinced. But if getting to the bottom of the situation meant, de facto, uncovering Natasha’s sinister plot, then so be it.

  Downtime

  IT WAS AMAZING, TOM MOORE mused, that you could be surrounded by so much physical beauty and still be dealing with ugly, menacing danger. He stepped out on the terrace of his hotel room, scanning the white beach and turquoise water for any sign of spies or hit men, but saw only frolicking tourists and hotel employees, dressed in spanking-white tunics, carrying piles of white fluffy towels. For a moment he allowed himself to relax as Natasha came up behind him and wound her arms around his torso, caressing his chest as she kissed the very center of his back. She had just flown in from New York the night before.

  “I guess I didn’t have to reserve my own room after all,” she said.

  “Not necessarily,” he said as he turned toward her and put his arms around her neck. “I could think of a few different ways to put it to use.” Their first night together had been filled with more passion than he’d felt since Katia’s death, followed by the first full night’s sleep he’d had since then, too.

  “Perhaps a little later—now we have work to do.” She sighed, pouring coffee from the tall silver decanter that room service had placed outside their door.

  Tom just gazed out the window.

  “You are thinking about Gaia?” Natasha asked.

  “She’s so far away,” Tom said, stepping inside, leaving the sliding doors wide open so that the humid tropical air filled the room. He picked up the delicate coffee cup in one hand and slugged down the rich black liquid. “I don’t like being where I can’t rush in if something happens to her.”

  “But you’re almost never near enou
gh to her—physically, I mean—to do that,” Natasha pointed out as she stirred two lumps of sugar into her coffee and broke a biscotti in half. “It must be torment. I don’t even like being away from Tatiana for a weekend.”

  “It’s been like having an arm cut off,” Tom agreed. “If I can only take care of Loki, I won’t have to worry that just by being near her, I’m putting her life in danger.”

  “Then that’s what we are going to do,” Natasha said, with such conviction Tom believed they’d really do it this time.

  “At least I know we’re close,” he said. “Somehow that takes the edge off the stress. I don’t remember when I’ve ever felt so …”

  “Carefree?”

  “Not exactly. But something approaching it.” He put down his coffee and stroked his finger softly along the delicate flesh that peeked from the top of Natasha’s bathrobe.

  Tom’s Blackberry beeped. He jumped, suddenly realizing how distracted he was from his job, and broke away to see what the minicomputer had to say to him. “What is it?” Natasha asked, seeing a shadow cross his face.

  “There’s a delay,” he answered her. “The operative we’re supposed to track isn’t going to be here for another day.”

  Tom felt the familiar clutch in his gut, telling him he could do nothing but lay low till someone, somewhere, did their job. He hated downtime; action quieted the noise in his head. Yet around the edges he felt his anxiety soften a bit. What the hell. If he had to waste a day, he was glad to have Natasha’s company.

  Fake-Ass People

  HEATHER BOUNCED INTO THE STARBUCKS on her way to school. It was time to meet Josh, and every nerve-ending in her body was alert with anticipation.

  He had already ordered up a grande for her, remembering the dash of cinnamon and extra foam. She loved how attentive he was. Suddenly being slighted by Sam and Ed in favor of Gaia didn’t matter—Josh was more intriguing than either one of them had been, and he was interested only in her.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Same to you, gorgeous,” he answered, nuzzling into her hair so that she shivered with the delicious warmth of it. “And what’s on the schedule for this hot student body?”

  “I predict a pop quiz on Catcher in the Rye in English class today,” she said. “Just to make sure we’re all keeping up with the adventures of Holden Caulfield.”

  “Good old Holden,” Josh said.

  “Yeah, I read it in seventh grade.” Heather shook her head. “It’s brilliant. I love it when he talks about everyone being—”

  “—a goddamn phony?” Josh finished the sentence with her. They both laughed.

  All Holden’s talk of the fake-ass people he met at prep school really hit home for Heather. Her own “friends” were like cardboard cutouts, yapping about their paraffin manicures and Brazilian bikini waxes and the next party in the Hamptons. Yet even knowing how lame it all was, she still had to play the game. Hell, she was the captain.

  “The thing I love about us is that we’re always on the same page.”

  Us. Heather did an instant audio replay. She loved the sound of that word so much, she could have recorded it onto a loop and listened to it all day.

  “I guess we are.” She was twinkling.

  “Well, if that’s the case, then you must be feeling as anxious as I am to get you started on those fearless injections.”

  Suddenly the twinkling faded. She looked at Josh, gazing deeply into his eyes. It was clear that he really cared about her. That he had her best interests in mind. But she still felt unsure about the whole fearless issue.

  “But what if something goes wrong?” she asked.

  “Have you been taking the pills?”

  “Of course,” Heather said, opening her bag so Josh could see the prescription bottle.

  Josh made a sympathetic face. “If you’re taking the pills, then nothing should go wrong. Trust me.”

  Josh put his arms around her and dragged both Heather and her chair closer into the circle of his arms and legs. She giggled and nestled into his muscular warmth, letting her mind wander into a reverie: She and Gaia facing off, Gaia focused and determined until Heather began fighting back with amazing speed. Then she saw Gaia’s face fall apart like a puzzle, confused and startled by Heather’s new grace, speed, and bravery. Heather finished her off with a kick to the gut, and Gaia fell. In her daydream Heather turned to see Josh, who nodded, took her by the hand, and drew her in for a passionate smooch.

  Maybe Josh was right. Maybe trust was the answer.

  Stupid Crutches

  ED LAY ON HIS BACK ON A TABLE, his legs pumping at a beeping machine. He was trying to concentrate on making his legs work on the weird StairMaster thing, but mostly he was trying to keep his mind on training and out of the gutter.

  “So, uh … where’s Brian again?”

  “He’s on vacation,” said Lydia, his new physical therapist. “You’re stuck with me.”

  Stuck? Lydia was hot. Which in any other setting would be a fine way for Ed to take his mind off his confusion over Gaia and Tatiana. But in this case it was cause for distraction. Ed tried to think about baseball.

  “Feel the burn?” Lydia asked.

  “Sheee-yeah,” Ed grumbled.

  “All right. We have to talk.” Lydia took her hand off Ed’s upper leg.

  Thank God, he thought.

  Lydia glared at Ed, and he wondered if his overactive hormones were showing in some way he didn’t know about. Hey, I’m just a healthy red-blooded American, he thought.

  “Do you want to tell me why you’re still on those crutches when you clearly don’t need them anymore?”

  What?

  “Uh, hello, Earth to medical professional,” Ed said, rolling his eyes. “I was in a massive skateboarding accident? Big hill, no brakes, Ed meets gravel? Two years in a wheelchair? Is any of this ringing a bell?”

  Lydia laughed and turned to face him. “Yeah. But that’s all in the past now. You’ve progressed a lot farther than you’re willing to admit, but you won’t take that first step.”

  Ed stared at her, flabbergasted.

  “I see this a lot,” Lydia said. “The body wants to get up and walk out of the chair, but the mind is still scared. Ed, there’s nothing to be scared of. You can walk without your crutches, and if you let yourself, you can move on from your accident and all the pain it brought you.”

  Ed blinked. “Is that true? Why didn’t Brian tell me?”

  “He was probably just being soft on you,” Lydia said. “Hoping you’d figure it out on your own. But I’m not like him. I want you to take a break from the crutches—before I see you next.”

  A break? Ed wanted to toss the Stupid crutches into a vat of sulfuric acid. But did Lydia really know what she was talking about? Ed concentrated, quieting his mind so that he could really feel his legs. There was that same cold, numb feeling, like when his feet were asleep and he couldn’t quite walk till they woke up. But maybe it was all in his head.

  Maybe he was ready to walk alone?

  Back 01

  THEY SAY THAT YOU ONLY HURT THE ONES YOU LOVE. SO I GUESS THAT MEANS I CAN’T GET HURT. NOBODY’S CLOSE ENOUGH TO HURT ME. AND NOBODY EVER WILL BE AGAIN.

  FEARLESS™

  … A GIRL BORN WITHOUT THE FEAR GENE

  DON’T MISS FEARLESS #22 ALONE

  COMING JULY 2002 FROM SIMON PULSE