Escape

by Francine Pascal

  “Gaia. . . ,” he began, staring deep into her eyes. “We live in a very strange world. . . .” Jesus, Fargo, get to the point.

  “Yeah. . . ?” Gaia raised her eyebrow with confusion.

  “Sorry, scratch that,” Ed said, letting go of her shoulders. He gave the wall one good head-bang of his own and slid closer to her. “Okay, look, what I’m about to say will not make any sense to you, but you have to understand. You have to believe what I’m telling you even if you can’t see it for the undeniable truth that it is right now. And you’ll think it’s pretty presumptuous, and you’ll think that I’m way out of line, but—”

  “Ed. You’re babbling.”

  Ed cleared his throat. “Okay, here’s the deal. I know that your life is in a total state of crisis basically twenty-four hours a day. I know that literally right this second, there is probably some incredibly urgent life-threatening thing you need to be doing. And I want you to deal with whatever that might be. And I want to help you deal with it. But the thing is this. . . Somehow, in the middle of all these crises, there is something that you must do tonight. Something just as essential to your survival as overcoming all those crises. Gaia. . . somehow. . . tonight. . . you and I must go out on a date.”

  Gaia’s face was blank with confusion. “What?” she uttered.

  “A date,” he replied. “A date date. Like you see on TV. We pick a time, we put on unnecessarily nice clothes, I pay for numerous overpriced things, we make the occasional googly eyes, we discuss our dreams and life philosophies, we retire to one of our respective homes, and depending on how things go, we both get lucky.”

  “Ed,” she began, with that same horrid futility in her voice. “Ed, I can’t possibly take the time to—”

  “No, Gaia, I told you. I told you that you wouldn’t see it at first. The importance of this date. The absolutely essential urgency of this date. So listen to me.” He dug himself deep into her ocean-blue eyes and glued himself there, unmoving and unblinking. He did not even want to say the words out loud, but he had to now.

  “We are drifting apart,” he said, feeling a totally unexpected hitch in his throat as he said it. “We’re drifting apart right now, Gaia, and to be honest with you, I don’t even know why. But I know this: You do not want us to drift apart. You do not want that, Gaia. Do you not remember what it felt like for us to be apart? Like I said, I have no idea what’s been going on the past couple of days, but you’re dragging us back, Gaia. You’re dragging us back into that torture chamber, and we don’t want go there. Because the thing is. . . my life without you. . . absolutely, unequivocally sucks. And, Gaia. . . so does your life without me. Do you agree?” Ed was still finding wells of confidence he didn’t even know he had. But these days, everything seemed to require the big guns. So he had no choice but to puke his entire heart out on the table.

  Finally, Ed saw a touch of surrender in her eyes. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I agree.”

  Hearing this was such a relief that Ed finally surrendered a bit himself, relaxing his posture and lowering his voice to a more intimate volume. With that one simple response, Starbucks had finally faded away. It was just the two of them again. At least for this moment. The way they were supposed to be. With none of that external crap clogging things up.

  “It’s a simple equation,” he said. “My life sucks without you, and your life sucks without me. We need each other, Gaia. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.”

  “I know,” she said, practically croaking out her words at this point. “I know we do.”

  “Then tonight? A date. An absolutely essential date. I pick you up at eight o’clock?”

  “Ed. . .” Gaia began to look positively ill as she spoke. “I want to go on the date. But does it have to be tonight?”

  Ed threw up his hands and laughed bitterly. “Yes, Gaia. Jesus, that’s my entire point. Yes, it has to be tonight. Unless you’re going out with your other boyfriend,” he chuckled. Gaia looked white as a sheet. “Sorry. I’m being a jerk. Yes,” he said sweetly. “Tonight, Gaia. Please.”

  He searched her eyes for the right answer. . . .

  “Okay,” she said, locking her eyes with his. “Tonight.”

  Ed let out a long and happy breath and he smiled. “Eight o’clock.”

  “Eight,” she agreed.

  “Wear a dress.”

  “Oh, God, don’t do this to me, Ed.”

  He grinned mischievously and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. “Wear a dress.”

  “Ed. . . if you’re trying to scare me. . . it’s working.”

  GAIA

  School was obviously a non-option for the day. Especially after the whole Starbucks debacle. Once I realized how totally useless Natasha and Tatiana were going to be, I knew that the burden of finding my father was now entirely on me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to find him at school. So I split Starbucks and went straight to the New York Science and Medical Library to do some research-see if I could possibly drum up any leads.

  “Research.” “Leads.” What a freaking joke.

  I spent hours at the library trying to dig up anything I could possibly find. I tried absolutely everything I could think of. I cross-referenced his name and his symptoms with every single research lab and hospital database I could log into. I pulled any article I could find on Swiss institutes specializing in everything from poisonous substances to acute neurological trauma. I swear to God, I must have called almost half of them, trying to pull impossible information out of lowly paper-pushers about patients who’d been admitted in the last twenty-four hours.

  Useless. All of it so utterly useless.

  I even tried calling hospitals and pretending to be a nurse calling for Dr. Sullivan, just so I could get some more specific information on all their recently admitted patients. But that just turned into a long, fruitless acting exercise that left me with yet another big fat zero in the information department. I don’t know why I kept kidding myself for the entire day. I was just spinning my wheels. I had nothing to go on. Nothing.

  I got so desperate, I even called to check in with Natasha again, just to see if she’d made any of the “few calls” she’d promised me she would make. But I couldn’t even reach her. If she was looking into it at all, she wasn’t letting me know a damn thing about it.

  In fact, I was so focused on my useless research, I didn’t even notice the day draining away. I didn’t even notice when the sun had set. It was like I had looked up at the library windows once and seen a sunny and depressing New York morning and then looked up again and seen a black and depressing New York night.

  And just like that, I had run out of research time. Thanks to my insane agreement to go out on that date with Ed.

  But I have to go. No matter how much I might want to stick with this useless research, I have to go. Because Ed’s right. Piece by little piece, and day by day, I’ve been doing it again. Thanks to my very own specific brand of misguided idiocy, I’ve been starting to push him away again, and I’m not going to let that happen this time. I’m not going to back away from him for his own “protection” again (a plan that has never done anything but backfire on us both completely). And I’m not going to take him for granted just because my life is in its usual state of pre-apocalyptic chaos. There has to be a way to keep him in the loop and out of danger at the same time, and I’ll be damned if I can’t figure out what that way is. I know that step one is to go on that date.

  Which also means that the time has come. The time has come to face that inevitable drama queen’s disaster I’ve created. The time has come to tell Sam about Ed. He’s obviously going to want to know why I can’t meet with him as planned. And I’m going to tell him. I have to tell him sooner or later. I have to. I’ll just have to walk right into his room and detonate my own stupid land mine.

  I’m just praying that the injuries in that tiny room won’t be too severe.

  But who am I kidding? The injuries are going to be disastrous.

  Visual
Jackpot

  IT HAD CUT THROUGH HER LINE OF sight so quickly, she’d almost missed it. Like an irritating mosquito or a black mouse scurrying into a dark corner. Only it was so much bigger. It meant so much more. A black bag. Gaia knew it instantly. She was sure of it. All thoughts of broken hearts and obligatory dates had disappeared. Suddenly Gaia’s attention had zeroed in on that bag like a high-powered telephoto lens. A few seconds later she had crouched stealthily behind a bookcase, peering through the available space between two huge red encyclopedic volumes. It was only a few moments more before she hit the visual jackpot.

  There he was. The pock-marked EMT slob. In his white shirt and his grimy corduroys. The coincidence that never was.

  Gaia’s eyes narrowed as she watched him step over to his wooden table and glance furtively back toward the spot she had just been sitting in for hours. The spot that was now empty.

  He’d stepped away. The idiot had stepped away from what was now quite obviously his little surveillance post, perhaps to stuff his face with more Rice Krispie Treats. Whatever the reason, the moment he had stepped away just happened to have been the moment that Gaia had shot up from her seat and walked out. And now, it seemed, the poor bastard had lost his mark.

  Gaia watched him scan the entire floor of the hushed library from left to right, searching for her. She watched him take a few steps out into the main aisle of the room, scanning a little more obviously now—a little more anxiously.

  I’m over here, you idiot. Behind the bookcase.

  But Gaia’s pleasure in his utter ineptitude at surveillance quickly fell away. Because her mind had just come around to the full implications of this vision.

  The worst-case scenario had quite suddenly revealed itself. All her most far-fetched thoughts while sitting in the corner of Starbucks had suddenly turned from ludicrous paranoid speculation to probable fact. He hadn’t been just a random sighting. He wasn’t just an off-duty EMT worker getting his morning coffee. A sighting at a downtown coffeehouse, she could chalk up to coincidence. But a second sighting, on the same day, at the library on East Fortieth Street? With him surveying the entire floor like the world’s worst spy? It changed everything. It proved everything. Yet it explained absolutely nothing.

  The longer Gaia spied on her appointed spy, the more chilling all the realizations became. If the ambulance driver who’d brought her father to the hospital was actually some kind of operative working for “them”—the Mystery Assholes, Loki’s people or whoever—then that meant that there had never really been a hospital angle here. They’d had her father from the moment he was picked up. They were just using the hospital. Using it as some kind of holding station to shake off cover and leave Gaia completely in the dark.

  They’d had him all along. The whole freaking time. They’d had her father from day one. And that meant that they definitely had him now. And they were watching her.

  Gaia’s teeth clenched tightly together. She’d had so many chances—so many opportunities to get her dad out of that ambulance or out of that hospital, away from these people. And she’d missed every one of them. She could feel her face heating up with the desire to pound her own face in for being so goddamn blind.

  Pockmark did one last sweep of the room. For one millisecond Gaia thought he might have spotted her through the books, but his face proceeded to glide right by her. He looked flustered, to say the least. He tugged his bag over his head and bolted for the exit. She could see his frustration increasing with every step. But he really didn’t need to worry. Yes, he had lost her for a moment, but in just a few minutes he was most definitely going to find her. Or rather, she was going to find him.

  She waited the appropriate ten count before following him in full surveillance mode. Eyes wide open, feet barely touching the ground, appearing completely nonchalant while inching closer and closer.

  Out the library doors and then out onto the brightly lit night on Fortieth and Fifth. The sidewalk was swarming with people, mostly men in suits headed home after putting in their extra this - is - how - I -got- rich two hours. The street had been transformed into a sea of metallic yellow, thanks to the bumper-to-bumper taxicabs and the amber streetlights. But Gaia’s eyes were like two fast-motion cameras, shooting frame after frame of every one of Pockmark’s lumbering moves. He slid between the taxis’ bumpers as he crossed the street. Then he walked up the wide expanse of stone stairs to the palatial main branch of the Public Library, guarded on either side by two stone lions lying proudly on their stone pedestals.

  The entrance concourse was reasonably empty at this point, what with the entire city headed home for dinner, and it was dark enough in certain corners for a little privacy. Gaia was in no mood to waste time. She decided that the moment had come for her and Pockmark to be reintroduced.

  “Looking for me?” she barked, being sure to cut right through the street noise with a sharp tone.

  She saw him stop in his tracks. But he didn’t turn his head. He knew that his cover had been blown and that any contact with his mark would have his people pounding on tables in a rage and most likely pounding on him, too. And most of all, he hadn’t turned around because he obviously knew all about Gaia. He knew what she was capable of doing to him, and he knew why she would do it. He was, after all, the man who had taken her father from her. Literally.

  And so, rather than turn around, this pathetic, cowardly slob picked up the pace.

  “Hey!” she shouted after him, moving from a walk to a trot to a full-on run. “I just have a few questions to ask you.” He increased his own speed as he headed back off the entrance steps and down Fifth Avenue, trying in vain to get lost in the crowd. Gaia cut through the masses of pedestrians until she was right on his tail, but he turned off onto the much darker Thirty-seventh Street, probably thinking that the maze of blue scaffolding on the street would hide him better.

  Gaia leapt off her feet and connected with his disgustingly sweaty back, slamming him face first into the rugged stone facade of the corner building.

  “I asked you to wait up,” she hissed, yanking his arm behind his back and stretching it downward at a most inhuman angle. He let out a tragic little yelp. Gaia was certainly no sadist, but she couldn’t help taking some small pleasure in any pain she might be causing him. She knew it was nothing compared the torture he’d put her through when he’d stolen her father from her and strapped him onto a metal gurney like he was already dead.

  “Where is he?” That was all she wanted to know right now. The rest would come later.

  “I don’t. . . I’m not sure what. . .”

  “Where is he?” she shouted straight down his ear canal, cramming her knee into his lower back.

  “Who?” he whimpered. “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Don’t. Don’t do it. Don’t waste my time with that, I’m warning you. You tell me where my father is. You tell me who is doing this right now, and I won’t break your arm clean off your shoulder.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t lie!” She shot a jab into his back and then twisted the arm harder.

  “I swear. I swear to God. I was just supposed to stand there and let you see. . . . Please don’t—”

  “What? What are you talking about? What do you mean, stand there? Let me see what?”

  “Me. I mean, you were just supposed to see—ugh. . .”

  A hand suddenly whipped by Gaia’s face, smacking Pockmark hard on the back of the head. Gaia flipped around just as an elbow cut across her forehead, knocking her completely off balance and sending her headfirst into one of the blue metal bars of the scaffold. She couldn’t even tell if the chimelike sound was inside her head or just the sound of her skull striking metal.

  “Just go, you idiot,” she heard a man barking at Pockmark. “Get your fat ass back to base. Run, you piece of crap.”

  Gaia leapt to her feet just in time to see Pockmark huffing toward Madison. But when she turned back to her assailant, the plot thickened so much more, it
nearly congealed.

  It was yet another face that she’d seen before, though much less bruised and battered than the last time she’d seen it. The same round jaw. The same Hispanic features. The same man she had encountered on the West Side Highway not so many days ago. The man she had first seen beating Sam Moon.

  Sam had explained the entire scenario to Gaia once they’d gotten him safely back to her place. This man who was standing before her. . . he was one of the men from Loki’s compound. One of the men who had wanted Sam dead. He’d chased Sam all the way from the Berkshires back to New York City. And if Gaia hadn’t shown up when she had, he probably would have gotten his wish: a dead Sam, an incarcerated Sam, or both. But what the hell was he doing here now? What had he just said? Get your fat ass back to base. . . .

  They knew each other. He and Pockmark. They were working together.

  He threw another punch at Gaia, but she was ready this time. She dodged the punch and yanked his wrist forward, using his momentum to send him the rest of the way into the cold, hard metal scaffold. There was the second chime.

  She yanked him up by the lapels of his gray suit and slammed him once more against the metal for a third chime. He croaked in pain as his eyes momentarily fluttered toward the back of his head. And as she stared at him in his painful daze, she didn’t even know what to say. Now she wasn’t even sure what questions she should be asking.

  If the man who’d tried to beat Sam to death knew the man who’d tried to kidnap her father. . . was one person responsible for all of this? Both Gaia and Sam had considered it a very real possibility, but this seemed to be the clincher. This proved for certain some connection between that compound in the Berkshires and the kidnapping of her father. But what was the connection? Was it as simple as Loki? Had it been as simple as Loki this entire time? Someone working for him while he rotted away in that coma, finishing up all his dirty work out of loyalty?