Alone (8 page)

You
know what? I've realized something. We're all given a choice in this life. We can take the well-worn path laid out before us and proceed to live a preapproved life that contains no surprises, no curveballs, and no challenges.

Or we can step off the path and make our own way.

Take Francis Ford Coppola. I just saw an A&E special on him. Everyone thought he was a lunatic when he made
Apocalypse Now.
He vanished into the jungle, mortgaged his own house to pay for this bloated, overbudget mess of a movie, and uprooted his whole family for a year or better. And everyone swore it would be a flop. Surprise: It swept the Oscars and changed the face of modern cinema.

History is littered with the corpses of those who rejected everyone's expectations, stepped out of line, and made a break for something greater. I'm not an
idiot. I know I'm taking a hell of a chance.

But you know what? I'm tired of being afraid. I'm tired of timidly hiding behind a mask of MAC, making up a face to look like everyone else. Look at Ed. He's so scared, he doesn't even know he can walk. That will never be me. And my family, for God's sake—my sister, who's so insecure she's literally starving herself, and my parents, who've bled themselves dry trying to keep up with the Joneses. I can't let that happen to me. I want to stand out. I want to leave mediocrity behind. And if I burn bright enough to catch a few eyes before I wink out of sight entirely, then so be it: at least I made an impression.

I'm going to do this thing. I'm going through with the experiment. Let them shoot me up with whatever they want: I'm ready to take the chance.

The wiseass attitude had gone from being a hobby to necessity. And he liked it that way.

“THANKS FOR PICKING ME UP,”
Heather said, relaxing into Josh's embrace in front of the school. She barely gave a glance behind her as she took his hand and strolled up the street with him. She could get expelled for cutting class like this, but this was
the new Heather: daring, nonchalant, and
—
almost
—
fearless.
“I wasn't sure that you got my message.”

“Of course I did,” Josh told her, waving his cell phone. “It was crazy; I didn't hear it ring, but something told me to look at it and there you were, in my voice mail in-box.”

Heather laughed. “Yeah, I have a way of getting attention,” she said.

Josh squeezed her hand. “Mine, anyway.” She smiled at him, and he felt something flip over in his chest. “So what was so important that you decided to waste your parents' precious tuition dollars?”

“I wanted to tell you something,” Heather said. They reached Washington Square Park, and she sat him down on a bench, facing her, with her hands on his shoulders. She stepped into the space between his feet and looked deeply into his piercing blue eyes.

“I'm ready,” she told him. “I want to do this. And I want to do it as soon as possible.”

Josh laughed. “It sounds like you're propositioning
me,” he said. “Anyone listening to this conversation would be quite shocked by you, Heather Gannis.”

“Please, this is so much bigger than sex.” Heather shook her head, smiling like someone who'd just had a religious conversion. “What you're offering me is precious, and I'm lucky I met you, so you could hook me up with this amazing experiment. I thought over everything you said to me, and I don't know why I didn't see it before. It makes total sense. If it wasn't a risk, it wouldn't have such an amazing payout. If I stand around asking questions, then I'm no better than the ordinary people who never take a chance. But I
am
better than them, and I want to make this leap of faith. Josh, I want to be fearless.”

Josh broke their gaze first as a shadow crossed his face. He took her hand and kissed her fingers, frowning.

“What's wrong?” Heather asked him. “I thought you'd be happy. I thought this was what you wanted.”

“I just want to be sure it's what
you
want,” Josh said, still unable to meet her gaze. “I'm not sure you've thought it all through. There are risks involved—terrible risks.”

“Hello! Josh, are you in there?” She knocked on his skull. “Haven't you heard what I've been saying? Nothing worth doing is completely safe.”

“I'm just worried that you—”

“Worried!” Heather laughed and hugged him, pulling
his head into her chest. “You are so sweet. Josh, I'm a big girl. I'm totally excited to do this. I'm going to be just what you said,
a bright and shining creature
. And you're the one who gave me this chance.”

She leaned in for a long, reassuring kiss. “I know what's really going on,” she whispered.

“And what's that?” he asked.

“You're afraid you'll lose me when I'm this all-new girl. But you won't. I'll never forget that if it wasn't for you, I would never have been part of this experiment.”

She swept her arms around him and gave him a huge, grateful hug. Josh patted her back, feeling how thin she had become, how fragile her little bones seemed.

“You're sure you want to do this?” he said.

“I insist on doing it,” she told him.

Her words echoed in his mind.
If it wasn't for you, I would never have been part of this experiment
.

He drew back, took Heather by the shoulders, and looked at her. “I don't want you to do this,” he said flatly. “I can't tell you why, exactly. But I've figured out a way to get you out of town. You can stay with friends of mine in Woodstock. Lay low for a while, and I'll find someone else to be Oliver's guinea pig. You don't need to do this. You don't need anything, Heather. You're perfect just the way you are.”

Heather turned to him with a concerned and wary look on her face. “Josh, you're acting really weird,” she told him. “What's going on? Why are you saying all this?”

“Because I know more about it than you do,” he said, stopping short of telling her exactly how
deadly
the experiment could be. He had to be cautious. One false step now and she could mistrust him completely—write him off as a nutcase. He just hoped he was touching that part of her that was still unsure about proceeding with the experiment.

“Stop it, you're freaking me out,” she said angrily.

Uh-oh.
Whatever he was touching, it seemed to be a raw nerve, not a kernel of reason.

“Listen to me, Heather.” Josh gripped her shoulders with both hands, looking intensely into her eyes. He could not let her endanger herself. His heart was thumping, and he felt desperate with the need to force her to see reason. She was running across the train tracks with a massive Amtrak engine bearing down on her:
He had to save this girl from her own desire for self-destruction.

“Ouch!” she said, drawing backward.

“Listen to me,” he repeated. “This isn't safe. You have to leave town. I've even found you a ride. You don't need clothes; we can find anything you need on the ride up there. Hell, you go right past the outlet stores. I don't want you taking this injection. I won't allow it. I forbid it.”

Whoops
. Too late, Josh realized he'd said just the thing that would turn Heather Gannis off completely.

“You won't what?” she intoned, sounding like an angry queen. Josh let go of her arms, giving her sleeves
a friendly little straightening out as he sat back slightly and retracted his intense rays as best he could.

“I didn't mean that,” he said meekly.

“You're damn right you didn't mean that,” she told him. “Nobody—not even my parents—‘forbids' me to do anything.”

Quick, Josh
—
think. You're losing all credibility
.

“Of course they don't. You think I don't know who I'm dealing with here? I was just testing you,” he said with a rush of laughter, knowing he had to get her to forgive him. Knowing he had to stay close to her. If he couldn't keep her away from this experiment, he had to keep watch over her, protect her as well as he could.

She gave him a curious look. Was she buying it? She had to;
Josh's ability to keep her safe hinged on how he played this one.

“Come on, Heather!” He laughed again. “You can't be this gullible! I was just making sure that you really wanted to do this. That you weren't going to freak out at the last minute.”

There was a tension-filled moment as he saw her turning this over in her mind. He gave his most reassuring smile. Then, to his relief, she gave one back.

“Ohmigod, you really fooled me,” she said, smacking him on the shoulder.

“I'm sorry, pretty girl,” he said, drawing her into a warm hug and kissing her on the forehead. “Come on, I owe you something for putting you through that little
performance. Let's go to Borgia's, and I'll treat you to a tiramisu.”

The thought of a creamy Italian dessert more than made up for a few minutes of inappropriate intensity, apparently. Heather stood and took his hand, as trusting as she'd ever been. Josh led her across to the west side of the park.
The irony of it was twisting his intestines into knots.

She trusted him, as long as he was leading her into danger. The minute he tried to keep her safe, she was ready to run away from him.

He was just going to have to let this play out and save her in some other way. He hoped he could. He had a bad feeling her life depended on it.

THERE WAS NOTHING LIKE THE
FEELING
of being on assignment and having everything click into place, Tom thought. He had spent his life working on endless cases, and each one had its own personality. Some were sluggish and unwilling to break, and working them was like slogging through mud. Some were amusing, with
clues popping out of the strangest places. But rarely, if ever, had he felt so in control and satisfied with how things were going. It reminded him of why he had chosen this line of work in the first place.

Dressed to the nines in a slick Armani suit, with Natasha on his arm in a dress that defied the laws of physics, Tom Moore was the very picture of a high-rolling playboy out to lose a couple thousand at the roulette table. The Caribbean was known for its lax gambling rules, but when so much money was at stake, all eyes were on the chips on the table, including those of the eye-in-the-sky camera poised above them. There was no room for error; fortunately, he and Natasha made a perfect team, and no errors were made.

From the regular casino they could hear the clanging of slot machines and the distant rumble of thousands of people murmuring, an occasional cheer or roar of defeat punctuating the white noise. But here in the lush back room, the walls were a deep burgundy velvet, and the mood was much more subdued. The wheel spun with a smooth series of clicks as the ball made its way around the red and black numbers to rest on one.

Tom and Natasha were not here for recreation, though they laughed and gambled like a couple of old-school players from a Frank Sinatra movie. They barely sipped the cocktails served to them and carefully watched their mark, three seats down from them at the roulette table.

His name was Fenster, and Tom could tell he was a total and complete nerd. Glasses, balding, sickly skin—he was the real deal. Guys like that should at least do something for a living that was unexpected, but no: he was an accountant. Loki's accountant. A high-level number cruncher who was here in the Cayman Islands to watch Loki's bank accounts and move his money around at different intervals, to keep it one step ahead of the international authorities.

But even a high-level number cruncher had to blow off steam sometimes, right?

Tom's operative had given him the tip-off earlier in the day, and he and Natasha had sprung into action. Their intention was just to watch this guy and wait for him to slip up. Enough patience, and he certainly would. And sure enough, the more he drank, the more money he bet.
Getting sloppy,
Tom thought.
It won't be long now
.

“You know what, I'm going to put it all on the double zero,” he said to Natasha.

“This is so boring. Can't we play craps?” Natasha moaned, the very picture of sultry lethargy.

“Come on, baby! You know I like the numbers,” Tom told her, relishing the role that let him step out of his usual taciturn nature. He slid a pile of bright red chips onto the green number all the way at the tip of the table and watched the wheel spin. It came up nineteen-red.

“Damn!” he said with a laugh. “I could have bought a small island with that.”

“No matter,” Natasha purred, bending over and nuzzling his ear. “There's plenty more where that came from, right, baby?”

“You bet,” Tom told her, toying with his chips in expert fashion. With one hand he lifted the stack. . . split it in two. . . shuffled the chips. . . returned them to one stack. It was a smooth-looking party trick, a subtle use of his hands, but it caught people's attention nonetheless. Helped him into his role. The warmth he felt emanating from Natasha's body helped him relax into character.

“You're all over the place,” Fenster chided him from his end of the table. “You don't know what you want to play. That's no way to win. You've got to be consistent.”

“Consistency was never my strong suit,” Tom responded, looking down the table at Fenster, who was greedily taking in the luscious Natasha even as he spoke to Tom. “But you sound like a man who knows what he's talking about.”

“Oh, I am,” Fenster squeaked, bouncing up and down in his chair ever so slightly. “I play my good-luck numbers. Stick to 'em, and they always pay out. It's a question of averages.”

Hmmm. Plays his favorite numbers, does he?
That was when Tom noticed that Fenster's green chips were ranged over the same pattern of numbers on every spin. All he had to do was glance at Natasha to know she'd seen it, too. He saw her concentrated stare as she
memorized the series of numbers in her steel-trap, photographic memory.

“Slow and steady, is that your game?” Tom asked. “You never take a chance on something unexpected?”

The chair next to his was vacated as a small fortune was lost on one roll and the man who'd lost it threw his hands in the air and retreated to the craps table. Natasha oozed into the chair, sensuously descending, aware that all eyes—not just Fenster's and Tom's—were upon her.

“That's right,” Fenster told him. “All that crazy betting is going to cost you in the long run. It's bad business!”

“And your business, it is a good business?” Natasha asked, her accent—or the accent of the woman she was pretending to be—as thick as the fog on a mountaintop in the Urals.

“My business is an excellent business,” Fenster said with conviction. “In fact. . .” He let loose a high-pitched giggle. Tom noticed a slight tightening in Natasha's jawline at the unexpected noise and almost had to laugh out loud. “I'd probably take better care of someone like you than that crazy-betting guy you're with. At least I'm dependable!”

“You better watch it, my friend,” Tom intoned, concentrating on the liquid movement of the chips in his hand as he bet a stack on number eleven. “This lady's very special to me.”

“Oh, don't be such a muddy stick,” Natasha chided him. “He is just being friendly.”

“All right, doll,” Tom murmured, with just a hint of threat in his voice. “Go be friendly, then.”

“Perhaps I will,” Natasha pouted, her bottom lip growing a full half inch as she slipped out of her chair and seemingly floated down to Fenster.

Tom watched her, outwardly playing the somewhat jealous sugar daddy, inwardly feeling a fiery rush of admiration for the skillful way she was manipulating the poor fellow.

“Tell me about your steady game,” she told Fenster, sliding Tom a reproachful glance.

Nice touch,
he thought. He watched her run an ivory hand up Fenster's hairy, beet red arm and felt a shiver of—what? Jealousy? No, he wasn't worried that Natasha would go too far in her assignment. He simply wanted her for himself. At the same time, he wished everyone in the room could know what she was up to—so they could admire her as he did.

Fenster didn't stand a chance.

Natasha murmured something into Fenster's ear and made him titter again, ordering him a big, fruity drink served in a ceramic tiki god festooned with umbrellas. He said something back to her, something that made her look sharply at Tom, dropping character for less than a nanosecond. She had something. Something they could use. He received the information with a jolt, and then she was gone again, vanished back into the vapid creature she was pretending to be.

God, he adored her.

This was what he'd always wanted. Work and personal life coming together as elegant as a tango. Working with a partner might be a good idea after all.

“The secret is in the chips,” Fenster was telling Natasha. “It's not the numbers themselves. It's about the relationship between them. You follow?”

“I follow you anywhere, cutie pie!” Natasha purred.

“You don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?” Fenster laughed.

“I understand,” she said, giggling.

“I'm warning you, my friend,” Tom said. “She's smarter than you think.”

“I'll bet she is,” Fenster crowed, daring to give her hip a nasty pinch. Natasha gave a squeal and pretended to slap his hand away as she laughed, but Tom could see she was dreaming of snapping his idiotic head clean off. “She's smart, all right. Smart enough to fetch me another drink, right, baby?”

“I get you a drink later,” she told him, grinning as she realized that he suspected nothing. “I better go back to my big man over there before he comes and gets me himself.”

“Aw, don't go—” Now it was Fenster's turn to pout. His eyes devoured Natasha as she strutted away from him, and he gave her what he surely thought was a secret, just-between-us wink. Which she returned, politely.

“I think we make a good team,” Tom whispered to Natasha, allowing himself a moment of truth between their elaborate lies.

“Maybe you're right,” she responded. “But you know, we'll have to let some others in on our secret if we want to take this all the way.”

Once again, she'd practically read his mind. There was no doubt that they were passionately, emotionally in sync. And no doubt that the heat between them made a forest fire look like a Yule log. Tom wanted Natasha to help him glue together the fractured fragments of his life. Once she helped him get rid of Loki, she could surely help him rediscover how to be a father to Gaia. As soon as they finished this assignment, they'd have to hightail it back to New York City and admit to their daughters that they were in love.