Fear (3 page)

Gaia took one last look around the room.
Everywhere there were smears and streaks of the brownish, nearly dry blood.
The outline that had looked so like a human figure a few minutes ago was now meaningless, scattered bits of tape spread all over the floor. The scene looked terrible enough to Gaia. How would it look to anyone else? How would it look to the police?
What are you doing in this room, Ms. Moore? How did you get into this brownstone? Were you returning to the scene of the crime? Where were you at the time of the murder?

These were not questions Gaia was in a big hurry to answer. All at once her stomach took a major elevator ride toward her throat, and Gaia had to press a hand over her mouth to keep from throwing up. The way the tape was torn up, the way the blood was scattered. It made it look like. . . not a murder. A massacre. Like someone had been torn to pieces in the apartment.

Gaia fled from the room and tore down the steps so fast, she nearly broke her own neck before she made it to the main floor. She went out the door, not worrying about whether she bothered to lock the brownstone behind her. If someone stole Ella's bad taste collection now, what difference would it make?

A cold tear ran down Gaia's cheek, and she brushed it away angrily. George had betrayed her. He had betrayed her father. He didn't deserve her tears. Only. . . did he really deserve to die?

Gaia took deep breaths as she ran. It helped to calm her stomach. Too bad it didn't do so much for her head. What had happened to George? Had Loki double-crossed him? Or had he suspected that George was telling Gaia more than he was supposed to?

There were way too many questions, not enough answers, and the list of people that might be able to help her was getting shorter all the time.

THE SUN HAD BEEN DOWN
for nearly an hour, but there was still a blur of deep violet light on the western horizon. The light shimmered across the slowly heaving sea and lit up the breakers as they smashed against the nearby bluffs. It was a beautiful scene, really. A glorious tropical evening with sea and sand and waves. Only Tom Moore was not in the best of positions to enjoy the view.

He grabbed the bars on his cell window, braced his feet against the stone wall, and pulled. The rusty iron gave a slight, encouraging movement, but then it settled down and refused to budge again. Tom pulled until the veins were bulging on his arms and sweat ran down his forehead into his eyes. It was no use. The bars were not going anywhere without a big file or a stick of dynamite.

Tom let go of the bars and brushed the rust flakes against his torn, dusty pants leg. He wasn't sure how long he had been in this place or how he had gotten there. At first Loki's forces had held him in another, smaller cell. The last thing he remembered, there had been an injection, then darkness, and now this place. Since awakening on the creaking metal bunk at the corner of the cell, Tom hadn't seen any sign of a guard—or of anyone else. He might have been out for days or weeks or for only minutes. He rubbed his hand across his chin. There was stubble there, but not much. A day? Maybe two days.

He was somewhat surprised to still be held prisoner after this long. Not because he had expected Loki to let him go. Far from it. He was only surprised that he hadn't been killed. With all the rage that his brother had displayed over the years, Tom had expected no mercy at his hands.

What did Loki hope to gain by keeping Tom prisoner? Was he hoping to extract information? Was he planning some kind of torture? Tom couldn't be sure. He had never understood his brother's twisted desires. He wasn't going to try to understand them now.

The fact that he was alive meant that there was still hope. Hope for himself, but more important, hope for Natasha. Natasha had been taken prisoner along with Tom. She had been alive when Tom was moved to this place. If Tom hadn't been killed, there was every chance that Natasha had also been spared. She might even be held in the same place where Tom was a prisoner. Wherever that was.

Tom turned away from the window and examined his cell again. The room was small, no more than two steps in either direction. The stone walls had been worn down by time and rain and the salt air, but they were still strong enough to prevent escape. The door was wood, which seemed to offer some chance that it might be broken, but this door was as thick as Tom's fist and so old that the wood seemed almost petrified. When he pounded against it, the sound was muffled and the door shook not at all. Not very promising.

Tom craned back his head and looked up. High above, there was a wide gap in the ceiling of the room. Through it he could see a spray of stars across the night sky. If Tom could climb up to the opening, he could easily fit through the space and slip over the walls. Only the ceiling looked to be at least twenty feet above him and the worn sandstone walls offered little chance for a handhold. Besides, the opening wasn't against the walls; it was in the middle of the room, with at least a couple of feet of solid roof on all sides.

He scanned the room. There was the cot. Six feet long. Maybe six and a half. There was a metal bucket. Another foot. If Tom was able to stand on top of the whole mess and put his arms overhead, he could reach up. . . maybe fifteen feet. That was five feet short of his goal.

Tom dragged the cot over to the middle of the room and tipped it up on edge. The little bed was made from aluminum tubing, and it looked none too sturdy turned up on end. Still, Tom grabbed the bucket, clenched the handle between his teeth, and climbed carefully to the top. The cot swayed precariously, and one of the metal tubes buckled slightly under Tom's weight, but it held. He balanced on one foot while he sat the bucket on the end of the cot, then held out his arms for balance as he stepped onto the bucket. Finally he looked up.

He could see the opening, so tantalizingly close, but so painfully far from reach. The distance between Tom's upraised fingertips and the edge of the opening was only three or four feet. From the ground, a standing jump of that distance would have been extremely tough. From here, perched on a tower of rickety metal, it was nearly impossible. And if he missed, it would be a long, painful drop to the stone floor of the cell.

Tom squinted. There was something at the edge of the opening. A broken spike that had once blocked the opening. With the cot and bucket trembling below him, Tom unbuttoned his stained white shirt and held it by the end of one sleeve. He took a deep breath, bent his knees, and leapt.

The cot and the bucket went tumbling away with a clatter of metal. Tom soared toward the opening, his hands coming within a foot of the corroded spike, but then he began to fall. At that moment, just as gravity started to drag him down toward the stones, Tom flung the shirt upward. The cloth tangled around the rusty metal, the sleeve whipping around and around.

There was a jerk, a shower of stone chips and rust, and an ominous tearing sound. Then Tom was dangling by one hand from the length of cloth.

He glanced down only for a moment. The floor of the cell was completely invisible in the gloom. He turned his attention upward and climbed hand over hand up the cotton shirt. The broken bit of metal dug into the flesh of Tom's chest as he squeezed past, but there was enough room. After a few anxious seconds he was standing on the stone roof above his cell. The first stage of his escape was accomplished.

Now that he was outside, he had a better idea of where he had been taken. The stone cell was just one small part of a rambling, tumbledown construction that covered most of a small island. There were the broken remains of a wall, several small buildings that had collapsed into heaps of worn stone block, and the large, central place that included the cell.

It was a fort of some kind. A hundred, probably hundreds of years old fort. Tom guessed that the building had been constructed by the Spanish or some other old colonial power to defend their holdings and shipping routes in the Caribbean. Whoever had built the place had picked an obscure spot. The island was no more than half a mile across, and as far as Tom could see, there wasn't another speck of land in sight. There was no clue to where the island might lie. It could be close to the Caymans or a thousand miles away. It might be anywhere between Miami and Martinique, Cuba and Caracas.

This was going to add another level of complexity to escaping. Getting out of his cell wasn't going to do much good unless he could also find a way off the island.

Tom walked across the roof. Thirty yards along, he came to another small opening. He went to it slowly and leaned down to look inside. Darkness.

“Natasha?” he called softly. “Natasha, are you down there?” There was no reply.

It was the same at the next opening. At the third opening Tom heard movement even before he spoke. “Natasha?”

“Tom!” A shadow moved in the darkness. From the shadows below, Tom could see a pale face looking up.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I'm fine,” Tom called down. Though he knew Natasha was too far away to see him, Tom couldn't help but smile. Knowing that she was close and uninjured, even if she was still captive, was enough to make him feel happier than he had in days. “Listen,” he said. “I'm going to go and look for some rope or something that I can lower down to you.”

“All right,” said Natasha. “Be careful.”

“Don't worry, we'll be out of here and on our way back to New York in ten minutes.”

Tom stood up and turned around just in time to catch the wooden stock of a Kalashnikov rifle across his face. Then he was falling. Falling deep into blackness.

Gaia
was gone when I woke up this morning. I don't know where she is, but I get the feeling she didn't just go out for a doughnut. Not this time. After what we saw last night, she knows that I was right. She knows that her father's friend was no friend at all.

My mother is not the enemy. She never was. I never doubted it, and now Gaia knows that it is true. I don't know how my mother ever got involved with someone like Gaia's father, but I knew she wasn't doing anything wrong. I knew it.

I only wish I knew where Gaia is right now. I'm really afraid that she's out doing something stupid. Ever since I got to this city, it seems like Gaia is either doing something stupid or getting ready to do something stupid.

She's actually very smart. I know that. But it's amazing how stupid smart people can be when they try, and Gaia's really been trying. She's been pushing everyone away at the one time she could use some help. That's pretty stupid. She's been pushing Ed away when he wants so much to love her. That's terribly stupid. I only hope that this time, for once, Gaia is not out there doing something too stupid. I hope that she's not out attacking this Loki or getting in trouble or getting herself killed.

Gaia is smart, and she's strong, and she can fight. If I'm going to get my mother back, I'm going to need Gaia's help. So please, just this once, don't let her be stupid.

Everybody's
seen those fun house mirrors. The kind that have all these ripples and bends. You step in front of one, and suddenly you're a six-foot-wide, two-foot-high dwarf. In the next one your neck is longer than a giraffe's. You're fat. You're skinny. You've got two heads and four arms. Lots of fun, right?

I hate those things.

I mean, who would want to look into the mirror and see something besides their own face? It's not like I think I'm the best-looking person in the world. I don't get a big thrill out of seeing me in the mirror. But seeing someone, or something, else in the glass? That's just plain creepy. People that think those mirrors are funny have some kind of serious problem.

So, what does it mean when you start looking at someone else and seeing a fun house reflection of yourself? Heather Gannis has always been so pretty, so well dressed, so neat and popular.

All that makes it sound like I liked her. Sometimes I almost did. Or was starting to. But most of the time I did not. I mean, come on. Heather is the Anti-Gaia. I'm the weird outcast; Heather is the girl at the center of attention. I'm wearing my sweats and jeans; she's in something with a designer label. The only things Heather and I ever agreed about were:

1. Sam

2. Ed

I loved them both. Heather loved them both. Or at least, I think she did. But Heather couldn't deal with Ed after the accident took him off his feet. And Heather definitely couldn't deal with the fact that Sam liked me more than he did her. Just another facet of the wonderful, mutual Gaia and Heather non-fan club.

Then last night Heather shows up looking worse than I do after a night spent trading punches with Central Park drug dealers. She had it all. The tangled hair. The bad clothes. The screw-you attitude. Pure imitation Gaia.

Maybe it was a joke. Maybe it was a temporary psychosomatic split with reality. Maybe it was a little tear in the fabric of the time-space continuum. Maybe she did it to piss me off. If that was the idea, it worked. This whole Single White Heather thing is getting under my skin.

If it was a onetime event, then I'll just chalk it up to weird. But if she keeps it up, I know one fun house mirror that's not getting out of the carnival without a few cracks.

Times
change, people change. Enemies become friends. Friends become strangers. Old girlfriends become people that would love to tear your eyeballs out and serve them up on crackers. Believe me, I've seen it.

It's just that usually, these big turnarounds don't happen in twenty-four hours.

The last time I talked with Tatiana, she didn't have anything good to say about Gaia. The two of them had been arguing about something, and Tatiana basically thought that Gaia was a capital
B
Bitch.

So why is it the two of them are suddenly acting like pals? Don't get me wrong. Tatiana is new to this country and this city. She needs more friends. Gaia is. . . well, Gaia. She'd never admit it, but she needs more friends, too.