Lust

Gaia

Unfamiliar Terrain

Tom

The Old Psycho—Killer

Jake

Hello Kitty Clips

Jake

Oliver

Ed

Not in Kansas Anymore

Gaia

Gaia

Firearms

Tom

Gaia

Nerve Endings

Oliver

Gaia

Tom

Which One?

Gaia

Lost

Shatter

Gaia

Jake

Piercing

Jake

Gaia

Sneak Peek of Fearless™ #30: ‘Freak'

To Colton and Gabrielle Bryan

I
guess the only time most people think about blood is when it's gushing out of their veins and they need to find a Band-Aid—or an emergency room—to keep it from messing up the white carpet. But I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Little red platelets and big white corpuscles rushing through everyone's veins. Keeping us alive as long as it stays on its dark little course—but signaling weakness or death when it wanders off the path, out into the light to spill on the ground.

Funny thing about blood: It also connects people. There it is, hidden inside your skin, yet it manages to call out to other blood, related blood, inside someone else's skin. You might have nothing else in common, but that red stuff really is thicker than water. There's nobody in the world I should have more cause to hate than Oliver. Or should I say, Loki. He has engineered more destruction—starting with that of
my own mother, the woman who created the blood I'm talking about—than anyone else in my life. So a bout of postcoma confusion has forced his pre-Loki, kinder and gentler Oliver personality to emerge, and suddenly he regrets his evil ways.

At best I should feel indifferent toward him. But because we share blood, I find myself drawn to him. I find myself willing to try to trust him—this new, remorseful Oliver—because our DNA matches up so nicely.

Am I just a sucker? A girl so lonely she'll cling to any semblance of a family connection? Or is this an instinct, speaking through the bowels of primordial history, telling me the tide has turned for Oliver?

Let's hope it's the latter.

Let's hope it's the blood that's letting me forgive him. Anyone else would get nothing from me but my everlasting hate. Like Natasha and Tatiana, the mother-daughter team from the
third ring of hell. A couple of lying, conniving females who took my dad from me and almost had me convinced he was dead. But he can't be dead. My blood would tell me if he was. They're still going to pay, though—maybe with their own blood. If I get half a chance, you can bet that'll be the case.

But that's so a priority. What's important now—what's got to happen before anything else—is I've got to find my dad. My real blood link. Even closer than Oliver. He's the one I owe my loyalty to. And I'm going to find him. Come hell or high water, the blood pumping in my veins is going to give me the strength to reach around the globe and find him. You can bet on that.

She had to remember to keep her distance this time. Within her heart, and out in the world.

Dangerously Accurate

GAIA SAT SLUMPED IN AN UNFORGIVING
wood-and-metal chair as she cycled through the seven local stations one more time, looking for something that would amuse her and Jake in his hospital room. The television, which looked about twenty years old, was bolted to the ceiling and made a disconcerting fuzzy noise between each channel, like the
cchk
sound at the beginning and end of a walkie-talkie broadcast. The static was only marginally less interesting than daytime TV.

“Is this
Judge Judy?”
Gaia wanted to know.

“No, that's a different show” Jake said, pointing to the screen. “I forget what this one's called. . . . It looks like a judge show, but then they bring in therapists and it turns into a corny love fest where everybody's hugging and crying, even though tomorrow they're going to go back to throwing chairs at each other.”

“Well, there's nothing else on. You need better health insurance. This no-cable thing is a problem.”

“Aren't you supposed to be in school?” Jake asked again. Gaia glared at him.

“Didn't I already sidestep that question?” she wanted to know.

“Yeah, that's why I have to ask it again. I'd think
you'd be more considerate—it's tiring, ya know? All this verbal back-and-forth . . .”

“Whatever. I skipped again,” she admitted. “I can't sit still in school. I'm too agitated.”

“What? Because of this?” Jake shrugged. Gaia tried not to think about the fact that he'd been shot when he'd been ambushed.
Because
of her. So what if it had turned out to be nothing more than a flesh wound? He was hurt because he'd gotten in the way of people after Gaia. And that made her feel ill.

He wasn't the first person to end up lying on a metal cot with a tube in his arm because of her. And she felt a leaden certainty that he wouldn't be the last.

“Please. Don't flatter yourself,” she said sheepishly, glancing at the bandages enveloping his powerful shoulder.

“Well, whatever it is, why don't you just go to school and avoid getting in trouble?”

Gaia blinked at him. “What are you, a Boy Scout?” she asked.

Jake laughed. “No, I'm just saying, you could go to school to pass the time just as easily as you can sit here.”

Gaia knew he was right. She didn't know why she had such an aversion to school. Maybe it was because she already knew everything that was being droned about in the front of the classroom. Her dad—her dad
and her mom, actually—had made sure of that, having made her take advantage of her sharp intellect from the moment she could read, which had happened at around age three. Maybe she just couldn't stand being fenced in. Maybe she was worried that another strike would hurt the students around her.

Or maybe she just wanted to be here, at the hospital, with Jake.

“Oh, why start behaving now?” she muttered. “It would just confuse everyone.”

“You know what I think?” Jake gave her a sidelong look.

“No, in fact, I don't possess that particular skill,” Gaia responded dryly.

“I think you like putting one over on people,” he said with a tiny nod. “You like being Invisible Girl, appearing in class at will, while everyone else sticks to the rules and studies and worries about the SATs. Because you know you can pull a passing grade out of your ass, and you like the challenge.”

“Oh, really?” Gaia knew she was just being teased. But even being fake-dissected gave her an uneasy feeling.

“Yeah. Plus, now that I know how crazy your life has been, it makes even more sense. You'd hate to feel settled and centered, wouldn't you? That would just be too unfamiliar to stand.” Jake was enjoying this, Gaia could see that. She was acting nonchalant, but inside she squirmed with discomfort under the probing spotlight of
this much attention. Not to mention the fact that his theory sounded dangerously accurate.

“Hey, I have a great idea, Jake. Why don't you get out of my head and back into your hospital bed? I think it's time for your lower G.I. series.”

“Oh, hoooo!” Jake laughed at the sharp tone in Gaia's voice. “Man, are you easy to tease!”

“You're annoying,” Gaia told him. “I'm going to request that your next sponge bath be given by a male nurse.”

As if Gaia's guilty feelings had taken human form, the door clunked open and Jake's father entered the room, along with a stout old woman. Gaia stood up as if she'd been caught pulling the wings off a fly. She couldn't help but worry that Mr. Montone would eventually come to his senses and hold her responsible for Jake's condition. There was no way he could believe it was pure coincidence that his golden boy had gotten shot while he was out with his mysterious new friend.

“Gaia!” Mr. Montone came straight for her and gave her a . . . hug? Gaia's nerve endings did a confused little dance; they'd been expecting a slap, or at least the cold shoulder.

“It's so good to see you,” Mr. Montone said. “You've been such a good friend to Jake through all this. Ma, this is Jake's friend Gaia. The one who got him to the hospital.”

“You do so good!” the old woman said, reaching up to grab Gaia by the cheeks and giving her an affectionate—and powerful—squeeze.

“A lot of girls your age are somewhat . . . flighty,” Mr. Montone added. “Might have panicked and run home. You really kept a level head, and I appreciate what you did for my son.”

Gaia sent a telepathic thank you to the CIA agents who'd talked to Mr. Montone after the shootout. Who knew what on earth they could have told him? But whatever it had been, it had evidently completely ruled out any possibility of Gaia's involvement.

“Oh, no,” Gaia stammered. “I mean, I didn't really—”
Shut up and quit while you're ahead
, she muttered internally.
For once, someone thinks you did something right. You'd better enjoy it.

“Dad, Nonna, what are you guys doing here?” Jake asked. “Is something wrong?”

The door opened again. A nervous-looking young doctor in a white coat shuffled in, eyeballing the visitors who already seemed intent on bossing him around.

“Excuse me—I understand you want to take Jake home?” he asked, with all the authority of a kid who'd missed his curfew.

“We don' just wanna,” Jake's grandmother said. “We
gonna
take him home.”

The doctor looked to Jake's dad for help, but he just shrugged and started packing Jake's things into a duffel.

“Mrs. Montone, I really must tell you, we'd prefer it if we could watch Jake for one more night.”

“Watch him what, starve to death because of your hospital food? I need to get some braciola into him before he fades to nothing.”

Gaia snorted with laughter. She couldn't help it. Jake was so huge and solid that the idea of him wasting away was ridiculous.

“We'd just like to observe . . . oh . . . fine,” the doctor said resignedly.

“Good man,” Mr. Montone said, patting him on the back. “Don't worry, I can watch him. I know what to look for: infection, gangrene. I work at Mount Sinai, you know.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was amazing. Gaia hadn't noticed it as much back at Jake's apartment, but for all intents and purposes, Mr. Montone looked like an older Jake, only with white hair and a bit of a belly. He peered at Jake over his half-glasses and said, “You. Up.”

“Gaia, do you mind?” Jake asked.

“What? Oh! I'll wait in the hall.” She caught a glimpse of him sitting up and shifting over in bed, preparing to take off his hospital gown. Flustered, she left the room.

Immediately she realized she should have just made
her excuses and left. Of course, she could still just leave, but she hadn't said good-bye, and Jake's family would think she was weird.

And why do you care what Jake's family thinks?
she asked herself.

I don't
, she answered.
Who cares? Just because his father fed me the best homemade dinner I've had since I was a kid and welcomed me into his home, and just because his son is basically my only friend? I don't give a hoot what they think of me.
But somehow she stood in the hallway, shifting her weight from one foot to the other with nervous energy until they emerged.

Jake was fully clothed, except he hadn't managed to get a T-shirt over his bandages, so his loose flannel button-down shirt fell open at the chest. His dad and grandma followed behind him, arguing over which one should carry the duffel bag.

“Gimme that. You've got the bad back,” his grandmother ordered.

“I've got it. It's not heavy,” his dad said.

“Sure, it's-a not heavy till you throw your back out again. Come on, give.”

Jake slowed down so that they had to pass him, then let the elevator door close without him.

“See you downstairs,” he called out as his grandmother tried to hit the door-open button and failed.

“The hospital would have been some welcome peace and quiet,” Jake said, indicating with a nod
that he was referring to his father and grandmother.