Shock (13 page)

TATIANA SAW THE BURST OF LIGHT
as Natasha was captured and stepped backward into the shadows. She watched her mother, her beautiful, proud mother, captured by thugs and treated like a common streetwalker. She nearly leapt into the light to join her mother in battling the attackers. But something stopped her. Almost like a hand, reaching out and pulling her back.

Stop.
Something told her. Some
one
. It was her mother's voice, speaking from her heart.

What is the logical progression if I run to help her?
that part of Tatiana asked.

I'll fight, but I'll get captured, too. There are too many of them,
she answered inwardly.

Then run.

With the instincts Natasha had instilled in her, Tatiana cut her losses and turned her back on her mother. It was the most wrenching thing she had ever done. But that voice inside her had spoken the truth. What good was she to her mother from inside a prison cell?

Tatiana could hear the shouts of the government agents behind her. Looking for her. Clumsy men. Fools. If she hadn't been concentrating so hard on slipping, invisible, into the streets of Brooklyn, Tatiana would have laughed.

But there would be plenty of time for laughter after she crossed the water. She'd use whatever she had to use to get back to Manhattan and contact the people who would help her.

Then she'd laugh. And she'd wait. Wait to get her revenge on Gaia. For trapping her mother. For taking her place. And just—just for being Gaia.

Then Tatiana would laugh like hell.

“DMITRI,” GAIA CALLED OUT AS SHE
stormed away from Natasha. “Where's Dmitri?” she asked one of the big CIA guys. He ignored her. She caught another one by the arm.

“I'm looking for Dmitri,” she said.

He barked into a walkie-talkie. “We need to find the daughter,” he told someone. “Excuse me,” he said to Gaia, shaking her off as he ran to round up Tatiana.

Gaia felt sick and desperate. And cold inside. She had to know. She'd been told her father was dead before, but this—coming from someone so close—Natasha really seemed to know. Rivulets of dread snaked through her heart as she made her way back to the caravan of cars and vans hidden behind a warehouse. A huge square light created daylight on the deserted street. It was like a movie set. Only this was real life, and Gaia had to find out the ending. Now.

Then she saw him. Dmitri. Standing off to the side, eerily still among all the activity. Dressed in black, his close-cropped gray-haired head pale in the light, he stared at her from across the street. She met his eyes and felt drawn toward him. She stopped running and walked, her stride even and purposeful, willing the space between them to shrink more quickly with each step.

“It's not true, right?” she asked, stopping a foot away from him.

He just gazed back at her, his eyes impossibly sad, the blue of them as open and endless as a noontime sky over a freshly dug grave.

“Dmitri. Is it true?”

He shook his head. “We don't know,” he said. “There is no way we can be sure. Given what we know about Natasha, it's definitely possible.”

Gaia knew Natasha could be lying. She'd seen her father rise from the dead more than once. But the possibility of it made her tired. Exhausted, in fact. Like her heart was made of granite. If it were true, then she had totally failed him. And if it weren't true? She wasn't any closer to finding him than she had been the night he disappeared. It was all too much.

She didn't know if she took the last step toward the old man or if he moved toward her, but Gaia felt his arms fold around her as she closed her eyes and stood trembling with confusion, allowing herself for one brief moment to feel the comfort of another human being. She'd searched so long for her father—wasted so many years hating him when she should have just been glad he was alive. Glad to share a planet with him. And when she was supposed to be watching out for him, she'd lived nose to nose with his wanna-be murderers, never lifting a finger to help him. Guilt turned her insides to custard. She thought she'd die of this feeling. The only thing that would ease the pain was her father. Her father. And she was farther away from him than ever.

And after all he'd done for her, she'd been so inept and useless—it was as bad as if she'd tried to murder him herself.

It was a touching sight, the young mournful girl in the old man's arms. Gaia barely noticed when Natasha's paddy wagon started up and drove past her and Dmitri down the artificially lit street. But Natasha's face gazed dispassionately from the window. Watched Gaia as she pulled away. Receded as the truck gained speed. Soon she was nothing but a speck in a tiny rectangle of light, disappearing down the dark, desolate streets of Brooklyn.

Around every corner she passed could be the gun that held the bullet that would end her life.

IT WASN'T A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE
for Gaia Moore, wandering the streets of New York City with nowhere to go. It wasn't even a unique experience for her to believe that her father was dead, that she was next, that around every corner she passed could be the gun that held the bullet that would end her life. It was just that it had been so long since she had been so entirely alone. Weeks, even. Months.

There was no one left.

Gaia pulled her collar up against the cold breeze that blew harder and more bitingly with each passing moment. It was late spring, but then, Manhattan never seemed to adhere to the
Farmer's Almanac
. The island had taken on the general attitude of its inhabitants and had mastered the ability to give an “Up yours!” to even the likes of Mother Nature. At least it kept the throngs of people off the streets and inside, watching their rented movies and eating their delivery food. Fewer innocents for Gaia to trample. She turned a corner and bent into the wind.

Just above the soft, worn cotton of her jacket, Gaia made sure her eyes were free and peeled. Natasha had been captured and was now in the custody of the CIA. At this very moment she was being questioned, interrogated, maybe even beaten (one could dream). But Tatiana was still out there somewhere. She could be anywhere. And she still had orders to kill Gaia.

Not if I kill you first,
Gaia thought, her rage bubbling over from her heart into her thoughts. It was still hard to swallow, the fact that Tatiana was in on it. The fact that everything they'd been through together had been a lie. That she'd actually been snowed by a little blond DKNY-sporting fake.

“It doesn't matter,” Gaia spoke into the collar of her jacket, her warm breath heating her cheeks and mouth. So she'd lost Tatiana. Big deal. She'd lost more important people in her lifetime. Much more important. And if she bumped into the girl right now, she'd kick the crap out of her first and ask questions later. One question, actually. The only one that mattered.

Where is my father?

Yes, Natasha had claimed that he was dead. And Gaia had no reason to not believe her. Except, of course, that everything else the woman had ever said or done had been a lie. At this point, she gave her father a 50-50 chance of still being down with the breathing folk. But she was 100 percent sure that Tatiana knew the truth. And those were good odds to be working with.

If she only knew where the hell the girl was.

“All alone, no place to go, all alone, no place to go.”

Gaia paused for a moment, taken off guard by the rambling words of the homeless man who was suddenly blocking her path. He looked at her with wild, blank eyes, shaking a battered blue-and-white coffee cup in front of her, the piddling change inside rattling pathetically. He was bundled inside about four flannel coats but somehow still looked impossibly cold. He shuffled toward her, his gooey gaze settling somewhere around the bridge of her nose.

“All alone, no place to go, all alone, no place to go…”

She knew he was just one of the thousands of unlucky people who had been driven insane by life on the street, but for a moment it felt as if he werè looking right through her skin into her heart. Somehow he was extracting the exact words she was trying to keep from eating away at her.

“All alone, no place to go, all alone, no place to go…”

“All right, all right!” Gaia said. She stuffed her hand into the depths of her jeans pocket and came out with a quarter. “Here,” she said, tossing the coin into the cup. The man didn't acknowledge it—he simply took up the refrain once more.

“All alone, no place to go, all alone, no place to go…”

Gaia started to run.

She ran to feel the wind on her face, to get her blood pumping, to hear the roar of the cars and people passing by in her ears, to drown out the man's ceaseless words.

“All alone, no place to go, all alone, no place to go…”

She didn't even realize that she was headed for Ed's building until she was standing right in front of it. The tears that had been torn from her eyes by the stinging wind as she ran made little streaks across her temples, tightening the skin. Gaia sucked in a breath and pulled her jacket closer. She stared at the door.

This was it. This was the place she always used to be able to come to when there was no place else to go. Ed was the one person who had always been there for her, without fail. But she'd screwed that up too, hadn't she? She'd screwed everything up.

Trying not to think about the comfort that lay just beyond those sleek glass doors, Gaia turned her steps toward Washington Square Park. It was time to admit the inevitable. If she was going to get any rest tonight, which she'd need if she was going to track down Tatiana, then she was going to have to scare herself up a park bench. Washington Square Park was downtown's Motel 6 for runaways and druggies. The only difference was that a person didn't need to lay out any cash to get a bed.

Gaia slipped into the park by the West entrance and started along the circle. A large woman dozed sitting up on the first bench, surrounded by dozens of shopping bags full of clothing and rags and heaven only knew what else. There was a shopping cart tied to the bench with a red bandana, and a kitten was curled up in the child's seat among a bunch of tangled scarves. On the next bench was a scrawny kid with barely enough clothing on to keep him comfortable on a hot summer's day, shivering away even as he slept. Gaia averted her eyes and choked back her pity. He was probably an addict who had left a perfectly good home behind him somewhere, and at that moment, Gaia couldn't feel sorry for him. All she could think about was the warm bed out there with his name on it.

Finally, Gaia came across an empty bench. She glanced around to make sure the immediate area was creep free. Satisfied, she laid down, her face toward the back of the seat, and curled her arm under her head.

Don't think about anything,
she told herself.
You can deal with it all tomorrow.

As Gaia felt herself starting to drift, she silently thanked the stars for her ability to fall asleep anywhere. But just as her thoughts were fading to black, the entire bench shook from the force of a powerful blow. She sat up straight and looked right into the stubble-covered face of a square-shouldered, square-jawed, totally strung-out junkie. His eyes were rimmed with red and his breathing was ragged. He bared his teeth like a rabid dog.

“This is my bench, girlie,” he said, gracing Gaia with a cloud of breath that smelled of rotten beer.

“Leave me alone,” Gaia said, starting to lie down again. She was definitely not in the mood.

The junkie walked around to the front of the bench, grabbed the back of Gaia's jacket, and yanked her to the ground. Her shoulder hit the asphalt and her head bounced against the hard ground. Quickly, Gaia rolled over onto her stomach and pushed herself up. When she turned around, the junkie was right in her face, laughing. Gaia scrunched up her nose and tried not to breathe.

“Look, when I got here, the bench was empty,” Gaia said. “You don't look like the brightest guy in the world, but I'm sure you've heard of finders keepers.”

“'F you won't give the bench up, I got no problem takin' it from ya,” the guy said.

Gaia rolled her eyes. For once, she didn't feel like fighting, but she'd already had more than enough of the grandstanding banter portion of the evening. She had a feeling that this was the type of guy who could stand here and trade threats until he passed out, but there was no telling how long that would take. Besides, the sweet taste of sleep was still in her mouth and she wanted to get back there. So she decided to take the short cut. She reached out and shoved him.

The junkie staggered back, surprised, then narrowed his eyes and threw a wide, arcing punch. Gaia easily blocked it, grasped his arm and turned into him, jabbing her elbow back into his stomach. He doubled over slightly, and she brought her skull back into his with a crack. When she spun away from him and took her fighting stance, he already looked pretty beaten up. Gaia was about to let her guard down when he let out a battle cry and rushed her, tackling her right to the ground.

Gaia tried to push him off of her, waiting for her adrenaline to kick in, waiting for that rush of energy, but it didn't come. She was just tired. And not a little bit bored. As she contemplated this, the junkie got one good punch into her gut and another to her jaw that sent stars across her vision. Gaia had had enough. She propped her calves under his torso and lifted, flipping him up and over her head, onto his back. He let out a groan as he fell. Gaia got up and hovered over him.

“Are we done yet?” she asked.

He waved his hands in front of his face and winced. “We're done! We're done! Please don't hurt me!”

“Fine,” Gaia said, trying not to show how relieved she was. “Just get the hell out of here.”

The junkie stood up, keeping his distance from Gaia, then ran off awkwardly into the night. Gaia trudged back over to her bench, feeling heavy and low and disappointed. She couldn't remember the last time she hadn't gotten worked up and focused and generally jazzed during a fight. And right now she felt about as alive as she did in her highly unstimulating math class every day. What was wrong with her? It wasn't like she hadn't been in places as depressing as this before. She'd spent almost her entire life in them.

But this time was somehow different. When she reached inside and tried to summon up some kind of motivating emotion—anger, vengefulness—all she felt was…broken.

She laid down on the bench again, her brow furrowing as she put her head down on the pillow of her bent arm.

Don't think about anything,
she told herself again.
You can deal with it all tomorrow.

Then she closed her eyes and let sleep finally come.