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  Some people were gluttons for punishment. Stupid people. Sure enough, they fit the category. The man sprinted toward Gaia, fists swinging.

  It was pitiful. Gaia almost felt like laughing. But she was too pissed off. The stupid ones were always the worst fighters. Gaia stepped sideways. There was no reason to engage him. As she dodged the guy’s fists, the force of his own weight made him stumble. He fell toward the ground, and Gaia heard a popping sound in his wrist as he tried to catch himself with his left hand.

  Logically, Gaia knew that she should probably feel some semblance of fear right now. Sure, she was winning the battle. Even so, deserted park plus attacking mugger equals fear.

  But all she felt was another surge of adrenaline.

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  FEARLESS™

  BAD

  FRANCINE PASCAL

  To William Rubin

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET PULSE, published by

  Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Produced by 17th Street Productions,

  an Alloy Online, Inc. company

  33 West 17th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Copyright © 2001 by Francine Pascal

  Cover art copyright © 2001 by 17th Street Productions, an Alloy Online, Inc. company.

  Cover photography by St. Denis. Cover design by Mike Rivilis.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address 17th Street Productions,

  33 West 17th Street, New York, NY 10011, or Pocket Books,

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  ISBN: 0-7434-2256-2

  eISBN-13: 978-0-743-42256-7

  Fearless™ is a trademark of Francine Pascal.

  POCKET PULSE and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  BAD

  GAIA

  Gaia and Sam. Sam and Gaia.

  I never thought I’d see those two names together.

  Sam and me. Yes, me. Gaia Moore. A poorly dressed Xena, Warrior Princess, minus the sex appeal and cult following. It’s impossible to believe. After everything that happened—after all the lies and betrayal and death and just plain old bull-shit—it’s beyond miraculous. It’s out there in biblical, apocalyptic, here-comes-the-rapture territory.

  People always talk about kismet. You know, the idea that two people are destined to be together—and they’ll eventually find each other, no matter what bizarre, horrendous paths they may take. And I’ve always put kismet right up there with UFOs and the tooth fairy on the believability scale.

  But now . . . I don’t know.

  When Sam found me in the park, I honestly felt like I was being visited by some kind of apparition. A phantom, conjured out of my subconscious. He was literally the last person I expected to see. For once I hadn’t even been thinking about him. No, my mind was definitely somewhere else. There’s nothing like nearly getting killed and then seeing your foster mother murdered to distract you from your obsession.

  Then, when Sam started to apologize for everything that had happened between us—for Ella, for the misunderstandings, for how he’d failed—I wondered if the bullet hadn’t missed me after all. For a split second I honestly thought I had died. And that’s a pretty big deal because I don’t believe in the afterlife. (I don’t believe in much at all, actually, but that’s another story.) But I especially don’t believe in some great spirit world, some ethereal plane beyond our reach.

  Still, at that moment, I have to admit, I had my doubts. After all, I was experiencing my version of heaven. There was Sam Moon, standing before me at the Pearly Gates (okay, at the miniature Arc de Triomphe in Washington Square Park, but close enough), telling me everything I’d always dreamed of him saying.

  And it was all real. When he put his arms around me, I knew I wasn’t hallucinating. For one thing, he accidentally stepped on my toe—hard. It was like pinching yourself on the arm to make sure you’re awake. Plus I never cry in my dreams. And we cried that night. About a lot of things. About Ella, whom neither of us ever even really knew . . . the Ella who ended up finding her true self in the last moments of her life because she realized she had been used—used by a monster far more sick than I had ever imagined her being.

  But I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to think about all the people I’ve lost, like my mother, or Ella, or my best friend, Mary. There’s no point in dwelling on the negative. Not anymore. Because mostly Sam and I talked about the time we missed out on being together because we can both be complete assholes.

  Then we kissed.

  To be honest, I can’t remember much else.

  SAM

  They say that there are only two things a person can ever be sure of: death and taxes. Having never paid taxes myself, I’m not even sure of that one. But I’m sure of one thing: Gaia Moore.

  It’s funny. Not “ha-ha” funny, either. More like the kind of funny that makes your insides twist into a horrible, sickening knot—because since the moment I saw her, my life has been a Tilt-A-Whirl. For example: My grades dropped, I was kidnapped, I broke up with my perfect, desirable, beautiful girlfriend, and I have reason to believe that I’ve developed an ulcer. And that’s just for starters.

  But it’s all been worth it. Describing my feelings has never been my strong point, but I have to say, when I’m in a four-mile radius of Gaia, nothing else exists. Nothing. Yes, that’s a terrible, simpleminded cliché, but it’s actually true. Nuclear war? Who cares? The bubonic plague is headed for New York? So what? I’ll stay inside. I felt that way the very first time it happened—even before I knew her, and I can’t explain why.

  I’ve spent countless hours thinking about Gaia, trying to figure out what it is about her that makes me risk life and limb to be close to her for even a minute. I’ve come to the conclusion that she isn’t human. I don’t know if she’s an angel, an alien, a sprite, or an oversize leprechaun. But she’s definitely not of this earth.

  I knew it for sure when I actually had Gaia in my arms. If I could just hold her on a steady basis for about a week, I would die a happy man. But maybe I won’t have to die to get my wish. Maybe, just maybe, Gaia and I actually have a shot at being together.

  If it works out—even for a week or less—then everything bad that’s happened will be null and void in my mind. Life will be perfect. . . .

  Except for one thing.

  My friend Mike Suarez is in the hospital, and he might die.

  But that can’t happen. No. Not when my life has the potential to be so good. Please, God, don’t let that happen.

  cold and lifeless

  She could feel the exhaustion creeping over her, smothering her like one of those lead blankets people have to wear in an X-ray room. Her knees buckled. Her eyesight dimmed.

  THE MAN AT THE MORGUE WAS straight out of central casting. Pale, bloated face, long, skinny fingers, creepy black eyes. He actually grinned at Gaia as he pulled Ella’s body out of th
e morgue’s special refrigeration system. Gaia wasn’t afraid of the guy—she was never afraid—but it didn’t take too much imagination to picture the kind of things he might do after hours to the corpses in his care.

  Overly Made-up Nympho

  “Can you identify this woman, Ms. Moore?” the man asked, flicking his gaze over Gaia’s body before raising his eyebrows at her.

  “Her name is Ella. I mean . . . it was Ella. Ella Niven.”

  It sounded to Gaia as if her voice were coming from a speaker in some other room: fake, distant. Everything about the moment seemed fake—the harsh, fluorescent lights, the antiseptic stink of chemicals, the cold metal surfaces—everything, in fact, except the film of sweat forming over the pathologist’s upper lip. Ella certainly didn’t look real. Her skin was a sort of light blue-gray color, and her lips were completely white because of all the blood she had lost. Her dyed red hair had been pushed away from her face, and it resembled the kind of cheap clown wigs they sold on Bleecker Street.

  Gaia thought Ella would at least appear as if she were finally at peace. People always said that about the dead. But Ella just looked . . . lifeless. Cold and lifeless.

  Creepy Guy smiled again, holding out a form for Gaia to sign.

  And then it was over.

  The next thing Gaia knew, she was running down Seventh Avenue, determined to put as much space as she could between herself and the basement of St. Vincent’s Hospital. Sometimes New York City just wasn’t big enough. Her thoughts swirled like dead leaves breaking into fragments in an autumn wind. One more person was out of her life. Like her mother. Like Mary. Ella Niven was officially no more. Gaia was minus one foster mother.

  A month ago, even a week ago, Gaia would have been happy to see Ella buried six feet under. The woman had done everything possible to make Gaia’s life a living hell. Including sleeping with Sam Moon. But then—

  Gaia took a right onto Christopher Street, skidding for a moment on the cold pavement. She dashed across the street, barely registering a splash into one of those slush puddles that guaranteed wet socks and frozen toes. At least it was a little warmer than it had been. It was already almost February, after all. Spring would be here soon. Gaia couldn’t wait for the spring....

  Maybe she should just stop thinking about Ella. Right. The coming spring meant making a fresh start. She should stop thinking about the past—and in particular, about what she’d learned of Ella in the past few days. Her stepmother hadn’t been a plastic, overly made-up nymphomaniac with an IQ of twenty. No. The real Ella had been a master of the martial arts, intelligent, and incredibly complicated.

  Just like me. Well, maybe except for the intelligent part. But otherwise . . .

  After another skidding turn, the Nivens’ Perry Street brownstone swam out of the wintry darkness, like it had so many times in the past. The windows were dark. Lifeless. The place was deserted, a tomb. Gaia swallowed as she bounded up the steps, her wet sneakers slapping on the smooth stone. If she’d never thought of this place as home before, she didn’t know what to think of it now.

  She slid her key into the dead-bolt lock and opened the door. The house was cold; not that this was any big surprise. Gaia felt as if she hadn’t been here in a year. It was strange; she had been here twice today already—once to receive the call from the man at the morgue. The house had been cold then, too.

  Even a week ago she would have been thrilled to come into the brownstone and discover that she had the place to herself. But now as she stood in the narrow hallway by the ticking grandfather clock, she realized that it felt less like a tomb and more like a movie set. In a way it was a set, a stage. A fake family had lived here, leading fake lives.

  She started up the creaky staircase, averting her gaze from the cheesy photos that Ella had taken to enhance her image as a dumb bimbo. It was harder than ever to believe that Ella’s husband, George—ironically, an old CIA buddy of her dad’s—had insisted that this would be a real home. A place for Gaia to finally grow some roots after all those years of bouncing from one foster home to another . . . after her mom’s death and her dad’s disappearance.

  A bitter bile rose in her throat. Gaia wouldn’t think of her dad. Never again. He had engineered the destruction that had nearly consumed her.

  Mary Moss would have found something funny about this situation, Gaia thought as her footsteps pounded up the stairs. She would have provided some old-fashioned gallows humor to make me laugh. . . .

  But Mary had met the same fate as Ella. She had been assassinated. Every time Gaia thought of the sleazy drug dealer’s henchman who had taken Mary’s life, she felt like punching her fist through a wall—or better yet, through an assassin’s face. She shook her head as she reached the fourth-floor landing. She still wasn’t sure why Ella had sacrificed herself to the assassin’s bullet, why Ella had claimed that she was Gaia. Or maybe she just didn’t want to dwell on it. The tears that Gaia had shed when she saw Ella’s dead body had been real. She’d hated her foster mother for so long—and in the end, she’d seen the truth. They were kindred spirits. They were both utterly lost....

  So maybe there was some humor in the situation. After all, when Gaia had first moved in, George had hoped that Ella would be a surrogate mother to her. Ha! It really would have been funny if it wasn’t so pitiful and sad. For all she knew, George still believed that Ella had married him for love, that she’d had no hidden agenda, that she hadn’t been mixed up with something twisted and evil and cruel. It was amazing, actually. How could somebody be so blind? Ella had done everything from “forget” to give Gaia phone messages, to sleep with Sam, to order a hit on Gaia’s life.

  On the other hand, Gaia knew all about willful blindness. She’d been wearing shades three feet thick for the first twelve years of her life. She hadn’t caught a glimpse of her own father’s true nature—

  You’re not going to think about him.

  No. She had a new family now. She had Sam. She had her uncle. Oliver. Well, maybe she had Oliver. He’d promised to take her away—then vanished as abruptly as he’d appeared. But she was certain he would contact her again. He had to. There was just no predicting when or how. Not with him.

  And there was one more family member, too—one more member of the odd and disparate little unit of people Gaia had allowed herself to become close with. There was Ed Fargo. But then, Ed might be another “maybe” as well. He’d been there from the very start, wheeling around the background of her life when she didn’t know a soul aside from the freakish chess players in the park . . . but now he was spending way too much time with Heather Gannis. In fact, now that Gaia really thought about it, Ed had become the first male FOH. The first Friend of Heather’s who didn’t wear lipstick. (Although who knew what Heather made him do when they were alone together?)

  A smirk curled on Gaia’s lips. What Ed needed was a good dose of reality. Some wheelchair jokes and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The kind of thing Heather would never provide.

  Gaia sighed, reaching the fourth-floor landing. The door of her room groaned as she pushed it open. In the shadows the bedroom looked the same as it had the last time she’d been in it. It felt the same, too. Like a hotel room. Like a place to crash, but not a place where she belonged. It was temporary. It always had been. Gaia flicked on the light and began to throw items of clothing onto her bed.

  Somewhere between the front door and the door of her bedroom, she had made a decision. She wouldn’t stay in this house another day. Not another second. There was no reason. Even if her uncle Oliver didn’t take her away, as he’d promised . . . well, she could always stay with Sam. Of course she could. She had to tell him about Oliver, anyway, about the possibility that she might be leaving New York for a while. Item by item the sum total of her possessions—her life—went into her ratty duffel bag: her cargo pants, her T-shirts and sweatshirts, the clothes that hung off her frame like potato sacks but still somehow couldn’t conceal the muscles. . . .

  But who cared about her bulgin
g biceps and thunder thighs? Sam liked the way she looked. That was all that mattered.

  It took Gaia all of seven minutes to gather everything. She left the pair of Gap capri pants she had bought during a moment of temporary insanity hanging in the closet. Then she swung her duffel bag over her shoulder and opened the bedroom window. She wanted to leave this house the way she had most often when Ella was alive. She would climb out of the window. She would escape.

  A final tribute to Ella, she thought, throwing her leg over the sill. A very fitting tribute.

  WAS THERE SOME CITY ORDINANCE stating that all SoHo boutiques had to be smaller than a hundred square feet?

  A Little PG-13 Fun

  Ed Fargo drummed his fingers restlessly on his baggy jeans. This was the third place he and Heather had hit this afternoon, and he was starting to feel extremely claus-trophobic—especially since his wheelchair seemed to fill up half the room. Maybe that was why every woman who worked in these stores maintained the weight of a life-size cardboard cutout. If they were actually three-dimensional, they wouldn’t be able to fit.

  “How are we doing in there?” the saleswoman called, rapping on the dressing-room door. Her name was Simone. It figured. She pronounced it “seemoooane.” And there was another thing all SoHo saleswomen had in common: They favored the royal “we.” Probably so they could convince customers that “we” needed to spend three hundred and fifty dollars on a tank top.

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” came Heather’s muffled reply.

  Ed ran his hand through his scruffy brown hair and glanced around the shop, frowning. Another minute and he might go crazy and start trashing the place. But he had woken up this morning with a mission. He was going to buy Heather Gannis an incredibly sexy, absurdly expensive new dress. No matter what the cost.