Freak Read online

  Just another set of criminals. Just another day.

  Tatiana blinked but remained otherwise impassive. She looked small and wan, her light skin translucent and green in her bright orange jumpsuit. The monstrous cuffs circling her tiny wrists were almost comical. Even though it was impossibly cold in the interrogation room, there was a line of sweat visible above her upper lip. It was taking a lot more effort for Tatiana to remain composed after days of stony, obstinate silence in her cell. Far more effort than her more experienced, more world-weary, more spy-game-weary mother.

  Tom shifted his gaze to Natasha again. Her dark hair was pulled back in a low braid that hung heavy and smooth down her back. She wore an amused smirk on her face. The face he had once held, once kissed, once touched with the tenderness that he’d formerly reserved only for his wife—his one true love.

  An acidic bitterness shot through his stomach. He could only hope his nausea couldn’t be detected by the detainees.

  “That’s fine,” Natasha said finally, shifting slightly in her iron chair. “It’s just that you’re not. Asking questions, that is.”

  “For whom were you working?” Tom asked flatly.

  The smirk deepened. “You don’t want to know that, Tom.”

  “Don’t say my name,” he snapped. “You don’t have that right.”

  Maddeningly, the smirk turned into a smile.

  “For whom were you working?” he repeated.

  “Everything is connected, Tom,” Natasha said lightly. “It’s all coming full circle.”

  “Oh, so now we’re being cryptic,” Tom snapped.

  “You have to see the bigger picture. You have to look to the past to clearly see the future.”

  Tom clenched his teeth. She was trying to make him think about Katia, trying to make him crack. But Katia was not just his past. She was his past, his present, his future. Why he’d ever let himself lose sight of that, he had no idea.

  “For whom were you working?” Tom repeated once again, glaring at her.

  “I want to talk about a deal,” she said.

  Tom got up and threw his chair across the room, the noise slicing his eardrums as it clattered and crashed. Tatiana flinched as he leaned his knuckles into the table and got right in Natasha’s face.

  “You tried to kill my daughter! You tried to kill Gaia! And you have the audacity . . . the unmitigated gall to sit here and talk to me about a deal!?” he shouted, his eyes so wide they felt about to burst.

  She didn’t move. She didn’t blink. And suddenly Tom Moore knew. He knew that he was going to grab her. He saw his hands around her throat. Saw himself choking the life out of her. Who would blame him if he did it? The woman was sitting here talking in code, making up riddles, and she’d tried to murder the only family he had left. She deserved to die.

  “Agent Moore!”

  The door to the cinderblock-walled room flew open and Director Vance stood on the threshold, his intimidating former-Navy Seal, former-NCAA basketball player frame blocking out the light from the hallway. He pressed his full lips together into a thin line.

  “That’s enough, Agent Moore,” Vance said in his rumbling baritone.

  Tom didn’t move. His knuckles turned white against the table as he continued to glare into Natasha’s unwavering eyes.

  I told this person I loved her. I thought I was going to be with her forever, he thought. The visions he’d had of himself and Natasha together—of making a family with their daughters—flitted through his mind, whirling together in a sickening tornado of colors.

  “Agent Moore, I’m not going to ask you again,” Vance said, stepping into the room.

  The whirlwind suddenly stopped. Tom swallowed hard and struggled to focus on Vance. Ever so slowly, some semblance of balance returned to his mind and he realized what he was doing. He was letting Natasha get the upper hand. He was letting her have the whole game. He smoothed down the front of his blue suit jacket, hoping to regain some shred of dignity.

  But when he glanced at her again it was clear from the expression of triumph on her face that all was lost. He couldn’t handle being around her. And he’d just proven it.

  Tom turned and followed his director out of the room and into the monitoring space just beyond. A couple of agents stood in front of the one-way glass that looked over the interrogation room and they averted their eyes when Tom entered. The second the door was shut behind him, Vance turned on Tom, his dark eyes livid, his deep brown skin flushed with anger.

  “Moore, don’t you ever let me see you lose your cool like that with a prisoner again, you understand me?” Vance spat, leaning in over Tom. “You know what you were in that room? You were that prisoner’s bitch!”

  Tom pulled his head back slightly, unaccustomed to such severe scolding after his glorious tenure in the CIA. Still, he knew on some level that Vance was right. There wasn’t much he could say.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, swallowing his pride. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Damn right it won’t. Because you’re going home,” Vance said through his teeth.

  It took Tom more time than absolutely necessary to process this. The man couldn’t be suggesting that he was being taken off this case. Didn’t Vance know how invested in this he was? He had to find out who had kidnapped him, who had ordered his daughter to be killed. He had to find out for sure whether or not his brother, Oliver, was involved as he so highly suspected.

  “What?” Tom spat out finally. “No! Sir, I—”

  “You heard me, Moore,” Vance said. “These particular prisoners obviously have you more than a little on edge.” He paused for a breath and looked at Tom sorrowfully, almost pityingly. “You’re taking a little time off,” he added, causing Tom’s heart to sink with the finality of it all. “Starting now.”

  Out with the Old . . .

  GAIA OPENED THE DOOR TO THE 72nd Street apartment on Friday after school and immediately went on alert. There was a crash coming from Natasha’s—no, her father’s—bedroom. She and Jake looked at each other. There was someone else there.

  Her first instinct was to call her father’s name and see if it was him. But what if it was an intruder? Then she’d just end up calling attention to herself and Jake. Gaia tiptoed toward the living room, her rubber-soled boots soundless on the hardwood floor.

  Footsteps approached, confident and loud and not remotely trying to be stealthy. Gaia flattened herself against the nearest wall, around the corner from the hallway. That was when her father emerged into the room, all smiles.

  “Hey, honey!” he said, shuffling a few envelopes in his hands. His dress shirt was unbuttoned at the top and the sleeves were rolled up above his wrists. “I didn’t hear you come in!”

  His eyes flicked to Jake, who was now standing outside the door to the kitchen, his muscles visibly slackening.

  “Hello, Jake,” Tom said as Gaia forced her fingers and her jaw to unclench.

  Her father breezed by her and sat down at the head of the dining room table where there were dozens of neatly arranged piles of bills and papers. He started pulling papers out of the envelopes, sorting them, and tossing the envelopes into the kitchen garbage can.

  Gaia eyed her father. This was all very weird. Not only was he home in the middle of the day, but he was doing paperwork—something she hadn’t seen him do . . . ever. When her mom was alive, that was her territory, and since then her father had never been around for enough days in a row to even know that there were bills.

  On top of it all, there was an odd air about him. He was humming. His knee was bouncing under the table. Her father was normally cool, aloof, sometimes intense, but always in a quiet way. Just then he was acting, well, hyper.

  “Dad?” Gaia asked, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Everything okay?”

  “Fine. Great, actually,” he said, glancing up at her for a split second before returning his attention to the papers.

  Jake moved into the room, stuffing his hands into the front pockets of h
is jeans and giving Tom a wide berth. Gaia could tell that Jake sensed something was up.

  “I heard a crash in the bedroom,” Gaia said, sitting down in a chair across from her father. She pulled her messenger bag off over her head and laid it on the floor.

  “Right, I broke a lamp,” her father said. “I’ll clean it up later.”

  Gaia looked at Jake and he tilted his head, giving her a look that said, “He’s your father.”

  “Okay, so what are you doing home?” Gaia asked, glancing at her black plastic watch. “It’s four o’clock.”

  “I decided to take some time off,” Tom said, slapping a piece of paper down on top of a pile. Her father taking time off? Was this some kind of new, previously unexplored reality?

  “What? But Dad, what about Natasha and Tatiana? What about your kidnappers? You can’t just—”

  “But I am,” he said calmly. “My director thinks I need to take a break and I agree.”

  He was lying. She could tell by the way his jaw was tensing, making his cheek bulge slightly. He didn’t want to take time off—his director was making him. This was insane. How were they supposed to find out who had kidnapped him if they weren’t even going to let him interrogate the two people who might give them a lead?

  “We’re both going to have to let the CIA do their job,” her father said, reading her distraught expression perfectly.

  Gaia had no idea how he could be so accepting of this. Her father wasn’t a quitter; he was a fighter—just like her. She wasn’t going to just drop this investigation. She’d do it on her own if she had to, no matter what the CIA or her father said. Whoever had kidnapped her father had to be found and be brought to justice.

  “In the meantime there’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” her father said with a forced smile. “How would you feel about making a new start?”

  “What kind of new start?” Gaia asked slowly, still adjusting to his new attitude.

  “Should I—” Jake asked, motioning toward the bedrooms.

  “No, stay,” Tom said with a laugh. “I just wanted to ask Gaia if she’d like to do a little shopping this weekend.”

  Gaia’s jaw dropped, but she recovered quickly and snapped it shut again. That was definitely a phrase she never thought she’d hear. Not from her father, anyway. The things she heard most often from him were phrases like, “Stay off the radar,” “I’ll try to be in touch sometime next month,” and “Aim for the solar plexus.”

  “Shopping?” Gaia asked, slumping back in her seat. “For what?”

  Please don’t let him say bras or something like that, Gaia thought. Like he suddenly wants to make up for not being there and for my not having a mother.

  Gaia didn’t blame her father for his many disappearing acts over the years—at least not anymore—not now that she knew what he was doing on all those excursions and why. He was fighting the good fight. Protecting her. Protecting the free world. It had taken Gaia a long time to accept that and move on. She couldn’t handle it if he decided to take on the role of guilt-ridden father now.

  “New furniture,” Tom said. “Everything in this place belongs to Natasha and Tatiana. I think it’s time we get some of our own things, don’t you?”

  A little stirring of excitement came to life in Gaia’s chest, quelling the determination for revenge ever so slightly. She hadn’t thought of it that way, but her father was right. This place was going to be their home. Their home. She and her father hadn’t had one of those in years. Why would they want it to be decorated by their evil archenemy?

  “Really?” Gaia said, too unaccustomed to the idea of doing something as normal as furniture shopping with her father.

  “Yes, really,” Tom said, standing. He moved over to the end of the hallway and looked off toward the opposite end—toward the room Gaia once shared with Tatiana. “We can get rid of those two beds and get you a double . . . move out that old-fashioned desk—I’m guessing it’s not your style,” he added with a grin.

  Gaia liked what he was saying, but the way he was saying it was still odd. Almost manic. He was too excited about the prospect of shopping.

  He wants to be at work, she thought with total certainty. He wants to find his kidnappers as much as I do, but they’re freezing him out.

  Well, maybe her father needed a little normalcy after everything he’d been through. And if so, she’d help him get it. But in the meantime, she’d do a little digging of her own.

  Gaia sat up straight and squared her shoulders. “Okay, I’m in,” she said. “Actually, we can go tomorrow. We have the day off for some teacher’s conference.”

  “Good. Tomorrow it is,” her father said, squeezing both her shoulders from behind. “We’ll go over to Seventh and hit the stores.” He turned, hands in the pockets of his khakis, and looked around the living room. “It’ll be a whole new start. Out with the old, in with the new.”

  Gaia smiled slightly and looked up at Jake, who was staring right at her. She felt a flutter in her heart as their eyes locked. Maybe Jake could help her with her investigation. She was clueless as to where to start, but maybe they could figure that out—together.

  A whole new start, she thought. Out with the old, in with the new.

  Rejection

  OLIVER SAT IN ONE OF THE FEW chairs in his brownstone in Brooklyn, staring at the telephone on the table next to him. A half-empty bottle of scotch reflected the glow from the desk lamp that afforded the only light in the room. He took a swig from his glass and braced himself as the warm liquid burned down his throat.

  It’s just a phone call, he told himself. You’ve taken phone calls from the President of the United States in your day. Just get it over with.

  He placed the tumbler down, picked up the receiver, and quickly punched in Gaia and Tom’s number. He had no idea why he was overcome with such trepidation. Yes, there was a lot of bad history between him and his brother and niece, but that had all changed. They had fought side by side in Russia. They had escaped together. And even if he and Tom had been at each other’s throats half the time, going through those experiences together had brought them closer. He could feel it. Tom must have been feeling it, too.

  The phone rang a few times and he finally heard someone pick up at the other end. Oliver started to smile.

  “Tom Moore,” his brother said stiffly.

  “Hello, Tom. How are you settling in?”

  Silence. Oliver’s heart thumped almost painfully.

  “Tom?”

  “I don’t want you calling here again,” his brother said, his tone impossibly cold.

  “Tom, please. I just thought you and Gaia and I could get together,” Oliver said, sitting forward in his seat. “To talk things over . . . maybe have a meal—”

  “Until I know with absolute certainty that you had nothing to do with my kidnapping and with the threats to Gaia’s life, I have nothing to say to you. And I don’t want you contacting her,” Tom said. “Do you understand?”

  Oliver struggled for words—a unique experience for him. Usually he could be smooth under any circumstance, could sweet-talk anyone and everyone he came into contact with. It was all part of his CIA training. But this . . . this flat-out rejection from his only brother—his twin—was too much, even for him.

  “Tom, I—”

  “Stay away from my daughter, Oliver. Don’t test me on this.”

  And with that, the line went dead. Oliver held the receiver against his face, unable to move. He hadn’t expected Tom to jump up and down and do cartwheels over the phone call, but this completely disrespectful treatment was uncalled for. After everything he’d done to bring Tom home safely, to help his brother and his daughter, he certainly didn’t deserve this.

  With his hand shaking, Oliver slowly lowered the receiver onto the cradle. He took a steadying breath and lifted his drink again, downing the rest of it in one quick gulp.

  It’s going to be okay, he told himself, bracing his forearm with his other hand to stop the shaking.
To stop the hot blood coursing through his veins from pushing him toward the edge—toward anger. He’ll come around eventually.

  But his thoughts were cold comfort to him, alone in his dark, unfurnished home. What did he have to do to get back in Tom’s good graces? How many times would he have to prove himself?

  By the Rules

  AS THE SUN BEGAN TO SET OVER THE city, and its red-gold light reflected off the mirrored façade of the more modern buildings, Gaia walked toward the front desk at Wallace and Wenk, the law offices that doubled as a front for the CIA’s underground New York headquarters. Per Jake’s advice, she was wearing the most responsible outfit she could piece together—her cleanest jeans topped by a light blue button-down shirt belonging to Jake that he hadn’t worn since the ninth grade. Her hair was back in a bun, and she tried to walk with her chin up and her eyes straight ahead. The small, mousy woman behind the counter smiled tightly as Gaia approached.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m here to see Mr. Lawrence Vance,” Gaia said, thrumming her fingers on the glossy marble countertop. The receptionist eyed her gnarled fingernails and Gaia clasped her hands behind her back.

  “I see. And your name?” the woman asked dubiously.

  “Gaia Moore. Please tell him I’m Tom Moore’s daughter,” Gaia said.

  The receptionist hit a few buttons on the switchboard in front of her, then turned away from Gaia to speak into the receiver. This was never going to work—Gaia could feel it. It was Jake’s idea to play by the rules—if she wanted to find out what was going on with Natasha and Tatiana, she would have to gain the respect and trust of the CIA. But Gaia didn’t like it. She would have preferred to figure out a way to break in after dark and deal with things her way.

  Of course, this was the CIA. Her way would probably get her shot dead on first sight.

  “I’m to show you to one of our waiting rooms,” the mousy woman said, seeming surprised as she hung up the phone. “Nancy, will you cover the phones for a sec?” she asked her counterpart. Then she led Gaia over to a bank of silver elevators at the back of the lobby. Once inside the sleek elevator, the woman stuck a key into a silver button, turned it, and depressed the button. The elevator moved swiftly down and Gaia almost lost her balance. She’d been expecting to be going up.