Shock Page 9

  Tatiana joined him in front of Smash in record time, freshly showered and dressed in jeans and a sweater. Ed watched as she inspected her cell phone for messages—then inspected a second one, too.

  “What’s with the two phones?” He laughed. “You need one for each ear or what?”

  “Oh—one is my mom’s,” she explained quickly. “We were shopping and she left it in my bag by accident, and I just can’t help seeing who might be calling her. Aren’t I a terrible daughter?”

  The story tumbled out in a rush, almost as if she had thought it through carefully in case anyone asked. Ed thought that was kind of weird. But it didn’t really warrant thinking about. Especially when she looked up and gave him a dazzling smile of the you’re-the-only-person-on-earth variety. That pretty much wiped any question from his mind. Stuck on Gaia or not, he liked being in the company of this very pretty girl.

  “Okay, how did you get ready so fast?” he asked. “It takes my sister half an hour just to brush her hair. And that’s right after she’s had it blow-dried at the salon.”

  “I am magical,” she said, hooking an arm into his. “And I am also starving.”

  “We can to go to Cucina in the East Village,” Ed told her. “They serve the food on platters the size of flatbed trucks. If you can finish what’s on your plate, I’ll be seriously impressed.”

  “I think I will finish my food and yours,” Tatiana told him. “Now tell me, did you run into Gaia when you were at my apartment, or were you safe from her prickly words?”

  “No, she showed up,” he said. “It was weird. She thinks something’s going on between you and me.” If Tatiana’s really taken me out of the potential boyfriend slot, she’ll think that’s funny, Ed thought.

  “Oh. Really?” Tatiana asked, peering at the cracks in the sidewalk.

  Oops. Damn. Time to clarify things, Fargo.

  “Yeah. She was asking how close we are, and I was trying to tell her that we’re just really good friends, so I pointed out the cannolis and the bobble-head dog you got me and she just, like, left.”

  “She left?”

  “Yeah. She looked at the bag and muttered something about Eleventh Street and Chinatown, and when I looked up, she’d left the room.”

  Tatiana didn’t say anything. Her arm was still hooked through Ed’s, but her hand gripped his anxiously as her steps slowed and she stared off into space.

  Ed felt a sinking feeling of déjà vu. Walking down the street with a girl who seemed completely occupied with a mysterious, secret question. For the second time that day Tatiana was acting like Gaia.

  “Tatiana?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Oh! I am sorry, Ed. I just remembered something, but I can take care of it tomorrow.”

  “Did you leave something at the gym? Want to go back?”

  “No, it is nothing. I just realized that I might have been careless with some…I might have done something careless. But it is nothing I cannot put right.” She shot him a cheerful smile, erasing the Gaia scowl he thought he’d seen on her face.

  “You’re sure?” he asked, hoping she wouldn’t excuse herself and leave.

  “I am positive! In fact, I am thinking maybe we should have Indian food instead of Italian. Would you like that, Ed?”

  “I could go either way,” he said. “As long as we’re eating.”

  “Oh, we are eating, my friend.” She giggled. “We are having an eating contest.”

  They walked together through the city as the air thickened into night around them, scrolling through purple to black as they moved across town. By the time the sun was gone and their vegetable samosas hit the table, Ed was feeling fine. Tatiana was cheerful, funny, and carefree. She was nothing like Gaia. Nothing, nothing at all. Ed had found himself a Gaia-free zone, and that was just what he needed to stop missing her. Maybe even to get her out of his mind entirely. For now, anyway. Gaia-free for a night. That’s what he needed to be.

  Evil Ice

  GAIA CLOSED THE DRAPES AS THE SKY outside darkened into evening. During the day she couldn’t be seen through the window, but since she had to turn on the lights, anyone peeking in would be able to plainly see her systematic inspection of every inch of the apartment. It wasn’t likely that someone would do such a thing. But unlikely things were pretty much central to her life, and she wasn’t about to take any chances.

  She had dismantled and reassembled almost every room in the house, finally arriving at the bedroom she and Tatiana shared. So far she had found nothing but a lot of dust bunnies, three buttons, and $5.32 in change. Proof of nothing but some lax housekeeping. Hardly the kind of indictment she both dreaded and was searching for.

  This room, though. Where could something be hidden here? After checking all the furniture for false bottoms and compartments, she moved to the walls, knocking on each bit of plaster to listen for a hollow sound, something that might indicate the presence of a safe.

  There was nothing.

  She inspected the floorboards next. Any looseness, any variation in color—all of it was suspect. Again her search turned up nothing. She gritted her teeth, frustrated. She refused to feel relieved. She sat with her back against the wall, glaring across the room at the old, nonworking fireplace. The hole in the middle of it seemed to stare back at her like a big, blank eye. A big, blank eye that went nowhere and…

  Oh. Shit.

  The fireplace.

  Gaia sprang from her seat and inspected the marble structure. This was a standard feature of New York apartments—an ancient chimney that had been closed off when the building got steam heat. A lot of people kept the structure of the fireplace with a false front just because it looked nice. Some even went so far as to put a gas burner in there, with faux logs that glowed like a real fire. This one was just a piece of metal. A piece of heavy, decorated iron that moved with a deep, heavy sigh when Gaia pulled at it. She yanked it away from the wall and saw that a compartment had been built into the old chimney.

  Well, that certainly went against city regulations.

  So did the object in the hole.

  A high-powered rifle. Sniper style.

  Gaia sat back on her butt with a thump, staring at the firearm with heart-sinking resignation. She could hear the bullets flashing past her ears. Could feel their heat as they barely missed her head. She’d studied firearms technology. She’d even grabbed a shell casing from the Ukranian church. She pulled it out of her pocket now and held it next to the rifle, a nasty-looking bit of machinery that would probably feel more at home in a South American cartel than here on the Upper East Side.

  Perfect match.

  Without pausing to listen to the wailing in her heart, Gaia stood, replaced the metal, and gathered her essentials: some clothes and…well, that was it. She was used to traveling light. It all went into her messenger bag and she was out the door like a shot. She felt violated, disgusted, like she was crawling with mites. Like it had rained maggots on her. Like she’d been living in a pit of snakes. Beautiful, friendly snakes.

  She had known that she couldn’t trust Tatiana and Natasha, but she had done it, anyway.

  She’d been off her guard for weeks, sharing a bedroom with a cold-blooded killer.

  She had accused Sam of being the one after her—and now his injured expression was burned in her memory as that of a totally innocent bystander. Sam, who’d taken bullets and survived weeks and weeks of imprisonment without knowing why. And she’d turned on him.

  She had left Ed, her buddy and her boyfriend, in the company of a rancid chick with evil ice in her veins. And no matter how much she wanted to warn him to stay away from her, she knew—after the way they’d been nonspeaking to each other—that he’d never believe it. He’d think it was petty jealousy, not pure protectiveness.

  And worst of all, she had let Natasha and Tatiana into her heart. She’d given them something she never gave anyone: her respect and her trust. Knowing she had been so wrong made her feel like there was nothing beneath her feet
but miles of blue sky.

  Gaia Moore had really screwed up this time. But she couldn’t do anything until she was sure of what she was doing. So far, since her father’s disappearance, Gaia had been flying by the seat of her pants, stomping around the city and having temper tantrums, bouncing from one neighborhood to the next, having weird chance encounters that seemed to lead her somewhere and just turned her in circles again.

  She had to get rid of this gun. And then she had to leave the city for a while. Natasha and Tatiana were sure to know, or at least suspect, that she had found the gun. And they’d know she knew the truth about them.

  Oh God. Oh God! The truth about them! That this home that she’d made was fake, that every word they’d ever spoken to her was a lie! Gaia felt her throat tighten all over again. Her mind dipped dizzily into fury and sorrow.

  It was impossible to think with all these feelings swirling around. She had to get out of there. She grabbed the gun, shoved it into her bag, and left as quickly as she could. The door slammed behind her with a thud that echoed a thousand times in her head. She wouldn’t be back. From now on she had nowhere to stay.

  Gaia had to get a grip. Find a way to focus and set out a plan. And to do that, she had to leave her own contaminated turf and lose herself somewhere else for a while. Anywhere, as long as it was far away.

  Too Much Fun

  It was like Great Adventure after a nuclear apocalypse.

  Cardboard Skeletons

  THE TRAIN OUT TO BROOKLYN WAS almost empty. It was a great place to sit and think. Like having her own private office, Gaia thought, except it wasn’t really private and most places of business didn’t have floors covered in pee. But the comforting rumble of the train as it took her downtown was soothing. She propped her feet up on the seat next to her and watched people get on and off.

  Different stops had different personalities. Midtown was for tourists and businesspeople; downtown was where hair got brighter and noses and eyebrows bloomed with piercings. But by the time the train shot out of the underground tunnels for its trip outside on the Manhattan Bridge, the crowd was a complete mix of every kind of person, from suit-wearing guys with briefcases to exhausted-looking women in fast-food restaurant uniforms. Manhattan from this distance looked like Emerald City, magical and simple and clean. The tall, glam buildings cleverly hid the trouble and confusion that existed just beneath the surface.

  Gaia looked the other way, toward Brooklyn, and saw fewer tall buildings and lots of smaller neighborhoods. The girls she went to school with acted like the outer boroughs were no-man’s-land, but Gaia thought that probably spoke well of the non-Manhattan sections of New York City. She had a sketchy knowledge of what was where. Brooklyn seemed like just the place to disappear for a while.

  The crowd on the train thinned out as Gaia hurtled farther and farther from Manhattan. By the time she pulled into the last stop, Coney Island, Gaia was one of six people stepping out onto the outdoor platform, where the night air closed in around her. The entire station had been built with Astroland in mind—a permanent seaside carnival that hadn’t been fancy since about 1907. It was like Great Adventure after a nuclear apocalypse: ancient, seedy, and busted up but charming and nostalgic at the same time.

  Gaia walked through the amusement park. The fog that had closed in around her during the hour-and-a-half ride out of Manhattan—the haze of confusion, anger, and heartsick betrayal—began to lift just a little as she walked aimlessly around the park. She had to clear her head and figure out what to do next. Slowly she felt her consciousness begin to click into place, pushing her emotional miasma back into the box she had to keep it in, allowing Gaia to think clearly and logically.

  As she looked around, she was amazed that anyone was there, but sure enough, a few families still straggled around the desolate rides. This place was a perma-holiday for the damned. An ancient roller coaster with wooden slats whipped people up and down a course of turns that Gaia thought couldn’t be scarier than the 4 train at rush hour. The “haunted house” was a couple of dismal carts that rolled through a small structure decorated with truly terrifying cardboard skeletons. Go-karts buzzed around a figure-eight track, looking like they’d been constructed of leftover parts from a demolition derby. The place was like an old couch, one part comfy and two parts gross. Gaia loved it.

  She stopped at a huge Ferris wheel that was the most obvious feature looming up out of the dark beachside neighborhood. Lights on the side of it spelled out Wonder Wheel. Gaia figured it was called that because everyone wondered why it didn’t pop off its casters and roll over the boardwalk into the nearby surf. It had two kinds of cars: big white ones that sailed placidly in a neat circle and smaller ones in red, blue, and green that seemed just as placid until they got about halfway up. That was where they lurched sickeningly and rolled to the center of the wheel, sliding violently back and forth before speeding back out to the outer edge of the wheel. Those cars really looked like they wanted to pop off and sail over into the carousel. Gaia could hear thin, high screams drifting down from the lurching cars. They did the same thing on the way down; when they came back around to the entrance, the doors to one of them opened, revealing a small family in a hurry to get out.

  The mom and dad of the family getting out of the Wonder Wheel were laughing, and a big brother looked a little embarrassed as a girl, about ten years old, wailed at the top of her lungs. She was shaking as her mother put her arms around her, stroking her wavy brown hair and trying to shush her.

  “She’ll be okay,” the operator told them, and the mom said, “I know.”

  The dad leaned down and spoke to the girl. “LuAnne, look, you don’t have to be scared,” he said. “You’re safe on the wheel; it just feels scary, but you’re okay.”

  “I don’t like that ride,” the girl wailed.

  “Come on, it’s not scary,” her older brother insisted, waving a hand derisively.

  “Don’t let him fool you—he cried, too, the first time he went up,” the mom said. The little girl looked up at her, amazed. “Ask him,” the man said.

  “You got scared?” the girl asked her brother. He rolled his eyes, stood back for a moment, and then laughed.

  “Yeah, I was scared,” he admitted, and his sister laughed, too. He pulled her back a bit and pointed to the huge wheel stretching above them in the sky. “This thing has been up there for like a hundred years,” he told her. “Look at how they made it—those things never fall off. It’s strong, see? It feels bad, but you’re safe in there. Probably safer than when Papi’s driving.”

  “Hey,” the dad growled. The girl looked dubious.

  “I don’t like the way it feels,” she said.

  “That’s ’cause you’re a wuss,” her brother told her, and she gave him a punch and started chasing him through the park, away from their parents, who yelled at them to slow down as they strolled to the next ride.

  Something about the scene made Gaia feel like her stomach was made of lead. Was she pissed at the parents for taking the kid on the ride? No. Gaia realized she was sick with envy. Jealous of a child who’d thought her world had spun out of control but then found out everything was okay—because her family wouldn’t let her get into anything really dangerous.

  As opposed to me, Gaia thought. In my case, there’s no safety inspector making sure I’m rolling on my track. No one to catch me when I fall. In fact, there are monkeys loosening the bolts on my car, and when I feel like I’m falling, I really am.

  It was enough to make a girl need some cotton candy.

  Gaia bought a bag of pink flax and broke off a piece, letting it melt in her mouth as she walked slowly out of the park and onto the boardwalk. A long pier stretched out into the darkness, lights twinkling at the end of it, just barely visible.

  She walked all the way down. Here the wind was stronger, colder. She hunched her shoulders, feeling almost like she could be blown into the black waves at any moment. When she got to the end, she leaned against the wooden rail
ing and pulled the rifle out of her bag, one handed. Never even put down her cotton candy. She saw the metal glint for just a second in the moonlight, then dropped it unceremoniously into the deep, cold, salty water.

  She didn’t look at it, didn’t make a snappy comment about a watery grave, didn’t even pause to reflect on the fact that it had almost been the agent of her death.

  It was gone, and that was that.

  There’s only one thing to do, she thought as she gazed down into the inky blackness below her. I’ve got to watch my own back. Check my own bolts. Run my own Ferris wheel. I’ve been doing it since I was twelve. Just because I thought for a moment that I didn’t have to anymore doesn’t mean I can’t learn to do it again.

  She followed the pier back down to the boardwalk and turned right, walking along the strip of boardwalk between the beach and the amusement park, toward the tall towers of the residential buildings of Brighton Beach. After ten minutes she was totally out of range of the bright lights and well into dangerous territory. But she wasn’t too worried. She could take care of herself. Unlike most people.

  Unlike the woman wrestling with a couple of muggers about fifty yards away.

  What kind of woman in her right mind would walk this boardwalk alone at night? Gaia wondered. A homeless person, maybe. Someone from out of town or someone who was lost. But now was not the time for profiling.

  Gaia dropped her cotton candy and thundered down the boardwalk toward the attack in progress. The most likely result would be that the bullies would want to avoid any kind of confrontation and would drop their task and run at the first sign of interference. But Gaia kind of hoped they wouldn’t do that. She could use a good ass-kicking right now. Anger still whirled in her head, and this could be just the stress-reducing workout she needed.

  Yahoo! The muggers didn’t even acknowledge her approach. An ass-kicking was just what was required. And Gaia was ready for it. She kicked forward, hard, making contact with someone’s chest. The two guys dropped the woman, who ran shrieking toward the lights of the tall projects at the end of the boardwalk. Now it was just Gaia and her new friends. Fists rained on her from either side, and the second guy grabbed her from behind, an arm across her windpipe, trying to cut off her air supply.