Agent Out

by Francine Pascal

  “This isn’t it,” Will said. He was struggling to remember more details from Agent Baxter’s lectures, but he was so agitated that it was difficult to do. “Wouldn’t a bomb be close to the center of a stone building? Not near its edge?”

  “Right,” Gaia said, pointing at another door with a pebbled-glass window on the other side of the hallway. It looked different from the other doors—Will wasn’t sure why until he realized that, like the storage room they had just left, it had no lock. “Try here,” Gaia said.

  Will pulled open the door as Gaia flicked on the lights. This was a slightly larger utility room, with cabinets built into one wall. Will immediately began opening the cabinets and pulling out the contents—bottles of cleanser, boxes of lightbulbs that exploded on the cement floor as he dropped them, cellophane rolls of paper towels.

  Gaia had started at the other end, pulling rubber gloves and plastic buckets out of the opposite cabinet. Will noticed the sudden quiet—he had to figure that the building had just about finished emptying out. The only sound was the hum of the basement’s air circulation vents and the clatter of the supplies that they were tossing onto the floor.

  “Found it!” Gaia yelled. She was on her hands and knees, facing the bottom of the cabinet—she pulled back, letting him get down beside her and look.

  It was a bomb, all right. Not a model, not a practice mechanism. The real thing.

  Will tried to clear his head and find a Zen calm like Gaia seemed able to do. He didn’t even come close. Sweat was pouring down his face, and his heart was pounding so loud that he was sure Gaia could hear it.

  There was an electronic timing mechanism with a fuse, a trigger, a large nine-volt dry-cell battery, and a mass of wires connecting it all. Will couldn’t see the detonating mass, but a pair of black wires led from the back of the bomb to holes drilled in the cabinet’s back wall.

  Where do those wires go? Will thought fleetingly. Did the bomb have an additional power source somewhere?

  He shrugged it off—there wasn’t time. The bomb had a digital clock mechanism, and its motionless display read 01:02.

  “We’ve got two minutes,” Will said breathlessly.

  “That’s not minutes,” Gaia argued, crouching next to him. “Are you crazy?”

  “The two? It has to be minutes,” Will disagreed. “I mean, what else can it be, seconds? It’s not moving.”

  “Obviously it’s not two seconds,” Gaia said patiently, “or we’d already be dead.”

  “Well, if it’s not minutes, then what is it?” Will demanded, wiping sweat from his face. “I don’t understand what you—”

  “Hours,” Gaia nearly shouted. “We’ve got two hours. Now will you pay attention to the wires?”

  “So the one is what—days?”

  “I don’t know. Yes, days. Whatever. Will, damn it, will you just—”

  With a beep the display changed to 01:03.

  “What the hell?” Will said. “What does that mean? Now it’s going backward”

  “Defuse it!” Gaia yelled. “Will, you’re driving me crazy.”

  “Why should I do it?”

  “Because you’re better at it,” Gaia said, shaking his shoulder furiously. “Now will you just—”

  “You’re admitting I’m better at defusing bombs?” Will asked, curious. “You’re not just psyching me up, are you? Because—”

  “Will!”

  The talk was doing its job—it was siphoning off the fear. Will had been staring at the wires as if in a trance, remembering how he had been able to do this before. Reaching out with a calm, almost delicate motion, he plucked a white wire away from the bomb’s network of contacts.

  With a loud click the bomb’s digital display went dead. The bomb was defused. Will breathed a tremendous sigh and collapsed against the floor. His entire body was coated in sweat. “That’s over,” he murmured weakly.

  But he was wrong.

  A distant, echoing thump sounded through the basement—as if the same automatic mechanism was activating simultaneously everywhere in the building.

  “What the hell is that?” Gaia asked. But he could tell from her voice—she knew as well as he did.

  The security system, Will thought dismally. The building’s automatic locks.

  He looked at his watch. Sure enough, it was ten exactly. The Philadelphia County Courthouse was closed for the night—and all its doors had automatically shut and their locks engaged, sealing them inside.

  an overwhelming need to stop

  BLOWN TO KINGDOM COME

  Gaia and Will’s escape efforts had officially grown futile. They’d searched the entire courthouse basement at least four times, from the stairwell doors to the maintenance doors to the storage doors—all industrially locked. Will had tried to give Gaia a leg up to reach the steel gratings on the ceiling that led to the air shafts. No luck. They’d even tried to wriggle their way through the barred windows that looked out on the pitch black alleyway. Useless. Gaia had come to terms after thirty minutes; it had just taken Will another hour to accept it. They were locked in this basement until morning—until security returned to unlock those doors. And although she hated to admit it, Gaia was actually grateful for the much needed breather.

  They’d been running on pure adrenaline for too long. Will had told Gaia all about his James Rossiter discoveries, and she could only imagine what he’d gone through to make it to that courthouse in time to save her. Adrenaline had carried them both across miles of highway, and it had carried them through a class-one bomb scare, but Gaia knew at least one thing from all her years of street fighting: all that adrenaline came with a price. Yes, she and Will had made it through the crisis, but now the posttraumatic exhaustion was kicking in. She could see it in Will’s eyes, too. An overwhelming need to stop. Just for a while. They didn’t even have a choice.

  They were standing just outside the utility closet where they’d defused the bomb. Almost simultaneously they fell back against the cold concrete basement wall and slid down to the floor. Will hung his arms over his knees and let his head drop forward. Gaia rested her face in her hands and took a few long breaths. She could feel Will’s thigh pressing against hers. His body was actually helping keep her upright—that’s how drained she had suddenly become. She might have even drifted off to sleep had Will not spoken at that moment.

  “Man, my head hurts.” He pressed his fingers to his temples and then scratched them wildly through his blond buzz cut.

  “I can’t even feel my head,” Gaia replied. “Or my fingers or my toes. Everything feels detached.”

  Will shook his head regretfully, staring down at the ground. “I should have gotten here faster. If I’d gotten here faster, we could have taken out the bomb and still made it out of here before lockdown. And we’d be looking for Catherine right now instead of—”

  “Shhh.” Gaia flailed her hand tiredly at his face to shut him up. “Let’s just not … Let’s not freak about things we can’t change right now. Let’s just be quiet for a few minutes, okay?”

  “Okay,” Will agreed. “You’re right. There isn’t a damn thing we can do right now.”

  “That’s right.”

  Gaia savored the moment of silence, but it didn’t last very long. Will’s voice began to echo off the dank gray walls of the basement again. “But if I’d just gotten here an hour earlier, then we could have—”

  “Will.” Gaia grabbed Will’s muscular arm to silence him again. “Come on. We agreed. Let’s not dwell, okay? We’re alive. We’ve got to believe that she’s still alive, too. But we won’t be any good to her burnt out and exhausted. We need to rest.”

  Will nodded. “I know it. You’re right.”

  “Okay,” Gaia said. She squeezed her knees closer to her chest to form a personal cocoon. Her eyelids began to flutter and grow heavy. “You know what?” she breathed. “I think I’m going fall asleep for just a little while …”

  This time Will grabbed hold of her arm. The jolt shook Gaia’
s eyes wide open again. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Maybe you’ve forgotten that we were almost blown to kingdom come less than two hours ago? Might be a good idea for you to stay alert down here, don’t you think?”

  Gaia tried to forge a reassuring smile with her tired lips. “Look,” she said with a sigh. “Think about it for a second. We are completely locked in down here. That means that everyone else is locked out. This is probably the safest we’re ever going to be. So I’m going to take advantage of that and get some rest. I highly recommend you do the same.”

  She tried to shut her eyes again, but now Will grasped her hand and nearly squeezed the life out of it. And for the first time she noticed … there was the slightest hint of a tremor in his strong fingers. She turned to face him, and she could see something strange in his eyes. Something she’d never really seen before. If she didn’t know Will Taylor better, she would have sworn his expression was bordering on vulnerability. No, not exactly vulnerability, more like … need.

  Will locked his eyes with hers. “Just don’t go to sleep, all right?” The hint of his pale blond stubble was showing in the stark light of the overhead bulbs. He quickly let go of her hand and turned to face forward, but it was too late. She’d already seen that look in his eyes.

  Gaia was at a momentary loss. This was not a Will Taylor she was accustomed to. Normally Will would rather die than admit that he needed something from Gaia, but the last few hours had pretty much done away with normalcy. Now that they’d stood over that ticking bomb together, they couldn’t exactly go back to petty bickering and witty banter. At least not tonight.

  “Okay,” she agreed quietly. “I’ll stay awake.” She kept her tone as neutral as possible. She knew Will had just dropped his egomaniacal guard for a moment, and he was open to a direct hit. If she had sounded condescending or obnoxious about it, he would have shut down completely. And the truth was, now that she’d seen a glimpse of his more vulnerable side … she wanted to see more.

  She stared at Will’s Southern gentleman profile. His elegant features reminded her of old black-and-white photos from the twenties and thirties when men still looked like—for lack of a better term—men. She followed her gaze down his arms and focused again on his hands. Now she could see that his right hand was indeed shaking slightly. Will caught her staring, and he quickly closed his right hand in his left, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead.

  “Will?” she asked cautiously. “Are you okay?”

  “What? Of course,” he insisted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s supposed to mean that your hand is shaking.”

  He clutched his hand more tightly. “No, it’s not.”

  Gaia reached over with lightning speed and grabbed hold of his right hand before he could stop her. She pulled it over to her lap and couched it firmly between her hands. Now she could feel the undeniable twitches in his thick fingers. Will made a halfhearted attempt to pull it away, but then he gave in, knocking his head back against the cinder-block wall with frustration.

  “It’s been doing that ever since we defused the bomb,” he admitted. “I mean, it’s not like I couldn’t handle it,” he added, straightening his posture. “I took care of it—we took care of the bomb.”

  “I know.”

  “But the whole time … my heart was just pounding like …” He finally turned to face her. “I mean, Jesus, Gaia …” He swallowed hard. “That was the real thing in there. No game, no class, no stopwatch, nobody wins. You just live or die. That’s it. I mean, hell, I’ve got confidence to burn, you know—but life or death’s got nothing to do with confidence. My goddamn hand is shaking like a leaf. I swear to God, I know I’m ready for this job—I’m ready to be an agent, but … I guess I got spooked, all right? I got spooked, and I didn’t even know it until just now—until it got so quiet and I really had a minute to think. And then I looked at you and I thought about what could have happened in there …”

  Will stopped himself mid-sentence and fixed his eyes on hers. Something about the way he looked at her sent a flush of heat up her back. The heat grew in the silence between them, running like a warm current from her hands to his and his eyes to hers.

  “I was scared,” he said. It clearly wasn’t easy for him to admit. “Weren’t you scared?” He searched her eyes for a connection.

  Gaia’s throat went bone dry. Her lips became glued to her teeth. But why? It was a simple enough question. Will obviously had no clue just how complicated the answer was, but that shouldn’t have mattered. It had never mattered before. She was quite accustomed to deflecting that question with a quick and easy lie.

  So lie, she told herself. What the hell is the glitch? Kill the deaf-mute routine and lie.

  “Of—of course,” Gaia said, clearing her throat. She let go of Will’s hand and tucked her arms tightly around her chest. “Of course I was scared.” She felt a wave of nausea rush through her stomach. Why was this so hard all of a sudden? Why was it making her physically ill?

  Will looked unconvinced. “Were you really? Because I sure couldn’t see it. And I am a perceptive son of a bitch, Ms. Moore. It was just … it was amazing.” He shifted his body so he was facing Gaia head-on—leaning even closer to her than before. “I mean, forget all our competitive crap for now, okay? Forget all that stuff. I don’t even care right now. I’m just going to sit here in awe and stew in the jealousy because I want to know how you do it. We were going to die in there, and you didn’t even bat an eyelash—I didn’t see one drop of sweat. You just went to it like it was a practice run—like it was just another plastic toy.”

  Gaia’s back grew stiff with discomfort. Her head began to throb, and she still couldn’t understand why. She just wanted Will to stop talking. “Let’s forget it and move on,” she muttered, avoiding his penetrating glance.

  “Oh, come on.” Will groaned. “Now you want to get modest with me? When I’m finally giving you all your props?”

  “It’s not that, I just—”

  “I’ve never seen anyone be that brave. I mean it. And you can call me a Carolina sexist pig if you want, but I have particularly never seen a woman that brave. Come on. Tell me what the trick is. Is it some kind of Zen philosophy thing, or are you just the most tough-as-nails woman I’ve ever—?”

  “Neither,” Gaia snapped. “It’s neither, it’s none, it’s nothing, okay? It’s nothing.”

  Her outburst echoed off the walls and faded into a long awkward silence. Her extreme response had obviously caught Will completely off guard. Hell, it caught her off guard. Will just sat there wide-eyed and frozen. Gaia pulled herself into such a tight fetal position, she looked like she was getting ready to crashland.

  Will seemed unsure what to even say next. “Hey, I’m—I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just—”

  “No.” Gaia shut her eyes with frustration. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  That was the most honest thing she’d said so far. What was wrong with her? She’d dodged this issue a hundred times before. Especially with all the baffled men in her life. They could never quite accept the notion of a woman this strong—this impervious to danger and peril. But of course, Gaia never truly explained it. She always had her rationales for lying or at least omitting the truth:

  Telling him the truth will only put him in danger. Don’t drag him into your tortured universe. What’s the point of telling him anyway? He’ll never believe you. He’ll think you’re a liar or crazy or both, and he’ll go running for the hills.

  All of a sudden Gaia was caught in a time warp. Her mind was flooded with those faces from the past—the short curls of Sam Moon’s red-brown hair, Ed Fargo’s eternally optimistic stubbly grin, Jake Montone’s uncommonly green eyes. She’d lied to every one of those beautiful faces, and now, sitting so close to Will in the silence of this dark basement, one question was haunting her like hell …

  W
hat good had it ever done? All the evasive answers she’d given the men she cared about, all those strained and awkward silences when they searched her eyes for the truth. She had always told herself that she was lying to protect them, but now, looking back with twenty-twenty hindsight, it was impossible to ignore the facts. Keeping those men in the dark had never protected any of them at all. It had, in fact, done just the opposite. It had brought them all nothing but pain and tragedy. It was a mistake.

  That’s why she felt so ill right now. That’s why she’d curled up like an infant. Because she was regressing and she knew it. Three years of lessons learned, yet here she was, about to lead Will Taylor right back down that same dark path? She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bring deception into this thing with Will when they’d barely even gotten started. She couldn’t do it to him, and she couldn’t do it to herself. That tortured life of hers was long in the past, and Will was a grown man. He didn’t need any protecting. And Gaia refused to make the same mistakes again. She refused to let her tragic ancient history repeat itself.

  That was that. She had made up her mind. She was going to tell him her secret.

  CLICHÉED BRD DREAM

  “I’m lying.”

  The moment she said it, she was overcome by a strange sense of calm. She had no plan here—no idea of what she would say or how she would say it, just the unmistakable sensation that she had taken a flying leap off a cliff and that it was the exact right thing to do.

  “Lying about what?” Will asked.

  “About being scared,” she said. “You’re right. I wasn’t scared.”

  “I knew it,” Will said. “But how do you steel yourself like that? What makes you so br—”

  “It’s not bravery,” she stated flatly—almost shamefully. She had always wanted to feel the fear and then overcome it—like Will had done with that bomb. That was bravery. That was being heroic. But she had only felt it once or twice in her life. “Bravery’s got nothing to do with it,” she explained. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Will looked stumped.