Freak

by Francine Pascal

  Head pounding, Gaia flipped over onto her back and saw a boot coming for her gut. It was about to hit home when she rolled away, gaining as much momentum as she could. She slammed into the bookcases and grabbed a shelf to leverage herself up, but she was only halfway to standing when the same boot hit her squarely in the center of her lower back.

  “Stay down, bitch!” the guy said.

  She could hear Jake and Scrawny Guy, still duking it out behind her as she tried to catch her breath. Scrawny turned out to have more stamina than she’d thought. The bigger guy backed away from her to help his associate, seemingly satisfied that she would take his advice. That was when she saw it: the gun handle, sticking out ever so slightly from under the bookcase.

  Gaia grabbed it and whirled around as she stood, still regaining control of her breathing. She pulled back the safety and aimed.

  “Don’t move!”

  The big guy stopped in the middle of the living room and Scrawny Guy looked at her like a deer caught in headlights. Jake hit him with one swift elbow to the back of the head, knocking him out. Then he walked over, crunching across the broken glass on the floor, and stood next to Gaia, never taking his eyes off hers.

  “Turn around,” she told the last man standing.

  He did as he was told, arms raised to shoulder height out at his sides.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, kid,” he said, eyeing the gun.

  “Who sent you?” Gaia spat. Her hand started to shake and she reached up with her other arm to steady herself.

  “Like I’m gonna tell you that,” he said.

  “I think you will,” Gaia said, taking a few steps toward him. She was starting to feel weak. Her head was getting groggy. It was coming and it was coming on fast.

  No. Not yet, she begged. Not until I find out what is going on.

  Her eyes stung with unshed tears as her hands continued to tremble with exertion. She thought it was over. She thought she was free. Who the hell was trying to kidnap her now?

  “Tell me!” Gaia said through her teeth, struggling to ward off the blackness.

  “Gaia,” Jake said.

  “Look, you’re gonna have to shoot me. Cuz I tell you, and I’m dead, anyway,” the guy said, smirking.

  “All right. Enough is enough.”

  Jake walked around behind the thug and took him down the same way he’d taken out Scrawny Guy. Gaia let her arms go limp. As her knees went out from under her, her mind was racing.

  Who took Dmitri? Who’s after me? Who . . . ?

  Suddenly she felt Jake’s arms around her, stopping her fall. He lowered her to the floor and sat cross-legged with Gaia across his lap. The darkness was coming more intensely now, enveloping her, dragging her down. She felt him slip the gun from her fingers and she tried to speak, but it was too late.

  Right before she blacked out she felt the touch of his lips against her forehead.

  All True

  TOM WAITED IN THE HALLWAY, HIS back up against the wall as the tactical team swept the premises of Natasha’s safe house. His patience grew thin, even though he’d only been there no more than two minutes. He needed to get inside. He had to get inside.

  He couldn’t believe that any of the things Natasha had told him were true—not until he saw proof with his own eyes.

  Kurt Handler, the squad leader, stuck his helmeted head out of the apartment and flipped up his clear eye-guard. “We’re all clear, sir,” he said.

  “Get them out of there!” Tom told him. “I don’t want anything moved.”

  Handler pressed a button on the side of his helmet and spoke into the built-in microphone. “Blue team, move out!” he said. Seconds later, half a dozen agents tromped out of the apartment and headed back down the stairs. Only Handler stayed behind, guarding the door with his M-16.

  “It’s all yours, sir,” he said with a nod.

  Tom’s hands were clammy as he slipped past Handler into the small apartment. It was sparsely furnished, the walls painted a bland white, but he didn’t take in much detail. A forensics team could comb the place later. For now, all he cared about was the safe.

  He picked the framed poster off the wall and revealed a small door. As he worked the combination, his fingers were calm and sure, as they’d been trained to be for so many years, but he was barely breathing. This was it. The moment of truth.

  The door swung open with a creak, and inside Tom found stacks of currency from countries all over the world, along with a dozen or more passports from various nations. He pushed everything aside and felt the back of the safe for the box. The box she’d said would be there. The box he almost hoped he wouldn’t find.

  His fingers grazed a sharp edge and Tom’s heart froze. He grasped a small metal box and pulled it out, being careful not to disturb the other contents of the safe. When he opened the box his knees felt slightly weak. He walked over to the ratty couch and sat down.

  There, right on top of a stack of photos, was a picture of two young girls, smiling with their arms wrapped around each other. One he recognized immediately. The blond hair, the wide grin, the dimple in one cheek, the gold lavaliere necklace hanging around her slim neck.

  Katia. She looked so much like Gaia had at that age, she was like a double of her daughter.

  And the other girl was undoubtedly Natasha. Her hair darker and fuller, her smile more reserved, her eyes mischievous. There was no doubt in his mind that he was looking at a younger version of the woman he’d interrogated earlier that night.

  Also obvious in the photo was the resemblance between the two girls. The high cheekbones, the sloped noses, the set of their eyes. They had their differences, but they were clearly related. Cousins. No doubt about it. They could have been sisters.

  Reluctantly, Tom flipped to the next photo in the pile and his mouth went dry. The same two girls, same day, but this time Yuri was in the picture. His face smiled out from between the heads of the two girls, his hands wrapped around their shoulders. A family.

  It was all Tom could do to keep from crushing the photos in his hand.

  From there, he knew what he would find. There were pictures of Natasha and Tatiana through the years. Pictures of Tatiana growing up, riding horses, practicing archery, firing a gun. And then, the very last photo was the one Tom was looking for but hoping he wouldn’t find. His blood ran cold as he lifted it and held it up to the light.

  Yuri. No doubt about it. He was older, grayer, and more frail but had the same cold, determined look on his face that Tom remembered so well. He had his arm around Tatiana, who gazed stoically at the camera, her palm pressed into the barrel of a rifle that stood in front of her. In the photo, Tatiana was only a year or so younger than she was now.

  Yuri was alive. Everything Natasha had told him was true.

  Tom dropped the picture back into the box, slammed the lid shut, and headed for the door. He had to find Gaia. He had to find her now.

  Irrevocably Stupid

  JAKE SAT DOWN GINGERLY ON THE couch next to Gaia and pressed a bag of frozen green beans against her cheek. Gaia winced, a shot of pain streaming right through her temple, then reached up and took the bag, holding it in place. Jake pulled away and leaned forward to study her face, his brow creased. She couldn’t even imagine what the bruise looked like, considering how tender and puffy it felt.

  “You know, with the lives you Moores lead, you might want to stock fresh steaks in your fridge,” Jake said with mock-seriousness.

  Gaia scoffed and the pain radiated along her jawbone. She grimaced and closed her eyes. That guy packed even more power in his punch than she’d imagined.

  “Sorry. I won’t make you laugh again,” Jake said, raising his hands. His perfect face was unscathed except for a small scrape on the underside of his chin.

  Gaia was just leaning back into the couch, ready to collapse and really focus on her new obsession over who might be chasing her, when the door to the apartment burst open. Her father barreled in, his hair sticking up slightly on top, pani
c radiating from him like visible energy. Gaia sat up straight again and Jake instantly got to his feet. The moment Gaia’s father saw them, his entire demeanor changed. His shoulders lowered from up by his ears back to their normal position.

  “You’re here. Thank God,” he said. Then he came around the coffee table and saw Gaia with the frozen food package against her face. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he checked his emotions. “What happened?”

  “We got jumped,” Jake replied.

  “By professionals,” Gaia added, moving her jaw around to see if she could. It hurt a little too much so she closed her mouth again.

  “Damn it,” Tom said, turning away from them. He brought his hand to his face and Gaia looked up at Jake. What was going on?

  “You know who did it, don’t you?” Gaia asked, ignoring the little aching shoots around her cheekbone.

  “I have my suspicions,” Tom said. He hung his head for a moment and then took a deep breath. There was a heavy sense of foreboding in the air. Something bad was about to happen. Her father turned around again and looked her in the eye. “You’re not going to like this,” he said.

  “Shocker,” Gaia said under her breath. Jake sat down next to her, sitting a bit closer. For a moment Gaia thought he was going to reach for her hand again, but he didn’t. Instead he pressed it into his thigh as if he was concentrating to keep it there.

  Gaia’s father sat down at her other side, a few inches away so that he could turn to face her. Gaia held her breath and pushed the frozen beans a little more firmly into her face, bracing herself.

  “Gaia, Yuri . . . your grandfather . . . is alive.”

  Gaia blinked. “Mom’s dad?”

  “And this is a bad thing, I take it?” Jake put in.

  Tom shot him a look that told him to keep out of this discussion. Gaia quickly decided to check her tongue as well. There had to be a good story behind this. Back when Yuri was alive he was a serious menace—a person her mother had gone to the ends of the earth to escape. Loki supposedly murdered him years ago. This revelation was just one more sud in the soap opera of Gaia’s life, but it was a big one.

  Tom quickly recounted the story—Gaia heard all about Natasha’s confession and the information and the confirmation. She took it all in, going a little more numb with each word that was spoken.

  “So Natasha wanted me dead because she thought I was going to take Tatiana’s job,” Gaia said slowly, when her father was through.

  “Basically,” Tom said. “But it’s not just a job. It’s a lot more than that. A lot more.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Gaia said.

  “So there’s some freak out there positioning himself to kidnap her and train her to be the head of an international terrorist cell?” Jake asked.

  How keen, Gaia thought sarcastically. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. Couldn’t she ever just have a talk with her father about the weather, her grades, the messy state of her bedroom?

  “I took a few of the pictures,” Tom told her, reaching into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. “Was this man there tonight when you were attacked? I doubt he’d come himself, but you never know.”

  Gaia took the picture from her father and her brow creased in confusion. “What’s Tatiana doing with Dmitri?”

  “Dmitri?” her father asked. “Who the hell is Dmitri?”

  Gaia’s mouth went dry. She had a feeling she knew what was coming, but the very idea, the very thought made her feel so indescribably, indubitably, irrevocably Stupid, she wished there was some way to shut her ears against hearing it. But she couldn’t, so instead, she closed her eyes.

  And then, her father said the words she wanted least to hear. “Gaia, this man’s name is not Dmitri,” he told her. “It’s Yuri.”

  OLIVER

  Why can’t things be different? I know . . . I know . . . everyone in the world wishes things were different, but I don’t understand. I don’t understand what went wrong.

  Well, that’s not exactly right, is it? I do understand what went wrong. I had a disease. I had treatments. I developed a disorder. And that disorder was responsible for atrocities I will never be able to reconcile myself with. That atrocity killed people. It killed a lot of people. It killed the woman I loved. And yes, these things are hard to bounce back from. Nearly impossible. To ask someone to forgive what I’ve done . . .

  But that’s just it. I didn’t do those things. It wasn’t me. It was him. It was all him. And if there’s one person who should understand that, it should be my brother. He was there. He saw it all—what I went through as a young boy, how I changed as I grew into a man. He of all people should know that I have no control over Loki’s actions. He of all people should know.

  I wish he would die. I wish he would just wither and sputter and die.

  Not my brother. No. Not Tom. Of course. But Loki. Why won’t he die? Why won’t he go away and leave me alone? Why do I have to live with this? What did I do? Where did I go wrong? Am I being punished for some crime in a past life? Is this some kind of test? Twins are born, one perfectly normal and blessed, the other mad and cursed? Is this my test?

  At least Gaia knows. At least Gaia can forgive. And she’s the last person I would have expected it from. She’s just so young. How can she understand? How can she forgive the person who murdered her own mother?

  But it wasn’t me. Not me. Not me. Him.

  I need my family back. I need them. Don’t they see that I need them? I need someone to ground me. To stay with me. To talk to me and . . . and . . . to see me. See me and not him. If they won’t let me . . . if they won’t come . . . then how can . . . how can I . . .

  This struggle. It’s too much. How can I . . .

  But it wasn’t me. It was him. It wasn’t me.

  Why won’t they let me in? Why . . . why . . . why . . . ?

  guys like him

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that she was out there somewhere with that Jake jerk, possibly doing things that he didn’t even want to think about.

  The Female Spectrum

  ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH THEIR second set, Sam decided it was time to bail on the Dust Magnets. He hadn’t imbibed as much alcohol as his buddies had, and his judgment was still intact. To him, the Dust Magnets’ music sounded much like the soundtrack the devil might play in hell.

  Sam walked toward the subway, his thoughts gradually turning toward Gaia and her new boyfriend—if that’s what he was. He definitely didn’t seem like Gaia’s type. Sam thought Gaia went for the more intelligent, laid-back, scruffy-around-the-edges type. Guys like him.

  But then, he knew firsthand that it was possible to be attracted to two very different people at the same time. Look at his own track history: He’d moved right from Heather Gannis to Gaia Moore. Those two occupied completely opposite ends of the female spectrum.

  So maybe she does still have feelings for me, Sam thought as he approached the entrance to the F train. If she does, I know I can still win her back. The problem was, he couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that she was out there somewhere with that Jake jerk, checking up on Dmitri—Dmitri, who was Sam’s friend. Sam should have been the one helping Gaia. Jake had nothing to do with it and yet he’d run out of the club with her as if it was his place—his job.

  As if he was Gaia’s boyfriend.

  Sam’s heart turned as he tried to blot out the mental images that threatened to take over—Gaia and Jake holding hands, Gaia and Jake kissing, Gaia and Jake going back to her apartment. . . .

  He had never felt quite this jealous in his life.

  It was time to get home and go to bed and put an end to this awful night. In the morning, the situation would look brighter. In the morning, he could come up with a plan to get back into Gaia’s life. Sam was about to descend the steps to the subway station when he heard his cell phone ringing. He grabbed it out of his jacket pocket and checked the caller ID screen, smiling when he saw Gaia’s name and number.

&nbs
p; See? She can’t stay away, he told himself.

  Stepping away from the subway entrance so a pack of people could squeeze by, Sam hit the talk button and lifted the phone to his ear.

  “Hey, Gaia. What’s up?” he said.

  “Sam, are you sure Dmitri didn’t tell you where he was going?” Gaia demanded. Her tense tone of voice made all the hair on Sam’s arms stand on end.

  “Whoa, slow down. Are you okay?” Sam asked.

  “What did he say the last time you saw him? I need specifics,” Gaia said.

  Sam’s brow creased as he leaned back against the low wall surrounding the subway entrance. “Uh . . . not much. We mostly talked about me . . . my new place . . . my new job. . . . ”

  “Just think for a second. Did he say anything about where he might be?” Gaia asked impatiently.

  “No. Nothing,” Sam said, pushing himself up straight again. “Did you try calling him?”

  “His cell phone was disconnected.”

  “Gaia, what’s going on?” Sam asked. “Is Dmitri in danger?”

  He heard her draw in a breath and then blow it out right into the speaker—right into his ear. “Listen, this is really important,” she said. “If Dmitri contacts you, try to find out where he is and don’t, I mean do not tell him where you are, okay?”

  Her voice was full of concern. Concern for him. But why? Dmitri was their friend. He’d done nothing but help them since the day they’d met him—the day they’d found him held captive in the same compound Sam had called home for months. What did they have to fear from Dmitri?

  “Gaia,” Sam said, lowering his voice as a couple strolled slowly by. “You have to tell me what’s going on. What did Dmitri do?”

  “I can’t get into it right now, but you have to trust me. The man is dangerous,” Gaia said. “I can’t believe I let him get so close to us.”

  Sam swallowed hard. Gaia sounded upset—more upset than he’d heard her sound since her father went missing. He felt his protective nature kick in.

  “Is there anything I can do?” he asked, gripping the phone. “Do you want me to come over?”