Freak

by Francine Pascal

  “What?” Jake asked.

  “You’ll need to hold this with your other hand so I can see what I’m doing,” Oliver said.

  The beads of sweat along Jake’s hairline organized themselves into one large rivulet and danced right down the center of his nose. He was sweating, he was shaking, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold on to the doorknob, let alone the flashlight. He looked down at Oliver helplessly, feeling like the useless wuss he clearly was.

  “You can do it, Jake,” Gaia said in his ear, her voice firm and full of confidence. It was also completely devoid of fear. Apparently when she knew she was about to be blown to bits she didn’t let it bother her.

  Jake nodded slowly. He grasped the flashlight in his sweaty fingers. Oliver guided Jake’s hand until the light was pointing where he needed it to be. Jake’s heart hammered in his ears and he found himself silently praying—something he hadn’t done once since his mother died. He’d kind of had a problem with God since then.

  Oliver cut the casing off the red wire and looked at the circuits inside. Then he did the same to the green wire, and the blue. Jake held his breath. If this was such a rudimentary device, then what the heck was taking so long?

  “Got it,” Oliver said, once the circuits inside the yellow wire were exposed.

  He placed the wire-cutters around the circuits and Jake waited for his life to flash before his eyes, but it didn’t. All he saw was his mother’s face, then his father’s, then his mother’s, then his father’s. His dad was going to be really pissed at him if he died and left him all alone.

  Then Jake heard the clip and the door swung free of his grasp. He sucked in a breath, still alive.

  “See? No problem,” Oliver said, holding the door open.

  Jake stumbled into the room and fell onto the bed, his knees finally giving out. He felt an overwhelming urge to cry, but the second Gaia stepped into view he squelched it. He’d already proven himself to be enough of a wimp right in front of her face. He wasn’t going to be a blubbering baby as well.

  “You okay?” Gaia asked, standing in front of him.

  “Fine,” Jake replied, pressing his hands into the bedspread. “Can’t say the same for my ego.”

  Oliver and Tom headed back out into the living room and Gaia sat down next to Jake, a few inches away. “I should’ve never asked you to come here,” she said.

  “You didn’t. I volunteered,” Jake reminded her, pushing both hands into his hair.

  “But I didn’t try to stop you,” Gaia said. She looked down at her clasped hands between her knees. “That’s not like me.”

  “And it’s not like me to stay behind no matter what you say,” Jake replied. He took in a long, shaky breath and let it out in a loud burst of air. “But I gotta say, I’m not so sure if I’m cut out for this stuff. Five minutes ago I was James Bond and now I feel like I left my spine somewhere in the living room.”

  He hung his head, ashamed, the rapid beating of his heart pounding in his ears.

  “What, you think you’re some kind of loser because you got scared?” Gaia asked.

  Jake scoffed. “You have a way with words.”

  He saw Gaia flush out of the corner of his eye and smiled slightly. “Jake, you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t petrified by what just—”

  Gaia abruptly stopped talking and looked away. Her jaw clenched and he could see her fighting something off—something she didn’t want to think about. So maybe she was affected by the idea of being blown to bits.

  “You’re gonna be fine,” Gaia said, standing—averting her gaze. “Let’s get back to work.”

  There was something she wasn’t telling him—Jake could sense it—but now was not the time to ask. He could hear Oliver and Tom crashing around in the living room, searching. The longer they stayed here, the longer Yuri was out there, free to plot whatever he was plotting. Jake made himself stand up and start moving.

  While Gaia searched the closet and dresser, Jake rifled through the drawers in the bedside tables, which were empty except for a few pencils, a pair of glasses, and an old watch. He dropped to the floor and looked under the bed. There was a bunch of random stuff shoved underneath the mattress and he started pulling it out. A sleeping bag, a pair of tall rubber boots . . . and then his hand hit something hard.

  Jake’s pulse seized up as he yanked it free. It was a laptop and it looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. The screen was mangled and half the keyboard had been smashed to bits, but the hard drive was still inside.

  “Check it out,” Jake said, standing. He set the computer on the bed as Gaia crossed the room in two long strides.

  “Dad!” she shouted, excited.

  Tom and Oliver had entered the room in less than a second. Together they all gathered around the laptop, knowing this could be what they were looking for.

  “Where did you find this?” Tom asked.

  “Under the bed,” Jake said. “Look—whoever destroyed this thing wasn’t paying much attention—the hard drive is still intact.”

  “So it is,” Oliver said, picking up the computer and inspecting it. “Which means we should be able to extract whatever is on it.”

  “Good job,” Tom said, clapping Jake on the back.

  Gaia smiled and Jake felt himself relaxing—grinning even. Suddenly all his fear and shame were washed away, replaced by the pride of accomplishment.

  “See?” Gaia said. “You’re fine.”

  “It’s a roller-coaster ride, kid,” Oliver said with a small smile. “But you’ll get used to it.”

  He thinks I’m good, Jake realized. He thinks I can do this for real.

  Tom clapped his shoulder again and Jake followed the others out of the room, practically glowing. Oliver was right. Excitement followed by dread, followed by sickening shame, followed by elation and pride. It was a roller coaster. And Jake could definitely get used to the ride.

  Bliss

  GAIA AWOKE TO THE SMELL OF frying bacon and was sure she was still dreaming. Breakfast was usually courtesy of Dunkin’ Donuts, Krispy Kreme, or, every now and again, McDonald’s. She couldn’t remember the last time breakfast had actually been made in this apartment. If ever.

  A city bus squealed to a stop somewhere on the street below and it knocked Gaia out of her groggy state. She sat up, everything suddenly rushing back to her—the storming of Dmitri’s . . . no, Yuri’s apartment in the wee hours of the morning. The argument she’d had with her father over her going to bed (she wanted to stay up, he insisted she get some rest). Gaia whirled around to look at the digital clock. It was 10:07. She flung the covers aside and headed for the kitchen.

  “Morning!” Oliver said from the head of the dining room table.

  He was sipping a cup of coffee and tapping away at a computer keyboard. Before Gaia had reluctantly hit the hay, he’d linked Yuri’s smashed hard drive to Tom’s PC to see if he could get something out of it.

  “Anything?” Gaia asked, yawning hugely.

  “I’m getting there,” Oliver replied.

  “Gaia! Want eggs?” her father asked, appearing at the window between the living room/dining room and the kitchen. Gaia’s stomach grumbled loud enough for him to hear. Oliver and Tom both chuckled.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” her father said, disappearing again.

  Gaia walked over to the doorway to the kitchen, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood floor. She was about to lambaste her father for letting her sleep so long, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. Seeing her father, standing there at the stove, pushing eggs around with a spatula, she was suddenly overwhelmed.

  This was it. This was the moment she’d been waiting for for over a year. It was a regular Sunday morning. She was still in her pajamas, her father was making breakfast in a pair of jeans and a worn-in sweater. This was normalcy.

  “I made them dry, just how you like ’em,” her father said, turning around with the frying pan in his hand. He took one look at Gaia and
paused. “You okay?”

  “I . . . ”

  She had no idea what to say. Part of her wanted to grab her father and hold on to him, partially to make sure this was really happening and partially to make sure he wouldn’t get away again. But that was far too melodramatic. So instead she just stood there, wringing the hem of her oversized T-shirt between her hands.

  Gaia’s father’s face softened. He walked over to her, leaned down, and planted a kiss in the middle of her forehead. Gaia, in that moment, felt bliss.

  “I know,” he said with a smile. Gaia smiled back. He did know.

  “I’ve got something!” Oliver called from the dining room.

  Gaia forgot about breakfast and rushed back to the table. Tom dropped the frying pan back onto the stove and followed. They took position behind Oliver at the computer screen, which was filled with a list of numbers and letters.

  “What is it?” Gaia asked.

  “It’s a list of coordinates, I believe,” Oliver said. “Each line seems to have a set of longitude and latitude coordinates embedded into it.”

  “Cells of the Organization?” Gaia asked, glancing at her father.

  “Could be,” he replied. “Could be fronts or safe houses . . . ”

  “Or targets,” Oliver said ominously. “We have no way of knowing. And there are hundreds of them. It would be impossible to check all of them out.”

  Gaia swallowed, a feeling of helplessness settling in over her shoulders. When she’d first heard Oliver’s psyched tone, she naively thought he’d figured out exactly where Yuri was, but it could take months to decipher this list—figure out what it meant and whether it was useful.

  “So what do we do now?” Gaia asked, looking from her father to Oliver and back again.

  Her dad stood up straight and rolled his shoulders back. “I may just have an idea.”

  So Close

  TOM STRODE DOWN THE DIMLY LIT hallway leading to Natasha’s glass-fronted cell, feeling more focused than he had in years. He was close—he could feel it. All he needed was one more piece of the puzzle to fall into place and he would have Yuri. The nightmare would be over, once and for all.

  Now he just had to convince Natasha to give him that last piece, to show him how it all came together.

  Tom paused in front of the transparent wall and watched Natasha rise from her cot and approach the glass. A line of tiny holes ran across the front, right at mouth level, so conversations could be had through the bulletproof substance. Tom pulled the list of coordinates and other random numbers out of his breast pocket and slapped it up against the glass, the printout facing the prisoner. For a moment, neither of them moved.

  “What does it mean?” Tom asked, his glare boring into Natasha as he pressed the paper into the glass with his palm.

  Her eyes moved back and forth quickly over the page in front of her and he could practically see the gears in her brain working. She knew what the gibberish meant, that much was clear. What she was undecided on was what to do with that knowledge.

  “What does it mean, Natasha?” Tom repeated. Her eyes flicked to him as if she was surprised by the sudden interruption in her thought process. “Intel is going to figure it out eventually. You may as well tell me now.”

  We’re so close, he thought, trying to keep his expression impassive. So . . . close.

  Natasha’s mouth curled into her trademark smirk. “I will give you no more help,” she said. “You have yet to release my daughter.”

  “That’s because the intel you gave us last time didn’t get us anywhere. You know how it works, Natasha. You lead us to an arrest and then we make good on the agreement,” Tom told her. “You give me this . . . you help me bring in Yuri, and Tatiana goes free.”

  “How stupid do you think I am, Tom?” Natasha snapped, her eyes flashing. “You can keep us both here for the rest of our lives dangling my daughter’s freedom in front of me whenever you want something. No.” She turned her back on him and paced away. “I will give you nothing more. You have betrayed my trust.”

  Tom saw red and it was all he could do to keep from pounding his fists against the glass. He had betrayed her trust? Who had wheedled her way into his life? Into his heart? And then tried to kill his daughter, for God’s sake!

  “You know what this is, don’t you?” Tom said, the paper fluttering slightly in his hand. “You could help me if you wanted to.”

  Natasha turned her defiant profile to him and he knew he was right. He knew that somewhere in her mind was the information that he needed—the information that would ensure Gaia’s safety. And she was denying him.

  “I could have helped you,” Tom told her through his teeth. He wondered if the human body could actually shake apart from repressed rage. “I could have gotten you both out of here. You’ve just sealed your own fate. And your daughter’s.”

  Then he turned on his heel and rushed back down the hallway. The MP at the end of the hall unlocked the door for him and Tom strode through. All he could think, over and over, was that he had failed. Natasha was their last hope for tracking down Yuri, but so far he had failed to get her to talk. And time is of the essence.

  If anything happened to Gaia now, it was all on him.

  Who to trust?

  SAM WOKE UP LATE SUNDAY MORNING to the sound of his cell phone singing the theme from Star Wars. He pressed his fingertips into his eyes, then fumbled on the floor for the jacket he’d been wearing last night. The number displayed on the screen was unfamiliar and started with an area code he’d never even seen before. Confused and half asleep, he hit the talk button and brought the phone to his ear.

  “Yeah?” he said gruffly, falling back into his pillows.

  “Sam? It’s Dmitri.”

  Instantly Sam was awake, heart hammering, senses on the alert, sitting up straight in bed. He’s a very dangerous man, Gaia’s voice said in the back of his mind. Find out where he is.

  “Oh . . . hey,” Sam said, because he had to say something. He bunched his sheet up in his lap and clasped it against his chest, praying for the right things to say. He couldn’t mess this up. Gaia needed him.

  “I had to leave again,” Dmitri told him. “Have you been to the apartment?”

  “Yeah . . . I was there yesterday,” Sam said, his brain working overtime to choose his words carefully. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, everything is fine, but I need to see you and Gaia,” Dmitri told him.

  He’s a very dangerous man. . . .

  But he didn’t sound dangerous. He sounded like Dmitri, the kindly old man who had been a victim of Loki’s, just like Sam had been.

  “Where are you?” Sam blurted. Luckily it was a logical question under the circumstances. If Dmitri wanted to see them he was going to have to tell him where they would meet.

  “I can’t tell you that right now,” Dmitri said. “But I need you to bring Gaia to the art museum in Philadelphia tomorrow afternoon. I will meet you on the steps at exactly two P.M. I’m trusting you to do this, Sam.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Dmitri, what the hell is going on?” Sam asked, his courage growing slightly. Anyone would be completely baffled and freaked by this phone call even if he didn’t suspect that Dmitri was bad news. “You can’t just expect us to go all the way to Philadelphia without giving us a reason.”

  “It’s for your own safety,” Dmitri told him calmly. “Sam, we have to trust each other.”

  Sam took a deep breath against the hammering in his chest. Gaia told him to trust her and now Dmitri was telling him to trust him. There was a point in time recently when Gaia had shown no confidence in him whatsoever—when she’d accused him of trying to kill her and turned her back on him entirely. Meanwhile, Dmitri had never done anything but help him.

  Sam had a choice to make. Who was it going to be? The girl who had broken his heart and stabbed him in the back, or the man who’d given him a home and money to get back on his feet?

  Sam closed his eyes, his stomach clenching. “Okay,” h
e said. “We’ll be there.”

  NATASHA

  It is an odd feeling, knowing there is not a soul on Earth you can trust. I thought I knew Tom. I thought that he would make sure that the CIA made good on its promise. They told me that if I talked, they would free my daughter. I talked, yet my daughter is still in prison. Still sequestered from life. Still suffering. I thought I could trust Tom. But then, how can I blame him, after what I have done to him?

  I could have told him what those numbers meant. I could have told him exactly where Yuri is. But what is the point? If Tom goes there, he will die. If Gaia goes there, she will be taken. And Yuri will find some way to punish me and possibly Tatiana as well. Yuri is everywhere. He is everything. And betraying him is a grave mistake. I learned that the hard way.

  Sooner or later Tom would have deciphered that Yuri was alive. I gave him nothing when I gave him that information. But if Yuri were to find Tom on his doorstep he would know who sent him there and Tatiana and I would pay with our lives.

  I have to do what little I can to protect my daughter. My silence is all I have left.

  Still, I hope I am wrong. I hope that Tom will find Yuri and bring him to justice. That Tom will prevail. Yuri must pay for what he has done to us. He must pay.

  nothing to lose

  Who knew that donning Kevlar could be so intimate?

  Choosing Him

  GAIA, JAKE, TOM, AND OLIVER SAT around the dining room table on Sunday afternoon, each poring over a separate copy of Yuri’s list of coordinates. Maps covered the table. They were marked with red dots in various places, indicating the listed locales. The work was hard and tedious and the longer it went on, the more coiled Gaia became. They were never going to get anywhere this way and they knew it. Just figuring out the locations meant nothing unless someone told them the significance of the list.

  The advantage was gone. Yuri was out there somewhere and they were never going to find him.

  A sudden rap at the door took them all by surprise. Gaia got up and checked through the peephole. Sam stood on the other side of the door, looking around him like a lamb who’d just been tossed into the lion’s den.