“Sam? What’s wrong?” Gaia asked, ripping the door open.
“He called me,” Sam said, holding out his cell phone like it was an explosive device.
Tom was on his feet in an instant. “Who? Yuri?”
“No. Dmitiri,” Sam said, walking into the room and taking in the maps, the endless cups of coffee . . . Jake. And then Oliver. Sam took an instinctive step back and Gaia took an instinctive step closer to him to help him feel safe.
“Dmitri and Yuri are the same guy,” Jake said, leaning back in his chair. He rested his muscled arm across the top, nonchalantly showing off his brawn.
“Well, who’s Yuri?” Sam asked, ignoring Jake and turning away from Oliver.
“My grandfather. It’s a really long story,” Gaia began.
“Forget that now. He contacted you?” Tom asked, walking over and taking the cell phone from Sam’s trembling fingers.
“Uh . . . yeah . . . it’s the last number in there,” Sam said, visibly fighting to control his emotions. He stuffed his hands under his arms and pressed his elbows down into his sides. “He wanted me to bring Gaia to meet him. He said two o’clock tomorrow afternoon on the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.”
“Philadelphia?” Oliver said, looking over Tom’s shoulder as he scrolled to the phone number. Both brothers’ faces lit up when they saw the digits displayed there.
“We’ve got him,” Tom said, meeting Oliver’s gaze. Gaia’s heart took a leap as her uncle looked up at her and smiled. After all this work, after being stonewalled by Natasha, after hours of brainstorming, Sam had just walked in and given them the key.
“How could he be so careless?” Tom asked. “All we have to do is trace this number through the satellite provider and we have his exact location.”
“He wants Gaia and he’s getting desperate,” Oliver said. “Kidnapping her didn’t work so he went to his next best hope.”
He looked at Sam as he said this and Sam’s face went ashen. Gaia had to get him out of there before he got sick or worse. She opened the door and pulled Sam out into the hallway.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
“This is all a little weird,” Sam admitted with an embarrassed laugh. “Dmitri is your grandfather? What the hell is that about? And why is he so dangerous?”
“Sam, my grandfather is a very bad man,” Gaia said, looking into Sam’s green eyes and feeling more grateful toward him than she’d ever felt toward anyone. “And you just helped us find him. We’re going to get him because of you.”
Sam swallowed and looked down at his shoes. “Gaia, I . . . I don’t even know what to say. I’m . . . glad I could help?” he added with a shrug.
“I’m going to explain all of this to you, I swear,” Gaia said. “But right now I’ve got to get back in there and help them.”
Sam nodded. “Is there anything else I can do?” He sounded almost hopeful that she’d ask for more. But he’d done enough. And now all she wanted was for him to be safe.
“You have no idea how much you’ve done already,” she said. And then, on impulse, she reached up and hugged him, tightening her arms around his neck. Sam held her so close she could feel his heart beating against her chest, matching the quickened pace of her own pulse. When she pulled away and looked into his eyes it was so simple to imagine herself kissing him. Choosing him. Being with him.
But she couldn’t. She was moving on. And Sam had to move on, too.
“Thank you,” she told him sincerely.
And before he could say anything more, she slipped back into the apartment and closed the door on Sam.
An Actual Girl
GAIA SAT ACROSS FROM JAKE AT THE dining room table early Sunday afternoon, watching him shovel food into his mouth. She couldn’t believe how quickly everything had changed. It had taken less than an hour for her father and Oliver to track Yuri’s cell phone down to an address in north Philadelphia. Once they’d come up with a game plan, Oliver had run out to the corner deli and bought sandwiches, salads, and fruit to fortify them for the trip. None of them had taken in a normal meal all day and Oliver was of the opinion that they had no chance against Yuri unless they were well fed and focused.
“Enjoying that?” Gaia asked, raising her eyebrows as Jake shoved half a turkey hero into his mouth at once.
“Uh, you’re one to talk,” he said, eyeing her chest. Gaia looked down to find a big chunk of potato salad stuck to the front of her light blue T-shirt.
Oh, that’s attractive, she thought, wiping it up with her finger.
Jake smiled at her, his blue eyes twinkling, and Gaia flushed. Every time she saw Jake, the temperature of whatever room they were in seemed to skyrocket. More and more she found herself blushing around him. And smiling. And wondering what her hair was doing. She found herself acting like an actual girl.
“Gaia, you have your battle gear?” Tom asked, walking in from his bedroom.
A girl with battle gear, Gaia reminded herself. Somehow she had a feeling she would never qualify for a femininity award.
“Yeah,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She grabbed her bulletproof vest from the chair next to her and pulled it on and zipped up the sides. She reached over her left shoulder and groped for the nylon strap, but couldn’t get it in her grasp.
“I got it,” Jake said, rising from his seat. Gaia couldn’t help noticing he used an actual napkin to wipe his face. He came up behind Gaia and lifted the strap. Gaia could feel his breath on her neck and tried not to react, but there was nothing she could do to control the omnipresent tingle.
Sam may have made her pulse race earlier that day, but Jake excited something new inside of her—something she felt in every inch of her body, heart and soul. There was no point in denying it anymore. She was falling for him.
“You okay?” Jake asked, as he snapped the strap to her shoulder and tightened it.
Gaia swallowed hard, her throat constricting. Who knew that donning Kevlar could be so intimate?
“Fine,” Gaia replied. She went over to the table and picked up the paper plates and bags and soda cans. “You better get ready.”
Her arms full, Gaia kicked open the kitchen door and dumped everything into the trash. She paused in front of the sink to catch her breath and get her pounding heart under control. Through the kitchen window she could see Oliver, Jake, and her father talking in low tones, going over the game plan as Jake secured his protective gear.
Aside from the vibe of attraction constantly sizzling between her and Jake, there was also an air of determination in the room that affected everyone, not least of all Gaia. This was it. By the end of the day today, it would all be over. She would be free.
Life as she knew it was about to change. For the better. For good.
Gaia took a deep breath and Jake tore his attention away from the elder men, looking over at her. Their eyes met and Gaia froze. As if in slow motion, Jake’s eyes softened and he smiled a slight, private smile. It turned Gaia’s insides to goo and she had the sudden, almost overwhelming desire to rush right out there, grab him, and kiss him.
Jake’s smile widened as if he knew what she was thinking, and Gaia forced herself to look away, closing the little shutters over the opening. She turned around and leaned back against the sink, her hands braced against the counter, her elbows behind her.
Gaia did want to kiss him. More than anything. And she would. Later. After it was over. When they were both safe and sound and victorious.
She would kiss Jake Montone as soon as she had nothing to lose.
Grandpa
“IF ANYTHING GOES WRONG AND you can’t speak into your handheld, just press this button,” Gaia’s father explained, holding up his tiny walkie-talkie. “You press this button on the side and the rest of us will be able to track you anywhere within a ten-mile radius.”
Gaia nodded her understanding. Every order, every instruction her father had given that afternoon had been repeated in layman’s terms again and aga
in as if he thought he were speaking to a group of kindergartners. She knew he just wanted them to be prepared, but enough was enough. Gaia was more than ready to go.
She looked out past the bushes that concealed her, Jake, Oliver, and Tom, gazing across the wide lawn at the mansion hulking against the twilit sky. At least a quarter mile of open green grass separated the little team from the target. If Yuri had any guards stationed outside, which was an obvious no-brainer, they would spot Gaia and the others before they made it five feet from the brush.
She considered mentioning this, but she was sure her father, Oliver and Jake were all well aware of the situation. Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do about it. This was the best route onto the grounds unless they wanted to walk en masse up the driveway out front.
“Remember, we want to head for the basement. If he’s got a panic room, that’s where it’ll be,” Tom added.
Come on. Enough instruction, Gaia thought, her leg jittering beneath her. Let’s get this over with already.
“This Yuri guy sure knows how to live,” Jake said, scanning the back of the huge house.
“That’s all about to change,” Tom told him. “Okay, Jake and Oliver take the west side, Gaia and I will go east.”
Everyone nodded and a thrill of excitement rushed through Gaia. This was it. If they succeeded here today, life as she knew it was over. How totally cool.
“Move out,” Tom said.
Gaia cast Jake what she hoped was an encouraging look before following her father through the woods toward the right side of the house. Every twig and leaf that crunched beneath their feet sounded loud enough to wake the dead. Gaia kept one eye trained on the house, but there was no sign of life. So far, so good.
Her father suddenly paused beside a huge oak and pressed himself back against the trunk. He motioned to Gaia to stay down, but over the top of the brush Gaia could see what had stopped him. A single guntoting guard moved from around the side of the house to the back, patrolling along the perimeter.
“That’s not too obvious,” Gaia said sarcastically.
“He has his back turned,” her father said flatly. “Stay low.”
He rushed out of the bushes, legs bent, back down, moving quickly across the lawn. Gaia followed him, wondering if he was scared, if he was worried that they might not pull this off. It was one rare moment in her life that she was actually grateful she was a freak who couldn’t feel fear. Yuri seemed like the type of character who could inspire terror in anyone. It was still so hard to imagine Dmitri as a psychopath.
They made it to the wall with no incident and sat back against it, taking shallow breaths. Gaia trained her ears toward the other side of the house, listening for anything out of the ordinary, but was met with silence. Wherever Jake and Oliver were, they were okay. So far.
“I’ll check the window,” Gaia’s father told her. He stood up and ran a circuitry detector along the bottom of the window above Gaia’s head. The green light blinked rapidly and Tom attached it to the glass. He pressed a button, then crouched down again.
“What’s that do?” Gaia asked.
There was a sizzle and a pop from above them and her father stood up and opened the window. No alarm.
“It shorts out all the wiring in the vicinity,” he explained, motioning for her to climb inside. “Let’s go.”
Impressed, Gaia swung her leg over the window and lowered herself into a vacant room. No furniture, no artwork, no light fixtures. Everything was still.
“Looks like we picked the right room,” Gaia whispered when her father appeared beside her.
He nodded tersely and headed for the door. Gaia pressed her lips together and told herself to remember why they were here. Her father had a reason for being all business. This was a huge mission and if he wanted her to keep her mouth shut—as he seemed to be telling her by his own example—she would do just that.
Her father checked outside the door, then motioned to her to follow. They speed-walked along the wall down a long corridor that appeared to open up onto a large room. The hallway split at one point, but her father stayed the course—heading for the front of the house. Suddenly Gaia heard male voices up ahead and she and her father both froze. He looked around the corner and pulled his head back.
“Two guards, playing poker,” he whispered to her. “Stay here.”
Gaia resisted the urge to protest. Why was she always staying behind him, staying low, staying back? Didn’t he trust her to hold her own—to help more?
Her dad stepped out of the hallway, dart gun drawn, and fired. There was a commotion and a gun went off. Gaia’s father ducked back into the hallway and a piece of the wall across from them exploded.
“There are two more,” he told Gaia as the shots and shouts intensified. “They walked in from the other room.” He reloaded his dart gun and looked her in the eye. “I’m gonna hold them here. You go back to that fork in the hallway and see if you can find a way to the basement.”
Gaia’s heart thumped as he jumped into the fray again and fired a few more shots from his dart gun.
“Why are you still here?” he hissed when he ducked back again.
“I’m not leaving you here with three guards,” she told him, pulling out her own dart gun.
“Yes you are.” He grabbed her arm and nudged her back in the direction they’d come from. “Go!”
Gaia hesitated.
“We’re here for Yuri, Gaia,” he said fiercely. “I know you can take him. I’ll be right behind you.”
That was all she needed to hear. Gaia drew herself up straight and ran double time back down the hallway, buoyed by her father’s confidence. Every door along the new hall led to another unused salon or bedroom, but at the very end of the hall, Gaia found a reinforced steel door—quite unlike the standard wood doors she’d already tried.
This looks promising, she thought.
She turned the knob, but it was locked. Gaia had a loaded gun in an ankle holster, but she had been instructed not to use it unless absolutely necessary. Besides, she didn’t want to draw attention to herself by blasting the lock to smithereens. Instead she crouched to the floor and pulled out a lock-picking pin and fork from her utility belt. She hadn’t practiced this particular skill since she was in grade school and Loki had secretly trained her behind her parents’ backs, but even then she was an expert.
Gaia inserted the tools into the lock, trying not to pay attention to the continued gunshots in another area of the house. She had to focus. Her father would be with her any minute.
Suddenly the mechanism inside the doorknob clicked and Gaia’s pulse jumped. “Like riding a bike,” she whispered.
She tried the knob and held her breath as it turned. Standing, Gaia opened the door ever so slowly, waiting for more gunfire, an order to stand down—something. But the door swung open and Gaia stood there, looking down a darkened set of stairs.
Bingo, she thought, replacing her tools in her belt. She drew out the dart gun again and started down the steps, walking as lightly as humanly possible. The stairs grew narrower toward the bottom and ended at a wall. The only direction Gaia could go was left. She pressed herself back against the wall and checked around the corner.
One guard stood before another metal door at the base of another set of stairs coming in from the right. He spoke rapidly into a wrist mike while more voices crackled through the speaker in his ear, so loud Gaia could hear the distortion all the way down the hall.
“I need a guard at the back door!” the man said into his mike. “Someone secure the back basement door.”
At that moment, he looked up and saw Gaia emerging from the stairs.
“Too late,” she said with a shrug. Before he could even pull his gun out, she had flattened him with a dart to the chest. Then Gaia raced down the hallway, her adrenaline pumping at a fierce rate.
This door was secured with an electric keypad lock. There was a keycard slot down the side. Gaia crouched to the ground and flipped the comatose
guard over. She searched his pockets and found a card with a metallic strip attached by a metal wire to his belt. She yanked as hard as she could and the wire snapped.
“Let this work,” Gaia said under her breath.
She checked over her shoulder for her father or for the guard her downed-man had ordered, but saw nothing. Pulling her gun out for good measure, Gaia stood and slipped the card through the lock box. The red light on the side turned green and a loud clang emitted from the doorway.
Gaia stepped back, held her gun up with both hands, and kicked the door with all her might. It flew open, slamming back against the wall, and Gaia trained her gun straight ahead.
“Don’t move!” a voice shouted.
Yuri stood on the other side of a richly decorated room near yet another, even thicker, door. He had a gun trained on Gaia’s head. His eyes widened ever so slightly when he saw her.
“I said, don’t move!” he told her again.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” Gaia said.
She reached back with her foot and slammed the door behind her. Any of the guards would have keycards as well, but the closed door would buy her a few extra seconds if they did come.
“What makes you think that?” Yuri asked as she sidestepped into the room, her gun pointed right at his face. He followed her with his own weapon, circling around a leather couch to stay across from her.
“Because, I’m your only hope now, right? I’m supposed to be groomed to succeed you, aren’t I, Yuri?” She paused and ground her teeth together. “Or should I call you Grandpa?” she asked with a sneer.
“Do you think I’m going to let you kill me?” he asked.
“Not planning on it,” Gaia said. “I’d rather see you rot in a federal prison for the rest of your life.”
Yuri chuckled. He ran one hand along his freshly shaven jaw line and smiled at her. “You can’t turn me in,” he told her. “I have video of you stealing files from a CIA office. If I go down, granddaughter, so do you.”
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