Alone (14 page)

THE BROWNSTONE ON PERRY STREET
was just as pretty as it had always been. Even Gaia could see that to an objective observer, it was totally cute and quaint.

“You lived here?” Tatiana asked, echoing her thoughts. “It is much more homely than that big building uptown.”

“Homey,” Gaia told her. “Homely is, like, ugly. This place looks cozy, I know. But believe me, the time I spent here was anything but comfortable.”

“Bad memories,” Tatiana agreed. “They can make the Winter Palace look like a tin shack.”

Gaia showed her the fire escape, her preferred method of secret entry, and just like old times, she swung herself up with great finesse.

“Why are we going in that way?” Tatiana asked, clearly alarmed by Gaia's perch. “I thought we were going to talk to George. Why can we not just ring the front bell to speak to him?”

“I have a very serious no-front-door policy,” Gaia responded. “Whenever possible, I like to take people by surprise. It's an old habit.” She shrugged. “Besides, I want to look around a bit before we talk to him. See if I can turn up any hard evidence on my own.”

“You're a snoop,” Tatiana grumbled.

“Yep.” Gaia nodded. “You can go home if you want. If you can't handle it, you know.”

“I can handle this!” Tatiana glared up at Gaia. “Just tell me how to get up there. I will do the rest.”

Gaia had only been teasing about sending Tatiana home. She was definitely more interesting than Gaia had given her credit for, and her determination was impressive.

Tatiana followed Gaia's directions on where to climb and how to stand so that she could haul her little bod up to the bottom of the fire escape. The structure of the metal scaffolding was sturdy, but like all fire escapes, it consisted of nothing more than widespread slats bolted to the brick. Climb the steps inside a building, and you're well insulated from the knowledge that you're actually standing two, three, four flights in the air. But on a fire escape, there's no such illusion. You're standing out in the air, and if you look down, even though you feel a solid landing beneath your feet, you see the dizzying drop to the ground below. Gaia could see that this was difficult for Tatiana. As they climbed the metal ladder, Gaia reminded her to stay focused on the trip up the outside of the building, but despite Tatiana's superhuman efforts, her eyes kept drifting downward, and
her muscles froze in total and complete terror
each time that happened.

This was completely foreign to Gaia. It never ceased to amaze her how fear could mess up an easy task, like this climb. She could feel Tatiana's anxiety mounting as they crept up each flight of rusty stairs.

Gaia realized that this was more than nervousness. Tatiana had a real fear of heights. She hoped she could back up her determination on this trip up the building. Gaia knew Tatiana wanted to prove something to her, but she also knew she might have bitten off more brownstone than she could chew.

Once they finally reached the top, Gaia swung out over the dizzying four-story drop to land,
with monkeylike ease,
on the windowsill outside her former bedroom. It took some serious balance and maneuvering, but it was small potatoes to Gaia. In a matter of moments she had jimmied the lock and slid open the heavy wooden frame.

Once inside, she leaned out and grinned at Tatiana, who was standing, white-knuckled, on the top flight of the fire escape.

“Come on,” she said. “See how easy? I swear to you, this is no big deal—I already did the hard part. All you have to do is jump across.”

“Yes. I can do it,” Tatiana squeaked.

“Sure, you can. So go ahead,” Gaia told her. “If you think about it too long, you'll talk yourself out of it.”

Tatiana's eyes were practically spinning around in their sockets,
she was so scared. She swallowed, locked her gaze onto Gaia's so she wouldn't look down, and stepped gingerly over the railing so that only her left hand, clinging to the cold metal, kept her from tumbling to the sidewalk. On the ground it was a nothing jump. But up here. . .

She tried to reach across at the same time as she jumped. It was one of the top-five
spazziest moves
Gaia had ever seen, and sure enough, she missed the window by a mile.

OF COURSE, GAIA HAD ANTICIPATED
Tatiana's clumsiness and had her legs wedged against the radiator inside the window. It was nothing for her to grab Tatiana under the arms and yank her up to safety. Hell, she didn't even realize she was falling until she was already firmly held in Gaia's grasp, so Gaia had a chance to clap a hand over Tatiana's mouth,
barely suppressing her hysterical shriek.

“Shut up,” Gaia whispered, wrestling Tatiana into

submission even as she dangled in the air. “I know you're scared, but you're okay, so lose the skirt.”

She waited for Tatiana's body to go limp in agreement and then yanked her through the window. They lay on the floor, Tatiana's breath coming in ragged, panicked gasps, Gaia's as normal as ever. When Tatiana had composed herself, Gaia sat up.

“Can I trust you not to freak out?” she whispered. Tatiana nodded. Gaia stood, silently, and slipped the window shut; then she paused and listened intently to the sounds inside the house. Not even a creak of the building settling. Apparently their little adventure on the fire escape hadn't alerted George to their presence.

Her room was familiar, but it felt like a million years since she'd stepped through that door. George had told her the truth when he asked her to come back here to live—he hadn't touched a thing in here; it was exactly as she'd left it. Hard to believe how much had happened since then. She remembered how George's wife, hootchie Ella, had pulled the wool over the old guy's eyes and made him think she was as innocent as an Olsen twin while the whole time she was feeding information about him to Loki—
and trying her best to turn Gaia into daisy fertilizer.
Now that she thought about it, Gaia realized that George was probably losing his marbles even then. That was a big screwup for a company man.

But hadn't he sworn to be more careful in the future?

Yeah. But promises were made to be broken—wasn't that the major lesson in Gaia's life?

“Let's roll,” she said. “I want to prove to you once and for all that George is telling the truth.” She said it as much for herself as for Tatiana. Some stupid, weak voice inside her head was nagging at her.
George is lying,
it said.
Natasha really is in love with your dad. You have a real shot at happiness, you genetic mutant freak
.

That was a voice she absolutely had to shut up. Self-doubt was as bad as fear; it would trip her up if she let it. She had a purpose, forcing George to prove his allegations, and disappointing as the truth was, she had to face it. Any part of her that denied it was just so much
sentimental appendicitis.
She forced the voice to the back of her mind and steeled herself.

Together she and Tatiana crept down the stairs toward the foyer. As soon as they got there, the doorbell started ringing with an insistent, urgent buzz.

GEORGE PADDED TO THE FRONT DOOR,
not even bothering to check through the peephole to see who it was. After years of being a spy, there were certain instincts he could not shake, try as he might to dull them with single-malt scotch:
on
the other side of that door, his old spy self told him, was trouble.

Besides, the timing was right. He'd made the call to Tom just a few hours ago—the call that had sentenced his old friend to certain death. By now he would have rushed off to his doom instead of getting on the plane. That woman Natasha, too: doomed. Loki was probably here to gloat. To torment George with his betrayal. What he didn't know was that
there was no torture worse than George's self-loathing.

His old friend had taken his advice without questioning it. As he should have. Why would he suspect a mole so close? George unlocked the door. It swung open with a mournful creak, revealing Loki.

“You shouldn't have dressed up for me,” Loki muttered, taking in the sight before him in disgust.

“Can I offer you a drink?” George asked, closing his flannel robe and knotting its sash, as if that would somehow make up for the fact that he was shuffling around in pajamas and slippers with a three-day growth of gray stubble on his suddenly aged face.

“Of what, some rotgut you had delivered so you could drown your pathetic sorrows in private?” Loki asked, stepping into the hallway with a menacing air that made George take a step backward.

“I only drink single-malt scotch,” George muttered. “If I am going to drink myself to death, I insist on doing it in style.”

“You truly are pathetic,” Loki said, staring George down so that the older man had to look away. He began making a long, slow circuit around him. “Once upon a time, you were a prime operative. More than just dependable. People looked up to you. Even agents who outranked you asked you for advice. George Niven was a name that was synonymous with total and complete honor. But after Ella. . . you lost your edge.”

“Don't you lecture me,” George shouted, waving his drink at Loki so that the ice clinked. “I did your dirty work. That's all you need. So you can just go away and leave me here.”

“And did you do my dirty work properly?” Loki asked, pausing in his circular stroll. “Can you assure me Gaia believed your fallacy?”

George looked down, his disheveled hair and troubled expression suddenly making him look like a sad little boy. “Indeed,” he told Loki. “Gaia completely believes that Natasha is an evil agent who's out to destroy her father. I even planted seeds of doubt in
his
mind, I think. It was all too easy. I thought Gaia was smarter than that—but she believed it all.”

“Well, then I guess you did do your job—for once,” Loki said. “Maybe there's still some fire in the old furnace after all. You've been a great help to me. I appreciate your warning Tom about his lady love, your attempts to seed his doubt in her. And your little phone call to Tom's cell phone was also of great assistance. I have captured him.
He's in my custody, and it's only a matter of time before I destroy him.”

George mumbled something that Loki couldn't hear.

“What was that, old man?”

“It's no wonder she believed me,” George mumbled. “She doesn't know who to trust. We've destroyed her trust—all of us.”

Loki was about to respond when a clatter upstairs made his head jerk back. George looked up slowly, his watery eyes focusing on the dark staircase above him. Had someone been listening. . . ? Could someone have snuck in and. . .

Loki bounded up the stairs, taking all four stories with ease. At the top he saw that Gaia's bedroom door was open. But all that greeted him inside was a wide-open window and billowing curtains.

The girl had been here, and now she was gone.

TOM HAD BEEN INSIDE SOME BAD
prisons in his life. His personal least favorite had been in Somalia—it had had tarantulas the size of kittens—but the one in Bosnia had been nearly as
bad because rotting corpses were left in their cells. The one he inhabited in Cuba had been relatively nice. The prison was in an abandoned mansion, which made it both pretty and easy to escape from.

This one wasn't filthy. In fact, it was squeaky clean. Hotel Niven, Tom dubbed it immediately, in honor of the failed agent who had sent him here. It had the white-walled, antiseptic feeling of a hospital, with not a speck of dirt to be seen. There were no bars, just a Plexiglas wall. But there was also no window—instead of a single shaft of sunlight framed by crumbling brick, he had a vent the size of a business envelope. There was no way to see the outside world, no way to tell what time it was.

Tom was trapped.

He knew that being in solitary confinement drove most men to stark screaming madness, but he was better trained than that. He could go inside his own mind and pass the time by working out complicated algorithms or calling up the text of the Declaration of Independence. Techniques like these were one of the first things taught at training school. But he had a more pressing matter to wonder about.

Where was Natasha?

The six goons who had dumped him in here had given no hint that someone else had been captured, but one of them wore a walkie-talkie that had squawked while he was being dragged inside. He thought he'd
heard her scream, but he couldn't be sure. One thing he did know: If George Niven was the snake, then Natasha was what he had always insisted she was—loyal and honest.

With a wave of guilt, he realized he was responsible for her capture as well.

There was no reason to stand. He had to conserve his strength. He sat, with his back against the wall and facing the Plexiglas, knees drawn up in front of him. He was probably being watched, though he couldn't see a pinhole for the camera. But he was surely being observed somehow.

So: With his hasty, thinking-with-his-heart move, he had jeopardized himself, Natasha, Gaia, and the entire mission. Was he really any better than George Niven? George had betrayed him maliciously; he had betrayed himself carelessly. The result was the same.

He supposed the glossy white walls repelled the stains of splattered blood.

Through the vent he heard a faint shuffling, then a louder series of thuds, uneven, like limbs flailing. Then a torrent of Russian curses. Then another thud, and the electric hum of Plexiglas being lowered.

Then Natasha was alive. And in another cell. Should he call to her?

Tom remained silent. He had already made one major mistake today. If the vent allowed him to hear Natasha, he had no doubt that was not an accident. To
begin chatting with her over the internal air-conditioning system—that would be playing into his captor's hands.

He sat very still, trying not to even acknowledge that he'd heard anything.

He heard Natasha beat against the Plexiglas, making frustrated grunts. Then an exasperated sigh. He desperately wanted to speak, to say something comforting, at least to apologize. But he had been clumsy enough for one day. For now he had to be silent. For now he had to sit tight and think.

He was proud to note that from what he could tell, she never gave in to tears.

He wasn't so sure he'd be able to do the same.