Lost (18 page)

Dr. Sullivan chuckled. He couldn't know how his laughter cut through her heart. Gaia knew for certain at that moment that he hadn't made that phone call. That whoever had called her hadn't been Dr. Sullivan. It had been someone else. Someone who didn't even work here. Someone who now had her father strapped to a bed and shoved in a plane, headed to a destination unknown.

“I think you've been having some very vivid dreams,” Dr. Sullivan said kindly. “But what I would have told you if I
had
called your house was that your
father tested negative for the hormones I mentioned to you.”

Gaia closed her eyes as the ICU spun around her, trying to breathe evenly. Trying to block out the familiar taunting voices in her head. The ones calling her stupid, gullible, moronic.

“My father is gone,” she whispered, letting the reality of it sink in.

“I'm sorry, I don't know what you're—”

“I mean he's not here anymore. They've taken him to Switzerland. Check his room,” Gaia said, opening her eyes and glaring at him, her jaw clenching.

Dr. Sullivan pulled back his head. “Check his room? What are you talking about? I just saw him a—”

Gaia stood up straight, ignoring the head rush, and walked right by Dr. Sullivan. For a moment he didn't move. He clearly thought she was a lunatic. Talking about phone calls and Switzerland and making no sense to him whatsoever. But as Gaia approached her father's room, she knew that in moments it would all make sense. At least to her.

Maybe it was a joke,
Gaia thought, a flicker of irrational hope spawning irrational thought.
Someone's idea of a sick joke. Or maybe I
did
dream the whole phone call.
When she opened the curtain, her father would be there, vegetative and half dead, but there. The last hour would be reduced to the status of bad dream.

She reached up, grasped the curtain, and flung it aside. Her father's bed was empty.

Gaia's stomach turned inside out over and over and over again as she stood there, clutching the curtain against the wall, staring at the twisted sheets, the IV tube that hung limp, the blank monitor on the heart machine.

Her father really was gone. And Gaia had no idea where he was, who had taken him, or why.

TO:
Y

From:
X22

Extraction of subject complete. There was no interference. Takeoff time was 3:37
A.M
. No weather complications are reported. Flight will arrive on schedule, runway 1-A. Pilots have been briefed as to procedure.

From:
Y

To:
X22

I commend you on a job well done. We are on our way.

Sometimes
I wonder what we all did to deserve this. Even now that I know most of the story of my parents, of my uncle, of my birth, it still doesn't seem right or just or fair. What was it, really, that got us all started on this path? Was it the moment my father and Oliver decided to join the CIA? Was it the moment my father met my mother? Or the moment Oliver met my mother? Was it the moment my mother left Russia? Was it my uncle's illness, diagnosed when he was just a kid—when my mother and I didn't even exist in the Moore reality?

Which thing would have had to be different to make the course of my life change? All of them? Just one? There are so many things that I can point to and say, “If this had never happened, I would have had a normal life.” I would have two parents. I would have a father who wasn't constantly disappearing. I would
live in a house with a family who loved me.

I might still be fearless, but it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't apply. Because all there would be is happiness. Normalcy. Football games and snowball fights and sleepover parties and laughter. You don't need fear to live a life like that. You just need to know how to be.

I guess it doesn't really matter what the moment was when it all changed. When my life veered from the line it could have followed onto the jagged path it's taken. What matters is what I do now. What I choose to do at
this
moment to change my path again. Who I choose to take with me. How I choose to get there.

Because I am going to change my future. I am going to find my father, and we are going to leave this path. And I don't care what I need to do to make it happen.

Enough is enough.

Gaia suddenly realized that she was talking a mile a minute, like some hyperactive five-year-old who neglected to take her Ritalin.

Emotionally Baffling

FAKE MOTHERS ARE THE ENEMY.

This had been Gaia Moore's credo for the better part of the last year. It was like a physical law of sorts. A mantra that had been engraved in her brain ever since she'd suffered through her prison sentence in that brownstone on Perry Street with the most fake of all fake mothers, Ella Niven.

Ella had been as fake as they come. Fake nails, fake red hair, fake eyelashes, and an inflatable chest faker than those of Britney and Mariah combined. But the fakest thing about Ella Niven had actually been hidden under that fake chest. Her fake heart. No, not just a fake heart. A murderous heart. Yes, in Gaia's limited experience, fake mothers, for the most part, tried to kill you.

All right, maybe that wasn't fair. Ella, as it turned out, hadn't been
all
bad. In fact, she really hadn't been anything other than a victim. Just another one of Loki's helpless victims. But still, take away those last forty-eight hours of redemption in Ella's life, and all you had left was a jealous, vindictive, all too fake mom who had spent her last days on this earth trying to order a hit on her own adopted daughter.

Obviously the odds of Gaia ever trusting another fake mother after that were pretty goddamn slim. But
nonetheless, here she was, stomping her way down the hall of her apartment, headed for Natasha's bedroom, with one very simple goal in mind: She had to forget absolutely everything she believed about fake moms.

Natasha Petrova was fake mom number two, and now, more than ever, Gaia needed to trust her. Not only did she need to trust Natasha, but she actually needed her help. And Tatiana's help, too. Because Gaia's father was obviously in serious danger, more serious than any of them had even imagined. And Gaia had learned an essential lesson in the last few weeks—perhaps the most essential lesson of them all. She had learned that she wasn't alone.

She did not have to face all this impending doom in a vacuum. Now there was this
thing
in this apartment on East Seventy-second Street that was starting to look and feel more and more like a family. And not even a fake family. Gaia had to admit that each day, the nagging sensation that Natasha and Tatiana were nothing more than cheap and nefarious imitations of a mother and sister had faded a little farther into the distance. And now, after everything they had been through together, Gaia was beginning to remember one of the best things about a family—something she hadn't even thought about since her mother had died.

If Gaia's father really was in serious trouble, now at least
one
other person would care as much as Gaia did. That person always used to be her mother. Her
real
mother. But now that person was undoubtedly Natasha. And whatever doubts Gaia might have had about Natasha in the past, one thing was for damn sure. Natasha loved Gaia's father. She truly loved him. And they were probably headed for marriage. She was the closest thing Gaia had to a real mother. Closer than Gaia was even willing to admit. And when Natasha heard about Gaia's encounter with the
real
Dr. Sullivan at the hospital, she was going to be just as shocked and infuriated as Gaia was. And just as ready to kick someone's head in.

Gaia knocked loudly on Natasha's bedroom door, barely waiting for her faint and groggy invitation. She slipped through the doorway and crouched down next to Natasha's bed, glimpsing the flashing clock on the bedside table. 7:03
A.M
. Natasha had somehow managed to fall back asleep since Gaia had rushed off to the hospital, though Gaia couldn't imagine how. But Gaia's news would surely send her flying up from the bed and straight to the phone to check in with all her Agency contacts.

That's what they needed now. They needed to call in the entire cavalry and send out a worldwide APB. They needed the kinds of answers Gaia couldn't possibly obtain alone.

“What . . . what's going on?” Natasha croaked sleepily. Her eyes slammed shut when Gaia flipped on the bedside lamp.

“Something's wrong,” Gaia said sharply. “With my father. Something is really wrong.”

Natasha squinted her eyes and tried to get a better look at Gaia. “What are you talking about? What time is it?” Natasha leaned toward the clock and then fell back on her pillow. “Did something happen at the hospital? Did you talk to Dr. Sullivan?”

“I did,” Gaia said. “You need to be awake for this. Are you awake?”

Natasha propped herself up against the headboard and brushed her hair clumsily from her face. She pulled the covers up over her silk nightgown and tried to focus her eyes on Gaia's. “I am sorry,” she uttered, clearing her throat before speaking again. “It has been such a horrible morning, I think I was just trying to recover. To . . . recharge for when you got—”

“Well, the morning just got worse,” Gaia interrupted, sitting firmly down on the bed. “That call we got this morning, from Dr. Sullivan . . . That wasn't Dr. Sullivan.”

“What?” Natasha tilted her head quizzically. “What do you mean?”

Gaia looked deeper into Natasha's eyes. “He was a fake. He was a goddamn
fake.
Dad is gone.”

A long silence took over the room. Sounds of morning traffic and the muted chatter of New Yorkers snuck in through the barely opened window. Gaia couldn't tell if Natasha was just dumbfounded or if
she had already begun to think countermeasures. She prayed it was the latter. Wherever her father was, there was no time to spare on drawn-out explanations. Not that Gaia really had any explanations.

“What do you mean . . . a ‘fake'?” Natasha asked.

Gaia's hand clenched with frustration, bunching up the covers, but she quickly relaxed it. She was being ludicrously unfair. Obviously Natasha was going to need a little more than that to go on. Even a clairvoyant genius would have needed a little more information.

“I'm sorry,” Gaia said, dropping her head momentarily. “I'm sorry, I'm moving too fast. Listen. The phone call—the call we
thought
was from Dr. Sullivan—it was a complete fake. All that stuff he was spewing out about some
clinic
and sending him off to
Switzerland?
I thought it all sounded so ridiculous, so
stupid,
but . . . but
he's
the doctor, right? He knows
everything.
But he
wasn't
the doctor. That's why we need to put out an APB. That's why we need to call in the Bureau or, you know, Interpol, or—”

“Gaia, Gaia, shhh. . . . ” Natasha placed her hand gently on Gaia's shoulder. Gaia suddenly realized that she was talking a mile a minute, like some hyperactive five-year-old who'd neglected to take her Ritalin.

“I know I'm not making much sense,” Gaia muttered, driving the palms of her hands deep into her eye sockets. She hadn't even realized how wound up she
was until she'd started to speak. “I'm sorry, but we've got to do something. We've got to do something
now.”

“Gaia, I am not understanding you,” Natasha said calmly. “Did you speak to the real Dr. Sullivan or not?”

“Yes.
At the hospital. I
saw
the real Dr. Sullivan. I
talked
to him. He told me that all of Dad's tests had come back negative. There was no hormonal . . .
whatever,
and he didn't know a damn thing about Switzerland or anywhere else. He didn't even know Dad was gone from the hospital. Dad is
not
in the hospital, Natasha, he's
gone.
Now I don't know if
anything
is true. I don't know if they took him to Switzerland or if he's still in New York somewhere or
what.
I don't even know who ‘they' are. Who was I talking to on the phone? ‘They' could be a million different people. I'd say it was Loki for sure, but he's practically dead. So then
who?
Who is doing this to my father? Where the hell is he? You've got to make some calls. We've got to figure out who the hell
they
are and how we're going to—”

“Gaia.”
Natasha clamped both her hands around Gaia's shoulders and pressed down firmly. “You have
got to calm down.”

Gaia locked her eyes with Natasha's and tried to collect herself. She was a little out of control, she knew that. But what exactly did Natasha expect? After everything they'd gone through just to have a few calm and happy minutes as a family, how could Gaia be anything
other than a basket case? How could Natasha stay so calm after hearing all of it?

“How can I calm down?” Gaia complained. “How the hell can I calm down right now? How can
you
be so calm? We don't know where he is. We have
no idea
where he is now. Why are we even still sitting here? We should be moving on this
now.”

“Gaia.” Natasha's tone was soothing but patronizing. She loosened her grip on Gaia's shoulders, but she didn't let go. “Listen to me now. If all this information is true  . . . then of course I would be out of my mind, like you. If someone has really taken Tom in the state he's in, then I would be beside myself. Absolutely
beside myself
with worry,
of course.
But Gaia . . . we don't know
anything
for sure. All you have right now is a prank phone call from a man you cannot even identify. Perhaps Dr. Sullivan is misinformed, uh? Or perhaps he is simply not aware of a decision to send Tom to this clinic in Switzerland? There are
so many
possibilities right now. Believe me, Gaia. I have been doing this for a very long time. If I went running around with my head spinning every time I got a false lead or prank phone call, they would have locked me away long, long ago, you see?”