Rebel (5 page)

"Hey!" a gruff male voice barked. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Speak of the devil.
A pudgy cop with powdered sugar stains on his blue uniform was at the opposite end of the car. Gaia hadn't even noticed him. But he posed no problem. She was already using the remaining force of her movement to propel her out the door. With her free hand she grabbed Mary's coat sleeve and yanked her out on the platform.

"Freeze!" the cop cried. His face reddened. "You two girls! Don't move--"

The doors slid shut, silencing him.

He was still yelling and gesturing frantically--but Gaia knew there was nothing he could do. The train was pulling from the station. The piercing shriek of the wheels drowned out any other noise.
Watching him was like watching a movie with the sound off.

Within seconds he was gone.

"Wow, Gaia!" Mary cried breathlessly. She started cracking up. "Damn! That
ruled!"

Gaia shook her head. She laughed, too--but she wasn't quite sure how she felt. She glanced around the station. Several onlookers were glaring at them. Bad sign.
Time to haul ass out of here before one of them called another cop.
She didn't exactly feel like spending the night in a jail cell. Or explaining to George and Ella why she had been arrested ...

"Come on," she whispered, tugging Mary toward

the exit. She broke into a jog. Mary scrambled after her. Their shoes clattered on the concrete. "We gotta split."

"I think that was the coolest thing I've ever seen," Mary gasped.

The coolest? That wasn't the word Gaia would have used. Silliest was more like it.
Or dumbest.
But as the two of them hurtled through the turnstiles and dashed upstairs into the wintry Manhattan night, she had to admit something.

The thrill of being bad was undeniable.

She laughed again despite herself. That had been a lot of fun. More fun than she would have expected. Best of all, her real life--the one filled with loneliness and rejection and uncertainty--seemed very, very far away.

THE MOSS GIRL
WAS
A DANGER.

Loki knew that now. Her danger lay in her stupidity. And apparently, judging from Gaia's latest stunt, that stupidity was contagious.

He scowled as he stood on the corner of Seventy-seventh Street and Lexington Avenue, watching Gaia and her new friend vanish into a mob of pedestrians. This behavior was unacceptable.
Absolutely.
Gaia's sudden penchant for delinquency called attention to herself. And it had the potential to give her a name and a face among the local authorities--at the very moment he most needed her to be anonymous.

He pulled a cell phone from his overcoat pocket and punched in a series of ten digits, then turned and abruptly strode east toward Third Avenue.

Loki often managed to forget that Gaia was a child. More specifically, that she was a teenager: a swirling vortex of hormonally fueled contradictions. He'd always thought of her as a
product
. He viewed her as the sum total of her unique genetic makeup, of her early environment--
but most of all, of her training.
Yet it was now clear to him that her training hadn't been rigorous enough. His brother had done a worse job than he'd previously suspected.

But he would show her the value of discipline. She would learn to exercise better judgment. Emotion and insecurity were not supposed to cloud reason. Not in someone of Gaia's ...
caliber.

He paused on the corner of Seventy-seventh and Third.

The intersection was very well lit. Christmas lights

in apartment and shop windows cast the street in a multicolored glow. A few passersby jostled him. He surveyed his surroundings just to make sure he wasn't being watched or followed. Security checks were usually unnecessary; still, one could never be too careful. It was a lesson he'd learned from the very beginning. He never forgot it.
His
training had been effective.

He heard the sound of the black Mercedes long before it rolled to a stop beside him. The engine had a distinct timbre, like a person's voice. It was his home away from home. His traveling headquarters.

Under normal circumstances the driver opened the door for him. But he was too cold
and too annoyed for formalities.
He ducked inside.

The red-haired woman behind the wheel glanced in the rearview mirror.

He slammed the door. The car pulled into the traffic and began to speed downtown.

"Your instincts were right," he told her.

She nodded. "How do you want to proceed?"

"We wait," he stated.

"But ..." Her brow grew furrowed.

"I want to see how far she can be pushed. I want to know exactly what she's capable of. Peer pressure was a factor I'd never even considered. I'm sure she'll snap out of it."

The woman's lips tightened. "You think so? I think--"

"I don't like your tone," Loki interrupted. "Remember our little talk about focus?"

She didn't reply.

"If she allows herself to be manipulated to the point of real trouble,
we'll have to intervene on her behalf,
"he said, mostly to himself. "We don't have the time to sit back and watch her training deteriorate further. My hope is that she'll come to her senses." He sighed grimly. "I don't want to have to deal with her friend. Her psyche is fragile enough. An accident now will just complicate matters."

Maybe it was time for another whack. Gaia had vowed never to punch her ever again--but hey, people broke promises all the time.

TOM MOORE LONGED FOR A PIECE OF PAPER
and a pen. But in Moscow even the most basic luxuries were sometimes impossible to find. The hotel could provide him with vodka, with bad coffee-- but on the day before Christmas, they were out of everything else. Even lightbulbs. His spartan room had a desk, but no desk lamp. And he needed light, too. The days were short at this time of year, and the sun hadn't risen. The only light in the room came from a flickering lamp by his bed, which looked like it had been manufactured during World War II. It was too dim to read or write by.

He shook his head.

Why did they have to assign him to Moscow? Why did they have to torture him?

But the answer was simple enough. He knew the language. He knew the culture. He stretched out on the mattress. It reeked of mothballs.

He closed his eyes and thought of Gaia. He was halfway around the world from her today ... not too far from where her mother's family had lived for hundreds of years.

The thought made him draw in his breath, wincing involuntarily.

"Katia," he whispered. It had been five years since

her death, but her beautiful face floated in black space before him as clearly as if he were staring at a photograph ... so much like Gaia's. He shook his head. His lids remained tightly shut. Whenever he came to Russia, Katia's memory clung to him like a shroud, smothering him.

He wondered if Gaia could remember how much Katia had loved her. How she lit up whenever her daughter walked into a room. He wondered if Gaia blamed him for her death--something he'd wondered a million times before. Surely she at least blamed him for disappearing from her life. How could she ever understand he had done it for her safety?

Tom shivered. The hotel room was cold. Outside, a blizzard was raging. It was probably twenty degrees below Fahrenheit out there. But he knew the room wouldn't get any warmer than this. The radiator was turned up as high as it would go, clanking and hissing noisily in the corner. When he'd turned it on, he'd sent cockroaches scurrying.

God, he hated the solitude. He was half tempted to fly to New York immediately, to rush to the Nivens' house and sweep Gaia in his arms--just to have the chance to gaze upon her face ... but that was impossible. Even watching from afar placed her in jeopardy--

The cell phone at his feet rang. His jaw tightened. Even on Christmas Eve they wouldn't leave him alone. Of course not. He had a job to do. He snatched at the

phone, struggling to shake Gaia from his mind.

"Yes?" he croaked.

"Package arriving at eleven hundred, sir," a clipped female voice stated.

"Understood," he replied.

"Sir, it's imperative that we intercept--"

"Understood," Tom repeated again, and disconnected the line.

He forced himself from the mattress. His limbs creaked as he stood in the cold room. He felt a quick flash of anger but thrust it aside. After all his years of service his colleagues and underlings still felt the need to remind him of how "imperative" it was that he perform his duties. He'd personally thwarted over two dozen assassination attempts, bombings, and coups. Yet they always spoke to him as if this were his first mission.

He knew that they were only doing their job, of course. And he knew better than to let his mood affect his work. This was a particularly sensitive matter. The "package" contained plutonium--several million dollars' worth. It was being smuggled from nuclear bases outside Moscow to Afghanistan, then places unknown. If it were to fall into the wrong hands ...

He knew all of this. He knew that if he failed, there was a chance he could endanger millions of lives. Still, it was amazing how the threat of nuclear terrorism

could seem so unimportant in the face of the fact that he couldn't hug his own daughter on Christmas.

IT WAS NEARLY ONE O'CLOCK BY THE TIME
Gaia tiptoed up to the brownstone on Perry Street.

She prayed that Ella and George were asleep. She had a feeling they weren't. Or at least Ella wasn't. The living-room light was on. It was strange: The emotion Gaia felt as she turned the key in the front door was probably the closest she would ever come to fear. She wasn't scared, of course.
But she felt an undeniable reluctance.
It was the reluctance of having to occupy the same general space as Ella--and in the worst-case scenario, actually engage in dialogue with her.

As quietly as she could, she pushed open the door.

"Where the hell have you been?"

Gaia bowed her head.
The reluctance was justified.

"Look, Ella--"

"You can't go on treating us this way."

Please.
Gaia closed the door. Ella was standing in
the middle of the narrow hall. Arms folded across her chest. Nostrils flaring. Wearing that absurd leather miniskirt. Maybe she needed another reminder of how
not
to deal with Gaia. The last time they had gotten into a screaming argument, Gaia had punched her. It had been a reflex; Ella had said something so cruel and horrible that it couldn't be forgiven ... but at least after that, she had contented herself with being a normal, run-of-the-mill bitch. The blow had frightened her.
Maybe it was time for another whack.
Gaia had vowed never to punch her ever again--but hey, people broke promises all the time.

"Answer me!" Ella barked.

"What's the question?" Gaia asked.

Ella's green eyes narrowed into slits. "Do you really think you can keep on waltzing in and out of here any time of day or night? Do you have any idea what the consequences will be?"

Here we go again, Gaia thought. She slipped out of her coat and hung it in the front hall closet. Ella
did
need another reminder. The Evil Twin was back.

Sometime in the past couple of months Ella had been afflicted with an acute case of multiple-personality disorder. Sometimes she was the surrogate mom. Sometimes she was the doting wife, who pretended to hang on George's every word. (That personality was particularly nauseating.) But other times, like now, she

was
the Evil Twin.
The Wicked Witch of the West Village. A psychopath. Someone out of control.

There was only one reason for the switches, Gaia figured. The woman had a hidden agenda. She was obviously a schemer--and occasionally all the deception took its toll. Maybe she was stealing George's money. It would make sense. There was no way Ella could support herself without him. She was supposed to be this up-and-coming photographer, but Gaia hadn't seen
one
picture she had taken--other than the lame ones in this house. And they certainly weren't of publishable quality. Yes, maybe she was embezzling from George, siphoning his funds into various offshore bank accounts--and then
poof!
--she'd disappear.

Maybe she would even do it sometime soon. George would be a lot better off. Gaia could always hope.

"Don't you have anything to say for yourself?" Ella demanded.

"Like what?"

"Like why you're wandering the streets two days before Christmas?"

"I didn't realize Christmas Eve
Eve
was such a big deal in the Niven household," Gaia replied evenly.

Ella's face darkened. "Well, maybe if you actually spent some
time
here, things would be different," she snapped.

"I spend lots of time here," Gaia muttered. "I probably spend more time here than
you
do. You're the one who's never around."

"That--that ... that's completely untrue," Ella sputtered.