Fearless: No. 2 - Sam (Fearless) (4 page)

Her adrenaline was pumping now. Her muscles were buzzing with intensity. She was an easy target this close.

THERE WERE MOMENTS IN LIFE WHEN
words failed to convey your thoughts. There were moments when your thoughts failed to convey your feelings. Then there were moments when even your feelings failed to convey your feelings.

This was one of those, Heather realized as she gaped at Sam and Gaia Moore sitting on the park bench together.

They weren't kissing. They weren't touching. They weren't even talking. But Sam and Gaia could have been doing the nasty right there on the spot, and it wouldn't have carried the intimacy of this tentative, nervous, neurotic union she now witnessed between them.

Maybe she was imagining it, Heather considered. Maybe it was a figment of her own obsessive, jealous mind.

She'd almost rather believe she was crazy than that Sam,
her Sam,
was falling in love with Gaia. It was too coincidental, just too cruel to be real. Like one of those Greek tragedies she read for Mr. Hirschberg's class. Gaia was the person she most despised. Sam was the person she loved.

Had she done something to bring this on herself? What was it the Greek guys always got smacked for?
Hubris,
that was the word -- believing you were too good, too strong, invulnerable. The world had a way of teaching you that you weren't invulnerable.

Heather was paralyzed. Anger told her to get between them and make trouble, Pride told her to run away. Hurt told her to cry. Cunning told her to make Sam feel as guilty and small as possible. She waited to hear what Intelligence had to say. It never spoke first, but its advice was usually worth waiting for.

Her mind raced and sorted. Considered and rejected. Then finally, Intelligence piped up with a strategy.

"Sam," Heather stated. Good, firm, steady voice. She stepped around to the front of the bench and faced them straight on.

Sam looked up. Shock, fear, guilt, uncertainty, and regret waged war over his features.

Staring at them, Heather made no secret of her surprise and distress, but she overlaid a brave, tentative, give-them-the-benefit-of-the-doubt smile.

The effect was just as she'd intended. Sam looked like he wished to pluck out both of his eyeballs on the spot.

"Hey, Gaia," Heather said. Her expression remained one of naive,
martyrlike
confusion.

Gaia looked less sure of herself than Heather had ever seen her before. Gaia cleared her throat, uncrossed her legs, straightened her posture, said nothing. Heather detected a faint blush on her cheeks.

Now Heather looked back at Sam. She applied no obvious pressure, just silence, which always proved the fiercest pressure of all.

"Heather, I -- we -- you --" Sam looked around, desperate for her to interrupt.

She didn't.

"I was just . . . and Gaia, here . . ."

Heather wasn't going to help him out of this.
Let him suffer.

"We were just . . . talking about chess." With that word, Sam regained his footing. He took a big breath. "Gaia is a big chess player, too."

Heather nodded trustingly. "Oh."

Sam looked at his watch. There wasn't a watch. A moment's discomfort. He regrouped again. "I gotta go, though." He stood up. "Physics study group." He offered his textbook as evidence.

"Right," Heather said. "Wait, I have something for you." She fished around in her bag and brought out the red sealed envelope. "Here. I was looking for you because I wanted to give you this." She smiled shyly. She shrugged. "It's kind of stupid, but ... whatever." Her voice was soft enough to be intimate and directed
solely at him.

He had to come two steps closer to take the card from her hand. This required him to turn his back on Gaia.

Sam glanced at his name, written in flowery cursive, and the heart she'd drawn next to it. When he looked at Heather again, his eyes were pained, uncertain.

He cleared his throat. "Why don't you walk with me, and I'll open it when I get to my dorm?"

Heather nodded brightly. "Okay."

He pressed the card carefully between the pages of his physics book and anchored the book under his arm. Heather took his free hand and laced her fingers through his as she often did, and they started across the park.

Sam said nothing to Gaia. He didn't even cast a backward glance.

But Heather couldn't help herself. She threw a tiny look over her shoulder. Then, without breaking her stride, she planted one fleeting kiss on Sam's upper arm, just the place where her mouth naturally landed on his tall frame. It was a casual kiss, light, one of millions, but undoubtedly
a kiss of ownership.

"See ya," Heather said to Gaia, silently thanking Intelligence for dealing her yet another effective strategy.

It was funny, thought Heather. Intelligence and Cunning so often ended up in the same place.

WHAT GOOD WAS IT BEING A TRAINED
fighting machine when you couldn't beat the hell out of a
loathsome creature
like Heather Gannis? Gaia wondered bitterly as she stomped along the overcrowded sidewalks of SoHo.

What a catty piece of crap Heather was. No, that was too kind. Cats were fuzzy, warm-blooded, and somewhat loyal. Heather was more reptile than mammal -- cold-blooded and remote with dead, hooded eyes.

Gaia was supposed to be smart. When she was six years old, her IQ tested so high, she'd been sent to the National Institutes of Health to spend a week with electrodes stuck to her forehead. And yet in Heather's presence Gaia felt like a
slobbering idiot.
She'd probably misspell her name if put on the spot.

"Oops. Sorry," Gaia mumbled to a man in a beige suit whose shoulder she caught as she crossed Spring Street.

Trendy stores were ablaze along the narrow cobblestoned streets. Well-dressed crowds flowed into the buzzing, overpriced restaurants that Ella always wanted to go to. Gaia strode past a cluster of
depressingly hip girls
who probably never considered wearing boots with capri pants.

Gaia caught her reflection in the darkened window of a florist shop. Ick. Blah. Blech. Who let her out on the streets of New York in that sweater? Exactly how fat could her legs look? High time to get rid of the --

Suddenly she caught sight of another familiar reflection. He was behind her, weaving and dodging through the throng, staying close but trying to avoid her notice. His face was beaded with sweat. One of his hands was tucked in his jacket.

Oh, shit. Well, at least you couldn't commit fashion blunders from the grave, could you?

She walked faster. She jaywalked across the street and ducked into a boutique. She wanted to see whether CJ was just keeping tabs on her or whether he intended to kill her immediately.

Gaia blinked in the laboratory-bright shop. The decor was spare, and the clothing was inscrutable. In the midst of all the chrome shelving and halogen lighting there seemed to be about three items for sale, all of them black. It made for poor browsing.

CJ stopped outside.
He knew she knew he was there.

"Excuse me, miss." An impatient voice echoed through the stark, high-ceilinged room.

Gaia spun around to see a severe-looking saleslady pinning her to the floor with a suspicious look. Salesladies in SoHo had a sixth sense for whether you could afford anything in their store. It was a superhuman power. It deserved to be investigated on
The X-Files
. This particular woman obviously knew that Gaia couldn't afford even a zipper or sleeve from the place.

"We're closed," the saleslady snapped. Her outfit was constructed of incredibly stiff-looking black material that covered her from her pointy chin to the very pointy tips of her shoes. Gaia couldn't help wondering if she ate breakfast or watched TV in that getup.

"The door was open," Gaia pointed out.

The woman cocked her head and made a sour face. "Apparently so. But we're closed."

"Fine." Gaia glanced through the glass door. CJ was pacing in an area of about two square feet.
He was ready to pounce.
She was pretty sure that the hand concealed in his roomy jacket held a gun.

"In the future, when you're closed," Gaia offered, trying to bide a little time, "you should consider
locking
your door. It's a common business practice. It not only alerts your customers to the fact that your store is closed but can help reduce crime as well."

"Are you done?" the woman asked, rolling her eyeballs skyward.

"Um, yeah." Gaia glanced out the door reluctantly. It opened outward. The glass was thick and well reinforced.

"Please leave."

Gaia backed up a few feet. "Okay," she said.

One . . . two . . . three . . .

Gaia slammed into the door at full strength. Just as she'd hoped, the door flew open and caught CJ hard in the face, knocking him backward. She heard his groan of surprise and pain. It gave her the moment she needed to run.

SoHo, with its single-file sidewalks and indignant pedestrians, was not a good place for sprinting.

"Ex
cuse
me!"

"Yo, watch it!"

"What's your problem?"

Gaia left a stream of angry New Yorkers in her wake. "Sorry!" she called out in a blanket apology. It was the best she could do at the moment.

She heard CJ shouting behind her. Then pounding footsteps and the protests of more unhappy pedestrians.

Gaia hung a quick left on Greene Street. She navigated the sidewalk with the deftness of a running back.

She heard screams as CJ (presumably) crashed into a woman with a screechy voice. He was gaining on Gaia. He cared less than she did about
thrashing innocent bystanders.

Gaia hooked onto Broome Street and ran west. CJ was just a few yards behind. The street was clotted with traffic, and she needed to cross to the south side, where the sidewalk was clear. The crosswalk was too far. She heard more screams and then a man's voice.

"That kid's got a gun! A
gun!
Everybody down!"

"Damn it!" Gaia muttered. Her adrenaline was pumping now. Her muscles were buzzing with intensity. She was an
easy target
this close. Now what?

Parked cars were nose to tail at the curb without a break. Gaia pounced on the first parked car she came upon, putting both hands above the driver's side window and vaulting herself onto the roof. She was in
full flee mode
now, and she didn't have the luxury to care about making a spectacle. Thin metal thundered and buckled under her feet. She surveyed the traffic piled up behind the light. She jumped to the roof of the next-nearest car and picked her way across the street from car to car the way she'd use stones to traverse a river. Cars honked. Cabbies shouted. A shot rang out to her left. Oh, man.

CJ had beaten her to the other side of Broome Street. The idiot was shooting at her in front of hundreds of witnesses. God, she wanted to wring his crazy neck! It was no fair going up against someone with a gun and no sense.

The traffic light was about to change. Any second, the stones under her feet were going to start moving downstream. She hopped her way back to the north side of the street in half the time and sprinted along Broome Street to the east now. A fast left took her zigging up Mercer. Her breath was coming fast now. The muscles in her legs were starting to ache.

This lower stretch of Mercer was nearly deserted. If she just ran north, she could cut over a couple of blocks and get to the park. She could run her way out of this. She had her Saucony sneakers on her feet. Footsteps sounded behind her, and she accelerated her pace. She knew that if CJ paused to take aim, he'd lose her.
Faster, faster,
she urged her protesting leg muscles.

"You're dead!" he shouted after her.

Not yet,
she promised herself. She could see the lights of Houston Street. She was getting close.

Suddenly her escape route was obscured by a large, silhouetted figure. As she got closer she realized his presence wasn't coincidental. In the side wash of a streetlight she recognized the face. She didn't know his name, but she'd often seen him with CJ and Marco and the other thugs in the park. A blade winked in his hand.

Ka-ping!
CJ fired a shot, which bounced off the cobblestones several feet away.

Oh, this sucked.
This really sucked.
Another wave of adrenaline flowed through her limbs and sizzled in her chest. She dragged in as much air as her lungs could take.

She juked, but he wouldn't let her pass. CJ was hard on her heels, so she couldn't think of stopping. CJ would succeed in shooting her in the back if she gave him any time at all. The space between CJ and his accomplice was closing fast.

Come on. Come on. Come on.

The guy in front of her raised the blade. Gaia didn't stop running. She lifted her arm, drew it back, and without losing a step punched him as hard as she could in the middle of his face. "Sorry," she murmured to him. Judging from the sting in her fist, she'd broken a tooth or two.

A bullet seared past her right shoulder. Another past her knee. The toe of her trusty sneaker caught in a deep groove between the cobblestones and she went down hard, scraping the skin of her forearms and shins.

Shit. Oh, shit.

Her mind was dreamlike again. She didn't feel any pain from her ragged, bleeding skin or from the impact to her wrist and knees. There wasn't anything wrong with her nervous system. It was that every cell of her body was fiercely anticipating the dreaded shot. Some atavistic impulse caused her to bring her hands over her head and curl her knees up in the fetal position.

Time slowed to an eerie, inexplicable stop. Although CJ had been within a few yards of her, the shot didn't come. She took big gulps of air. There were no footsteps. No bullets. She heard nothing.

Slowly, slowly, in disbelief she lifted her head from the street. She turned around cautiously. Her legs shook as she straightened them under the weight of her body.

She peered into the dark, desolate street.

He wasn't there. He really wasn't. CJ had disappeared, just when his duck had finally sat.

It was impossible. It made no sense to Gaia. Something told her there was no reasonable explanation for this. But she also knew it would be a mistake to hang around and try to figure out why.