Fearless: No. 2 - Sam (Fearless) (5 page)

Sometimes
I worry there's something wrong with me. Sometimes I worry I don't actually feel things like regular people do. Often I'm watching the world rather than actually living in it. It's not just that I feel distant from the world. The thing that worries me is that a lot of times, I feel distant from myself. I watch myself like I'd watch an actor in a movie. I think, I observe, I process, but I don't
feel
anything.

Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever sat at the funeral of your great-aunt, for example, and worn a solemn expression on your face and tried to tell yourself all the ways in which it was sad, without actually feeling sad at all?

Have you ever met somebody who said, "Oh my God, that's so funny!" all the time, but never actually laughed? I'm worried that's me.

When my parents split up when I was in fifth grade, I said all of the things a sad kid says in that circumstance. I even wrung out a few tears. When they got back together ten months later, I shared in the happiness. But for me it was abstract. I could sort of talk myself into feeling something -- or at least into believing I felt something -- but it didn't come naturally. The emotions certainly didn't rush over me like a wave. I was their eager host, never their victim.

Maybe that's really lucky; I don't know.

But the flip side of experiencing pain abstractly is that you experience pleasure that way, too. Sometimes Heather and I will be eating a romantic dinner together or making out in the park, and it feels really good and everything, but I find myself wondering if I'm missing out on something.

I think this is the reason I can't get over Gaia Moore. I think it's the reason why I'm intensely attracted to her and repelled by her at the same time. When I'm with her -- when I even think of her -- I feel things. I feel a wave brewing just out of reach, building and swelling into a breaker of dangerous proportions.

So maybe you can see why I have mixed feelings about getting close to Gaia. I'm not sure I want to lose control. I mean, who would willingly turn himself into a victim?

Maybe that's what love is -- I don't know.

Sam couldn't help smiling."Yeah, I'm getting lucky.Very lucky."

GAIA IS IN DANGER.

Tom Moore looked up from his laptop computer. He'd been thinking vaguely of Gaia all evening -- there was nothing unusual in that -- but this was the first time a specific thought coalesced in his mind.

For most of his life he'd
discounted notions of telepathy
with a certain scorn, but his last five years in the CIA had opened him up to almost any possibility. Was Gaia truly in danger? He felt the familiar worry roiling his stomach.

He looked out the window of the airplane. The plane was either crossing desert or ocean because the sky was almost clear of cloud cover and beneath him was blackness. There wasn't a single light or other sign of human life. He felt terribly lonely.

He wasn't worried about danger in any ordinary sense. Gaia could get herself out of most situations. Tom, of all people, would know.
He was the one who'd taught her.
In the case of a mugger or purse snatcher going up against Gaia, Tom would frankly fear more for the criminal than her. Gaia was intensely strong, a master of martial arts and most commonly used weapons, and moreover she was free of the fear that compromised ordinary people. Or at least she
was --

Was.

What did he know of her now?

He knew where she lived and where she went to school. Twice a year he received a heavily encrypted notice of her safety and general progress from the agency. He looked forward to those updates with the fervor of a man grasping for a lifeline, even though they were absurdly short, stiff, and uninformative.

That was it. He knew nothing of her friends, her habits, her pleasures, her emotional state. He had no idea how she was coping with her losses or how close the danger was.

"Sir?" An attendant offered him dinner on a tray. The smell further distressed his stomach. The food on U.S. military planes was even worse than on commercial flights.

"No. Thanks. Maybe later."

"We should be landing in Tel Aviv in approximately seventeen minutes, sir."

"Very well."

Tom looked back at his computer screen. His current briefing involved hundreds and hundreds of pages that had been downloaded via satellite during the course of the flight.
One couldn't escape even for a matter of minutes anymore.

He couldn't give his mind to the intricacies of desert diplomacy right now.

There were other dangers to Gaia. More insidious ones that struck close to home. And how could he possibly protect her? Apart from his memories, that was the worst pain he faced.

In the old days, when Gaia was still a child, he'd been purely blown away by her abilities.
She was a miracle.
His greatest gift. Her brilliance, her beauty, her athleticism, and most of all her God-given sense of honor astonished him every single hour he spent with her. He couldn't imagine what he had done in this life to deserve such a child.

But in these strange days he found himself wishing and praying that his darling, magnificent Gaia were a meek, ordinary creature, likely to catch the attention of no one. A daughter he could trust, above all, to stay out of trouble.

"MAN, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR teeth?" Tarick asked. His eyes were bugged out the way they got when he was excited about something.

Marty put his hand over his mouth. He was embarrassed. One front tooth was gone, and the smaller one to the side of it was cracked down the middle. "The girl got in a lucky punch."

CJ snorted and leaned back against the fountain in Washington Square. "The girl laid him out for like five minutes," he explained. "The girl kicked his ass." He was relieved that Gaia had busted somebody else for once.

Tarick turned cold eyes on him.
He got up off the fountain wall and paced. "And you, my man. Not having a lot of luck, either?"

CJ could feel his face fall. He'd been dreading this little talk with Tarick for a good reason. "She's tough, man. She's, like, supernatural. And now she's got somebody watching her back. I had a bead on her down on Mercer Street. I had her, I'm telling you, and somebody wearing a parka and a ski mask bagged me from behind and ran off."

"Who was it?" Tarick asked. He looked doubtful.

"Somebody. I don't know. I told you -- I couldn't see a face," CJ said.

"You're getting real creative about coming up with excuses," Tarick said.

CJ glared at him.
It was unfair.
"I am totally serious, man. Marty woulda seen 'em, too, but he was out cold."

Marty looked hurt, but he didn't say anything.

Tarick shook his head. He looked at his watch. He sighed, like he was holding back his temper.

CJ was starting to feel really uneasy. The midday sun had disappeared, and clouds were rolling in from the west. The October air was suddenly cold against CJ's bare head. He felt goose bumps rising all along his back, coursing up his neck and scalp.

"CJ, my man," Tarick started slowly. "This is not hard. You got a powerful weapon. You know where this girl lives. You gotta do what you said you were gonna do."

CJ nodded.

"And you gotta do it, like I said, by midnight Saturday. We're not fooling around here, are we?"

CJ shook his head.

Tarick sat back on the fountain wall just inches away. He put a hand on
CJ's bald scalp.
"I need to be able to tell the boys we avenged Marco, you know what I mean?"

CJ wished Tarick would remove his hand. It wasn't supposed to be comforting. It was a threat.

"Yeah," CJ mumbled.

"So let's make it crystal clear here, okay?" Tarick increased the pressure of his palm against CJ's shrinking scalp. "Saturday at midnight. If Gaia's not dead . . ."

Tarick paused, and CJ stared at him expectantly.

"Then you are."

SEARCH: THOMAS MOORE

No Match Found

Search:
Special Agent Moore

Arlington, Virginia

No Match Found

Search:
Federal Agent #4466

No Match Found

Search:
Michael Sage

No Match Found

Search:
Robert W. Connelly

No Match Found

Search:
Enigma

No Match Found

Search:
My goddamned father, you stupid morons.

No Match Found

Search:

Gaia threw the mouse at the monitor. She was getting frustrated. She'd hacked her way into the files of the appropriate federal agency, but the search engine refused to recognize her father's name, his old badge number, or any of his old aliases.

Was he with the agency anymore?
Was he even still alive?

She'd always told herself the government would notify her if he were dead. The agency was the only place that knew her whereabouts. She'd also told herself that her dad had to have been up to some pretty covert and important stuff -- like single-handedly saving the planet, for instance -- to have abandoned her this way.

She told herself these things, but that didn't make them true.

Gaia heard a noise. Oh, no. If Ella was home, she'd have to jump out the window again. A moment spent with that woman was like
chewing tinfoil.
And this was not Gaia's computer to be performing illegal operations -- or actually any operations -- on.

She crept to the door of George's office on silent feet. The house was still. She crept back to the computer. According to the time in the right corner of the screen, she had seven minutes before Ella was due home. George wouldn't be home till after seven.

Okay. Now what? She drummed her fingers on the mouse pad. She didn't know the name her father used. She didn't know where he lived. She didn't know where he was working. He'd never, in almost five years, made any attempt to contact her. Not quite your doting father.

She felt the old anger building. Time for a little distraction. As far as Gaia was concerned, a little distraction was worth a lot of solution.

Okay. Plan 2. Sam. She had been less successful with plan 2 than plan 1, if that was possible. Could you get lower than zero? Was it appropriate
to bring in negative
numbers for the sake of comparison?

She aimed her fingers back at the keyboard. She called up an address-locator web site and typed in Sam's basic information.

Aha! All was not lost! Within seconds she had a definitive answer:

[email protected]

She was just one (borrowed) computer away from direct and private conversation with Sam.

Ha!

And she'd done it while leaving one full minute to hide before Ella got home.

SAM LAY IN HIS LUMPY, STEEL-frame twin bed, considering Heather's note. He didn't need to look at the note to consider it because he had stared at it so long, he'd committed it to memory.

Heather was ready.
How long had he wanted to hear those words? How long had he fantasized about this very thing?

God, and after seeing him with Gaia, he'd expected her to be pissed or at least suspicious. But she wasn't. She was angelic and totally trusting. And he was an undeserving bastard who was about to get
unbelievably lucky.
Almost too lucky to be true.

So what was the problem?

Forget it. There wasn't a problem. He wasn't going to get derailed by thinking about the problem.

If there was a problem, that is. Which there wasn't.

He was really, really happy as hell, even if he didn't realize it one hundred percent yet.

Time to think about Saturday night. That was only two days away. Heather was coming here, to his dorm room, and they were going to . . .

Oh, man. He was starting to feel tingly. He stared up at the stained acoustical tile on the ceiling.
It wasn't the most romantic sight.
He glanced at the piles of clothes around his room. He looked at the mound of chess books, magazines, and clippings blanketing his desk. He eyed the new box of syringes he'd just bought for his diabetes treatments. He propped himself up on his elbow and studied the grayish sheet covering his mattress. Exactly when was the last time he'd washed that sheet? Had it been gray to start out with, or was it born white? The fact that he couldn't remember the answer to either question wasn't a good sign.

Wait a minute. Heather. Gorgeous, perfectly dressed, sweet-smelling Heather was going to come into this room? This pigpen? This landfill?
Was he seriously thinking of lying her down on this filthy bed?
It wasn't only unromantic; it was probably a health hazard.

He sat up with a jolt and swung his legs off the bed. He swept up a pile of clothes and threw them on the bed beside him. Lurking under the pile were dust creatures that belonged in a horror movie. Thank God his mother couldn't see this.

In his freshman year he'd kept up some semblance of hygiene (if you defined the term very loosely) because he had a roommate. But this year he had his own minuscule room, attached to a common room shared by three other guys. He pretended to get indignant when the other guys left spilled beer on the vomit-colored carpet in the common room or ground Cheetos into microscopic orange dust under-foot. But that didn't mean he'd spent even one second looking after his own room. Usually if Heather came around, they hung out in the common room and watched TV or raided the minifridge. She hadn't inspected the
frightening cave
where he slept.

It was high time to reacquaint himself with the laundry room in the basement. He'd sweep out whatever flora and fauna were growing under his bed. He'd get rid of the altar to Gary Kasparov -- no need to subject Heather to a full-on dork fest. Besides, the knitted brow of Kasparov didn't exactly
put you in the mood.

He was just consolidating his massive clothes pile when the door swung open.

"Hey, Moon."

It was Mike Suarez, one of his suite mates.

"Does the word
knock
mean anything to you, Suarez?" Sam asked.

"Does the phrase 'lock your friggin' door if you don't want company' mean anything to you?"

Sam laughed. "The lock is busted. Half the time you turn the knob, it falls off into your hand." He made a mental note to get that fixed before Saturday.

Suarez watched him clean for a minute.

"You planning on getting lucky?"

Sam paused and rubbed his nose. Dust bits were flying in his nostrils, making them itch. "What do you mean?"

"I can think of only one reason why a guy cleans his room," Suarez said suggestively.

Sam's energy sagged at the thought of being such a cliché. He tossed the ball of laundry on the ground.

"So?"

Sam couldn't help smiling. "Yeah, I'm getting lucky. Very lucky."