Lost (10 page)

As more raindrops hit Gaia's face, the little brick entryway at the corner of Riverside Park came into view, and Gaia instantly knew something was wrong. A couple of men hovered near the curb, intrigued by something they were watching but clearly ready to bolt if the need presented itself. All the other pedestrians were swinging wide the moment they arrived at
the edge of the park. They were crossing the road at unsafe moments, checking over their shoulders. Clearly something was happening that they didn't want to get caught up in.

Which probably meant it was something Gaia would just
love
to join in on.

She jogged across Riverside Drive and skidded to a stop next to the two spectators. A man dressed in head-to-toe black had another guy, someone with mismatched shoes and very baggy sweatpants, pinned to the ground. On instinct, Gaia knew the man in black was the bad guy here. Maybe because black clothing meant villain. Maybe because he seemed too professional. Maybe because he seemed like he could easily be one of Loki's men. And if he was, then he was here for her. And if he were here for her . . .

Gaia took a running start, bent at the waist, and slammed into the assailant, tackling him to the ground. They tumbled, head over heels, away from his victim, and Gaia made sure she landed on top. She pushed herself up slightly, pulled back, and punched the man in black with all of her strength.

“Who sent you?” she shouted, pulling back and punching him again before he had time to recover from the first blow. His head snapped back and forth on his neck like it was on a hinge.

She shifted her weight, and he screamed—an agonized, screeching scream. That was when she noticed
that his arm was in a sling. How perfect was that? She pressed her knee into his shoulder, and he screamed again.

“Who sent you?” she shouted.

“I . . . I don't know what you mean,” he sputtered, spittle flicking her in the face. His eyes were wild with pain. His face looked like it had been put through a meat grinder. At least the mismatched-clothing man had held his own.

“You wanted to meet me here!” she shouted again, raindrops now dotting her arms, stinging her with their force. “Who sent you?”

He kicked up his leg and sent her sprawling away from his arm, then somehow staggered to his feet. Gaia stood quickly and lunged at him, but he was too fast. He backhanded her with his good hand and sent her reeling around. Definitely one of Loki's men. No one else would be able to function in that kind of pain. When the world stopped spinning, she was facing him again, and he leapt into the air, spinning with his leg outstretched. But Gaia saw it coming. She reached up and stopped his ankle with both arms before he could land his kick.

He crumpled to the ground but rolled over instantly, and as Gaia advanced on him, he thrust up his leg and caught her in the stomach. Gaia ricocheted back. She jumped up onto the step surrounding the monument as the man in black climbed to his feet.

“You're her, aren't you?” he said, then spit out a wad of blood.

“Like you weren't expecting me,” Gaia shot back. The rain was driving faster and faster, soaking her through to her skin and making her hair stick in clumps to her face.

“I wasn't,” he said. “But it will be my pleasure to kill you.”

Damn, this guy was pretty full of himself, considering his condition.

Gaia smiled as he rushed her, then easily hopped out of the way. He stumbled forward and braced his good hand against the step, then spun around, throwing a punch in her general direction. Gaia ducked it easily. She pulled up her fist and swung down, pounding him across the cheek. He doubled over and she kneed him in the face, opening the cut in his already swollen lip. He tried valiantly to throw a right hook, but Gaia hit the ground and kicked out her leg, sweeping his legs out from under him. He hit the ground, facedown.

This was definitely easier than fighting Jake.

Gaia stepped around him, one foot on either side of his torso, grabbed his bad arm, and pulled it back.

The scream this time was not of a human nature.

“Who sent you?” she shouted again. She just wanted to hear it. She wanted to hear him say her uncle's name. She wanted it confirmed.

But then the arm went limp in her hand. The man in black had passed out from the pain. Gaia dropped the useless limb and looked around, her head still a bit dizzy from all the reeling. Dizzy from having gotten no answers.

Where was the guy the man in black had attacked? Maybe he had some answers. Maybe the man attacked him for a reason.

But before she could focus on anyone, she felt the blackout coming. The tingling sensation started in the back of her skull and crept forward. She fought to stave it off, but she knew it wouldn't work. It never did. She had to find the victim. She had to talk to him before he got away. . . .

Something moved at Gaia's feet. Someone was pushing himself up from the ground. One black shoe. One white. It was him. It was the guy. It was . . .

Gaia swallowed hard as he stood up and looked her in the eyes. She couldn't trust her vision, clouded by so many tiny prickles of black. By the raindrops that clung to her eyelashes. She had to be hallucinating. Those hazel eyes. Those laugh lines. That wavy brownish-red hair. That face. That face. That face.

And then he spoke. “Hi,” he said. He smiled.

“Sam?” Gaia asked.

And everything went black.

Her
hair is dirty and wet and matted from the rain. It's sticking to her forehead and her cheek in knotted tangles. She has a bruise just above her eye that is a swirl of purples and blues. There's dried blood under her nose. Her skin is pale, and her lips are flaking. She's wearing a T-shirt big enough for a linebacker and a pair of muddied, ripped cords with her ever present black boots.

She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

All that time. All that time I was imprisoned, kept away from all human contact except the occasional roughing up by the guards, all I thought about was her. I thought about the first day I saw her in the park, playing chess—that look of concentration and joy on her face. I thought about the first time she smiled at me, the first time we kissed, the first time we touched. But after a while, with
nothing to look at but blank white walls, and with no one to see but those wrinkled, evil faces, I started to wonder if I'd made her up. If I'd imagined her as a way to stay sane. Or at the very least if I was building her up to be something she wasn't. If I was imagining this perfection because it was all I had.

But now it's clear that I didn't imagine a thing. She's even more beautiful than I remembered.

The Dream Sam

THE FIRST THING GAIA FELT WAS
the water flicking against her eyelids. Splattering along her bare arms. Then a gust of wind whirled by, sending goose bumps over her chilled skin, and she pulled her arms around herself, nestling deeper into the arms that held her. She was outside. Why? How had she gotten—

Wait a minute? Arms holding her?

Gaia wrenched her eyes open with some effort, then blinked rapidly to clear the painful dryness that stung them. She shivered, and the arms tightened around her, holding her close. When she was finally able to keep her eyes open, finally able to see, she realized that she was actually still asleep. That all this rain and wind and cold and scratchiness was part of a very vivid dream. Because Sam Moon could not be holding her and smiling down at her. Sam Moon was long dead.

“Hey. You're awake,” the dream Sam said. She felt his voice reverberate through his chest, beneath her cheek. It sent a pleasant shiver deep down into her body, and she smiled. Might as well enjoy this while she could. Before her subconscious took it all away.

“Hey,” Gaia replied. “You're alive.” It was an unmomentous thing to say, but this was an unmomentous moment. It was a dream, after all. And it wasn't as if she hadn't dreamed of Sam before. She had. She'd had
nightmares almost every night since he died. This had to be another one. Any second now Josh would come along and shoot Sam in the head. And there would be nothing Gaia could do to stop it.

“That's all I get?” Sam said with a smirk. He touched her face, wiping a spot of rain away from her nose. His fingertips felt so real. “I go MIA for months, and all I get is your dry irony? Not that I mind, exactly. I mean, I'd hate to think you'd changed.”

Any second now Gaia was sure she'd wake up. Sam would poof away as always, and she'd wake up in her bed at Natasha's to the annoying sound of her alarm clock bleeping.

She turned slightly, and a stabbing jolt of pain sliced through her temple from just above her right eye. She squeezed her eyes shut, and her hand flew to the bruise, her heart pounding.

That was real. That was real pain.

She stared up at Sam, amazed. She hadn't woken up when that jolt of pain had hit her. And if she hadn't woken up, then that meant Sam really was alive. In a flash it all came rushing back to her—the note, the subway ride uptown, the fight, the man with two mismatched shoes that had turned out to be—

“Sam?” she said through the throbbing in her head.

“There she is,” Sam said. “Now you're awake.”

“You're here? But how—how did you—” Gaia
broke off as tears threatened. She reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck forcefully, awkwardly, with all the grace of a mule. He squeezed her back so hard that for a moment she felt like she was going to crack.

He's
alive! He's really here!
Gaia's mind screamed through the million swirling images and thoughts and emotions that whirled through her head and heart. She was holding Sam Moon in her arms. She hadn't been responsible for his death because he wasn't actually dead. He was right here. As real and alive as ever.

She reached up and touched her fingers to his wet hair. Squeezed his back, his shoulders, then hugged him again, pressing her face into his rank T-shirt that smelled of stale sweat and ammonia. It was all real.

“But you died!” Gaia exclaimed when she pulled back, looking into his face to make sure he was okay. That it was actually him. The feeling of relief and happiness that washed over her was overwhelming. The shock almost paralyzing. How was any of this possible?

“Is that what they told you?” Sam asked, pushing her wet, clumpy hair away from her face and cupping her cheeks with his wet palms. “They didn't kill me. I thought they were going to, but they didn't. All I remember is fighting with this guy, and then I guess I was just knocked out, and then I woke up and I was in this compound in these different clothes and surrounded by guards. . . . I was kidnapped and I was held and no
one ever told me why and I—” He cut himself off and laughed. “Sorry, I guess I'm babbling. I haven't talked to anyone in so long.”

“It's okay. I want to know everything,” Gaia said. “Where did they keep you?” It was just one of a thousand questions on the tip of her tongue, and it was the first to fall out. Sam shifted his weight, and Gaia suddenly realized that she was still cradled in his lap.

If Ed could see me now,
her mind thought incongruously. She blushed and slid away from Sam, landing her butt on the wet bricks and turning to face him. Still, she couldn't seem to completely break contact. Letting go of him would be too dangerous. As long as she could touch him, he was real. So she held both his hands in hers, and they laced a few fingers together awkwardly.

“I was in some kind of compound in the Berkshires, I think,” Sam said. “At least that's what I could tell from the route I had to use to get here.” He uncrossed his legs to stretch them out, then crossed them again, looking at her almost forlornly, as if he missed having her in his lap.

“The Berkshires?” Gaia repeated. That was where she'd grown up with her parents. Had Loki had this compound there all along? Her parents had moved the family there to get away from her uncle, but of course he had followed. Of course.

Gaia had to swallow hard to keep the bile from rushing up in her throat. This was not what she should be concentrating on right now. Loki was out of the picture.

“I'm sorry about the weird note I left you,” Sam said. “I wasn't sure what to do.”

“So
you
left it,” Gaia said. “When were you at the school?”

“A few hours ago,” Sam replied, looking down at his chest. “That's where I got these clothes. They made us wear jumpsuits at the compound.”

“How did you get out?” Gaia asked, shaking her head slightly in an effort to focus. There was so much to take in—so many clues to listen for. And all the while her brain was repeating,
Sam's alive! Sam's here! Sam's alive! Sam's here!
It was all a lot to deal with at one time.

“Well, I tried to escape a couple of times when I first got there, but let's just say they didn't like that very much,” Sam said, looking away. A shadow crossed his face, and his grip on her hands tightened. Gaia's stomach turned. What had they done to him? What had they done to him simply because he'd made the mistake of knowing her?

“I gave up for a while, but a couple of days ago everything changed,” Sam continued, his voice gaining strength. “The place had been a well-oiled machine, and then suddenly it was total chaos. So I took my
chance, and I got the hell out of there.” He looked to his left, his eyes growing distant.

“He was the last of the ones that came after me, I think,” Sam said.

Gaia's eyes traveled over the body of the man she had just rendered unconscious. In all the confusion she'd completely forgotten about him. Rivulets of rain were running across the bridge of his nose and down the other side of his face. His back rose and fell slowly with his breathing. If he hadn't looked so worked over, Gaia would have thought he was just sleeping happily, knocked out from an all-night drinking binge.