Chase (17 page)

The place was pitch black. Gaia stepped into the large, airy room, moving only inches from the door. It was freezing inside, as if someone had left the air conditioning on full blast, but the hair on Gaia's neck
wasn't standing on end because of the chill. Someone was here—she could feel it.

“Jake?” she called out.

Before her question stopped echoing, someone grabbed her from behind. Her arms were pinned back, and as much as Gaia struggled, she couldn't free herself.

So here it is
, she thought.
Ambush time.
Apparently Tatiana had made herself some friends while she was on the lam. Some friends other than Jake.

“Ooh . . . feisty,” a growling voice said in her ear, accompanied by
the thick stench of scotch.

Gaia wrinkled her nose in disgust and stopped trying to pull away. The guy seemed to like the struggling. And besides, she had a feeling he wasn't going to kill her. Not just yet. Tatiana was here somewhere, and she was going to want to show herself to Gaia before she died. She was going to want to gloat over her victory.

Gaia's assailant shoved her into a chair and proceeded to hold her down while some other person used thick ropes to bind her. Her hands were tied around the back of the chair, straining her arm muscles, and her ankles were each tied to a chair leg. As they worked, Gaia strained her ears to hear whether there were more people in the darkness, and there were. At least two—maybe more.

The two men stepped away from Gaia, satisfied that she was going nowhere, and the lights flickered on. Gaia blinked against the sudden brightness. When
she was able to focus again, she saw that five men, mostly in jeans and distressed suede and leather, surrounded her, each with his own special sneer and each with his own special gun aimed at her face. A couple of them looked strong, and most of them had the glassy eyes of total drunks. Gaia looked past them to the thick black velvet curtains that lined the two side walls, and then the door to the dojo's office opened and out walked Tatiana, her boots clicking on the polished wooden floor. She was wearing a short, dark wig,
but it was definitely her.

Gaia felt her blood start to race in her veins at the sight of her. Before this night was over, she was going to wipe that smirk off little Tatiana's face.

Ever so dramatically, Tatiana stepped across the room until she was face-to-face with Gaia but a few yards away. She flicked her blue eyes to each of her thugs, smiling a bit more each time, as if to draw Gaia's attention to them—as if to say, “I've got you now.”

Gaia took a deep breath, sighed, and adopted her most bored expression.

Tatiana's eyes narrowed. “You're going to tell me where my mother is,” she said, her voice filling the room.

Gaia's lips twitched. “No. You're going to tell me where my father is.”

“I don't think you're in any position to make demands,” Tatiana snapped.

Gaia's smile widened. “I wouldn't say that.”

Unarmed

“NOW!” JAKE SHOUTED.

He ripped away the black curtain that shrouded his face and stepped out into the dojo in perfect unison with nine of his closest, most powerful friends. He took in the scene quickly. Gaia was tied to a chair in the center of the room, Tatiana was looking at him, shocked, and five huge guys with guns were just turning around to take aim at the fighters who lined the walls. Jake and his friends had the gun toters surrounded, but they were also
unarmed.

“Dude, no one said anything about guns,” Jake's friend Thomas said through his teeth.

You read my mind
, Jake thought, trying not to let his fear show. Who
were
these girls?

Suddenly Tatiana reached behind her back and pulled a gun out of her waistband, aiming for Jake.

“Down!” Jake called out.

He dropped to the floor and rolled into the legs of the nearest guy, taking him down just as he fired his first shot—into the ceiling. After that, everything was a blur and Jake was moving on pure instinct. The guy's gun went skittering across the floor and slid under the curtains. He struggled to get up, but Jake and his sparring partner from the dojo, Derek, made sure he stayed down. It was almost too easy. The guy was clearly trashed, and he didn't have
much fight in him. A one-two punch from Derek, followed by an elbow jab to the back from Jake, and the dude had passed out on the floor, sleeping like a baby.

“No!” Tatiana yelled out over the sounds of fired shots and landed punches, the groans and grunts and shouts of the battle. “No! No! No!”

Jake glanced in her direction and saw that Christov had easily disarmed her before moving on to his next opponent. Tatiana was stomping her feet like a spoiled child.

Jake and Derek rose up into their fighting stances and surveyed the room. The big guy who'd arrived first with Tatiana was giving a couple of Jake's friends a hard time on the far side of the room.

“You help Tim,” Jake said, feeling not unlike an army general giving orders. It gave him a bit of a high.
If there was ever a time to play the superhero, this was it.
This was his moment. “I'm gonna get Gaia,” he added.

Derek nodded and ran across the room. Jake rushed over to Gaia and fell on his knees at her side. He yanked his switchblade from the back pocket of his jeans and went to work on the ropes that bound her wrists.

Jake Montone to the rescue!
a little voice in his brain shouted.
Super-Jake! Jake the Great . . .

“You carry a knife?” Gaia said, her voice strained.

“Only when I need to,” Jake replied. “You all right?” he asked as he sawed at the ropes.

“Been better,” Gaia replied.

Something about the way she said
it made Jake's heart stop short in his chest.
He pulled back a little and surveyed her body, making sure she wasn't hurt. There was a large stain of blood on the leg of her jeans, and it was spreading.

“Oh my God. You're shot,” he said, grabbing for her leg.

“Leave it,” Gaia demanded. “It's just a scratch.”

One of the thugs went flying over their heads and landed on his back with a loud moan. Jake still couldn't believe this was happening. When Gaia had told him that Tatiana was setting them both up, he'd had no idea she was going to bring
her own little army.

“Jake, please,” she said. “Tatiana . . .”

He glanced around and saw Tatiana searching the guy who'd just been tossed—shoving her hands frantically into his pockets and feeling along his legs. She was looking for a gun.

“Got it,” Jake said, his adrenaline pumping.

He sliced through the last threads of the fraying ropes and Gaia swung her arms free. Her eyes were trained on Tatiana, and Jake could tell she was salivating to get to the girl, but her legs were still bound. Jake stood up, grabbed the back of the chair, and ripped it
off the seat, tossing the shredded wood across the room.

“Can you stand?” he asked Gaia.

Tatiana was now crawling around the room, feeling under the curtains. She was only yards away from the first thug's gun.

Gaia grunted her approval and struggled up. The moment her butt was up, Jake sliced the wooden seat in two with one expertly placed
karate chop.
The seat fell free of the chair legs and he was able to pull the two rods of wood out of the ropes around Gaia's ankles.

As soon as Gaia was free, she spun around, her eyes searching. She spotted something and dove past Jake toward the back wall. At the same moment Tatiana finally found her gun and whirled around as she stood, her wig falling from her head, her eyes wild.

“Gaia!” Jake shouted.

But he didn't need to alert her. She'd found her own weapon and aimed it right back at Tatiana. The two girls cocked their guns at the same time and stood there, chests heaving, at opposite sides of the room,
an Old West-style standoff.

Okay
, Jake thought.
This is not your ordinary catfight.

He had no idea what was going to happen next, but he had the distinct feeling that it was not going to be good. His friends from the dojo, having made short work of Tatiana's little band of thugs, walked up behind him. They all stood there and watched the two girls in silent awe.

“You don't see that every day,” Derek whispered just off Jake's shoulder.

“No, you don't,” Jake replied.

“We're not going to solve this if we're both dead,” Gaia said, her shooting arm as steady as a tree branch.

“No, we're not,” Tatiana agreed.

“I don't want to shoot you,” Gaia said.

There was a beat. “Nor I you,” Tatiana replied.

She blinked. She was lying. In that moment Jake knew for absolute certain that Tatiana wanted Gaia dead. Gaia had warned him that this was the case earlier this afternoon when he told her about this meeting and had been honest about who was calling it. That was why he'd agreed to bring along his friends. That was why he was here. But he'd never fully believed it until that moment. Tatiana wanted to kill Gaia.
The girl really was a psycho.

“So why don't we just both put down our guns and talk this out?” Gaia suggested. “I'll tell you what I know about your mom, you tell me what you know about my dad.”

Tatiana took a deep breath. “Agreed,” she said.

Ever so slowly both girls lowered their arms and crouched to the floor to put down their guns. Gaia winced in pain and grabbed at her leg, and Jake's heart flew into his throat. He glanced at Tatiana, and she saw her opportunity. She reached behind her, and Jake caught a glimpse of silver—the butt of another gun—tucked into the waistband of her pants.

“No!” Jake shouted, and took off across the room.

One step and Tatiana had the gun in her hands.

The second step and she was training it on Gaia.

The third step and he swore he heard the catch of the trigger.

He threw himself into the air, his eyes locked on Gaia's shocked face. The sound of the gunshot exploded in his ears, and then
everything went black.

Tonight
, I swear on my life, I remembered what it was like to learn to walk. The first time, that is. Not the last time, after I got out of my wheelchair. I swear, I vividly remembered being one year old and concentrating my little diapered ass off as I tried to walk to my father's outstretched arms. Only this time I was concentrating to walk away from someone. And it took everything I had.

It's unbelievable, that thin line between love and hate. That tiny little thin line is like a balance beam that's . . . well, impossible to walk.

But somehow I did it. I put one foot in front of the other, and somehow I made it to the end of the block and got Kai to her building.

And then I took that last monster step. I kissed Kai good night.

And it wasn't half bad.

She thought of Jake's open, honest face . . . the way he'd looked at her as he threw himself in the path of the bullet that was meant for her heart.

Grub

GAIA PULLED THE METAL-AND-PLASTIC
chair over to the side of Jake's hospital bed and sat facing his side, watching the little line on his
heart monitor
jump up and down on the other side of the room. She slumped down in the chair, brought her hand to her mouth, and promptly started to chew on the side of her thumb. Jake's dad, after at least an hour of intense conversation with a CIA agent who had calmed him down while divulging nothing, had just headed down to the cafeteria for some coffee. Gaia had actually turned down his offer to buy her food. The very idea of tasteless hospital
grub
made her lose her appetite. She'd been spending way too much time in hospitals lately.

“Gaia?”

She sat up straight and saw that Jake was rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. He blinked a few times and looked at her, confused. “Am I dead?”

Gaia laughed—a loud, relieved sort of bark. “No. You don't die from getting shot in the shoulder.”

“The shoulder?”

He attempted to move his arm and winced and groaned. His head, which had come up about an inch off the pillow, flopped down again.

“Why does my head feel like someone ripped it in half?” he asked, his face crinkling up in pain.

“Concussion. You should probably just stay down,”
Gaia said. She got up and quickly flicked the light switch off so that the glare wouldn't cause him more pain. “You were knocked out when you fell,” she explained, returning to her chair.

Jake managed a wry laugh and closed his eyes. “That's graceful.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, gradually relaxing the muscles of his face. Gaia watched him, her heart pounding. There was something she wanted to say to him, but she was, as always, having trouble with the words.

A few more of his calming breaths and his eyes opened again. They were cool and clear now in the semidarkness—
the only light in the room seeped in from the hallway.

“How's your leg?” he asked.

“It's fine,” she replied. “Like I said . . . just a scratch.”

“Great. You get a scratch, and I get an arm that feels like a sack of flour,” Jake said with another laugh.

Gaia reddened and looked down at her hands in her lap. “Yeah . . . about that,” she said, picking at her nonnails. “I wanted to . . . you know . . . thank you.” He said nothing, and she finally forced herself to lift her chin—to look him in the eye. “You saved my life.”

“Eh,” Jake said, blowing it off. But he smiled nonetheless.

“Really. I was stupid. I should have known she wouldn't let it go,” Gaia said. “So thanks.”

“Don't thank me yet. You're going to be carrying
my books for the next few weeks,” Jake shot back with a smirk.