Liar (15 page)

The front door slammed.

Gaia's face twisted into a grimace as she pulled a moth-bitten sweater over her T-shirt. There was only one person who would possibly show up uninvited at her house on a Monday morning. He'd done it before. And right now she was
not
in the mood to deal with him.

Unless …

Could it be Sam?

She swallowed, stealing a quick peek at herself in the mirror on her closet door. No, it wasn't Sam. And that was a good thing, too. Her shoulders sagged. Her hair was in complete disarray—not that this was a surprise. Her clothes were rumpled and mismatched. In her fatigues and combat boots she almost looked like a refugee from some war-torn, third-world country.

No wonder everybody wanted to hang out with Heather Gannis.
She
knew how to dress. Hell, yeah. Throw in some
Vogue,
mix in a little MTV: presto! That was fashion.

Gaia's fashion only seemed to reflect her sour disposition.

But who cared how she looked?

With a groan she slung her backpack over her shoulder and trotted down the stairwell to the front hall.

Yup. She'd been right all along. Heather Gannis's new best friend smiled at Gaia from his wheelchair as she descended the last flight of steps.

“Hey, G.”

“What are you doing here, Ed?” she asked wearily, heading straight for the kitchen. She swung her book bag off her shoulder. It dropped to the front hall floor with a loud
thwack. Shouldn't you he having lox and bagels with Heather right now?
she added to herself, feeling petty and sullen.

Ed rolled after her. “I … uh, came to freeload breakfast cereals off you. You know, the way I've been doing for the past four months—”

“Where did Ella go?” Gaia interrupted. She reached into a cabinet and yanked a box of Froot Loops off the shelf, then slammed the door so hard that the plates rattled. “You know, she doesn't like it when people just show up unannounced.”

“Yeah … I got that impression,” Ed said. He hesitated in the kitchen doorway. “She just gave me this look and took off.” He laughed. “I kind of get the feeling she wants to make this house wheelchair inaccessible.”

Great. Now he was going for the wheelchair jokes. Playing the pity card. Enough was enough. Gaia whirled and slammed the box of cereal down on the kitchen table. “What do you
want,
Ed?” she growled.

His expression didn't falter. “Well, for starters, I want to know why you're acting like such a bitch right now,” he answered with the same easygoing smile. “We can take it from there.”

“I …” She couldn't answer. A sense of self-loathing swept over her, smothering her like a black shroud. She lowered her eyes, then glanced out the kitchen window at the charcoal-colored sky.
I'm acting like a hitch because I'm a petty, jealous jerk I'm acting like a bitch because I can't stand to share you with anyone else. Especially you know who.
But there was no way she could say any of that.

“Look, I'm just a little worn out, all right?” she lied, grabbing a bowl and spoon from the unemptied dishwasher. “I stayed up all night trying to finish
The Great Gatsby.
I didn't even start the paper.”

Ed pulled up to the table. “Well, if it's any consolation, neither did I,” he said. “That's part of the reason I'm here, actually. I was hoping to do a little early morning plagiarizing.”

Gaia met his gaze. “What's
your
excuse?” she asked harshly. “Busy weekend?”

Ed blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“You tell me,” she shot back. “I know you spent the
night at Heather's on Friday.”
Jesus.
Who
was
she right now? Hearing herself made her sick. She sounded like an out-of-control second grader, throwing a temper tantrum.

Ed's eyes narrowed in seeming disbelief. “Who told you
that?”

“Your parents,” Gaia muttered. She tore open the box of Froot Loops and started pouring them into the bowl.

“Oh, Jesus,” Ed moaned. He pushed himself away from the table and shook his head. “For your information, Gaia, I was at the hospital. I just told my parents I was at Heather's so they wouldn't freak out. They had enough on their minds this weekend without dealing with any of
my
shit.”

Gaia's head jerked up. She nearly dropped the cereal box. The sick feeling inside her began to grow. “You were at the
hospital?”
she whispered.

He nodded, staring down at his lap. “Yeah. Heather's sister Phoebe … Look, it doesn't even matter. That's not the point.”

The blood drained from Gaia's face. She put the cereal box down on the table. Her hand was trembling. Heather really
had
been having a crisis. But in Gaia's state of utter self-absorption, she hadn't even considered it. She hadn't even believed it. She'd only focused on how the situation affected
her.

“The point is,” Ed continued, “you're pissed off at me, and I want to know why.”

Suddenly Gaia was overcome with an uncontrollable urge to bolt. Immediately. She couldn't sit here anymore. Besides, her appetite was shot. If she answered Ed's question … no. That wasn't an option. She'd had enough self-examination for one day. No way was she going to admit to Ed that she was jealous of Heather. She would never show that kind of weakness. To
anyone.

“I gotta go,” Gaia muttered. She stood abruptly and brushed past Ed, without even bothering to close the cereal box or put away her dishes. She snatched her book bag up from the floor of the front hall and grabbed her coat.

“Wait, Gaia!” Ed called after her. “There's something I want to tell you—”

Gaia slammed the front door behind her. She was sure she didn't want to hear what he had to tell her, anyway.

What had happened to the new, open Gaia, ready to deal like a true friend? she wondered miserably as she sped along the sidewalk, away from him.

WHATEVER ELLA NIVEN MIGHT BE, she was
not
an up-and-coming freelance photographer.

Tom was almost certain of that now.
He'd been trailing her since Saturday night, stopping only to doze for a few hours here and there—and every action she took seemed to indicate that she was leading another life. A secret life. One carefully hidden from George and the rest of the world.

The most obvious scraps of evidence, of course, were those clandestine trips to that apartment building on the Upper West Side. Judging from the frequency of the visits (four in two days), their brevity (never more than fifteen minutes at a time), and the circuitous routes she took in getting there (never the same route twice), he could deduce that she was reporting to somebody. A superior. Perhaps the person with whom she spoke so frequently on her cell phone.

But whom was she working for? And why?

There were several possible answers, of course. One was that she was working for the agency itself. She might have been assigned to keep an eye on George. That wouldn't surprise him at all, in fact. Spouses were hired to spy on each other all t he time. It was an extremely effective way of maintaining security. Unfortunately, the spying often ended up destroying otherwise happy marriages. But then, happy marriages had never been the agency's top priority.

It meant nothing that Tom had never seen Ella's
name on any agency list. He knew very well that no agency member could name
all
of the agency's employees—just as no agency member could detail an entire operation or provide a list of all its activities. The less people knew, the better. And the powers that be would definitely want to keep Ella's employment secret from him. After all, he was George's best friend. He might compromise her status.

Even now, as Tom followed Ella through the gray, wintry streets of the Village to a camera store on Seventh Avenue, he was positive that this errand was simply part of an elaborate act. He hurried past the store window, eyes forward, using his peripheral vision to soak up the scene inside. She was chatting happily with the store clerk about a lens. He almost smiled. This kind of activity was a textbook precaution if one had gone deep cover. A classic smoke screen. Tom could quote the manual word for word:
“Cover professions should consume most of a standard business day…. Establish relationships with appropriate merchants and associates…. Always assume you have a shadow….”

He rounded the corner and paused outside a bookstore.

A bitter wind swept down the street. He shivered, pondering his next course of action. No doubt she would spend the rest of the morning being a photographer. Correction:
pretending
to be a photographer.
Maybe he should move on to the surveillance of Sam Moon.

Or maybe he should find out who lived in that apartment building.

He anxiously tapped his foot on the frozen sidewalk. Even as this thought crossed his mind for the thousandth time, he thrust it aside. If he snooped too much and she
was
working for the agency, then he would most likely be discovered. And then he would lose his job—and a short time later, his life. He only needed to consider how his behavior would look to them. Here he was, unwittingly spying on the agency for his own purposes when he should have been working for them overseas. He'd already gone AWOL, for all intents and purposes. Renegade. They didn't need another excuse to terminate him.

On the other hand, there was a distinct possibility that she was working for an enemy. A foreign power, perhaps. Another intelligence community. A crime syndicate. The possibilities were as endless as they were terrifying. And in that case, the agency would
want
to know who lived in that building. Just as much as he did.

But I can't afford to take that risk. Not when I have to make sure I stay alive. Not when Gaia's in so much danger …

There was one last possibility, too. One that filled him with dread.

Ella could be working for Loki.

He swallowed, glancing back down the street toward Seventh Avenue. He knew from the agency's database that Loki was in close contact with a “BFF” and an “ELJ.” Every time this suspicion crept into the back of Tom's consciousness, he was nearly overwhelmed by an intense desire to find George, to tell him. But he couldn't. Given his friend's current fragile state, even a seed of doubt would tear George apart. No, Tom had to be absolutely sure of Ella's guilt. And there was only one way to do that.

Keep watching.

WHAT WAS THE POINT OF SCHOOL, anyway?

Gaia took one look around the grim rows of identical lockers and knew instantly that coming here had been a monumental mistake. She hadn't done her homework. She hated the stinking cafeteria food. (Not nearly enough sugar.) She definitely didn't want to
socialize.
Not with these mindless teenage drones, churned straight from the pages of
Seventeen
magazine. No, in fact, she wanted to stay as far as possible from two specific members of the student body, those being one Ed Fargo and one Heather Gannis.

So why stay? What did she need with this place?

She couldn't think of one good reason to stay. Not one. This place was a freaking dump. It wasn't as if she needed a formal education. She'd probably read more books by the age of twelve than most of the underpaid English teachers here had read in their entire lifetimes. She had a good grasp of calculus. She sure as hell didn't need to go to gym—not with her freakish build. So what did that leave? Art? Fine. She'd take up finger painting in her spare time. Anyway, her lifelong dream was to be a waitress, and it didn't take a high school diploma to serve two eggs over easy or to get her butt pinched.

Fine. It was a relief. She was glad she'd made
that
decision. School and Gaia Moore would no longer have anything to do with each other.

She turned and shoved her way back to the exit, nearly knocking over a couple of faceless meatheads on her way.

“Watch it, bitch!” one of them snapped.

“Bye!” she called sweetly.

A blast of winter air hit her as she burst out onto the front steps. It was crisp and invigorating. She
laughed out loud. A couple of stragglers stared at her: the chronically late, dope-smoking crowd. She blew them a kiss. She was free! Free at last!

It was so easy. So perfectly simple.

The city seemed to stretch out before her, filled with limitless possibility. She had the whole day to spend exactly as she pleased. Talk about liberating. She couldn't believe it had taken her
this
long to drop out of school. What had she been thinking, anyway?

Maybe she should just toss her book bag in a garbage can to make it official. It was weighing her down. Nah … she might need it for other things. Like to carry around all the money she would win from hustling chess games in the park. Yes.
That's
what she'd do with her time. She'd spend the next few months earning a small fortune on the tables in Washington Square Park (maybe kicking the ass of a random thug or two every now and then, just to keep the area safe)—then she'd blow this town for good. No more Ella and George. No more Ed and Heather. No more creepy uncle. No more Sam—

She stopped short.

Sam.

A twinge of electricity shot down her spine.

He
still
hadn't explained himself. And he still wasn't answering his damn phone, either.

Gaia was riding high on recklessness. Who cared what happened tomorrow? All that mattered was living
large this minute.
Now
was the time to confront Sam Moon. She was sick of waiting around and wondering. Fed up. She would go straight to his dorm. If her uncle jumped out at her again, she would ignore him. If Sam was in class, she would just hang around his suite until he got back.