Tears (13 page)

“Uh... sorry,” she mumbled, not knowing how to react—suddenly wishing she could run outside and come back in all over again, start the school day from scratch. But she couldn't help but be annoyed, too. How the hell was she supposed to know that Ed had abruptly developed a sensitive streak?

“No, it's cool,” Ed muttered, his face unreadable, a mix of emotions that Gaia couldn't translate. “I just meant that I didn't feel like... that I was sick of... look, just ignore me, okay? Things'll be better once. . . Forget it.”

“Once what?” Gaia prompted, baffled.

He shook his head. “Forget it.”

All at once Gaia was angry. She was sick of this—
sick of sweating through people's odd moods and silences.
You'd think between Ed and Sam, one of them might give the cryptology a rest. . . . But then, apparently, you'd have to think again. She scrutinized Ed's face as if she were deciphering
a map. Clues to some inner turmoil were there, all right. But they pointed at nothing concrete. Or at too many things. There was apology in there. And worry. But something else, too. Something like anxiety but with more of a kick in it. Excitement?

“
Things'll be better once
...”

Gaia's lips tightened. Ed was beginning to sound a hell of a lot like Sam. Yes, it was definitely a good thing that Ed wasn't coming to the dinner tonight. Dealing with one secretive jerk at a time was about all she could handle.

“PLEASE STAND CLEAR OF THE
closing doors
.”

Veiny Hands

Sam gripped the metal pole as the subway doors pinged shut, watching as the Thirty-fourth Street station receded from view. Warily his eyes flicked across the train compartment. He felt like he'd swallowed a steel rod: His stomach was cold and uncomfortable, and he wasn't hungry, even though he'd barely eaten all day. Once again he was looking for something. Someone. Only he didn't have even the vaguest idea who that person was. Which meant it could be anyone.

Anybody. Everybody.

Sam shivered. His mind seemed to race the train itself, one suspicion tumbling over the next as he recast the sequence of events that had led him to this moment.

Point of origination: Mike's death.
No, Ella.
Or maybe before that. . .

One more stop to go: Grand Central Station. But the journey through the black tunnel seemed interminable. The fluorescent lighting hurt Sam's eyes. He was bone tired, so tired that his body felt wired into overdrive, every cell screaming and throbbing. Sleep was no longer an option.
Not since the nightmares, and not since Sam had known for sure that someone was watching him.
Beyond the guys Gaia had found trying to break into his room. Beyond a doubt.

He'd felt it in the library. He'd felt it walking home after talking with Gaia in the park. Unseen eyes. Unseen, all-seeing eyes. Sam watched the floor. Anything to avoid looking at the people around him. They could all be with. . .
them.
The sullen Latino guy hiding behind a paperback in the corner. The upscale exec with her cat-frame glasses and the pencil at her lip. She could easily just be in “work” disguise. He thought he might truly lose it now, if he hadn't already. Paranoia. Sam would have laughed if he hadn't been thoroughly stripped of that ability.
He'd actually begun to feel paranoid about paranoia itself.

Chasing your own tail.

Suddenly Sam's forehead turned fiery hot. He'd heard that line very recently. Was it from his dreams? Hadn't someone said that to him while he lay in a diabetic slump on the cold, hard floors of some warehouse?

Or was that just another instance of paranoia feeding off itself?

The train jerked to a stop. Jesus. He hadn't even noticed he'd arrived.

The doors slid open, and Sam bolted straight for Grand Central terminal. Before exiting the turnstile, he stood for a moment leaning against a pillar, the white tile cooling off the skin of his cheek as he struggled to force his head clear. He had to keep it together.
Focus on the positives: The police were no longer looking for him, and this was the last pickup.


So says Josh.

Sam laughed hollowly, tearing himself away from the pillar and moving between clouds of commuters and groups of tourists. What else did he have to go on but Josh's word? He had no choice but to believe Josh. None at all. As he reached the main concourse, he couldn't help but glance up at the famous ceiling: turquoise, decorated with the signs of the zodiac and
twenty-five hundred stars in pinpricks of electric light. What he would give to be out in space right now, drifting, alone, far from this planet. . . a bittersweet ping of nostalgia shot through him. He'd seen this with his mother shortly after the renovation had been unveiled. They'd stopped for lunch at the Oyster Bar. . . a million lifetimes ago, yet so tantalizingly recent that he could almost taste it....

Get a grip!

Sam turned his head away from the throng of passersby. He felt seasick.
Breathe.
Abruptly Sam stopped. He realized he'd found the designated spot: an anonymous pillar in a corner where the arteries of two tunnels bisected each other. He stood under the arch, searching the faces that flickered by. But no one paused. One minute slipped into the next. He faced the wall, sucked in air, and talked himself down. The last pickup. This would be the very last—

“
Hellooo, Sam
...”

Sam went cold.
He was over the edge now, well and truly.
He was hearing voices, coming out of the wall.

“
Hello, Sam Moon
.”

That was it. Time to get out of here. Book himself into a lunatic hospital. A nervous breakdown, that was what he was having... voices in the wall... the insidious whispering. The hair on the back of his neck
stood at attention. Flipping out, he was flipping out, losing the edge, losing the—

“
I know you can hear me, Sam Moon
.”

He slipped down the cold pillar, shaking. And then he saw it. Him. A thin, spidery man diagonally opposite him, standing where the arch above them bisected another pillar. He smiled at Sam, turned, and whispered into the corner.

“
Didn't I tell you that you could hear me?
”

An acoustic effect. Some chance amplification of sound waves through the placement of tiled pillar and arch. That was all.
His sanity was still intact.
Well, maybe not intact. . . but he should be thankful for small favors. Stiffly Sam approached the man and without a word accepted a brown-paper-wrapped package from his veiny hands. The man smiled again, gave an impish salute, and walked away.

Manhattan Federal Prison


Sam read the instruction without expression, then opened his bag, the buzz of the Velcro like a chain saw to his hyperattuned ears. After tucking the package inside, he walked through the terminal's giant hall, craned his neck, and looked up at the stars.

Taurus, the bull. Aquarius, the water bearer.

But the vaulted ceiling's imagery didn't calm him. It only gave him pause to run the same conflicting ideas through his numb brain, to turn the dots of light into visual representations of his fears.
Enough.
Sam
continued walking—back through the drop zone, where three children now giggled and whispered into the corners of pillars. Apparently everyone knew this trick. Everyone but him.

He supposed he should feel used to being left in the dark by now.

INSULT ME ALREADY,
GAIA DE-
manded silently.
What are you waiting for?

Makeup Nookie

But Heather just stared straight through Gaia as if she were made of glass. “Have you seen Ed?” she asked in her new robo-voice, completely devoid of anything even vaguely approximating emotion.

“No,” Gaia answered. Not since their early morning near collision, anyway. After Ed's fuzzy apology, he'd disappeared. And since Gaia didn't have a class with Ed until after lunch, she'd passed the time by carefully prepping the speech she would present to him. This time he wouldn't worm his way out of her questions. Once Gaia saw Ed again, she'd get the truth if it killed her. Or him.

“Look, I need to talk to him,” Heather said, her
voice catching slightly. “So if you know where he is, I would appreciate your telling me.”

“I thought he was with you,” Gaia said. It was true. Gaia knew Ed had a free period. Since she hadn't seen him anywhere, she'd assumed he was off somewhere having a tête-à-tête with his girlfriend....

Heather turned her back to Gaia and began furiously scribbling on a piece of paper. When she was done, she folded it, walked toward Ed's locker, and slipped it in through the crack in the locker door. Gaia shook her head as Heather disappeared down the corridor.
Your guess is as good as mine,
she said silently.
Apparently for once both Gaia and Heather had the same ax to grind
. Ed's mysterious behavior was getting to both of them. And now Ed's bizarre behavior spells had extended to include disappearance.

If Ed wasn't with Heather, then where was he?

Last Chance

“THANKS, MAN.” SAM JUMPED UP
from his desk and gratefully took the pile of experiment notes from Keon. At least he still had
one
friend. Or at least a guy who could stand in his doorway without cringing or
asking him to commit a felony. “Did I miss anything?”

Keon shrugged. “Krause had us do more gravity experiments. Although it looks like you've been doing some of your own.” He grinned, surveying the pile of clothes stacked on top of Sam's bed. “Nice tower. Is that a conceptual art piece or something?”

Sam managed a tired smile. “Somewhere in here is a clean shirt,” he explained. “I'm having dinner with Gaia. And her father.”

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” Keon joked, leaning against the door frame. “From Heather straight to Gaia. You don't waste time, man.”

“Mmmm.” Sam hadn't really thought about that before. Nor did he want to think about it now. He had enough to feel anxious about.
Like meeting Tom Moore.
He began to rummage through the clothes for the button-down oxford he wanted to wear. This was a real chance to act
normal.
For Gaia. For her dad. He had to be willing to suspend all his haunting fears and suspicions. At least for one night.

“So you're meeting her father, huh?” Keon raised an eyebrow as Sam continued to search. “Scary.”

“Maybe,” Sam said. Or maybe not. He really didn't know what to expect. All he knew about Tom Moore was that he was capable of making Gaia either blissfully happy or totally miserable.

“I'd be careful with the guy if I were you,” Keon
said. He removed his glasses and began to clean them with his sweatshirt.

Sam abruptly stopped tossing clothes around. “What do you mean?”

“Well.” Keon looked up, still smiling, and put his glasses back on. “You're seeing the man's daughter, right? Ergo: he's not your number-one fan. Law of nature.” He shrugged and turned to leave. “Good luck, Moon Man. Enjoy your dinner.”

Sam just stood there as Keon disappeared down the hall. His pulse quickened.

Tom Moore. Not my number-one fan.

Whoever was orchestrating Sam's rather intricate and systematic torture would need a whole lot of resources at their disposal. They'd need surveillance equipment. They'd need contacts at the police department, contacts at the federal jail.
They'd need to be watching Sam every minute of the day.
Didn't the CIA fit every single aspect of that description?

His stomach squeezed.

Was all this madness the work of a demented and overly protective father?

No, no, no.
He was going crazy again. His synapses were fried. He slowly walked into the suite's common room and sat down heavily on the couch. He needed to skip this mental road to nowhere. Suspecting Gaia's father was totally, royally out of line. Plain desperate.
But as Sam did his best to extricate himself from this particularly disturbing bout of paranoia, he felt a familiar tingling at the back of his neck.
An unmistakable feeling that he couldn't deny.

He was being watched. Again.

Just because I can't see anyone doesn't mean no one's out there
—

The phone rang in his room. He jumped up and dashed to pick it up, hoping it was Gaia. She could calm him. She could allay his fears.

“Hello?” he asked breathlessly.

“Moon. Josh here.”

He bristled. Just his luck. “What do you want?”

“Hate to do this to you, but you gotta stay in tonight.”

Sam's face darkened. He gripped the phone as if it were Josh's neck. “No way.” The job was over. Josh had said so.

“I said no more deliveries,” Josh mumbled. “I didn't say we wouldn't be having any—”

“I have a date tonight!” Sam screamed.

“With the TV,” Josh interjected. “Sorry, buddy, but I can't let you go out. Someone might get hurt, you know?”

The color drained from Sam's face. “Why? Why are you—”

There was a click, and the line went dead.

Slowly Sam replaced the receiver, his throat tightening as he thought of Gaia. There was no way in hell she'd forgive him if he canceled this date. He knew very well this was a last-chance type of scenario. But if he didn't cancel?
Josh wasn't bluffing when he said someone could get hurt. Somebody could do real damage to Gaia.
And if there was even the slightest fraction of a chance that Gaia's well-being could somehow be connected to Josh's orders, then Sam had to take Josh seriously.