BLOWN TO KINGDOM COME
Gaia and Will’s escape efforts had officially grown futile. They’d searched the entire courthouse basement at least four times, from the stairwell doors to the maintenance doors to the storage doors—all industrially locked. Will had tried to give Gaia a leg up to reach the steel gratings on the ceiling that led to the air shafts. No luck. They’d even tried to wriggle their way through the barred windows that looked out on the pitch black alleyway. Useless. Gaia had come to terms after thirty minutes; it had just taken Will another hour to accept it. They were locked in this basement until morning—until security returned to unlock those doors. And although she hated to admit it, Gaia was actually grateful for the much needed breather.
They’d been running on pure adrenaline for too long. Will had told Gaia all about his James Rossiter discoveries, and she could only imagine what he’d gone through to make it to that courthouse in time to save her. Adrenaline had carried them both across miles of highway, and it had carried them through a class-one bomb scare, but Gaia knew at least one thing from all her years of street fighting: all that adrenaline came with a price. Yes, she and Will had made it through the crisis, but now the posttraumatic exhaustion was kicking in. She could see it in Will’s eyes, too. An overwhelming need to stop. Just for a while. They didn’t even have a choice.
They were standing just outside the utility closet where they’d defused the bomb. Almost simultaneously they fell back against the cold concrete basement wall and slid down to the floor. Will hung his arms over his knees and let his head drop forward. Gaia rested her face in her hands and took a few long breaths. She could feel Will’s thigh pressing against hers. His body was actually helping keep her upright—that’s how drained she had suddenly become. She might have even drifted off to sleep had Will not spoken at that moment.
“Man, my head hurts.” He pressed his fingers to his temples and then scratched them wildly through his blond buzz cut.
“I can’t even feel my head,” Gaia replied. “Or my fingers or my toes. Everything feels detached.”
Will shook his head regretfully, staring down at the ground. “I should have gotten here faster. If I’d gotten here faster, we could have taken out the bomb and still made it out of here before lockdown. And we’d be looking for Catherine right now instead of—”
“Shhh.” Gaia flailed her hand tiredly at his face to shut him up. “Let’s just not … Let’s not freak about things we can’t change right now. Let’s just be quiet for a few minutes, okay?”
“Okay,” Will agreed. “You’re right. There isn’t a damn thing we can do right now.”
“That’s right.”
Gaia savored the moment of silence, but it didn’t last very long. Will’s voice began to echo off the dank gray walls of the basement again. “But if I’d just gotten here an hour earlier, then we could have—”
“Will.” Gaia grabbed Will’s muscular arm to silence him again. “Come on. We agreed. Let’s not dwell, okay? We’re alive. We’ve got to believe that she’s still alive, too. But we won’t be any good to her burnt out and exhausted. We need to rest.”
Will nodded. “I know it. You’re right.”
“Okay,” Gaia said. She squeezed her knees closer to her chest to form a personal cocoon. Her eyelids began to flutter and grow heavy. “You know what?” she breathed. “I think I’m going fall asleep for just a little while …”
This time Will grabbed hold of her arm. The jolt shook Gaia’s eyes wide open again. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Why not? Maybe you’ve forgotten that we were almost blown to kingdom come less than two hours ago? Might be a good idea for you to stay alert down here, don’t you think?”
Gaia tried to forge a reassuring smile with her tired lips. “Look,” she said with a sigh. “Think about it for a second. We are completely locked in down here. That means that everyone else is locked out. This is probably the safest we’re ever going to be. So I’m going to take advantage of that and get some rest. I highly recommend you do the same.”
She tried to shut her eyes again, but now Will grasped her hand and nearly squeezed the life out of it. And for the first time she noticed … there was the slightest hint of a tremor in his strong fingers. She turned to face him, and she could see something strange in his eyes. Something she’d never really seen before. If she didn’t know Will Taylor better, she would have sworn his expression was bordering on vulnerability. No, not exactly vulnerability, more like … need.
Will locked his eyes with hers. “Just don’t go to sleep, all right?” The hint of his pale blond stubble was showing in the stark light of the overhead bulbs. He quickly let go of her hand and turned to face forward, but it was too late. She’d already seen that look in his eyes.
Gaia was at a momentary loss. This was not a Will Taylor she was accustomed to. Normally Will would rather die than admit that he needed something from Gaia, but the last few hours had pretty much done away with normalcy. Now that they’d stood over that ticking bomb together, they couldn’t exactly go back to petty bickering and witty banter. At least not tonight.
“Okay,” she agreed quietly. “I’ll stay awake.” She kept her tone as neutral as possible. She knew Will had just dropped his egomaniacal guard for a moment, and he was open to a direct hit. If she had sounded condescending or obnoxious about it, he would have shut down completely. And the truth was, now that she’d seen a glimpse of his more vulnerable side … she wanted to see more.
She stared at Will’s Southern gentleman profile. His elegant features reminded her of old black-and-white photos from the twenties and thirties when men still looked like—for lack of a better term—men. She followed her gaze down his arms and focused again on his hands. Now she could see that his right hand was indeed shaking slightly. Will caught her staring, and he quickly closed his right hand in his left, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead.
“Will?” she asked cautiously. “Are you okay?”
“What? Of course,” he insisted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s supposed to mean that your hand is shaking.”
He clutched his hand more tightly. “No, it’s not.”
Gaia reached over with lightning speed and grabbed hold of his right hand before he could stop her. She pulled it over to her lap and couched it firmly between her hands. Now she could feel the undeniable twitches in his thick fingers. Will made a halfhearted attempt to pull it away, but then he gave in, knocking his head back against the cinder-block wall with frustration.
“It’s been doing that ever since we defused the bomb,” he admitted. “I mean, it’s not like I couldn’t handle it,” he added, straightening his posture. “I took care of it—we took care of the bomb.”
“I know.”
“But the whole time … my heart was just pounding like …” He finally turned to face her. “I mean, Jesus, Gaia …” He swallowed hard. “That was the real thing in there. No game, no class, no stopwatch, nobody wins. You just live or die. That’s it. I mean, hell, I’ve got confidence to burn, you know—but life or death’s got nothing to do with confidence. My goddamn hand is shaking like a leaf. I swear to God, I know I’m ready for this job—I’m ready to be an agent, but … I guess I got spooked, all right? I got spooked, and I didn’t even know it until just now—until it got so quiet and I really had a minute to think. And then I looked at you and I thought about what could have happened in there …”
Will stopped himself mid-sentence and fixed his eyes on hers. Something about the way he looked at her sent a flush of heat up her back. The heat grew in the silence between them, running like a warm current from her hands to his and his eyes to hers.
“I was scared,” he said. It clearly wasn’t easy for him to admit. “Weren’t you scared?” He searched her eyes for a connection.
Gaia’s throat went bone dry. Her lips became glued to her teeth. But why? It was a simple enough question. Will obviously had no clue just how complicated the answer was, but that shouldn’t have mattered. It had never mattered before. She was quite accustomed to deflecting that question with a quick and easy lie.
So lie, she told herself. What the hell is the glitch? Kill the deaf-mute routine and lie.
“Of—of course,” Gaia said, clearing her throat. She let go of Will’s hand and tucked her arms tightly around her chest. “Of course I was scared.” She felt a wave of nausea rush through her stomach. Why was this so hard all of a sudden? Why was it making her physically ill?
Will looked unconvinced. “Were you really? Because I sure couldn’t see it. And I am a perceptive son of a bitch, Ms. Moore. It was just … it was amazing.” He shifted his body so he was facing Gaia head-on—leaning even closer to her than before. “I mean, forget all our competitive crap for now, okay? Forget all that stuff. I don’t even care right now. I’m just going to sit here in awe and stew in the jealousy because I want to know how you do it. We were going to die in there, and you didn’t even bat an eyelash—I didn’t see one drop of sweat. You just went to it like it was a practice run—like it was just another plastic toy.”
Gaia’s back grew stiff with discomfort. Her head began to throb, and she still couldn’t understand why. She just wanted Will to stop talking. “Let’s forget it and move on,” she muttered, avoiding his penetrating glance.
“Oh, come on.” Will groaned. “Now you want to get modest with me? When I’m finally giving you all your props?”
“It’s not that, I just—”
“I’ve never seen anyone be that brave. I mean it. And you can call me a Carolina sexist pig if you want, but I have particularly never seen a woman that brave. Come on. Tell me what the trick is. Is it some kind of Zen philosophy thing, or are you just the most tough-as-nails woman I’ve ever—?”
“Neither,” Gaia snapped. “It’s neither, it’s none, it’s nothing, okay? It’s nothing.”
Her outburst echoed off the walls and faded into a long awkward silence. Her extreme response had obviously caught Will completely off guard. Hell, it caught her off guard. Will just sat there wide-eyed and frozen. Gaia pulled herself into such a tight fetal position, she looked like she was getting ready to crashland.
Will seemed unsure what to even say next. “Hey, I’m—I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just—”
“No.” Gaia shut her eyes with frustration. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
That was the most honest thing she’d said so far. What was wrong with her? She’d dodged this issue a hundred times before. Especially with all the baffled men in her life. They could never quite accept the notion of a woman this strong—this impervious to danger and peril. But of course, Gaia never truly explained it. She always had her rationales for lying or at least omitting the truth:
Telling him the truth will only put him in danger. Don’t drag him into your tortured universe. What’s the point of telling him anyway? He’ll never believe you. He’ll think you’re a liar or crazy or both, and he’ll go running for the hills.
All of a sudden Gaia was caught in a time warp. Her mind was flooded with those faces from the past—the short curls of Sam Moon’s red-brown hair, Ed Fargo’s eternally optimistic stubbly grin, Jake Montone’s uncommonly green eyes. She’d lied to every one of those beautiful faces, and now, sitting so close to Will in the silence of this dark basement, one question was haunting her like hell …
What good had it ever done? All the evasive answers she’d given the men she cared about, all those strained and awkward silences when they searched her eyes for the truth. She had always told herself that she was lying to protect them, but now, looking back with twenty-twenty hindsight, it was impossible to ignore the facts. Keeping those men in the dark had never protected any of them at all. It had, in fact, done just the opposite. It had brought them all nothing but pain and tragedy. It was a mistake.
That’s why she felt so ill right now. That’s why she’d curled up like an infant. Because she was regressing and she knew it. Three years of lessons learned, yet here she was, about to lead Will Taylor right back down that same dark path? She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bring deception into this thing with Will when they’d barely even gotten started. She couldn’t do it to him, and she couldn’t do it to herself. That tortured life of hers was long in the past, and Will was a grown man. He didn’t need any protecting. And Gaia refused to make the same mistakes again. She refused to let her tragic ancient history repeat itself.
That was that. She had made up her mind. She was going to tell him her secret.
CLICHÉED BRD DREAM
“I’m lying.”
The moment she said it, she was overcome by a strange sense of calm. She had no plan here—no idea of what she would say or how she would say it, just the unmistakable sensation that she had taken a flying leap off a cliff and that it was the exact right thing to do.
“Lying about what?” Will asked.
“About being scared,” she said. “You’re right. I wasn’t scared.”
“I knew it,” Will said. “But how do you steel yourself like that? What makes you so br—”
“It’s not bravery,” she stated flatly—almost shamefully. She had always wanted to feel the fear and then overcome it—like Will had done with that bomb. That was bravery. That was being heroic. But she had only felt it once or twice in her life. “Bravery’s got nothing to do with it,” she explained. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Will looked stumped.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“I, uh …”
Where to begin? How was this supposed to come out without sounding like utter lunacy or a very bad joke? The truth, she reminded herself. Just tell him the truth. As long as she stuck to that plan, she knew she couldn’t really screw it up. She reminded herself that the point wasn’t really to make Will believe her. That was not something she had any control over. The only point was to not lie—to not drag Will down that same road that she’d taken Sam, and Ed, and, most important, Jake. Or maybe the real point was just to stay in this moment with Will. He’d created this unexpectedly naked moment here on this cold basement floor, and Gaia didn’t want to leave it. What she wanted was to start putting some faith in the opposite sex again.
“Look,” she said, “there’s no way to say this, so I’m just going to say it, okay? I need to tell you something about me, and it’s going to sound very strange, and you’re probably not going to believe me, but I still need to tell you.” He looked thoroughly confused already. “The thing is,” she went on. “The thing about me is … I … I don’t get scared.”
“I know,” Will said. “That’s what I’m saying—”
“No,” Gaia interrupted. “I mean, I can’t get scared. It’s like … it’s like a genetic defect. I’m missing the chromosomes that trigger the fear response, so … I don’t feel fear. I’m sort of … incapable of feeling—I mean, no, not sort of—I am incapable of feeling fear. Genetically incapable.”
God, that was easy. She never would have believed it, but it was so easy to say it out loud. Or so she thought. A moment later, however, she became very short of breath. She felt strange needling tingles in her hands and feet, and she began to feel dizzy.
Okay, not so easy. Weird. Sickeningly weird. Literally. I feel sick. Say something, Will. Now’s the time for you to say something.
She finally sneaked a glance at Will, and when she saw what looked like anger on his face, a wave of regret began to creep up from below.
Will narrowed his eyes at her. “Hey, I was trying to be straight with you,” he complained. “I was being real with you, and you’re turning it into a joke—you’re screwing with me when I was trying to—”
“I am not screwing with you,” she insisted. “And what I’m telling you is not a joke.” All she could do was stare him down and stay honest. She’d made her decision. She’d committed to this confession—she wanted this confession, and she wanted to make it to Will. “You asked me if I was scared, and I decided to tell you the truth—the honest-to-God truth about me. It’s not something I tell people about. It’s not something people know. And if you don’t believe me, there is nothing I can do about that. Not a thing. But I’m telling you the truth. You are the only person I am telling.” Now she felt a sudden lump in her throat, and she didn’t even know why. Apparently this kind of exposure stripped you of all emotional control, which was just one of the many reasons she had steered clear of this kind of exposure for most of her life.
Will stared at her long and hard in the silence, and she stared right back, despite the early signs of inexplicable tears that were beginning to blur her vision. She watched the anger drain away from his face as his eyes narrowed with bafflement. “Gaia, I don’t … I don’t understand what you’re trying to do here. Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know,” she said. Now she felt so naked it was almost painful. The tears in her eyes were just some kind of uncontrollable reflex. “I thought it was a good idea at the time, but now I’m not so sure. I told you that you wouldn’t believe me, but I wanted to tell you anyway. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of—this fearless ‘gift’ of mine—it doesn’t really mean anything to me anymore, to be honest. It’s just a fact of my life. It’s the way I’m wired, like blue eyes or wavy hair. I was born this way, so it’s beyond my control.”
What am I saying now? I’m babbling.
Will just shook his head with confusion. He probably would have continued to accuse her of joking if he hadn’t seen the tears in her eyes, but now he seemed to have no idea what to think. “I’m sorry, I just … I don’t know what I’m supposed to say here. I mean, if you’re going to keep on with this whole medical miracle story, then I’ve got to assume you’re either joking, which you’re obviously not, or that you’re just … you know …”
She knew where this was going. “Crazy?”
“Well, not—”
“I’m not crazy, Will. If that’s what you want to believe, you can, but I’m not crazy.” Before she knew it, words were spilling out of her mouth. “If you want to know the truth, this little genetic malfunction has been the bane of my existence. It’s made me a target for half my life. It demolished any chance I had of having a real family—I lost my mother, my father had to abandon me more times than I can count, it’s made me a victim, and I hate being a victim….”
This isn’t going well This is a mess. It wasn’t at all what she’d envisioned when she’d made the decision to be honest. But then again, she hadn’t really envisioned anything. Still, that sense of free falling was feeling less and less like freedom and more like plummeting to her doom.
“Look, I already told you,” she said, swiping those pain-in-the-ass tears from her cheeks. “You don’t have to believe me. I just needed to tell you. I had to. But you’re making me regret it. Don’t make me regret telling you this.” She shifted to make some distance between them. She hated this feeling. She hated being this raw in front of him—in front of anyone, but especially him. Suddenly being this raw and this close was too much.
“Gaia …” Will wouldn’t let her keep the gap between them. He slid across the wall and pressed his side up against hers again. “Don’t cry, okay? Please don’t cry. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
“You said that already.”
“Well, what do you expect?” Will threw up his hands and puffed out a hopeless little laugh. “Okay. You’re, uh … you’re clinically fearless. You’re a genetic anomaly.”
“Yes. That’s exactly right.”
“Well, will you at least admit that it sounds a little insane?”
“Yes. It sounds a little insane. Now get over it!” She shoved her elbow into Will’s side. Hard. It led to a much needed moment of silence.
Something changed in that silence. Gaia couldn’t put her finger on it, but something changed. She finally realized that she’d done it. As torturous as it was, whether he ever believed her or not, she had made it all the way through her confession. She’d been completely honest about who she was … and the world hadn’t come to an end.
And the next thing she knew, she felt his knuckles graze her cheek, wiping away the remaining tears. And then he clasped his fingers between hers and rested her hand on his knee. His hand had stopped shaking now.
Gaia was completely exhausted. She leaned back and dropped her head on Will’s shoulder. She wasn’t sure which was more tiring—defusing a bomb or confessing her secret.
“What?” Will asked, leaning his head back against the wall.
“I feel completely different,” she said. “I feel … lighter. I mean, I honestly feel lighter now that you know. I think secrets have an actual mass—a physical weight that literally weighs you down.”
“I think you’re right,” Will agreed. “I do.”
Gaia gazed up at Will’s face. She couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking at that moment. Then she settled back down on his shoulder. “I think extremely fat people must have a ton of secrets.”
“I suppose it stands to reason.”
“Will …” She peered up at his face again. She was close enough to smell the faint sweet remnants of sweat and Yardley soap on his neck.
“Yeah?”
“I honestly don’t care either way,” she said. “But I still want to know. Do you believe me?”
“You mean about your—?”
“Yes. Do you believe me?”
Will took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. He turned his face toward the ceiling and stared at the grating to an air shaft where they’d tried in vain to make their escape. “I didn’t know you grew up without a dad,” he said.
“He left when I was twelve. I didn’t meet him again until I was seventeen.”
“Where the hell was he hiding?”
“Long story,” Gaia replied.
“Yeah, it always is.” Will sighed. “You know … I lost my dad, too. He split before I was even born. Walked out on us while Mom was pregnant with me.”
Gaia found her hand gripping Will’s more tightly when she heard this. For a moment she felt like she could see exactly what Will looked like as a child. He probably even had the buzz cut.
Of course, she thought. That explained all his macho alphamale issues instantly. That’s why he had so much to prove. He’d grown up without a father.
“Have you ever talked to him?” Gaia asked. “Have you ever met him?”
“Never,” Will said. “To be totally honest … I don’t think my mom much cared if I ever met him or not. I don’t think she cared much about him in general. I think she’s the reason he left. I mean, I wouldn’t say that to her face. I probably wouldn’t say it to anyone except my uncle Casper. But I said it to you.” Will turned his face down to Gaia, grazing his stubbly cheek along hers until their eyes met.
“Why?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I wanted to test your theory. I wanted to see if I felt any lighter.”
“And?”
“And …” Will’s voice trailed off. He brought his fingers to her lips and traced along the curve of her mouth and then down her neck. Gaia felt another rush of heat rise up from the center of her chest, through the back of her neck, and into her cheeks. He ran his index finger along her collarbone, just beneath her shirt, and then pushed the wisps of her tangled hair back behind her ear. “I suppose I do feel much lighter,” he said. “And yes. If you insist you’re a genetic freak of nature … then I think I could believe you. I mean, I’ve yet to see anything about you that’s even remotely normal.”
Will tilted Gaia’s chin up and their lips met—first for a soft kiss, but then for something much deeper. She wrapped her hands around the back of his neck and breathed him in, collapsing against him as they drifted down onto the basement floor. There was something new about this kiss. A new kind of urgency—a new kind of closeness. Like some thin layer of caution between them had been peeled away. Gaia had given all of herself over now. Not just the parts of herself she was willing to reveal, but the entire person, secrets and all. And she could feel it in the kiss. She could feel it in the way his strong hands spread out and gripped her entire back. He was holding all of her now.
There was no way of knowing what might have happened then and there on that basement floor. Wills fingertips had just found their way under her shirt to the small of her back when that ugly sound stopped them both cold.
First there was the high-pitched electrical snap that sent them both flying to their feet in less than a second. It sounded like a spark plug or a piston firing. Then there was the electronic whir. It started at a low-pitched rumble, but the ominous pitch was climbing awfully quickly. And it was coming from that utility closet.
There’s no way, Gaia thought in that surreal little blip of a moment. There’s just no way….
Gaia and Will shared one painfully apprehensive glance, and then she leaped back into that cabinet. The numbers were the first thing she saw at its base. Flashing on the bomb’s digital readout. It seemed so much like a clichéd bad dream, only it was actually happening.
The bomb—the very same bomb they had busted their asses to defuse—was somehow operational again. The goddamn thing had reactivated itself.