Authors: Francine Pascal

Wired (19 page)

The man gave a frustrated huff and slid the giant book toward Jake who immediately began leafing through it.

“Roddenberry â¦ Roddick â¦ Roditi â¦” he mumbled as his finger slid slowly down the page. “Yes! Rodke.” There was a John out in Queens, a Sarah with a Chelsea exchange and then a bunch of “Rodkey” spellings. No Skyler. Not even a half-anonymous S. Rodke with a Manhattan listing. Nothing.

Jake slammed the book shut and returned it to the guard with a mumbled “thanks.” Then he walked back out the front door into the rain.

Gaia was someplace close, he could feel it. But he had no idea how to get to her. He was like a rat in a maze of dead ends, and a fragrant block of cheese was sitting just beyond the walls.

Gaia please, he urged silently, straining to seek out her mind through the walls of the nearby buildings. Please just answer my messages. Call me. Before if's too late.

JAKE

This
or obably never happens to real undercover operatives. Or at least it shouldn'tânot to the good ones anyway.

I know how it's supposed to unfold. I've seen all those spy movies where the hero saves the world in thousand dollar suits. Watching themâI just knew that could be me someday, disarming the bad guys and knocking them senseless. Then carrying the hot blonde to safety only seconds before a bomb exploded in a supernova of fire and smoke.

Only lately I've had the nagging suspicion that I'm quickly becoming the Barney Fife of the undercover world. Obviously I'm not cut out for this after all, since I seem to have all the spy instincts of a garden slug.

Oliver is counting on me to find Gaia. Gaia needs me. And I'm letting them down.

I never realized just how freaking hard this spy stuff is. Where are the scared informants
whispering vital information to me from out of the shadows? Where are the clues? A bookbag or scuffed tennis shoe or some other Gala-like debris pointing the way to her hideaway? I could use a cryptic S.O.S. message on my answering machine or a taunting riddle from the baddiesâanything to use as a starting place in this whole screwed up cat-and-mouse game.

The guys I watched never made mistakes. James Bond never burst into someone's Â¡air only to find a group of women playing Mah-Jongg. “Very sorry. Pardon me. Please carry on.” Eliot Ness never nabbed an innocent bystander or aimlessly wandered the city streets for hours.

Even Oliver would never be stuck in neutral like this. He'd have located Gaia in under ten minutes. I know he wants me to do it, since Gaia's still freaked into thinking he's Loki again, but obviously I don't deserve his faith in me.

So I'll make a deal with the Cosmos. Forget my earlier dreams. I don't need to be a big hero. I'll just settle for this: to locate Gaia in one piece before anything awful happens. The rest you can take from there.

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