Shock by Francine Pascal

Author:Francine Pascal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2003-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Gaia

This is just weird. I don’t—it doesn’t make sense. Veniero’s on Eleventh Street—that’s right across the avenue from the Ukranian church where I almost got my head shot off. Pearl River? That’s in Chinatown—by Dmitri’s apartment. By Sam’s apartment. The cell phone. The last time I saw it, it was here, and Tatiana was standing three feet away. Drunk as a skunk, but still…

Or was she? I remember a story about Nikita Kruschev, the prime minister of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He was at a big diplomatic party, and he was getting drunker and drunker. Then someone smelled his drink, and it turned out he wasn’t drinking straight vodka, as he’d claimed. It was just water, and he was trying to catch everyone off their guard. Thinking they’d give away government secrets if they thought he was too drunk to notice. A sneaky little trick.

Could Tatiana have heard the same story? Was she pretending to be drunk so that she could steal the cell phone?

Bigger picture: Is this loving mother-daughter team nothing more than a couple of double agents setting me up to get killed?

That was my first instinct about them. When I met them, I just didn’t trust them. But they hung in there with me. They really did. And besides, my dad trusts Natasha. Enough to fall in love with her. Enough to leave me in her care. That’s the bottom line, right? He taught me everything I know. He did something unbelievably difficult—disappeared from my life—just because he thought it would keep me safe. Even though it made me hate him. Even though he had to fight to get me to understand. And that guy, the one who did all that—he trusts Natasha. So I should, too, shouldn’t I?

These signs—these tiny clues and these little voices from deep in my subconscious—they have to be wrong. I have to be wrong when I think there’s something weird going on with them.

It’s impossible. I’m being paranoid. This life is just making me totally paranoid, and I’m letting the fact that my dad is missing throw all my instincts off. This is textbook psychological crap: I can’t figure out the answer I need, so I’m finding bad guys everywhere.

Get a grip, Gaia.

Natasha—I mean, okay, she’s not being as active in her investigation as I think she should be. That doesn’t mean she’s double crossing me and my dad. Or that she’s somehow behind his disappearance. That’s just crazy!

And so what if Tatiana ratted out Sam and me to Ed—that’s more about her being so desperately in love with Ed, right?

Ugh.

I’m trying to believe my own pep talk. But these weird little details keep popping up, and I feel like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle are putting themselves together, and I hate the picture that’s starting to appear.

If Natasha and Tatiana turn out to be bad…I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to trust anyone, ever again. Not even Dad.

Not even myself.

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