Dragon's Eden (19 page)

“Jackson!” she yelled, warning him of the
two men rushing at him from behind.

With the grace of poetry in motion, he
pivoted on his foot and sidekicked the first man in the midsection.
Jen tripped the second.

“
Huh-yeeah!”
Jackson punched and ducked, avoiding a
kick, then came up inside the kicking range and hooked his opponent
around the neck, taking him down with a knee smash to the
groin.

The second man took a kick to the
collarbone, and Sugar swore she heard something break. She’d never
seen such controlled violence, such unleashed power. Jackson looked
bigger than life, his muscles pumped up, his veins tracking ridges
across his arms and chest. He yelled again, coming back into a
fighting stance, the sound full of controlled force.

Sher Chang was waiting for him, a murderous
glint in his eye. The fog thickened around the two fighters. Sugar
cut the last of her and Jen’s ropes and rolled to her feet. The old
man took up a fighting stance next to Jackson.

He would be crushed, Sugar thought. Between
Sher Chang’s humongous bulk and Jackson’s lightning fast-power, Jen
didn’t have a prayer of doing anything except getting in the way
and getting himself hurt.

She was wrong. The last thing she saw was
Jen launching himself at the giant and Jackson following. The fog
took them from her view, leaving only sound. All too quickly the
fight was over and silence reigned.

Not a breath disturbed the air. She held
herself in place, tensed and wary, not daring to move for fear of
what she might find—or of what might find her.

“Sugar?” Jackson’s voice rang out, sounding
distant and vague.

Relief flooded her veins and buckled her
knees, dropping her to the ground. She’d expected the worst: Sher
Chang looming up out of the fog with his huge awful hands grabbing
for her. “I’m here, over here.”

Jackson was beside her in seconds, kneeling
next to her, a warm presence in the earthbound cloud that had
become their world.

“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” he asked,
his mouth close to her ear, his arms strong and sure around
her.

“No. I’m not hurt,” she said. “Sher Chang
wanted to save the pain for later. How’s Jen?”

He called out in Chinese and the old man
answered. “He’s tying the bastard,” he told her. “We don’t have
much time, Sugar. We have to leave.”

“Leave?” Her brow wrinkled in confusion. Why
did they have to leave? They’d won, hadn’t they?

“There’re nine men in a
jiu
, and I only got six,” he said, answering the
unspoken question in her voice. “The snake got one, and Jen got
Chang. That leaves one loose
budoka
with a
gun.”

A feeling of dread skittered through her,
momentarily sidetracking her other concern. “The man, the one who
was screaming, was he bitten?”

“It was a bushmaster,” Jackson said, without
sounding pleased that he’d been right. “I don’t think he has much—”
The whirring grind of the plane engine starting interrupted him. He
swore viciously, coming to his feet. He shouted something in
Chinese and pushed her to the ground. “Stay down!”

He slipped away in the fog, and thirty
seconds later a burst of gunfire streaked through the white night
from her distant right, blasting away toward the beach and the
plane.

If Jackson hit anything it would be a
miracle, she thought, and if he didn’t, it would be a disaster. No
matter how good the pilot was, he couldn’t get out of the bay
without damaging the plane and probably himself, not with zero
visibility. Baolian’s force had arrived at high tide, and the tide
had been going out ever since. By now there would be a barrier of
rocks sticking up like jagged teeth across the mouth of the small
cove, impossible to maneuver through. If the pilot tried to take
off from inside the bay, the fog gave him less than a fifty-fifty
chance of not flying into the cliffs wrapping around her home. He
was sure to crash.

Another burst of gunfire tore through the
air. On the other hand, if Jackson hit the plane’s gas tank, all of
her worrying about the fog and rocks and crashing was moot.

The engine wound up tighter and tighter, and
Jackson reappeared at her side.

“Ran out of ammo,” he said, disgusted,
putting his hand on the small of her back more to locate her than
as a sign of affection. Over his shoulder, he spoke in Chinese, and
Jen took up the fight using Sher Chang’s automatic weapon.

Jackson swore. “We’ll never do it.”

“What?” she asked.

“Hit the friggin’ gas tank when you can’t
even see your hand in front of your face.”

“You were
trying
to
hit the gas tank?”

“Blow that sucker right out of the water.”
He cursed again. “I hope to hell he can’t see any better than we
can. Maybe he’ll hit a cliff or something, one of the jetties.”

Sugar was horrified. Trying to stop the man
was understandable, wishing his death was beyond her
comprehension.

“You can’t mean that,” she said, moving away
from him in shock.

She didn’t get very far before he pulled her
back to his side. His face came down real close to hers.

“I mean it, Sugar, every damn word. You’ve
been living in a paradise where all creatures are created equal and
they’re all sweet and kind.” He tightened his hold on her. “I’ll be
the first to admit that not killing the snake turned out great for
us, but the real world just gate-crashed the rest of your party. If
the pilot gets away, we lose whatever advantage we might have at
this point. This isn’t a game to these people. They’re out for
blood, yours and mine, and I’m not going to let them have it.”

Sugar tried not to cringe under the force of
his words, or scoot away from him out of fear. This was the side of
him she’d only glimpsed, the warrior side. His muscles were tense,
his body on the edge of superhuman alertness, still ready to
strike. He smelled of sweat and man, of danger . . . and of
flowers. The scent was faint but familiar, from one of her wild
orchid species.

She was bewildered. How could a man laugh,
tease, and pick flowers one moment, then fight with the blood lust
of survival rushing through his veins the next?

“Dammit, Sugar, you’re trembling. Why?” he
asked, rolling her over so they were lying face-to-face.

Her gaze lowered, and she stared mutely at
the dragon, at a loss for words. Though they were less than a
handbreadth away, wisps of fog floated between them, making the
creature appear and reappear as if it were flying through clouds.
She couldn’t tell Jackson he frightened her. He’d just saved her
life, using the very skills and convictions she found
frightening.

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” he
asked.

“No. It’s just—” She never got the chance to
tell him. An explosion rent the air, sending a concussion of sound
and energy rolling through Cocorico.

Jackson pulled her into his arms, holding
her tightly while a fireworks panorama of the plane’s destruction
upon the cliffs backlit the night. Streamers of red and yellow
arced into the sea, too bright to be subdued by the fog.

She expected him to let out a victory whoop,
but he was silent. When the last of the visible debris and fire
fell from the sky, he rested his forehead on hers and whispered in
Chinese, the words solemn, like a benediction for the dead.

Pain lanced her breast. Death was raining on
her garden, a place where life had ruled, and she was helpless to
stop it.

They slowly rose to their feet, helping each
other, and she felt him bow in the direction of the accident, a
short but definite lowering of his head in deference to the killed
pilot.

No, she definitely did not understand him, a
man who played naked in ocean pools, who kissed her as if life
began and the sun rose when their lips touched, a man who worked
side by side with her in the gardens of Cocorico; and then became a
force of destruction, wishing death on an enemy he honored when his
wish was fulfilled.

“How long will the fog hold?” He brushed his
thumb across her cheek in a gesture of tenderness that confused her
even more.

She’d been wrong.

“All night,” she said. “Unless the wind
comes up.”

“Then let’s pray for wind.” He bent his head
to place a kiss upon her brow. She closed her eyes, squeezing them
tight against the tears threatening to fall. Two men had died that
night, others had been harmed, and she’d been exposed. Nothing was
ever going to be the same.

Jen spoke then, a rattling stream of words,
much closer to them than she’d thought.

“We have to go,” Jackson said. “The men I
took out will be coming around any minute, and I only had time to
tie three of them.”

“What . . . what are you going to do with
them?” She couldn’t allow more deaths. Murder would put him forever
out of her reach.

“There isn’t much more I can do,” he said.
“They’re already disarmed. The important thing is that we’re not
here if there are any reinforcements arriving.”

Her gratitude was a palpable sensation,
causing her to sigh in relief. As awful as the night had been so
far, it wasn’t going to get any worse. Now all she had to do was
reasonably and calmly explain her position on leaving the island.
The time had come to let him go. She’d rather be left with her
sadness than for their last moments together to end in an
argument.

“I can’t leave Cocorico, Jackson.” And she
couldn’t. She didn’t need to make a decision, only face the facts.
Her whole life was on the island. She wouldn’t abandon everything
she’d sacrificed for, everything she’d built. This was her
sanctuary, the place where she was safe; she felt it emotionally
even with all the physical evidence to the contrary. She couldn’t
leave it to go with a stranger, for that’s what Jackson was, what
he’d always been. She’d only been fooling herself to think
differently.

“Yes, you can,” he said.

“No,” she said patiently. “I’ve got my work
and the—”

“What you’ve got,” he interrupted, his voice
harsh, his hold on her tightening, “is eight men and no place to
put them. They win by default. We can have them picked up, maybe
even make some money off them, but unless you feel like running a
damned prisoner-of-war camp, we’ll be safer off the island.”

“Money?” she repeated, uncertain of what he
meant and a little leery of his anger. She hadn’t wanted to fight,
but neither would she be bullied.

“Yes, money. I’m a bounty hunter, remember?
And we’ve got over half a ton of Baolian’s finest. I can think of
two shippers right off the top of my head who will pay to have this
scum behind bars.”

A light breeze swirled through the fog,
dispersing the water droplets and lightly lifting the veil of
haze.

“They’ll destroy my home,” she said in
defense of her reasoning. Men who had come to kill would think
nothing of ransacking the bungalow and the cottage. Her one
consolation was hoping a smart one among them might know better
than to tear apart the garden, their only source of food.

“What they’ll destroy is you, Sugar.” He
grasped her hand, reinforcing his words. “If I can get someone here
by first light, the buildings will be fine. But we have to leave
now. Come on. Show me the way.”

She pulled herself free and stepped back,
frustrated at his inability to understand. “Listen to me, Jackson.”
Her voice rose despite her effort to remain calm. “I don’t have
anyplace else to go, no place left to run. This is it for me, the
last hiding place.”

“There’s no such thing as a hiding place,
and there’s no damn future in running from anything. You’ve got me
now.” He reached for her again, but she moved back.

The wind stirred more vigorously, revealing
the hard set of his jaw. Sweat made his skin glisten. Moonlight
carved planes and shadows in his face and down the muscles in his
arms. She wanted to touch him, to soothe away the implacable frown
tightening his mouth, but she held back.

“I’ll show you how to leave, or Jen can—he’s
always known about the pirate’s door—but I’m staying. I can hide up
in the hills. They’ll never find me, and when they’re gone, I’ll
come back.”

“No.” Jackson shook his head, adamant. She
wasn’t making any sense. Whatever security she’d had in her
tropical paradise had disappeared the minute Sher Chang landed.
Baolian would know where her henchman had gone and why, and when he
didn’t come back with her prizes, she would send another.

Sugar had to know those facts as well as he;
she was the one who’d spent three years of her life hiding from the
Dragon Queen of the South China Sea. Logic obviously wasn’t driving
her or she’d be the one dragging him out of there. That left her
emotions as the culprit, and it wasn’t too difficult to follow
those to a conclusion. She was more afraid of facing the outside
world than she was of facing Baolian.

He released a long-drawn-out breath. He
should have made love to her before now to deepen the bond between
them, then they wouldn’t be having this ridiculous conversation. He
didn’t want to resort to carting her off bodily, but he wasn’t
above cave man tactics.

“You’re coming with me, Sugar.”

“I’ll only be a danger to you,” she said,
her argument taking on the undertones of a plea. “Once I leave
Cocorico, I’m the kiss of death to anyone I’m with.”

Jackson stared at her for all of five
seconds before he burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it.

The fog lifted more while he continued to
laugh, enough for him to watch her confusion turn into irritation
and then downright anger.

“There’s nothing funny about it.”

He begged to differ and bent down to her eye
level to give her a succinct explanation. His grin was a mile
wide.

“Someday, Sugar, for my pleasure and your
sexual edification, I will teach you the ‘kiss of death.’ Until
then, rest assured that it’s a special favor to be bought off a
Bangkok hooker and not you.”