Dragon's Eden (20 page)

Even in the moonlight, he could see her
blush. “You’re insufferable.”

“Probably, but I’m also right. You’re coming
with me, no matter how scared you are to leave your little
hideaway.”

“I am not scared. I’m being practical.”

He bit back a curse. He’d had no idea she
had such a stubborn streak. Words weren’t getting him anywhere.
Action was his only recourse. “I think you’re making a mistake, but
I don’t have time to change your mind. Get a few things together,
whatever you’ll need up in the hills. I’ll rest easier knowing you
won’t have to come back here after I’m gone.”

She acquiesced after a moment’s hesitation,
giving him a short nod before heading toward the bungalow.

He followed a few paces behind. He had never
considered himself a very good liar, at least around his brother.
With Cooper, it had always seemed that the more vital it was to
weave a good story, the less likely he had been to come up with
one. He had never successfully lied his way out of a major piece of
trouble.

Sugar obviously didn’t have Cooper’s years
of experience to guide her. She’d bought his story, and he’d been
lying through his teeth. She would be off the island before he
was.

* * *

Inside her bedroom, Sugar went first to the
closet and removed the box containing Jackson’s things. She knew
she had to keep moving or her heart would break.

He was leaving.

“You’re going to need this stuff once you’re
off the island,” she said, carrying the box over to her bed,
willing the tremors out of her voice.

He was leaving. She’d expected to have more
notice, time for a good-bye and an apology, time to prepare herself
for loneliness.

“I’ll give you the charts of the local
waters,” she went on. “You can pick your island, but I recommend
St. Vincent. It’s the closest.” She opened the box and stepped
back, giving him access to the contents.

The first thing he picked up was the gun. He
checked the clip, then tucked the weapon into the waistband of his
pants. The wallet came next. He opened it up and thumbed through
the bills.

“It’s all there,” she said, giving in to a
nominal degree of anger—which was so much better than giving in to
heartbreak.

“I wouldn’t know if it weren’t. I’m just
checking my resources.” He continued looking through the pockets,
checking credit cards and his identification.

“You don’t know how much money you carry
around in your wallet?” She knew, and it was a lot. He should be
more aware of his cash, of his situation . . . of what he was
leaving behind.

“I usually have a general idea, but it’s
been kind of a wild few months.” He glanced up, an indecipherable
expression on his face. “Did you find anything else in my wallet
interesting?”

“I wasn’t interested in your money,” she
said defensively, trying in vain to hold on to her anger. “I was
only looking for a phone number or an address or something so I
could have Cooper contacted.”

“I never did find your radio.” He refolded
the wallet and slipped it into the pocket of the drawstring pants.
“You did use a radio, didn’t you?”

“Yes. It’s in the pantry, under the
floorboards.” It didn’t matter what he knew now. Nothing
mattered.

He lifted his head a fraction, as if to say,
Ah yes, of course, the perfect place—but no smile graced his mouth
and only a hint of impatience warmed the depths of his eyes. He was
the warrior, looking through her to the next move.

“Get your clothes together, Sugar,” he told
her, glancing away to pick up the rest of his things and put them
in his pockets. “I have to go.”

That was right. He was in a hurry. She’d
forgotten for a moment. There was no more time left for words of
the love he’d thought he felt, not when his freedom beckoned like a
fire in the night.

Moving around the room, she stuffed clothes
and a few personal items into a canvas bag. The wind was picking
up, gaining strength and setting the jalousies quivering. She
wished she’d thought ahead to have a present for him, something for
him to remember her by besides a few ragged pieces of clothing.

Her hand lingered on a conch shell, then
passed it by to pick up her comb to put in the bag. Every souvenir
shop in the West Indies sold conch shells. The only unique thing
she had on Cocorico were the endangered flora species, and she
couldn’t quite see him bothering to take a plant home, or her being
dumb enough to give him one.

She grabbed extra socks for her bag. Most of
what she needed she could get off the land, including food, water,
and shelter. She wouldn’t starve up-country, but she wanted to take
cooking utensils and a few food items out of the cottage. She
wanted to take him. He hadn’t seen that part of the island, where
the mists gathered in the trees, where it rained in the sunshine.
The trade winds always blew up-country, cooling down the heat and
wafting soft against a person’s skin. The mountain trails were
precarious, the wildlife abundant. The land was rugged, open, and
free, the vistas went on forever and ever. It was a good place for
a dragon’s lair.

Jack Sun preferred San Francisco.

He could believe whatever he wanted, but she
knew Shulan was telling the truth about his heritage. They both
carried Sun Yi’s blood—and for that, Baolian wanted him dead.

She stopped with a sweatshirt clutched in
her fist, turning to look at him over her shoulder.

“You’ll be careful, won’t you?” Her voice
was softer than she’d meant it to be, the warning more personal,
revealing a level of emotion she would be wise to hide.

She needn’t have worried he’d read too much
into her words. He only gave her a wry glance and said, “I’m not
the one you need to be worrying about.”

“I’ll be fine.” Her chin lifted. One way or
the other, she would survive being alone again. The days would melt
into one another like sand into the sea, and before long his face
would fade from her memory along with the sound of his voice.

But not his kiss. What she’d felt with his
kiss would never fade.

“I’m sure you will be,” he said, showing
more confidence in her than she would have expected.

Maybe too much confidence. If she wasn’t
supposed to worry about him or herself, then who? No one was in
more trouble, unless—

“Shulan never meant you harm,” she said,
interceding for her friend. Whatever revenge he might exact should
not include the young Asian woman. “She was only trying to save
someone she cared about.”

He let out a hard laugh. “She didn’t even
know me until she dragged me off the beach.”

“No, but she knew about you. She knew she
had a brother, and as far as Cooper would go to avenge you, she
went to protect you. No more, no—”

The wooden shutters on the window snapped
open with a crash, bouncing against the wall, then flapping back to
hang crookedly. Wind swirled through the room, rattling bottles and
displacing papers.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he
growled, reaching for her canvas bag and leading the way out of the
bungalow.

They met Jen on the windswept verandah, and
the news he delivered made Jackson swear.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Sher Chang is missing.” He grabbed her by
the arm and propelled her down the steps, following Jen. “Whatever
else you thought you needed, you’re going to have to do
without.”

“I thought he was tied,” she said, running
to keep up with him.

“He was, but it’s damn hard to tie a snake
and make it hold.” The mists had lifted enough for the moon to
light their way, but wisps of fog still swirled across the ground,
driven by the wind.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Sher Chang, his name translates to ‘Chang
the Snake.’ Jen calls him Manushi, after an Asiatic pit viper
that’s fine as long as it’s picking on something smaller than
itself, but pretty damn ineffectual on anything bigger.”

Another snake, she thought in dismay.
Suddenly her island was crawling with them, and they had brought
discord and destruction to her gardens. The bushmaster and she
could have lived in wary harmony, but ineffectual or not, she
didn’t want to deal with a human snake, especially alone.

“What are the chances of you being able to
get someone here tomorrow to pick these men up?”

“Good, but better for the day after. I have
some connections in Brazil I can count on for help.”

The increasing wind made further discussion
difficult. She would wait until they were inside the icehouse. They
were nearly there.

To their right, the forest fluttered and
swayed in the wind, all the leaves rustling together and sounding
like a larger version of the four-tiered waterfall. The clearing
where she’d thought he’d been sleeping was directly ahead. Palms
flanked both sides of the grassy area. A frond tore free as they
entered the clearing and blew against her, making her stumble.

Jackson lost his grip on her and she went
down, catching herself with her hands. The wind wasn’t knocked out
of her, but she gasped anyway—first in outrage, then out of
fear.

Directly in front of her face, less than two
feet away, was a box trap holding a jungle runner. There was only
one person who would have dared to trap one of her animals—Jackson
Daniels, the man who dared anything and defied the rest. She would
have given him both barrels of her anger if she hadn’t been frozen
in place by the hypnotic stillness of the bushmaster less than a
foot farther away, stalking its corralled dinner.

Its tongue flickered in the moonlight,
feeling her heat and chilling her to the bone.

“Don’t move,” Jackson whispered.

The warning was unnecessary. Her muscles
were numb; not so the snake’s. Its head silently slid forward,
searching, and a bolt of adrenaline shot through her, searing a
path to every nerve ending she possessed.

She sensed more than saw Jackson drawing his
gun.

“No,” she breathed, and the bushmaster
coiled in upon itself, reacting to her voice.

Moonbeams played along the whole awesome
length of the reptilian beast, shining off the slick-skinned body
and revealing where its tail crossed the forest’ path and made
sinuous tracings in the mix of soil and sand. The bushmaster was
huge and powerful, an animal to be reckoned with on its own
terms.

Jackson moved again, and once again she
warned him off.

“No.” She kept her voice calm and low,
soothing. The snake was looking directly at her, holding her gaze
with its snake’s eyes. The forked tongue flickered at her again.
She didn’t respond with another bolt of fear, but with acceptance.
She was well within striking distance of one of the most formidable
creatures on the face of the earth. It would either bite her or
not, and for reasons she didn’t fully understand, her money was on
not.

All around them the storm built in strength
and intensity, but the creatures in the glade held their places in
the deadly tableau of woman, beast, and man. Jen, far in the lead,
had gone on ahead, unaware of the danger behind him.

The snake glided forward, head held high,
stretching its length out. It seemed endless, longer than herself
by twice as much. Below the sound of the wind, she heard the soft,
hissing slither of scales sliding across the grass. Lord, she
prayed she was right about the thing not biting her.

Jackson had never felt so useless. A venom
factory was closing in on the woman he loved, and he didn’t dare
take a chance and shoot it. He wouldn’t put it past her to throw
herself in front of a speeding bullet to save a damn snake. She
wouldn’t make it, of course, she wasn’t that fast. But the damn
snake was fast—fast enough to get her before he could pull the
trigger.

He was standing so still his body hurt. Only
seconds had passed since she’d fallen, and only seconds more would
pass before the confrontation was over, one way or the other.

The bushmaster kept gliding across the
grass, moving closer and closer to where she knelt at Jackson’s
feet. The trapped lizard was paralyzed with fear.

With a rapid action Jackson never could have
beaten, the snake struck and sank its fangs into its prey.
Jackson’s stomach and heart both plummeted, taking ten years off
his life, even though it was the jungle runner the bushmaster had
chosen, box trap and all, and not Sugar.

The lizard struggled, but the bushmaster
held firm, pulling its body in close to give it more strength and
leverage. The box trap disintegrated under the thrashing it took.
Jackson wasn’t waiting around for the final scene. He reached down
for Sugar, ready to pull her to her feet and get the hell out of
there—but once again the snake was faster. When Jackson grabbed
Sugar, the snake grabbed him, its tail coiling up from underneath
her arm and wrapping around his wrist, binding them together with a
powerful squeeze of its body.

Sweet Lord, he prayed, instantly
hyperventilating, his eyes glazing over with shock. The snake was
curled around him like a bracelet, tying him to Sugar, while it
fought the lizard to the death.

No one would believe it.

He didn’t believe it.

The bushmaster’s body was cool and dry, all
sinuous, moving muscle wrapping around his arm. Black-and-gray
markings ran together as the snake slid and coiled around him,
showing flashes of its orange underbelly. The thought of shooting
it crossed his mind once, like a streak of lightning, and was just
as quickly discarded. The snake had spared him twice.

The lizard jerked in its last throes of
death, and the bushmaster slowly uncoiled, releasing him and Sugar.
Neither of them so much as twitched until the snake was nothing
more than a shadow moving in the forest.

Maybe he’d dreamed the whole surreal
incident.

A shudder rippled through his body. He
hadn’t dreamed anything. He and Sugar had just tangled with a
bushmaster, been caressed by the reptile. By rights, they should
both be suffering their own death throes.