Dragon's Eden (21 page)

“Jackson?” Her voice was soft, barely a
whisper.

“Yeah?”

“I think we should get out of here.”

“Yeah.”

He crouched down and helped her to her feet.
She was as unsteady as he was, her knees jelly, her breath coming
as rapidly as his. He’d been mistaken when he’d thought she wasn’t
reacting with the same spine-tingling distress he’d felt.

“It wasn’t going to hurt us, you know,” she
said, not sounding overly convinced.

He let out a deep breath. “No, I didn’t know
that. Are you okay?”

“Fine.” Her voice was shaking too much for
him to believe her. “How about you?”

“Doing great. Just great.” He didn’t sound
any better than she did.

Jen yelled at them from the icehouse,
exhorting them to hurry. Jackson tightened his hold on her, and
together they made their way up to the old building at the base of
the cliff. Jen beckoned them inside.

Jackson looked down at her. “I thought you
said he knew the way out of here.”

“That’s it.” She stepped inside and gestured
at the wood planks covering the southern wall. They were old and
scarred and thick, like ship’s siding. He remembered them from when
he’d had tea with Jen.

“Cocorico was a pirate’s cove long before it
became mine,” she continued. “The better living is on this side of
the island, but the better mooring is on the other side. So the
brigands blasted a tunnel. They built the door to keep unwanted
visitors out”

“And you’ve been using it to keep me in,” he
said, disgusted with himself. He should have seen it before, what
with Jen camped out in front of the damn icehouse night and day.
His consolation was in knowing that if he had escaped, he wouldn’t
have been there to save her from Sher Chang.

Jen hurried to the back of the shack, and
Jackson heard the sound of a heavy chain running through metal
rings. Chances were, even if he’d realized where the door was, he
wouldn’t have been able to open it.

The wooden planks moved, swinging inward and
taking up most of the remaining space. Sugar squeezed through the
opening left between the outer wall and the door. He followed her
into a narrow portal. Jen was ahead of them, lighting their way
with a flashlight and ordering them to keep up.

The tunnel was cool and damp, unhappily
reminding him of the river that ran above their heads. The
passageway curved through the rock, making it impossible to see too
far ahead or too far behind. Jen’s flashlight beam bounced off
jagged walls and an uneven floor.

Without warning, they turned a corner and
stumbled out onto a beach. It was as if the tunnel walls had
suddenly disappeared to be replaced with sea and sand, trees and
the night sky. The wind that had buffeted them in the glade didn’t
exist on this side of the island. The storm had been confined to
her home and gardens, a meteorological anomaly he wasn’t going to
begin to try to understand.

He breathed his first easy breath in hours.
There was a whaleboat in the bay with a big outboard motor hanging
off the stern. He hadn’t known what to expect, but a dugout canoe
wouldn’t have surprised him.

Sugar felt her heart constrict at the sight
of the boat. Wild roses twined their way across the bow and down
either side, along with paintings of oleander, hibiscus,
frangipani, the yellow blossoms of nightsage, all manner of
orchids, and the strikingly tropical lobster-claw helconia with its
spikelike orange flowers set against the turquoise blue of the
hull. Henry kept the boat in good repair. She used it to get to
parts of the island that were inaccessible by an overland route.
She had never used it to leave or even to go beyond Shark Alley.
There was no place she could go without putting someone in danger.
There was no place she could go now. She could only stand on the
beach and watch Jackson leave.

He and Jen were walking toward the dock,
speaking in Chinese to each other. She knew she had to go down and
show them where she kept her charts and compass. A course of north
by northeast would get them to St. Vincent in little over an hour.
From there, the world was at his feet.

Briefly, she allowed herself to wonder if he
would ever come back. Then she squelched the thought as hopeless
and forced herself to move. She got no farther than a yard before
she was captured from behind.

A strangled scream lodged in her throat, cut
off by the huge sweaty hand clamped over her mouth. What little
sound she made was drowned by the pounding surf. Neither Jackson
nor Jen looked back.

She kicked at her attacker; squirming within
the ironlike bands of his arms. He was hauling her back to the
tunnel, and what she knew was a fate worse than death. All of her
years of planning and caution were coming to naught. She’d always
thought it would be easy to die, that she would be in control of
the moment, able to choose death over torture. But she wasn’t going
to have a choice. The beast holding her, Chang the Snake, had
promised rape and mutilation, and death only when it was granted by
Fang Baolian.

Helpless rage boiled up within her. The
Dragon Whore would not reduce her to less than a woman. With all
her strength, she tightened the muscles in her arms and smashed her
elbow back into Sher Chang’s torso, catching him just under the rib
cage.

He let her go with an
ummph
, and she screamed bloody murder.

Jackson whirled around and took off up the
beach at a dead run. Sher Chang had found them. He and Sugar were
on the ground, and he had her by the ankle. The brute crawled and
lunged through the sand after her, trying for a better hold. She
rolled over to fight him off, and Jackson winced. Damn bad move,
Sugar, he thought, unless you can get in a good kick before he
crushes you.

She did, right to the bastard’s groin.
Howling, the giant recoiled, cupping his injured manhood, his face
a mask of rage and pain. Jackson didn’t give him a chance to
recover. There was no such thing as a fair fight when lives were on
the line. He caught Sher Chang on the side of the head with the
heel of his foot, and the giant crumpled to the sand in sudden and
absolute silence.

Once again, the two of them were left in the
moonlight, breathing too fast with their hearts pounding. If
another snake came out of the night and so much as looked
cross-eyed at her, Jackson was shooting first and asking questions
later. He’d had enough.

He helped her to her feet and steadied her
while they caught their breaths. Behind him, Jen started up the big
outboard. He saw her look over his shoulder, saw dismay cloud her
face. He understood her reaction; she thought she was staying on
the island alone, the way she’d been for so long.

He wasn’t about to tell her any different.
She’d know soon enough.

She shifted her gaze to meet his, and the
sadness in her eyes tore at him. He’d never seen such a bleak
surrender to the inevitable.

“It’s time,” she said so softly he almost
didn’t hear the words.

He tightened his hold on her arms, trying to
give her his strength. She’d had a rebel’s spirit once. She still
did when it came to fighting him, but she needed to find enough of
it again to fight her real enemy, Fang Baolian.

“Jackson, before you leave . . .” Her gaze
slid away from his. “I—I want you to know that if I could have
chosen a man to come, if I could have chosen a man to love, I would
have chosen you. . . .” Her voice trailed off in a whisper full of
regrets.

A single tear slipped free, and he captured
it with his finger. She was so beautiful, so strong. He wanted to
kiss her, before she got so mad at him he’d be lucky to get within
ten feet of her, but there was no help for it. They were out of
time.

“I want you to remember that, Sugar, no
matter what,” he said, just before he bent down, picked her up, and
hauled her over his shoulder. Jen had the boat idling, waiting for
them.

Jackson stood on the balcony of his hotel
room. Below him was an enclosed garden, a small jungle sweet with
the scent of flowers. Above him was a dark sky preparing to give
way to dawn. To his left was Sugar, stonily silent, staring down at
the inky profusion of plants.

She hadn’t spoken to him since he and Jen
had dragged her off the Kingstown docks and as far away from the
ocean as they could get on foot. He’d offered to take her to her
father’s house, but she’d acted like he’d offered to help her
murder baby harp seals. The last place she would go, she’d told him
with anger sparking her eyes, was anywhere near anyone she cared
about. So she’d gone with him He hadn’t missed the not-so-subtle
insult in her decision.

Jen had the room on the other side of
Sugar’s, but he’d gone to bed after making a phone call to
Shulan.

Jackson had made his own phone call. Cooper
would be on St. Vincent by nightfall and have a crew on Cocorico
before that. Jackson was to stay out of it. Cooper would rather
lose the bounty than take a chance on losing him again. He hadn’t
had to say it twice. Jackson was bone-tired. Even under Sugar’s
benign house arrest, his nerves had been taut, his body harboring
unconscious tension. With freedom had come release and exhaustion.
He was ready to collapse.

The problem was, the place he wanted to
collapse was in Sugar’s bed, preferably with her next to him. He
would feel safer that way, and she would be safer. He had not been
invited, though, and from the look on her face, it would be a cold
day in hell before she so much as spoke to him again, let alone
asked him into her bed. He had kidnapped her, an act that had
evened up the felonies in their relationship, but was unlikely to
get him anything more intimate.

He sighed and looked back out into the
night. Cooper had cried on the phone. That had shaken him up. The
last time he’d heard Cooper cry was when their mom had died. Nobody
had shed a tear for Old Man Daniels, not even his only son, but
Cooper had cried for Jackson.

A knock sounded on the door, and he pushed
himself away from the balcony railing. His credit cards had been
canceled due to his untimely demise, but he’d had enough cash in
American dollars to grease a few wheels of comfort, like having
breakfast served at four-thirty in the morning.

The inn’s proprietress, a groggy but
congenial black woman, had done the cooking herself, explaining
that her chef didn’t come to work for another hour. She rolled in a
cart laden with coffee, freshly baked muffins, two covered
omelettes, a double order of bacon for Jackson, and a basket of
fruit. He helped her push it out on the balcony and set a few of
the items, along with a vase of flowers, onto a small table.

After the proprietress left, he walked over
and lightly touched Sugar’s shoulder.

“I wish you would eat something. We’ve had a
long night.”

Her answer was the same one he’d been
getting since he’d carried her aboard the boat. “You have to take
me back.”

“You don’t have to live in exile.” The words
had become his standard answer. “I’m not going to spend the rest of
my life in hiding, and Baolian wants me as badly as she wants
you.”

“Not quite,” she said, sounding as tired as
he felt.

He conceded the point with silence. He was
merely a possible threat to Baolian’s empire and had only hurt her
ego. Sugar had actually cut the royal tush.

“Cocorico isn’t safe anymore anyway, Sugar.
It’s on the map now. Every pirate and bounty hunter from here to
Singapore has just put a big X on their Caribbean charts for ‘marks
the spot.’ ”

“I know.” She wrapped one arm around her
waist and buried her face in her other hand. Her anger was giving
way to desolation, a transition he would rather not have witnessed,
yet he knew it was all part of the process of letting go. She’d
lost so much in the last twelve hours: her sense of
security—however false it might have been—her home, her work, her
means of support, yet her insistence on returning hinted at
something more. Cocorico was no longer safe, even she admitted it,
but a part of her still saw the place as a sanctuary.

From what, though?

He moved closer and slipped his arm around
her shoulders, enfolding her to his side. After a moment’s
hesitation, she sank against him.

This was where she belonged, he thought,
tightening his hold. For reasons he didn’t fully understand, he
needed her next to him, always. He needed her in his life. She had
become a part of him, or he a part of her. He didn’t know which or
if it even made a difference. There had been only a few women in
his life and he’d loved each of them, but Sugar entranced him
beyond romantic love. She was an endless mystery to be explored, a
primeval Eve, virginal and ripe, fecund. Where she worked, life
blossomed, what she nurtured thrived. Leaving her alone in her
gardens had been impossible from the moment he’d seen her. Even if
Sher Chang had never shown up, he would not have left without her.
He would have cajoled, enticed, seduced, whatever it took to keep
her by his side.

Frustration tightened his jaw. She was by
his side now, but he was no closer to keeping her than he’d ever
been.

“You can’t go back, not until things
change,” he said, wondering who he was lying to the most, her or
himself. “Baolian has to be dealt with, one way or the other.”

“I don’t have anyplace else to go, Jackson.”
She shook her head, and her soft curls caught and held the
differing angles of moonlight. “No place else.”

“We’ll figure out a plan. Come on.” He led
her over to the table. “Things will look better if you have
something to eat and get some rest.”

He already had a plan, a half dozen of them,
but the decisions were hers to make. All he could do was console,
cajole, entice, and do his damnedest to seduce.

He pulled out her chair and poured her a cup
of coffee. When she was settled, he sat down on the opposite side
of the table and reached for a muffin.