Stranded (21 page)

Only you can’t outrun a croc in its own territory.

The thought sank in as his chest squeezed out the last molecule of oxygen in his lungs. He inhaled desperately, mouth wide, throat burning. He toppled to his knees and let go of Eve to break his fall.

Eve’s shriek matched the wind’s. Her nails scratched through his shirt as she slid down his back.
God, no!
The croc had her!

He scrambled to his feet and whirled, still gasping, to face the beast. Eve lay on the path, struggling to get to her knees, swiping mud off her face. There was no croc.

He didn’t wait to see why. “Run!” He swept her up, heaved her over his shoulder, and staggered forward. Ten steps and the wind hurled them off his feet. Sand, coconuts, and palm fronds assaulted them as he fell. They had reached the beach.

“You okay?”

Eve answered him with a groan and dry heaves.

He barely had enough energy to drag her out of missile range. He set her down and slumped against a palm, facing inland toward the bog while he caught his breath. A pile of coconuts next to him was ammunition in case of a croc invasion, though he doubted the reptiles would venture out this far. Not with a typhoon working up its own appetite.

“We’ve got to go. We still have time.” The rest of the journey would be a piece of cake compared to this.

The fury of the storm hit as they approached the ocean cliff. The path he’d created around it proved no protection. They went inland into unfamiliar territory, where the canopy battled the storm for them. Except for the howl of the wind and the tremor of the trees, there was no sign of life. The monkeys and other canopy-dwellers had fled. Exhausted, Jake fell asleep, cushioning Eve’s head on his thigh.

The quiet woke him. He roused Eve. “The eye is here. We’ve got to get down to the cove before the typhoon hits again.”

The nap had done Eve as much good as it had him. Although still woozy, she insisted on stumbling after him, leaving him free to hunt the trail he had marked. They emerged at the top of the ocean cliff and gazed with astonishment at the clear sky forming a crystal blue dome over beaches strewn with debris and fallen trees. The ocean, however, strained in huge waves that said the storm wasn’t over.

“The eye won’t last long.” He forced himself to keep a pace Eve could match. “We’d better get to the cove before the wind starts up again. We don’t want it to catch us on that open field.”

The descent proved too much for Eve’s shaky legs. He helped her climb step by step down the rocky path to the stream. They paused for a drink, but it didn’t stay in Eve’s stomach. She hung her head and gasped shallow breaths.

“We’re almost there,” he soothed her. “Just a few more steps.”

At the trench, she collapsed. He carried her the rest of the way to Betty and Crystal’s welcoming arms. She was out cold, and his stomach buzzed with worry that she had internal injuries.

Eve shrank from the coconut shell of sea chowder Betty thrust in her face. “No thanks.” Her stomach lurched at the reminder of ocean water scouring salt up her esophagus the whole trip back from the boat yesterday. She’d slept all day, but tonight, as soon as everyone joined her at the hearth, she wanted to apologize for wrecking the boat—and their best chance to leave the island. Her failure sat heavily on her stomach, as bitter as the salt the ocean had forced down her throat.

“You haven’t eaten anything all day.” The shell teetered as Betty set it at Eve’s feet.

“Can’t.” How could she, when Romero’s trial would proceed without her now? Everyone thought she was dead.

Crystal approached and
with a loud clatter dumped an armload of wood onto the floor. She sighed heavily and sat to feed the branches one at a time into the fire. “I’m bored. Jake, can you finish telling us the story about you and Ginny?”

“Don’t pester him, child.” Betty lowered herself into the chair next to Crystal and yawned.

The yawn meant Betty would be heading to bed in minutes. If Eve were going to apologize, she’d better do it now.

But she couldn’t roll the two-ton rock off her chest. She gazed glumly at the coals sparking red in the intermittent gusts from the windows. None of the others had a stake in the boat like she did. What did they care, really? Only she had a reason to get back home. Frustration pinched her stomach.

“I don’t mind, Betty. I like talking about Ginny.” Jake took a seat on the other side of Eve and put his bare feet on the hearth’s edge. The four of them sat side-by-side so the caldron afforded some protection from the wind and rain whistling through the windows.

Jake stretched his arms toward the coals and wiggled his fingers. “I told you about our time at the fair. Ginny never would date me, but we became good friends. I found every excuse I could to be with her. I sat next to her in school, walked down the hall with her between classes, asked to study with her for exams. I even drove all the way out to where she lived to help with odd jobs around the place. Her father was an inventor and was often away on business. There was always something I could do. I had a schoolboy’s crush and was madly in love with her. I was sure that somehow I would find a way to win her.”

He withdrew his arms to his sides. “Then tragedy struck. At the beginning of Ginny’s senior year, both her parents died in an accident. Her only surviving relative was her grandmother, who was in a nursing home.”

“Poor thing,” Betty murmured.

“Did Ginny have to move away?” Crystal stopped poking the fire to wait for Jake’s answer.

“No. Permission was given for her to live with a family that belonged to her church so she could complete her senior year.” Jake fell silent.

“Let me guess.” Betty leaned forward in her chair to peer at him. “It changed things between you and Ginny.”

“Yes. The Millers—the family she lived with—were stricter than her parents had been and didn’t want us getting together outside of school. When it was time to leave for college, Ginny told me it was best not to see each other or even correspond.”

“That stinks!” Crystal jabbed a branch at the coals.

“I told her I loved her and wanted to marry her. But she said our relationship could go nowhere and now was a good time to end it. I was crushed, but what could I do? I went on to college and concentrated on my studies and athletic scholarship. I did my best to forget her. Then, in my sophomore year, I roomed in a dorm suite with three guys on my wrestling team, and guess what?”

Crystal giggled. “I know. They were all Christians.”

“You’re right. God used them to wrestle me to the mat and pin me. I asked Jesus to be my Savior and turned my life over to Him.”

Eve suppressed a groan.

“So you called Ginny and finally got together?” Betty grinned at her guess.

“Nope. I figured God had firmly closed the door on any romance between us. But as it turned out, Ginny was meant to be part of my life after all. My father died of cancer while I was in college. Ginny came to his funeral and I told her I’d become a Christian.”

Jake’s voice broke. “My dad was the best. He’d have been happy to know he brought Ginny and me together.”

Eve squirmed at the grief in his voice. The ache pinching her stomach catapulted into her heart. Except now the pain wasn’t about missing the trial. It was about something worse. Something far worse. She quelled a sob that rose to her throat.

“I’m turning in.” Jake rose abruptly to his feet. His chair rocked backwards. He righted it and left without another word.

Crystal and Betty gazed in silence at the fire. Seconds later, they followed him, bidding Eve good-night.

She eased the bumpy route of her pain with a deep sigh. Well, so much for apologizing about the boat. Didn’t matter. There’d be lots
more nights they’d sit around with nothing to do, thanks to her. The apology wouldn’t mean much to them, anyway. Once the typhoon hit, Jake and Betty had resigned themselves to waiting out the monsoon season. If anything, they would try to console her, maybe ask questions about why she’d been so determined to attend this mysterious court date.

Should she just tell them everything, come clean now that they’d be stuck together for who knew how many months?

The pain scuttled back to her stomach. And have Jake hate her day after day all those months? How many times had he rescued her? Each one would be a knife in his heart that he hadn’t saved his wife but had saved the person behind his wife’s death. Eve slumped forward and wrapped her arms around her chest.

No, if he was this emotional about his father’s death from more than twenty years ago, he certainly wasn’t going to be understanding about the circumstances of Ginny’s death. The only reasonable course of action was to bide her time until they got off the island.

The ache snaked back to her heart, jolting the emotion aroused by Jake’s unfinished story. Something . . . She swallowed as the ache crept up and squeezed her throat. Something about Jake and his father. The respect, the tenderness that had choked Jake’s voice . . . She clapped her hands over her face. Her father. It was about her father.

She hated him.

The pain twisted inside her like a buried dagger, scarred over but never removed. She had pushed it away and pushed it away, put it out of her mind, interred it in a tomb of forgetfulness. But it was still there.

She sat up, ramrod straight. All right, then, it was time to deal with the issue. Get over it. Move on.

She clenched her teeth. At the boat yesterday, Jake had brought up her dream. That was her clue. The ache thudded heartbeats in her ears as she forced herself to think through the nightmare. Wolves. Wolves caught her. Were they her father, something he had done? No. The answer was solid, sure. The tightness in her throat loosened.

What, then? Again, with equal clarity, the answer asserted itself: not what he’d done, but what he hadn’t done. Some way he hadn’t been there for her. Some way he had abandoned her. Rejected her for something else.

Bile curdled at the back of her throat. What? she yelled at herself. She placed herself on the witness stand—young, a child, maybe Crystal’s age.
What?
she yelled at her. The child cowed. She was only scaring her with the yelling.
What?
she pleaded. The child stared back with blank eyes. She wasn’t going to tell. Couldn’t tell. The child couldn’t see what the “what” was.

Eve stood up. Sweat coated her skin. Her body shook.
It’s okay
, she soothed the child.
It’s okay that you don’t know. It will come.
She felt that with certainty. The answer would come.

The island would give it to her.

Jojo walked down to the harbor in Manila and sat on a piling. Sea gulls circled the dock, squawking
.
Pools of captured ocean water and dead seaweed dotted the beachfront. The smell of the ocean was strong, freshly released from the turmoil that had battered the harbor and the city beyond it.

Exhilaration pounded his nerves. The first typhoon of the season had come and gone. The power, the relentless violence, was his power too. Four more months it would build. And build. Build until the monsoon ended, and he took his first step. With spring would come the big, fancy yachts to fill the empty slips in the marina. This year he would examine each slick vessel until the right one came along. This year, for sure, he’d find it and make it his. This year he was ready.

The harbor had become his at age six. He’d sat on the wharf and kicked his legs and waited. Waited for his father. His mother had described him. Tall, with wavy blond hair, handsome like Clint Eastwood. And rich. His stomach squeezed with excitement. A rich
americano
with a big, fancy, white yacht.

She told the story over and over, how she had waited on the handsome man in the bar of the restaurant he and his friends frequented. She was young and slim then, with large, brown eyes that gazed yearningly after him. She’d had all her teeth then, too, and they were white like oyster pearls. Whenever the
americano
looked at her, she smiled. At last, he invited her to come aboard his big boat to tend bar at a bash he gave for his friends.

When the party was over, he came to her drunk and paid her for her services. It hadn’t been hard to end up in his bed. She didn’t stay until morning because she didn’t want the crew to find her, but when she went back after work, the beautiful boat was gone. Nine months later, Jojo was born. Stupid woman, she didn’t even know the name of his father. But he’d come back. And he’d recognize his son. His mother said they looked just like each other in the face.

But not any more. Jojo ran his beefy hand over the stubble on his cheeks and chin. His mother said he was ugly with his face cut up and scarred. Six of his teeth were knocked out in prison brawls.

So what. His father wasn’t coming for him.

And that didn’t matter either. Jojo flicked his tongue over his lips. He couldn’t have a father, but he could have a yacht.

He had two of the crew picked out to run the boat. And he had the island picked out to hide on—right at the outermost edge of the Philippines, complete with a cove to hide in.

This year he was ready.