Stranded (31 page)

Eve awoke with a start.
Snake!
Her rib cage wouldn’t expand, wouldn’t let her breathe. Air squeaked in helpless hiccups against her windpipe so that her eyes bulged like balloons about to pop. Darkness enveloped her like a body bag. She struck out at it, and her fist slammed against something cold and hard.

Please!
Her appeal clung to the last molecule of oxygen in her lungs. She knew who she was calling to, but the name hovered beyond her reach.

Please!

In one shattering inhale, the barrier broke. Air barreled into her gasping lungs. Her heart slammed against her ribs.

Her sore ribs . . .

Jake!
She opened her eyes, remembering the bumpy ride down the mountainside and Jake asking if her ribs felt broken. Not broken, she’d groaned, just super sore.

She was in her bed. Betty’s voice, then Crystal’s, floated into the sleeping hall. She swung her legs over her bunk and slipped her feet into her deer moccasins. She held onto the wall. It hurt to breathe and walk at the same time. No way she’d tell anyone, though. Today was the day they were leaving, wasn’t it?

Something else. Even more important. She leaned against the doorway into the chamber, catching her breath, grasping at the elusive memory.

“You’re awake!” Betty almost knocked her chair over, getting up from the table. “How are you feeling?”

Blue sky bathed in sunshine colored the window across the room. How long had she slept? “Where’s Jake? Why is everything still here instead of on the raft? We’re leaving today, aren’t we?”

“I guess that answers my question.” Betty plopped back into her seat. “Jake’s getting fruit, and Crystal left to get water. We’re waiting a day so you can recover.”

“No.” Eve straightened. “I’m fine. We can go.”

“One day won’t make a difference.”

“I don’t need a day. I’ll tell Jake.” If he was getting fruit, it must be morning. They’d have time to make it to the sea-lane before dark. “I’m going to the garden. If he comes back another way, tell him we can go, to start loading up.”

“The garden! That’s the last place you need to go.”

Eve shrugged and emitted a self-conscious laugh. “I don’t know why, but I have to see it.” Before Betty could disapprove further, Eve grabbed a bayonet and crawled out the door. Her ribs protested each movement of her limbs. The pain was worse climbing the mountainside, but she couldn’t leave without visiting the garden. A memory dogged her like a shadow in bright sunlight. She had to understand what had happened in the garden.

She prepared herself for what she’d find. A python, huge, its carcass an ugly blemish against the beauty of the garden. She’d seen plenty of reticulated pythons on the island the last several months, but none that size. Was it one of the same snakes Jake had encountered a year ago in the burial cave? Her head spun at the thought of being imprisoned in that small space with two of the monsters.

She slipped between the boulders guarding the garden’s entryway and cried out. The flowers and bushes planted with such care lay in an upheaval where the snake had writhed in its death agony. The bridges and terraces, though still intact, stood in disarray. Flies blackened the snake’s carcass, their movement giving it a macabre life in death.

Her knees forsook her and she collapsed to the ground. The purple orchid she’d braided into her hair lay torn and battered nearby. She picked it up and pressed its satin petals against her cheek. She’d wanted so much to be beautiful for Jake. Wanted to woo him to her side. Wanted—she swallowed—to not be a grasshopper in a world she couldn’t control.

But she was a grasshopper. As easily crushed as the orchid.

A small landslide lay next to the miniature waterfall. She rose and selected a rock she could heft in both hands to carry it to the snake’s head. She held it above the mass of blowflies and released it. The flies rose and settled again like a flapping cloth. As though driven, she returned with a second rock, then another and another until the skull lay buried.

She stood beside the ragged pile and stared at it. Her heart swelled as the elusive memory flooded her soul. “That’s my headstone, isn’t it?” she whispered. “It says
Helpless. Doomed to Die.
”

Joy spouted like a geyser. It wasn’t Jake she’d called out to. It wasn’t Jake who had rescued her. She laid the tattered orchid on top of the stones. “And it’s my memorial too. I see it now, Lord. It says
Beloved. Saved to Live.
”

It wasn’t until she crossed the garden to the other entrance that she wondered what Jake’s answer to her was. Had he chosen God or her? She would ask him.

Not that it mattered now.

Crystal set the bucket of water onto the cave floor, careful not to let it slop over. “Done. Can I go play now?”

“Shut the door behind you this time.” Aunt Betty thumped her cane. No doubt a scowl accompanied it.

Crystal scooted out the door. “What a grump,” she muttered to the lone soldier. She stood to lower the door, then froze. A white boat was sailing into the cove. Froth-laced waves trailed it. She dropped to a crouch and poked her head back into the cave. “A boat, Aunt Betty! In the cove!”

Her aunt ran as fast as Crystal had ever seen her. She crawled into the trench and peered over the edge with Crystal. “A yacht. Glory be!” She clutched Crystal’s arm as the vessel slowed and laid anchor.

The glint of sunlight on glass flashed from the boat. “Watch out, they’re using binoculars.” Betty pushed Crystal’s head down. “Quick, get in the cave and shut the door.”

“Wait! We gotta find out what they’re going to do. Jake said no one could see the Japanese soldiers, so they won’t see us either. Besides, it’s probably okay if they do.”

“Blast it, child, no, it isn’t! Jake said we’re to stay hidden until he checks anyone out, so don’t you dare show yourself.”

“Okay, I won’t, I promise.” Crystal suppressed a giggle. Aunt Betty must be as curious as she was to agree to stay in the trench. And that meant she must figure they were safe too. But this was more fun, anyway, to stay hidden and spy on the yacht.

Behind her, the cave door rasped as her aunt lowered it. Could the people on the yacht hear it?

Aunt Betty came up and crouched beside her. She put an arm across Crystal’s shoulders. The heavy musk of her aunt’s underarm and the shaky breaths that vibrated from her chest down her arm sent the creeps down Crystal’s spine. Maybe this was a bit scary after all.

Two men lowered a boat from the yacht and boarded it. The sputter of a motor sent the sea gulls screaming. The hairs on Crystal’s arms and the back of her neck rose. The boat shot straight to the stream that emptied into the cove. When the boat landed, the two men jumped out and dashed up the stream toward the jungle.

“We need to tell Jake.” Crystal dropped onto her hands and knees to crawl as fast as she could down the trench.

“Oh no you don’t!” Betty grabbed Crystal’s ankle. “We’re waiting inside the cave like Jake said.” She didn’t let go until they both were inside and the door lowered. “And don’t you go sneaking off on me, either, young lady.”

Eve left the garden to wait for Jake at the waterfall. There was no telling where he’d gone to gather fruit, but he usually came to the pool afterward for a morning swim. Her insides buzzed with all she wanted to tell him. Then again, why delay when she could probably find him downstream?

The earth was tamped into a well-traveled path alongside the stream, which was now narrow and shallow once again from the summer heat, as it had been when they arrived a year ago. How long before the overgrowth would obscure the trail and their history on the island become as well-hidden a secret as the Japanese soldiers’? A sense of melancholia stole over her. For months, all she’d wanted was to leave the island. Now she counted her year here the most important turnaround of her life. The Romero trial was long over, and she couldn’t care less.

“Hello there.”

She jumped at the voice. Standing in front of her was a slender, cocoa-skinned man with black hair and Asian features. Her first thought was that he was one of the left-behind Japanese soldiers, that he’d been on the island all along, probably somewhere deep in the interior. Then it hit her that he was wearing an expensive Pierre Cardin shirt. It was way too big for him and covered up most of a pair of dirty, tan shorts. He wasn’t Japanese, either. He was Filipino.

“You alone?” he asked.

Every cell in her body went on high alert. “Where’d you come from?” She kept her voice friendly but placed her hand on the bayonet strapped to her left leg.

“You need rescue? You and friends?”

He clearly wanted information. So did she. “Do you have a boat? Fishing? Logging?” How good was his English?

“Yes.” He kept smiling while his dark eyes studied her. “You tell me how many I take home.”

“Where is your ship?” She pointed downstream toward the cove. “There?”

She moved to step around him, but stopped when he reached under his shirt and pulled out a pistol. “How many?” he demanded, pointing the weapon at her.

The pistol unnerved her, but surely he wouldn’t use it. He just wanted to scare her into cooperating. She unsheathed her bayonet and held it up, as if she could swat down bullets. She glared at him. “Show me your boat!”

Suddenly someone grabbed her arms from behind. A blow slammed the back of her knees. Her legs buckled, and she was yanked to the ground, the bayonet snatched out of her hand. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a second Filipino dressed in a similar shirt. He pulled a bandana from around his neck and tied her hands behind her back.

She got out one scream. Then the first man grabbed her hair above her brow with his left hand and jammed the pistol into her mouth with his right hand.

“You scream, I shoot. Understand?”

Eve’s heart stuffed into her throat. She nodded.

He removed the gun from her mouth but kept it pressed against her cheek. “You tell me how many friends?”

They wouldn’t believe her if she said she was alone. “One man.” There was no doubt in her mind that Jake could handle these thugs. And, hopefully, Betty and Crystal were hiding in the cave.

“Where this man?”

“I don’t know. He’s gathering fruit.”

“Where you live?”

“Up there, near a pool.”

She listened while the two conferred about what to do next. Look for the man or take her to the boss? The boss won out.

“Get up.” Her captor kept a tight hold on her hair at the top of her head and forced her to walk bent over. She had to face the ground, but it allowed her to see in back of her. The second Filipino fell behind until he was out of sight. The tactic had given him the advantage of sneaking up on her and subduing her. Maybe she could use the separation to her advantage too.

She clenched her thudding heart between her teeth. There had to be something she could do to escape. Ignoring the pain, she strained to loosen the bandana on her wrists.

Jake halted at the scream.

Eve?

He dropped the fruit in his shirt and raced down the tree toward her cry. At the sound of two men’s voices, he stopped, aghast. Someone had landed on the island. Had slipped by him! And now Eve was in danger.

He turned off the path and worked his way through the vegetation to where he could see Eve and her captors without being seen himself. His heart catapulted to his throat when he saw Eve on her knees, head pulled back, the barrel of a pistol ground into the side of her face. It was all he could do not to shout and charge them in a wild rage.

The man holding Eve captive forced her to her feet. She was a good six inches taller, but he compelled her to walk bent over. With her hands tied behind her back, the position put her completely under his control. The second man waited until they were out of sight before trailing them, pistol in hand. Good. That made things easier.

He stepped back onto the trail after the second man passed. At the next bend of the stream, he approached the man from behind, slipped his left hand over the man’s mouth and his right hand to his collar. He jerked the collar across the man’s throat and kicked the back of his knees. A yank backwards pulled his victim off his feet so that his weight hung from the pressure point on his neck. Jake held the squeeze to the count of fifteen, until the man fell limp.

He dragged the body off the path into the foliage and stuffed the pistol into his own belt. The man was wearing tennis shoes. Jake ripped out the shoelaces and tied the man’s hands and feet together behind his back. He used his knife to cut off a portion of the man’s shirt, tore it in two, and gagged him.

How much time had passed? A minute? Two? Jake rushed down the path, his ears sharpened for any sound from Eve and her captor.

Eve strained for a peek ahead at their location. Yes, the junction of the game trail to her favorite tree was coming up. If she could get away, her captor might find it difficult to get a straight shot at her on the undulating path.

She stumbled on purpose and dropped to her knees. The man cursed and let go of her hair. She fell onto her back and yelped as her sore ribs hit the ground. The deception was risky. The man might kick her if he was angry. But he wouldn’t shoot her. Lying on the ground, she looked anything but a threat.

For a moment, the man stood over her, his eyes sweeping her body. “You good mousemeat for boss.” He smirked.

An icy fear pierced her, and in spite of herself, she gasped.

He laughed at her response. “Hey, Miguel, how about we get mousemeat too?” He pointed the pistol at her and walked back down the path. “Hey, Miguel!”

Gun aimed at her or not, she wasn’t going to be anyone’s mousemeat. Her adrenaline exploded like a bomb. The bandana was loose enough now to slide her hands over her bottom and legs and up to her front. She jumped to her feet and ran.

Her captor shrieked an obscenity. The pound of his footsteps sounded behind her. She turned the corner onto the game trail. For a moment it was silent. Only her own breath shuddering in and out of her lungs. Then he was behind her again, his footsteps faster, closer. She needed to open the gap or the chase would be over.

She grabbed a leafy branch and bent it forward as she dashed by. She released it, and it snapped back. Her pursuer squawked, and for a moment his footsteps faltered. Then he was after her again. The trick gained her six steps.

She rounded another twist in the trail. Her destination, the large tree that had toppled into a taller tree’s branches, loomed ahead of her. Her ribs ached, pinching every organ in her heaving chest. Her lungs rasped like rusty hinges.

With a final surge of zip, she hurled herself up the fallen tree trunk. The climb was familiar, the slippery moss not a problem. A glance over her shoulder showed her pursuer much more cautious. Her lead gained another six steps. She climbed as high as she dared in the second tree and clung to its trunk, panting.

Should she shout for help? The pistol tucked into her pursuer’s belt dissuaded her. He would shoot her for sure if she yelled. Or her shout might bring the second Filipino instead of Jake.

Mousemeat
. She shuddered at what the reality of the word would mean for her.

And, just as certain, she realized she’d rather die than get caught.