Eden's Promise (29 page)

She turned her face to the wind and let it blow the tears from her eyes.

***

Eden had no way of telling time, but when they’d found the boat it had been almost dusk, and now the sun had gone down two days later. Eden and Kelly hadn’t slept since the truck stop, and she wasn’t sure if Annie and Christine had, since they were watching over Aaron below. Christine had come up at regular intervals with updates. They’d slowed the bleeding, but he was weak. They needed to get him home.

Eden’s hands were numb and raw from battling the sails, and she was soaked through from the spray. Kelly urged her to go below to warm up, but she wouldn’t chance being off the deck and Kelly missing the island. She checked the compass on the boat. They were getting close, she knew, but since the island stayed dark at night, it would be easy to miss it, to sail right past, into the ocean.
 

“Get out the flashlights,” she ordered Annie. The wind was still strong but Annie had come out on deck, saying the smell of blood and the movement of the water was making her sick. So the two of them turned on their flashlights and the beams danced off the fog that enveloped them. No land. No land. No land.

Despair dropped her stomach and she sank to a bench, her grip on the lines slacking. She’d killed them all. They were starving and thirsty and lost.

And then...

“Did you hear that?” She bounded to her feet again. “Over there. Point over there!”

Yes, the sound of waves lapping on rocks. They were approaching from the south end of the island, not the east as she usually did. And then she heard the hail.

“Turn back! No place for you here!”

She stepped up on the bench to see who was calling to her, but of course it was impossible in the dark. “It’s Eden McKay!”
 

She scrambled in her brain for the password Damien had given her when she left. He’d given her two—one if she was arriving safely, another if she had enemies on board. She hoped she remembered which was which.
 

“The password is ‘Package!”“ She had Kelly, after all.

Hesitation, then shouts of excitement. With shaking hands she guided the boat toward the dock.

“Bring Vicky! We have an emergency!” she called as she tried to tie the boat to the dock.

Suddenly other hands were there, taking over, other hands lifting her from the boat, into an embrace.

“We thought you were dead,” Damien said into her hair.

She let herself sag against him, if only for a moment. “It was a near thing. Aaron’s stabbed, and we have others with us.”

Damien drew back, his brow furrowed in the bouncing flashlight beams. “Others?”

“They’re friends. I’ll explain later. But Aaron’s hurt, bad, and we need to get him to Vicky. How is my mother? Someone needs to tell her I brought Kelly home.”

Damien dispatched Josh with a flick of his finger, and the younger man dashed up the dock. “She’s taking it easy, getting a lot of rest. Without x-rays and blood tests, it’s hard to tell.”

She swallowed hard. She’d feared her mother would be dead when she returned, but the bigger part of her mind had convinced herself there would be a miraculous recovery. She still clung to that hope. She nodded and fought tears, then stepped back.

“Aaron,” she reminded gently, pointing at the boat.

Damien grunted, released her, and sent two of his men onto the boat to bring Aaron to shore.
 

She hadn’t seen him since Geoff and Christine took him below. He was semi-conscious now, an arm draped over the shoulder of each of the two men, his head bobbing. It seemed to take all of his strength for him to lift it and smile at her.

“Good job, sweetheart.”

“Yes, good job, sweetheart,” echoed another voice, farther away, and she pivoted, shining her flashlight in the direction of the familiar voice.

 
Commander Wayne stood on the deck of another sailboat, a few feet away, with three men armed with automatic rifles. “Lovely place you have here.”

They’d led him to their safest place. How had he gotten a boat, when so many had been disabled? Had she been so focused on getting to the island that she hadn’t looked behind them? She’d never even thought they’d be followed.

But they had, and now everyone she loved was in danger.

Without hesitation, Eden pulled her revolver from her pocket and fired.

Chapter Twenty One

The bobbing boat made for difficult targets, but the security team on shore followed her lead. All of them emptied their magazines and cylinders into the men on the boat. The men fell, but not without getting some shots off first, and Eden heard cries of pain around her. Out here on the dock, out in the open, they were sitting ducks. But despite the armor the men on the boat wore, her people took them down, until there was no movement. Even then, she wanted to be sure. Because her cylinder was empty, she grabbed the pistol from Damien’s holster, walked to the edge of the dock and looked into the bottom of the boat, where Wayne lay, wounded and gasping.

And put a bullet into his black heart.

When she turned back, Damien was staring at her like he’d never seen her before, and she was suddenly so, so tired.
 

“Make sure he’s dead. Let’s get Aaron to Vicky, now,” she said.

Damien nodded, then bent his knees and swept her into his arms. She would have protested—should have protested. Instead, she rested her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes as he carried her to the clinic.

But once she was in the clinic, back in the familiar surroundings where she’d grown up, when she saw Aaron stretched out on the exam table, his legs hanging off the end—he’d lost consciousness again—she was reenergized. She shifted in Damien’s arms and he let her down.
 

Vicky wasn’t there, but Eden wasn’t waiting. She removed the makeshift bandages and inspected the wound, feeling gratified when he stirred, grunting, his brow furrowed in pain. She crossed to the cabinet and grabbed bottled water and clean bandages, then turned back to clean the wound. She made soothing noises, though she doubted he could hear her. Bruises covered his chest, new overlapping old, and she coasted the flat of her hand over his skin. She wished she was more skilled, that she didn’t have to wait for Vicky, who was a nurse, for God’s sake, not a surgeon. Why didn’t they have someone more skilled to fix Aaron? He’s already lost so much blood.
 

“Send someone to his mom’s. We need to know what blood type he has. Maybe I’m a match.”

“Maybe she’s a match,” Damien countered. “I sent for her already. They thought the two of you were dead.”

“It was a near thing,” Christine said.
 

Eden hadn’t even noticed Christine, Annie, Kelly and Geoff had come with them, but of course they would follow—they had no place else to go, and she didn’t have the brain power to work out where they should go. They needed someone to introduce them to the town, to the rules, to the ways of the island. But she wasn’t leaving Aaron’s side to do it, not yet.

The door of the clinic burst open. Eden looked up, hoping for Vicky. Instead her mother entered, supported by Josh. The older woman pulled free and headed straight for her younger daughter.

Eden collapsed into her mom’s arms, let her mother stroke her hair and sob, and she sobbed too, big gulping hiccups. She might have felt embarrassed about her meltdown, if she had any resources left, if she had anything holding her together other than sheer willpower and the desire to see Aaron awake and alert and healing.

Her mother pulled back first, which also might have embarrassed her at another time, cupped Eden’s face in her hands, looked into her eyes. Afraid she’d see too much of what she’d endured, Eden lowered her gaze.

“I have something for you,” she said, and nodded toward her sister.

Her mother twisted to look and gave a cry, part joy, part pain. The two women fell into each other, sobbing and sinking to the floor, not letting go. Tears flowed down Eden’s cheeks as she watched. Everything was worth it. Everything, as long as she didn’t lose Aaron. She turned toward him and twined her fingers with his.

Her mother looked up, petting Kelly’s hair as her daughter rested her head against her shoulder.

“You look terrible.”

Eden choked out a laugh. Hadn’t she noticed Aaron? “Haven’t eaten in a bit.” They hadn’t had time on the boat as they battled the swells, despite the food she’d found at the marina.

Her mother’s eyebrows snapped together. “How long is a bit?”

“Couple days? None of us have.” She motioned to the waiting room where the newcomers sat. “I need you to find them a place to live, get them some supplies. Can you find someone to do that for me?”

“Of course. I’ll go now, get some food. Kelly, you come with me. You come home with me.” She choked a bit on the words as she tucked her arm through Kelly’s. She spotted the baby in Annie’s arms and stopped short. “My God, a baby, brand new! What—how did—?”
 

“We’ll tell you all about it later, Mom, but now they need food and shelter and rest. We haven’t—there hasn’t been a safe place to rest for days.”

Just saying it, just seeing her mother’s reaction to her words, made her tired.
 

“I’ll make it happen. Don’t worry.” She glanced toward Aaron. “I’ll be back with some food. Vicky will be right here.”

Vicky came in then, followed shortly by Aaron’s parents, Mary and Robert Jenkins. His mother gave a cry of alarm as she ran across the room to her son’s bedside. Eden had cleaned up a lot of the blood and the wound was covered, but he looked awful, his ribs standing out against his skin, his skin bruised. Mary’s hands fluttered over him, his hair, his cheek, his battered chest. He blinked up at her a few times.

“Hi, Ma,” he said, before drifting off again.

Mrs. Jenkins stayed by his side as Vicky worked, edging Eden out, casting incinerating looks in Eden’d direction. Got it, she blamed Eden. That was okay, Eden blamed herself. His father had the same blood type and was able to give him a transfusion.
 

The next few hours passed like a bad dream, where time was stretched and twisted, sometimes going fast, liked they were on a roller coaster ride as they worked on Aaron, Vicky’s plastic gloved fingers probing the hole in his chest, disappearing beneath his flesh in a way that made the gorge rise in Eden’s throat. Then it stretched, long sleepless minutes, hours, waiting. Waiting, waiting.

Some of the neighbor ladies showed up with food, homemade and fresh, and she and the others fell on it ravenously. Eden wished Aaron was awake to eat, certain it would make him stronger. Then her mother’s friend Caroline took Annie, Christine and the baby away—Eden barely had the energy to care where.
 

Robert left and returned with Huck, Aaron’s dog. The dog whimpered when Robert lifted him up to Aaron’s bed, and crawled gingerly over his owner to nestle against Aaron’s side, licking his shoulder. Aaron turned his head, looked at the dog and slowly lifted a hand to scratch his head.
 

“Hey, boy,” he said huskily, before closing his eyes again.

Because his mother was by his side, Eden dozed in the waiting room, unwilling to leave. Every time she started to drop off in earnest, she thought about how she’d feel if he died while she was asleep. She’d rise, check on him, no change. His mother would scowl at her and she’d back off.
 

She wished she knew if he was sleeping because he was exhausted, or if his injuries were so bad.

Finally, around noon the next day, he woke up and smiled at her. “You look like hell. Go home and get some sleep. I’ll be around when you wake up.”

***

She slept for almost twenty hours straight. When she woke, Aaron had been moved from the clinic to his parents’ house. Eden reminded herself she’d faced worse than his mother on the mainland, and trekked across town to his house after almost eating her mother out of rations.

Aaron’s mother answered the door. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to check on him, see how he’s doing.” She took a step toward the door, but his mother moved to fill the opening.
 

“He’s resting. He survived two tours in Afghanistan, and was nearly killed in our own country, because of you.”

Eden forced herself not to flinch. She’d thought the same in the weeks they’d been gone.
 

“Because he’s a hero,” she replied quietly.
 

“He’s been a hero long enough. He’s home now,” the older woman said sharply, and started to close the door.

“Mom.” Aaron’s voice was soft from the top of the stairs, but chiding nonetheless.

Eden looked up at him. His arm was in a sling for reasons she’d couldn’t remember, and his face was a colorful assortment of bruises. But he looked wonderful nonetheless, on his feet, conscious, his hair a bit of a mess from bedhead. Huck stood at his side, ears perked, body leaning forward, body angled down the stairs.