Stranded (35 page)

Jake’s head throbbed. The glare of sunlight on water brought stabs of pain to the backs of his eyeballs. He risked a squint behind him. The island, while not a speck, was at least a blob on the horizon. Was this what the ships saw from the sea-lane, or did he have farther to go?

He stuck the second oar into the water so the two paddles straddled the canoe and stabilized it. The sea was calmer now, not as combative—maybe he could manage a piece of fruit with one hand while he held the two oar handles with the other hand.

The overripe star fruit was soggy and bland, but the juice was as good as heaven-sent. Two more lay on the canoe floor. Best to save them in case he needed to eat with one hand again. The coconuts and other fruit required two hands and a knife to open them.

Ahead of him and to the east, a dark spot appeared on the ocean. His heartbeat quickened. A ship? He raised his hand to shade his eyes, then stood to wave frantically. “Hey!”

The two oars plopped into the ocean. The canoe wobbled, tipped, and tossed him in after them. He rose to the surface, sputtering.

It was a ship, all right, but hardly nearby. He and the canoe would be no more noticeable than a pebble in a gravel pit.

He swam to the canoe and righted it. Water flecked with soot sloshed in the shallow cavity he had burned out for a seat. The coconuts and star fruit were gone. He attempted to crawl aboard, but the boat rolled every time. Finally, he mounted it as if it were still a log, wrapped his arms and legs around it and rotated it until he splashed flat on his stomach into the cavity. The boat sank as his body displaced the water but rose when he squirmed his chest onto the bow.

Forget sitting up. Using both arms as oars, he paddled smoothly forward.

In the distance, the ship sailed in a steady path westward. Jake oriented himself to the same destination. A destination with a sky rapidly turning pink.

Eve rose to her feet and stared at Eduardon. For a moment, past and present collided. Her heartbeat thudded against her ears, shook every bone down to her wobbling ankles. Then past and present separated into their two monsters—her father decades earlier; Jojo now.

“Go.” Eduardon’s pistol prodded her below her left shoulder blade. She mounted the stairs to the lower deck on shaking knees. The past tore holes in her stomach. Clawed talons at her heart. She gripped the railing to stay on her feet.

Jojo would torture her now—beat her, slash her, stomp out her breath. But his torture was only to her body. Not like what her father had done. He had thrown her soul out the window. Left it splattered on the roadside for the vultures to eat. She fought the tightness in her chest to draw in air.

Eduardon grasped her arm and pulled her to the bridge’s ladder. “Go.”

Go where? To her death peaceably? She clenched her teeth and inhaled a deep breath. Not unless God willed it.

“Eduardon.” She clasped the ladder and put a foot onto the first rung. “Together we can stop him.”

“Shut up.”

“Better to kill him than to let him kill me.”

“I said, shut up!” He shoved her so hard the ladder bruised her skin.

“Do you need help?” The scarred face of the monster appeared above her.

Her throat constricted. Had he heard her? She ignored the thick hand extended to her and climbed to the bridge.

Jojo’s eyes flickered over her. “Ah, you are a princess! Come, my beauty, get your reward.” He poured a brown liquid into a shot glass. The pungent smell of whiskey assaulted her nose. The bottle was half empty.

She thrust her chin forward. “I don’t drink.”

He pulled a knife with a wicked curve from his belt and waggled it at her. “What good are you if you won’t join in my fun? We will have to return to your boyfriend so you can watch while I cut his guts out. Or he can watch while I cut out yours.”

“All right.” She took the glass and sipped it.

“Down it.”

She squared her shoulders and swallowed it in one gulp. Her face burned as the whiskey hit her empty stomach.

“Another,” he bellowed. “One for you, too, ’Duardon. Put your gun down and join the party. Our beautiful princess can dance for us, eh?” He poured three drinks and handed one to each.

Eve clutched her stomach. “I’m going to throw up. I need something to eat.”

Jojo took her glass and set it on the map table. Then he opened his right hand, splayed his fingers, and slapped her face. She couldn’t help grabbing her cheek in surprise.

“I warned you about this earlier.” He put the glass back into her hand.

She downed the whiskey. The liquor entered her bloodstream and fire spread throughout her body.

“I think she’d be good at a strip tease, don’t you, ’Duardon?”

Flames scalded her cheeks. “I don’t dance.”

This time he hit hard enough to knock her to the floor. The shot glass rolled across the wooden planks.

He jerked her to her feet by her hair. “Then Eduardon here will be nice enough to help you.”

The scrawny man took a step backwards.

“Ah, ’Duardon, I can see you want her. Tell you what, we will share her. I will let you go first.” He released Eve’s hair and pinned her arms behind her.

“No!” She struggled, twisting her shoulders, kicking her heels at Jojo’s shins. “Let me go!”

“Look, she dances for you, ’Duardon! She likes you. You must come and join her.”

Eduardon’s face darkened into a scowl. “Let her go, you degenerate ape.” He whipped out his knife and pointed it at Jojo.

The monster loosed Eve’s right arm and thrust forward a pistol. Eduardon’s face paled.

He flung his knife at the same time Jojo fired. The brute stumbled backwards, releasing Eve’s other arm. She jumped away.

Eduardon crumpled groaning to the floor, holding his stomach.

Jojo clapped his hand over blood spurting from his neck. His head jerked and he reeled and fell, discharging the pistol in a wild shot. The bullet pinged off the laminate map table and clanked in a ricochet off the stainless steel trim overhead.

Eve’s head snapped backwards, and everything went dark.

Darkness covered the sea. The roller-coaster heaves of the ocean had resumed. Water black as ink slapped Jake’s face and snatched at the canoe. His tongue and gums stung from spitting out salt water. He clung to the dugout with all four limbs, the weight of his torso in the burnt cavity barely preventing the craft from rolling.

Two more ships had sailed by without spotting him. He’d have to wait for daylight now. No telling where the roller coaster would take him. Farther away from the sea-lane? Back to the island? Or out to a wasteland of water?

The dugout careened down another dip of the ocean and Jake tightened his hold. His arm muscles ached from paddling. From hanging by his wrists. From being attached to two cracked ribs. He didn’t dare relax, even when the waves were flat. If he fell asleep, he might never wake up. Not on this earth, anyway.

Without warning, a hulk cut into his path. Lights dotted it from bow to stern.

A ship.

A SHIP!

It sliced through the water, churning waves at its sides that fanned out like sparkling plumage in the ship’s lights. The waves caught the dugout and dragged it under, spinning it out of Jake’s grip. He tumbled helplessly, unable to tell which way was up. He forced himself to remain limp until at last he felt the life vest lifting him to the surface. With a surge of energy, his lungs ready to pop, he kicked to the surface.

He broke through the water, yelling as soon as he could breathe. The ship, a tanker, plowed past him. Ridiculous to think anyone atop that mountain of steel would hear him, but he screamed anyway. “Help! Man overboard!” He waved his arms, splashed a target of geysers with his hands and feet, yelled his larynx raw.

The tanker climbed the roller coaster’s opposite slope and disappeared.

His body drooped, every last drop of adrenaline spent. The dugout was nowhere in sight. He treaded water minimally to keep heat in his limbs. Hollowed of all feelings, he let the swell of the ocean carry him up the slope.

The bright lights of the tanker glowed startlingly close. A faint “Hal-loh!” echoed across the water. Adrenaline shot a fresh dose into his muscles.

“Here, over here!” He splashed up geysers for his rescuers’ binoculars, shouted loud halleluiahs for their ears.

And for God’s.

“C-C-Coast Guard. I need to talk to the Coast Guard.” Jake’s teeth chattered so hard it was no wonder the crewmen stared blankly at him. He clutched the blanket they’d thrown around him when they hauled him from the pontoon boat to the tanker’s main deck. Okay, he’d try a simpler word. “C-C-Captain.” At his third attempt, they nodded.

“Captain’s on his way.” A crewman pointed at a paunchy man in uniform descending the ladder from the bridge. The captain, puffing on chubby legs that strained his trousers, peered at Jake suspiciously.

Jake quelled the urge to pounce on the man and scream demands. The captain would be responding to a black-and-blue bag of bones with long hair and beard straggling past his shoulders, clad only in thread-bare shorts. A middle-age hippie, no doubt, who had fallen from some boat.

A sailor handed Jake a drink of water. The captain folded his arms across his chest, as if addressing a naughty schoolboy. “What happened?”

The sips of water helped. The words still croaked out, but without the stuttering. “I’m a survivor of the
Gateway
.” The captain gave no indication of recognizing the name. “Stranded on an island over a year, three others with me. Pirates kidnapped one of us this morning. Need to radio the Coast Guard, intercept the yacht.”

Jake’s knees gave way and two of the sailors caught him and held him up. His breath rattled between sentences. “Name’s Jake Chalmers. U.S. Marine Corps colonel.”

The captain unfolded his arms.

Encouraged, Jake pushed above the fog of paralysis creeping over his body. “Need to send your coordinates. Yacht is”—he swallowed, dredging the name from numb brain cells—“
Cameron’s Castle
.”

This time the captain’s eyes rounded. He turned on his heels and waddled at a close run to the bridge.

“Sounds like the stolen yacht the Coast Guard’s looking for,” a sailor said. He nodded to the other sailor gripping Jake. “The Captain will take care of it, Colonel Chalmers. Let’s get you some rest.”

Jake straightened to his full height. “No. I need to go to the bridge. I need to talk to them.”

A sailor clattered down the ladder and ran over to them. “Coast Guard is coming for him. There’s a cutter nearby.”

Jake’s heart did a flip. There was still a chance. A chance Eve was alive. A chance they could get to her in time.

The cutter reduced its speed to approach
Cameron’s Castle
with caution. Jake held his breath for so long, his chest ached. Two Coast Guardsmen on the cutter’s upper deck stood by with rifles trained on the yacht. Jake’s fingers itched to join them.

The yacht was floating aimlessly on huge swells of the ocean. Not good. Jake’s breath broke loose from its prison, draining his lungs, shaking his knees so hard he could hardly stand.
Eve
. Brain and heart clashed over what the drifting vessel indicated of her fate.

Next to him, the captain hefted a megaphone to his mouth. “Ahoy,
Cameron’s Castle
,” he bellowed, first in Filipino, then in English. “This is the Philippine Coast Guard. Please respond.”

The cutter moved closer and the captain repeated his command. When there was no answer, he motioned the first mate to close in on the yacht. His voice sharpened. “Prepare to be boarded!”

The cutter lurched against the yacht and several Coast Guardsmen secured an attachment while two others jumped aboard the yacht. Side arms at the ready, they dashed to the bridge and disappeared inside. It was all Jake could do to not hurl himself after them.

Minutes later, one of the guardsmen reappeared. “Send a corpsman,” he shouted. “Two dead, one injured.” He climbed down into the lower deck.

The captain put a restraining hand on Jake’s arm. “In case you’re thinking about rushing over there, don’t.”

“Of course not.” Jake’s scarred cheek twitched. “I know better.” Truth was, the captain had caught him just in time.

A medical corpsman darted from the cutter to the yacht and up to the bridge. Watching him, Jake assumed an at-ease stance, but inside he was ready to bolt. Two dead, one injured. God knew which way he was voting on that matter.

Within seconds, the corpsman emerged. He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Need a medevac, pronto!”

At the same time, the second guardsman returned from the lower deck. “No one below,” he yelled.

Jake was out the door before the captain could stop him. Although he’d been sitting the entire time they’d traveled from the tanker to the yacht, not one cell in his beaten, broken, worn out body had rested. He ran toward the yacht, aware of his feet stumbling. Of groping for support on the wall. Of careening down the ladder and staggering across the deck. Of having to crawl like a baby from one ship to the other.

But all he felt was the pounding of his heart. Pounding from his stomach to his chest. Pounding from his throat to his head. Reverberating in his ears, against his eyeballs, against the vast, dark cavern in his skull.

He climbed to the yacht’s bridge, disconnected now from awareness of his body, lifted as if by angels’ wings from rung to rung. When he stepped inside the cabin, the pounding shaking his soul stopped.

Eve.

She lay with her head in a pool of blood. The side of her face was matted in dark red.

No.

His gaze leaped to the two bodies sprawled on either side of her. The big man, the brute, was on his side, his face drained of color. His hands and the left side of his neck and shirt were soaked in blood. A short distance away, the little man lay on his back, his hands bloodied over a crimson flower that spread outward from his belly.

A movement at Eve’s side startled his heart into erratic thumps. The corpsman knelt by her, unraveling a long, narrow piece of gauze. Jake fell on his knees across from him and watched numbly as slender cocoa hands raised Eve’s head and wrapped the gauze around and around her head above her eyes.

Jake swallowed. “She’s . . . alive?” He couldn’t bear to hope without confirmation.

The corpsman nodded. “Bullet put in a good dent. Fortunately for her, the blood clotted.”

When the corpsman finished the bandage, Jake carefully took Eve into his arms. Her eyes fluttered open and she stared up at his face. A weak smile flitted across her lips. “Jake. You came.”

Unable to speak, he touched his lips to hers.

Her forehead furrowed. “Wolves—”

“They’re dead,” he rasped. “They’ll never bother you again.”

“. . . saved me . . .” Her voice sank and she closed her eyes. Her breath wisped in a steady rhythm against his skin.

The water lapped against the boat, rocking them with the gentle hand of a mother tending her newborn. He looked out the window into the deep dome of the sky.
Thank You.

He hugged Eve’s body to his chest and wept.

“Jake?”

At Betty’s voice, Jake rushed from the side of Eve’s gurney to the Coast Guard cutter pulling up next to his. The two ships rocked as they bumped together and were secured. He looked over his shoulder to make certain the corpsman had a good hold on Eve.

“I wasn’t sure they’d get you girls to come out of the cave.” He laughed, lighthearted now that Betty and Crystal were here. Everyone was safe. They were off the island and headed home. Their families had been notified, and the authorities were on the alert for Captain Emilio. He lifted Betty over the side of the second cutter into his while the young Gymnast of the Ocean Cliff scrambled easily from one ship to the other. He hugged both of them for a long time. A long, long time.

“We weren’t in the cave,” Crystal said when he released them. “We spent all our time looking for you to return. When we saw the Coast Guard coming, Aunt Betty guessed you’d sent them.”

Betty’s face creased into worry lines. “They wanted to know where the dead men’s bodies were, but we told them you’d have to show them. Are you and Eve in trouble?”

“No. It’s standard procedure. They’ll identify them and send them home for burial. Same with the Japanese soldiers.” His heart warmed at the thought of Lone Soldier’s wait finally being over. Then he remembered that the island guardian’s skull lay at the bottom of the ocean. He ducked his head in remorse.

“Is that Eve on the upper deck?” Betty gripped his arm. “All they would say was that she was safe.”

“Yes.” He took their hands and led them to her. “She has a head wound,” he whispered, although Eve wouldn’t have heard him. She had slid back into unconsciousness after their brief exchange on the yacht. “A medevac is coming to take her to Manila for surgery.”

“Will we go with her?” Crystal picked up Eve’s right hand and gently sandwiched it between her two hands. Jake recognized what she was doing. A toaster hug.

He took in a quick breath. “Yes. We’ll all fly back on the helicopter.”

“And then what? Home?” There was no eagerness in Betty’s voice.

Home. His heart leaped at the thought of seeing his children again, of holding them in his arms, of catching up on their lives. But beyond that, home was back on the island, wasn’t it? Not so much on the island as with Eve and Betty and Crystal. The year had melded them into a family under God’s sovereign hand.

The sadness on Betty’s and Crystal’s faces mirrored a sudden despondency in his own heart. Home for Betty, he knew, was an empty house. For Crystal, it was with grandparents whose love for her was questionable. He and Eve would have each other, but was that enough?

He cleared his throat. “Three things happen now. First, we go to Manila and stay with Eve until she’s okay. Second, we go home to our families and give them big hugs. And third, the four of us get back together again.”

“Forever?” Crystal squealed.

Eve’s eyes blinked open. Her lips moved slowly, and the three of them leaned in close.

“The perfect plan,” she mumbled. She smiled and placed her other hand on Crystal’s. One by one, the four of them sandwiched their hands together in a giant toaster hug.