by Jean Barrett
Shane hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights elsewhere in the cottage. They weren’t necessary when the moon was sufficient illumination. She met him out in the hall returning from the living room.
“Just checking the doors and windows,” he explained. She knew he had made certain just after their arrival that both outside doors and all the windows were locked. “Everything’s tight. Wake me around three, and I’ll take another turn. And, Eden?”
“Yes?”
“If you hear anything, you call me.”
But she heard nothing except the wind in the pines and the surf rolling on the beach after he disappeared into their bedroom, closing the door behind him. She went into Nathanial’s room and found him as she had left him earlier, peacefully asleep.
Taking up her post, she curled into an easy chair in the corner. It was a bad choice, much too comfortable with her robe wrapped around her warmly. She must have dozed, because when she lifted her head, the pattern of moonlight on the carpet had shifted.
Leaving the chair before she nodded off again, she went and stood beside the bed, tenderly gazing down at her son. Then, unable to resist the temptation, she leaned over and brushed a light kiss against his forehead. When she straightened up, there was a gun at her back.
Chapter Fourteen
“Don’t move, don’t speak,” whispered a gravelly voice so close behind her that she could feel his hot breath in her ear. “Not a muscle, understand, because if you do the kid will suffer for it.”
Eden remained perfectly still. Or as still, anyway, as her trembling body would permit.
He was apparently satisfied. Although the gun remained pressed against her back, she no longer felt his breath close to her ear when he spoke again. The direction of his whisper indicated he must have turned his head.
“It’s clear now. I’ve got her covered.”
Eden heard no movement behind her, but she knew instantly that someone must have joined them in the bedroom. The scent of an expensive perfume invaded the air, the same fragrance she had detected in a Charleston apartment. It was a chilling reminder of what had happened to Harriet Krause.
Eden caught the sound of the bedroom door closing softly behind the new arrival, and then the gunman issued another command to her in that same loathsome whisper.
“Turn around. Slowly, and keep your hands in front of you where I can see them.”
Eden obeyed him. What choice did she have with that gun trained on her? When her son was threatened?
She had no trouble recognizing them once she was facing them. The moonlight from the window was bright enough to identify them as the brutish Bryant Dennis and his mother, Dr. Claire Jamison. How long had they been lurking in the darkness out in the hall? And how had they gotten into the cottage without either Shane or her hearing them?
But what did any of this matter when Claire Jamison was confronting her with a lethal expression on her elegant face? “Listen to me,” she addressed Eden in an undertone. “I want you to wake the boy, but do it carefully. Make certain that he doesn’t cry out. Not a sound from him.”
They didn’t want to rouse Shane, Eden realized. Why? Did they fear he had a gun of his own, or did they have another motive for this furtive activity?
“Is that clear?” Claire demanded.
Eden jerked a nod and turned to the bed. She was sick with fear, but it was mostly for her son. She was also angry. Angry that they were forcing her to wake him. He would be terrified. And she was angry with her own helplessness.
Bending over the bed, ready to cover Nathanial’s mouth with her hand while hating the possible necessity of such an action, she spoke to him as soothingly as possible. “Patrick, you have to wake up. Can you hear me, sweetheart?”
He didn’t at first. She had to call to him twice more in a low voice and then gently shake him. There was a bewildered expression on his face when he opened his eyes. She laid a finger against his lips.
“Shh, it’s all right, sweetheart.”
It was anything but all right, and Claire made it worse when she murmured to him from the shadows. “Hello, Patrick. Have you missed me?”
Alarmed by her taunt, by a silky voice he must not have wanted ever to hear again, Nathanial shot up against the headboard, his eyes wide. To his credit, he remained silent. Eden didn’t. She turned her head, whispering fiercely. “You’re scaring him!”
“Enough, I hope, that he does what he’s asked without a single word from him. Now get him into his robe and slippers.”
They mean to take him out of here. But where? She was afraid to guess the answer to that question. But wherever it was, she wouldn’t let him go without her. Nathanial clung to her trustingly as she helped him out of bed and into his robe and slippers. In any other circumstances, she would have welcomed that trust. But not now. Not when his life was in danger.
And all the while she longed to call out to Shane, but she couldn’t. Not with that gun in Bryant’s hand. Because if Shane was startled out of a solid sleep and came bursting in here, Bryant Dennis wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him, maybe her as well. And she had to stay alive for Nathanial’s sake.
Eden did the only thing she could do. She made an effort to stall them, praying that the delay would permit Shane to wake on his own. To understand something was wrong and take an action that wouldn’t cost all of them their lives.
“Why?” she asked. “Can you just tell me that? Why?”
It was a simple question, and Claire understood it. “Money, of course. It’s a wonderful thing. If you have enough of it, you can buy anything. Like the services of a local fisherman willing to risk his boat to carry you across from the mainland in rough waters. And having him tell you where you can find the child you’re looking for. Not so surprising he would know about a boy of his age and coloring staying with an African-American couple on an island this size. It can even buy the silence of such a man.”
“But not a car,” her son complained. “Had to walk all the way from the landing, or we would have been here long before this.”
“Ah, but in a car we might have missed the sign for the DuBois cottages here and the sight of the Toyota with its South Carolina plate parked outside.” Her mood abruptly shifted again. “That’s enough. Get moving now, both of you. Outside, and not a sound from either of you.”
That’s when Eden understood their intention. They didn’t want Shane alerted, didn’t want to be forced to shoot anyone, though they would do so if it became necessary. But something that wouldn’t look like murder, that could be explained as an accident—
“You heard her,” Bryant growled. “Move!”
Her arm protectively around Nathanial’s shoulder, Eden guided her son out into the hall and across the living room. She could feel him shivering against her side, and his fear refueled her anger. But what could she do, other than to continue to hope that Shane would somehow rescue them?
But that possibility seemed increasingly unlikely when there was no sign of any stirring behind the closed bedroom door. He had to be unaware of what was happening to them.
They had reached the front door where Eden paused, surprised to see the door ajar. Bryant nudged her in the back with the barrel of the gun. She couldn’t help it. She lost her temper then.
“Stop that!”
“Then move!”
“Patience, Bryant,” his mother whispered. “She’s just trying to understand how we could possibly have gotten inside without their hearing.” Claire leaned toward Eden, friend to friend. “You’ll have to forgive my son. I’m afraid he isn’t as smart as I’d like him to be. But he does have a talent for breaking and entering that grieved me when he and his brother were in their teens and forever in trouble. As it turns out, though, it’s very useful.” She pulled the door all the way back, holding it open for them. “Shall we go?”
Eden hesitated, knowing that once they left this cottage there would be little chance of surviving whatever Claire Jamison and her son planned for them.
“Now,” Claire insisted.
The gun was in Eden’s back again. No option about it. Taking Nathanial’s hand in her own, she led him out into the night where the wind still howled, tossing the tops of the pines, and the moon swam brightly overhead.
Their captors drove them down the lane, turning them in the direction of the old fort. Its bulk loomed in the moonlight.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Claire’s mocking voice said behind them. “Who could fail to understand how a small boy, waking up in the middle of the night and catching sight of it from his bedroom window, would be unable to resist its fascination. And how the woman, who finds him gone and has raced after him, loses her footing in her effort to rescue him from one of those high walls and carries them both into the ocean.”
Where we wouldn’t survive the frigid, raging waters, Eden thought. It would look like a tragic accident, and no one could prove that Claire Jamison and her son were ever here. That’s why they had been so careful not to disturb Shane. They were a cunning pair. And absolutely ruthless.
This was intolerable. She had to do something. But what? What?
Nathanial tugged at her hand. “Uncle Mike will come for us, won’t he?” he whispered to her bravely.
“Yes, darling,” she told him, wanting it to be true, still hoping against all reason that it would be true.
WAS IT THE nightmare again?
Except for his recent session under hypnosis, Shane hadn’t experienced it in a long while. Hadn’t gone back to that damn jungle and the horror of battling to save his men.
But, no, he was sure he hadn’t been dreaming this time. Then, what had suddenly awakened him out of a sound sleep? He didn’t know.
Maybe there’d been a noise in the cottage. A warning that had penetrated his unconscious state. Lifting his head from the pillow, he listened. Nothing. If anything, it was too quiet in the cottage. Like the silence of desertion. Could that kind of stillness make a man uneasy in his sleep?
Shane didn’t like it.
Throwing off the blanket, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and got to his feet, intending to check on Eden and Nathanial in the other bedroom. He never reached the door. There was a movement in his peripheral vision that stopped him in midstride. Something that came from outside.
Whipping around, he went to the window and looked out. What he saw seized him with a dread deep in his gut. They were headed down the lane toward the road, four figures in the sharp moonlight. Eden and Nathanial were out in front, their two captors directly behind them, urging them forward with a gun.
Yeah, he recognized them all right. That bastard, Bryant Dennis, and his mother beside him, her blond hair pale in the moonlight.
No!
A fury exploded inside Shane’s head, along with a determination that galvanized him into action. There was no time to wonder how they had managed to get inside the cottage and snatch Eden and the boy. No time to reproach himself for failing to be aware of their arrival, for going back to bed when he should have remained on watch all night.
All that mattered was his fierce need to recover Eden and her son. Dennis and the Jamison woman couldn’t have them. They belonged to him, were everything to him. The family he no longer had. Without them, nothing meant anything. Why hadn’t he understood this hours ago when he and Eden had made love?
And all the while, along with his hollow feeling of loss, was a blind rage that had him moving swiftly around the room. He dragged on a pair of black jeans, pulled a dark sweatshirt over his head and slid his feet into a pair of equally dark sneakers. Colors that would blend in with the night.
Without consciously being aware of it, Shane had automatically slipped back into commando mode. His training as an Army Ranger continued to serve him when he raced out of the cottage, stopping just long enough to scoop up a handful of wet earth from a flower bed beside the door. Smearing the mud over his face and hands in a further effort to camouflage himself, he checked on his targets.
They had reached the main road, were turning in the direction of the old fort. Cutting diagonally across the lawns he had once mowed as a teenager, Shane went after them. Hugging the shadows, sprinting from tree to tree, dodging behind shrubs whenever one of the enemies started to look back over his shoulder. He had his cover, but what he wouldn’t give for an assault rifle. Or, for that matter, any weapon. Never mind, he would figure out some way of saving Eden and her son.
But save them from what? Fairly certain now that their destination was the fort, with those murderous waters beneath its high, sea-facing walls, Shane was beginning to have a sick understanding about what Dennis and his mother planned for them. Could he overtake them in time? Even though he was using a shortcut, they were still better than a hundred yards off, and with this damn leg of his slowing him down…
Eden had suddenly halted at the approach to the fort, had swung around to confront Dennis and the Jamison woman. Concealed by an azalea hedge wet and drooping from the storm, Shane watched through a gap in the foliage as she argued with them heatedly, refusing to go on.
They were too far away for him to hear what she was saying, but it didn’t matter. The important thing was she was stalling them.
“Good girl,” he whispered.
The delay permitted Shane to work his way rapidly in a half crouch along the length of the hedge, which rimmed the road. But there were no more gaps in the screen, and when he emerged from behind the hedge close to where they had stopped, the four were gone.
Dennis and his mother had forced their captives to move on. The four of them were already nearing the bridge over the dry moat on the landward side of the fort. The distance between Shane and the fort offered no further cover for him. Not caring now whether he exposed himself in his need to reach Eden and her son, he trotted across the open road.
By the time he gained the bridge, they were across the moat and disappearing into the sally port. He went after them on swift, silent feet, stopping for a necessary reconnaissance in the blackness of the deep tunnel that entered the fort through the gorge wall.
The four had emerged from the other end of the sally port and were starting across the broad expanse of the parade ground, picking their way with care over the broken paving. The fort was pentagonal in shape, with masonry stairs situated in the angle of two of its front walls. They were making for the stairs that rose through three levels, the tiers carried on massive brick arches, to the open terreplein high overhead.
Shane no longer questioned the intention of his objectives. Eden and Nathanial would be shoved over the parapet to certain death in the thundering sea below. What were his chances of rescuing them before that could happen? Nonexistent if he tried to charge across the parade ground. Dennis would shoot him before he got anywhere near them.
But if he could somehow get above them without their knowledge, manage to ambush Dennis from overhead—
There was only one way, and Shane didn’t hesitate to choose it. Formidable challenge though it was, he would have to scale the outside of the gorge wall.
He could do it, he promised himself. Hadn’t his training included climbing the faces of sheer cliffs? He had to do it. And do it in time to intercept the enemy.
Even before he fully reached this decision, Shane had retreated from the sally port, vaulted over the sagging railing of the bridge, and was attacking the thick rear wall of the fort.
Swarming up that steep precipice wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible either. The onslaught of time and weather hadn’t been kind to the long-abandoned fort. Its brick walls had suffered fractures that offered Shane cracks for his hands and feet.
In other places, where the bricks had crumbled away, vegetation had sprouted in the gaps. Some of it was rooted deeply enough to bear his weight. And where the wall hadn’t opened up, or there weren’t missing bricks, there were often narrow gun ports that had once bristled with cannon fire and now provided Shane with ledges to grip.
His only serious problem was the wind. On
the ground it had been his ally. Its wail, together with the boom of the surf, had masked any sounds that might have betrayed his presence. But up here it was his enemy, becoming more of a threat the higher he climbed. At one point, the gusts were so severe they threatened to tear him away from the wall to which he clung with grim determination.
It was this absolute will that drove him upward. His urgent need to reach Eden and the boy. It was all he permitted himself to think about. Getting them back, telling Eden what he should have told her long ago. That he loved her, that she meant everything to him, and without her—
You won’t lose her. It isn’t an option. Do you understand that, soldier? It is not an option.
What seemed like a slow, frustrating ascent was actually something he managed in the space of a few minutes. But they were vital minutes, and Shane feared what they might have cost him when he finally hauled himself over the parapet. Scrambling to his feet, he cautiously checked on the position of his targets.
To his relief, he found them down on the second level almost directly across from where he stood. Their progress had been stalled by great chunks of fallen masonry blocking the stairway to the third tier. He could hear Dennis spewing curses.
“Go on,” he commanded Eden. “Take the kid and climb over the stuff.”
Drawing back out of sight before any of them could look up and glimpse him, bending low and keeping close to the parapet side of the terreplein, Shane swiftly worked his way around the perimeter of the fort. Within seconds, he had located himself above the stairway.
The three levels of the ruin, all of them missing their railings, rose like the layers of a wedding cake, wider at the bottom, narrower at the top. From where he placed himself at the edge of the third level, Shane was able to look down on his objective—Bryant Dennis, gun in hand, urging Eden onward, his mother below him on the second flight.
Shane would need a distraction if he was going to disarm Dennis. With the deterioration everywhere around him, this was no problem. He armed himself with a chunk of brick that he silently scooped up from the litter at his feet. Ready for action, he took aim and fired his missile. It struck the paving behind Dennis with a loud clatter.