by Marx, J. A.
Dr. Caedis. Akiko’s heart leaped then settled. He groped his bare chest for the pendant he’d hidden in his duffle. “I didn’t want to lose it swimming.”
Stepping out from the foliage, the doctor released his arm. “Has she bragged much about her past?”
“Hope doesn’t talk about anything.” He needed water for his suddenly dry throat. “I feel really weird.”
Caedis laid his hand over his heart. “I feel weird as well. It’s her. She thinks she has control over you. Let her believe that for now, for your own safety.” Assurance sugarcoated his breath. “Put on the pendant, son. I’d never forgive myself if disaster befell you.”
Akiko milked comfort from Caedis’s narcotic gaze. He’d never met a man with such confidence. And mystique.
The tingling in Hope’s solar plexus died out by the time she reached the deck. Isaac’s shadow, to the contrary, stubbornly adhered, even up the steps.
Take a hint. “Forty winks sound good.”
Isaac chuckled. “My grandfather used to say forty winks.” He slid the glass door open and signaled her to enter. “You can nap in the bunkroom after we change.”
“No, thanks.” She breezed past. Unloading herself onto the padded bench, she slumped against the backrest.
“Hope?”
Keeping her head frontward, she shifted her eyes his direction.
“We’re on your side.”
Ludicrous. Why did he smother her, a stranger, with undeserved acceptance?
As soon as the alpha dog entered the bungalow, Hope tipped over on the bench and curled up. Once she conquered this exhaustion, she’d set up camp in a cave. Maybe then the whirlwind of mental images and voices would slow long enough for her to decipher them. Her compass had lost its north.
The distant, soothing sound of lapping waves lulled her to sleep.
Chapter 11
Isaac rinsed off the sand and put on his hiking shorts. These first twenty-four hours had packed in more of the unexpected than he was used to processing. Needing logical input, he found Sabio flipping through a Bible with his journal in front of him as he sat near the bookshelf. With a history/Latin professor for a father, Sabio definitely inherited the yearn-to-learn gene.
“Yo.” Isaac hunkered down near his friend. “Remember Mr. Fletcher warning us that funny stuff happened on the Cay?”
“We should’ve asked him to define funny.” The scholar voiced Isaac’s exact thoughts. “Do you recall his philosophical challenge?”
He’d almost forgotten. “‘Avoiding the pitfalls of a me-first generation requires a nobly inspired heart.’ I’ve mastered the me-first part.”
The corner of Sabio’s mouth lifted slightly, a sign of internal laughter. “Out of respect, we should explore the significance of a nobly inspired heart before our mentor returns.”
“Agreed.” Isaac leaned in and read his friend’s recent journal entry. Be completely loyal to God … The nations you’re about to run out of the country consort with sorcerers and witches. But not you. God, your God, forbids it. Deut. 18:13,14.
Be completely loyal … That stuck with him.
“Nobly inspired is in this book.” Sabio stuffed the Bible in the daypack. “Just need to coax out a decent interpretation.”
If anyone could, it was Sabio Quinn.
Isaac added the raisin-nut mix to the daypack then tailgated his three friends out of the bungalow. He paused to observe his patient asleep on the padded bench. She should be okay on her own for a while.
He and Sabio bounded up the trail behind Jase, who was leading the convoy toward Mt. Merhamet. Akiko followed, quieter than usual.
Isaac whispered at Sabio, “I don’t want Hope’s presence to spoil our plans.”
“Too late,” he said. “My ambitions have already shrunk into vague interests.”
Girls. Isaac growled over the shrinkage. Camping? Doubtful. Swimming in the buff? No way.
Sabio negotiated the rutty trail as if he’d grown up on the island. “Did you read the written policy regarding guests on Fletcher’s Cay? No mixed-gender groups permitted.”
To break a rule was to dishonor the man who gave them this opportunity—not Isaac’s style. What were they supposed to do? Throw Hope out to sea? By the time they reached the base of the mountain, his conscience demanded a resolution. “We need to keep our interactions with Hope completely innocent this week.”
Jase peered over the guitar case strapped to his back. “Is that rule aimed at anyone in particular?”
Sabio pushed him. “All Ohio residents.”
“It’s the law of the island.” Isaac would tolerate nothing less.
They started the ascent. Looking over his shoulder, he checked on the silent Asian. If Isaac could somehow inject the guy with confidence—
“Hey.” Jase stopped suddenly, stumbling back a step. He held up his blackened foot. “I stepped on a fireplace.”
Ashes? Isaac stooped and inspected the flat, sooty stone but considered the thing insignificant. He took the lead and continued up one of several trails crisscrossing Mt. Merhamet’s lower third.
They reached Turtle’s Head, which had earned its nickname because of its position relative to the dome. Summiting the dome would require technical gear, which, to Isaac’s disappointment, they didn’t bring.
He hiked across the green slope to where it flattened out and dropped off. Overlooking the stony beach one-hundred-and-fifty feet below, he savored the warm gusts of salty air rising up the cliffs from the wide, aqua bay.
Sabio pulled up next to him. “How many people do you think suffer because of one person’s death?”
Huh? Bumped from his communion with nature, Isaac faced his friend who was still mourning the Cornell suicide.
“I need to understand the war on humanity so I can move on, Ize.”
War didn’t fit paradise or Isaac’s mood.
“It’s invisible. Yet alive.” Sabio folded his arms, his gaze lost at sea. “I’m going to discover my role in this living war before I leave the Cay.”
Too much analyzing. Isaac patted his friend’s shoulder. “Let’s chill, bro.” He went and settled between the giant, exposed roots of a kapok tree. A perfect, shady, napping spot.
At the end of the buttress, the scholar finger through the Bible. Did the guy ever take a break?
This is vacation. Isaac hopped out of his corner. “Hacky sack?”
Sabio fished the foot bag from the pack. “Time to spill the frijoles, Kiko.”
Catching the foot bag tossed at him, Isaac eyed the Asian. No way had the Foxxes’ son fallen from his historic reputation as a good boy.
“I got jailed for a DUI.”
Isaac’s jaw dropped. Akiko never touched alcohol … in high school.
“Actually, I was pulled over for a burned-out headlight. But the cop smelled the ounce of tequila I drank.”
Only an ounce? Isaac juggled the sack. “You failed the sobriety test?”
“Nope.” Akiko kicked off his shoes and stretched out. “But being under twenty-one, I had to spend the night in the drunk tank. That place is a battlefield.”
The metaphor piled on top of what Sabio had said earlier, causing images of human suffering to ambush Isaac as they had that morning. The depressed and abused. The fearful and addicted. Victims he had rescued. Newspapers were deluged with them. TV shows were staged around their tragedies, proving the existence of an invisible, inescapable combat zone.
People are so messed up. Isaac kept juggling, determined to reach vacation mode.
Jase took out his guitar. “Girls are battlefields, too.”
Ugh! Isaac flung the foot bag and hit the musician’s ear.
“Ow. I’m serious.” Jase threw back the sack then plucked strings. “Half the girls on my campus dress like strippers. Do you think that’s easy for me when I’m trying to change my reputation?”
The borderline playboy was serious about improving himself. That made Isaac happy.
Sabio hopped
up and stalled the foot bag on top of his foot, adding to the happiness. He launched the bag into play, but his movements weren’t as smooth as usual. And the sadness on his face said what Isaac guessed he was thinking.
A friend committing suicide was the ultimate war casualty.
“Do you see the warfare now?” Sabio’s voice cracked.
“Yeah, bro.” Isaac did a clipper kick.
“We’ve got to take the field.” The typically detached scholar had tears in his eyes. Had Mr. Logic fallen off the deep end?
“I’m with you.” Isaac bumped the sack to him.
Sabio dropkicked the foot bag over Isaac’s head. “We have to do it soon. Because I see a familiar pain all over Hope.” Plopping back down on the ground, Sabio emptied out the daypack and opened the Bible.
A familiar pain. Silenced by the abnormal show of emotion, Isaac rescued the hacky sack from the bamboo grove and halfheartedly juggled the foot bag to himself. He kept beat with the JasTunes—Jase’s personal compositions.
Apparently, Hope was getting to Sabio, too. The fear Isaac saw in her eyes had clamped on to his heart. He wished she’d lower defenses and talk so he could help. “It bugs me that she hides.”
Sabio looked up from the book. “Visualize her situation. She awoke in a foreign setting with four strange guys. No way to communicate with the outside world. Or with her family.” He closed the leatherback. “Considering how many women are abducted and violated these days, I’d flip out if Stacy was in Hope’s shoes.”
Sideswiped by images of violated women, Isaac abandoned the foot bag and reclined against the kapok’s gargantuan root. He massaged his face with both hands but couldn’t rub out the reality Sabio painted. “You’re right. I’m expecting too much from her.”
“What’s there to expect?” Akiko muttered from the other side of the root barrier. His silence must have been spent brooding. “She’s messing up our week.”
Isaac’s relaxed facial muscles hardened again. “It’s not her fault she’s here.”
“She’s eating our food. Sleeping in our house. Becoming a parasite—”
“Get over it!” Isaac rose far enough to glare over the top of the root.
Akiko flicked a finger at him. “You care more about her than us.”
That hurt. Isaac crawled around the root like an army tank. “Why are you so heartless?”
“She’s a liar.” Akiko tried sneaking away.
Gripping his shirtfront, Isaac pinned the slanderer to the trunk. “Lay off her.”
“You lay off.”
Isaac jostled him. “You acted like Dudley Do-Right when you caught her on the deck this morning. You’ve been the Grinch ever since. Why?”
Avoiding eye contact, Akiko pried at his fingers. “I don’t live for adversity like you do. I need some semblance of sanity.”
“Sanity?” Isaac tightened his hold. “Welcome to the real world.”
“The world of liars. She’s manipulating you.”
She’s my patient. Isaac wanted to shove the thoughtless criticism back down the Asian’s throat. “If you say anything cruel to her, I’ll bust your—”
Wrenched back, Isaac landed on his butt. Anger suspended. He gaped at Sabio who’d never before intervened in a quarrel. Whatever warmed the Ivy Leaguer out of his apathy deserved attention.
“We’re rooming with Hope for the next six days.” Sabio’s voice boomed with authority. “Fighting over her is pointless. And destructive.”
Out of respect for his friend, Isaac watered down his wrath and finally extended a hand to initiate the Foursome’s unspoken rule. “Sorry, Kiko. Hope being here is hard for me, too.” But I will always protect the defenseless.
Moving sluggishly, Akiko linked their hands. “And I need to adjust better than I am. It’s not worth our friendship.”
They shook. The JasTunes resumed. Sabio returned to reading. Everything back to normal.
Thank God, guys conquered their issues without drama. Isaac sprawled onto a spacious plot of grass and squeezed the foot bag like a tension ball. Closing his eyes, he basked in the Tunes. Next time, he’d bring his pocketknife so he could whittle.
“I think Hope is being tormented by something big.” Sabio’s announcement killed the calm. “Did you guys sense a darkness on her earlier?”
“Yep.” Isaac opened his eyes, respite again cut short.
Eerie sounds from the guitar exaggerated the solemn mood.
Smacking the book shut, Sabio tossed it onto the daypack. “She seems haunted by life, like she wants to escape it. I think she’s here through a divine act of mercy.”
Isaac pictured Hope in a ghetto or prostitution. If her life was a mess and heaven had somehow led her to the Cay to escape, then … “That means we have another purpose in being here.”
Jase drummed the guitar. “Why us?”
“Why not us?” Isaac rolled up onto one elbow and eyed his friends. “Life doesn’t happen to a person. Remember?”
Life already existed, so people happened to it. Isaac considered his birth an obligation to make a difference. The mosaic of evidence collected in his mind, and a bigger picture took shape. “If we hadn’t come to the Cay at this time, Hope would’ve been found dead. If I wasn’t a well-trained med tech, we’d be digging a grave right now. No coincidences.”
Was this God proving His relevance?
A jolt of urgency drove Isaac to his feet. Why had he left her alone? “We have to get back to the bungalow. Now.” God, please keep her safe.
Chapter 12
Lord Vétis followed the mongrels far enough away to ensure they wouldn’t return too soon. Clenching the book of matches, he backtracked toward the bungalow. He wasn’t used to doing legwork. His trusted minion had always kept him abreast of Riki and her family’s daily activities. Vétis had supervised her educational progress via video recordings, never stepping foot on their island.
Why?
The ensnaring question slowed his stride. The jury in his head indicted him for not evaluating his prototype in person. Fear of failing, they proclaimed, citing the extreme risk and poor odds as his motives.
“Overruled. I am the victor. I am.”
Vétis quietly limped up the deck steps. Dread poisoned his spirit at the sight of the maiden asleep on the bench. The name she’d invented for herself vexed him. He’d have preferred her stage name to Hope.
Crouching at her side, he wrangled with the possibility she was using her temporary freedom to undermine him. “What kind of game are you playing this time?” he whispered.
Eyeing her with unholy approval, he recalled images from the videotapes demonstrating her lethal abilities. According to the final summary, the unsuspecting Riki Hammad wanted to live a “normal life,” as if she were capable of identifying with worldly concepts. As Vétis had estimated from the onset, her designed experiences should register in her mind as normal unless someone enlightened her otherwise.
Praying under his breath, he pulled out a match.
What about the maternal influence? Had Jamila unearthed facts about her daughter’s purpose? Vétis had only kept the woman alive because selection of the destined child had originated from the mother’s Syrian bloodline. Should he have questioned Jamila’s suspicious behavior aboard ship last night?
No. Maternal instincts had no power to foil supreme destiny.
He lit a consecrated twig and waved it above the chosen one. Crude, but passable. Fortunately, he had completed the initiation ritual with the proper tools last night.
What if the mongrels pervert her? His confidence sputtered over unthinkable consequences that would arise from any major perversion. He must keep the Americans from distorting Riki’s impeccable programming.
Waving the hot stick over the chosen one, he circled his other hand over the spectral tracking device in her solar plexus. “You will not fail me,” he whispered. “You … are … mine.”
Drifting ashes. A pleasant sulfuric incense.
He felt th
e Prince of the Air graze him with approval. Had the prince not guided him to choose the prow of the ship to meet with Max Spencer, Vétis would have died in the blast.
The ashes abruptly sucked upward. A shift in the ambience iced up the consecrated stick.
Lord Vétis tipped sideways but caught himself. Enemy interference swarmed like locusts, forcing him to leave. He staggered into the concealing, leafy vegetation and dropped to his knees, energy stolen. He’d failed to complete the ritual.
Someone’s praying. Malice purred in his soul at the mongrels speeding past on the trail.
Chapter 13
Concerns over the side effects of Hope’s injury propelled Isaac down Mt. Merhamet like a luge. He should’ve stood his ground against Jase’s beach party idea. Patients with possible concussions didn’t belong at parties. Isaac wouldn’t put it past her to wander off in a stupor.
When they reached the bungalow, he was relieved to find her still asleep on the bench.
“She’s faking,” Akiko whispered.
Jase whacked him. “She’s scared.”
Snapping his finger, Isaac signaled them to argue elsewhere.
Sabio opened the bungalow door and herded the two inside.
Once the agitators cleared the field, Isaac bent over his patient. She was the most bizarre girl he’d ever met. He couldn’t decide whether she was abnormally shy or secretly investigative. She’d make a great spy, except for her seemingly genuine naïveté toward the world.
While making a visual evaluation, his nose tickled from a wood-burning scent. The tropics are playing with me.
Other than the irrelevant odor, she appeared normal, which made him wonder what had caused his acute anxiety on Turtle’s Head. He’d give her another hour before assuming she was more than sleeping. Only an X-ray of her skull and a medical staff to interpret it could fully put his mind at ease.
He moved to the cast iron table where Sabio was inspecting his foot. Isaac had seen him stub his toe on another flat stone smothered with ashes, as Jase had earlier.