As if they’d rehearsed it countless times—as they had in their minds—they each went to work. As his mother read aloud, Kyle lifted the square of flooring, then went to take his place at the closed door. He nudged it open a fraction of an inch to see if Filipo was where they thought he was, far enough in the right direction. When he spotted him, Kyle gave the “go” signal they’d arranged. Lani lowered herself down through the opening, took a split second to orient herself, then crawled quickly to the back side of the building. Noah had promised if she stuck to the path he’d marked under the building, she would come out at the rear, out of sight, with only a few feet to run before she was in trees thick enough to hide in.
Paige counted to herself, gave the girl an extra five seconds to reach safety. And then the real work began. While still reading, and starting with the youngest, Stevie, she pointed to each child in turn. When selected, they obediently tiptoed to her, each young face scrunched up in an agony of strain as they tried to be so very quiet.
“Follow the arrows, then run to Lani,” she whispered between sentences to each one, then sent them on their way to freedom with a kiss on the forehead.
Her heart was pounding so loudly she was surprised it didn’t betray them. It took every bit of her concentration to try and follow her reading and make it sound normal, all the while using minute breaks in the story to whisper the directions to the children. But child after child followed instructions to the letter.
Hannah was reluctant to leave Noah, and kept looking back at him as she inched her way to the front of the room. She bumped into a desk, and the sound seemed much louder than it should have.
“Keep going,” Paige whispered urgently in the same instant Noah moved. As if casually stretching muscles weary of lack of activity, he turned his back to Tarak, placing his body in the man’s line of sight, blocking his view. He gave the little girl a grin and a wink and, reassured, she scuttled out of sight.
The chain began again. As the number of children dwindled, Noah moved gradually closer, as if ready to shield the few remaining again if necessary. They kept going, so smoothly that Paige was almost afraid to breathe. Child after child, escaping from the horror, and a joyous triumph began to sing along her nerves, until she could feel the hum.
Bless you, Noah Rider! Twenty, she counted. Twenty-one. Take that, you bastards! This is for all the innocents who have died at your hands.
And then it happened. One of the bigger boys misjudged and hit the side of the opening with his shoe, making a loud, resounding thump.
Too loud. Paige knew instantly there was no masking this one. In that same instant Noah gestured to Kyle to take his mother’s place helping the last children escape before he got out himself. Then Noah grabbed Paige and pulled her toward the guarded doors.
She had no time to speak, barely enough time to wonder what he was doing before he yanked her hard against him. His mouth came down on hers, fast and fierce. The shock that jolted her was quickly replaced by a swift, searing heat. She was too nervous, too frightened to give in to it totally, and because of that she was oddly able to think, that here it was again, that instant fire she’d felt only with Noah. Even now, beneath the fear, it was still there.
Noah wrested the book she’d somehow clung to out of her hand. She heard a heavy thud as it dropped to the floor. The fear of making noise that had been their life for two days shot through her. What if the guard had heard?
“A little outrage would help,” Noah whispered lovingly.
She came totally back to herself with a start. The guard was supposed to have heard, she realized belatedly. This whole thing was a diversion.
Once she’d snapped out of her distraction she reacted quickly. She shoved against Noah’s chest with both hands. He resisted; she shoved harder. And poured every bit of the embarrassment she was feeling at missing her cue into her voice.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, with what she hoped sounded like the outrage he’d asked for, and only now noticed they were at the front doors and that Tarak was watching them with interest.
“Hey, take it easy,” Noah said, with a smirking grin she’d never seen before on his face.
“Easy!” She let her voice rise. “You start pawing me like that and I’m supposed to take it easy?”
“Hey, now, don’t go getting all upset,” he said, trying to pull her back into his arms. He bent his head close in the process and whispered, “Better slap me. Hard.”
“Leave me alone!” she yelled. She’d never slapped anyone before, but she gave it her best shot. As her hand connected with Noah’s face the sound was horrible. And she was afraid she’d given him too good a shot, because he reeled backward. But when he ended up nearly outside, with Tarak starting to laugh out loud, she knew it was intentional.
Quickly she followed the action to the door. Noah backed up and actually stepped outside. All Tarak did was laugh again, making a joke about men who can’t control their women. And then he called out to Filipo to come watch the fun.
Yes, do, Paige thought, stepping outside herself.
With what she guessed was his idea of a placating smile, Noah came toward her again.
“Aw, come on, honey, don’t be mad.” He grabbed her again, at an oddly awkward angle. “Just calm down,” he said, patting her on the back as one would an upset child.
She was starting to get genuinely annoyed, and if she hadn’t known he was acting, she might have clobbered him again. Especially when Filipo arrived at a run and gave her a look that frightened her, so clearly did it tell her she was lucky it wasn’t he who had his hands on her.
And then she realized the reason for the uncomfortable twist of her body Noah was forcing her to; it enabled him to see back into the school without being obvious.
“They made it,” he whispered, and it was all Paige could do not to make the hug real. “Your turn. Move fast. They need you.”
And in the next moment Noah stumbled back as if she’d pushed him away again.
“Leave me alone,” she repeated, figuring she’d better play along.
“Can’t handle the little schoolteacher?” Filipo crowed loudly. “I can. Just wait and see.”
Noah shrugged. “Okay, okay, just go sit down and cool off,” he told her.
His gaze flicked toward the inside of the room, and she knew he meant for her to go now. For an instant as he looked back at her their gazes locked and held. In his eyes she saw determination, encouragement and something that she couldn’t name, not in this split second.
She hesitated, not wanting to leave him there. But she knew he was right. Those kids needed her. She couldn’t leave Lani and Kyle alone to handle two dozen scared children. She summoned up the demeanor she knew she should be trying to present for their captors.
“Fine,” she said icily. “You just stay here and cool off, yourself!”
With all the offended dignity she could muster, she turned on her heel and marched back into the school. She could hear the laughter of the guards, heard Noah saying sheepishly, “Well, can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Paige hurried to the front of the now empty schoolhouse. God, they hadn’t talked about this, had only talked about how to get the kids out. And now that she thought back, Noah had always referred to what she—not they—would do once they got the children to the sanctuary of Lani’s cave.
Did he have a plan for his own escape? Should she leave the floor open? She could feel her safety margin ticking away. Finally deciding what puzzlement the closed floor might cause wasn’t worth the extra seconds it might cost Noah, she left it open.
He’d shown the way carefully, with thick, white arrows marked on the uprights of the school’s foundation with her chalk. She crawled as fast as she could, heedless of the damage to her elbows—the floor over her head was too low for her to crawl normally—and her knees. There was plenty of light, and she could see the break in the outer shell that was her goal.
She hadn’t thought the small spa
ce had bothered her until she scrambled out into the sunlight and relief swamped her. It seemed like forever since she’d been outside, and she had to resist the urge to simply stop and breathe in the clean air.
She heard a hissing sound, and looked just to her right to see Kyle half-hidden in the trees, gesturing at her to hurry up. She ran toward her son, grateful for the cover of the trees when she got there.
“Consider yourself hugged,” she said, knowing they didn’t have time nor would Kyle tolerate the real thing.
“You, too,” he said, surprising her.
“Where are the kids?”
“I sent them ahead with Lani. They shouldn’t be far, though. Where’s Mr. Rider?”
“Stalling the guards,” she said.
“But how’s he going to—”
“I don’t know.”
Her own unease about the same question made her voice sharp. What would they do when they realized their hostages were gone? The possibilities were many and all of them were ugly. She hesitated, looking back toward the school.
And then they heard Filipo shout. Curses followed, and then another shout from Filipo.
She knew it was too late to do anything but run.
“We better run,” Kyle said even as her thought formed.
And run they did. Kyle led the way, unhesitatingly making his way through the thick trees and brush that qualified as jungle in her mind. He clearly knew exactly where he was going, for which Paige was thankful.
When he slowed, she looked at him questioningly.
“We’re almost where I left them,” he explained. “I told Lani—”
The sound that echoed through the trees cut off his words. Paige froze. Kyle went pale. Denial was impossible. The sound was what it was.
A shot.
Chapter 14
She’d never been fond of caves, Paige thought as she walked back and forth near the entrance, but she wouldn’t trade this one for the Ritz. Even the littlest children seemed to realize that while they were without the comforts of the school, they had gained something so much more precious: the absence of those nasty men, as Hannah put it.
Hannah.
Lord, how would the child deal with it, if her beloved Noah was—
Paige shook her head, trying not to think about it. Trying not to think about how she would deal with it. Trying above all not to think about the magnitude of that “if.”
An old memory shot through her mind, something she hadn’t thought about in years. She’d wondered, back then, if Phil had had time to realize what was happening, that the plane was going down. That he was about to die. If he’d had any last regrets about what he’d thrown away. Of course, he’d never have gotten on that plane if he’d known. Nothing mattered that much to Phil.
Noah had known. He had to have known. And yet he’d gone ahead, had—
“Mrs. Cooper?”
Paige stopped her wretched pacing as Lani hesitantly approached. “Yes, Lani?”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Paige put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “No. You’ve done so much already. You should be very proud, Lani.”
The girl colored. “Thank you.”
“We could never have saved these children if not for you,” Paige said.
“And Mr. Rider,” Lani said, her eyes troubled now.
“Yes.” Paige swallowed against the sudden tightness of her throat. “It was all his idea, after all.”
And it had been his idea to stay behind, she thought. He had to have known what he was risking, when he’d stayed to distract the guards so she could escape.
“Kyle told me,” Lani said, her eyes suspiciously bright.
“Told you? That he planned it all?”
The girl shook her head. “About…the shot you heard.”
“Oh.”
“Do you think…they shot him? When they found we were gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hannah keeps asking for him. Do you think he’s still alive?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
And that was the truth, as far as it went. She didn’t know, because she hadn’t been there. Thankfully. But what she was refusing to acknowledge, even to herself, was the very high likelihood that that was exactly what they’d done, that it was exactly what men like that would do. In fact, it would be more unusual if they hadn’t shot him the moment they had discovered he’d made a fool of them. Right there, on the spot where he’d staged that reckless diversion, he’d set himself up once more as a weakling to be laughed at, this time so she could escape.
The vision she’d been trying to fight off since that frozen moment in the trees swamped her, a nightmare image grown out of too many film clips, too many still shots of the carnage left behind by terrorists the world over. Noah, forced to his knees, the last seconds of his life ticking away, Filipo aiming at the back of his head. A sacrifice too big to ask of anyone, and he’d given it without hesitation.
A sacrifice…
Dear God, he’d known all along. He’d known all along he would have to stay behind to give them a chance. That was why he’d never referred to himself in their plans after the escape, he’d known from the beginning he wouldn’t be with them.
Suddenly the vision shifted, back to the night he’d come back after his first foray. Back to her own shaky voice…
I thought they’d killed you.
They may yet. I’m not cut out for this kind of thing.
Not cut out to be a hero, he’d meant. And she wondered if he’d ever realized that a man not cut out to be a hero who goes ahead and does it, anyway, is the biggest hero of all.
She nearly whimpered aloud when she recognized that she had thought of him in the past tense.
She tried to hang on to some hope. She tried to come up with at least one feasible reason why they wouldn’t have killed him where he stood. The only one she could think of was Ares, that they wouldn’t do anything on their own, without a direct order from their charismatic leader.
It was a hope so slim it was barely existent. But it was all she had.
The cave wasn’t exactly comfortable, Paige thought, but the view was spectacular. Beneath them, in a small cove, was a little beach of gleaming white sand. Not too much farther out was a reef, marked on the surface by ranks of breaking waves. The result was a small circle of calm, clear water, a natural swimming pool.
And she wasn’t about to complain about the cave, not when it was providing the most important thing of all, safety. Bless Lani for knowing about it and thinking of it.
As if her thoughts had drawn the girl, she appeared again and dropped down to sit beside Paige.
“Most of them are napping,” she said. “This was all pretty rough on them.”
“On all of us,” Paige said, with the best smile she could manage for the girl. “Thank you for your help, Lani. We all would have fallen apart without you.”
The girl smiled shyly but didn’t speak. After a long silence Paige said, “It’s a good thing Redstone didn’t see this place. I’m sure they’d want to add this to the resort. It’s lovely.”
“My father says Mr. Redstone did see it. He found it himself, when he was hiking around the island. He asked about it, and Father explained this cave was the spiritual home of our ancestors.”
“Joshua Redstone personally hiked this island?”
Lani nodded. “All alone, before he bought the land for the resort.”
Paige had a hard time picturing the high-powered executive tramping around like that. But then she remembered the few times she’d met him—tall, lean, with a depth of understanding in his gray eyes that hadn’t come from an easy life.
He came up the hard way, from a worse start than most of us ever had. Noah’s words came back to her, along with the ache that accompanied every thought of him. It didn’t seem possible he could be dead, her heart wanted to scream that it wasn’t true, but she knew she was kidding herself by clinging to that hope. The sound of tha
t shot was seared into her memory. He’d saved them, saved them all, and he’d known what it was going to cost him. This man who had thought himself anything but a hero had become one, in the hardest possible way.
“My uncle expected him to want the cove,” Lani said, thankfully distracting her, “so he was ready to fight. My uncle assured everyone the night before the discussions began that it would never be allowed. He kept waiting for Mr. Redstone to say something about it, but he never did.”
“It never even came up?”
Lani smiled. “My uncle finally couldn’t stand it, so he asked. Mr. Redstone said he had never considered it because he respected what this place meant to us. He even asked if we wanted him to put up a fence or a hedge to assure no guest found it accidentally. I think that is what decided my father that this was a man we could trust.”
“Have they ever regretted it?” Paige asked, curious now.
Lani shook her head. “We were in a bad way. We had no doctor, no medical service at all. There is a visiting doctor who flies to the islands, but we couldn’t afford him. There was no school, no teacher for the children. No work for our people.”
“How did you survive?”
“Only…” Lani paused, as if searching for words. “Hand to mouth, is how you say it I think. But now we have all those things, even a small clinic with a nurse, thanks to Mr. Redstone. He has kept his word.”
No wonder Noah thought so much of his boss, Paige thought. And on that thought the pain returned, tightening her chest until it was all she could do to draw another breath. She stared out at the turquoise sea, the never-changing sea that cared nothing for the foibles of mankind or the cruelties—cruelties that could kill a man without qualm. No matter what happened to Noah, the sea would roll on as if nothing had changed; whereas, Paige knew the world was suddenly a lesser place for the loss of that one man.
Just Another Day in Paradise Page 16