Eden's Promise (13 page)

He grunted an assent and pressed his hand to her back, holding her in a crouched position. But she knew not all the threats could be high. How could he see where to step, where to steer her? Then she saw a trip wire and threw herself back to stop him from, well, tripping it. He caught her arms, holding her against his chest until she caught her balance.
 

“Good girl,” he murmured against her ear.
 

Shaking off her nerves—God knew what that wire was attached to—she forged forward.

And felt the ground give beneath her.

Chapter Nine

Aaron felt rather than saw Eden disappear with a scream in front of him. He lunged forward, catching her pack, digging his fingers in, before reaching around with his other hand and grabbing her arm. Her weight pulled him forward, onto his knees, then onto his belly as the full weight of her body and pack clung to his arm.

Only then did he see the round pit she’d fallen into, probably seven feet across and fifteen feet deep, and shit. With spikes lining the bottom. Eden dangled on the side, feet trying to find purchase so she could climb out. He dropped to his chest to get a better grip on her.
 

“I got you, I got you,” he said, hoping to God he did. Suddenly her weight eased slightly and she wasn’t so wiggly. “You need to drop the pack.” The damned thing weighed as much as she did. No wonder she was tired.

“Can’t. We can’t lose our supplies.”

“Sweetheart. I can’t pull both of you up. You’re going to have to let go.”

She grunted and shifted, never easing up on the death grip she had on his arm.
 

“Take the pack,” she said a few moments later.

“The hell I will. I’m not letting go of you.”

“I’ve got a root or something here. Just for a minute. Take the pack.”

He slackened his hold testingly, but she wasn’t lying. She was holding on to something. He reached past her, sank his fingers into the soft pack and hauled it up to the ground beside him before grasping her hand again. Yes, God, yes, so much easier to pull her up now. She shifted and gripped his forearm with her other hand, climbing up the wall of the pit until he was able to grab her under the shoulders and haul her to the ground beside him. Both of them tumbled onto their back and stared up at the darkening sky, breathing heavily.

So heavily they didn’t hear anyone approach.

“Well, what do we have here?” a voice said from the darkness.

Aaron flipped Eden beneath him, shielding her with his body, and glared up into the barrel of a rifle.
 

“We’re just passing through,” he said, still breathless from the effort of pulling her up. “We don’t want anything from you, and we don’t have anything you want.”

“Sure about that?” the man asked, prodding Eden’s pack with the toe of his boot. “Seems pretty full to me.”

Aaron got a better look at him once he was able to switch his focus away from the gun. The man holding it was bearded and thin, his cheeks hollow and his clothes hanging from him. Beyond him, three other men ranged around them, all armed. Oh, hell. These men were starving. And the glint in the first man’s eyes gave Aaron a bad feeling in his gut.
 

“Blankets and the like. Some MREs. Nothing of value.”

“Well, son, things of value these days are things I want and you have.”

 
The man dragged the pack closer to his feet and flicked on a flashlight to look inside as the other three men held them at gunpoint. Aaron’s gun was in the holster at his hip, beneath his jacket, and the rifle he’d taken from the National Guardsman was on the ground somewhere, where he’d dropped it when he’d gone after Eden. He gauged he couldn’t get to either without getting his own head blown off.
 

“Don’t even think about it, tough guy.” The man with the gun looked past them to aim the flashlight into the pit. “Here we thought we were going to get a deer, something to eat. Guess we’ll have to make do.”
 

He aimed the flashlight back on Aaron, flipped it between him and Eden. “Get ‘em up,” the man with the gun said. “Get his weapons.”

Two men grabbed him by the arms and hauled him to his feet, patting him down, grabbing his pistol. The cocking of a gun below him registered seconds before the sound of a .357 fired three times. The man with the rifle and flashlight fell back, Aaron’s arms were suddenly free and he dropped, just as Eden rolled to her knee and aimed her gun at the fourth man, who turned and ran into the forest.
 

“Shit,” she said, getting to her feet, only to have her leg snatched from beneath her by the man with the flashlight, who lay panting on the ground.
 

In the dim beam of the flashlight that rolled across the ground, Aaron could see the bearded man was shot in the shoulder. He stepped on the man’s wrist, sweeping down to retrieve his own gun from the man’s belt. He aimed his weapon at the man’s head.

“Check them,” he said to Eden, nodding toward the other two men.
 

She scrambled to do his bidding and he heard a gasp from the darkness. “Dead,” she said, her voice a little strangled.
 

The man beneath him groaned, a pain not physical. Aaron aimed his pistol at the man’s head, but the man’s eyes were closed, his face twisted.

“The other?”

He heard her crunch across the leaves—funny that he hadn’t heard them when the men approached—held his breath as he waited for her assessment.
 

“Alive, but barely. Chest shot, lung punctured, I think.”

“I’m not taking him to the ER,” he said sharply. “I just want to know he’s not coming after us.”

“He’s not. Can’t be sure about the one who got away.” She joined him over the injured man Aaron was watching. “Are there more of you? Is he going for help?”

Just what they needed. People pursuing them. The man at his feet chuckled, and Aaron kicked the side of his head.
 

Silence.

“We gotta go.” He gathered the weapons, then held a hand to her.

She scooped up the backpack and took his hand. Together they hurried down the mountain.

“Why this way?” she asked, trying to catch her breath.

“Because if there were people in the forest with supplies, you think those men would have been thinking about eating us?”

She stopped so suddenly his arm jerked behind him. “You don’t really think—?”

“I absolutely do. I’ve seen it before.”

She shuddered, but didn’t move forward.
 

He pivoted on her and gripped her arms tightly, forcing her to look at him. God, he hated being rough with her, but he didn’t have time to coddle her. “Don’t you freak out on me now, Eden. We’re not done. So get your shit together.”

“I just killed a man, Aaron.” Tears filled her eyes.

“I know, sweetheart, and I’ll help you work through that. It will be rough. But it was necessary, or, hell, we’d be barbecue right about now.” He wanted to pull her into his arms and comfort her, but God knew if there were more of the damned cannibals ready to hunt them down, if for no other reason than revenge.

He tugged, and she started following him, more by rote than desire.
 

***

If Eden thought she was exhausted before, now she was just numb. She couldn’t let her thoughts go back to that scene on the mountain. She couldn’t let herself think about what she’d done.

And she couldn’t think about resting, sleeping, though her knees threatened to lock as she hurried down the mountain after Aaron. She was shaking all over, her stomach was growling despite the MRE from earlier. Everything she had hurt, feet, hips, shoulders, from her fall, from Aaron pulling her out of the hole. She could barely raise her arms. Her eyes were gritty but all she wanted to do was cry. As much as her father had trained her, he hadn’t taught her what it would be like to take a life, and he hadn’t trained her in endurance.

Aaron was a machine, not stopping, not slowing, when she knew he had to be as tired as she was.
 

Finally he slowed as the sky above the trees lightened. He stopped at the base of a tree and looked up, then looked back at her.

“When was the last time you climbed a tree?”

Something else she hadn’t prepared for. She eyed the rough bark and the first branch a few feet above her head. “Really?”

“Safest place to get some sleep. You’re dead on your feet.”

“So are you.”

“I can hold off until you get some sleep and can keep watch.”

“Aaron.”

“Do you need a boost?”

She heaved a sigh, then nodded, not sure how she was going to get up with the backpack.

She managed, scraping her fingertips in the process. Great, something else to hurt and throb. When she tried to stop in the second fork of the tree, he prodded her upward with his hand on her ass. As she continued to climb, she wondered if he ever would have looked twice at her in the time before. She’d been strong before, yes, but nothing like now. Did he need that in her? And when she broke down, would he be there for her?
 

Ridiculous questions swirling around in an exhausted mind. All that was between them was trust and one night of sex, one night it looked like they were never going to get a chance to repeat.

“That’s good,” he whispered to her when she reached another fork in the tree, which had wide branches and enough room for them both to sit, side by side, though their asses would be squeezed together. He unzipped her pack and dragged out something which made it suddenly lighter. In the dim dawn light, she saw it was one of the blankets she’d managed to salvage.

“Get comfortable,” he said, and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders.
 

“Not cold,” she said petulantly.

“Not now, because you’ve been exerting yourself, but when you cool off, you’ll be glad of this.” He settled in beside her and eased his arm around her shoulders, drawing her against his chest. “Get some sleep.”

His heart thudded beneath her cheek as she nestled against him despite herself. “I’m sorry I’m so weak.”

He laughed softly. “You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met. Get some sleep, Eden. I’ll hold onto you.”

***

Aaron jolted awake from his combat nap at the sound of leaves stirring beneath them. Every muscle tense, he barely kept himself from jerking and causing a sudden movement that would draw attention. Twisting his head, he gazed down to see three men below, all holding rifles, no doubt looking for them.

He debated leaving Eden asleep, but feared she’d wake up suddenly and make a sound. Moving slowly, he covered her mouth with his hand and nudged her awake. Her body jerked defensively and her eyes flew open.

“Sh,” he said, right against her ear, and pointed down.

Her body melted into a new kind of tension and she moved slowly to watch what was going on below them.
 

Three men, all bearded, wearing threadbare clothes, carried rifles that hadn’t been well-cared-for. They watched the ground, for sign of Aaron and Eden or for game, he couldn’t be sure, but he was pretty sure they were connected to the men they’d left on the mountain.
 

The season was a blessing and a curse—because there were so few leaves on the trees, Aaron could see everything below. But if the men looked up, he and Eden would have no camouflage.
 

He shifted to follow their progress as the men moved past the tree, but didn’t allow himself to relax yet, not when they could still look up.

Beside him he felt Eden’s body go tight, and she pressed her hand to her nose, her eyes squeezed shut. Shit, just what they needed, her to sneeze and blow their cover. He brought her face against his shoulder as she struggled to suppress it...and the blanket slipped from around her and floated to the ground. Aaron froze as it landed not ten feet away from the man bringing up the rear.

The man stopped, and looked up.
 

Aaron grabbed the back of Eden’s jacket and dragged her behind him as the man lifted his rifle. The bullet hit inches from Aaron’s face, spraying them both with bark. He hauled Eden to the side of the tree away from the men, knowing that was temporary cover, since the men on the ground were more agile than the two of them were in the tree. He steadied his rifle on his shoulder and drew a bead on the closet man, taking him down with a shot between the eyes, but hell, that only made the other two shout in anger and run back toward the tree. The rifle slipped in his grip when he felt Eden move below him, and his aim was off as he fired at the second man, hitting him in the knee instead. Would slow the sucker down but wouldn’t stop him from shooting them. He aimed again, only to duck when the third man fired, accurate son of a bitch, considering he was shooting on the run. Splinters from the tree bit into Aaron’s cheek as the bullet lodged in the trunk beside his head.