Escape from Eden (16 page)

After finding the right button to unlock the car, I shoved open the passenger’s door. Glass spilled out onto the black asphalt, sparkling like sugar under the blue-white glow of the headlights.

“What are you doing?” Juanita asked.

“Get out,” I said. “We’re going to get help.”

“From whom?” She waved her hand around the car. “Thaddeus?”

“No.”

Cars began honking. The road back to the resort was long and lined with headlights, backed up because our car blocked them from moving ahead.

“Move that car!” someone yelled. “We can’t get out!”

Maybe that was what we needed to make our escape. If they couldn’t drive down the only road leading away from the beach resort, then Thaddeus couldn’t follow us.

I marched toward the white car ahead. In the distance, I could see the silhouette of someone getting out of it.

Gabriel caught up with me first.

“Hey, just so you know,” he said, “that dude may not be inclined to help us.”

“Probably not.” I glanced at him. “When was the last time you punched someone?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

“Entirely too long.”

Gabriel grinned, the shadows lining his face giving him a roguish appearance–not much different from his normal appearance, actually.

As we approached, the darkness gave way to the ambient light from the car and I saw a large, barrel-chested man standing in the middle of the road, hand shielding his eyes from the headlights behind us. I recognized him immediately. My stomach dropped.

“What is going on here?” Lambert asked with the indignant voice of an aristocrat.

“Hello, Monsieur Lambert.”

“Mia!” he said, voice bright with surprise.

“You know this douche?” Gabriel asked as he stepped in front of me, shielding me from Lambert.

“Douche?” Lambert asked, drawing out the word so long I could practically see a trail of letter Os rushing out of his mouth. With little subtlety, he sniffed under one of his arms.

I threw Gabriel a questioning look.

“Aw.” Gabriel reached back and stroked my arm. “I keep forgetting you’ve been so sheltered all these years. How about asshat? Know that one?”

But when Gabriel touched me, Lambert puffed up, scowl descending over his face.

“Do not put your hands on her,” Lambert said with a sharp edge to his voice.

“Why not?” Gabriel said, taking one step closer to him. “So you can?”

“Mia, get in the car,” said Lambert, motioning to the passenger’s side door.

“No,” I said.

Gabriel squinted at Lambert. “Oh, wait—I know who you are.” Obviously, he remembered seeing Lambert that night with Mama.

“You know who I am, do you? Listen to me, young man. Mia is–”

But before he could get the rest of his sentence out, Gabriel slugged him in the nose and Lambert went down like a thick-trunked tree. He fell against the open driver’s side door then onto the hard surface of the road, groaning.

“That was so brutal,” I said to Gabriel.

Gabriel bent over and shoved Lambert out of the way of the door, rolling him away a couple of feet. “Don’t forget I have a sweet side.”

“Hey!” Juanita ran up to us. She looked at Lambert, groaning on the ground. “Who’s he?”

Gabriel eyes bore into mine. “Did he touch you?” He jerked his hand toward the lights in the distance. “Back there. In that place?”

I shook my head, trying to fight through the fog in my brain. “I—I don’t think so.”

Down the road, more and more cars attempted to drive off the road and into the surrounding grass. Flapping sounds filled the air, along with curses and angry yelling.

Juanita stared off into the distance. “Do you think Thaddeus is back there looking for us?”

“Yep.” Gabriel smiled. “And probably frustrated as hell.”

“He’s going to punish us when we get back to Edenton,” she said to me.

I couldn’t meet her eyes. We weren’t going back.

Gabriel placed a hand on Juanita’s shoulder. She instantly brightened.

“Get in the car,” he said to her, opening the back door of Lambert’s car. “We’ll see where this road leads.”

She smiled at him and folded herself into the backseat, behind the driver’s seat. He shut Juanita’s door. “You’re riding shotgun, Ricci.”

That little flair of jealousy rose up in my chest. I pushed it back down and quickly made my way to the other side of the car.

“Lucky me,” I said, grabbing the handle.

He caught my eye over the roof of the car. “Hey, Ricci.”

“What, Gabriel?”

“I thought you wanted to escape without me.” His eyes shone in the night between us.

Lambert groaned again. Gabriel turned and kicked him.

“Well?” he said, turning back to me. “Are we going to do this? Together?”

We were going to escape. Together. And at least for a little while, I wouldn’t be alone in the outside world.

“Yes,” I answered. “We’re going to do this.”

The constellation of instruments in the car’s dashboard danced with every adjustment Gabriel made while driving. I’d never seen anything like it, the colors, the intensity of the lights. Each was like a compass, mapping our way to freedom–or a clock, ticking away the time until we were caught.

I was still processing all that had happened, at least what I could remember. Bits and pieces of what transpired before I woke up in that room with Monsieur Lambert were coming back to me, little flashes of light and sensation. Prayer Circle and the cloying taste of vanilla and cherry. Dancing with Gabriel, and kissing him. Getting caught by Thaddeus and seeing the anger in his eyes. Crashing a lamp into a window in an attempt to escape.

Trees and plants blurred by outside the car’s window, disappearing into the darkness as the headlights passed by, like a black curtain closing over the jungle, keeping its secrets. Only a small shard of the waning moon shone in the sky. Inside the car, it was cool and soft, the seat cradling me. I allowed myself to love the luxurious feeling of it. It kept my mind from wandering into dangerous territory. Namely, the future.

Gabriel pressed a few buttons. A small TV screen unfolded from the top of the dashboard and glowed. Juanita leaned forward, awe in her eyes. I’m sure I looked no different.

“What is that?” she asked.

“GPS.”

“What does it do?”

“What does it do—oh, right.” Gabriel smiled a little as he fiddled with the controls. “It can tell us where to go.”

A disembodied voice sounded from somewhere in the cabin of the car, speaking French.

“This car talks?” I asked.

“Lots of cars talk,” Gabriel said, scrolling through jumbling words on the screen.

“And you understand this car?” Juanita said. “What language is it speaking?”

“French. It was a requirement at my prep school. And now, I’m thoroughly prepped to drive through the Amazon and translate the prompts of a snotty navigation system.” He glanced in the rear view mirror at Juanita. “I keep forgetting how long you guys have been in Edenton.”

“Since I was three,” she said in a faraway voice. “Thirteen years.” She leaned forward, hand resting on the back of my seat.

“That’s a long time,” Gabriel whispered.

She heard him. “I don’t remember my life before. Is this GPS thing going to tell us how to get back to Edenton?”

I turned in my seat. “Back to Edenton?”

“Yes, Mia,” Juanita said with impatience. “Back to Edenton. Our family is there, it’s our home.”

“We aren’t going back to Edenton,” Gabriel said definitively. “It’s not safe.”

“Driving through the dark jungle in the middle of the night is safe?” Juanita asked. “Edenton is where we belong.”

“But what happened back there, Juanita?” I asked. “Explain how we ended up in that place with those people if we were so safe in Edenton.”

She thought for a moment. “I can’t.”

“Well, I can’t go back,” I said. “I won’t go back.”

“What about your mom?” she asked.

“What about her?’

“Mia!” Juanita gasped. “I can’t believe you would say that! We can’t abandon our families. I can’t leave my mom. She’s already lost one child.”

Guilt descended over me in the silence that followed. With Octavio gone, Juanita was now the only child her mom had. Because of me. Was it, though? I stared at the long road before us, the dark, mangled jungle on either side. I didn’t belong out here. I didn’t think I belonged in Edenton either, but whatever had happened to land me where I was, it wasn’t my fault. It was the Reverend’s. He was a liar, a manipulator. He got us out of Edenton somehow, endangering us. And he was responsible for the deaths of those eleven people. Those people didn’t die because of me. It was because the Reverend used me. I couldn’t take responsibility for Octavio’s death.

Gabriel sensed the tension, his brow furrowing as he glanced at me. “Let’s get to the nearest city,” he said. “What’s it called again?”

“San Sebastian,” I mumbled, staring at my reflection in the dark window next to me.

I looked different, older. I swiped my finger over my eyelid and it came away darker. Not the same gray-black as the soot. More like a mossy green color.

“Once we get to San Sebastian,” he said, scrolling through words on the GPS screen, “we’ll figure out something. Juanita, if you want to go back to Edenton once we’re there, we’ll find a way.”

“But Gabriel,” Juanita said. “Your parents are in Edenton, too.”

He didn’t say anything, only shifted his focus from the GPS to the road.

“What are they going to say when they realize you’re gone?” she asked.

“They won’t do anything. I turn eighteen next year and I told them I was leaving Edenton anyway.”

“But they love you.”

“If they loved me, they wouldn’t have brought me to Edenton,” he said bitterly.

Juanita turned to me, realizing it was impossible to rationalize with an angry Gabriel. “Running away isn’t the right thing to do, Mia. You know that. Edenton is our family. I don’t know anything else. And what about little Max? He needs you.”

A small pain lodged in my heart. I couldn’t leave Max in Edenton without me. “You’re right. Max—” I started.

“Ssssh!” Gabriel said suddenly and cocked his head to the side. “Do you hear that?”

We all froze, listening. Softly, in the distance, I heard a buzzing. It was faint, but it was there.

“What is that?” Juanita asked.

Gabriel shot a look over his shoulder, then through the sunroof. He flipped off the headlights and the road ahead of us disappeared. The car slowed with a soft rumble and he brought it to a stop in the middle of the road. Before he turned the car off, he slid open his window.

“What are you doing?” Juanita asked.

Darkness swallowed up everything around us; only the sliver of moon cast a dim glow through the sunroof. The sounds of the jungle slowly faded away as the noise grew louder, closer, a rhythmic thwomping, a thick, heart-like pounding approaching.

Gabriel cursed and twisted in his seat, looking up.

Overhead, a helicopter passed us, shining lights like tentacles over the road. A flash of blue-hued light came through the sunroof, almost blinding us.

We watched with numb disbelief as the helicopter plowed ahead of us, a red light on one side and a green light on the other. Before I could blink, it climbed higher into the sky and the red light on its left side disappeared in the dark.

“It’s turning around,” I said.

“How desperate are they?” he asked, not expecting an answer. “Why don’t they just let us go?”

“Who?” Juanita asked.

It couldn’t be. I looked at Gabriel in disbelief. “Is that—?”

“Yes!” Gabriel blindly grasped for the key in the ignition and started the car. He revved the engine and pealed forward, tires screeching, toward the helicopter.

“Don’t drive toward them!” I yelled.

“If we drive toward them, they’ll have to turn around again. It could buy us some time.”

“Oh,” I said lamely.

“Stop the car, Gabriel!” Juanita said. “Maybe they can help us get back to Edenton.”

“They’re the reason you’re not in Edenton!” Gabriel said. “Whoever is up there drugged us and took us out of Edenton to that weird resort.”

“How do you know who’s up there?” Juanita asked.

“Jesus, Juanita.” Gabriel looked at her in the rearview mirror. “It’s not the local police nabbing us for a speeding ticket. Who the hell else do you think it is?”

The helicopter barreled toward us, sinking lower, following the road. A spotlight from its underbelly hit us like a weight and I felt cold fear slide down my spine.

“Mia,” Juanita said, trying to reason with me. “This is insane. How are we going to get away from a helicopter? Let’s pull over and let them—”

“Let them what, Juanita?” I asked. “Drug us again?”

“But—”

“No!” I said, immediately feeling guilty for snapping at her. But she was being unreasonable. We couldn’t trust anyone.

The helicopter stopped mid-air and drifted down to the asphalt in front of us, blocking the road. Gabriel hit the brakes and we spun out. I was thrown against the side of the car, knocking my head and shoulder on the window. I opened my eyes and we all stared, rapt, at the helicopter perched in the middle of the road. The doors flew open and four brawny figures ran out, each cradling something in his hands. Then we heard Thaddeus’s voice resonating through a loudspeaker, calling our names.

“Out of the car,” he said. “Now. We don’t have time for this.”

“What do they have in their hands?” I asked.

“Guns,” Gabriel whispered.

“Go,” I said, the men coming closer. “Go, go, go!”

“No!” Juanita yelled, trying to open the back door, but Gabriel hit the gas, turning the car away from the helicopter and we surged forward. Thaddeus yelled behind us, his voice ringing through the car. The helicopter blades picked up speed again, beating like wings.

Juanita yelled something at Gabriel from the backseat, but my pulse pounded in my ears, drowning her out. Why did they have guns? I leaned forward, squinting through the windshield.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing. “There, on the right, a break in the trees.” As we whizzed by, I saw the beginning of a rutted dirt road. “Turn around! There’s a road leading into the jungle!”