Stranded (7 page)

She raced toward the coconut, its sweetness already on her tongue and halfway to her stomach. She’d open it and take just a sip, then first dibs went to Aunt Betty because her pulse was faint. Or should it be Eve, barely hanging onto life? Or Jake, so tired from saving Eve he couldn’t be roused?

The buzzing registered just before the sight and smell of the rotting animal made her veer. Her feet slipped and she fell smack on her face, her fingers only inches away from the putrid flesh. A blanket of shiny green flies hurled upward from the lump, hovered like a magic carpet, and zoomed down on her. Squealing through her nose, her eyes and mouth scrunched tight, she rolled over and over in the sand until she could scramble to her feet and run.

The gulls screeched and took to the sky as she dashed past. They scolded her with raspy caws, flapping away over the ocean and circling back.

Jake, Betty, and Eve had not moved. They were dying, and the flies would move in on them next. Crystal didn’t bother to check anyone’s pulse. She dropped to her knees beside Jake’s head.

Raising her hand, she brought it down hard and slapped him full across the face.

White lightning slashed Jake into consciousness. He opened his eyes to blinding brightness. Silence stuffed his ears. He blinked, and beach and sky appeared. The noise of gulls, ocean breakers, and flapping palm fronds clicked on at full blast. What had happened? His left cheek stung as if touched by an electric wire. He rubbed it gingerly and sat up.

Crystal huddled nearby, eyes wide, body motionless, as if watching Lazarus rise from the dead.

He must have passed out. The last thing he remembered was telling Crystal about the human toaster. Had it worked? A few feet away, Betty and Eve lay stretched out against each other, sound asleep.

He got to his feet and stumbled to the women. Betty was snoring, but Eve’s chest wasn’t moving. He touched her neck and found her skin warm, her pulse strong. Evidently a shallow breather. Her fingers and hands were blanched and wrinkled from the water. Her feet too. No shoes. No calluses on her toes and heels. He shook his head. Those pampered feet were going to have a tough go of it.

The sun was sinking behind the island. How long had he been out, anyway?

He glanced back at Crystal. She hadn’t stirred. Mighty unusual for her. “What happened? I must have fallen asleep.”

“I slapped you.”

“You—” He stopped. “That’s what woke me up?”

Crystal’s nod was barely perceptible. Her body hunched into a tighter wad.

Crybaby Crystal had slapped him? Jake rubbed his cheek, hiding his smile. The kid had really whopped him one. That explained why she was sitting there knotted up like that.

“Which was harder, smacking me or the snake?”

Crystal’s lips twitched. “You.” She grinned and her shoulders relaxed. “You wouldn’t wake up.”

“Looks like you did a good job with the human toaster while I slept.”

“They won’t wake up either.” Crystal pinched the skin on the back of her hand and held it up for Jake to observe. “We need coconut juice. I looked but I couldn’t find any—only a dead animal covered with flies.” The corners of her mouth crinkled downward.

“Tell you what. Eve has immersion foot. How about if you massage her hands and feet while I get some coconuts for us?”

“Immersion foot? Ewww!” Crystal slipped her hands behind her back. “What’s that?”

“She was in the cold water so long the blood stopped circulating in her hands and feet. If we don’t get it going again, she won’t be able to use them. Ever.” Disfigured face, useless hands and feet. Would she wish he’d left her in the ocean? Tightness squeezed his chest.

He sat and lifted Eve’s right foot. “Start gently, using the palms of your hands to squeeze, like you were flattening Silly Putty.”

Crystal crept next to him and sat, crisscrossing her legs. She grasped Eve’s left foot.

“Then, before your hands get tired, press harder and use your fingertips.”

“My hands are already tired.”

“Count to ten, then shake your fingers out.” Jake shifted to Eve’s right hand. “Let’s do the same thing with her hands. Squeeze each finger ten times like they’re in hot-dog buns, then rest and go back to her feet.”

“Okay, but I’m thirsty.”

“Right.” Not a marathon runner here. He rose on stiffened legs. “One coconut shake coming up.”

Before he’d taken ten steps up the beach, he turned around to find that Crystal had fallen asleep. He hesitated. The shadows had deepened, and a murmur of animal life seeped from the dense tree line. He should shake Betty awake to keep watch. Or he could hurry and pray nothing bad would happen.

Eve opened her eyes. Her vision flitted like a bird caught in a storm, seeking a place to land. It tumbled onto a moving blur and focused. A man. Sunburned face, scraggly whiskers, two jagged scars on his right cheek. Alarm spat electricity across her nerves.

Quick, get away!
Run!
She tried to move, but her head spun so that she
teetered at the edge of a dark chasm.

“Hey, you okay?”

The voice brought her back to the man. He sat cross-legged next to where she lay. Way too close. Course dark hair lay on sand-crusted legs barely inches from her face. She jerked her head away. The movement tingled life down her spine and into her limbs.

Wait—he was holding her hand? She whipped it away. “What are you doing?”

“You’ve got immersion foot. I’m massaging your hand to get the circulation back.”

“Don’t touch me!” She tried to wriggle away from him, but her body parts lay in a disconnected heap. Her mind swirled, dragging her into the depths of a black whirlpool.
No!
She fought back. Not with this man here.

She willed herself to grasp the jagged edge of consciousness, to pull herself over its razor-sharp lip.
Breathe
.
Think
. Where was she?

She gulped a lungful of air and risked a glance away from the man. Sand. She was lying flat on her back on a stretch of sand. The rhythmic crash of ocean breakers broke into her consciousness. A beach? She wrenched her attention back to the man. What was going on? She struggled to sit up.

The man sat immobile. When she collapsed, he spoke, his voice soft against the ocean’s rumble. “Betty and Crystal are here. Look to my left and you can see them.”

Betty and Crystal? The memory dropped like a bomb. She’d fallen off the lighter—had swum after them, screaming, yelling, pleading for them to hear. Horror at her abandonment gripped her anew. She gasped to breathe.

“They’re right over there, see?”

She turned her head. Betty and Crystal lay nestled nearby, eyes closed, heads pillowed side by side on a yellow life vest.

The grip on her throat loosened, and air seeped back into her lungs
.
Safe. They were all safe. She peered up at the man. “Jake Chalmers. Your wife—” Hadn’t she worn a life vest too?

“She didn’t make it.” The words scraped in a whisper from his throat.

The words cut into her soul. Ginny—dead, trapped in an explosion meant to kill Evedene Eriksson. Sobs crammed her chest.

“I have some coconut juice here. How about if you take a swallow.” Without waiting for an answer, Jake scooted closer and raised her head. With his free hand he picked up a coconut pierced at one end and held it over her mouth. “Can you stick out your tongue?”

She winced as her tongue touched her lips. “My mouth—”

“Your lips are swollen from sun poisoning. We’ll try not to touch them. Just a bit of juice now.” He tilted the coconut until it dribbled a dab onto her tongue. “Atta girl.”

The drop of liquid crystallized into salt. Her tongue was coated with it. She swallowed the bitter saliva and panted to keep from vomiting it up.

“More? Gets better as the salt dissolves.”

She nodded reluctantly and stuck out her tongue. In between swallows she breathed deeply, willing her stomach to settle, closing her eyes until the black whirlpool threatened, and she popped them open again.

“Good enough. Let’s give it a rest.” Jake lowered her head and took her hand. He kneaded her fingers. “Can you feel that?”

“Yes.” She squirmed. “Pins and needles in my fingertips.”

“Good. Betty and Crystal and I are taking turns massaging your hands and feet. By tomorrow you should be okay.”

Tomorrow? She turned her head for another glimpse of the beach, absorbing the fact that the sun had set and a gray gauze of twilight clung to the sky. Behind her a bird chattered. She pivoted her head toward it. Was that the howl of monkey in the distance? A breeze fluttered the shadowy fronds of a line of palm trees, and she caught the faint scent of flowers.

“Where are we?”

“An island, probably on the edge of the Philippines. Appears to be uninhabited. We’ll check it out tomorrow.”

The Romero trial. It jumped out at her like a jack-in-the-box. “I need to get off.”

Jake squinted his right eye and raised his left eyebrow. “We aren’t staying any longer than we have to.”

“I mean there’s a—” She halted. Should she talk about the Romero trial? What if she slipped and mentioned Captain Emilio in connection with it? Jake would figure out she was the target of the explosions. All those passengers, Ginny, dead. But the target escaped. The target lived.

She coughed. “I’m sorry. I’m confused. I—how did I get here?”

Jake switched to massaging her other hand, and she stifled a yelp at the pinpricks.

“Betty and Crystal landed here this morning, then I swam in from a piece of wreckage. We spotted you in the current and fished you out.”

“You weren’t in one of the lighters with the rest of us. How—?”

“Captain Emilio forced me overboard at gunpoint. I swam out to save Ginny, but . . .” Jake’s lower lip jerked. He paused. “But I was too late.”

The sobs beat hard fists against her lungs again. Jake turned fierce eyes on her, and the fists froze.

“There’s a man out there who murdered nineteen people.” Jake’s eyes, weighted with pain, blazed into hers. “He made sure I saw it. Made sure I saw him raise his hand and give the signal to detonate those explosions. Made sure I knew my wife was on board one of those lighters.” He stopped, and the air hurled out of his lungs like a category five hurricane. He flared his nostrils and gasped in a fresh storm, his chest shaking.

“Nineteen people. They never had a chance.” His jaw tightened, accentuating the two pale scars on his sunburnt cheek. “Captain Emilio thinks he killed twenty-three, but four of us escaped.” His eyes bored into Eve’s. “And that, Eva Gray, will be his downfall.”

Eva Gray. She shuddered. That name was key to why nineteen people had lost their lives. Until they got off this island, she must make sure Jake never found out.

Jake’s heels sank deeper into the sand with each sweep of the waves until both feet lay buried. The water crept past his legs and soaked the backside of his shorts where he sat. On the horizon, translucent hues of orange and red smeared the sky, painting the undersides of clouds mounded over the circle of the earth.

Another morning. Using his left hand, he drew hash marks in the sand: two and a half days on the cruise ship, two and a half on the broken lighter, and now a new day on the island. Six days since he and Ginny had boarded the
Gateway.
He ran his palm over his face and flinched at the sting of sunburnt skin. Its nip contrasted the icy numbness in his chest.

Instead of feeling sorry for himself, he ought to be grateful he hadn’t been shark meat. He inhaled the tang of brine off the sea and focused on the horizon, where the rising sun flung its radiance like a king donning his robes. He wasn’t alone—Nam had taught him that.
Lo, I am with you always.
God’s promise. And he’d made it home to Indy, hadn’t he?

But there was no home now. Only a wide, gaping hole where Ginny had been.

“Jake!” Crystal raced across the beach and plopped down next to him. “What are you doing?”

For a second, the muscles in his neck and shoulders knotted. He ducked his head to hide the resentment dead-bolting his jaws at her intrusion. She was just a kid. She wouldn’t understand the enormity of his loss, what it meant to be hollowed out and left behind.

He eased his shoulders into a comfortable slump and faced Crystal with a smile that felt like cardboard. “Reading.”

Crystal’s eyes widened as he raised his right hand to show her a notecard-sized book. “You found a book? What is it?”

He handed it to her and she rubbed her fingers over the stiff, plastic brown case sealing off the pages. “
The New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs
. You found a Bible?”

“Got it from a Navy chaplain in Viet Nam. I carry it with me everywhere I go.” He patted his back pocket and grinned. “Waterproofed for shipwrecked Marines and long swims in the ocean.”

“Why do you want it?” She ruffled the pages and handed the book back to him.

“I read some of it every day.” He paused. “You ever get a love letter from your dad?”

The corners of Crystal’s mouth drooped. “No.”

A pang yanked Jake’s heart. A father not expressing love to his child? What wouldn’t he give to wrap Brett and Dana in his arms right now? Warmth seeped into his chest and nestled against the chilly place of Ginny’s absence. He took a quick breath. He still had his kids. Still had his life as a father and their love for him.

He pressed his lips together until he could speak without choking up. He tapped the book. “This is a love letter from God, our heavenly Father. Every day He tells me in a new way that He loves me. I wouldn’t want to miss out on that, now, would I?”

“No.” The color drained from Crystal’s face and she stared motionless at her hands. “Can I read it?” she whispered. “I don’t have a daddy.”

Air slammed into Jake’s lungs and rushed back out in a tight rasp. He wanted to sweep the kid into his arms, to squash the ache pinching that tiny whisper of despair. “Tell you what,” he whispered back, his voice hoarse, “every morning, you find me and we’ll read it together.”

A flush sprang to Crystal’s face, and she raised her head, eyes blinking back moisture to look at him. Her chin and lower lip twitched in a tug-of-war between crying and smiling.

He encouraged the smile with a warm one of his own. A real one this time. “How about if we get some coconuts going? See how Eve and your aunt are doing?” He stood as a smile won the battle on Crystal’s lips.

Who knew how many mornings they’d have together? He knew where they’d start their reading, though.
Lo, I am with you always
.

It took every bit of self-control Eve could muster to not kick Betty in the face.

“Stop! Please.” Beach, palm trees, and bright morning light flashed on and off around her like a blinking neon sign.

Betty dropped Eve’s foot that she'd been massaging. “Am I hurting you?”

“Yes!” Eve’s head spun. She jerked onto her elbows and turned her head just in time to retch onto the sand instead of on her shirt.

“I’m sorry. What should I do?” Betty tottered to her feet, her voice shrill against Eve’s wobbling
eardrums. 

Eve’s breath jolted into her lungs and back out.
Go. Just
leave me alone.
She collapsed onto her back and waited for the world to stop twirling.

Betty squatted next to her, careful to avoid Eve’s vomit. “Would you like to sit up?”

Eve gritted her teeth. Mother Teresa was not going to leave her alone. She grunted her assent.

Betty gripped Eve’s bare shoulders, and white-hot vises clamped onto raw, tissue-thin skin. Eve shrieked.

“Don’t worry, I’ve gotcha.” Betty tugged Eve upright and steadied her. “There you go.”

Eve gasped and thrust stiffened arms to her sides. She peered at her sunburned shoulders sizzling with ten white ovals where Betty had grasped her.

Was there any part of her that didn’t hurt? Top to bottom, inside and out, every cell in her body crackled with pain. There was no marrow in her bones. Only smoldering coals, glowing, pulsating, feeding off the tinder of her body.

Crossing her legs in front of her, she tilted forward enough to free her hands and poke her big toe. She drew in a hissing breath. She might as well have used an ice pick.

“How about some coconut juice?” Mother Teresa snatched away a hulled coconut from some ants in a fire brigade line and brushed them onto the sand. “Jake’s got a supply stacked here, but this one’s open.”

Eve held out a trembling hand. She’d crunch an army of ants if that’s what it took to get moisture inside her.

She lifted the nut to her mouth and took a sip. Her lips throbbed, but not like they had last night. The pinpricks in her fingertips were subdued too, almost gone. But the coconut juice pinched her stomach, and she gagged the last swallow back into her mouth. She spat it out and let the nut fall to the ground.

Sleep. That was all she wanted, to curl up in the fetal position and let time nurse away her aches and pains.

“Eve, you’re awake!” Crystal sped across the beach, arms outstretched, her path a direct collision course with Eve.

Eve whimpered.

Betty stepped between them and caught Crystal. “Careful, child. You don’t want to hurt her.”

“Oh.” Crystal peeked around her aunt, the eagerness on her face shifting to uncertainty.

Eve shammed a smile. “How about a rain check on that hug?”

“Okay.” Crystal dropped onto the sand and sat cross-legged like Eve. “What happened to you? We woke up on the lighter and you were gone.”

“I fell off. It’s as simple as that.”

“Jake rescued you. You saved us, and then Jake saved you. He swam out and got you.”

Eve glanced at Jake trudging barefoot toward them from the beach. He hadn’t told her that last night. Guilt punched another red-hot poker into her body. He’d saved her, but not his wife. She swallowed the ash in her throat. He must never, ever find out about her part in Ginny’s death.

“Guess what? A snake bit Aunt Betty. See?” Crystal pulled up the hem of her aunt’s shorts to expose two red, puckered dots.

Betty touched them with the tip of her finger. “It hurts, but at least the snake wasn’t poisonous.”

Eve’s skin pricked into goose bumps. “I hate snakes.” She couldn’t even look at them in zoos. She did a three-hundred-sixty-degree scan. “Do they slither onto beaches?”

“They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.” Jake grinned at her from where he stooped over a pile of four coconuts.

Bile rose to the back of Eve’s throat. Her father used to say that, the same smirk on his face. “Which is precisely why it bit Betty,” she snapped.

“No, I . . . I whacked it.” Crystal scrunched her head into her shoulders and looked down at her hands squeezed together in her lap. “It was slithering right toward her. I thought I’d scare it away, but it bit her instead.”

“I’d say that was pretty brave of you, Crystal.” Jake straightened, juggling three large, hairy coconuts in his arms. He glanced at Eve
,
his facial muscles stiff, then past her to Crystal. “How about grabbing that fourth nut and we’ll crack these open.”

Crystal jumped up, spattering sand on Eve. Eve whipped her face aside in time to protect her eyes. The sand pelted her hair, and what didn’t stick fell onto her neckline and slipped underneath her shirt, grinding against her skin. Crystal and Betty didn’t even notice. Their eyes and smiles were focused on Jake.

Molten lead pulsated against Eve’s temples. She groaned and folded into a tight curl on the sand. She wasn’t going to move another muscle until they got off this horrid island.

A bead of sweat slipped from Jake’s forehead to the end of his nose as he hammered the coconut hull against a rock. Three days with nothing to eat, and then only coconut for the last twenty-four hours, made the task grueling. Crystal’s help, simple as it was in using a sharp rock to punch holes into the hulled nuts, was a welcome relief.

When all four were opened, he and Crystal sat on warm sand not yet crisped by the sun and took hefty gulps from two of the nuts. He savored the sweetness, rolling the moisture on his tongue before swallowing. The breeze off the ocean bore the coolness of morning. Overhead, the gulls’ raucous cries carried a note of glee, as if pleased at the prospects the day held for them.

From where he sat, he could see the tip of the volcano above the tree line. He rose, eager now like the gulls. The four of them should get going before the heat of day sapped their energy.

They gathered the other two nuts and brought them to Eve and Betty. Eve lay curled on the sand, her eyes closed as if sleeping, but the furrows on her forehead belied a
relaxed condition. So had her words. Jake grimaced. She should be in a hospital bed, receiving treatment for sun poisoning, dehydration, and exhaustion. Instead, she was going to be asked to get up and suffer some more.

He gave Betty a coconut while Crystal offered the fourth one to Eve. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Eve push herself into a sitting position without help. Her hands shook, but she manipulated the nut to her mouth with ease. Good, her hands had recovered. That meant her legs and feet should be fine too. She should be strong enough to walk.

“We need to find water,” he said.

The three women looked at him, squinting their eyes at the sun forming a backdrop to where he stood.

He nodded toward the west side of the island. “I did a little exploring this morning and found a swamp. The source of its water is probably the volcano at the other end of the island.” He pointed north, but the women didn’t turn their heads to look. “If we don’t find any people, we’ll want to set up a signal for help at the island’s highest point.”

“And leave this place?” Betty clutched her coconut to her chest.

Jake scowled. “No one knows we’re here, Betty. No one is out looking to rescue us.”

Her face and shoulders sagged, and he immediately regretted his sharpness. He wasn’t commanding troops here, he was dealing with scared, sun-sick women. They needed to know his plan so they could get on board.

He consciously relaxed the muscles in his brow and jaw and softened his voice. “Our first priority is to stay alive, which means securing water, food, and shelter. There may be someone here already and we just need to find
them.” He smiled to encourage them. “If not, we need to get to the best site for a signal beacon.”

“No!” Eve sat up taller, her backbone rigid, her shoulders taut. “Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, but not today.” Her eyes narrowed at Jake. “There’s not one part of my body that doesn’t hurt. I can barely sit up, much less walk.” She waved her hand at her feet. “And I don’t have any sandals—I’d have to walk barefoot.”

Jake kept his voice even. “None of us feels good, Miss Gray, but we—”

“Tell me, Mr. Chalmers, who put you in charge?”

Jake stiffened. “This isn’t a matter of elections. The issue here is survival. I’ve been trained as a Marine to—”

“My question stands.” Eve folded her arms across her chest and glared at him.

“Your question is inappropriate to the situation.”

“No, it’s your presumption of taking charge of my life that is inappropriate.”

Jake stopped. He clenched his jaw, and for a moment no one spoke. “Very well,” he said at last. “If you ladies would rather stay here, I’ll explore the island by myself.”

Crystal’s face crumpled. “I want us to be with you, Jake. Please don’t leave us!”

“I’m not talking about abandoning anyone.” The words came out harsher than he intended. He took a deep breath. “I’ll be back by nightfall.” He’d travel faster by himself anyway.

“Wait!” Betty stood. “Jake’s right. We need water.” She put her hands on her hips and faced Eve. “We should start out right now. And we’re not going to leave you behind.” She extended a hand to Eve.