Rebel (25 page)

“I don’t know. On Belamar itself, it’s been quiet as a cemetery. Ian, Julian, take the sail; we’ll let her out all the way. We can be on the islet in a matter of minutes,” Jerome said.

Ian and his brother took control of the sail while Jerome sat back against the aft of the boat, his full weight on the tiller to bring them into the wind. They seemed to skim above the water.

The scream echoed in Ian’s head. Dread filled him, along with a desperate anxiety to reach Belamar.
He shouldn’t have left her here!

He had to reach the isle, had to reach it now, this second, had to stop whatever was going on.

An inner voice mocked him. Oh, he had to reach it now? He’d been away for months! His heart seemed to be in his throat.

“There’s surely some explanation; the military can’t be shooting at Teddy,” Jerome said.

“Right,” Ian agreed. They were nearing the sandy shore side of the islet. They had reached the area with incredible speed, because the three of them needed no commands; they worked in silence. How often they had sailed together, worked together. Played together. In days gone past, as kids, they’d played soldiers and Indians, stalking one another. Escaping, discovering. Battling. Sometimes winning, sometimes not. Sometimes arguing, with Ian and Julian wanting to play the Indians, while Jerome and Brent had to be the soldiers. And upon occasion the girls, being headstrong creatures,
would insist on being part of the games as well. Searching each other out in hidden lairs, letting out their war cries on the air. Arguing, exploring, playing…

Banding together when it was necessary.

“Anyone have weapons?” Jerome asked.

“I have my medical bag,” Julian said.

“My Colts, there, with my jacket,” Ian said.

“Colts—two of them? Toss one over—I only have my rifle.”

“Give me the rifle,” Julian said.

Jerome tossed him the rifle. Ian went for the Colts, tossing one to Jerome as they beached the sailboat.

There was another barrage of gunfire as the three of them leaped from the boat into the water and began running to the beach and then across the scraggly, sand-spurred lawn to the groves that grew toward the mainland.

“Alaina! Get down, Alaina!” Teddy shouted to her.

She met her father’s eyes across the distance that still separated them. They were clear and blue and sharply on her; she had his undivided attention now. “Down, Alaina, get down now!” he repeated.

“Papa!” she shrieked back. “You get down, do you hear me? Get down.”

The army men were running toward them.

The chained men were closer.

“The old man! Get the old man as a shield!” one of the convicts called. He was darker, ruddier than his companion, older perhaps.

“Papa, run to me, we’ve got to get out of the line of fire!” Alaina cried.

Teddy tried to run.

He wasn’t fast enough.

The younger man came hobbling up quickly behind her father and locked an arm around his throat. He dragged Teddy against him, then stared at Alaina, his eyes growing wider. She realized that the men hadn’t seen her until that moment; her father had blocked their view of her.

“The old man!” the young convict snorted. “By God, get the woman!” he shouted.

Teddy’s throat was in a death lock. His face was growing crimson.

“You let go of my father!” Alaina shouted furiously, so frightened for her father that she couldn’t allow herself the luxury of personal fear. She burst into motion.

Her actions were foolhardy; but at that moment, all she saw was blood-red fury and the danger that threatened Teddy.

She raced like a madwoman toward Teddy and his attacker, throwing herself against the man and hammering him furiously on the back.

“Thayer, get her!” the young man shrieked.

The older man grimly obeyed, clamping his arms around her. She kept fighting like a tigress, swearing. Then she heard a
click
and saw that the younger man had brought his gun against her father’s temple.

The fellow wasn’t just tattered and dirty. He had a lean, starving look about him like a fox that hadn’t eaten in far too long. His teeth were broken and tobacco-stained; his eyes were a strange, pale blue, far more unsettling than his words. “Quit, bitch,” he said simply, “or I’ll splatter your pa’s brains all over your fine white dress. She’s a might pretty one, eh? Out here on this hellhole. She’s a better hostage, I’d say. Wouldn’t mind having her with me tonight at all, no, sir.”

“You let my girl go,” Teddy said. His voice was calm. He seemed impervious to the steel against his skull. “I’ll protect you all the way back into those mangroves yonder. A hundred men could search a week and never find you there.”

“Papa, I’m fine, and I can take care of myself,” Alaina assured her father. Could she? Against these filthy, murderous fools? Yes. She turned to the convicts. “All right, you scurvy bastards. You let him go! Can’t you see that you’re strangling him? Leave him be, and I’ll get you out of here myself,” Alaina promised, “but you step away from my father—now!”

The pale-eyed convict smiled. The sizzle of light in his eyes made her feel ill, but it didn’t matter. She had to get the men away from Teddy. “The girl comes with us,” he said. But then the day was newly shattered by another barrage of gunfire. The convict holding her swore.

“Damned idiot army!” he cried. “Shooting at us while we’re holding hostages! Move, girl, move!”

“Papa—” Alaina began.

But she didn’t see Teddy because the older convict had her elbow and viciously jerked her along with him, taking her about twenty feet toward the eastern shore.

The water looked shallow. It seemed as if the mainland might be a walk away through thigh-high water.

But the tide was rising. When it did so, it rose fast. Right now, a nonswimmer could walk through the shallows. Halfway across, though, the water would rise over their heads.

Alaina was as familiar with the rise and fall of the water about their small islet as she was the rise and fall of the sun. But the convict prodding her along with his merciless grasp probably didn’t understand a thing about the isles, the reefs, or the tides.

Alaina let him drag her to the water.

She had little choice.

Yet his escape route could be her best chance. She hoped that the men would decide that they didn’t need her father. And if Teddy was taken in to the water behind her, well, he was an excellent swimmer, too.

Their captors’ accents were Northern; she prayed that they never had the opportunity to learn to swim.

“Well, I’ve the better part of this deal,” the man shoving her along muttered. “You can show me how to disappear into those mangroves—and survive there. You might even find out you like old Ned all right, eh, little lady?”

Ned was disgusting. She’d kill him before she ever discovered if she liked him.

But she had to know that Teddy was safe first.

She tried to look back and make sure that her father was all right. The convict pulled her with such a vengeance—his gun shoved hard against her ribs the whole way—that she couldn’t even twist around.

“You don’t need to do this. If my father is safe, I’ll get you across without protest!” she cried.

“Just keep moving. Fast. They’re right behind us.”

They reached the water.

The convict shoved his gun against the small of Alaina’s back. “Move! Now!” Alaina started into the water.

They ran hard across the islet. The distance from the northeastern beachhead to the grove was no more than a quarter of a mile, with another half mile of grove crowding into an area of good growing soil before the sparse green grasses and spurs gave way to sand beach again, dipping into the cove that flooded with high tide.

Ian, Julian, and Jerome moved across the distance with such speed that they arrived at the spit of lime trees along with the three uniformed soldiers.

And Jennifer.

“Where’s Alaina?” Ian demanded of his cousin.

“In the grove, toward the beach, I don’t know!” Jennifer said desperately.

Ian started to run. A shot was fired over his head. He spun back around.

One of the soldiers had fired over his head. He felt his temper soar.

“What in God’s name is going on?” Ian demanded. He didn’t know any of the three very green and very young men who were tentatively edging through the trees.

“And who the hell are you to ask?” The oldest of the trio—a cocky boy with a scraggle of whiskers on his chin—demanded in return. “McKenzie.
Major
McKen-zie,” Ian informed them, his eyes narrowing. He strode quickly toward the boy, wrenching his gun from his hand. “Now answer me!”

“We’re after two men,” the boy said quickly, chastised. Ian was not sure if the boy had been intimidated by his rank—or by the sight of himself, Jerome, and Julian bearing down on his awkward trio. “Two deserters; they made their way to old Fort Dallas, robbing a few good citizens in the Keys along the way. Armed, dangerous, desperate men. We have to stop them.”

The boy himself sounded desperate then. There was something like the sound of a little sob at the end of his words.

Ian glanced to the grove and saw why.

One of the convicts was down.

And Teddy atop him.

“Oh, God!” Ian’s stomach knotted. He ran forward and knelt by his father-in-law.

“Alaina,” Teddy whispered in a labored breath.

“I’ll get her, I promise,” Ian said.

He stood, his every muscle seeming to constrict with fear. “Where’s my wife?” he demanded.

“Who?”

“The woman!” Jerome bellowed.

“The water,” the soldier said.

Ian turned and ran.

Alaina tried to take her time, allowing the water a greater chance to grow deeper.

The convict shoved her from behind. The water became deeper and deeper as they moved across it. The convict began to swear. “What’s going on here? You trying to drown me, girl?”

“The tide is rising; I have no control over it.”

“You knew it was going to rise!”

“The tide always rises.”

“You meant to drag me out—and drown me!”

“I haven’t dragged you anywhere!”

“If I die, you die. If I go down, you go down with me!” he promised her.

“Bastard! I didn’t attack you, I never threatened you!”

“Blame the bloody army, ma’am!”

His head went down suddenly as a wave washed over them. Salt stung their eyes.

The convict inhaled raggedly when the wave was gone. “Get me out, get me ashore, now!” he commanded her. His eyes narrowed. “I’d sure like to have you around tonight, girl, but you’d best take care. I’ll kill you if you try anything, I swear that I will!” he warned.

His gun jammed against her ribs. Was his shot still any good? His powder would be soaked.

She had to do it carefully, had to do it right—but it was time to take her chance and wrench free.

For a full minute she moved along as docile as a lamb, leading him, as commanded, through the deepening water toward the mangrove-laden shore.

Then she jerked against him with all her strength.

He swore; he reached for her again, and lost his grip upon his gun. It went drifting down into the rock and sand and seaweed.

“Bitch!” he roared, and though she nearly escaped him, his fingers bit into the material of her white day gown, pulling her back. They began to struggle in the water. Alaina knew that her strength lay in eluding a solid grasp by his fingers. All he had now was material; she had to find a way to rip free.

She managed to inch back beneath the water, just avoiding his groping fingers each time.

Then, quite suddenly, he realized he was drowning and he panicked.

He no longer attempted to kill Alaina; he was clinging to her. She was nearly free, but he had her gown. She tried desperately to rip and tear at the fabric and make her way back up to the surface.

She kicked him hard in the chest. His grasp eased, but she couldn’t move swiftly enough in the bulky, voluminous weight of her clothing. She needed to rid herself of the skirt before he regained his strength and grasped hold of her again.

She worked industriously at the fabric, trying with all her strength to rip free.

Then she screamed, nearly inhaled, nearly died, as she felt another set of arms coming around her. A moment’s panic seized her.

There was a hand before her.

Wielding a knife.

The knife caught the brilliant light of the sun, even through the water, and flashed silver.

Dear God, they were going to kill her, slash her, slit her throat.

No.

The knife flashed once, then again and again.

Cutting fabric. Freeing her from the drowning bulk of it. She kicked hard, surfacing. She inhaled deeply, treading water. Five feet separated her now from the two bodies that were thrashing in the water. She swam hard, backing away, watching the churning water all the while.

Then a head broke the surface, and she thought that
she was dying after all, and hallucinating in the process.

It was Ian.

“My God!” she breathed.

“You’re all right?” he demanded, eyes hard on her, as cobalt as the water. Hair pitch black and water-slicked. Bronze shoulders naked.

“I’m fine. My father—”

“You’re not hurt?”

“No, but my father—”

“Let’s get back,” he said, cutting her off huskily. There was something strange about his face, his eyes. Or was there? She hadn’t seen him in so long. Naturally, he would appear strange. Months had passed. He had more or less deserted her on this islet to pursue his own life.

She had wanted to be here, she reminded herself. She had been willing to bargain and barter to stay with her father.

She simply hadn’t thought about how hard the separation would be.

“I can swim!” she protested quickly as a few strokes brought him to her side. Warmth seemed to come along with him. Strength, which she seemed sadly lacking at that moment. He was very close, very solid, bronze muscles glistening in sun and water.

Alaina realized then that she was deliriously happy to be alive, but so shaken to see him. She wasn’t ready, wasn’t prepared. And now he would think this too dangerous a place to leave her. He would want her to come away. Not with him. He would want her back at Cimarron, so far away from Teddy.