Horizons (15 page)

“Amen!”

“
Amen!” Sydney chimed in innocentl
y, struggling on tiptoe to raise her cup to theirs.

The three women chuckled at the baby’s antics. Kelly lifted Sydney onto her lap, making the toddler’s reach easier. “To Sydney, with love.”

G
avin wanted to use the sword to cut down small trees to use as the base for his raft. Zach refused to relinquish
the weapon until they had cleared safe paths from the camp to the beach and the pool. “Your raft can wait, Gav. This won’t We can’t afford to have anybody else stepping into some sort of trap. We need to establish at least a few trails we know we can travel safely.
”

Even Earl agreed with that, and made it his mission to scout out other areas in search of any additional snares or pits the Japanese fellow might have set.

“What’s the story on this Japanese soldier, anyway?” Kelly asked curiously. “Did he die of a wound, or what?”

Zach had gone back with Earl and Gavin to investigate further. Now, he said, “We couldn’t find any evidence that he was shot. At least there were no bullets lodged in his skeletal frame, as far as we could tell without disturbing the scene too much, or any tell-tale holes in his clothing, which was fairly worn and tattered.”

“So your guess is?” Blair pressed.

“That he’s been dead for years. It wasn't as gruesome as it could have been, as I’d first feared from Gavin’s reaction. The body was totally decomposed, nothing left but dry bones and what remained of his uniform.”

“How do you suppose h
e got here?
”
Alita inquired.

“During the War,” Earl said. “World War II. Leastwise, that’s when his uniform and weapons date from. Could be he was sent here as a scout or signal operator.”

“Then where’s his radio?” Gavin queried. “And why would they just leave him here?”

“Maybe he missed the boat, so to speak, when everyone else left,” Blair proposed.

“Or maybe his boat or plane sank, and he swam to the island,” Kelly put in.

“Well, however he made it here, he obviously didn’t make it off again,” Zach noted.

“Do you think he’s not the only one? That there are more skeletons lying around?”

Zach shrugged. “Who knows?”

Kelly shivered. “There
… couldn’t be anymore Japanese
soldiers still alive on the island after al
l this time, could t
here?”

“I honestly doubt that,” Zach answered. “The war ended in 1945, and if the average soldier was around twenty or twenty-five years of age then, he’d be in his seventies now. That’s a hell of a long time to survive being marooned on an island.”

“How do you think this guy died?” Gavin asked.

Zach shook his head. “Hard telling, Gav. Could be he caught some sort of disease, or maybe he
was
wounded and died of infection. Or thirst, perhaps, if all the fresh water was still hidden underground back then. It might have taken an earthquake or some sort of tremor or violent storm to crack the lava and let the water through to the surface.”

“More recently than his lifetime,” Earl concluded.

“Possibly.”

“Could he have been here for so long that he died of old age?” Blair inquired with a quiver in her voice. “I mean, as far as we know, we’re the first to discover his body.”

“Which would lead to the conclusion that no one ever comes to this island,” Kelly deduced bleakly.

“And we could be stuck he
re until we die, too,” Al
ita added anxiously, her panic rising with every syllable. “We could all grow old and die right here on this stinking pile of weeds and rock!”

Blair caught the hysteria. “With no medicine, or doctors! I don’t want to have my baby here! I want a nice, sterile hospital, with anesthetic available if I need it, and help for the baby, and Anton holding my hand and coaching me!”

“Cripes! Some pioneer woman you’d have made!” Earl
scoffed. “My granny had eight young’uns right there in her cabin, and lived to the ripe old age of ninety.”

His mockery did nothing to calm Blair, who was sobbing inconsolably now.

“Oh, shut up, you insensitive bozo!” Kelly railed. “You may not mind the idea of spending the rest of your natural days here, but the rest of us have lives we’d like to resume.”

“As soon as possible,” Alita appended angrily. She stalked past Earl, pausing only to punch him hard on the arm as she passed. “You really piss
me off, you know that?”

Contrar
i
l
y, Earl took her swat with good grace. In fact, he stood gazing after her with a smitten grin on his face. “By gum, I think that hot little tamale likes me,” he commented to no one in particular. Then he trotted after Alita, like a hound on a scent.

Gavin let loose a hoot of disbelief. “Ha! That dumb ridgerunner’s been playin’ with himself too much if he thinks a famous star like Alita will give him a spin. Besides, if she really wants a tumble, I’m younger and better lookin’. What’s Earl got over me?”

“A big gun, Gavin,” Kelly told him, deadpan. As he and Zach stared at her, mouths agape, she said, “I mean that literally, not sexually. She intends to sweet-talk him out of that gun somehow, by hook or by crook. Blair and I both tried to drill some sense into her, to tell her it was too risky, but she’s determined that she can do it.”

“Then, by God, we’ll help her,” Zach decided. “If she can distract him and get him to let down his guard, Gavin and I might have a chance to grab the pistol. It’s worth a try, but we’ll have to coordinate our actions with hers. Maybe set up some type of signal between us ahead of time. In the interim, if she can just string him along
…
”

Kelly’s lips wrapped around a sly, purely feminine smile. “Oh, she has every intention of doing
just that, Zach. She’s
not about to give up the goodies until he’s paid the dues, and something tells me that before Alita is through with him, old Earl is going to be tied up in more knots than a Chinese puzzle.”

Chapter 15

T
he ship was too far out for anyone on board to spot the half-dozen people shou
ti
ng and waving from the island. “They don’t see us! Use the mirror, Zach!” Kelly yelled.

“The ship is to the east of us, and the sun is too low in the west for that to work. They wouldn’t catch the gleam.” Gavin called from the signal fire. “Zach! The fire won’t light! The damned wood is soaking wet! It won’t even catch enough to smoke!”

Zach swung around, his eyes blazing as he searched for Earl. The man was leaning nonchalantly against the trunk of a tree some distance away, his expression smug as he watched the others exhaust themselves in their useless attempts.

“You lousy son-of-a-bitch!” Zach snarled, advancing on Roberts with ground eating strides. “You doused the wood with water, didn’t you? You’ve been doing it all along!”

Earl grinned. “Yup. And I’ll keep right on doin’
it, too.” He straightened slightl
y, his hand hovering over the butt
of the pistol stuck into the waistband of his pants, the gesture reminding Kelly of a gunslinger’s move in a grade B movie. “So, Goldstein. Whatcha aim to do about it?”

When Zach’s steps didn’t slow, Kelly began to panic. “Zach! Stop! For heaven’s sake! Think what you’re doing!” Even as she shouted the warning, she was running across the beach toward him.

“Zach!” Kelly launched herself into Zach’s back, knocking him to the ground in a flurry of sand.

Reflexively, he tried to buck her off, but she clung to him, pleading all the while. “Please, Zach. Don’t. Please! I don’t want you to get shot. Don’t make me watch him kill you! Please!”

For a few, desperate seconds Kelly’s words fell on deaf ears. Then she felt
Zach’s muscles relax as his initi
al blind fury began to fade and common sense took root. On hands and knees, Zach’s head sagged in defeat. “Damn it!” he grated through clenched teeth. “Damn that man to everlasting hell!”

“I’m sure God’s already got that on the agenda,” Kelly assured him, sliding off of him to the sand at his side.

From his place by the tree, Earl jeered. “You gonna let
the little woman fight yer battl
es, Goldstein? Ya gonna let her interfere in yer business?”

“I’d wipe that smirk off my face, if I were you,” Gavin told him.

“Yeah, you dumb clod jumper!” Alita spat out. Her own eyes were practically spewing flames as she marched toward him.

“Clodhopper,” Blair corrected automatically.

“Whatever,” Alita hissed. Upon reaching Earl, she grabbed a fistful of exposed chest hair and yanked. Hard enough to rip half of what she held from his flesh.

Earl yelped in pain, too surprised to react immediately.

“And to think I was considering giving myself to one
such as you! Someone who would betray me so readily!”
Cursing him in rapid-fire Spanish, Alita strutted past him,; the enticing sway of her hips exaggerated all the more by her ire, a motion Earl could scarcely miss.

“Hey now! Come back here!” Ignoring the others, Earl bolted after her, his gaze all but riveted to Alita’s backside.

“Geezow!” Gavin exclaimed softly. “If anybody’s in danger of being pussy-whipped, it’s old Earl! And if Alita’s strategy wasn’t working so well, I’d be the first to tell him
j
so.”

“Not until we get that gun away from him,” Zach advised
on a frustrated breath. “
He’s got the upper hand right
now, and reveling in it, which makes him doubly dan
gerous.”

“We can’t let him provo
ke us like that again,” Kelly
added miserably. “We’ve got to play it cool, no matter what the provocation, until we can disarm him.”

Z
ach and Kelly were walking along the beach, just the two of them.

“You saved my bacon back there, Kelly.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no
maybe
about it. A couple of more steps, and Earl would have drawn on me.” Zach still couldn’t believe he’d come unglued to the extent that he’d rushed an armed man the way he had. He hadn’t even had the sword for defense. “If Earl wou
ld have shot, at that range…
”

“But he didn’t, and the more I consider it, even if he had, I'm not sure that rusty old antique would have fired. For that matter, how do we know it’s even loaded? Or that the bullets are any good after all this time? So, you see, I may not have saved you at all.”

“On the other hand, that old pistol may be in perfect working order. In which case you did come to my rescue,
very valiantly I might add. That was your intention, wasn’t it—behind that flying tackle and all that screeching?”

“Well, I couldn’t just stand there like a stump and watch you tempt fate. That was a pretty dumb thing for you to do, Zach.”

“I agree. But when Earl admitted to dousing the firewood, and dared to act so damned smug about it, something snapped. There was that ship, with no way to signal it. And my ailing dad waiting in Seat
tl
e. And Mom and Becky. And me figuratively knocking my head against a stone wall all this time, trying to convince myself that we can stay alive ’til we’re found, that it won’t be too late, that sooner or later a plane will fly by and we’ll signal it and all be rescued. And all the while, Earl was sneaking around behind our backs, sabotaging our chances.”

“I know,” she put in glumly. “I’ve had to re-align the coconuts in our SOS sign for three days running, and I’ll bet it’s not birds or lizards or the wind messing it up, either.”

By now, they’d traversed several miles of shoreline on their solitary trek. Kelly hadn’t come this far along the eastern coast before. “Shouldn’t we be heading back now?” she asked.

“Not yet. Since we’ve already come this distance, there’s something
I
want you to see.”

“Your etchings?” she teased.

He laughed. “Not precisely what I had in mind, but if that’s what turns you on, I’ll gladly grab a stick and draw a few in the sand for you. Would you prefer an architectural rendering or a still life?”

“
A self-portrait of you would do nicely, thank you.”

“That might take some time.”

“From all indications, that’s what we have most of around here.”

“Then let’s put it to good use,” he suggested. He took
her hand in his, leading her on for another half mile or so. “There.” He pointe
d ahead of them. “What do you
think?”

At first Kelly didn’t see anything unusual, just more beach, shaded by palm
trees. Or so she thought. Upon
closer scrutiny, she discovered that the sand was not dark because it was shadowed, but because the granules underfoot were actually black! In
the few places where the sunlight struck directl
y, they shone
like tiny pieces of polished
onyx.

“How fantastic! Black sand!
I’ve never seen such a thing!
How did it form? Why here, of all places?”

Zach grinned. “Neat, isn’t it
? There are only a few places
like this in the world. The co
nditions have to be right for
it. Basically, you need hot
lava flowing into the cooler
ocean, and a rough enoug
h surf to pulverize the cooled
lava into minuscule fragments.”

Kelly scooped some into her hand. “It looks like millions of black diamonds, all heaped together!”

“Don’t I wish!” Zach exclaimed, laughing. “I’d never have to worry about funding for a project again. I could build the Taj Mahal, or its equivalent, if I wanted, and never borrow a dime from anyone else.”

“I could quit buying lottery tickets and build my own house, with everything exactly the way I want it.” She grinned up at him. “Of course, I’d hire the very best architect. Would you help me design and build my dream house, Zach?”

“Would you let me live in it with you?” he countered with a look more serious than she’d expected.

“Wow!” Kelly’s eyes widened. “That sort of came from left field, didn’t it?”

“It happens that way sometimes, so I’m told. How about it, Kelly? Did your first experience with marriage make you
totally gun-shy, or would you be willing to give it another try? With me?”

Now he was talking marriage, not just living together, which was even more scary. “Don’t dig yourself in any deeper than you want to
be, Zach,” she advised him quietl
y, biding for
time to adjust her thoughts. “
After all, you don’t know me very well yet, and certainly not under normal conditions.”

Zach shrugged. “They say extraordinary circumstances reveal a person’s true nature. If that’s so, I already know the best and worst about you, and I like what I’ve found, Kelly.”

“I do, too,” she admitted, “but that still doesn’t assure that you’d like me in the real world, or vice-versa. Aside from any major differences, there could be a thousand small things I might do that would drive you thoroughly nuts.”

“Such as?” He sprawled comfortably on the sand beside her, prepared to hear her out.

With a frown, she did likewise. “Okay, sometimes I forget my manners, even at important functions—like propping my elbows on the table, and whenever possible, I kick off my shoes.”

He tugged playfully on a strand of her hair. “Yeah, I can see where that would really send me over the edge. Go on.”

“I sometimes grind my teeth at night. I wear a special guard my dentist made for me.”

“News flash, babe. I already know that. I’ve heard you. I can live with it, if you can stand to hear me crack the occasional knuckle.”

Kelly grimaced. “Not too often, I hope.”

“What else?” he prompted.

“I like being in charge, and I hate being ordered around.”

“So, we’ll take turns being the boss, on alternate days.”

“I like running my stores, and being independent, and I sell sexy undies.”

“Lucky me. Is there more?”

“Whenever I chew a piece of gum, I can’t help cracking
it. It’s an unconscious habit.”

“I tend to blow bubbles and pop them. So does Becky.”

Kelly jumped on that poss
ible stumbling block. “Speak
ing of Becky, she might not like the idea of having me for a stepmother.”

“We’ll deal with it. What’s not to like?”

“Just because you like me, doesn’t mean she will, Zach. Lots of girls resent another woman marrying their fathers, especially teenage daughters.”

“Then we’d better not wa
ste any time about this. Becky
turns thirteen in another ten months.”

“Good grief, Zach! My divorce won’t be final for several months, especially if Brad decides to fight it, which I suspect he might.”

“Too bad bigamy’s a crime, isn’t it?” he mused. “Oh, well, we’ll do the best we can. Are you deadset on staying in Arizona, or would you be willing to live in Seattle? Or,
I suppose we could commute, but that’s a hell of a way to conduct a marriage.”

Kelly got to her feet and glared down at him. “You are not taking this seriously, Zach.”

His expression turned solemn, his smile and good humor evaporating. He, too, rose, to stand facing her, his stance one of challenge. “Yes, I am. You’re just looking for trouble, and maybe a way out. If you don’t want to marry me, just say so,” he told her stiffly.

“Don’t I even get any time to think about it? To get to know you better?”

She was hedging, skirting around binding herself to him in any serious way, and Zach was getting angry now.

“Hell, woman! We’ve been living out of each other’s pockets for weeks here. If you don’t know me by now, you never will.”

“Don’t yell at me, Zach. I’m simply suggesting that maybe we should just live together for awhile, when we get back to civilization. Try it out and see how it feels there, before committing ourselves to something more permanent.”

“Get real!” he sneered. “I’ve got
a
daughter to consider. What kind of moral example would I be setting for her if we’re shacking up?”

“I just don’t want to make another mistake, not with something this important. Surely you can understand that.”

“Actually, I’m having trouble with it,” he snapped back. “From my side of the fence, it seems you’re determined to paint me with the same brush as your dip-shit husband, and I don’t mind telling you I resent it mightily. Open your eyes, Kelly. Take off the blinders. I am not Brad. If you’re going to judge me, judge me on my own merits and faults, not his.”

“I’m trying, but you’re not making it easy. Especially when you get all belligerent and bossy. I hate that, Zach. I put up with it for five long years, and I won’t tie myself up in that particular ball of wax again, or one even remotely similar.”

“So what are you saying? You need someone perfect or not at all? Well, good luck finding him. And you’d better brush up your own character while you’re searching, because you’re not all that ideal yourself.”