Man of Honor (Passion in Paradise Book 4) (65 page)

“He was gonna hurt
her ‘gain, Zeke, but you’d be so proud of ‘er.  She didna take his shit. 
Yelled in his face that you were all she wanted,” Maggie slurred.  “He got
mad.  Hit ‘er.  Was gonna do more ta her, so I jumped on ‘is back.  Kickin’,
Clawin’.  Screamin’.  Got shot while I’s strugglin’ with ‘im.  Screamed at
Honor to run.  ”  She smiled up at Zeke.  “She ran.”

“Christ,” Zeke
murmured, smoothing back the sweaty hair stuck to Maggie’s forehead.  “He chase
her?”

“Mmm hmm,” Maggie
nodded slightly as her wince grew.  “She led him away from me to give me a
chance.”

“Zeke, I need to get
her out of here,” Ice growled.  “She’s still losin’ blood, man.  Too much
blood,” he stated anxiously. 

“Those asshats ruint
my pretty outfit,” Maggie mumbled, her tired voice thin and feeble.  “You boys
kill ‘em good, ‘kay?” she ordered just before her head lolled to the side.

“Fuck!  Maggie! 
Baby!  Open your eyes!” Ice begged urgently.

“No,” Diego said, “It
is better she remain unconscious while you carry her down to the four wheelers,
Ice.  Allow her to escape the pain, mi amigo,” he urged the desperate wild-eyed
man.

“He’s right, Zach,”
Zeke said firmly, staring his frantic brother in the eye.  “Go.  Diego, you go
with him,” he directed.

“But Honor… I need to
be at your back.”

“You need to be with
the woman you care about,” Zeke countered, dropping his voice.  “I’ve got
Wrath, and there are two other teams up on this mountain.  We’ll get my woman;
you need to take care of yours.” 

“She ain’t mine,” Ice
bit out as he adjusted the tourniquet around her leg.

Zeke watched as Ice’s
jaw flexed.  He knew his brother wanted to argue with him, but he also knew
there wasn’t any time to waste.  Instead, Ice slid one arm under Maggie’s neck
and the other under her knees, lifting her in his arms against his chest.  “I’m
takin’ her out of here because she’s an injured woman that needs help.  Not
because she’s anything special.”

“Whatever you need to
tell yourself, brother,” Zeke called as he watched his brother descend down the
hill with Diego at his heels.  Looking at Wrath, he murmured, “Now, let’s find
my girl and end this shit once and for all.”

~~~***~~~

Skyview Bluff –
4:45 pm

Honor

 Carefully shifting
on the tree limb where she’d been perched for the last hour, Honor chewed
nervously on her lower lip.  She knew she couldn’t stay up in the tree forever. 
A quick look at the darkening sky and the dropping temperature had only
reinforced the fact that she’d need to abandon her current hiding spot soon. 

Straining to hear
anything above the whistle of the wind and the rustling leaves, Honor drew in a
deep breath when no sound leapt out at her.  God, she needed to shimmy down
from this tree, but she wasn’t sure she could coax her frozen limbs into
moving.  Her cheek ached where Henry had belted her and every muscle in her
body ached from the hard walk up the mountainside.  She was exhausted, and even
though she knew night was fast approaching, she couldn’t find the strength to
move just yet.

Shoving her hand
through her hair, she looked around the darkening forest and tried to pinpoint
her location.  She knew she’d burst through the woods on her left.  She could
see where her feet had tromped down the foliage.  A few feet away, she could
see where Henry had clamored after her, having left a wider path of flattened
weeds and grass.

“Okay, Honor,” she
whispered to herself.  “You gotta move now.  You gotta find your way back to
Maggie and get her some help.  She’s countin’ on you, dang it,” she ordered
herself as she stared at the ground several feet below her.  No matter how hard
she tried to force her legs to move, though, she remained paralyzed by her
fear.  “Crap, crap, crap,” she chanted in a low voice as she heard the distant
sound of someone coming toward her hiding spot.  Scanning the woods, she could
just make out the big body of a man headed in her direction.  Squeezing her
eyes shut, she held her breath and prayed that Henry went past her again just
as he had the first time.

Cracking one eyelid
to see how close he was, Honor gasped as she recognized the man coming toward
her.  “Zeke!” she whimpered as the man suddenly halted in his tracks.  It was
then that she noticed another man following behind him.  “Oh, my God!  Zeke! 
Wrath!  Is that you?” she asked, mildly afraid that she’d started seeing
things.

“Honor!” Zeke
shouted, swiveling his head around as he tried to find her in the dense
forest.  “Kitten, where are you?”

“U-up here,” Honor
called as overjoyed tears dripped down her cheeks.   “I’m up here!”

Both men leaned their
heads back, searching for the origin of her voice.  “Son of a bitch!” Wrath breathed,
slapping Zeke on the shoulder as he pointed at the mostly bare limbs of an
American chestnut tree.  “Your woman is literally up a tree, man!”

Zeke’s eyes widened
as he followed the direction of Wrath’s finger.  “Honor?”

Honor nodded
wordlessly as Zeke hurried toward the tree where she’d been hiding.  “Zeke,
Henry killed David and shot Maggie,” she cried.  “You gotta find her.  I don’t
know how bad she’s hurt, but I know he hit her,” Honor sobbed as she stared
down from her roost high in the branches of the old tree. 

“We already found
her, baby.  Ice and Diego are already taking her down the mountain.  She’s
gonna be fine,” Zeke soothed, not quite certain if he was lying to her or not,
but unwilling to upset her any more than necessary after the fright she’d
already endured.  His eyes catalogued every inch of her body that he could see,
and other than a few scrapes on her legs and a nasty bruise on her jaw, she
seemed uninjured.  But in the waning light, he couldn’t see her all that well,
either.  “You hurt anywhere, Kitten?”

“I don’t think so,”
she whimpered, blinking back her tears as she looked down at her body.  Her
nails dug into the soft dark bark of the branch where she sat as she tried
again to convince her body to move.  But God, moving meant giving up her hiding
spot.  And giving up her hiding spot meant potentially being found by Henry. 

And that thought made
her body stiffen even more.

“Look at me,” Zeke
urged.  “I need you to climb down from there so we can get a look at you.”

Honor shook her head
violently, unable to control her response.  “I can’t.  I c-can’t move, Zeke. 
He’s still out here somewhere,” she haltingly explained as her fingers
tightened on her branch.  “Don’t make me.  Please, don’t make me.”

“Shit,” Wrath
muttered with a low curse.  “When we find this guy, I say we gut him like a
fish.”

Zeke nodded,
privately thinking that sounded like a hell of a plan.  “Radio base camp that
we found her, man.  Tell them to notify the other teams,” he requested before
looking back up at his terrified woman.  “It’s okay, baby,” he replied calmly,
moving toward the tree.  “If you can’t come down, I’ll come to you.”

“No, you can’t!  You
just got shot this morning,” Honor denied rapidly, lifting one hand to wipe the
damp tears from her cheeks.  “Stop it before you hurt yourself worse than you
already are!”

“Been separated from
you for hours scared out of my ever-lovin’ mind,” Zeke growled, hefting himself
into the tree with a boost from Wrath.  “Not spending another fuckin’ minute
apart from you.”

Honor watched as he
made quick work of the climb despite the wound in his shoulder.  Fighting back
a sob when he reached her eyelevel, she lifted an unsteady hand to lightly
touch the bandage at his temple.  “You actually found me,” she whispered shakily.

“Of course I did. 
Don’t you know that I’d tear apart hell to get to you?  This was a short trip. 
I only had to climb a mountain to get to you,” he whispered, leaning forward to
carefully brush his lips against hers.  “I can see that fucker marked your
beautiful face.  He hurt you anywhere else?” he questioned softly, his words
vibrating gently against her lips.

Leaning forward,
Honor rested her face against the curve of his neck and shook her head. 
“Thanks to Maggie opening up a can of crazy on him, I got away in time.  Is she
really okay, Zeke?”

“She’s on her way to
the hospital now,” Zeke answered evasively.  “They’ll take care of her.  Now,
you ready to climb down, baby.  It’s gettin’ dark out here, and Wrath and I
already almost fell off over the edge of the bluff once.  I don’t want to risk
it happening with you, too.   We need to get you out of these woods while we
can still see.”

Honor nodded.  “Okay,
let’s do it.”

“Alright, I want you
to move careful and slow, and I’ll be right here with you,” Zeke assured her
tenderly. 

Nodding, Honor began
the slow descent to the ground.  It took her double the time to get back down
as it had to go up the tree, but then fear was a powerful motivator.  When her
feet finally touched solid ground, she gave Wrath a quick hug of thanks before
turning back to the man she loved.  “He’s still out here somewhere, Zeke,” she
said worriedly as she bent to pick up the long stick she’d discarded when she
scrambled up the tree to escape Henry.

“Yeah, I know, that’s
why I want you off this damn mountain just as quick as I can make it happen,”
Zeke returned, wrapping his arm around her as he began guiding her back the way
he and Wrath had come.  “Let’s get you out of here.”

“Now, Sheriff, I’m
afraid I can’t let you do that.  See, you’ve got something that belongs to me,”
an angry voice sneered from a few feet away as a bullet whistled past them to
hit a tree behind them.   

Honor screamed as
Henry stepped out from the tree line and grinned at them.

Pulling Honor behind
him Zeke lifted his weapon as Henry unzipped the jacket he wore, still
grinning.  “Go ahead, Sheriff, shoot me.  Blow us all to Kingdom Come.  I dare
you,” he heard Henry invite as his jacket fell open to reveal the bomb he had
strapped to his chest. 

“Fuck,” Wrath
snarled.

“Damn it, Watson. 
This is how you wanna go out?” Zeke growled.  “You’re a fuckin’ coward!”

Honor stared at Henry
in horrified fascination.  He had enough of what appeared to be explosives
strapped to his chest to blow a hole in this side of the mountain.  There was
no way they’d make it out alive if he chose to press the button he held in his
hands.  “Henry, please… don’t do this,” Honor begged as it suddenly dawned on
her what she had to do.   Moving past Zeke, she shrugged off his hand when he
tried to catch her.  “You know you can’t take a shot without him detonating
that bomb.  Just let me try,” she whispered.  “Trust me,” she urged staring
into his turbulent gray eyes.  “I need to face this monster.”

Zeke stared at her
for a long moment before nodding slightly.  “Be careful,” he urged as she moved
past him to slowly approach the insane man that had tortured her for far too
long.   “We’ll be aiming for his head, Kitten, so stay as low as possible.”

Tightening her
fingers around the long tree limb, she leaned heavily against it as she gazed
across the distance at her last living rapist.  “Henry,” she called gently. 
“I-I’ve been thinking.  You still want to be with me, don’t you?”

Henry turned his
dilated eyes toward her.  “More than anything, my Pretty Kitty.  I’ve never
wanted anything else.  Not since you gave me your cream.  I knew then that
there’d never be another for me.”

Swallowing hard,
Honor nodded, fighting the urge to shriek that she hadn’t given him a thing and
that everything he’d taken from her, he’d stolen, but she quashed the urge. 
She had to get them out of here alive… and she’d discovered a way to do it. 
“Right, well, it’s going to be impossible for us to have a life together if you
press that button,” she pointed out sweetly.  “Why don’t you just throw it down
and then we can go.  We can go and start our life together.  Just us.  We’ll
put all the nasty business of our pasts behind us and start fresh.  Wouldn’t
you like that, Henry?” she asked, moving closer.  “Doesn’t that sound
wonderful?”

Henry smiled
dreamily.  “So wonderful.  I knew you were meant for me.”

“Just you, Henry,”
Honor crooned.  “Just for you,” she breathed as she watched his fingers loosen
on the detonator as she finally arrived in arm’s distance of the man
responsible for so much heartache.  “I can’t wait to start my life with you,
Henry,” she whispered as the trigger fell from his fingertips to the ground.

Exhaling a long
breath as the trigger bounced on the ground, Honor lifted the walking stick she
held and shoved it into Henry’s soft belly shoving him back as she dove for
cover.  Covering her head as the report of a multiple shots echoed throughout
the mountainside, she squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for a quick end to this
nightmare.

Seconds later, it was
over and silence descended over the forest.  Slowly lifting her head, the first
thing she saw was Zeke rushing toward her.  “It’s over,” she sobbed as he
reached her side and hauled her into his arms.  “It’s finally all over.” 

Weeping relieved
tears as Zeke gathered her to his chest, she finally allowed herself to relax
as she felt his protective arms surrounding her.  Lifting her head to gaze up
into his beloved face, she knew her nightmare was over, but her dream had only
just begun.