Dragon's Eden (9 page)

“Hong Kong?” she asked, slanting him a
questioning look. “Shulan told me you were American.”

The soft slap of their sandals added an even
rhythm to the intermittent songs of the flycatchers flitting
through the trees. All the sounds of her home were gentle, natural
ones. There were no engines, other than the one that ran the
generator, and since he’d been there, she’d only used it once, the
night she’d turned on the floodlights. There were no cars, no
electric hums, no music beyond the lilting tone of her voice.

“Cooper took me back to Asia to live with
our aunt when I was still pretty young. Living with his father in
San Francisco was hell after our mother died. The old man seemed to
hate me more every day of my life.”

“Because you were another man’s son?” Sugar
knew she was trespassing as badly as he had earlier, but like him,
she was interested, very interested.

“That was a big part of it, but what really
infuriated him was that he couldn’t hide the fact that I was some
Chinaman’s bastard.”

“Sun Yi’s?”

To her surprise, he laughed. “Shulan sure
wants to believe it.”

“But you don’t?” She kept her eyes on the
path and saw a blue-and-green lizard, a jungle runner, skitter
across it.

“Even if I did, it wouldn’t change what I am
or who I am.” He lifted his hand and held aside a large fern leaf
for her. “Cooper raised me. If I’m anyone’s son, I’m his.”

“Is he a lot older than you?”

“Ten years. Not much when you think about a
sixteen-year-old kid hauling a six-year-old child halfway around
the world on his own, without the luxury of two one-way plane
tickets.”

“You went by ship?” She cast him a
disbelieving glance.

“Freighters,” he said, reaching into his
pocket and pulling out a strip of red cloth that she recognized as
the ribbed cuff of an old sweatshirt of hers. More distracting than
the red cloth, though, was what putting his hand in his pocket had
done to the waistline of the pants. Namely, it had lowered them a
good two inches below his tan line, exposing skin a bare shade
paler than his chest. She could see the top of one hipbone, which
was what she would have sworn was the only thing holding up the
pants in the first place. Worse, she could sec where the dark hair
arrowing down from his navel began to spread across his lower
abdomen. Heat infused her senses; he looked so undone.

“Cooper worked for our room and board,” he
continued, reaching up behind his neck and gathering his hair in
one hand. He slipped the red cuff over the single thick cable he’d
made and pulled the entire length of his hair through. He repeated
the action twice more, until he’d secured everything in a
ponytail—and all the while she watched the fluid, rolling action of
his muscles and traced the tracks of his veins up the inside of his
arm. Another patch of silky dark hair awaited her there, nestled
into a curve of tawny skin.

He was as alluring as any creature she’d
ever seen, colorful like a toco toucan with the touch of red in his
ebony hair and the amber-streaked green of his eyes, lithe and
powerful like the large cats who stalked prey deep in Amazonian
forests.

Their next steps took them into a bower of
purpleheart and jade vine, two of the indigenous species on
Cocorico. The sound of the surf receded into a lulling backdrop,
replaced by the calls of birds and the hum of insects. He wasn’t
for her, she told herself, and she dared not forget it.

“You must have been a six-year-old angel,”
she said, “to have survived crossing the Pacific on a
freighter.”

“I was pure hell let loose.” He laughed
again. “But Cooper was one tough son of a bitch even at sixteen.”
He paused, as if considering his words, and his expression grew
thoughtful before he continued. “He knifed a man on one of the
cargo ships, because the guy had me backed into a corner in the
engine room, getting ready to . . . well, hurt me. Cooper cut him
clean across the back, shoulder to shoulder, and told the guy if he
ever caught him in the same room with me again, he would cut out
his heart.” He held another leaf back for her, the gesture bringing
them closer than was good for her control. “Made a helluva
impression on me.”

“You must have been terrified,” she said,
forcing herself not to reach out and touch him in compassion, for
fear her touch would turn into something altogether different.

“I don’t remember being afraid so much as I
was confused, not only about what the man said he wanted, but how
he could be smiling and crooning at me and smell so evil at the
same time.”

The image he conjured up struck a responsive
chord in her psyche. She remembered what evil smelled like—Fang
Baolian. She shuddered.

“It was okay, Sugar, really.” He touched her
on the shoulder, surprising her with his awareness of the subtle
change in her emotions. “He didn’t hurt me.”

“Did he bother you again?” she asked,
allowing him to mistake her momentary weakness for the compassion
she hadn’t given.

“No. He jumped ship at the next port.” The
satisfied smile accompanying his answer made her immediately
suspicious.

“Why?” she asked.

“Well, it wasn’t just because Cooper had
sworn to cut his heart out,” he admitted, his smile broadening. “I
figured if Cooper thought the guy was such bad joss, I ought to
take a few stabs at him myself, and being only six, I always got
him below the waist. Almost castrated him once.”

Her reaction was spontaneous laughter, a big
burst of it. What he’d said was terrible and awful—not that he’d
hurt the man, but that at six he’d felt the need to protect himself
with a knife—but it was also funny.

“I was a real hit-and-run artist,” he
continued. “I would wait in the gangways, pretending I was the
Shadow. Whenever he got within range, I would stick him with my
penknife and run like hell, screaming like a banshee for
Cooper!”

Her laughter faded, but not her respect.
“I’m surprised he didn’t kill you both in your sleep.”

He looked down at her, his smile still in
place, but with a cynical edge to it. “He tried, more than once,
but Cooper was always quicker and deadlier. He never put a mark on
either one of us, but he’d been stitched in half a dozen places by
the time we reached the next port.”

“You and Cooper must be very close.” She
knew it was an understatement even as she voiced the thought.

“Maybe too close,” he said, his smile gone,
replaced by a grimness she found disturbing. “I know Coop, and I
know how far he’ll go to avenge my death!”

“How far?” she asked.

He stopped on the trail and turned her to
face him, using a hand on each of her shoulders. His grip was firm
but gentle, like his voice when he spoke. “He’ll go until he’s
either broken or dead, and I can’t live with that, Sugar. If you
can’t find it in your heart to let me go, you have to contact him
and let him know I’m alive. I tried once from Hong Kong, but got
interrupted before I could say much more than his name. A woman had
answered the phone, a voice I didn’t recognize, so I’m not sure he
even knows about the call. But I can’t let him get killed because
of me, especially when it’d all be for nothing. I’m alive, Sugar,
and I want my brother alive.”

His hold on her had tightened as he’d
spoken, and he’d stepped closer, putting them face-to-face with her
head tilted back. The pain in his voice was undisguised, his need
clear.

“Do this for me,” he said, “and I won’t hold
you responsible for whatever else happens.”

The added incentive was unnecessary. Telling
Cooper Daniels his brother was alive wouldn’t undermine her promise
to Shulan. The cost to her would be in breaking radio silence and
upsetting her father, but she had to do it.

“Don’t follow me, and he’ll know by
nightfall,” she promised, turning to head back down the path.

Jackson let her go, feeling a weight lift
off his shoulders. It would drive Cooper crazy, knowing he was
alive, but not knowing where, or how, or when, or if he would be
released. But Jackson had spent a lifetime driving Cooper crazy.
That part didn’t bother him at all, not as long as Cooper was
alive.

* * *

Sugar went first to her bedroom and pulled a
locked box off the top shelf of her closet. Inside the box were
Jackson’s personal effects: his wallet, a laundry receipt dated
four months back, some loose change, a carabiner, a gun, and a used
ski-lift ticket. The gun was loaded.

She reached for the wallet and felt a twinge
of guilt for prying, but she was doing it for him. The information
she needed was simple, a phone number or a fax line, even an
address would suffice. She hadn’t asked him for it, because she
didn’t want to give him any idea of how she was going to contact
his brother. She didn’t want him tearing up the island looking for
the source of her communications, a fourth-hand ship-to-shore radio
she’d hidden beneath the pantry floor the day he arrived. Not even
Jen knew of its existence.

She opened his wallet, prepared to be
businesslike, efficient, and objective. She lost all three
attitudes when the first thing to fall out was a condom. The foil
packet was ancient, the wear and creases almost masking the words
printed across the front—
Break Seal in Case of
Fire
.

She grinned in spite of herself.

The rest of the contents were less amusing.
There was a recent picture of him with a woman. The corners of the
photograph were still clean and sharp, the image still clear—and
what an image it was. The woman was tall, blond, and willowy,
dressed in a sequin-spangled minidress. Jackson was in a tuxedo.
The woman’s hair was as long as his, drifting to her waist like a
waterfall of gold. They made the most striking couple she had ever
seen.

She put the photograph aside, wondering if
the gorgeous blonde missed him in the night, agonized over where
her lover had gone, if he would return. Yet he’d only asked her to
contact his brother, no one else.

Also in the wallet was a lot of money and a
number of credit cards and business cards, many with notes jotted
on them, most having to do with shipping. Judging from the titles
of the men and women on the cards, Jackson Daniels was no
run-of-the-mill bounty hunter. He dealt with the presidents and
CEOs of major shipping corporations and federations. Some of the
added notes on the cards were telephone numbers marked with the
words
private line
.

The card she was looking for was in a
separate compartment of the wallet and read,
Daniels Limited, Maritime Investigation, Jackson
Daniels
. Behind that one was another—
Daniels Limited, Investments, Jackson Daniels
. Both
listed the same address and phone number in San Francisco,
California. Behind the investment card were two cards written in
Chinese script. There were two in Arabic, two in Spanish, French,
German, and others in languages she could only guess at. Jackson
Daniels was definitely more than a bounty hunter; he was an
international businessman. The knowledge made her uneasy. Maybe
he’d been right that first night on the beach. Maybe she would end
up in front of some multinational tribunal for holding him captive.
The only thing worse that could happen to her would be for Baolian
to find her.

Wallet in hand, she relocked the box and set
it back on the shelf. Having a gun on the island did nothing to
lessen her uneasiness. Weapons of any kind implied a necessity to
use them, and she’d worked hard to ensure the absolute safety of
Cocorico. Things were changing faster than she liked.

She also didn’t like having to ask her
father to call Cooper Daniels and tell him his brother was alive.
Thomas Caine’s heart deserved better than to be dragged deeper into
the mess she’d made of all their lives, and her mother certainly
didn’t deserve any more grief. Calling her was out of the question.
If she got lucky, Carolina would be the one she raised on the
radio, but her luck hadn’t been running all that good lately.

Sugar and Jackson were falling into a
routine after working together for three days.

“When you’ve finished turning the compost,
you might take some and mulch it around the tomatoes,” she said.
That was their routine: She gave the orders, he followed them.
Usually.

Jackson made a noncommittal sound and
continued staring down at the steaming pile of decaying vegetation
she’d assigned to him.

“Leaning on the spade isn’t going to get the
job done.”

“Right,” he agreed, but didn’t make a
move.

“Is there something wrong?” she asked,
stepping over the rows of cassava she’d been weeding.

“There’s something alive in there.” They’d
been working for hours, mostly on their hands and knees, a position
Jackson had been unfamiliar with until she’d put him to work. He
played, or had played at, dozens of sports, most of them strenuous,
but none of them had prepared him for the drudgery of trying to eke
food out of the soil, and none of them had required him to be on
all fours. He’d been transformed from a hunter into a gardener,
tamed. He was sweating and aching, and he didn’t know how she kept
at it.

“Sure there is,” she said. “About a billion
bacteria and a few hundred thousand bugs.” She looked at the
compost heap, then slanted him a wry glance. “Don’t worry. I think
you’re safe.”

“It’s bigger than a bacterium, Miss
Know-It-All.” The irony in his voice matched hers. “I think it’s a
snake.”

She moved a step closer, peering around him.
“I doubt it. An island is pretty much a closed ecosystem. I know
just about every plant and animal on Cocorico, and believe me, I
wouldn’t have missed a snake.”

“Cocorico?”

“This spot of land you’re on in the
Windwards, and no, you won’t find it listed on any map under that
name. Besides, it’s too hot in a tropical compost pile for a
snake.”