Reawakening Eden Read online

  Ben’s cocky grin didn’t falter. “Where’d you get the gun, princess? It doesn’t suit you.”

  “Leave us alone, Ben.” Her voice didn’t shake. Just hearing the chilly determination in it made her feel stronger.

  He snorted. “Or what? You gonna shoot me?”

  “I will if I have to.”

  Ben’s grin grew. “Sure you will, sweetheart.”

  He didn’t think she would. Worse, she wasn’t sure she could. She wanted to think she’d be able to, to protect the kids, and a small, vicious part of her loved the idea of putting a bullet through Jonah Carter, but the truth was she honestly didn’t know if she could be responsible for another dead body after all the ones she’d seen.

  “How did you find us?”

  Two days. Only two days since their near escape in Spokane, and he’d found them already. Had they ever had a chance of getting away clean?

  “I have my ways.” Ben crouched down where he stood, which put him out of Lucas’s line of fire. The boy started to sit up to follow the shot, but Eden nudged him with her leg, and he lay back down so her body shielded both children. Her rifle stayed steady, aimed at the center of her target.

  “Jonah’s been looking for you, honey. He’s even put out a reward for your return.”

  “What kind of reward?” Money didn’t mean anything anymore, and with so fewer people vying for survival supplies, there was a deceptive sense of prosperity. Most people weren’t looking ahead to the months or years later when all the prepackaged and preserved goods would run out.

  “The kind worth getting.” Ben brushed his hand in an arc through the leaves, the movement catching her eye. She didn’t notice his other hand reaching behind his back until it reappeared in front of him holding a handgun. Eden’s breath caught. Shit. His smile was gone. “Where’s your car, pretty girl?”

  Eden had never been so happy to say, “It broke down. We left it.”

  “Well, fuck.” Ben glowered.

  She decided it was best not to tell the pissed-off, armed linebacker to watch his language around the kids. It was easy to see why he was upset. The engine sound they’d heard approaching was for a vehicle that wasn’t designed for more than one. How was Ben supposed to drag her and the miracle children back to Seattle and claim his reward without anything to drag them in?

  The big man shrugged. “I guess you’re walking until we find a car. Get up.”

  Eden tried to swallow, but her throat was desert dry, her palms clammy on the rifle. “No.”

  She was banking everything on the fact that Jonah’s reward required all three of them to be alive and unharmed, gambling that Ben couldn’t shoot her. And hoping desperately that she could convince him that she would shoot him if he tried to take them by force.

  “We aren’t going back with you,” she said, startled again by the calm power in her words. Where had that stone-cold-bitch voice come from?

  Ben frowned, considering his options. Even though he knew jack shit about military operations, he wasn’t a dumb guy. Unfortunately. She’d heard he used to work for Microsoft before the plague. She didn’t want to give him time to come up with a plan, but she couldn’t even move without tipping the precarious impasse they’d reached.

  Apparently coming to a decision, Ben straightened and started toward them. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be, sugar.”

  Something deep inside Eden went arctic. Her finger wrapped around the trigger. Could she do it? Was it worth taking a life just to stay away from Jonah? They’d escaped before. They could again…if he didn’t put a guard on her. Hannah Rose made a small sound beneath her. Would the kids be safe?

  Eden took a slow, shuddering breath. Steady, girl. Just exhale and squeeze. In her head she heard her father’s voice, an echo of her former life, the memory of him teaching her how to fire a rifle as crisp as if it had happened yesterday.

  Just exhale and squeeze.

  She was so immersed in her thoughts of guns, the sound of one cocking to her left didn’t even seem odd at first. Then a voice that put her stone-cold tone to shame spoke from the shadows.

  “I believe the lady said she didn’t want to go with you.”

  Chapter Three

  Eden kept the rifle trained on Ben but risked looking away from him to search for this new arrival. Lucas jerked the shotgun up and aimed it in the direction of the voice, bless him, but he’d be shooting blind. The forest vista was blank. Abandoned.

  Eden’s gaze raked the trees, but she didn’t see any sign of the speaker, just an uninterrupted sun-dappled landscape like something out of a Walt Whitman poem.

  The wolfhound emerged first, trotting into view with a bouncing step that was at odds with the vicious teeth on clear display and the low growl rumbling out of its massive throat. She recognized the animal from last night, and a shivering sense of unease rolled over her skin. Had it been tracking them? Stalking? Was this a savior or a new threat? Then a figure slipped out from behind a tree only twenty feet away, giving Lucas a target.

  A damn big, heavily armed target.

  Jesus flipping Christ, it’s Rambo.

  He approached slowly, his movements silent and steady. Unhurried. Confident. She’d be confident too, if she was holding a freaking machine gun and packing enough artillery to topple a dictatorship.

  As their mystery guest got closer, her impression of size only grew. He had to be six-five and his build was massive, though some of his bulk could have been due to the heavy camo hunting gear he was swathed in head to toe. She couldn’t even make out his skin tone with the camouflage paint smeared across his face.

  He stopped ten feet away, his gun held casually but aimed squarely at Ben’s chest. His aim was a comfort, as his words had been, but Eden’s mouth still went dry with fear. Ben was the devil she knew. This man was a devil of a whole new variety.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Ben snarled—clearly trying to sound as menacing as the Rambo Mountain Man and failing pathetically.

  “That’s far enough,” Rambo growled. The dog gave a short, snarling bark.

  Eden jerked and twisted back to face Ben. She hadn’t realized he’d begun creeping up on her back until the mountain man’s hard voice stopped him. With no success from threats and stealth, Ben switched tactics again, slapping on a lazy just-between-us-guys grin.

  “No need to get upset, friend.” He held up his empty hand in a look-how-harmless-I-am gesture, the one still clutching the handgun dangling oh so casually against his thigh. As if Rambo wouldn’t notice it there.

  “I’m not upset. Friend.”

  Eden believed that. Upset implied emotion and he didn’t seem to have any. Like the Terminator. But was this the first movie or the second? Was he there to kill her or protect her?

  “Look, this is a complicated situation,” Ben said calmly. “I can see how you would misunderstand, but trust me, I would never hurt this woman. I’m just making sure she gets home safe. That’s all I want.”

  His voice was so reasonable, Eden almost believed him herself. Ben must have been taking charisma and manipulation lessons from Jonah.

  Rambo didn’t budge. “If that’s true, let her tell me that and I’ll go.”

  Ben turned his charm offensive in her direction. “Tell him, sweetheart.”

  Her gaze flicked between the two men. Five minutes ago she’d wanted nothing more than to get rid of Ben, but if she admitted that, she’d be left alone with the Rambo Terminator. Out of the frying pan… He might be a Good Samaritan, just a helpful gunman on his way to ambush revolutionaries in the next valley, but after seeing the dog last night, she knew his presence here wasn’t a coincidence.

  She had no guarantee she’d be safe with him. Or that the children would.

  It was a gamble, and Eden had never been the kind of girl who got off on risk. Control. Order. That was more her speed. She was a librarian, for chrissake. Or she had been.

  Ben was a known quantity. He’d drag them back to Seattle where Jonah
was waiting to make them the centerpiece of his twisted new religion. She hadn’t been watched before, but if they went back, she would be. She wouldn’t be able to talk Jonah’s minions into releasing her. You couldn’t reason with zealots.

  Jonah wanted power—and had actually started buying his own pseudo-religious bullshit. Ben was motivated by greed. But her rescuer, this behemoth in hunting gear, was a wild card. There was a chance he would help her. A chance he was the one good man who’d survived the epidemics. And she and Lucas still had their weapons, if it came to holding him off.

  In Seattle, there were no chances. So no matter how slight the chance that this mercenary-looking bastard with the ice-cold voice was really pudding and marshmallows on the inside, it was still a chance worth taking.

  “We don’t want to go with him.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear.” Rambo’s machine gun barely moved an inch, but suddenly it was poised for death. The wolfhound began a low, constant growl, circling to take a flanking position.

  Ben’s facial muscles tightened reflexively, souring his grin. “She’s a thief,” he tried again, the words fast and desperate. “A kidnapper. She abducted those kids.”

  “He’s ly—”

  Rambo made a low scoffing noise, cutting her off. “You should have started with that story if you wanted it to fly.”

  Ben’s gaze pinged between Eden, sprawled protectively over the kids, and Rambo with his wide, immoveable stance and steady gun. “Shit.”

  “I’m getting impatient,” Rambo said, the threat deceptively soft, an odd harmony to the dog’s menacing growl.

  “I’m going,” Ben snapped. He began to back away, sending Eden one last meaningful glower. “See you later, honey.”

  She shivered at the promise in those words.

  Eden held her breath, warily eyeing their rescuer as Ben’s footsteps retreated. The wolfhound followed him, weaving a serpentine pattern through the trees. When Jonah’s man was out of sight, Rambo turned his attention to her, catching her staring. She didn’t look away and neither did he—not so much in a battle of wills as a waiting game, a strategic feint to see who would reveal their true intentions first.

  His gun was held at the ready, but she wasn’t exactly pointing a lollipop at him, so she couldn’t really blame him. She didn’t precisely aim the rifle at Rambo’s head, but she didn’t put it down either.

  No one moved until the sound of Ben’s engine had faded to a distant whine, and then it was Hannah Rose who broke the silence.

  “Mama?”

  Eden shushed her. Rambo’s eyes flicked down to the kids huddled half beneath her, and her hands tightened on the rifle. Then he dismissed them—faster than she’d ever seen anyone look away from the miracle children before—and met her eyes again. “You okay?”

  That remained to be seen. Eden wet her lips. “How long have you been following us?”

  His expression, so hard to read beneath the camo paint, didn’t change, but she had the impression she’d managed to surprise him. “What makes you think—?”

  “I’ve seen your dog.” Only the one time, but he didn’t need to know that.

  As if on cue, the wolfhound reappeared in the narrow clearing where she and the kids had taken cover. Its jaws hung loosely in a canine grin as it loped over to Rambo’s side. Its butt thumped down and it listed heavily against his thigh. They fit together, the oversized dog and its oversized master. He reached down to absently scratch the enormous animal’s head, and something in Eden’s chest unknotted. He couldn’t be evil if he was good to animals, right? And he hadn’t shot them yet. Maybe he wasn’t so terrifying, though he had been following them…

  “Been keeping an eye on you since you started running circles on my land.”

  His concept of possession startled her a bit. It had been a while since my land meant anything to most people. Then she caught up to the circles part, and her heart thudded against her ribs. Just how lost were they?

  “Who are you? What do you want from us?”

  His face twisted with what might have been exasperation without the camo paint to make it look foreign and terrifying. “Look, lady, I don’t want anything from you. You just looked like you could use a hand.”

  God, how amazing would it be if she could believe him?

  She reminded herself he’d come out, made a target of himself and stepped in to help them. He hadn’t had to do that. He could have just walked on by. Or if he’d wanted to hurt them, he could easily have killed them all without stepping a single foot out of cover.

  His eyes flicked down to her white-knuckled grip on the rifle. “You ever fired that thing?”

  “Yes,” she replied too fast, defensively.

  His mouth moved in what could have been a half-smile, but with the face paint she couldn’t really tell. “Ever hit anything?”

  “Yes.” A moose. Her dad had loved to hunt and taken her when she was a teen. She’d shot the poor thing dead. Then puked all over the place for the next hour.

  “Uh-huh.” Rambo pointed his machine gun toward the sky, propping it back against his shoulder.

  Eden’s barrel didn’t waver, though she did let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She wasn’t going to shoot him and they both knew it, but she still felt stronger, more prepared, with the muzzle aimed in his general direction. He didn’t seem to mind.

  But she didn’t know how she would be able to tell if he did. The man made robots look emotive.

  “Where’re you headed?”

  “We’re just passing through,” Eden said, trying to keep her own voice as even and emotionless as his.

  Rambo jerked his chin toward the dirt track they’d been walking down all morning. “Nothing down this road to pass to.”

  Which meant she’d gotten them just as lost as she’d feared. “We’re going south.”

  She couldn’t read his expression past the camo paint, but his voice was dry. “You need a new compass. You’re going west.”

  West. Back toward Spokane. Back toward Seattle. Shit. She’d tried to stay on small roads because they were easier for the kids to manage, but the country lanes didn’t always run straight, and she hadn’t been very good about watching the angle of the sun and all that shit to make sure they were staying headed in the right direction.

  Suddenly she felt weary to her soul. It was too much for one person to do everything, to be wholly responsible for three lives when the world was spinning upside down. How had she thought she could do this?

  Eden swallowed back the self-flagellation and defeat. She needed to focus on moving forward. Getting the kids to safety. Building a life for them somewhere that didn’t involve guns or cults or fear.

  Hannah Rose made a small sound of complaint, and Eden shifted so she wasn’t smushing the little girl quite so much. Lucas sat up at her side as Eden crouched in front of them, still defensive.

  She jutted her chin up the road back the way they’d come. “So that’s east, huh?”

  “East-north-east.”

  So south was right in front of her, through the dense forest where this man had appeared. He didn’t look like he was in the mood to play tour guide, and she wasn’t sure she wanted him to. He was too imposing, too obviously deadly for comfort. This didn’t look like the kind of man who had picked up a gun and some hunting gear out of desperation and self-defense the way she had. He was too calm. He’d probably been living the curmudgeonly mountain-man existence for the last two decades, reading the Unabomber’s unauthorized biography and taking shots at anyone who trespassed on his land. No doubt he was delighted that only one person was living today for every three thousand who’d been alive a year ago.

  But he was plainly capable. He knew the area. He’d tracked them easily, so it wasn’t like she’d be able to escape him without a car anyway.

  “Could you give us directions to Boise?”

  He snorted. “On foot? Honey, you’ve lost your mind if you think you can walk to Boise this time of
year.”

  “What about someplace we can get a car? Is there a town near here?” She’d pretty much exhausted her knowledge of Idaho towns with Coeur d’Alene and Boise.

  The sense of hopeless defeat rushed back in. How was she supposed to get the kids south for the winter if she couldn’t even figure out which way south was?

  A tiny hand plucked at Eden’s jeans, Hannah Rose trying to get her attention. She shifted her leg away. Not now, babygirl. Mama’s holding a gun on the nice man.

  “Look, I’m sorry, lady…”

  “Mama?” The little plucking fingers were back. Hannah Rose poked her head around Eden’s shoulder.

  “Not now, Hannah Rose.” Don’t call attention to yourself, babygirl.

  But it was already too late. The mountain man was staring at Hannah Rose’s rosy cheeks, his fierce frown evident even through the camouflage paint. “What does she want?” His voice was gruff, choked.

  And a note in it set off warning bells in Eden—a note that made him simultaneously a dozen times more likely to help them and a thousand times more dangerous. Not a loner mountain man after all. This man was a daddy once.

  Eden scrambled to think of something to say to distract him, to take his attention off Hannah Rose and Lucas, but the girl was already wiggling away from her brother’s attempts to quietly pin her and climbing around Eden. “Can I ride the pony, Mama?”

  “It isn’t a pony, babygirl.” The inane response was all her brain could manage. Suddenly holding a gun on the man who had rescued them felt absurd, but putting it down required an impossible level of trust.

  “She’s a dog,” the mountain man said, reaching down to pet the hound again.

  “That’s a big dog.” This time it was Lucas’s voice by her knee, filled with an awe she hadn’t heard there in a year.