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“Richard!” she cried again, and then squeezed his torso with gentle pressure, fighting the waves around them. To her relief, he coughed and choked, and water spewed from his mouth. A wave lapped around them, covering his face, and he coughed again, trying to fight the water that seemed so ready to claim him.
“Easy, easy, just float, I’ve got you!” Tara assured him.
“The ship … the men,” Richard said, and choked as icy salt water moved over his mouth again.
“Shhh … Stop talking.” She wondered if he’d been struck in the head…. But he was breathing; he was alive and breathing and she was going to make sure nothing changed that.
“The men …” he repeated.
“Stop. We’ve been through this.” She was terribly afraid that her friend didn’t want to live, that guilt over his men would infect his thoughts and keep him from assisting her rescue attempt. “Richard! Shut up! The war has taken many lives—I won’t let it take yours.”
Richard wasn’t a small man, and the water felt bitterly cold, and it wasn’t easy managing the weight and length of his lean and muscled body—especially when he wasn’t cooperating.
“Fire,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her, glazed eyes reflecting the burst of fire in the sky.
She was tempted to knock him out again. He was the dearest friend she’d ever had, or would have, and she would not lose him.
“Quiet!” she whispered softly. She hooked her arm around his body, trying to get him to relax and let her use the power of her right arm and legs against the water. “Lay back, Richard, and let me take you. Please. Please …” Just when she thought she couldn’t wrestle with him for one minute more, he mercifully passed out once again. She felt the fight leave his muscles.
Finally, she was able to begin a hard crawl toward the shore.
The water was deep; the ship had floundered in the channel between isles, where a coral shelf rested just to the Atlantic side. They couldn’t be in more than thirty feet of water, and yet, now the length of her body burned with the exertion of her muscles and her lips continued to quiver from the cold.
She had never felt so strained, nor so exhausted, in her life.
Just when she thought that the agony in her arms and legs would cripple her, she felt ground at the tips of her feet. She realized that she could stand, having reached the gnarled toes of the island. She slipped off the submerged root, dragging Richard with her. Doggedly, she found a foothold again, paused, breathed and waited. She looked back to the Yankee ship, on fire now.
At last, she managed to drag him up on a spit of sand between the gnarled and twisted “legs” of a spiderlike clump of mangroves. She lay there next to him, panting, and feeling as if her muscles burned with the same fire that still illuminated the night sky. She breathed in the acrid and smoky air.
Turning then to Richard, she felt for his pulse—faint, but steady—and warmth jumped in her heart. She allowed herself to fall back for another moment, just breathing and gathering her strength. She was drenched, and her skirts were heavy with water. She felt the winter’s nip that lay around her, even here.
She thanked God that they hadn’t gone in farther north, where temperatures would have been far more wicked.
She rested, and then, even as she breathed more easily, she bolted up. Looking out over the dying remnants of the Peace, she could see that the Union ship floundered, too.
She had grounded herself; she wasn’t injured and limping, but she was caught on the reef, and there was no escape for her. The Union boat would have a number of longboats, easy to send into the inlets, saving the lives of the men aboard.
Richard was alive, she knew that, and she believed in her heart that he would survive. But he wasn’t coming around, and they had to leave their present position; they were like sitting ducks at a county fair.
She dragged herself to her feet. Half of the heaviness of the weight she had borne, she realized, had been that of her skirts. She wrenched off the cumbersome petticoat that had nicely provided warmth—before becoming saturated with seawater. Rolling the cotton and lace into a ball, she stuffed it into a gap in the tree roots, shoving up a pile of seaweed and sand to hide the telltale sign that this was where survivors had come ashore.
Something in the water caught her eye, some form of movement. It might have just been a shadow created on the water by the rise and fall of flames that still tore from the desiccating ship. Soon, the Peace would be down to charred, skeletal remains, and she would sink to the seabed. At the moment, enough of the hull remained above the surface to allow the flames to continue to lap at the sky, shooting upward with dying sparks now and then.
A shadow on the water … The Unionists would be coming … coming after a blockade runner.
She reached down, dragging Richard’s body up. He was far bigger than she was, but she managed to get him over her shoulder. Taking a last glance back at the flame-riddled night, she started to move through the mangroves that rimmed the edge of the isle.
THE FIRE ON THE BLOCKADE runner was just beginning to subside, but Finn could still hear the lick of the flames as they consumed tinder, and the split of wood as it disintegrated in the conflagration. Soon, however, the sea would claim the fire, and the night would be lit by only the stars.
He couldn’t wait for the longboats; he surveyed his surroundings from the mangrove roots he stood upon.
This side of the islet—new to time and history, created by the tenacious roots and the silt and debris caught with those roots—was really nothing more than a tangle of gnarled tree, slick ponds and beds of seaweed. But looking toward the east, he could see that there was a spit of sand. He began crawling over the roots, heedless when he stepped knee-deep in a cache of water. Tiny crabs scurried around his intrusion, and he could hear the squish of his boots. When he cleared the heaviest thicket, he paused, leaning on a tree, to empty the water from his boots.
Shortly after he resumed moving through the thinning foliage, he heard a grunting sound. He paused. Alligators roamed the freshwater areas of the upper Keys, and even crocodiles made a home in the brackish waters off the southern coast. But Finn wasn’t hearing the odd, piglike grunt of a gator. He was hearing the snuffling grunt made by wild pigs. There was hope that water was to be found on the island, and if pigs were surviving here, then man could, too. Good to know, in case this was a long excursion.
Something along the terrain caught his eye and he paused. The remaining fire that had lit the sky was all but gone, little more than a flicker. He paused, seeing nothing, and retraced his footsteps, wincing as he stepped knee-deep into a pool again. But even with this, his efforts were rewarded. There, deep in a crevice, was something. He reached for it, and was surprised when something big and white and heavily laden with seawater fell into his hands. He frowned, puzzled for a moment, and then smiled grimly.
A petticoat. A woman’s petticoat. Soaked and salty, ripped and torn and encrusted with sand and muck.
It hadn’t been there long. It hadn’t been there long at all.
He looked ahead to the beach, where a survivor might conceivably find a dry spot in the chill night. Where a survivor just might have to risk building a fire, or freeze. There was certainly no snow this far south, but it was a bitter night. They were probably hitting down close to freezing.
He set the petticoat down, studying it, and felt a sweep of tension wash over him. He did his work well, and he knew that he did, and he felt passionately that the future of the country—the decency, the healing—were in the hands of a good man. He had followed through on every threat, perceived or real, and he had lost his suspect only once.
At Gettysburg.
The woman had slipped cleanly through his fingers, and he had never forgotten, and now …
He couldn’t help but look at the petticoat, and wonder, as impossible as the odds might be, if he hadn’t come upon her again.
Was she Gator?
TARA FOUND A SPOT SHIELDED by a strip of land where pines had taken root. She looked around carefully before lowering Richard’s body to the soft, chill ground, and then paused for a minute to stretch her agonized muscles. She fell into a seated position next to Richard and leaned her head against one of the protecting trees. She was exhausted and, despite her exertion, very cold.
She checked Richard’s pulse and breathing again, and assured herself that he was going to make it. But his limbs felt like ice. She forced herself back to her feet. She would gather fallen palm branches to make a blanket for her friend. Now that she had gotten him out of the water, she wished that he would come to—there were others out there in the night, and it was imperative that they stay hidden until she could find a way off the island. Another blockade runner would eventually come by. They would survive; they both knew how to hold out in such an environment. If there were palms on the island, there were coconuts. And she had heard the scurry of wildlife. But they had to get through the night.
And avoid the men from the Union ship that had gone down. They would be seeking shelter, as well.
“Richard?” she whispered, caressing his cheek. He didn’t open his eyes; he didn’t acknowledge her in any way. She groaned inwardly, checking for his pulse once again.
Still steady.
She wanted to build a fire; she didn’t dare. “Richard, I so wish that you would wake up and speak!”
His chest rose and fell as he breathed. But his eyes didn’t open. She consoled herself that it was better that he got some rest; the death of his men was a crushing blow to him. It had almost been a fatal blow.
She eased against him, trying to use her body to warm his. The winter breeze seemed to rise with a low moan, as if it wailed for the bloodshed that night.
She listened to the sound of the wind, and the waves, and she watched as the fire left the sky, and cloud cover came over. The night became dark again, as if it had consumed all the events that had taken place, and nature had been the victor.
She knew she needed rest also, but she didn’t want to doze. She had to stay awake.
And listen.
SO GATOR JUST MIGHT be a woman. No matter, he told himself, she had to be dealt with as harshly as a man. He wasn’t sure at all why women were considered to be the weaker sex; he’d met many who could make strong men cower. But still …
In the darkness, he did his best to follow a trail. It was difficult with the watery sand washing over every footprint. Finally, however, he cleared the mangroves, and found the part of the isle that had surely found birth at the beginning, and had gained substance from the passing sea. There was one beautiful, clear area of beach, residing almost like a haven, visible only in the pale starlight that fell upon it, and, in that starlight, almost magical. As he stood there for a moment, he thought of the great majesty of the sea and the sky. He might have been at the ends of the earth, he was so far removed from Washington, D.C. No troops marched through the streets, no civilians at work and play, and no great buildings rising around him. There were no buildings at all. Just the crisp darkness of the night, the wash of the waves and the soft whimpering of the wind.
Actually, he wasn’t sure he was glad for the wind; he was slowly drying, but the air was cold, and his flesh felt like ice. He’d had matches in his pocket, but they were quite worthless now.
He hunkered down to see the sand.
Footprints. The foot was fairly small, but the indentations were deep, and they almost dragged, as if the imprinter had carried a heavy load. There seemed to be drag marks in the sand, as well.
A seabird let out a raucous cry in the night, a sound so sudden and eerie in the darkness that even he tensed, spinning around. He stood quickly.
The last of the fires had burned out. There seemed to be nothing in the darkness.
He looked toward the center of the island where pines and palms had taken root, and where someone, evading capture, might well seek sanctuary.
TARA COULD SEE HIM coming.
The man was tall. The darkness wouldn’t allow much more information than that, but she had a sense about him. It was almost like she was being stalked by a jungle cat, one of the panthers that prowled the hammocks of the Everglades up on the mainland. He didn’t slouch. He didn’t creep along the beach. He just stood there, perhaps doing the same as she—trying to sense the very air around him.
He couldn’t possibly see her in the dark, and yet, she felt as if he was looking right through her.
He saw her!
Or he saw something. He started walking right toward her little palm-and-pine sanctuary, and in a minute, he’d discover where she’d hidden Richard.
Tara eased to her feet; as silently as she could, she made her way behind the stand of pines and crept back into the brush and palms … once there, she fled back toward the west, allowing the foliage to slap around her, giving a clear path to anyone who wanted to follow her.
She did well. Turning back, she saw the man was no longer on the beach. He had disappeared as if he’d been no more than a shadow in the night.
She weighed her situation. Looking up, she saw the outstretched branch of a sea grape tree. She measured the distance, lowered herself and bounded onto the high branch. Then she sat silent, waiting.
EVEN FOR FINN, PURSUIT in the dark was not easy, though it was usually more of a friend to him, and an enemy to those he sought.
He had followed the trail, and yet, it seemed amazing that, now, the same person who had made those footprints was bounding as light as a bird through the trees. He followed with all speed, running through brush, a copse of pines and through a thicket containing a dozen different trees. He followed the thrashing he had heard, the bracken breaking underfoot, and he burst through the trees onto a higher spit of ragged brush and poor sand.
Which was empty.
He held still, listening again.
He let go of the natural sounds of the island.
The now-slightly distant roll of the waves, the rustle of branches. He heard again a sound that was guttural, like a rooting sound, as if animals—wild pigs? boars?—sought deep in the ground for some kind of food. He heard the wings of a bird as it took flight from one of the tall trees.
He knew that the Spaniards had found native tribes living on most of the islands; fishermen and others had come and gone forever. Pirates had made use of the channels and the reefs to escape capture. They’d brought new species to the little islands, and there might well be anything—plant or animal—hunting in a semitropic climate here.
Pigs, birds, insects, crabs.
He kept listening, concentrating his extrasensory abilities.
Then he could hear it.
The beating of a heart.
The sound was fast, a strong rhythm.
And then Finn knew; he was being watched, just as he was watching.
He stood where he was for a long time, and then he started back to the beach. As he did so, he heard a wild flurry of activity behind him; he turned, and he saw the figure running back into the trees.
He raced after the fleeting form, but in the midst of trees again, the subject of his chase disappeared once again. He didn’t hesitate that time.
He stopped cold, and he listened.
And found that heartbeat again.
He waited a very long time, until he was certain, until the thump-thump-thump grew stronger and so familiar to him that it almost seemed a cacophony.
He took aim, and jumped, certainly taking his culprit by complete surprise.
Even though the thought had crossed his mind upon uncovering the petticoat, he had not fully accepted that he might actually find the woman he had lost in Gettysburg. The experience had been such a sword in his side; he had chafed at losing her, been haunted even by what had happened, and now …
She screamed, not so much with fear, but with complete surprise, as he made his way to the branch, capturing her in his arms and bringing them both slamming down to the ground below. He looked into her eyes, amazed that he remembered them so well, and as she stared up at him, he realized that she found instant recognition, as well.
She stared at him as if fighting for the right words of loathing to hurl his way. She was winded, he realized, even if he’d twisted himself to take the brunt of the fall. And so he spoke first.
“Why, miss. Fancy meeting you here, on such a dark and lonely night.”
She looked back at him, gasping for breath, and he eased his hold.
“Let me go—move. You’re an oaf. You’re a disgrace to your uniform,” she spat out.
“I don’t wear a uniform. But I am taking you in—”
“You have no power to take me anywhere.”
“You’re a blockade runner. And I believe your name is Gator, and that you’re plotting against the president of the United States of America. You will face a military tribunal, and you will hang, my dear,” he said most pleasantly.
Of course, it was doubtful that she would hang. Southern spies—women—had been incarcerated in D.C., but the judges and leaders seemed loath to take action against such a woman. Hanging one damsel—however clawed and vicious she might be—would just be another knife in the side of the Southern ethic.
And, of course, Finn thought, what a waste if she were to hang. Even now, in half-dry, tattered clothing, hair tangled in clumps around her features, she was stunning. The same uncanny beauty he’d reflected upon since Gettysburg. She had a perfect face, with large eyes that dominated the fine, slender structure of her cheeks and jawline. Her brows were clean and even and flyaway, and if she were to smile …
She didn’t smile. “You’re in a Southern state, you fool,” she told him.
“There’s a massive Union fort down at the tip, in case you hadn’t noticed. And let’s see, the Union has held St. Augustine since ‘62. Plus, there’s a host of Union sailors about to land on this little islet, while I’m not seeing any boys in butternut and gray marching along the sand to save you. Oh—and since we’re at war, I think I’m doing okay,” he told her pleasantly.
To his amazement, she smiled, giving no resistance.
And then she did.
He had eased his hold to something far too gentle; she was small, but apparently built of steel. She suddenly shoved him aside with exceptional strength, kicked out hard, catching him entirely by surprise and with a sound assault, and leaped to her feet.
“Ass!” she hissed.
