“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.”
<
br /> 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.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Saturday, October 22, 2016
The McKinnon Family Home – 3:15 pm
Honor
“I swear, Ice Monroe, if you don’t quit following me around like a lost puppy, I’m gonna give you a proctology exam with my cane!” Honor McKinnon heard the ginger-headed woman threaten outside the closed door to her bathroom.
“Look, Red, the doc said you’re supposed to be keeping off that leg as much as possible,” Honor heard Zeke’s older brother chastise. “Tromping up and down the stairs of this house doesn’t exactly scream taking it easy. Dammit, you could have fallen!”
“Honor, get out here and throw your future brother-in-law out before I shove him down the stairs and ruin the Paradise wedding of the year,” she heard Maggie yell.
“Oh, no! Nobody is ruining this day! We’ve all worked way too hard to get Zeke and Honor to this point. Now, you just scat on out of here, Ice. This is the bride’s staging area. No boys allowed!”
Honor rolled her eyes at Harmony’s statement. Only her sister would call the upstairs bedrooms something as pretentious as the ‘bridal staging area’. Oh, she knew her thoughts were less than charitable, but it had been a long few weeks leading up to this moment.
After the events of that afternoon on Skyview Bluff, she’d needed a few days to get her head back on straight. It wasn’t that she wasn’t thrilled that she had her life back. She was! But when the sun suddenly shines on a cloudy day and blinds you with its beauty, it can be a bit of a shock. And that’s exactly how she’d felt.
Zeke had been there with her every step of the way as her emotions had run the gamut. She’d been enraged when she realized how close her friend had come to dying from blood loss. It seemed that when the bullet entered Maggie’s thigh, it had, in fact, clipped an artery. Thankfully, Cain had been on hand, and he’d performed emergency surgery as soon as they’d gotten Mags to the hospital. After she burned the rage out of her system, the disbelief had begun to sink into her that it was finally over. After living in a state of constant fear for the past eight years, the idea that she could go outside, alone, and not need to worry about monsters lurking around every corner was a new, startling reality. It had taken her weeks before her jumpy nerves settled into something approaching normal. She certainly hadn’t been in the right frame of mind to finish planning her wedding so she’d left it in her sisters’ capable hands. Well, she’d left it to Harmony and Faith, anyway. Patience was… well, Patience… the woman who said ‘I do’ in her pajamas.
It was all just details anyway. As long as Zeke waited for her at the end of the aisle, she was all set. Besides, it was the actual marriage she was looking forward to experiencing. The wedding was just a means to an end. One that her eldest sibling had declared had to be absolutely perfect since three quarters of Paradise County had RSVP’d they’d be attending. Honestly, between Faith’s perpetually happy outlook on all things bridal and Harmony’s wedding day propaganda, Honor had felt positively ready to elope!
Of course, that would have meant she’d never have gotten to wear her fancy, expensive dress down the aisle in front of everyone she loved, she thought with a giddy look in the mirror. Pressing a hand to the gathered waist of her strapless antique white wedding dress, she couldn’t help admiring the intricate water crystal stone beading edging the sweetheart neckline. It was beyond gorgeous,
and she couldn’t wait to see the look on Zeke’s face when he saw her walking toward him in it.
Jumping as she heard someone knocking on the bathroom door, she grinned when she heard Patience call out, “What’s the word, mockingbird? You almost ready? Our oldest sister’s head is gonna explode if we don’t start posing for some wedding pictures soon,” she warned.
“Uhmmmm…. I just need a few more minutes,” she hollered back, biting her lower lip as she shot a look at the white test stick on the back of the commode.
“Okay, I’ll tell her, but if doves start flying out of her ass, I’m blamin’ you, wedding day or not,” her outspoken sister replied.
Honor giggled despite her nerves and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Touching the elegant chignon that Faith had styled her hair into, she reached for the tube of pale rose lip color and began to touch up her makeup. She still had another minute or so left on the test, and she desperately needed to keep her fidgety hands busy.
She wasn’t sure why she was so anxious. It wasn’t like she wouldn’t be thrilled to have Zeke’s baby. Truthfully, she knew that Zeke would view the announcement of a baby as the bow on top of this wonderful day, but she couldn’t help wondering if adding a child this quickly to their lives might be too much too soon. Heck, she didn’t even know how to be a wife yet; could she really learn to be a mother at the same time?
She knew she probably should have waited until after the wedding to take the test she’d picked up a week ago. For that matter, she could have taken it at any time in the last seven days, but she’d always thought that she was overreacting. Over the last six weeks, she’d been more than a little stressed. She’d just believed that was the reason her monthly visitor was late. And when you added that to the fact that she only had half of her reproductive equipment, she’d been almost certain that she was overreacting.
Man of Honor (Passion in Paradise Book 4) Page 57
