by Janzen, Tara
They’d been found.
The sewer tunnel was three or four feet below the opening where they stood, and both of them scrambled like mad over the edge, their feet splashing into the stream. A slimy bottom sent Jessica almost instantly to her knees.
“Up, up, up, babe.” Cooper pulled her up and pulled her along, running, slipping, sliding, and doing his darnedest to get her in front of him. Heavy, padding footsteps sounded in the tunnel they’d left, an echoing rhythm of massive weight accompanied by the deep bass of the creature’s rumbling hisses.
Cooper had never more surely heard the sound of death.
“Oh, geez, oh, geez, my God, oh – oh…” Jessica was gasping beside him, slipping, and running, and splashing.
Then came the big splash, one of a huge weight heaving itself into the stream with a scraping thud and a terrible grunt.
This was it, the crystal clear and precise line between life and death. If they did not prevail with speed and one damn bamboo pole, they would die, and be eaten, and never be found. Unless he could hold the beast off, and by some miracle, Jessica found a way out.
“Take the light.” He pressed it into her hand and turned to take a stand, the piece of bamboo his only weapon to protect himself against…
For the barest split second, all he could do was stand and stare and categorize what was coming down the tunnel.
Giant.
Reptile.
Lizard.
Venom.
Claws.
Scales.
And a deeply forked, long, snaking, yellow tongue.
Komodo Dragon. Huge. Coming at him like a heaving, grunting freight train.
“Ladder, ladder, Coop, Cooper, ladder.” The words sounded somewhere in the distance.
He’d have given anything for a 12-gauge loaded with slugs.
Or a ladder out of this place.
Finally, it dawned on him what Jessica was saying, what she was screaming at him.
“Ladder! Cooper! There’s a ladder!”
And he had about five seconds to reach it.
The drugs, the pain, the fear all left him on a surge of pure muscle-pumping, mind-focusing adrenaline.
He moved like a rocket, sprinting up the tunnel and lofting himself onto the ladder. His hands and feet found rungs at the same time, and with half a second to spare, he and Jessica heaved aside a manhole cover at the top of the ladder and burst into a circle of bright light.
Sixteen
“Ms. Langston. May I see you in my office, please?”
Jessica leaned forward and pressed the response panel on the intercom. “Yes, Mr. Daniels. I’ll be right in .”
She stopped and poured them both a cup of coffee before she breezed through the dragon doors and walked straight over the top of the dragon on the floor to his desk. The fierce beast with emerald eyes and fire dancing on its tongue had been tamed.
“Thanks, Jessie.” Cooper took the coffee from her and handed her the morning paper. “It’s been a week. I’m surprised we’re still making the front page.”
Jessica skimmed the Chronicle, finally finding an article toward the bottom with the dubious headline of PIRATE BUSTERS SHUT DOWN HERB SHOP. That’s what she’d been reduced to, a pirate buster, she who had graduated at the top of her class.
“I think you’re pretty well all washed up as far as the financial district goes, honey,” Cooper said, not doing a very good job of hiding his grin.
He was right. She’d become notorious practically overnight, when she’d dragged herself out of that Chinatown sewer and into the bright lights of a television crew filming the biggest traffic jam to hit Grant Street since the Chinese New Year. Four squad cars had been on the scene, with Luke Signorelli in the lead of a small platoon of cops looking for the lady who had locked her double-parked car and left it running.
When Cooper had hauled himself out behind her, he, too, had become an instant, if fleeting, celebrity. The media were more interested in a woman bounty hunter than a man. They especially liked that she was a single mother, a super mom, the woman who could do it all—work her sedate job as an investment counselor during the day, bust pirates by night, and tuck the children into bed in between.
They were wrong, of course. She had a brother who did kitchen work for a living. Her children never went hungry or had to settle for fish sticks, because they had an Uncle Tony whose idea of fast food was angelhair pasta. She had another brother who spent all of his free time at home, where he was always available to watch the kids, because the love of his life was finding the bifurcation points of the indigenous species in the yard.
She also had a boss who understood that after nearly a month of working for him, she needed an extended vacation. For a week now she’d come into the office just before lunch, allowed Mr. Daniels to wine her and dine her through the noontime meal, then had gone home to burn cookies for the kids after school.
She got to the end of the article and tossed the paper aside. “So the feds have closed down the shop pending further investigation, and they’re tracing a lead to Grand Cayman. Baolian never surfaced, and we’re assuming she sailed out the Golden Gate with her recalcitrant daughter in tow. Where does that leave us, Cooper? Did we win?”
“There was no way to win, Jess,” he said, his smile fading into an expression that was part resignation, part acceptance. “But we did damn good.”
“Where are we having lunch?” she asked, changing the subject. He was right. There had been no way to win, not from the moment his brother had died on a beach in the South China Sea. She was grateful he’d finally come to that understanding.
“Your choice,” he said. “Better make it someplace nice. I think Daniels, Ltd. is going to be belly-up by the end of the year.” He didn’t sound too distressed by the possibility.
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” she said, hiding her own grin. “I heard Mr. Daniels hired himself a really hot MBA out of Stanford who can make money just by reading the stock pages. With a little capital investment, the MBA could save the company.”
“Maybe Mr. Daniels ought to take the MBA to lunch instead of the sweet lady he’s been spending so much time with lately.”
“Maybe.” She smiled at him, and was surprised to see him blush. Damn surprised. “Cooper?”
He lowered his lashes, averting his gaze, and began fumbling through his leather coat pockets. “You saved my life, Jessie, and you know what they say, if somebody saves your life, you owe them a life.”
“I’ve heard the expression, but really, Cooper, I’m not planning on getting into any more trouble.”
“Yeah, well, none of us plans on getting into trouble. It just happens.” He finally pulled a small box free of his coat. His blush deepened, fascinating her. “I’ve had to do a lot of thinking these last few days, and a lot of what I’ve been thinking about is you.” He looked up at her. He was very beautiful, her dragon, with his emerald eyes and his sun-streaked hair. “Life is pretty damn tenuous, Jessie. I want you to have whatever is left of mine.”
She accepted the box with trembling hands. “Better be careful, Cooper. A woman could take a statement like that a lot of different ways.”
She opened the velvet-lined box and gasped. The ring inside was gaudy and outrageous. It was gold and big, with a dragon with emerald eyes and a dove with diamonds, locked in either mortal combat or a tender embrace. It said By Love Alone on the inside in a delicately engraved script.
“Take it however you want,” he said. “Indecent proposal, or marriage proposal. For the kids’ sake and mine, though, I’d rather you went for the legally binding contract.”
Jessica brushed at the tears in her eyes, wondering what always made women cry when they were happy. “I’m going for the legal partnership.”
He slipped the ring on her finger, and she couldn’t believe how wild it looked, or how much she loved it. Her conservative image was in serious danger.
“I love you, Jessie,” he said, taking her hand in his and pu
lling her down onto his lap. “I’m giving you the ring to be my wife. I want you to know your love is safe with me.”
Another wave of tears ran down her cheeks, and she brushed those away too.
“Is there a reason you’re crying that I need to know about?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m crying because I’m so happy.”
“Ah,” he said, not sounding the least bit enlightened.
“I think you’re going to have to kiss me, Cooper, to take my mind off how happy I am.”
He didn’t need a second request, but pulled her mouth down to his to softly plunder, taste, and tease, until her tears were replaced by passion.
* * *
Six months later
“Cooper?” Jessica came up beside him on the deck of his house and put her arm around his waist. In front of them, the Pacific Ocean stretched all the way to the South China Sea and beyond.
Cooper pulled her to his side and bent down to kiss her lips. Some hurts might never heal, he mused, some people would never be replaced, but the awful emptiness he’d felt since Jackson’s death was slowly being filled with love—Jessie’s love with her motherly quirks, and all the wanton love she gave him in bed. The children liked him enough for a good relationship to grow, and he was fascinated by them. Christina was so delicate and strong, so like her mother. Eric’s biggest disappointment was that the Dragon didn’t have an actual dragon tattooed on his body somewhere. Cooper had told them there had once been a dragon with a tattoo. That dragon had been Jackson, and it was time to put his memory in a place of rest instead of a place of pain.
“This just arrived by courier,” she said when the sweet kiss was over, holding up an ancient-looking envelope.
The chop set in wax on the back made his spine stiffen.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Baolian. It’s her chop.” He took the envelope and broke the seal, his moment of contentment gone. With quick movements, he snapped open the letter, not knowing what to expect, but somehow expecting something different than the few words she’d written.
He swore softly and handed the letter to Jessica. She read it aloud. “Shulan tells me I must tell you I am most sorry for Jack Sun. She says this will help us, all of us.”
She folded the letter back into its envelope and set it on a deck chair. Then she took his hand in hers. “Come on.” She pulled him toward the bedroom.
“Are the kids asleep?” For her sake he forced a smile.
“Like a couple of rocks.”
He wanted her, he always wanted her, but he couldn’t hold the smile in place. “Jessie, I know what you’re doing, but you can’t make all the hurt go away with love.”
She looked up at him, and what he saw in her eyes made a liar out of him.
“Oh, yes you can, Cooper. Love is an amazing thing.”
He believed her enough to go with her, and it didn’t take much faith to continue believing her while she was in his arms. By the time the deepest part of the night had fallen, he was a convert.
He woke later, restless, and eased out of bed, careful not to wake her. Fog had slipped in over the coast while they’d slept. The deck was a netherworld of muted sounds and skyless night. With a soft tread, he went back to where they’d stood and bent to pick the letter up off the chair where they’d left it. His fingers encountered only the wooden slats of the chair. The letter was gone, blown by the wind into the sea, where all earthly life had been created.
Cooper waited for the sense of loss to come, but the only thing that came to him was Jessie, to wrap her warmth around him.
Epilogue
Sun Shulan stood in her house on the Peak, looking out a window that framed Victoria Harbor and the Hong Kong skyline. She’d done her best, and her best had not been good enough. Her mother still ruled the South China Sea, unchecked and unreformed; the half brother she’d risked her life to save was still in danger.
With a heavy sigh, she turned and forced herself to meet the fiery emerald eyes of the man being held in the foyer by her guards. His hair flowed to his waist like a river of black silk. Powerful muscles strained beneath the coolie clothes she’d bought for him to wear.
Holding him captive was like trying to cage a wildcat . . . or a dragon. She couldn’t do it forever, couldn’t hide him forever, and yet his only protection was that Baolian thought Jackson Daniels, Sun Yi’s bastard son, was dead.
Another sigh escaped her as she turned back toward the window. Someday she would have to let him go. Someday soon.
* * * * * * * * *
Thank you for reading The Dragon and the Dove. For more information on my writing and my books please visit me on my website www.tarajanzen.com; on Facebook http://on.fb.me/mSstpd; and Twitter @tara_janzen http://twitter.com/#!/tara_janzen.
Don’t miss Jackson’s story in DRAGON’S EDEN !
Please read on for excerpts from Dragon’s Eden and Stevie Lee
Dragon’s Eden
Prologue
The island floated on the horizon in a darkly azure sea, its windward edge painted into visibility by the rising sun. Jackson Daniels leaned closer to the seaplane’s window, watching the blush of dawn spread up the eastern flank of a tall, jagged mountain. Morning mists wreathed the peak with gossamer clouds and liquid sunshine, making the island look like paradise, a tropical heaven on earth.
He turned away from the window, letting out a short sound of disgust. Given the way his luck had been running lately, his money was on the island being just a new version of hell.
He looked down at the shackles on his ankles, the handcuffs on his wrists, and the chain running between the two inconveniences. It didn’t matter what the island turned out to be, he wasn’t going anywhere, neither to heaven nor hell without his jailer’s permission. That was for damn sure.
The plane banked, and Sher Chang, the brutish behemoth sitting next to him, jerked him back from the window, grabbing him by his wounded shoulder and digging his fingers in hard. A curse lodged against Jackson’s teeth. From the seat in front of him, he heard a woman’s murmured command to release him. Sher Chang complied, and Jackson slumped forward into a silent ball of pain.
He knew from experience that any show of weakness on his part would be met with a generous dose of injected painkillers, just as any show of strength was met with an added shackle and chain. He couldn’t win. He’d been at the mercy of the woman and her gang of Chinese pirates since . . . since forever, it seemed.
A wry grin curved his mouth. The situation could have been worse. Instead of the young woman named Sun Shulan sitting in the front seat of the seaplane, his jailer could have been her mother, Fang Baolian, dreaded pirate queen of the South China Sea and the lady who’d had him shot for refusing her sexual favors.
“Stop worrying, Jen. You’re like an old woman,” Shulan said in Cantonese, her voice rising enough for Jackson to hear her over the drone of the engines. She sounded exasperated with the old man in the seat next to her. “She will accept him onto the island, and she will take care he is not harmed. I can do no better for him than to bring him here, away from Hong Kong and my mother’s spies.”
She? Jackson thought, his body tensing in spite of himself. He didn’t need another “she.” He didn’t want another “she” running and ruining his life. He’d always known maritime bounty hunting was dangerous work—pirates had only gotten more daring and more ruthless over the centuries, not less—but he’d never thought it would be a woman who finally brought him to his knees, let alone three: Baolian, the “hell has no fury like a woman scorned” contingent; Shulan, the one who had saved him for reasons he’d rather not believe; and now the new “she,” the one who would take him and keep him on a small strip of land floating between the earth and the sky.
He, the hunter, had been trapped by women, captured by women. His only consolation was in knowing his brother, Cooper, had survived Baolian’s ambush on the godforsaken beach south of Singapore where he’d been shot. Shulan had sworn t
hat was true, and Jackson believed the pirate princess. It was easy to believe her when she held his hands in hers and gazed at him with her warm amber eyes, her expression sweetly innocent, assuring him she only had his welfare at heart. It was harder to believe her when she had an extra chain added to his bindings. He wished she would hurry up and ransom him, get the whole ordeal over with. He could imagine no other reason for her interference in her mother’s fit of deadly pique, despite her wild story of him being her long-lost half brother.
The plane dropped in altitude, making a slow descent into the mist. Within seconds, they were enshrouded in impenetrable fog. The mountain and the island’s rolling green hills were gone, along with the azure sea and the streaking brilliance of dawn across the horizon.
An unexpected calm overtook him in those silent moments of blind flying, a peace he shouldn’t have felt. Maybe it was merely acceptance of the inevitable, but it felt like something more, like a promise of life, or joy.
The fanciful thought brought another wry grin to his lips. Joy. Right. He was losing it.
“Sedate him,” Shulan ordered, and his peace shattered.
He swore, a vicious sound that had no affect whatsoever on his jailers. He felt the prick of the needle and the flood of warmth that always preceded a deep, dreamless sleep.
“When he’s out, take off the cuffs and chains, and be careful with him.” Shulan’s voice came to him as if from a far distance. “If he drowns in the surf, I’ll turn you all over to my mother!”
Hell, he decided in one last hazy thought. Not life. Not joy. The island was going to be pure hell.
* * * * * *
Read on for an excerpt from Stevie Lee
Stevie Lee
One
Halsey Morgan was alive—bad news sure traveled fast.
Stevie Lee Brown held the telephone receiver at arm’s length and gave it a long, hard look, barely fighting the temptation to rip the darn thing off the wall. Ten lousy calls in the last four hours had all reported the same lousy news—Halsey Morgan was alive. From the Grand Lake postmaster to the station attendant at the Gas Em Up, everybody wanted to extend their sympathies.
