The uncharted series box.., p.25
The Uncharted Series Box Set 2, page 25
part #5 of Uncharted Series
Then the face changed, and it was her martial arts instructor. What was Coach doing under the water? Before she could figure out what was happening, the face morphed into Mrs. Polk, her favorite foster parent, and then it was Professor Tim.
“Tim!” Bailey cried.
His eyes opened and focused sharply on her for one desperate second. His mouth didn’t move, but she heard his voice. “You can make a family out of friends.” Then the image disappeared.
Bailey sat up, panting. She wasn’t back in Virginia; she was in the spare bedroom in John Colburn’s house in the Land.
She reached to the lamp on the bedside table and felt for the switch before she remembered there was no electricity here. She didn’t need light anyway. The bright, oval moon shone through the window sheers.
Standing, she straightened the old-fashioned nightgown Lydia had given her, then she tiptoed to the wardrobe. John had insisted she use it for her clothes. The wardrobe’s ornately carved door creaked as it opened. Its interior smelled like lavender and old lady, which were basically the same smell.
Her fingers found the two-way radio in her backpack. She carried it to the window and stood between a wooden rocking chair and a doily-covered side table. The modern electronic devise looked as out-of-place as she felt.
She opened the curtain and let the moonlight hit the radio’s digital clock display. 06:18. The clocks on the yacht had been set to Cape Town time, so it was probably an hour earlier here. Maybe two. She could check the Colburns’ clock in the living room and set the radio to match it while no one was up to see her. Later. It wasn’t knowing the time that had woken her.
She sat in the rocking chair and switched on the radio, trying not to wonder about the deceased relative who had once lived in this room. The look on Lydia’s face when she’d shown Bailey to the room told her the death had been recent and the grief still fresh. Bailey knew the feeling well and knew how to bury it even better.
The two-way radio buzzed to life. Static hummed from the speaker on the same lonely frequency as her heart. Her shins ached after spending all of yesterday hiking up and down the rocky shore, searching for any sign of Tim. John had been true to his word and enlisted several village men to help with the search, but they’d found no sign of Tim.
So here she sat by the moonlit window in an old lady rocking chair, wearing an old lady nightgown, hoping to hear Tim’s voice over the radio, imagining him curled up in the boat with his lucky hat, lost and hungry. She may have come to a patriarchal society, but she couldn’t sit like a helpless female of times past.
She turned the hand crank on the radio for a couple minutes to recharge the battery then switched it off and tucked it into her backpack. After changing into a sweatshirt and her only good pair of jeans, she slipped the backpack’s straps over her shoulders and reached for the glass knob on the bedroom door. Something about the way the moonlight caught the smooth knob stopped her. She glanced back at the room where she’d left the bed unmade and the nightgown crumpled on the handwoven rug.
The Colburns might lead simple looking lives, but that was no reason to be a jerk. She wasn’t above them. Her technologically advanced society had disintegrated. So what if her people could send a message around the world in a microsecond? Those messages were usually selfish, untrue, or divisive.
She smoothed the bed’s soft sheets, spread the warm quilt evenly over the mattress, and fluffed the feather pillows. More care had gone into weaving those sheets and sewing that quilt and stuffing those pillows than into anything she owned. No matter what modern superiority complex had been ground into her psyche, she would show gratitude for the way of life in the Land.
After all, she’d long dreamed of a sweet and simple life.
Now she had the chance to build that life. All that was missing was the man who’d given her this opportunity. She would find him. He was the closest person she had to family. He’d even said himself a person can make a family out of friends, and that’s what they’d done. Without him she was alone to face these strangers.
She closed the bedroom door then stepped lightly through the hall and rounded the corner into the living room. The short hand of the clock on the wall behind an overstuffed armchair pointed to V. Five in the morning. She could be at the shore by first light.
As she walked through the wide doorway from the living room to the kitchen, a shadowy figure moved near the stove. Even in the dark, the lines of Revel’s suspenders made stripes down the back of his shirt. He struck a match and lit an oil lantern but kept the flame low.
She stepped into the kitchen, and he snapped his face toward her as if she’d startled him. “Why are you up so early?” he asked.
She walked to the cabinet where she’d seen him get a cup for her yesterday. As she filled it at the sink, she avoided answering his question. “I’ve only been here two days, and on both days, someone was surprised to see me awake the next morning.”
A half-smile briefly curved his lips then disappeared as he quickly looked away.
She took a long drink of the crisp water. There was no need to hide what she was doing. “I’m going to the shore to look for Tim. What are you doing up?”
Revel held up a copper kettle. “I wanted an early start.”
“Why?” After the word slipped out, she realized work started early in an agrarian culture. She should be more sensitive so she could fit in here. “Sorry. You have chores to do. I get it. I’m not a morning person.”
“Nor am I.” Revel set the kettle on the stove then walked close enough she could clearly see his features in the dim light. Brown whiskers shadowed his jaw. Faint lines at the corners of his eyes placed him in his thirties, late twenties if he spent most of his time in the sun.
He kept his voice quiet. “I couldn’t sleep. Just kept thinking of what happened the other night.” His eyes finally met hers. “I’m sorry about your friends.”
She couldn’t mourn over Micah and the crewmen, whom she barely knew, while Tim was still floating along the coast in the tender. She shrugged, needing to appear tougher than she felt. “Yeah, well, they weren’t my friends. Tim was my only friend on that yacht, and he’s still out there. I’ll find him today.”
Revel took a mug down from the cupboard but kept his gaze on her. “Connor said violence is a part of life in the outside world. I can’t imagine going through something like the other night over and over again.”
She hadn’t thought about the trauma the crewmen’s violence might have inflicted on Connor’s security team. If the locals had never experienced an attack, they were probably in shock. Connor might know how to handle post-traumatic stress, but a person raised in the Land might not. She offered her old coach’s words to Revel. “Survivors find ways to cope.”
“You are a survivor.” Revel’s statement came out more like a question.
“Always have been.”
“How do you cope?”
She flashed a quick smile, like that would lighten his dark mood. “I do the next thing.”
His gaze intensified as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t. Just when she thought he was done with their conversation, he shook his head slowly, loosening the strands of sun-bleached hair across his forehead. “It still must be difficult.”
She began to deny it, but her ability to pretend was weakening. “Yeah, it stinks. Especially since Connor blames me. The whole mess was the crewmen’s fault.”
Revel looked past her with a thousand-yard stare. Maybe he was reliving the firefight. No matter how she felt, it must be worse for a person who’d never seen a gun to encounter two men shooting wildly in the night. Revel’s unblinking eyes turned back to her, but he didn’t speak.
Unable to interpret the look on his face, she busied herself at the sink by filling the water bottle for her backpack. “I’d understand if you blame me too.”
“No.” His brow furrowed and he frowned like he was pained by what she suggested. “No, I don’t blame you for what happened.”
A reply of thanks dissolved on her tongue. Even if he didn’t blame her, the urge to apologize kept her from leaving the kitchen.
The kettle on the stove whistled, diverting their attention. He slowly moved away, leaving hope in the air. It was nice to know the man who apprehended her two days ago now sympathized with her.
He poured boiling water over a strainer full of dark green leaves. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
The scent of her favorite morning beverage filled the room, but whatever he was making wasn’t coffee. She hooked her thumbs in her backpack straps. “No, I should go. Like I said, I have to do the next thing.”
“And find Tim?”
When she nodded, he set the kettle on an iron trivet and walked toward the back door. “I’m coming too.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do,” he said, taking a jacket from a row of silver hooks in the wall by the door.
When she’d dreamed of the life she might live in the Land, she hadn’t considered the traditionalist culture meant having men hover over her as if she couldn’t protect herself. They had no idea what she was capable of. “Look, Revel, I can take care of myself.”
Though her words came out with more of a defensive tone than she’d intended, Revel simply nodded. “I know you don’t need me to go with you, but I need to do the next thing too.” He reached around her and opened the door. “The reason I’m up early is to go back to the shore. It bothered me that we didn’t find your friend yesterday. The way I see it, you are welcome to go with me.” A slight grin curved the edge of his mouth. “After you, ma’am.”
Ma’am? She would let that one slide. If his manners were supposed to mean anything more than kindness, he was in for disappointment. Her desire for finding a family in no way included making one. She didn’t return his grin. “Fine. We can split up and cover more ground. Two is better than one—”
“Because they have a good reward for their labor.”
His continuance of the Bible verse she’d started to recite made her smile. “Yeah, something like that.”
He closed the door behind them. “How is your leg?”
“Hm? Oh, fine.” She inhaled the humid predawn air and glanced at Revel’s profile. “It’s scarred, but the gray leaf medicine healed the wound quickly. It was amazing.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
“You never needed it?”
He shook his head. “But the gray leaf medicine saved my brother James’s life a couple of months ago. He hated it.”
Recalling the euphoric sensation, she wondered how the inhabitants of the Land resisted drinking cup after cup of it simply to feel good. “Your brother hated drinking the gray leaf tea?”
“Many people don’t like it.”
She walked between the back of the house and the doctor’s office. The downstairs windows were dark, but the glow of a lantern illumined an upstairs window. Sophia must be up early. She looked back at Revel. “Why would someone not like the gray leaf?”
“Probably fear.”
“Of what?”
“Old stories. There’s one about how a horse died after it ate a few gray leaves. One about how the gray leaf tea put a young woman in a coma and she almost died. Another says it made a man infertile. Those sorts of stories.”
“So, is the gray leaf unreliable or is the folklore?”
“Probably both.” Revel chuckled. There was more to him than shell-shocked regret. He motioned to the ground as they navigated between trees. “Watch your step through here. Lots of roots.”
Twigs crackled with each footstep when they neared the forest at the back of John’s property. The oval-shaped moon wasn’t as bright as it had been two nights ago, and first light had yet to grace the sky. She didn’t need much light to know her way to the shore by now. She’d walked this path several times already, having spent yesterday combing the shore and only returning to the house when John told her it was mealtime.
The hum of the waves reminded Bailey of the beaches in Accomack, especially after the barrier islands had washed away. As they walked toward the waterline on the hard-packed sand, the black sky lightened to gray then to pale lavender.
Revel put a hand in front of her, stopping her. “Don’t go any closer to the water. The tide is about to change. The surface is only calm for a few minutes during the full moon—like it was when you came ashore night before last.”
At first, she found his warning overcautious, but the growing light gave her a clearer look at the incoming water. Quick swirls in the sand under the receding waves demonstrated its harsh undertow. She didn’t need to go into the water anyway. Tim was on the shore somewhere; she just knew it. She scanned the beach in both directions. “Where to start?”
Revel pointed south. “Since we won’t be able to go past the bluffs once the tide comes in, let’s start there.”
She hadn’t meant to ask for his advice but took it anyway. “That’s what I was thinking.”
Seagulls scurried up and down the shore. The light of the coming dawn grew, aiding her search for any sign of Professor Tim. It had been thirty-six hours since they’d said goodbye on the yacht. Her last image of him was while he was packing his bag, wearing the white bucket hat he claimed was lucky. The hat didn’t matter as much as what he’d put in his bag. “I hope he has his medicine with him.”
“What type of medicine?”
“Insulin. He’s diabetic.”
Revel took his eyes off the beach long enough to look at her. “What would happen to him if he didn’t have it?”
“Sometimes he can go awhile without it and feel fine. But if his blood sugar dropped low enough, he could get very sick.” She had to shout over the waves’ loud crashing. “I didn’t bring him out here to die. I’m counting on Tim’s survival to make all of this okay.”
“What do you mean?”
“If he dies, it is all my fault.”
Revel stopped walking. Bailey had said too much. She hadn’t meant to create a sentimental moment with him. Something about his openness made her let down her guard. She shouldn’t. Ever.
But he wasn’t looking at her; he was looking past her at some tussock grass where the wind-tossed sand met the wilderness. Something yellow was caught in the bottom of the grass.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to it.
She hurried ahead of him to check it out. Waist-high grass blades swished in the breeze. She pushed the long blades out of her face and grabbed the wet object. The emblem on it matched the yacht company’s logo. “It’s a life vest.”
At her announcement, Revel’s eyes widened. He jumped toward the high grass and searched frantically. Bailey dropped the vest and moved the surrounding grass, folding it in one direction then the other. “Tim? Tim?”
Her calls went unanswered.
After several minutes of searching, Revel had gone some twenty yards down the shore. His tall frame was bent over, swallowed by high grass. He stood erect and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Bailey! Come here!”
The ocean’s furious waves crashed against the rocks between the sea and the tall grass, spraying her with salty mist. She ran toward Revel. He knelt to the ground and stood again, holding up something white. It was made of thick cloth and regained its shape when he gave it a quick shake. Part of it was embroidered with a little black giraffe silhouette.
Bailey’s feet slowed as she got closer. Each step felt like she was walking in thick tar. “That is Tim’s lucky hat.”
She took the hat from Revel. Tim never would have removed his lucky hat. A scientist with a superstition. Even he’d laughed at himself for that one. Everything else that had been in his boat, including his remains, would soon wash ashore if it hadn’t already. She rubbed a thumb over the embroidered giraffe. “He didn’t survive, did—” her voice caught, taking her words and her hope with it.
Revel shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Bailey.”
Chapter Fifteen
An overcast sky dimmed the afternoon light in the kitchen, so Eva opened the pantry doors wider to see inside it. She turned the jars on the shelves to check their labels, and Sybil immediately straightened the jars back into perfect rows. After making a note on her inventory list, Eva chuckled at Sybil. “Could you at least wait until I have my arms out of the way before you start that?”
“Start what?” Sybil frowned, drawing her full lips into a cute pout.
“You know exactly what.”
“You get to have your messy office, and I get to keep my kitchen tidy.”
“Fair enough.”
Sybil’s expression swiftly changed then as though she suddenly had a secret. “Did he say anything before he left this morning?”
“Who?”
A faint blush colored Sybil’s cheeks. “Isaac.”
“Isaac Owens? About the farm job?”
“Yes, did he accept your offer?”
Eva counted the cans of cherries next. “He did.” Just as she wrote down the number, Sybil squealed like a wrong note on the violin. The sound startled Eva, and she broke the tip of her pencil. “What was that for?”
Sybil’s smile broadened. “When does he start?”
The pure bliss in her sister’s eyes betrayed her infatuation. Still, Eva had to ask. “Are you intrigued with him?”
“No.” She tried to erase the emotion from her face to no avail. “No, I’m just thrilled we will finally have more help around here. For Leonard and Father and you, of course. I know how badly you wanted to hire someone.” She pretended to busy herself with the jars, but another happy squeal filled the pantry.
Eva set her pencil and notebook on a shelf and turned her sister by the shoulders. “Tell me everything.”
