Altar Of Eden

A shadow fell over her and growled. “Jeezus H. Christ! Are you all right?” The nasal in his voice pitched higher. “I didn’t mean to shoot. It was an accident, I swear. If you hadn’t gone off and kept flying away… I mean, didn’t you goddamn see me?”

His words were harsh, graveled, more accusation than concern, as if what had happened were all her fault. But there was something else about the voice. Maybe it was the situation: on her back, dazed, woken into a nightmare.

Past and present blurred around her.

The shadowy shaped dropped next to her, loomed over her. His face was sculpted out of darkness. He reached for her.

“Don’t move.” It sounded like a threat. “You’re all tangled up.”

Still, she pulled away.

Something about that voice…

All of a sudden it struck her like a blow to the gut. The voice, even the shape of the silhouette leaning over her. She knew this man. Gasping in shock, she scrambled back, as if trying to escape a past that had haunted her for over a decade. She became further snarled in the helicopter’s cable and her harness.

“What’s wrong with you?” The speaker stepped forward, turning slightly to face the approach of pounding boots, his face lit by the fires.

She stared, shell-shocked. She recognized that man’s features: the crooked nose, the fat lips, the piggish eyes. Memory crushed her. An empty space filled inside her with color and noise. In her ears, she heard her own sobbing, her cries to stop, felt again the humiliation and terror. She must’ve blocked it all away, pushed it deep down with everything else. Traumatized, she had somehow convinced herself that she’d not gotten a good look at her attacker.

She was wrong.

Here was the man who’d tried to rape her ten years ago, whose attack led to Tom’s death. “Lorna!”

She jumped at the call of her name. It was Jack, running toward her, coming to the rescue like before, blurring past and present even further.

Still, Lorna didn’t take her eyes off the bastard in front of her. He seemed to shrink and drop back into the shadows as Jack came running up with his brother.

Jack hurried to her side, not even giving the monster a second glance. He dropped hard to his knees. “Lorna, don’t move!”

Though the words were the same as a moment ago, she heard no threat this time, only heartfelt concern in Jack’s voice.

“I’m okay,” she said to him, then repeated it for herself. “I’m okay.”

She grabbed his arm. He helped her up and out of the harness. Over his shoulder, she watched her attacker retreat away, heading across the farm.

“It’s him,” she said.

Jack noted where she stared-then stiffened next to her in recognition. His face became a thundercloud.

Randy swore sharply. “Shoulda known. Garland Chase. Sheriff Gumbo’s inbred bastard. Who else would go and shoot half-cocked like that?”

Lorna clutched Jack’s shoulder, finally putting a name to a nightmare. Garland Chase. Her voice rang with a mix of certainty and disbelief. “He’s the bastard who attacked me. The night Tommy died.”

Randy turned sharply toward her.

“I know,” Jack whispered.

Randy squinted. “What’re you two talking about?”

Jack’s brother knew nothing about that night. His family had grown to hate her, to blame her, the same family she’d once hoped would be her own. She began to tremble, perhaps still half in shock from the crash.

Jack took her in his arms and held her.

She didn’t resist. She felt the strength in his arms and something indefinable, a warmth and closeness long missing from her life. In his arms, she realized for the first time the true depth of her loss that horrible night-not just the loss of an unborn baby and a young lover, but also an entire family, a future full of love and warmth.

She’d lost it all that night.

Yet, with that recognition came no sorrow. Instead, anger, hot and bright, surged through her. Lorna was done with secrets, sick to the bone of them. She pushed out of Jack’s arms-and fully out of that old nightmare. This wasn’t the past. She wasn’t a scared half-drugged teenager any longer.

She looked around her and spotted her tranquilizer gun. She stalked over to the rifle, picked it up, and hurried ahead. Fire still blazed down her back with every step, but the pain helped focus her.

Jack came alongside her. “Lorna, what’re you thinking of doing? He’s not worth it.”

She burned him with a glare. “Of course he’s not worth it. I’ll deal with that bastard later. Right now we have bigger problems.”

She searched to either side of the boardwalk, backtracking along the path on which she’d been dragged. When she hit, she’d lost hold of the blanket and the cub. Both went flying out of her arms on impact. But where had they gone?

She rounded another pond-a breeding pond from the looks of it-and spotted a flash of crimson below, near the water’s edge. Beyond the rail, a grassy bank ringed the pond. The fire blanket and its cargo had rolled halfway into the water.

Lorna set down her rifle, ducked under the rail, and dropped below.

Ahead, the blanket squirmed. A plaintive mewl sounded. The motion sent ripples across the pond’s mirror. Out on the water, black logs drifted closer, drawn by the motion. A scaly-ridged pair of eyes rose like a submarine’s periscope from the water.

A pair of boots struck the grassy mud behind her.

Jack.

She kept her focus on the pond, on the blanket, and rushed forward. She reached the bank in four steps. The blanket shook as the trapped cub struggled to escape the water.

If it got loose… ran off…

A hem of the blanket lifted. She spotted a tiny white muzzle, whiskers. Lorna lunged forward, sliding on her knees in the mud. She grabbed the blanket and scooped up the cub.

“Gotcha…”

She leaned back, pulling the cub to her chest. She rolled to her feet and straightened-when water exploded from the pond’s edge. An alligator burst out, jaws wide, fish-belly-white maw and yellow teeth flashing in the dark.

Lorna jerked back, but she was too slow.

The jaws snapped with enough force to shatter bone. Teeth caught the trailing edge of the blanket and ripped it out of her grip. The beast surged back and tossed its leathery head. The blanket went flying, and the cub got hurled along with it. The small cat hit the grass, rolled, then pounced back to its tiny paws. It took off like a flash of lightning away from the pond.

No…

Lorna knew she’d never be quick enough to catch it again. If it reached the open bayou-