Searching for Eden Read online

  Searching For Eden

  Love and Justice, Volume 1

  Kimberly Ford

  Published by Kimberly Ford, 2020.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  SEARCHING FOR EDEN

  First edition. November 5, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Kimberly Ford.

  Written by Kimberly Ford.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  To my fabulous kiddos. You are such bright spots in my life. I can't imagine my life without you.

  Martin, love of my life, God blessed me the day He brought you to me. I love how you love me!

  Chapter One

  She rechecked the rearview mirror.

  Nothing but darkness.

  She’d been driving for hours, since the last water stop. Fatigue made her muscles heavy. A deep breath filled her nostrils with the musty smell of old car and stale cigarettes. The nasty scent had been her only companion for days in her life or death race for Canada.

  Ever since her blind dash out of Dallas, she’d run on adrenaline that flowed through her veins like the Trinity River flooding from its banks. The last forty-eight hours were nothing but a blur.

  “Gotta stay awake. Get to the border.” The words echoed into the empty interior. The same ones that had repeated on a loop for the last few hours, since her life was turned upside down.

  She squirmed in the seat, patted her cheeks, and stifled a yawn. There’d been no time for sleep, not since her escape. They’d be looking for her.

  Through the focused lens of fear, she remembered hands as they clawed at her shirt, fingers bruising her tender skin as they groped her. Even now, his breath, a mix of garlic and cigarettes, gagged her. The sickly-sweet aftershave still clung to her clothes.

  Then the gunshot. Her wrists still ached from the recoil. Her ears had rung for hours.

  And the blood... Oh my God, so much blood.

  And she still didn’t know what happened to Jared.

  Her lungs refused to expand as if a massive fist squeezed her airway, no matter how much she gasped and pulled. Her tongue swelled to fill her mouth and spasms of pain raked her stomach, bending her over the wheel.

  Panic attack.

  Again.

  Cool metal slid under her fingers as she grasped the compass on the copper chain at her left wrist. Rough texture grounded her, and the terror loosened its hold ever so slightly.

  The smallest trickle of air swept through her nose, but it wasn’t enough. She would suffocate out here in the middle of nowhere with no one to know. She grunted. No one would care.

  Breathe. Breathe. Another tendril of air. And then another. Another.

  Breathing was the key. Deep lungfuls of oxygen and sheer willpower held the anxiety in check, but a full-on attack still lurked. Still nipped at her heels. She wouldn’t reward the fear by feeding it. She couldn’t. The price was her life. As usual, there would be no white knight coming to her rescue. Right now, she needed to keep her head clear and focused.

  Her brother’s young voice sing-songed in her head. One day we’ll go to Canada, Eden. We’ll track down Dad and then it will be okay. Everything will be okay. Like it was before...

  Those words, his presence, had been her only comfort on so many lonely nights as they huddled together in dark alleys or abandoned buildings.

  She dug fingernails into her arm, desperate to relieve the tingling that raced along her skin—always an after-effect of the panic attack.

  Only two hours away from the Canadian border. So close.

  Lights flared in the thumbprint-smeared rearview mirror, and her heart seized. The chaos threatened to return and battled at the walls of her defenses. The lights inched closer until the car could’ve kissed her bumper.

  She white-knuckled the wheel until her fingers burned with an ache that slithered up her arms like two pythons squeezing their prey.

  A street appeared on the left, and she made the impulsive turn, fishtailing onto the dirt road. The other car followed.

  Sweat beaded on her upper lip. She drove until the next intersection, made another left-hand turn. Then a right, with the car on her tail, winding farther away from the main road.

  That couldn’t be them. No one but Jared would know where she headed. Fear crawled through her body. This couldn’t be real. She’d driven all the way from Texas to be nabbed so close to freedom?

  The other driver angled down a dirt path. Her body went limp as she continued down the narrow road. Tears of frustration clung to her lashes. No friendly glow of a distant city. No streetlights. No lights period. Nothing but inky blackness and relentless despair.

  Her phone chirped. “Jared.” A sob choked her throat.

  “Jared? Where are you? I’ve been so worried.”

  The shrill whistle of a nose-breather answered her.

  Oh, God.

  Time stopped. The chaos that smoldered beneath the surface reignited.

  There was only one person she knew who breathed like that. “How’d you—”

  “That’s right bitch. Do you really think you can hide? There is nowhere you can go where we can’t find you.”

  Jared would never give him the number... unless...

  Hang up. Hang up. Her hands shook as she fumbled to turn it off and it slipped from her grasp, springing from the seat to floor. She groped around the floorboard and took her gaze off the road long enough to glance down. The car bounced through a pothole, and the wheel jerked hard to the right. She peered up in time to see the headlights leap from tree to tree, and wrenched the wheel back to the left.

  Too little, too late.

  Towering trees moved in and out of shadows as the car rolled and flipped down an embankment. One moment she hung upside down from the seatbelt, and the next her head slammed the steering wheel. Over and over again she flipped. Empty water bottles ping-ponged around the interior, and her overstuffed run-bag followed in their wake.

  A scream ripped from her throat as the car landed on its side and everything went black.

  Chapter Two

  Seventy-two hours ago.

  “Awww, come on, Eden. Jusss one more drink. Never heard last call. You can’t send me home yet. Itssss been a loooong week. Need—” he hiccupped. “Need ‘nother drink.”

  Eden Glover sashayed aroun
d the bar. She stopped at the corner and leaned a hip against the side. At twenty-nine, this was her life.

  Herding drunks.

  The boozer slid off the stool in his attempt to stand, and tried to right himself with little success.

  She pressed a fist against her lips and bit her cheek, holding back a smile.

  After several failed attempts to save his dignity, she took pity and guided his staggering body to the exit. “Sammy, it’s two-thirty in the morning. You know the rules. The bar shuts down, and you go home to bed.” She unlocked the door and gently pulled him into the humid Dallas night.

  “How ‘bout you let me come home with ya? We can keep the party goin’ in your bed.” Flying drops of spit punctuated each slurred word at the same time he tried to waggle the two caterpillars above his eyes.

  She bit back a gag reflex. The urge to drop his arm and stalk away overwhelmed her, but she didn’t miss a beat. Soon a hot shower would wash away the filth of the world. No matter what, Sammy was as harmless as a June bug. “Darlin,’ your wife would miss the hell out of you and come hunt us down. Besides, your chariot awaits.”

  She helped him into the cab, gave the driver the address, and headed back in The Beer Bong for the nightly cleanup.

  Selah Fox, bartender and Eden’s boss for the last seven years, carried a rack of glasses from the kitchen. She sat them on the counter and began unloading. “Did he go quietly?”

  Eden flicked the long, heavy, ponytail off her shoulder and brushed peanut shells into a bucket. “He needs some new material.”

  “You’re a saint for putting up with him night after night.”

  “Trust me, Sammy Duval is a sweetheart. I’ve dealt with far worse.”

  Selah wagged a perfectly manicured finger under Eden’s nose. “One day you, me, and a bottle of tequila are gonna have a long sit-down. I need to know what kinda life you led that makes you think a drunken slob is a sweetheart.”

  “Trust me, there’s nothing to tell.” Nothing a gentlewoman like Selah—who’d been raised by her family—could ever comprehend. And truthfully, Eden was more at home with the darker patrons of The Beer Bong than with the clean-cut lunch crowd on her day job at Mallory’s Diner.

  “That’s the last of the glasses.” Dax, co-owner, cook and Selah’s husband, came through the door from the kitchen untying a stained white apron. The quick kiss he planted on the other woman’s cheek made Eden smile. Since meeting Selah in a GED class nine years ago, they’d become the only family she could count on. They treated her with kindness, and she repaid them with half-truths. But the less they knew about her past connections, the better.

  Dax pointed a thumb to the back. “I put your bags of food by the door. Lots of good stuff left tonight. Too much drinking and not enough eating going on, I guess.”

  Saturday nights he always made extra food to add to her “bags” since the bar closed on Sundays. They assumed it kept her fed through the weekend.

  She didn’t correct them.

  “Thanks, Dax. I’ll finish up here. You two go on.”

  “We’ll see you Monday night.”

  “You got it. Enjoy your family.”

  Ten minutes later, Eden grabbed the worn gray backpack and slung it on her shoulder. Her life in a bag. Where she went, it went.

  One last glance around the kitchen, before she turned out the lights and hefted the food. He wasn’t kidding. They each weighed several pounds.

  As she stepped into the alley, warm, moist air settled over her skin. The harsh scent of pot, stale cigarettes, day-old garbage, and urine burned the tiny hairs of her nose. She sucked in a breath and tip-toed around a used condom, a pile of filthy needles, and items of discarded clothing.

  Shadows shifted inside the tent-boxes littered between the doorways lining either side of the alley. Eyes highlighted by the lamplights followed her progress onto the street before she turned right and started the four-block trek for home.

  The quiet of three a.m. embraced her as she sauntered down deserted streets. Families with their two-point-five kids slept with the misguided belief that bolted doors and guard dogs kept them safe from the riff-raff and gangs that prowled the night.

  Her gaze roamed from one side of the street to the other. Ears strained to catch the echo of footfalls or whispers carried with the breeze. Alone yes, but that didn’t mean she dropped her guard. Might get a girl a short ride to hookin’ with a gold-toothed pimp dogging her every step.

  She stopped at the next corner, under the dim glow of the bus stop sign and put the heavier bag of food on the bench. After another quick scan, she crossed the side street and hid in a doorway.

  It only took a few minutes for them to come into the light. Six of them swarmed the bag like ants on honey. All ranged in age from five to fourteen.

  A thorn she carried deep in her heart, twisted.

  Street life was difficult no matter what age. But for these children, danger waited around every corner.

  A roaring in her ears preceded images of another group of misfits. In her mind they’d been bigger. Stronger. But, as with this group, very much alone. The only hope any of them had of surviving was to band together. Become a family.

  “It must be Saturday. Look at all this food.”

  “Remember to share. We gotta make it last. Won’t be more eats this good ’til Monday.”

  The oldest admonished the younger ones. A strict hierarchy ruled these makeshift families, and rule number one, never break the rules. Your life depended on your brothers and sisters.

  “But I’m hungry.”

  “I know...” Their childish voices faded in the distance as they took their loot and disappeared.

  Eden swiped a tear as it escaped over her lower lid. “Stupid dust. Makes my eyes water.” Her feet shuffled as she resumed the path for home.

  A light from behind illuminated the black street.

  The short hairs at the base of her neck rose. She shivered. A car.

  Okay, no need to panic. Probably nothing. Lots of people drove cars.

  One by one the seconds ticked by. The light still glowed from a distance, and the whine of the engine had yet to reach her ears.

  Without turning or stopping forward motion, she glanced down and to the left. It moved at a snail’s pace.

  Not a good sign. Whoever sat in the car searched for something. Or someone.

  A knot formed in her belly. A new thought took hold. This might be one of those life-altering moments. The kind that made headlines—Woman found naked and dead face down in the gutter.

  An empty doorway to the right beckoned, and she ducked into the shelter of darkness. Her hand fisted around the mace in the left pocket. The thumb of the other twitched over the button on a switchblade tucked inside a strap around her waist.

  Her heart pounded too loud in her ear. Air, instantly dry, sucked all moisture from her lips, but her head was clear and focused. With a pinch of luck, they’d get bored and go on their merry way.

  She chanced a peek around the edge and reeled back as the unfamiliar car slowed to a standstill at the corner.

  Damn. Damndamndamndamn. Oh, God, had they seen her? Adrenaline boiled through her veins. She abandoned the mace and reached for the doorknob jabbing into the small of her back. Her head dropped against the door and her eyes clamped shut. Locked.

  Her lungs shutdown, and her tongue swelled to fill her mouth. No panic attack in months and now one shows up? Fingers groped for the bracelet. Breath in, breath out. The repeated mantra calmed her mind.

  Think. Think. She shoved the fog of panic from her head. She’d been through worse. Quick action always kept her alive. The only way out—straight ahead. Or, she waited for them to corner her. She’d picked up an arsenal of self-defense moves over the years. Take a couple of ‘em down. If that’s all there was. She didn’t have a chance to see how many were in the car.

  Run for it. These streets belonged to her. She knew them like a mouse, trapped for eternity in the same maze. If anyone
had a chance of escape, it was her.

  She laid the second bag of food on the stoop and willed a plague on the douche bags who made her give up Sunday Nachos. But running would be faster without the drag.

  With a deep breath, she tightened the strap of the backpack. One, two, three... She bolted to the right and didn’t look back. The stark glare from the headlights told her all she needed to know. They still idled in the same spot.

  She didn’t even reach the next street before her name floated from behind.

  “Eden! Damnit, stop! It’s me.”

  She froze, back stiff. Eyelids dropped over gritty, exhausted eyeballs. She knew that voice. Turning, she retraced her steps. “Smoke? What are you doing? You scared the shit out of me.”

  “Sorry. Been looking for you.”

  Eden waved a hand at the car. “Whose car is this?”

  “Does it matter?”

  It mattered enough she worked six days a week at two jobs to afford a one-room, rat-infested, hellhole away from the past. Dump? Yes. But it was safe. And warm. And dry. Well, except for the occasional leak. She’d spent years trying to get away, and she’d be damned if anything would threaten that. “Whose. Car?” Her tone held a challenge. She didn’t need trouble here. Her territory. Not theirs.

  “Jared sent me. Said to tell you, it’s time. He’s in trouble.”

  No! Jared made his choice. She’d tried to help him, begged him to leave. He’d refused.

  So damn unfair he wanted her to toss everything away. Her hard-won freedom. Her friends. Her community. What would Selah and Dax do Monday when she didn’t show? Who would feed the kids? Everything in her wanted to refuse.

  The bracelet on her wrist burned a reminder. She sucked in a breath and let it trickle past clenched teeth. Jared needed her.

  Nothing else mattered.

  Chapter Three

  “The answer is still no.” Liam Conlin gripped the steering wheel and repeated the same thing he had the previous three times.

  A barrage of emotions pounced across his twelve-year-old son’s face. Anger, hurt, sadness. Disappointment. Vivid blue eyes so like his mother’s burned with unshed tears of frustration, and his bottom lip trembled. Noah shouldn’t ever play poker. He didn’t know what it meant to hold your cards close.