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“Where is she now?” I asked, doing my best to stay at an angle that hid my features in the shadows of this cramped wooden room.
“The hell I know where she is by now, but my father let her go so I’m assuming she went into town.”
I nodded my thanks. It was all I could give as I still processed the strange interaction between a brother-like figure I’d once looked up to, who was now younger than me and naïve to what life held in store for him.
He stepped aside so that I could leave. With my wet clothes sticking to my skin and making moving quickly difficult, I stepped out onto the deck. It had been so long since I’d seen this ship in this condition. Like new and modified with cannons and new sails, ready to conquer the world. How little I realized how many decades I would spend a slave on board here, rotting away with it as eras passed.
Shaking myself free of the strange memory, I stepped to the raised gangplank and sliced through the rope holding it back with my knife. It dropped with a heavy thud and slammed onto the dock below, bringing memories to the forefront of my mind I’d rather have not faced as I walked across. McKenzie and Noah awaited me, both wearing looks of disappointment when they saw that I’d returned without Katrina.
“She can’t be far,” McKenzie stated. “She probably went looking for us when she saw us leave to get help.”
“Then let’s not waste time finding her,” I ordered, shaking my head. “I should never have let her go.”
I paced forward, scanning every inch to the left and right of this port. As we walked along the main dock back to the town entrance, I thought I saw her. My spirits lifted as a woman with dark, full hair tumbling over her shoulders approached, heading back toward the piers. But when she came closer to me, I could see that she wasn’t Katrina. It was Cordelia.
Walking with a regal stride in her layers of fine skirts and corset, she neared. I didn’t expect her to know me, or even notice me. So, when she looked up and grinned at me with a dark, sly smile, a bolt of ice struck my core. She passed by me as if on purpose, turning her head just to hold her cruel smirk on me just a bit longer. And I noticed around her neck was the scale hanging from its silvery chain, and all at once I felt sick.
I shook her chilling stare out of my mind and refocused on finding Katrina. The last place wanted to imagine her getting lost in alone was Nassau. Not that she needed me to protect her, I reminded myself. But I would be there just in case she did. We would find her.
So as we rushed along the dirt road into the belly of Nassau, I stopped dead in my tracks when someone called out to me from a section of a building on the coast blockaded in by barrels and crates. And in between them stood three men, obviously trying to stay out of plain sight. McKenzie shrieked in horror at the scene. Two men stood on either side of a brooding figure in the middle—Carl Thane. And he was pulling Katrina’s head back by her hair to expose her neck as he pressed the edge of dagger against it.
28
Of the Code
Milo
Iwanted to scream. I fought back the wave of panic rising in my veins. My nerves shook, and it took every ounce of my focus not to let it show. I had to appear unshaken, despite my world crumbling before me. I had to draw this out as long as I could. There was a good bit of distance between us—too much distance for me to make it in time if Thane decided to swipe the knife across her neck. Katrina held my gaze, a wide-eyed look of terror in her trembling face. And I remained still. Because I knew Thane would slice her throat without a second thought if I made one wrong move.
“You’re the bastard who set the Lark ablaze,” Thane grunted.
My eyes flicked to the man at his right. It was the one I had pushed into the water to save. And all at once I regretted that mercy. I should’ve let him burn.
“It was nothing personal. You should be looking for the man who assigned me the mission,” I uttered, hiding the ever-growing fury in my voice.
“Well don’t consider this personal when I spill her blood out on the ground in front of you,” he dug the point of the blade into Katrina’s skin, and she winced with a yelp.
“Wait,” I pleaded. To my surprise, he stopped. I spoke through a tight knot in my chest that nearly left me unable to breathe. “What do you want? I’ll restore your loss with a new ship. Take your pick from my fleet.” It was the perfect bargain now that my father’s ships sat without a captain in the bay.
“I’ll take the whole fleet.”
Fine by me. He could have them all. “Done. Now let her go.”
“Tsk, tsk, stranger. I’m not done bargaining.” Even from where I stood, meters away from Thane’s position in the shadows, I could see the way his eyes darkened.
“What else?” I stiffened, stepping forward and clenching my fist, hoping it wouldn’t set him off.
“I want to know who you are, so that I can ensure every minute spent on this island is devoted to hunting you down. Take off the hood.”
I tilted my head at the strange request. “Why don’t you and your men just kill me right here?”
A grim smile stretched across his thin lips. “Because where’s the fun in that? I want you to spend every day forward in fear, ne’er knowing when I’ll finally strike, but always knowing that one day I will. If I spare your whore, I’m coming for you.” This was exactly the sort of sick game Thane would relish. A chance to enact his sadistic tendencies by hunting me down like an animal. But I was more than willing to play along if it meant saving Katrina. After all, I’d been killed before.
“So, you’ll let her go?” I reached for the top of my hood, not fully convinced he wouldn’t kill Katrina after I showed myself anyway.
“I’m a man of the code,” he grinned, lifting his knife off Katrina’s neck, but still holding her by her hair, nearly lifting her from the ground.
“If you hurt her, I swear I’ll send you back to hell myself.” I watched his hand like a hawk tracking its prey.
