by Cat Lindler
“That’s a bet I’ll not take,” Christian said softly, then asked, “How many men do you count?”
Richard scanned the ship and the town area. “A dozen, mayhap a few more inside or at the harbor entrance on watch.”
“I make it fourteen with the three who just went below deck.”
Miggs entered the cabin, drawing their gazes, and another man left, closing the door behind him.
“Fifteen,” amended Christian. “What do you make of that small hut on the forest edge?” He pointed to it.
Richard focused in on the tiny, windowless hut. He turned to Christian with a grin. “Munitions?”
Christian smiled grimly. “Our ticket in.”
They scrabbled backward on their bellies away from the cliff and stood when no longer within sight of the village. After brushing themselves off, they made their way back to the camp Garrett and the others had established inside the encroaching forest. They made no fire when night fell but sat in a circle and discussed their plans for penetrating the pirates’ midst and retreating in one piece. A tawny frogmouth called in the tall pines, and the cries of hapless creatures, prey to prowling predators, pierced the darkness at intervals, shredding the men’s nerves.
“I would prefer to watch the town for another day to determine for certain where the prisoners, if any, are being held,” Christian said. “Most likely it’s in Miggs’s own cabin, the large one at the eastern edge of the village. Nonetheless, we can’t afford to be wrong. Once we enter the area, I have no wish to waste time in trying to find them.”
“As much as I deplore leaving Samantha in the hands of those villains another day,” Richard said, “I agree with Christian. Miggs must believe Samantha is the only person with the information he so desperately wants. He would assume James and I are dead. Surely he’ll not take the risk of her dying, too, and taking the secret with her.”
“Wouldn’t she have told him by now?” one of the seamen asked. “Then he would have no reason to keep her alive.”
Richard and Christian exchanged a knowing glance. “Samantha would tell him naught, even were he to keelhaul her,” Christian said in a dry voice. “I imagine she and her gentleman friend found their way here expecting to find Lord Stanbury. When she learned otherwise, she got her back up. When Samantha becomes stubborn, Beelzebub himself couldn’t compel her to cooperate.”
When the men looked skeptical, Jasper nodded and said, “He is right, you know. Lady Samantha is as tough as a moray eel.”
“Besides, she has been here but a short while,” Richard said. “With a lady among their company, I seriously doubt they traveled as quickly as we did. I would imagine Miggs would give her and Landry some time to mull over their fate before moving on to the heavy persuasion. Miggs would have no reason to expect pursuit and therefore might believe he has all the time he needs.”
“There is another factor,” Christian added. “The man who paid Miggs for Richard’s abduction, a gentleman from Hobart. I have yet to see anyone who fits that description. Miggs will wait until this mystery man arrives. I would expect his employer plans to interrogate Samantha personally before he pays, so he may be certain the information comes from a reliable source. More than likely, he’ll arrive by ship through Hell’s Gates. I can’t see a gentleman tackling the overland route. Only one ship sits at anchor. Unless he has already come and gone, we’ve arrived before him.”
They turned in for the night and curled up in blankets beneath the trees in beds of thick pine needles.
Richard shook Christian before he fell asleep. “In the event I fail to make it out of here, I want you to find the Smilodon.”
“In order to do that, I would first have to know its location,” Christian replied.
A smile pulled crookedly at Richard’s mouth. “You mean Samantha didn’t tell you yet?”
Christian shot him a speaking glance.
“That little minx.” Richard shook his head. “Well, as you are officially family now, the secret is yours as well as ours.” He proceeded to relate the island’s coordinates to Christian.
When morning came, they monitored the village from the cliffs. Men came and went from the area of Hell’s Gates, and only two pirates kept watch on the sea passage. None appeared to guard the forest near the munitions hut nor any other location. Two sailors from the Maiden Anne scoured the village perimeter to confirm their observations.
The pirates clearly felt secure from attack by land. One man always remained in the cabin they had designated as belonging to Miggs. Food was taken in, empty plates carried out, and visitors knocked before the door opened. If the pirates held Samantha and her gentleman friend, they were in that cabin, and the door remained locked from the inside.
As the sun westered, the men gathered again. “We require two diversions,” Christian said. “The first will distract the pirates after Garrett, Richard, Jasper, and I make our way to the hut. When we set off the fireworks, we trust the man guarding Sam and Landry will unlock the door and come outside. We can get to them in the confusion.”
The men collected their weapons and divided into two groups. “Give us one hour to reach the forest nearest the ammunition hut,” Christian said, handing the spyglass to one of the seamen. “Once you see my signal, come down the cliff. Fire your guns and make as much commotion as possible. About a third of the way down, you’ll find a ledge fronted by boulders, where you can hold off the pirates until we return.”
The two groups split up. One moved toward the cliff, with ropes to rappel down the slick face. The other slipped through the forest to circle around to the ammunition hut. The four men ran silently and swiftly through the trees, barely disturbing the wildlife in their passing. In less than an hour, they positioned themselves on the edge of the forest directly behind the hut.
Sunset came in a blaze of glory, the sun sinking in an inferno of crimson and pink into the sea off Hell’s Gates. Christian pulled out a small mirror and held it up to the last rays of the sun. The light’s reflection bounced off the top of the cliff where his men waited. A few minutes later, all hell broke loose.
The men atop the cliff threw ropes over the side. They slid downward and fired their repeating rifles into the village. Pirates burst from the cabins and left cook fires, hiding from the snipers behind makeshift barriers of barrels and wooden crates. With the pirates’ eyes riveted on the cliff, the four men in the forest crept into the open and approached the hut.
Jasper smashed the lock with his pistol butt and stood guard while Garrett, Richard, and Christian moved inside the murky interior. Christian was the last to enter. He paused at the doorway, waiting for Richard to go ahead, and thought he heard Samantha calling out to him. Glancing around, however, he failed to see her. Ducking inside, he blamed his confused senses on the uproar in the camp and wishful thinking.
Gunpowder barrels and cannonballs littered the rotting wood floor. Rifle and pistol bullets filled wooden boxes along one wall, and cutlasses and sabers hung from the rafters. Cannon grease sat in tubs near the door.
Christian pulled out a length of rope and coated it with grease. He broke open a barrel of gunpowder, buried one end of the rope in the black powder, and motioned to Garrett to leave. When Jasper and Garrett sped toward the woods, Christian knelt and lit a match, touching it to the end of the rope.
“Come on,” he yelled to Richard, taking him by the arm and pulling. “I don’t know how long that fuse will burn.”
As they spun toward the door, Richard following on Christian’s heels, a bullet came through the side of the hut. A tremendous force slammed into Christian’s back at the same instant the world ripped apart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Macquarie Harbour
Samantha slept for what seemed like time without end. Whenever she climbed upward through the gloom, wetness poured down her throat. She swallowed convulsively and sank deeper into a dreamless sleep. When she finally awoke, she blinked stupidly, her body sluggish, mind disoriented. Rough-hewn lo
gs chinked with mudlike mortar enclosed her in a dirt-floored space no more than six by eight feet. One window, shuttered with wooden planks, cut into the wall opposite her. A door lay to her right. The room held naught for furnishings save for the straw mattress she occupied on the floor. By the pallid quality of the light sifting through spaces between the shutter boards, either dawn or dusk approached.
When she sat up, her head spun with the sudden movement. A batten of cotton wool wrapped around her mind, and her eyes felt heavy and gritty. A foul taste lingered in her mouth, her throat as dry as ashes. Her last memory was of falling asleep beside the fire in the forest on the banks of the Huon.
She cleared her throat and tested her voice. “Steven?” From the pounding headache coming on through her mental confusion and the enervation of her limbs and body, she suspected she’d been drugged. “Steven, can you hear me? Where are you?”
A faint rapping came from behind her.
She crawled off the mattress and dragged herself to the wall. “Steven? Are you there?”
The rapping came again and a whispered voice. “Samantha?”
“Oh, Steven. What happened to us?”
“Quiet,” he said. “Keep your voice low, or they will hear us.”
She shoved her tangled hair back from her face. “Who?”
“Miggs,” he responded. “The pirate betrayed us. Miggs caught us at the camp after you fell asleep. He killed my men, knocked me out, and took us captive. We are being held in the pirates’ village at Macquarie Harbour.”
“I was drugged, Steven. I remember naught. Who drugged me?”
“One of my men. I believed him loyal to me, but he also worked for Miggs. I found out only too late. Miggs interrogated me earlier, said you are privy to some information he desires. He wanted to know about a cat and your uncle.”
Samantha inhaled a breathy gasp.
“They’ve been waiting for you to revive. Then they plan to question you,” he continued. “What do they want? What cat are they talking about?”
“I-I have no notion,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Samantha, listen to me. These men are killers. They took your uncle, and I must tell you, though I know how much you hoped to hear otherwise, but they killed him, murdered him because he refused to talk. They have convinced themselves you have the information they seek. What do you know? What could be so valuable they would kill Richard to obtain it? Pray believe me, they will not bat an eye at torturing us both to extract what they desire.
“What do you know?” he asked again when she remained silent. “Is it worth dying for? Allow me to help us. Would Richard have wanted you to keep his secret at the cost of your life?”
“Oh, Steven, I don’t know. I’m so confused. Had I imagined it would come to this, I would have told the world. No secret is worth Richard’s life.” Her throat constricted and ached with the strain of holding back tears.
“Hear me well, Samantha. I know Richard’s demise has devastated you, but you must share your secret with me. If I was to know what the pirates seek, I might be able to stall or misdirect them while I devise a plan that will allow us to leave here alive. I can withstand more torture than you. They will beat you, mayhap even rape you.”
“No, I cannot allow you to sacrifice yourself for me. I shall tell them what little I know.”
“Did Richard die in vain? Will you now make a mockery of his life and kill us, too? Mark my words. If you tell them everything; that is exactly what will happen. Once they get what they want, they will murder us and dump our bodies at sea. Tell me, Samantha. Allow me to help us. I can bargain with them, while you cannot.”
She expelled a weary breath. “They want to know where to find the Smilodon.”
“Smilodon? A saber-toothed tiger? Are they not extinct?”
“Indeed, they are or were. Richard found one, a living one. And some person, another scientist, wishes the cat to be his discovery. He hired Miggs to kidnap Richard and James and coerce the locality of the find from them.”
“If what you say is true, Richard has made the greatest discovery of the century, or so I assume, not being a scientist myself. I now understand why his life was in danger and why the pirates want you. Did Richard inform you of where he found this cat?”
She held her tongue, considering Steven’s question. ‘Twas overmuch to process, what with her headache and their desperate situation. Circumstances were unraveling too quickly. Not really understanding why, she equivocated. “He did, but the coordinates are in Richard’s last letter back at Talmadge House. So you see, I cannot reveal what I do not know. I fear ‘tis hopeless. They will not believe me and will kill us anyway.”
“Do you recall anything from the letter, anything I can give them to stay their hand at least for a time until we concoct an escape plan?”
He sounded so terribly desperate. Was she not obligated to provide him with something? ‘Twas she who had put his life in danger. “Only that the cat is on an island in the Furneaux Group.”
“That area contains over fifty small islands and hundreds of atolls,” he said with a note of exasperation. “Can you not be more specific?”
An unexplainable instinct warned her to guard her tongue. “No, I truly cannot remember. I require Richard’s letter.”
“Very well, save your strength. Try to rest. When they come for you, pretend you still suffer from the influence of the drug. I shall think of something.”
Steven rose and walked out of the room into the cabin’s main living area.
Miggs sat at a battered table where he wielded a knife to carve into its wooden top by the light of a whale-oil lantern. He raised his head at Steven’s entrance. “De she ‘ave what ye want? I know she ‘as what I want.” A smarmy grin covered his mouth.
Steven caught up a chair and swung it around, straddling it backward. “She has it but says it’s in Hobart, meaning this trip was a useless waste of time.”
“De ye believe ‘er?”
He rubbed his chin with a hand. “I don’t know.” He met Miggs’s one rheumy eye with a silent challenge. “You’ll not touch her. That was part of our agreement.”
Miggs laughed. “An agreement atween gen’lemen, eh?”
“Correct, and I shall gut you should you revoke it. I require her alive, at least until I obtain the information from her.”
“An’ ‘ow will ye de that? De ye really think she’ll give ye what ye want once she’s back wi’ ‘er lovin’ family an’ them bodyguards?”
“I shall get it. How I accomplish that is none of your concern. You’ve received your pay. Now we must come up with a plausible escape scenario that will make her forever obligated to me for saving her life.”
“I don’t know,” Miggs mused. “I think this job’s worth more’n ye paid. If this cat’s so bloody valuable, I may jest want it fer meself, an’ the girl, too.”
Steven exploded from the chair. He caught Miggs’s wrist in an iron grip and squeezed. The unholy look he gave Miggs was enough to make the pirate shiver.
“‘Ey now. She’s yers if’n ye want ‘er that bad,” Miggs said in a pained voice.
“You’re bloody right she’s mine,” Steven spat and dropped the pirate’s wrist.
A knock came at the door. Rubbing his wrist, Miggs shoved back from the table and lumbered to his feet. He made his way across the room and cracked open the door. “What de ye want? I’m busy ‘ere,” he said to the pirate in torn breeches with two cutlasses hanging from leather bands crossing his chest.
“We ‘ave trouble.” The man swallowed visibly. “There’s men comin’ down t’cliffs. Not garrison, no uniforms, but not ourn.”
“‘Ow many?”
“Four o’ five so far.”
Gunfire erupted from the direction of the cliffs. The man swung his head to look over his shoulder. “Then take care o’ ‘em!”
While Miggs berated the man, Steven slipped a stiletto out of his boot and silently got up from the chair. He came up behind Migg
s. When the door slammed closed, he clamped an arm around Miggs’s neck and thrust the knife deep into his kidneys. The pirate struggled briefly before sinking to the floor. Blood poured from the wound.
Samantha leaned against the rough wall, tears streaming from her eyes. Finding Richard alive after all this time had been unlikely. Nevertheless, she had still held out hope. She cursed the Smilodon and the expedition that brought her uncle to Tasmania. Her stomach cramped, and she vomited on the floor. Though Steven vowed he would find a way for them to leave this place, she no longer had the will to believe him. He was as much a prisoner as she.
She tapped on the wall. “Steven?”
He failed to answer; only muttered voices came from the room beyond her prison. The guards. How many? How in God’s name did Steven expect them to stroll past an entire pirate crew?
Diminishing light bled in from the window, indicating coming night instead of day. Samantha pushed herself up from the floor and stumbled over to the boards. Her legs, still weak from the drugging, scarcely held her upright. She peered out. A bar braced along the outside width secured the shutters. Men in dirty clothing, some with bare chests, their bodies swarming with knives, pistols, and cutlasses, ran past the window. Other cabins sat in the forefront in a space denuded of vegetation. A log corral to the right held horses, and straight ahead on the edge of the settlement, the waters of Macquarie Harbor made a blacker shadow against the darkening sky. A battered ship, its near side stove in, bobbed in the water beside a hand-hewn wooden dock. Sheer cliffs rose in the distance above the enclave.
A sudden volley of gunfire shattered the silence, and a suggestion of movement on the face of the cliff attracted her attention. However, the light had become too faint to make out details.
When her door flew open, Samantha swallowed a scream. Her heart pounded, and she whipped around. Steven stood in the opening, holding a cutlass.
