Captain Rourke

by Helena Newbury

  “Take it,” I said bitterly. “Take the treasure. No one shoots. We all walk away.”

  Hannah grabbed my shirt. “What are you doing? You can’t let him take it!”

  I looked her right in the eye. “I don’t care about the treasure,” I said. “I care about you.”

  She stared at me, her eyes moist. Then she wrapped her arms around me and pressed her face to my chest.

  “Sounds fair enough to me,” said Ratcher, grinning. “You just stay there. Me and the boys will be out of your way in a jiffy.”

  There followed the toughest few minutes of my life as I watched Ratcher’s men shamble inside and relieve us of the treasure. With so many of them, they could form a human chain and simply pass the crates out onto the deck and then onto their boat. What had taken days of effort and danger to find—not to mention the decades of research by Hannah’s great-grandfather—became Ratcher’s prize in just a few minutes.

  I could feel the rage blossoming and heating inside me. It was the biggest find of my life, bigger even than the submarine I’d found with Edwards. And now the riches and the glory would be his. My finger was still on the shotgun’s trigger. It would be so easy….

  But if I started a fight, we were both dead. Ratcher wasn’t kidding about burning the boat. He was willing to see it go to the bottom rather than let us keep it. He had nothing to lose but—I looked at Hannah—for the first time, I did.

  I forced myself to lower the shotgun and watched, seething. They took everything, even the chest of coins and the ruby we found with the first clue. We’d be left with nothing. When I saw one guy walk off with my sword, staying put took every ounce of self-control I had.

  Then, as they were preparing to leave, Ratcher grabbed something from the shelf beside the hammock. My heart sank. A pill bottle, taped to a stone. “What’s this?” he asked.

  I heard Hannah curse beside me.

  “Nothing.” I fought to keep my voice level but it suddenly felt as if someone was tightening an iron band around my chest.

  Ratcher walked slowly to the door we were sheltering behind. He was frowning at the stone, rubbing his fat thumb back and forth over it. Then he held the pill bottle up to the light, sloshing the liquid inside it. He looked at me and raised a curious eyebrow.

  All my anger about the treasure evaporated. None of it mattered: my entire attention was focused on what he had in his hand. And yet somehow, I had to pretend it wasn’t important. “It’s nothing,” I said again. I was wracking my brain for an explanation he’d believe.

  “It’s a mineral,” said Hannah suddenly. “I’m an amateur geologist. I found it on the island and ground some up to study it.”

  Ratcher leaned close to her, leering at her through the glass. She stared coldly back at him. I wanted to scream at him, tell him to get the hell away from her. I wanted to blast the shotgun through the window, right into his grinning face, or pull the door open and pummel him. But I forced myself to keep still.

  “So it’s not worth anything?” said Ratcher.

  “No,” said Hannah, her voice tight.

  Ratcher turned away from us, his tank top stretched tight across his rounded back and sunburned neck. He marched across the room to the open door and drew back his arm as if to throw a ball. “So you won’t mind if I toss it overboard, then—”

  “No!” Hannah pushed forward and had the door half open before I could stop her. Ratcher turned, laughing, and I pushed her protectively behind me. But the damage was done.

  “She needs it,” Ratcher said victoriously. And then he read my expression. I couldn’t help it: there was no hiding the look of fear on my face. I’ve faced death plenty of times and held it together but the thought of him throwing the cure overboard, dooming Hannah to an agonizing end...my eyes were wild, my knuckles white on the shotgun’s stock. “And you’ve gone soft on her.” He laughed. “You pathetic bastard.”

  “Just leave it here,” I said. “It’s not worth anything.” And then, even though it made my soul burn to say it: “Please, Ratcher.”

  His face split into a huge, wet-lipped grin. He thought he understood: the half-lame, messed-up seadog, besotted with the beautiful blonde who was way out of his league. He shook his head and made to toss the stone into the hammock. My chest went tight: I’d take any amount of humiliation, as long as we got the cure back—

  Then Ratcher frowned, his hand frozen in midair. I followed his gaze to Hannah, who in turn was looking at me. She quickly looked down at her feet, but it was too late. I’d seen the look of love and admiration in her eyes and so had Ratcher.

  His grin disintegrated. “You’re fucking him,” he said. I saw his eyes go cold with jealousy. “You’re fucking him?”

  Hannah caught her breath and then set her jaw and glared defiantly back at Ratcher.

  “I told you what would happen,” he muttered. “I told you she was mine!”

  He turned and stormed from the room. For a sickening second, I thought he was going to make good on his threat and throw the stone and bottle overboard, but he shoved it into his pants pocket instead.

  I threw open the door and started after him, raising the shotgun in front of me. Hannah grabbed my arm. “No!” she screamed. “They’ll kill you!”

  I could hear Ratcher yelling orders above deck and boots moving around. “If they run off with the cure, you’re dead,” I growled. “And I’ll not have that.” I pulled myself free and ran for the door—

  Halfway there, two of Ratcher’s men leaned through the doorway and started shooting. Hannah screamed and ducked back inside the maintenance room, slamming the door. I fired the shotgun and the men ducked back, one of them clutching his arm. But as I reached the door, another man leaned in with a machine gun and let loose. I had to flatten myself against the wall and watch, ears ringing, as bullets tore apart the interior of the Fortune’s Hope. Smoking black holes were punched through photographs of my Navy crew, my crew in Nassau, and the picture of Edwards and me. The polished woodwork shredded and splintered. In the maintenance room, I heard Hannah scream and her face disappeared from the window. I prayed she’d ducked down out of sight and hadn’t been hit.

  As soon as the guy had to reload, I stepped out from behind the wall and fired the other barrel of the shotgun out through the doorway. More gunfire drove me back and I scrambled to reload—

  Then the machine gun roared again, outside, and I heard glass shatter and metal shake as bullets poured into it. What the hell was he firing at? Then more sounds: the hiss of rope followed by the heavy thump of cloth. I heard the engine of Ratcher’s boat start up and men scrambling from one boat to the other….

  And then all was quiet.

  For a second, I waited, unsure if it was a trap. Had they left someone aboard to blow my head off as soon as I ventured outside? Hannah cautiously opened the door to the maintenance room but I waved for her to stay put.

  At last, I crept out of the door and onto the deck. The Pitbull was already powering away into the distance, heavy now with treasure. The crew were on the deck, laughing and cheering, and Ratcher gave me a mock salute from the upper deck. I frowned. I didn’t get it. Ratcher had been mad as hell: why hadn’t he told his crew to finish us off, or torch our boat?

  Then I saw Ratcher very deliberately shift his gaze and nod. Look behind you. I reluctantly turned….

  The entire sky was black. The storm was almost on us and beneath the clouds, the wind was whipping the waves up into walls of water the size of houses. Even as I watched, the boat rocked like a toy as it began to enter the storm’s influence. Ratcher was forgotten. I raced for the controls, to start the engine: I had to get us out of there. But when I got to the controls, they were a shattered, smoking mess. Now I knew what they’d been firing the machine gun at.

  Hannah burst out onto deck. As soon as she felt the wind whip across her face she turned towards the storm...and gave a strangled moan of horror. My chest tightened: it was everything she feared: open ocean at its most merci
less.

  “Help me with the sails!” I yelled. Now that there was wind, we might still be able to outrun the storm, if we were quick. I grabbed for the rope—

  And that’s when I saw the main sail lying on a heap on the deck. They’d cut the line that would raise it and pulled it all the way out of the eyelet at the top of the mast. Until we got back to port, there was no way to rerig it.

  We were dead in the water. We couldn’t even turn the boat around. And the biggest storm I’d seen in my life was about to hit us broadside. We’d flip over and be torn to pieces like a child’s toy. I ran for the radio but of course they’d shot that, too.

  “You son of a bitch!” I screamed across the water. My heart was hammering with rage and fear. For years, I’d wanted the sea to take me. Now it was going to...but it was going to take Hannah, too.

  By now, the Pitbull was tiny, easily pulling ahead of the storm. But I saw Ratcher wave mockingly in response to my cry.

  Then he strolled below deck and left us to die.

  54

  Hannah

  I stared at the approaching waves. They were straight out of my nightmares, cold and gray as iron and towering high above my head. I could feel the panic uncoil in my belly and start to spread through my body. In another few seconds, it would take over completely.

  I tore my gaze away and faced Rourke. I could feel the chill wind lifting strands of my hair and working its way down the back of my neck and under my collar. “What do we do?” I asked.

  And then my face fell because Rourke looked...beaten.

  I’d never seen him back down or give up, no matter how useless the fight. That’s why he won. But now he’d lost the treasure and was going to lose his boat. All because of me.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” he said, his voice tight. His hands were bunching and unbunching in helpless fury. “We can’t fix the sail out here. We’d have to get the line up through that hoop.” He nodded at the mast and I looked. Right at the top, sickeningly high above the deck, there was a metal eyelet. “I used to be able to climb masts like that,” he muttered. “Before—” He scowled down at his leg.

  I grabbed the line and strode towards the mast. “I’ll try.” Just the thought of being all the way up there made me go light-headed with fear, so if I was going to do this I needed to do it now, before I chickened out.

  Rourke grabbed me just as I got there, his hands warm on my waist. “No! If you fall—”

  I glanced up at the height of the mast. At the hard deck beneath. “We don’t have a choice,” I said.

  He stared at me, his blue eyes raging. But at last, he nodded.

  I tied the line to a belt loop on my shorts so that I had both hands free. Then I wrapped my arms and legs around the mast, squeezed tight and dragged myself upward—

  I got less than six feet before I slithered back down, my palms and inner thighs burning. I tried again and got a little further, then a third time and barely made it off the deck. Shit! It was just too smooth to grip and I didn’t have the strength to hug it tight enough to stay on.

  The wind lifted my hair and blew it out into streamers in front of me. For the first time, I heard it make that warning, shrill howl that everyone knows means get to shelter.

  I had to look. Rourke and I slowly turned around.

  I’d seen storms in Nebraska. I’d even seen tornados. But on land, there’s always one safe haven, one thing you can cling to: the ground.

  But we were on the water and it was as alive and as terrifyingly powerful as the sky. What was approaching didn’t look like a flat ocean topped with waves. It looked as if the sea had torn itself apart into mountains and valleys: cliffs of towering gray slate and ravines so deep I couldn’t see the bottom of them.

  The noise was incredible: the slow, momentous crash of the waves topped with the rising wail of the wind. The sky was barely brighter than the water. Black clouds blotted out the sun and they were releasing torrential rain, so thick you could barely see through it. It was morning but it was as dark as night except when lightning lit up the scene.

  And all of this was heading right for us. And there was no shelter, no cellar we could hide in. We were in a flimsy husk of wood and we were going to be in the middle of the chaos. The panic climbed up through my chest, stealing my breath. It was everything I feared about the ocean: I was tiny and powerless, about to feel its wrath. All of the confidence Rourke had been helping me gain evaporated. I was right all along. This is no place for me.

  I felt for Rourke’s hand and he grabbed it. But there was nothing either of us could do. We stood there on the deck staring up at the storm, the first drops of rain wetting our faces. I squeezed Rourke’s hand tighter and tighter….

  A warm, furry mass hit my leg and clung there. I looked down to see Yoyo glancing between me and the storm with huge, scared eyes. Then he jumped and in an instant had scampered up my leg, up my torso and onto my shoulder so he could nestle against my cheek. How does he do that so easily?

  I turned and looked at the mast. “I bet Yoyo could get up there.”

  Rourke stared at me. “How?” he asked. “How are you going to…?” He looked between me and the monkey. How are you going to tell him what to do?

  “He mimics us,” I said, looking into YoYo’s eyes. “Don’t you?”

  Rourke shook his head. But if he thought I was crazy, he didn’t let it stop him. He grabbed some string and tied it to the end of the line, then tied a set of keys to the other end to give it weight. I found a fishing net and tore away the mesh to leave just the iron hoop. Then I picked up the keys and demonstrated. “Drop the keys through the hoop,” I told Yoyo, my voice light and happy.

  Yoyo stared back at me blankly.

  “Drop the keys through the hoop,” I said, doing it again. Then I pointed up at the hoop at the top of the mast. The monkey didn’t even look.

  “Drop the keys…”—I jangled them, forcing myself to keep my voice light—”through the hoop.” I did it again. “Up there.” And I pointed. This time, Yoyo looked at the mast. But then he just looked at me uncomprehendingly, his little head tilted to the side.

  “It’s no good,” said Rourke. His voice was gentle.

  But I pressed on. “Drop the keys,” I said, my voice strained, “through the hoop. Please, Yoyo.” Spray hit the back of my neck and the boat suddenly lurched under my feet. The storm was right on us but I didn’t dare turn to look.

  Rourke grabbed my arm. “We need to get below.” But there was an awful finality in his voice. He wasn’t talking about surviving. He was talking about preparing for the end.

  There was a rising roar behind me, a bass rumble that made my whole body vibrate. The wind whipped my hair across my face. Yoyo reached up and pawed it out of the way.

  Rourke pulled on my arm. “We have to go. Now!”

  “Please, Yoyo,” I begged, tears in my eyes. “Drop the keys—”

  Yoyo snatched them from my hand and darted away across the deck. When he reached the mast, his speed barely changed: he swarmed up it as if it was horizontal. I drew in my breath, barely daring to hope.

  The boat began to tilt as the first big wave hit it. I stumbled but it was worse for Yoyo, halfway up the mast. The whole thing swayed, flinging him around, and he chirruped in fear. One paw came loose, then a leg: he was dangling. “Oh Jesus, no,” I whispered and ran forward to catch him—

  But as the mast steadied for a second he regained his grip and raced on up. Suddenly, he was at the top, holding the keys. I clasped my hands together in silent prayer—

  He dropped them through. They hurtled down and clattered to the deck, trailing the string behind them. Rourke and I stared at them in disbelief. Yoyo raced down the mast even faster than he’d gone up, jumped the last six feet, and bounded onto my shoulder. I think I gave a kind of hysterical hiccup of joy. Then I cuddled Yoyo very, very hard into my chest and kissed the top of his furry head about twenty times. “Good monkey,” I managed, panting with relief. “Very goo
d monkey.” He snuggled into me as the rain began to soak us and the wind rose to a piercing scream.

  Rourke hauled on the string and we watched as it pulled the line that carried the heavy sail. I ran over and took some of the sail’s weight as it rose. If the string snapped….

  But it held and Rourke pulled the line down to where he could grab it. He tied the two cut ends together and we had a sail again. I saw his lungs fill and his stance straighten: he was back. He nodded his thanks to me and Yoyo and then jerked his head below deck. “Get below,” he said. “It’s going to get rough.”

  Even as he said it, the wind caught the sail and almost tore the rope from his hand. He growled and hauled on it but he was being dragged along the rain-slick deck.

  For the first time in a while, I looked at the storm. And immediately wished I hadn’t. The black sky extended beyond us, now: we were in it. The only reason we hadn’t capsized was that a huge wave was slowly building, right in front of us, and we were in the calm of its trough. But when it hit…. “You’re going to sail through that, on your own?” I yelled over the wind.

  He glared at me and gave me a push towards the door. “Get below, lass!” I could see it in his eyes, that fierce need to protect me. I glanced below deck. Even bullet-scarred and damaged, it looked warm and safe. It was so tempting….

  But he’d die out here trying to save me, if I let him. “No.” I pulled Yoyo from my chest, shooed him below deck and closed the doors tight. Then I stumbled across the lurching deck to Rourke. “I’m staying to help you.”

  His eyes burned into me. I could see him getting ready to yell, to tell me that this was what he did. That he’d had to be out here on his own ever since Edwards died.

  But I pressed myself to his chest and stared right back at him. And at last, he got the message: he wasn’t on his own anymore.

  He drew in a long breath, his chest pushing against me. One hand cupped my cheek, his big palm gloriously warm on my rain-chilled skin. He shook his head slowly at me. “Lass!” he said in wonder. Then he leaned down and kissed me, his thumbs stroking over my cheeks, his hard lips working at my soft ones. A warm glow spread through me and my heart lifted and bobbed. The wind howled around us but, just for a second, it didn’t scare me. Maybe we wouldn’t make it through this, but if we went, we were going together.