The man wasn’t taking her at all seriously!
He only sighed as he turned carefully and slowly walked to the door, giving her time to maintain her position behind him. Still, she bumped into his arse when he bent over from the waist to pick up the key from the floor. She hissed through her teeth and was surprised he didn’t laugh about it.
But he opened the door and walked up the few steps that led to the quarterdeck. It was dark, except for the light from the two lanterns on either side of his cabin door. Bastard didn’t move any farther. It wasn’t difficult to see why. She might not be able to see over his shoulders, but she could see on either side of him that his men stood in a tight half circle at the top of the steps, forming a solid barrier, undoubtedly put in place by the blond crewman.
She pressed her pistol harder into Bastard’s back. “Tell them to back off.”
“No. This is what can loosely be termed a standoff. You might as well give up graciously, Jack.”
Her mind churned frantically. Among the mostly brawny men who formed that blockade, she saw only one skinny fellow to her right and a nervous-looking boy next to him. She would have given anything right then for her rapier instead of a damned one-shot pistol. With two arm’s lengths of sharp metal in hand, she could have slashed an opening to get past them.
She leapt toward the boy, but socked the man next to him first before pushing the boy out of the way, clearing a path to the railing. She almost made it, was only three feet from it, about to leap into the water, when an arm went about her waist, lifting her off her feet, and the pistol was yanked out of her hand. She should never have turned her back on Bastard! She screamed in fury, but she was facing nothing but an empty deck now, his men having scattered to get out of the way of any gunshots.
She was let go inside the cabin and then pushed forward into the room, just far enough for Bastard to close the door and lock it—with him on the other side of it before she could even turn around. But she didn’t pause to bemoan what had just happened. She ran straight for the long row of drapes covering the bank of windows she’d escaped from once before.
Chapter Twelve
DAMON REEVES GRIPPED THE rail, trying to calm his breathing. That had been too close, she’d almost made it over the side. He would have jumped in after her, of course, but the Thames definitely wasn’t the clear aqua waters of the Caribbean. If she’d dived into its murky depths, he might not have found her. And if she’d drowned, her father would have been after him before the night was done, instead of a week from now per Damon’s plan, which was to make sure Malory didn’t follow too quickly this time.
“What were you thinking, letting her keep that weapon?” Mortimer Bower said angrily as he joined Damon.
“I don’t want to fight with her for the duration of this voyage.”
“You’d rather take a bullet?”
“No danger of that now.” Damon showed Mort that he had the weapon.
Mortimer snorted. “You shouldn’t have gambled that she would come or wasted all that blunt hiring that small army in case she did. I know those four bruisers who escort her stayed your hand in the park that day, but did you really think you’d need so many to deal with them tonight?”
“No, I actually hoped her father would be escorting her. We definitely needed those numbers for James Malory, as we learned firsthand on the last trip.”
“So you would have taken him and not her?”
“No. I want his cooperation. I won’t get it without leverage, so having them both would have been ideal.”
“I still can’t believe she even showed up, young lady like her.”
“And I was sure she would. I piqued her interest just enough. And by all accounts, she’s recklessly daring. Probably gets it from her father.”
“Well, she came prepared, if you didn’t notice,” Mort grumbled. “As if she expected you to be waiting for her here. So I’ll allow it was a good thing you overdid it. But if even one of her men escapes, you will have lost your advantage.”
Damon laughed. “When did you become such a doomsayer? We picked that location because it’s a street with hardly any traffic in the evening and it’s secluded due to the high walls of the London Docks. We were successful, Mort. Johnny signaled that by waving the lantern from shore. The street will be cleaned. Her family will waste time looking for her in London.”
“Unless she left a note about where she was going.”
Damon frowned. He’d have to ask her about that—or not. If she left a note, she probably wouldn’t be able to resist gloating about it.
“And you weren’t expecting another coach full of guards tonight,” Mortimer said, continuing to point out what hadn’t gone according to plan. “That flat you rented to hold the prisoners for a week is going to reek by the end of it, with all the extra bodies in it.”
“Better than killing people who don’t deserve killing. Which is what those damn pirates wanted to do. Hell, they wanted to storm Malory’s house, you know. They would have got us all arrested, trying something that stupid in that part of town. It was hard enough getting them to agree to let me handle the details of Jack’s arrival. I’m still a little surprised it worked.”
“I suppose young ladies love mystery and romance.”
“It was worth a try, though she’s not a typical young lady. And the proof is, I think she came to capture me. She alluded to as much.”
“But how would she have guessed?”
“I don’t know—yet. Now stop being so negative. Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. I’m pleased with our progress. My only regret is that we had to involve his daughter again.”
“You had no choice. We already learned Malory is impossible to take down. Trying it twice on our first trip to London just got six of our crew so injured they had to be replaced and forced us to follow Malory and his family to America. At least Malory just thought we were thieves trying to rob him, so he never sent the watch after us. But your target did warn you it would be nigh impossible to capture Malory. Why else would he have told you to take one of Malory’s female relatives instead and given you the ransom note for that scenario?”
His target. The irony was that they were both his targets, but originally there had been three. One was too easy and had been captured in days. The other two were so difficult that Damon had decided to pit them against each other and then deal with the remaining survivor. It had seemed a good plan, but it hadn’t worked the first time around. That failure had landed him in a dungeon where he’d been quite sure he was going to rot.