“I’ll bet you did,” Ricky said quietly. “But I’ll bet your sister Neave convinced my wife to disappear on me. I’d like to talk to that sister of yours.”
“She’s at work every day. She’s not hard to find.”
“She’s hard to find if a person wants a more intimate conversation. Some privacy. Tell your sister that I think she’s hiding my wife. Tell her that’s not a smart thing to do.”
“She doesn’t have any explaining to do to anybody. And we don’t know where Lilly is. You’re the one with explaining to do!”
“I don’t think so, Superboy. You just tell Neave that me and her need to have a chat. In private. Tell her that for me.” He smiled.
“I can’t help you, Ricky,” Snyder said. “I don’t think Neave has anything to say to you.”
Snyder stood as tall as he could and held on to the table. He kept hanging on to it while Ricky Luhrmann sneered, said he could bide his time, and walked slowly out of the studio, closing the door quietly behind him. Then Snyder rushed to the window and watched the man step out of the building, go to his car, and drive off.
But then poor Snyder made the mistake that Ricky had hoped he would make. He’d watched the car pull out, reach the corner, and turn. He stood there another ten minutes to assure himself that Ricky was gone and then he scrambled down the stairs so fast he kept himself from plunging headfirst to the first floor only by hanging on to the banister. All he could think was that he had to tell Neave what had happened. He was too distracted, too frightened, to consider that Ricky might have simply circled the block and parked someplace where he could have a view of Snyder’s departure, which is just what Ricky had done. Despite decades of exposure to advertisements for spy-mirror tubes and gadgets that made it possible to see around corners, Snyder had no idea how to spot someone following him. It was easy for Ricky Luhrmann to trail him all the way to the Charlestown docks and pull into a parking place that gave him a narrow but clear view of the boats. There he sat, watching while Snyder ran down the quay, calling her name, watching Neave open the cabin door and calm him, watching her usher him into the cabin quickly so he wouldn’t attract attention.
Then he drove away, satisfied that when the time was right, he knew exactly where to find an isolated Neave Terhune.
THE PIRATE LOVER
Attack
Closing, closing, coming up into the wind with the enemy schooner directly in her path, the Cat made quick work of the chase. They were driving directly into Henri Le Cherche’s path, apparently intending to board his last intact ship, the Terrible.
“Sir!” cried Basil Le Cherche’s lookout. “There are women aboard the Terrible—I see them being pushed belowdecks … some very strangely dressed women!”
“His little flock of custom whoremaster pleasers,” Basil answered. “His slaves. Aim above the waterline—I intend to kill him but not sink a ship crammed to the gunwales with helpless prisoners. Arm the boarding party! Top yardsmen first and behind them lower deckhands—snipers into the rigging! Gun crews continue ongoing fire—sweep their quarterdeck until the moment we cross. Mr. Hortense,” he said, turning to his lieutenant. “I leave you in charge until my return.” With that, Basil Le Cherche drew his sword and positioned himself at the rail with his eager hands poised at his back, ready for the leap onto the enemy’s deck.
As they came within yards of the Terrible a lucky shot smashed through her mizzen topgallant. It swept downward, pulling the Terrible’s spanker and mainsail along with it and coming to rest at last on the deck of the Cat—a bridge to the enemy ship. “Now!” Basil Le Cherche cried as he sprang up and over, onto the deck of the Terrible. His slashing drive took the hand off his first attacker and in the pressing chaos he struggled to break free of the crush of men—to hunt madly amid the blistering confrontations all around him, to find his enemy, his nemesis, his brother.
The collision of the fallen mast onto the Cat and the feral cries of the boarding party all pulled Electra Gates up from the sick bay and onto the deck. She had ignored the angry, protesting surgeon, plaited her hair into a sailor’s pigtail, jammed a hat on her head, and pulled a heavy cotton middy over herself to make her figure more square. Now on the deck itself she bent before the guns and blacked her face with their powder, the better to move unrecognized. Holding fast to a dagger, determined to find and free the women she knew were battened down belowdecks on the Terrible, she stepped to the rail of the Cat, balanced there above the pitching black water for an instant like an otherworldly creature about to fly. And then she sprang.
Her landing was hard, much harder than she had imagined it would be, and as an enemy ran toward her with a sword raised, Trotter lunged forward and delivered a blow to him, saving her life. He yanked her to her feet. “Get onto your bleeding feet, you fucking swab, or they’ll slice you to ribbons! Watch your fucking back, boy!” he cried, pushing her behind him and facing yet another attacker. She whirled, then pushed herself toward where she hoped to find the main hatch. Just as she reached it another attacker lunged toward her, bludgeon in hand, and without engaging her mind at all, she slipped under the man’s line of attack and thrust her dagger upward into his rib cage, directly to the heart. When he collapsed on the hatch she rolled the body to the side, pried the hatch open, and dropped down into the black depths of the enemy ship.
There she found exactly what she’d expected to find—a dozen figures, all young, some too young to have yet entered into womanhood, all clustered around a single guttering taper. They gaped at her, she gaped in return, so strange did their costumes seem as they stood with the sound of battle just above their heads. Flounces and bows, boys’ trousers and wigs, pants and bodices of many descriptions made of many materials. All against the bulkhead, bottles were lined up—each one corked and sealed with wax, each one holding a scrap of cloth or paper. She pulled the cap from her head and released a flood of shining hair. They saw her stare.
“Bottles, miss,” one said at last. “For messages. We put them under our clothes and drop them in the sea when we’re allowed to go to the head. It’s all we could think to do. All we had the power to do, for we’re helpless, miss. Helpless.”
“What do the messages say?”
“Each and every one the same, though it might be in different words: ‘Save us!’”