LITMIR.BIZ

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don’t be in such a hurry,” she drawled.

      He hesitated, looking at her. He’d never fooled with the whores in this place, though he’d tipped well enough for his drinks. But she knew he wasn’t interested in what she had to offer.

      She was trying to keep him from leaving.

      “Brendan, we need to go,” he said sharply.

      “What?” Brendan asked.

      “Sonya knows something. In fact, I’d say someone paid her to stop us,” he said softly, looking into the woman’s eyes.

      She flushed, lowering her thick lashes.

      “Nay, ’tis only that I live by the profits of this place,” she said, sounding a little desperate.

      “I doubt if any man is brave enough to go after Blackbeard,” Logan said. “So who paid you to keep us here so that they could go after Captain Red Robert?”

      She stepped away, but he caught her arms and dragged her back.

      “Sonya?”

      “I don’t know!” she snapped. “Some fellow…he gave me gold,” she said, as if that would explain everything.

      He moved her firmly aside and looked at Brendan. “I haven’t figured out what Red Robert is so bent on achieving, nor do I know who or why, but someone is after Red.”

      Brendan stared at him, then turned toward the door. Logan caught his arm. “We’re in this together,” he told him quietly. “And may I suggest you call your man Hagar, as well?”

      Brendan, face taut, nodded stiffly. For a moment he’d had a reckless look in his eyes. He was a formidable man, tall and muscled, but agile, and his concern would have sent him off without heed, but Logan’s words reined in his impulse to rush out alone. He sized Logan up carefully while shouting, “Hagar, gather who you can. We’re going after the cap’n. Now!”

      They moved out. There were narrow alleys to either side of the tavern, both now dark and menacing, filled with shadows and gloom. Each led into smaller, darker alleys, little craters of blackness that could hide many a sin. Ghostly laundry hung in the darkening mist of the day. A dog howled as the wind picked up, and the screeching cry of a cat sent shivers up Logan’s back. A scurrying sound warned them of rats.

      The day was no longer what it had been.

      The clear sky had gone dark. The breeze had gone chill and brisk, whispering with the coming rain. The clouds overhead billowed and rushed.

      A storm was coming, and coming hard.

      A perfect shield…

      For a surprise attack.

      A man stood leaning against one of the supports that held the bar upright, his head on his chest as if he had fallen asleep in a drunken stupor. “Which way?” Logan demanded.

      The fellow didn’t move.

      Logan shook him, and he opened one bleary eye. But Logan didn’t believe he was so far gone.

      He shook the man harder.

      “Which way?” he asked again.

      “I don’t know.”

      “Tell me, or I’ll slit you from the groin up,” Logan said evenly.

      “The alley.”

      “Which alley?” Logan demanded.

      “The alley to the left. Cap’n Robert went that way not five minutes past. The…others came out a bit after.”

      “How many?” Logan demanded.

      The man shrugged.

      “How many?” Logan repeated, his tone still low, but filled with a menacing promise.

      “Eight…ten…”

      Brendan was already running into the shadows.

      Logan released his hold on the drunk and followed.

      And the storm broke.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      RED KNEW SHE was being followed, and she listened carefully.

      It was exactly what she had expected. No, hoped for.

      But as she pretended to saunter along, weaving a bit, as if she had drunk heavily, she listened hard and damned the weather. The rain had started. The sky had threatened that it would come down in buckets, but as yet, it was just an annoying and continual fall, darkening the world and making it hard for her to listen. She couldn’t tell how many were following. She had assumed it would be just one man. Maybe two. But there were more than that behind her, she knew.

      Blair Colm did not know who she was. He knew only that the pirate Red Robert had a reputation for horrible ferocity.

      And that Red Robert was looking for him.

      And she knew that despite his cruelty, Blair Colm had always been a coward.

      When she left Teach, she had seen Sonya taking a coin from a man. She’d tested it, but Sonya was a businesswoman—she knew real gold when she saw it. Red didn’t even hate Sonya for the betrayal. The woman’s life was hard. She hated most men. She’d crawled her way to the top of the heap by lifting her skirts for sex in dark corners, turning her face from the putrid breath of unwashed men. Red couldn’t hate her.

      Maybe she had grown too complacent in her own skills, Red thought now. A sad miscalculation, since she had lost to Logan Haggerty. But he had been different. There was—or usually was—little to fear from other pirates. They passed at sea and saluted one another. They shared dens of iniquity, like the one she had just left. They brawled and wenched and drank, but they seldom picked battles with one another. They shared one bond, the ever-present image of the hangman’s noose. No need to battle one another.

      But Red had wanted to be followed, for there could have been only one reason for it. And now she knew. Blair Colm had spent a great deal of money to send men out to murder Captain Red Robert.

      But now she began to count the footsteps and lament her own reckless determination to see Blair Colm dead. There were at least six men behind her. They would have to be the most drunken, poorest swordsmen in the world to fall victim to her alone. She damned her own stupidity and confidence—her belief that she could best her pursuers in any duel and demand to know from them where Colm was headed now, where he might be found.

      She hadn’t asked Brendan or any of the men to go with her, for a coward who had taken money to kill would not have followed her if she had been accompanied.

      She simply hadn’t believed there would be so many.

      Ahead, a white sheet billowed as the alley widened, and she hurried beyond it, knowing she had to pick a place to make her stand.

      And so she did, checking the line that held the laundry as she held her position, barely daring to breathe, and waited.

      She heard the footsteps, coming closer now, moving faster.

      “Where’s he gone?” came a whisper, just audible in the night.

      A flash of lightning illuminated the sky for a split second.

      From her vantage point atop a step just beyond the line, Red saw the men. Eight. Two were leaning upon one another, and one of those two carried a bottle of rum. They weren’t there to fight; they were just waiting for the kill.

      None of them was well-armed. They were debris, she determined. Refuse that had found its way to the island. There was only one—a tall, muscular man, wearing a brace of pistols, his cutlass at the ready—who appeared to offer any real danger. He was bald beneath his sweeping hat, and one of his eyes was made of glass. Though the alley was dark, she could see that; slivers of moonlight caught on it, casting a glint of reflection. That was good. She would attack from the left.

      Full darkness

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