LITMIR.BIZ

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joined Isabella on the veranda as more gunshots rang out, to see Edmund Beales standing on the beach now, legs spread, hands on hips, looking across the expanse of sand, up at the veranda.

      Another man in black. But although tall, although handsome, he was not Geoffrey Baskin, could never be more than he was, a pale-skinned man with a too- thin face and a mass of black curls, a man who wore leather close against his skin even in this heat, like an animal, Courtland had always thought. Beales was smiling now, and Courtland realized that, for all that he’d seen in his short span of years, he’d never before seen true evil. Not until this moment.

      Then one of the ships opened fire from the harbor, and a cannonball hit high in the palm trees to the left of the house, severing one so that its top crashed to the ground.

      Children cried, called for their mothers. But the mothers, the old men, the young boys, most all of them were running toward the attackers now, armed with pistols of their own, with metal-tipped pikes, with swords whose deadly blades caught the sunlight.

      “Isabella!”

      “Oh, sweet Jesus protect us,” Isabella said at Beales’s shout.

      “Isabella! You’re mine now! Isabella! Geoff is dead! You’re mine. Everything is mine!”

      Isabella swayed where she stood and Odette roughly pushed Cassandra, now wrapped tightly in a blanket, into Courtland’s arms as she caught her mistress close against her. “He lies. I did not see this, but I would have seen the Cap’n’s death. I would have known that in my heart. She kept me from seeing the treachery, my own wicked twin. I am so sorry! Come with me now. Into the trees, to the cave. Now, Missy Isabella! For your husband, your child—now!”

      Isabella held tightly to the wooden railing for a few moments longer, even as the wives of her husband’s crews were put upon by Beales’s men, and the older crew, crippled and maimed and gray of hair, fell or were subdued, one by one.

      At last she turned away, grabbing Courtland’s arm and pulling him back from the open windows. “Take Cassandra, Courtland. Take her and follow Odette. Go with the others, to the cave, just as Papa Geoff has always talked about if we were attacked, remember? Take her now!”

      “And you,” Courtland said, pleaded. “You’ll come, too.”

      She shook her head. “He doesn’t want you, he wants me. If I go with you, he won’t stop until he finds us all. I’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll talk to him, reason with him until Geoff comes to save us. But take Cassandra for me, keep her safe for us. Never leave her, Courtland, not for a moment, not until Geoff returns.”

      “No! I won’t leave you! You can’t make me leave you!”

      She slapped him. Isabella, the gentle one, the always smiling, laughing one. The one he loved above all others. Slapped him.

      “Do what I say! You have to live, Courtland. For your Callie, you have to live. You are her protector! Never leave her, not ever! Promise me!”

      Courtland nodded, unable to speak, and Isabella put her arms around him, pulling him and her child close, kissing both their foreheads.

      She looked at Odette, who only nodded, and then turned away, stepped back onto the veranda, to stand there, her hands on the railing, daring Edmund Beales to do his worst. “I am here, Edmund. Stop this, and we’ll talk! I’ll give you what you want— just stop your men, now!”

      Odette tugged on Courtland’s arm, pulling him out of the bedchamber, through one of the bedrooms across the wide hallway, onto the veranda there, the wooden stairs that led down the rear of the house. Once on the ground, they ran into the trees, meeting up with one of the other women, Edythe, who carried young Morgan, and they all pressed on together into previously forbidden territory for the children, the sounds of cannon fire, of gunshot, of unholy screams, chasing at their heels.

      “They didn’t stop,” Courtland said, looking to Odette. “He didn’t listen to her. I’ve got to go back, help her.”

      “You are a child, and you’ve got to do what she said for you to do,” Odette told him, her large brown eyes filled with tears. “If you love her, you’ll do as she said. It is all we can do. You know the way? Guide us.”

      Reluctantly, Courtland led the others deeper into the trees, avoiding the deadfalls Geoffrey Baskin had shown him, the deceptively normal-looking ground that hid deep pits lined with dozens of pointed wooden spikes. On and on they ran, twisting and turning through a path known only to those who had been trained to recognize the signs, until at last they reached the cave.

      Some were already there. Spencer, Rian, Fanny, three dozen or more women and even more children sitting wide-eyed and silent in the damp and dark. No more came, not as the screams continued to reach them, as night fell, as some of the young ones began to cry for their mothers, for their empty bellies.

      The hours stretched out into an eternity.

      At last Courtland could take no more. He reluctantly relinquished Cassandra, whom he’d been holding still for hours and hours, and gave her over to Odette.

      He walked slowly, not to avoid the deadfalls, but because he didn’t want to see what he felt sure he would see.

      The sun was just rising as he stepped out of the trees, skirting the side of the big house, walking onto the beginnings of the wide beach. The wide, red beach. Buzzing with flies; littered with broken, gutted bodies. Women, children, babies. Animals. They all lay on the sand. They hung from trees. Bodies, pieces of bodies.

      The three ships were gone.

      Young Isaac was among the dead. Isaac, and so many others who had survived the raid on the church, just to die here. Geoffrey Baskin had saved them, taken them in as his own—for this? Why? Why?

      Courtland went to his knees beside Isaac, pressed a hand to the boy’s chest, hoping for a heartbeat, but only came away with blood on his hands. Everywhere he went, every body he knelt beside, he touched, said a prayer for before moving on to the next, and then the next…

      The silence rang in his ears like the sound of the whip whistling above his head, ready to sting, to cut. Even the exotic birds in the trees were silent.

      At last he turned toward the huge house, his shoulders squaring as he prepared himself for whatever he might face inside those white walls. It was then that he saw the words, written high and wide on the wood. Written in blood.

      You lose. No mercy, no quarter. Until it’s mine.

      He began to run, not knowing if he should be praying to find Isabella, or to hope that Edmund Beales had taken her with him, because then she’d still be alive.

      The most fervent of his prayers weren’t to be answered, for the first thing he saw when entering the high foyer ringed by the main staircase was the body of Isabella Baskin lying on the stone floor. She looked to be asleep, except that her eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the chandelier hanging twenty feet above her head.

      Courtland went to his knees beside her, still hoping she was alive, sliding his hands beneath her, trying to lift her up. But her head fell back, her neck broken, and he looked up at the second floor balcony. Had she fallen? Had she been picked up, thrown over the railing? And why? Why?

      He left her then, knowing he had to return to the cave, to Cassandra, to Odette and the others. What if Beales hadn’t been lying? What if Geoffrey Baskin was dead, what if both the Black Ghost and the Silver Ghost were at the bottom of the sea? What then?

      He couldn’t cry, had no time to mourn. This was not the time for tears.

      He was, he knew, the oldest male left alive on the island, possibly the only man left alive at all. He had a responsibility.

      They all looked to him when he entered the cave, questions in their eyes.

      He gathered up the sleeping Callie once more, the blood on his hands smearing the infant’s white lawn gown.

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