I never wanted this. Any of it. I only want you, my love. Which is why you have to find me. Which is why I supported the plantation of that clue. Roche wishes someone would come.
So come. But do not come alone, for he plans to kill each of you.
I will wait for your arrival, but if I never see you again, just know that you occupy the space between my ears. Roche may have the rest of me, but he cannot get my thoughts.
Those, my love, belong to you.
I
Sara sunk into her chair. How grim to face your mortality at such a young age. There was too much optimism in her tone for the girl to be any older than a teenager.
And for all Sara knew, the stains on this paper were salt from Isabella’s tears.
There was more here and Sara felt like knowing all there was to know about the island Blake was looking for. And how it all started with a tongue.
Apparently.
To the Curious:
You are cordially invited to find the estate of Captain Alejandro Roche, for which the English Navy has searched tirelessly for nearly two decades.
It shan’t be easy, and many who come looking will not survive. But there would be no challenge in that. To those with the cunning and the patience to succeed, there is so much to await you.
Begin this hunt on the hook. Where you are the bait.
From there, travel along the path of the plate to the glaring twins, who watch the sky in order to see the sign.
Once you are there, have a seat among the red feet.
Use your taste buds to feast forever.
Understand... these words are ghosts. They move across the moonlight; promises as purple fog.
Do not be discouraged. There is a little pirate in everyone.
I
This paper was different. Written on different stock.
And while the handwriting was close enough to Isabella’s, there was no doubt that Roche himself had authored this. It was gleeful in its invitation of death. Holding it in her hands, Sara had never felt closer to a monster.
She put the document aside as if holding it any longer might poison her mind. She reread Isabella’s pages until the world dimmed and she smelled the candle wax that hardened on the yellow paper in small half bulbs.
They lived hundreds of years apart, on opposite sides of the world, and Isabella would never know Sara Mosby existed. Yet, Sara felt a kinship with her all the same.
Each time she read the girl’s words, a little more of the author crept off the page. The terror in her scribbles. The hopelessness of her actions—stuffing a letter inside a cask of pirate wine, slipping Far East traders some extra coin in order to take it the rest of the way, all while hoping for the best.
How horrible that uncertainty must’ve been.
Sara thought of the pirate and wondered what about him had driven Isabella into his arms. He must’ve possessed a roguish charm that, when coupled with his considerable wealth, made him impossible to resist. Sara knew it because, if Blake somehow pulled this off, she may very well forgive him.
God, she hated to admit that.
She folded the pages and her thoughts drifted inexplicably to Holloway. The way his steely eyes had roved her like a lion looking at dinner.
Sara slid her torn jean shorts up past her thighs and buttoned them. A dark tee covered her dark breasts and left a hint of midriff exposed. She looked herself over in the floor-to-ceiling mirror and nodded.
I look good, she thought.
She opened the door and hurried past Blake’s room without a second thought.
***
Holloway and Kahega were at the bow. The guide had the automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, glaring at open water.
The captain stood beside him and their chatter crumbled away with the sound of her approach. Across the deck, the small crew of the Frozen Cocktail performed their jobs with silent efficiency.
“I feel left out,” Sara said, crossing her arms and pretending to know what they were looking at.
“We’re trying to make it around the island without arousing suspicion,” Holloway said.
Kahega snorted. “Which is hard, given the fact that you shot someone.”
“Yeah,” Holloway said, resuming his watch. “Look, Sara, you really should go back to your room.”
“Because it’s not safe out here?”
“Safer here than your goddamn house,” the captain said.
“So why do I need to stay out of sight?”
The captain shrugged, a look that said, “your funeral.” The three of them stood quiet until Holloway excused himself and headed to the stern. Sara was left staring at the back of Kahega’s neck.
“You really do not like me,” the guide said.
“Blame me?”
Kahega laughed and turned in profile. “I suppose not. But I have done what I was supposed to do.”
“Is it really out there? The treasure?”
“I would not have taken your money otherwise.”
“Well, then. Case closed.”
“You still do not trust.”
“Not even a little.”
“You should,” he said. “Because the wrong man would have slashed your husband’s throat. Left him bleeding and taken the map off his corpse.”
“You’re a real good guy, huh?”
Kahega snickered. “Just an honest one.”
“This ship, the people on it—”
“Comes out of my piece,” he said. “What else can I say to ease your mind?”
“Nothing, while you’re holding that. Guns make me nervous,” Sara said.
“They should.”
“Not exactly the comfort I was hoping for.”
“This is not the coast of Maine.” Kahega unslung his weapon and held it out, shaking his fists until she took it.
She held it the way someone holds a newborn baby for the first time. Even though she liked shooting these things, they never settled into her grip the right way. She was always too aware of their potential for destruction.
Kahega put night vision binoculars to his face as the sky around them darkened.
“Take this back,” Sara said.
Kahega allowed her request to linger, at last taking the rifle and slinging it back over his shoulder. “You really should relax,” he said. “I can show you how to shoot this thing, might help you some.”
“I said I don’t like them. Didn’t say I couldn’t shoot one.”
Kahega smiled, gave a slow but prideful nod. “Want to know the worst part of this?”
“Being on your honeymoon and finding out your husband looted your bank account to pay some shady-ass tour guide?”
This drew a belly laugh. He shook the smirk off his face. “The villagers will take my jeep, which I can live without. But my tapes...”
“Get us through this and I’ll buy you an iPod loaded up with every song the 80s ever produced.”
“Even Don Johnson?”
Sara thought maybe she knew that name from The Eagles, but had no desire to ask. Everything was on iTunes these days. “Sure,” she said. “Even Don Johnson.”
“Fair deal,” Kahega laughed. “Tell you what, Sara Mosby, if we find what we’re looking for, I’ll pay your husband back every cent I took thus far.”
“Nah,” she said.
“It must happen. I did not realize the circumstances in which he paid me.”
She smiled at the gesture, but the topic was too awkward to continue.
The guide craned his neck. Sara followed his line of sight to a figure moving up the mast ladder. It was Holloway, looking through his binoculars and gesturing with increased fervor.
He called down, some of his voice lost to the swirling ocean breeze. It sounded like “horizon!”
“Back to your room,” Kahega told her, sliding the weapon off his back. “And tell one of the men to give you a pistol.”
Something was coming to kill them. Sara swallowed hard but couldn’t bring herself to move. Never
had she felt more vulnerable. Blake had driven them out to sea in a floating coffin.
Kahega swatted her away and ran to the bow. Overhead, the captain descended, barking orders at his men to arm up. The three crewmen were everywhere at once, their clicking weapons sounded like clucking tongues.
Before Sara could get below, one of the men stuffed a pistol in her fist and closed her fingers around the handle.
She took it below deck and hurried to her room.
Blake’s bunk was still closed tight. Her hand hovered over the knob but even then, she couldn’t make herself go in.
So she went instead to the large suite at the end of the hall and locked the door behind her.
Thirteen
The Zodiac boat zipped through the shallows on the far side of Nosy Be. Island fires danced across the shoreline there, guiding them toward Madagascar’s tip. Toward Antsiranana.
It wasn’t the fastest way, but Kaahin knew they would find the least amount of resistance here. Given the Algerian ambush by Langley spooks, he was through taking chances. His feet tapped solid board beneath his feet while stomach acid swam at the back of his throat.
If they had taken him alive, there would’ve been questions. Where was the Star Time? What happened to the people aboard it? Kaahin was not prepared to answer.
That meant they’d imprison him in some CIA black site, conjure his house on satellite feed and threaten to drone strike it. Langley wasn’t going to abandon their search for him just yet.
Kaahin’s point man lifted the portable searchlight and clicked it. The sky was so dark they appeared to be floating across glass. Only it wasn’t glass that Kaahin looked at, but wreckage. The remnants of what had been a fine sea-faring vessel. It was driftwood now, broken into a thousand pieces, bobbing like it was trying to reassemble itself.
The Zodiac boat slowed and puttered through the mess, careful not to damage its propeller on the flotsam. It was everywhere, as far as the searchlight could see.
Somewhere inside the crushing black of night, human cries were louder than the motor. Gibberish at first, but growing into something slightly more coherent the longer their ears stayed open to it.
“Death’s head... Death’s head... Death’s head...”
They found a naked man lying over a bit of curved and broken wood, staring into the water and refusing to lift his head at the sound of their approach.
Kaahin killed the motor and two of his men reached out to grab him. Kaahin listened to the sound of rhythmic drums in the night, finding them all the way out here from the shores of Nosy Be.
They had to grab the man beneath his arms and heaved him through the water. His torso slipped in alongside the floating debris and he screamed so hard his voice turned to scratches. They lugged him over the edge of the inflatable boat and dropped him face down at Kaahin’s feet. “Death’s head,” he slurred. “Death’s head!”
His hand bolted up and seized a fistful of Kaahin’s pant leg, glaring wild-eyed as if he could see nothing except the gates of hell.
“Death’s head!”
Kaahin realized there were body parts floating alongside the debris. Limp and half-eaten hunks that floated face down on relaxed swells. The sole survivor chanted nonsense from the center of their boat. One of this man’s legs was missing beneath the knee. The gushing appendage blasted their ankles with a flood of crimson.
Kaahin did not have to ask what these men had been doing. They were poachers, he knew. And did not like it. His fingers closed around the sidearm on the seat beside him. He dropped the hammer. The man was too agitated to notice. His eyes were wider than marbles and he kept screaming those same two words over and over.
“Death’s head! Death’s head! Death’s head.”
Superstition rose on the faces of the men. Nervous eyes darted through the water, suddenly tense because they feared the evil waiting just beneath the surface.
The man’s voice grew louder still, even more agitated. Kaahin hated it and pulled the trigger. The bullet drilled straight through his forehead, red slush pelting the faces of his soldiers.
“Toss him,” Kaahin said.
His men rolled the corpse up onto the rubber wall and pushed him overboard, the body bobbing in the matchstick mess behind them as Kaahin restarted the motor. There was still a ways to go and they could afford no more distractions.
Kaahin glanced back and smiled at the dead body floating there. Whatever madness had taken him would not infect his men.
Kaahin thought he saw the body slip beneath the waves. And then a geyser of red bubbles shot up to replace the spot where he’d been.
Rather than question it, Kaahin accelerated. None of the men could bring themselves to look over their shoulders. None wanted to. Instead they checked their weapons and clutched them harder.
Kaahin thought he should give them a word of encouragement. In days gone by, Alzir would’ve been the one to do that. But the Pirate King had a rule and that was to never lie to his men. While eager bodies were a dime a dozen, loyalty was rare.
And yet there were no words to set their minds at ease. He might’ve known something about what haunted these waters, but it was nothing to ever speak aloud.
He stayed quiet.
They kept going.
Fourteen
Sara sat with Isabella’s notes in her lap, trying to shut out the bustling footsteps stomping above deck.
It wasn’t working, and by the time Holloway knocked at her door, she was relived for the distraction.
“We’re being boarded,” he said.
“By who?”
Blake stood behind him. The captain hooked him by the arm and flung him against Sara before pulling the door shut. “Lock it and keep quiet.”
Sara did.
Blake moved to starboard portal and squinted through.
“Get away from there,” Sara said. “If they see you—”
“We can’t let them find the papers.” Blake reached for them and—
Sara was faster. She snatched them in her fist and scanned the cabin. Her first thought was to slide them between a few of the old softback books on the shelf beside the bed, but Blake didn’t agree.
“First place they’ll look.”
They went back and forth about where they wouldn’t look, still uncertain who they were. Sara went for her duffel bag and Blake snapped up her wrist.
“You’re joking,” he hissed. “They’ll think we’ve got bricks of coke in there.”
“We’ve got limited options.”
“Trick is to keep them in the open.” Blake stripped down to his boxers and arranged himself into an Indian fold on the bedspread. “Quick,” he whispered. “From my room... the notebook.”
Sara’s heart felt like dynamite as she pulled the door back and peered through the sliver. The boarding party hadn’t swept this far down yet. There was still time.
She dashed for their couple’s cabin and found Blake’s notebook atop the desk, opened to a page where he’d written furiously about their honeymoon. Certain words jumped out at her. Disgust. Ingrate. Didn’t have to read it to know exactly what he’d written.
She flung it at Blake once she returned. He ripped a few pages out and placed them among the translated notes.
Above deck, a shouting match erupted between Holloway and the uninvited. Sara braced herself, half expecting to hear gunshots. Through the window, she saw the familiar emblem of home. The insignia of United States Coast Guard blurred past and then she was looking at the ship floating beside the Frozen Cocktail.
“Take your clothes off,” Blake said, his voice mostly pleading.
She stripped and climbed beneath the covers, stretching out to pretend they’d just exhausted themselves. She wondered if this wasn’t an opportunity to get off this ride.
“We love to be where we don’t belong,” Blake said, never missing an opportunity to pontificate.
“Yeah, that’s the takeaway.”
“It is, he said. “We’re fucking impe
rialists.”
The sound of hustling bodies filled the stairwell, the search turning to the ship’s interiors. Military boots landed fast and stomped heavy. If they barged in, how were they going to sell themselves?
“We’re on our honeymoon,” Blake said. “Remember that. There is nothing but truth here.”
Sara nodded. “Saw Holloway’s boat and thought it’d be fun to look at the island from the ocean.”
“And you’re a marine biologist so it checks.”
A knock hit their door. They swapped nervous glances and then she rose with the bed sheet wrapped around her. Gooseflesh lined her forearms as she strode to the door, twisting the knob and flinging it wide, giving the soldiers beyond it an unexpected show.
They averted their eyes and apologized for the intrusion, asking if they’d seen anything unusual in their travels. With a soft chuckle, Sara told them they really hadn’t been paying much attention.
“Look wherever you’d like,” Holloway said. He stood so far to the back of the overstuffed hallway she couldn’t even see him.
The coast guard gave their quarters a cursory check and decided there was nothing out of the ordinary.
“Won’t be necessary.” Sara heard one of the men reply.
They proceeded to open the rest of the doors, checking the other bunks with only slightly more attention. This while Sara left their door wide open and dropped back into bed. She grabbed a paperback off the shelf and pretended to read while the men completed their sweep.
“And the storage compartments,” Holloway said, still out of sight. Still in full compliance mode. Laughter boomed as he continued to charm them with anecdotes and jokes Sara couldn’t hear.
Once every last body was back on their own ship and pulling away from the Frozen Cocktail, Holloway reappeared at the end of the hall.
“You kids rekindling?” He smirked.
“She’s my wife,” Blake said.
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