Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) (27 page)

That was when she
heard the first ominous split of her perch. Before she could move toward the
trunk of the tree, she heard a last terrible crack as the branch broke in half beneath
her, flinging her to the ground.

25

Sully watched the
two men hurry away. The rain, which had abated during his demonstration, was
back with a vengeance. He smiled to think of the soaking his Honor would endure
before reaching Key West. He put up the collar of his own coat. He didn’t have
as far to go as the judge, but with the rain creating thick rivulets in the
sand and the hard-packed trails of shells and dirt, he would have his own
challenges to return to the ship. He waited just long enough to ensure the judge
wasn’t planning on finishing their agreement with a bullet to the back of his
head and reached into his leather pouch to touch the certificate, safe and dry.

As he turned to
retrace his steps back to the boat, his eye fell on the bonnet, ruined and
sodden near a large palmetto bush. Perhaps he’d have another try with Miss
Morton. She was definitely a pretty little thing.

The rain seemed
to be pushing him down into the mud and the moving sands beneath his feet. At
one point, two vipers shot out of the underbrush, literally swimming in front
of him, thrashing and squirming to get away.

This rain would
bring out all manner of creature, he thought, his hand dropping to his musket.
The path around the mangrove, which had led him to the meeting place, was now a
small river. He looked at the mangrove itself wondering if he could possibly
cross on it, but the snakes had reminded him of what lived in the mangrove.

One thing was
certain, the rain was coming down harder and the water was rising. Waiting to
decide which way to go wasn’t helping. In another quarter of an hour the whole
island might well be submerged. Panic ate his jubilation like an acid. Holding
the leather bag tightly inside his coat, he plunged into the knee-high water to
try to find the path back to the ship.

The mud underfoot
nearly sucked his boots from his feet and he had to use both hands to pull each
foot up. The water was nearly to his hips now. Abandoning the path he’d taken
earlier, he pulled himself up an incline that now served as an embankment. He
barely had time to orient himself when he heard what sounded like a woman’s
scream.

Surely the rain
and the wind were playing tricks on his hearing? He staggered against the blast
of air and moved further inland away from the beach when he suddenly heard it
again. Tearing past the low hanging moss and dead limbs of a stand of ancient coral
trees, he broke into a small clearing just as she screamed a third time.

It was Adele
Morton. She was facing a trio of crocodiles and appeared to be beating them
with tree branches.

For a moment,
Sully just stood there stunned, but when she screamed again as one of the crocs
lunged at her snapping at her long skirt, he pulled his musket and took aim at
the beast as it leapt again. Its white underbelly and neck exploded in a gory
confetti of crimson and gray, the sound of the pistol shot seeming to echo and
reverberate as if the sound were coming from all over the island at once in
varying volume levels.

The other crocs
instantly slithered away and he saw the girl drop the branch to her feet,
clearly exhausted. He ran to her and grabbed her hand.

“No time for fainting,”
he shouted over the din of the storm. “Follow me.”

He was relieved
he wasn’t going to have to carry her. She looked like she couldn’t go another
step. She was barefoot and her dress was plastered to her body. Her wet hair
now appeared to be cropped short against her neck. He hurriedly drew her away
from the mangroves and the rising water. Even as they ran, he was splashing
through puddles and filled holes of mud and water. She fell once, nearly taking
him down with her, and he jerked her back to her feet.

“Just a little
bit further,” he yelled. “Up there. Can you make it?”

He pointed to the
rocky formation protruding above their heads, and when he did he thought he saw
her sway uncertainly on her feet.

Best not to think about it too much
, he decided, and turned around and
grabbed her by the hips and boosted her up the boulder.

“Grab on to
something!” he shouted. At first he didn’t think she understood him as her
hands simply clung to the rock face. The water was now rushing around his legs
it was rising so fast. Finally he felt her move out of his arms and upward.
She’d found a branch and was pulling herself up. He didn’t dare let go of her
in case her strength gave out, but the water was climbing up his legs by the
second.

Finally, she
kicked free of his grasp and was gone. Sully looked wildly about for anything
that might give him a hand up the rock face. He knew the path he normally took
up there was washed away. The rain came down even harder, and when he put his
hands on the rock looking for purchase everything was slippery. He jabbed the
toe of his boot in the rock fighting to find a hold, and then grabbed the sides
of the rock. But the toehold wasn’t big enough, and when he lifted his other foot
to climb he fell back into the water.

Sputtering and
splashing to his feet, his hand went to the leather bag in his jacket to
confirm the hard lump was still in there. Angry now, he reached down below the
waterline on the rock with his hands and felt for the toeholds he knew must be
there. Lower and lower until he put his face in the water to be able to reach
them. When he did, he jerked his head up and found the hold with his shoe. The
water was past his waist now—and climbing.

But he had it
now. He reached up and found a small sapling growing out of a crevice in the
stone and wrapped his hand around it and pulled. Twice more and he was up and
over the top. He collapsed, sides heaving, on the flat rocky outcropping as the
rain pounded him from above.

When he opened
his eyes after a moment, he saw her huddled and shivering in a squatting
position as far away from the ledge as she could get.

Poor lass,
he thought.
She has more grit than I’d
ever imagined a judge’s daughter to have. Mind you, that would make sense if
she’s a traveler.

He dragged
himself to his feet and staggered to her.

“Come on,” he
said. “There’s a cave back around the first line of rocks there.”

She climbed to
her feet and followed him. It was more of a natural stone lean-to than a cave,
but it would give them shelter from the storm. It was dry inside, if not warm,
but there was a place just inside the lip where he could build a fire.

Sully dropped his
bag and stripped off his coat. He watched the girl peer into the cave and then
settle down in a dry spot near the mouth. He stood next to her for a moment
watching the sky erupt into a series of demonic flashes followed by terrible
rumbles that seem to shake the island to its core. When the lightning
illuminated the sky, he was able to briefly see the silhouette of
Die Hard
, black and ghostly, moored in
the cove a few miles due east.

He touched her
shoulder and she jumped. “I’m going for firewood,” he said and she nodded. He
returned within minutes with an armful of driftwood and gnarled mangrove
branches. They were wet but they’d burn.
Damn.
Now would be a good time to have that lighter.
As he set to work building
the fire, he noticed she had stopped shaking.

“I don’t supposed
it would do me any good to ask you how you got here when I left you cozy and
dry under guard back on the ship?”

“One of your men
tried to rape me,” she said, her voice full of indictment.

I will kill whoever it was
, he found himself thinking.
And if it was Toad, all the better.

 
“What did he look like?”

She ran her
fingers through her hair and looked away. “Like what you all look like,” she
said. “Greasy, dirty, horrible.”

Sully laughed. “I
guess we do all look alike.”

Once the fire was
going, he pulled out a handful of dried beef jerky and handed it to her. She
hesitated to take it.

“It’s not
poisoned,” he said.

“That’s right,”
she said snatching it away and giving him a fierce look. “Because drugging poor
defenseless women is not something you do, is it?”

He bit into his
own jerky and eyed her. “Where are you from?”
 

“You know the
answer to that very well.”

“I mean what
timeline. You won’t convince me you are from 1825.”

“I don’t care to
convince you of anything.”

“You should come
closer to the fire so your clothes will dry.”

“Don’t act all
solicitous! If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be stranded on a godforsaken
island surrounded by sea snakes and crocodiles in the middle of a category four
hurricane!”

Sully grinned.
“Don’t forget the stinging jellyfish,” he said. “You can die from the sting.
Did you know that? Or just wish you had.”

She didn’t answer
and he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small bottle of rum. He
held it out to her. “It’ll help you stay warm.”

She reached for
the bottle. “Offering me succor after
you’re
the one who’s put me in this mess doesn’t absolve you.”

He pulled off his
sodden scarf and draped it over a stick propped near the fire. “I don’t expect
it to,” he said, smiling.

 
“How did you know this cave was here?”
She wiped her mouth and handed the bottle back to him.

“It
happens to be my favorite hiding place in all the Dry Tortugas,” he said,
taking a swig from the rum. It burned all the way down his throat in a way that
warmed him like the small fire couldn’t possibly. He felt his shoulders relax
and he rotated his neck to try to work the kinks out of it. When he turned to
hand the bottle back to Miss Morton, she was staring at him with her mouth open
in complete shock and horror.

***

Ella felt the
effects of the rum rush to her head, and if it wasn’t for the hard wall of the
rock cave behind her back supporting her, she would have collapsed.

“Are you all
right, Miss Morton?”

Ella waved away
the pirate’s concern, not trusting her voice to speak.

Had she really seen what she thought she had? Was that even
possible?

“I’m…I’m
surprised you revealed it,” she said. “I thought pirates were fairly secretive
about their treasure.”

“Well, I consider
this
our
treasure, Adele. May I call
you Adele?”

“No, you may not.
How do you figure it’s ours?” Ella asked, trying to keep him engaged talking
while her mind when into hyperdrive.

How is it possible? Could it be a coincidence?
Had she really seen it?

“Are you sure
you’re all right, Miss Morton? You have had quite an afternoon and nobody would
fault you if you would like to retire early.”

“You think you’re
funny, don’t you? You keep forgetting that
you
are the reason I’ve had
quite an
afternoon
. Kidnapped, attempted rape, being attacked by crocodiles and now
sitting in a cave during a hurricane.”

“You keep saying
hurricane, but I’m fairly sure Doppler radar has yet to be invented.”

“I don’t care if
it’s only a tropical storm,” Ella hissed. “It’s still really shitty!”

“I grant you it
is,” Sully said, “but I have no control over the weather. Even you can see
that.”

Ella rubbed her
arms to stop the shivering that was starting back up. “Did you…did you see…my
father?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“And he agreed to
give me a wrecking certificate.”

“What did you say
to make that happen, because I happen to know he doesn’t give them out and
certainly not to a criminal low-life monster like you.”

“My, my, it’s
almost as if you know me,” Sully said, raising his eyebrows. He tossed a few
more small sticks onto the fire. Ella watched it snap and spark against the
torrential downpour beyond the cave opening.

“I just showed
him some of the more amazing features of a semi-automatic weapon and entreated
him to imagine one in the hands of every pirate in the West Indies.”

“You brought a
semi-automatic pistol to 1825?”

 
“I admit I did. The judge seemed to think
a wrecking certificate was a small price to pay to avoid a new Golden Age of
piracy.”

“Are you kidding?
He
agreed
?”

 
“He’s a protectorate of his province,
Miss Morton. Of course he agreed. Pirates with Glocks? Can you imagine?”

“And you’d do it?”

He shrugged. “As
it happens, I only have the one gun.”

“So you were
bluffing. Why wouldn’t they just blow you and your whole mangy crew out of the
water—literally—rather than deal with you?”

“I should think
that’s obvious. Because I have the judge’s daughter.” He smiled.