Wherever You Are (2 page)

Morgan leaned a shoulder against the wall of the captain’s cabin and glared at the woman who’d swept away his worst nightmare with two words. She hadn’t listened to a damn thing he’d said, but why should that surprise him? Lady Isabelle Parker didn’t listen to anyone when she didn’t want to.

He uncrossed his arms, so damn tired he couldn’t see straight. Every time he closed his eyes he pictured his flaming ship sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic and heard the cries of the four men he hadn’t been able to save.

“A ship with Parker and Parker Limited cargo sank.” Isabelle spoke slowly, as if speaking to a child, which shot his anger through the forecastle.

“Isabelle, think on it, if it were your enemy, he would have sunk one of your ships. Yet my ship was sunk.” He pounded his fist against his chest for emphasis.

Isabelle laid a hand on his arm, concern in her blue-green eyes. “You make too much of this, Morgan.”

And she too little. “Do you have enemies willing to sink your ships?” he asked.

A shadow passed across her face, gone before Morgan could decipher it. She turned to her husband, Reed, who was sitting at the captain’s desk, watching the exchange silently. Reed frowned and shook his head. Morgan wondered what silent communication passed between them that they weren’t willing to share.

“Do you?” He directed his question to Isabelle, but included Reed with a flick of his gaze.

“No,” Reed answered. “Parker and Parker has enemies, yes. Some are finding it difficult to deal with a woman at the helm of a ship, but no one would go so far as to torch one of our ships.”

Morgan had worried about this from the beginning. Isabelle was a woman born before her time. Years ago, before Reed found her and made her respectable, she’d been the feared pirate Lady Jane. And Morgan had sailed beside her, just as feared. Now Isabelle wanted to make a name for herself in the shipping industry. An industry ruled by men who thought it scandalous a woman would enter their ranks.

“And you, Morgan? Do you have enemies willing to sink your ship?” Isabelle asked.

Automatically his left hand went to the puckered scar on his right forearm. Silence stretched between them, the creak of the ship loud and intrusive.

“We can help,” she said softly. “Reed and I can fight with you if that is what you need. You have but to ask.”

A tremor raced up his spine. Even if Morgan wanted to, he couldn’t voice the words crowding his throat. A knock on the door relieved him of the burden. “Enter,” he called out.

Thomas, Morgan’s quartermaster, stepped in. “Sir, if I may interrupt. What would you like me to do with the boy found in the manger?”

Weary beyond endurance, Morgan rubbed his eyes. “What boy?”

“The one you saved from burning.”

His brows rose and his hand dropped to his side. He’d forgotten about the boy. “What of him?”

“I have him in the hold.”

Morgan stared at the young man who looked more boy than man with his bony shoulders and short hair. Yet he was a man, one who had earned his place as Morgan’s right hand.

Morgan sighed. Damn but he needed a bath to wash away the stink of the fire. Never mind there wasn’t enough water and soap in the world to get the stench of his burning ship from his nostrils. He needed sleep as well. A few hours of hard sleep would clear the cobwebs from his mind and allow him to concentrate.

“I didn’t recognize him as one of the crew,” Thomas added.

“Are you saying you think this boy is a stowaway?”
 

“Aye, sir. And I’m wondering if he may have started the fire.”

“You’ve never seen him before?” Isabelle asked Thomas, her voice sharp and commanding.

“No, ma’am.”

“How in the hell did a stowaway get aboard my ship?” Morgan asked quietly.

When no one answered he looked toward the ceiling. It wasn’t coincidence his ship burned while a stowaway was on board.

“Question him,” he ordered. “Discover his name and where he came from.”

Thomas nodded and left. Morgan cursed. Isabelle looked troubled. “A stowaway,” he muttered. Could this day get any worse?

Reed shifted and his chair creaked. “Why would a stowaway start a fire that would nearly kill him?”

Morgan didn’t have an answer but in his bones he knew the two were connected. “Stranger things have been done,” he said.

Reed shook his head in apparent disagreement. “I have to agree with Isabelle. The fire was an unfortunate occurrence. However, if you believe there is some threat to you and inadvertently—” Reed’s gaze cut to Isabelle, “—us, you should tell us.”

Was there a threat to the Parkers? Morgan didn’t know. If Barun sent the stowaway to torch his ship then the vendetta was personal. However, Barun wasn’t one to lose sleep over incidental casualties. Morgan had to believe that if Barun indeed found him, the Parkers were threatened as well.

“It is a possibility,” he admitted.

Reed blew out a breath, clearly angry Morgan had put Isabelle in danger. “Then I’ll have to insist that, for her safety, Isabelle retire to my ship for the rest of the voyage.”

Isabelle opened her mouth, no doubt to argue she was perfectly capable of defending herself while sailing a ship, but just as quickly she closed it when Reed threw a quelling glance at her. Reluctantly she nodded. “Let me gather my things and inform the crew that Morgan will take over my duties as captain. I’ll take a few crew members as well since the ship is already overly crowded with the addition of Morgan’s men.”

The silence left in her wake was charged with Reed’s hostility. Morgan didn’t blame the man. He’d lost thousands of pounds of profit with the sinking of Morgan’s ship.

“I also agree with Isabelle. We can help,” Reed said.

“Thank you, but no. This is my fight.”

Choking.

She was choking. Couldn’t breathe.

She clawed at her neck, the torn pads of her fingers ripping at the knot of the blanket.

Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe.

Can’tbreathcan’tbreathecan’tbreathe.

Air. She tried to draw in a breath but the air merely trickled into her lungs. She heard herself wheeze. Once. Twice. Glued by the salt of the ocean the knot was stiff beneath her fingers, her panic making it beyond difficult to untie. Little by little it gave way. She rolled to her hands and knees and dropped her head between her shoulders to draw in huge breaths.

Eventually, she lifted her head and rocked back on her heels, staring at…nothing. Blackness. Her heart picked up speed until it marathon-raced in her chest. Darkness. Walls surrounding her.

No!

Not this. Anything but this. She jumped to her feet. The damp, salt-encrusted blanket slipped to the floor, sliding down her legs to pool at her feet. Her hand touched rough wood. The tips of her fingers, already shredded from her climb up the rope ladder dug into planks. Splinters sliced through the torn skin but Juliana barely felt them.

Sweat dripped down her back, gathering at the waistband of her pants. She skimmed her hands across the rough wood, searching for an opening. Small whimpers she didn’t bother to control escaped.

Light-headed, dizzy, she pressed her face against the wood and sucked her lips between her teeth. She hated the dark.

Her feet shuffled, making strange noises and she looked down, confused, until she realized she was pushing her way through straw. It wasn’t completely dark. Weak light shone through small cracks. She crab-walked toward the largest crack, keeping both hands on the wall, and pressed her eye against it. Nothing but another wooden wall on the other side.

Her hands resumed their restless searching.

Surely there was a way out. She’d been put in here hadn’t she? There had to be a door. Something. Something to get her out of here. If the walls weren’t surrounding her, closing her in, she’d be able to think.

Think. Think. Think.

It was too hard, the panic too much.
Don’t give in.

She found a larger crack and cried out in relief. A door.

She pulled on the handle. It didn’t budge.

No.

She pounded with the flat of her palms and opened her mouth to call for help. Nothing came out except a jagged breath of air. For the first time she noticed her throat burned. Water. She’d been thrown into water. The ocean.

A ship.

She remembered now. Disreputable men armed with weapons. A ship on fire. Being trapped in the fire.

She pounded harder.

She’d been talking to Zach’s mom, Emily Langtree. She’d had to see Emily one last time before moving to Chicago to start her new life but so much stood between them. Zach’s memory stood between them. The boy Juliana had loved with all her heart, the boy who left her inexplicably. Who’d never been found.

Her frantic pounding slowed, and her hand dropped to her side. She stared at the door in the very dim light.

She’d fallen. In the Langtree home. Had she hit her head? Was she unconscious?

Yes. That had to be it. She was unconscious, her mind taking her back to her childhood. To the closet in the barn.

She sank to the straw. It scratched her through her linen pants. Her fingers curled around fistfuls of it. Her head hurt. Her skin burned. The straw poked her hands and the floor beneath her shifted just like a ship would if it were on the ocean.

No, this wasn’t a dream. This was real. She was on a ship, locked in a small room. Her nightmare come to life.

Her stomach churned, bile rose in her throat, and a cold chill raced up her arms. She surged to her feet and began pounding the door again.

“Emily!” At first the words came out gravely and thin but soon panic made them shrill. “Emily! Let me out! Please!”

Oh, God, oh, God.
She needed out.

“Emmmmmilllllyyyyyy!” The cry turned into a wail of desperation and ended on a sob.

Juliana pressed her back to the door and slid down until her knees were tucked under her chin. Something to her right squeaked and ran over her bare feet but she couldn’t summon the energy to care.

Rats. Big, fat, hairy rats with long, sharp teeth and ugly pink tails.

She pictured the rats crawling over her cold, dead body. She felt their little eyes boring into her, waiting for her.

The floor beneath her tilted and made her slide a few inches to the left. Her arms shot out for balance. She closed her eyes and tried to remember how she got here. She’d called Zach’s mother and asked if they could meet. They’d talked in the kitchen of the house that had been more a home for Juliana than her own dysfunctional home had been.

They’d eaten cookies. Juliana smelled the sugary vanilla scent of fresh-baked cookies and the pungent aroma of fresh brewed coffee.

At first the conversation had been stilted and Juliana had wondered if she shouldn’t have come. Zach, or rather Zach’s memory, stood between the two women who’d loved him the most.

She rubbed her temples as if the pressure would release the memories. Why couldn’t she remember anything after that? What happened? How had she ended up here, on a burning ship, in the middle of an ocean?

A tear of frustration slipped down her cheek.

If she could figure out how she got here, she could figure out how to get back. But where was here?

Footsteps sounded outside the door, the ring of booted feet against wooden planks. Juliana scurried to her feet and backed away from the door.

Metal scraped as if a large key were being inserted into a lock, and slowly the door swung inward. Light pierced her small prison and burned her eyes. She threw an arm up to shield her face from it.

A man shifted. The same man who’d brought her to the hold.

He was taller than she, on the thin side with short-cropped hair and the face of a boy, yet with muscles roping his wiry frame.

“What’s your name?” he asked in a British accent.

Suddenly she felt as if she were floating above the scene, separated from her body yet still feeling the sweat on her skin, the erratic thumping of her heart and the stiff straw beneath her feet.

“I know you are not part of Captain Morgan’s crew, so tell me how you got aboard his ship.”

She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, because she had no idea how she’d gotten aboard his ship.

He took a threatening step forward. “My name is Thomas Hamilton, I am—was—the quartermaster of the ship you set fire to. I need to know your name and who sent you.”

He thought she started the fire? Her stomach dropped to her toes and suddenly the idea of being in a different time wasn’t nearly as scary as the thought of what these people could do to her if they thought she’d burned their ship.

“I didn’t start the fire.” Her voice was raspy from the smoke and it hurt to talk.

Another set of footsteps outside the door, heavy, methodical. Another man entered, so tall he had to bend over to get through the doorway and when he straightened his wide shoulders blocked most of the door, sealing off the light, making her heart stutter in her chest and her palms sweat.

She’d recognize him anywhere. This was the man who’d thrown her into the water. She tried to step back, but was already up against the wall. With two men in here, the small room became smaller and the panic crawled up her throat.

He turned halfway to Thomas, allowing more light to enter. Enough for her to see him.

His long hair was pulled back at the sides, the rest hanging past his elbows. He wore strange-looking pants that hugged the powerful muscles of his thighs and slim waist. His white shirt had full sleeves that ended in tight cuffs at his wrists. Knee-high boots completed the strange outfit.

He was speaking to Thomas in another language, French she assumed, when suddenly he stopped and stared at her with a predatory look, his massive body completely still but primed to move quickly. She dropped her eyes to his hands, hanging loosely at his sides. His long fingers were relaxed. A picture of those hands wielding a sword crossed her mind.

And where had that image come from? Men carried Blackberries and briefcases. Not swords or pistols or daggers. But swords and pistols and daggers seemed to fit this man better than a Blackberry.