Читать книгу The Wicked Redhead - Beatriz Williams - Страница 8

THE SCHOONER cruising before me looks innocent enough. I am no expert on maritime matters, having been reared up inside the walls of a mountain holler, yet still I can admire the beauty of her lines, can’t I? Lubber though I am, I can appreciate the sky’s pungent blue against the cluster of milk-white sails, and the way the dark-painted sides reflect the shimmer of the surrounding water.

As we draw near, the ship grows larger, until the sight of her fills my gaze like the screen at a picture house. I am wholly absorbed in her, and she in me. She bobs and rolls, and I bob and roll in sympathy. The boards of her deck articulate into view, and it seems I see every detail at once: the seams sealed in tar, the coils of perfect rope, the black paint of the deckhouse, the wooden crates in stacks at the stern and the middle, each stamped with a pair of letters: FH.

We come to board her, my companion and I, and I can’t say why I’m not alarmed by her lack of crew. Not a single man hails us as we pass over the railing; not the faintest rustle of movement disturbs the dead calm of the deck. I do understand she’s a rumrunner, this vessel, carrying liquor to America’s teetotal shore from some ambitious island, and it seems reasonable that the fellows on board might have gone into hiding at our approach. Why, even now they might crouch unseen behind those silent objects fixed to the deck, or wait speechless at the hatchways for some kind of signal. My friend hovers watchfully behind me, pistol drawn in case of ambush, but I don’t feel the smallest grain of fear. Anticipation alone drives the quick pulse of my blood. Something I desire lies below those decks, I believe, and I will shortly see it for myself.

At what instant my anticipation transforms into dread, I don’t rightly notice. Maybe it’s the sight of the dark, irregular stain on a section of deck near the bow hatchway; maybe it’s the unnatural blackness that rears up from below as my companion tugs away the cover of the hatch itself. My breath turns stiff in my chest as I commence to descend those stairs, and I have gone no farther than the first two steps when my foot slips on some kind of wetness, and I tumble downward to land like a carcass on the deck below.

The impact shocks my bones back into wakefulness, but in the nick of space before my eyelids open to the clean, sunwashed Florida ceiling above me, I catch glimpse of what lies in the hold of that silent, innocent ship.

The piles of mutilated men, and a pair of beloved eyes staring at me without sight.