Priest was a slave to his carnal desires, a worshiper of the standing prick between his legs. He would follow it before anything else.
“Why do you care?” I turned to face him.
“Because you do. What if the map is inside the instrument?”
“You think I haven’t considered that? There’s no keyhole. No openings.” My head pounded as irritation threaded through my tone. “It doesn’t open.”
“I located the inventor who crafted it.”
“You say?” My face numbed, and a ringing sound erupted in my ears.
“During my exhaustive search for you, I found some old acquaintances of Edric Sharp. One fellow knew another fellow and so on. I followed the trail. The man who designed your compass died years ago, but I had an interesting conversation with his son. The lad didn’t take up his father’s skill, but he remembered some of the unusual techniques.”
My heart hammered so hard I thought it might burst from my chest. “Did you tell him about my compass?”
“No, I would never risk that. But he mentioned that all his father’s instruments required two things. One, a physical key.” His gaze shifted to my throat.
My hand leaped to the jade stone I wore there, my fingers tracing the serrated cuts on the surface. Shaped like a thumb and half as narrow, it resembled a key. I always thought it could be the key, but it didn’t fit anywhere on the compass.
“No keyhole, remember?” I dropped my hand, taking my hopes with it.
“The notch will reveal itself if given the correct combination of movements. That’s the second requirement. Every instrument was built with a key and a list of verbal instructions. Something to hide on your body and something to hide in your mind. The lad’s words.”
When my father had given me the instrument, he’d said, Start and end north.
The devil knew how many times I tried that combination of movements over the years, rotating the compass over and over. Nothing had happened.
“Did he teach you any songs?” Priest asked.
Yes. A lot of songs. Most of them chants that narrated the maritime tasks of sailors. I couldn’t possibly remember them all. If the answer was in one of those, how could my father have expected me to know which verse held a secret meaning?
He wouldn’t have.
What if this was just another of Priest’s manipulations? With my body buzzing from orgasm and the flavor of his lips upon my tongue, what better way to distract me from torture than to tease me with hope about my compass?
I’d come down here to learn the truth, and he didn’t want me to leave. Leaving meant I would return with another man.
He was smart enough to steal my compass and earn passage aboard my ship. Cunning enough to hold it hostage as a guaranteed ticket to remain on board. Persuasive enough to send me out of here less satisfied, less certain, every damn time.
He was always ten steps ahead of me.
I couldn’t dismiss the information he’d shared about the compass, but there was naught I could do about it until I held it in my possession again.
“I’ll be back with Reynolds.” I didn’t spare him or his blistered hands another glance as I climbed the ladder and pushed open the hatch.
The moment it lifted, an outstretched arm greeted me. Long fingers, black skin, white scars… What the devil was Jobah doing down here?
He grabbed my arm and lifted me out too quickly for this to be a social call.
My rising panic exploded when I glimpsed the turmoil on his face. “What happened?”
He kicked the hatch closed and started dragging stores of food and water over the top of it. “Sails on our aft, stealing our wind and closing in fast.”
I stood motionless, momentarily stunned, as he hauled and shuffled casks. There was only one reason he would conceal the entrance to the bilge.
He was preparing for boarders.
That meant the ship on our aft was fast enough, heavy enough, armed enough to overtake us and search our holds.
“Royal Navy?” My voice quivered.
“I’m afraid so, Captain.”
Priest and I were two of the most wanted pirates on this side of the world.
It was possible our British pursuers didn’t have an accurate description of my identity. I always went ashore incognito, making it difficult for my enemies to recognize me. But Priest never tried to hide who he was or what he looked like. His face was sketched in newspapers all over the West Indies.