“Is it, now? And you there, come a-calling with a pair of pistols. Why don’t you put them away now, eh? We’re a right friendly bunch.”
Evan kept his pistols where they were. Poseidon’s barrel didn’t waver from Evan’s face.
“Red’s not about, is he?”
Poseidon let out a bark of laughter. “Bothwick’s stumbled into the wrong cave, boys,” he crowed over his shoulder. He lowered the weapon long enough to use it to gesture the other men forward. “He thinks he’s at home.”
A half-dozen burly smugglers spread out to surround him in a loose circle. Backing up would do no good, but that was all right because Evan wasn’t ready to leave. He hadn’t come this far to run off now—or lose the back of his skull for his efforts.
“I think it’s pretty clear which cave I’m in,” was what he did say. Idly, casually, as if he were remarking on something with even less importance than the crisp Bournemouth weather.
“Aye, I’d guess by now as it’d be obvious. Yellow’s never been your color.” Poseidon slid his gun into his waistband and stepped forward, hand outstretched.
Evan didn’t think for a moment any of the barrels behind him had abandoned their precision. But he gave his hallmark devil-may-care grin, tucked one—but not both—of his pistols into his own waistband, and gave Poseidon’s hand a hearty shake. And returned both pistols to his palms.
Poseidon leaned back and spit onto the rocks. “Peering about for Red, then, are you?”
“Timothy, as well.” When Poseidon didn’t immediately respond to this gambit, Evan cast about for inspiration. “I thought they might be together.”
Gold flashed in Poseidon’s gap-toothed smile. “That they might be, mate. One never knows about such things, does he?”
A chill crept down Evan’s spine. He barely restrained himself from demanding,What the devil isthatsupposed to mean?Wherever he was, Timothy was dead. And if Red were with his dead shipmate...
“I never know much of anything.” He fought the urge to glance at the faces of the unseen men behind him. “And you? No clue where they might be?”
Poseidon snorted. “I’d have to see if they listed the port in the logbook, now, wouldn’t I?”
Evan stared, completely forgetting he was supposed to look carefree, not gobsmacked. Poseidon thought Red and Timothy were together... at sea? Heading to an unknown destination? But how was that possible? Everybody already knew where they’d gone on the last mission. It was more or less the same route a few times a month, and both crews took turns. Not only that, but the ship should’ve docked on Sunday. Red should be at the tavern, and Timothy should be at home doing absolutely nothing, as usual. Poseidon wasn’t making a lick of sense. Unless he was implying Red and Timothy had taken the shipbackout.
Evan’s pistols felt unnaturally heavy in his palms. “They went on a secret mission?”
“I try not to get involved.” The pirate shrugged one big shoulder in studied unconcern. “Dangerous, you know.”
If it were dangerous for Poseidon to poke his nose into secret missions, it was the height of stupidity for Timothy to set sail on one without the captain’s blessing. Whose harebrained idea had that been? Red’s? Unless the missionhadn’tbeen a secret from the captain. After all, Poseidon’s entire crew seemed reasonably informed. Did Ollie know, too? What did it mean if the captain were hiding mission details only from Evan?
God, how he wished he could ask those questions aloud. But he didn’t dare weaken his already-undesirable position.
“Fire out, boys?” Poseidon asked suddenly.
A voice from behind them grunted in assent. Footfalls approached, but the grunter did not step into view.
Poseidon nodded. “Good.” He returned his gaze to Evan. Another flash of gold between the crooked yellow teeth. “Anything else we can be doing for you, mate? Or were you just about done using up our fine hospitality?”
He should go. They were actually going tolethim go. Probably. But he couldn’t go yet, not like this, not with so many questions unanswered and so many more crowding his brain by the second.
If the captain were hiding missions from Evan, the only logical reason was that he didn’t expect Evan to be a member of the crew for much longer. And the only—theonly—way one ceased to be a member of a band of treasonous smugglers was the precise way Timothy had found himself retired from duty. If Evan was about to undertake his last mission come Friday, he had to know. Now.
“How did you know they’d gone?” he blurted unpiratically. Damn.
Derogatory laughter sounded from behind him. “Who you think sold ’im an extra night with the ship, ye lubber? We wouldn’t be standing around this fool cave like ladies at a tea party if we wasn’t waiting on those jacks to get back with the damn—”
A gunshot.
A yelp of pain.
It took a split second to realize that although it was Poseidon’s pistol that had fired, it had not been Evan’s cry. He risked a glance behind him. One of the water rats was doubled over, hand to his ample gut, blood seeping between his fingers.
“Ye shot me!” he choked out, then crumpled to his knees.
