Hark! To the hurried question of despair:
“Where is my child?”—an echo answers, “Where?”
LORD BYRON
THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS, CANTO II
It wasn’t much of a noise, but he’d heard it distinctly in between the thunder and lightning and the scratch of a tree branch against the side of the house. Maybe it was just a soft step on a floorboard. But he’d lain awake most of the night listening for even the slightest of sounds, and this one was enough to pull Morgan from the tangle of Kate’s hair. Quietly he slipped from the bed, stepped into his trousers, and went to the door.
He listened, but heard nothing.
Kate stirred, rolled over in bed. Still asleep.
He went into the hallway and immediately turned to Casey’s room. A sliver of light shone under the door. He started to move toward it when he heard the footstep again.
The door opened slowly, and a little girl walked out of the room rubbing her eyes.
Morgan sighed with relief, and whispered, “Tis much too early for you to be up.”
Casey smiled. “I couldn’t sleep.”
He scooped her up in his arms and she put her soft cheek against his whiskered face. He started to hum, softly, an old tune of his mother’s. Carrying Casey down the stairs, he checked the front door, the windows in every room, and the door to the backyard. All were safely locked.
He carried Casey up the stairs, and went through the same ritual of checking windows in every room, before returning her to bed.
“Will you tell me a story?” Casey asked.
“One short one,” he answered, “and then you must go back to sleep.”
Casey turned on her side, tucked her hands beneath her cheek. She closed her eyes and smiled when Morgan began his tale about a man who’d found an angel and fallen in love. He whispered the words, smoothing a fallen curl away from Casey’s cheek, and when he knew she was once again asleep, he kissed her brow, and returned to Kate.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, waking only when he crawled back into bed.
“Casey was awake. I told her a story—and checked all the locks again.”
Morgan leaned against the headboard and pulled Kate against him. Her head rested against his shoulder and she traced small circles over his chest.
“Would you tell me a story, too?”
“I would rather talk of our future.” He kissed the top of her head and let his lips linger. “I love Casey as if she were my own, but I would like more children. Many of them.”
“Joe and I wanted more, too, but…” She raised her head and looked at him. “What if we can’t have any more?”
He squeezed her tightly. “Tis not something to fret over. If the good Lord chooses to bless us, we will celebrate. If not,” he said, caressing the silkiness of Kate’s skin, letting his thumb swirl over the roundness of her breast, “I do not believe our efforts will have been in vain.”
“What about a job? You’ll have to work.”
“Are you forgetting, madam, that here in this very house I have a bag of jewels and another of gold and silver doubloons, which, I have been told, are worth many fortunes? Have you forgotten that I have treasures scattered in many other ports?”
“We can’t live off your ill-gotten gains.”
“I do not consider these things ill gotten. ’Tis but a portion of the riches my family had before Thomas Low took everything. This is something I will not discuss.”
She started to protest, but he kissed her instead, rolling her beneath him and pinning her to the bed. “I have thought of one job I might like,” he said, in between tasting her lips. “I would like to write books—history books, I imagine, ones that tell the truth of my time, not falsehoods.”
“You’d be good at that.”
“I am good at many things, madam. Would you like me to show you one of my greatest skills?”
Kate smiled. “Aye.”
And he did, making love to her until the wee hours of the morning.
Kate woke with a long roll of thunder rattling the windows and shaking the picture frames and knickknacks on the dresser. Morgan’s hair was wrapped around her hands, and he slept soundless beside her. She smiled, and kissed his brow.
She loved him. She had no doubts about anything any longer.
Outside she heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel and shell path, on the porch, and a knock on the door.
Morgan didn’t stir, even when she rushed from the bed and peeked out the window into the storm-darkened morning.
Nikki’s patrol car was parked at the curb.
The knock came again, and then Kate heard the door open.
Kate grabbed a pair of cutoffs from the back of a chair and struggled into them, and was pulling a T-shirt over her head when Morgan jerked up in bed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nikki’s downstairs.”
“Good. We can tell her the truth, and she can begin looking for Low—even though I’ll find him first.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Kate said in a rush. “Give me a chance to tell her everything. If she sees you she’ll overreact—she’ll probably arrest you and ask questions later.”
She thought he was going to argue with her. Instead, he smiled. “Very well, madam. You talk to Nikki, and I’ll check on Casey.”
“Thank you.”
Kate blew him a kiss as she dashed out of the bedroom and down the stairs.
Nikki stood in the center of the living room. In her hands she was holding the wallet and ring, and she looked at Kate as if they were strangers.
“Is your pirate here?” Nikki asked.
“No. I told you he left yesterday.”
“I don’t believe you. Not anymore.”
Nikki brushed past Kate, her hand moving to her gun as she put a foot on the first stair.
“Don’t go up there. Please,” Kate called out, but Nikki ignored her.
Upstairs a door slammed, and Morgan’s haunting cry echoed against the walls and through Kate’s nerves. “Casey!”
Glass shattered.
Something hit the floor.
Kate ran, but Nikki beat her to the top of the stairs.
Morgan was lying on the floor in the doorway to Casey’s room.
Nikki drew her gun and motioned for Kate to stay back, but all Kate could think of was Casey, and Morgan. She slammed against Nikki’s shoulder in her rush to the room, throwing Nikki off balance.
The gun fell to the floor, and Kate saw a booted foot kick it away as Nikki bent to retrieve her weapon.
A hand clamped over Kate’s mouth, and she heard the familiar voice.
“Well, well, well. We meet again.”
Thomas Low’s arm tightened around her waist, and the fingers that covered her mouth worked their way down to her breasts.
“Let her go,” Nikki said, sounding calm, in control.
“That is not possible. After all, she is what I came here for.”
Kate fought the fear rising inside her. “I was going to tell you about him,” Kate stammered. “He’s the one you’ve been looking for, not Morgan.”
“You?” Nikki asked. “You’re the murderer?”
“Aye, that I am,” he said proudly, no hint of remorse in his voice. “Murder is something I do quite well.”
“What have you done with my daughter? Please. Tell me,” Kate cried, struggling to look toward the empty room, the unmade bed, and the man she loved lying lifeless on the floor.
“She is alive. Have no fear. As for your friend—I imagine he’s dead.”
Kate tried to control her anguish, to free herself of his hold, but she wasn’t successful at either. Tears filled her eyes, blurring everything around her, even Nikki.
But she saw her sister-in-law move in spite of the sword held against her, saw her go for the gun, saw Thomas Low lunge, thrusting the blade into Nikki’s stomach.
Kate screamed.
She saw the pain in Nikki’s face, saw the dark red stain forming on her shirt as she crumpled to the floor.
Low pulled her away. “Do not struggle, Kate. Be good, and you will see your daughter again.”
He dragged her through the house and kitchen, his hand returning to her mouth to keep her from I screaming. His strength was too powerful to resist, and the knowledge that he had Casey made her willing to go anywhere he asked. The garage door was already open, and he shoved her through the passenger door of the Chevy. He climbed in behind her, coaxing her toward the driver’s seat with the tip of his blade.
“Head toward the ship,” he told her.
“I need my keys.”
He held them toward her. “You should not keep these where just anyone can find them, Kate. You made it quite easy for me to get into your house, and now you’re making it easy to drive away. Go.”
Her hands were shaking so hard she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to start the car, but the engine turned over immediately and she pulled out of the garage, down the driveway, and headed toward the bridge.
Her heart ached for Morgan, for Nikki. They could be dead or dying, but she could do nothing to help. Right now, she had to think about Casey, and it was her fear that kept her going.
“Where’s my daughter?”
“On the ship. If you do as you are told, I might let you see her again.”
“What are you going to do to us?”
“I have not decided.” The edge of the sword wedged at the base of her neck. “You have seen the scars on Black Heart’s face and back. Those, as you no doubt have heard, are the results of my handiwork.” He laughed. “Do you think the man you slept with last night will find you as pretty if you are scarred, like he is?”
Morgan thought his head had been split in two, but still he managed to push himself from the floor. There was blood on the carpeting. It coursed over his forehead and into his eye. He was dizzy, and then he stumbled over something behind him.
The blond-headed woman he’d seen on the ship lay on the floor in a pool of blood. Nikki—Kate’s sister-in-law. He knelt beside her, turning her gently. He saw the agony in her face as her eyes opened.
“Gordon Lancaster,” she whispered, then gasped for breath. “He has Kate…and Casey. You have to help them.”
“Aye. But I must help you first.”
“No. Please.”
He didn’t listen. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to Casey’s bed, tugged the sheet away from the mattress and ripped away a strip. He folded it into a compress and placed it over I the gash he knew full well had come from the tip of Thomas Low’s blade.
“Hold this against you.”
He lifted her hand and put it on top of the now blood-stained sheet.
“Call nine-one-one,” she told him, looking toward the small pink telephone sitting on the table next to Casey’s bed. He had never used the telephone before, did not know what “nine-one-one” even meant, but he did as Nikki’d said.
He listened to the voice at the other end, and he asked for help, answering every question he possibly could until he finally shouted, “I don’t have time to answer any more of your bloody questions. A woman needs help.”
He slammed the phone down, and smiled weakly at the woman looking up at him with a slight grin on her face and tears dripping out of the corners of her eyes.
“Hurry. Please,”
A moment later, Morgan was downstairs, recovering his weapons from the top of the cabinet where he’d left them but a few days before. He strapped the leather belt about his waist and shoved his cutlass, dagger, and pistol into their? appointed places.
Thomas Low would surely die this day. He ran outside into the driving rain. Thunder bellowed.
Lightning crackled and snapped. And suddenly he was three hundred years in the past, living the horror all over again.