Grave Phantoms
Page 76

Maybe he’d never really gotten over it completely.
But he knew what he was capable of. And he would do it again. To get her back. To protect her. To avenge her. He would do it without hesitation. And focusing on this made the panic manageable.
A door slammed. Bo sat up as two sets of footfalls approached.
“We’re going to untie you now,” a British-accented voice said. Mad Hammett. “If you try anything funny, it’ll be taken out on the girl. Understand?”
“Where is she?” Bo demanded.
“Close enough that if I press a button, she’ll be harmed—and that’s all you need to know right now. And in case you haven’t noticed, that’s a gun on your head.”
Blood rushed to Bo’s hands as the rope was cut. He was hauled to his feet and pushed forward before being told to sit. The blindfold was removed. Bo blinked into the light. He sat in front of the ship’s wheel. An L-shaped wooden dash with a radio and navigational instruments curved around to his right, and before him, slanted windows looked out over the yacht’s bow.
He tried to gauge where they were docked—somewhere on the northern shore of the city—but it was hard to concentrate when a gun was prodding the back of his head and a man with half a face was coughing up blood at his side.
Max leaned against the ship’s wheel. “This is what’s going to happen. You will pilot us to this location,” he said, pointing to a map on the dash. A spot in the ocean was circled, and next to it, a pair of coordinates written in dark ink. It took Bo’s eyes time to focus, but he shortly comprehended the location. It was north of the city, off the coast. Near the Magnusson’s Marin County warehouse and the lighthouse . . .
Where Captain Haig had taken the yacht the night of its disappearance a year ago.
“Why do you need me?” Bo asked. “I thought pirates were sailors. Or has it been so long, you’ve forgotten your way around a boat?”
Something like surprise flickered over Max’s peeling face, but he looked too weary to care. “Start the engine before I change my mind and throw you overboard.”
Bo considered his options. Astrid was on the boat. That was all that mattered right now. She was here, and he would get to her. Somehow. He just needed to get his hands on the gun prodding his skull.
After flipping on the blowers, he managed to start the engine and get his bearings. He also sneaked a look around the pilothouse. It was a cramped space, hardly big enough for all three men to stretch out. Apart from the dash and the wheel, there was a narrow berth to his left and, next to it, the door they’d entered, which led down to the deck. Nothing that could be used as a weapon. He eyed the headset hanging from a hook on the dash. He could radio the Coast Guard.
“Cord’s cut,” Max said, nodding to the dangling wire that wasn’t connected to the transmitter. “So don’t get any Mayday ideas. Just get us moving. The lines have been cast.”
“I want to see Astrid.”
Max tapped the map. “You pilot us here, I just might let you do that.”
Bo checked the gauges, turned on the fog lights, and pulled past a line of buoys, away from the dock. The yacht was big and moved like a slow beast as it cut through the Bay. It would take a half hour or more to get to where they were going. And once they got there, then what?
“How old are you?” Bo asked.
Max coughed into his hand. “I was born in 1491 in Cornwall,” he said, his accent changing—sounding awfully close to Mad Hammett’s. “I see that doesn’t shock you. I’m not sure how you found out about us, but it doesn’t really matter. Once I get my vigor back, you and Goldilocks will no longer be my problem.”
“How are you going to get it back?” Bo asked.
“The Sibyl will pull it out of her.”
“Sibyl?”
“Our priestess.”
“Mrs. Cushing,” Bo said.
Max didn’t confirm or deny it. He just peered out across the water, where the fog lights shone over the surface as they headed away from the northern coast of the city. Bo could navigate this route in his sleep. His eyes flicked around the pilothouse, still looking for something—anything—to use to his advantage, and settled on the radio headset and its dangling cord.
He continued talking to Max, less out of curiosity, and more to keep the man’s attention occupied. “If your turquoise idol is Aztec,” Bo mused, thinking back to the Wicked Wenches’ story, “and you were a Cornish pirate, then I’m guessing you were under the French pirate’s command—Jean Fleury?”
“Very good,” Max said, sounding genuinely impressed. “Attacking those galleons changed my life. I could’ve died that day. Instead, I had the fortune to raid the hold where they were keeping the Sibyl. Freeing her turned Max Nance’s destiny around.”
“How did you end up here in San Francisco?”
Max shrugged. “We settled in France until the Revolution. Things became too dangerous. Fleury was nearly killed by a mob.”
“The closest you all ever came to dying, wasn’t it, Grandfer?” Mad Hammett spoke up for the first time, his voice floating over Bo’s head.
Grandfer? “Are you related?” Bo asked, not seeing the resemblance.
Max’s gaze connected with Bo’s. A wariness behind his eyes softened to apathy. “You won’t be around to tell anyone,” he said, more to the view outside the Bay than to Bo. “And who would believe you anyway? No, this is the closest we all came to dying. Because if I go, we all go. Stand or fall together. So thanks to you and your girl snooping around in matters that didn’t concern you, we’re all here tonight.”