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  ‘I’ve got the rudder link!’

  His cry sounded feeble and pathetic as it was snapped away by the brisk wind and the effort broke the rhythm of his oars. He struggled to get moving again, the boat wallowing on the waves as he dragged the oars through the churning water.

  ‘I can fix the rudder!’

  He saw Hank appear at the bulwarks, saw Seth and several of Sawyer’s henchmen aiming rifles at him as he screamed at the top of his lungs.

  ‘I’ve got the rudder link!’

  He looked over his shoulder and saw Hank push the muzzles of the weapons down and start frantically waving Cody on. Cody almost burst into tears of relief as he saw the rope ladder hurled from the side of the ship. Waves crashed around him as he brought the boat alongside and heard Hank’s voice yelling down at him.

  ‘Let me see it! Let me see the link!’

  Exhausted, Cody reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved the steel coupling, held it aloft as he squinted up into the rain at Hank and shouted.

  ‘Is she aboard?’

  Hank nodded at him.

  Cody struggled to his feet on legs that felt rubbery and weak, ankle deep in cold sea water. He took hold of the ladder and dragged himself up. Hank reached down for him and grabbed him as soon as he was within reach, Sawyer also taking hold of his drenched shirt as they hauled him over the bulwarks and onto the sodden deck.

  Cody handed the link to Hank, who dashed away as Sawyer looked down at Cody, his features almost silhouetted against the bright but cloudy sky above.

  ‘Is she aboard?’ Cody asked again, his chest heaving.

  ‘She’s aboard,’ Sawyer replied, and then walked away.

  Cody rolled onto his side and up onto his knees in time to hear a crashing crescendo of gunshots that shuddered through him. Laughter rolled and echoed across the ship’s deck as Sawyer’s henchmen stood at the side of the ship and fired upon the flotilla of boats trying to reach the Phoenix.

  Cody saw bodies topple into the water, saw boats desperately try to turn back against the swells only to be swamped and overwhelmed as the exhausted occupants were swallowed by the waves. Cody sat in silence, oblivious to the salt water spilling down his face as he watched the prisoners drown in the bleak waters.

  He stared down at the deck, at his own hands, the palms rubbed raw and spilling blood into the rain that ran in rivulets between the deck planks. He stared transfixed, barely hearing Hank’s bellowed order echoing across the deck as he emerged from the wheelhouse.

  ‘Fly topsails and bow anchor away! Set her free!’

  Seth and another crewman were already there, and moments later the ship began to drift as the stern anchor was freed and the Phoenix moved slowly in the water. The crew swarmed up the ratlines and freed the topmast sails, the yards twisted to pick up the force of the nor-easter and allow the Phoenix to tack out of the bay.

  ‘Bow anchor away!’

  Seth and a companion sprinted down the damp, slippery decks and hauled on the bow capstan until she came free, the ship’s slow forward motion helping to drag the anchor from the seabed.

  Cody turned and saw the remaining boats fleeing or upturned and bobbing on the relentless waves as the Phoenix began slowly carving her way out of Boston harbour.

  Cody somehow found the strength to stagger across the pitching, rolling deck and into the wheelhouse. He almost fell through the door and slammed it shut behind him against the wind and the rain.

  Sawyer and Hank both looked at him.

  ‘Where?’ Cody demanded.

  ‘Below decks,’ Hank replied.

  Cody staggered down into the ‘tween deck, the ship’s darkness blinding him as he headed for a dull light glowing from one of the cabins. He stumbled and bounced off the walls as he made his weary way to the light and turned into the doorway.

  A single lamp burned, casting a warm glow through the tiny berth.

  Bethany sat on the bed, the child hugged close to her body and tears falling from her face to drench her shirt as she looked up at Cody. Cody’s eyes settled on the small child curled in her lap, a mop of damp brown hair above a pair of fearful blue eyes that stared back at him.

  A boy.

  Cody felt nothing. Numbness enveloped his body, a strange, alien sensation as he looked at Bethany and the small boy she held close to her shoulder. Her voice reached him from afar, as though from another universe.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘There was no time. I had to save my brother. I’m so sorry.’

  Cody sagged against the doorframe and then he turned.

  He ran, through the darkened corridor and up the steps into the wheelhouse. Past Sawyer and Hank who watched him as he burst out of the wheelhouse and onto the rain sodden deck.

  He dashed to the bulwarks at the stern, saw the city skyline looming through the rain squalls, saw the fires raging deep within the city and the black smoke staining the sullen sky as the state house burned in a hellish inferno.

  ‘Maria!’

  Cody’s scream was snatched away by the wind as he collapsed to his knees, the rain spilling down his face as his heart fluttered dangerously inside his chest. He grabbed the bulwarks and pulled as he prepared for the embrace of the icy water below.

  Hands grabbed him and hauled him back from the bulwarks. Cody writhed and screamed, hurled fists and boots at the men trying to pin him down. Spittle flew from his lips and blood from his palms as he saw Hank’s big head appear above him.

  ‘It’s over, Cody!’ Hank bellowed. ‘There’s nothing else you can do!’

  ‘Go back for her!’ Cody screamed. ‘Turn the ship around!’

  Hank’s features registered no apparent emotion. Cody barely saw the blow coming and then his vision starred as the world tilted crazily and he slumped against the bulwarks. Another blow and everything went black.

  *

  The noise was horrible. So was the smell.

  But the warmth was nice.

  The huge grey building burned with fearsome flames that snapped and snarled from shattering glass windows and climbed up toward the turbulent grey sky above, coiling up into fascinating towers of oily black smoke.

  She watched as they spiralled up in patterns to be snatched away by the blustering winds.

  People staggered from the burning building, their clothes aflame in bright colours as they collapsed onto the lawns. The sharp odours made her curl up her nose in disgust and she coughed as a swirling cloud of smoke billowed around her.

  Instinctively she turned away from the raging inferno, and with small and uncertain steps she walked down between the main gates of the building and looked at the vast city before her. Huge buildings stood stoically against the surging storm as litter and debris gusted across empty streets.

  Voices whispered to her and she turned to see the odd figures hanging from the fences nearby, haggard and limp.

  She didn’t like the smell or their skull-like faces.

  She turned, and across the city she heard distant bangs, like popping noises that attracted her curiosity.

  ‘Daddy?’

  Maria Ryan stepped out alone onto the street and walked unsteadily away into the city.

  ***

  40

  The wheelhouse was dimly illuminated by a pair of lamps and grey daylight as Hank held the wheel steady against the currents and the wind driving across the endlessly marching waves. The Phoenix was heeling before the wind and the bow rose and fell as she shouldered her way through the crashing seas.

  Sawyer steadied himself against one wall, his features drained of colour as he swallowed thickly and wiped sweat from his forehead.

  ‘You should lay down somewhere,’ Hank observed.

  Sawyer did not reply.

  Behind them sat Bethany, her brother sitting next to her on a sea chest strapped to the cabin wall. The child remained silent, apparently in awe of the ship and the men surrounding them.

  Sawyer swallowed again, coughed, and then turned to Hank.

 
; ‘Time to figure out where we’re going, don’t you think?’

  Hank’s gaze swivelled sideways to peer at Sawyer. ‘There’s no rush.’

  Sawyer managed a smirk above his discomfort. ‘The charts, captain. Don’t make a fuss and I won’t shoot you both and make a mess.’

  Hank glanced at Bethany and the child. ‘Get back below decks,’ he told them.

  Bethany looked at the two men for a moment and then turned and took her brother’s hand and led him down into the ‘tween decks.

  As soon as they had vanished, Hank secured the wheel against the forces acting on the hull and then turned to a cabinet that lined one wall of the wheelhouse. But instead of reaching into the cabinet, he reached up to the panelled ceiling above it and pushed his hands against one of the panels.

  The panel rotated upward and inward on concealed hinges, exposing a narrow storage compartment. Hank lifted out a series of bound volumes, each marked with latitudes and longitudes.

  ‘Most impressive,’ Sawyer said with a raised eyebrow. ‘You haven’t trusted your own crew for some time.’

  Hank laid the volumes down on the map table and replied as he opened one of them.

  ‘This ship was a training vessel for young sailors, all of them former convicts. The crew kept any weapons aboard ship in that panel, to ensure the kids never knew where they were. The seas are a dangerous place, Sawyer, and you can never be too sure of what you’ll encounter.’

  Hank laid out the volume he’d selected and glanced at the coordinates Bethany had scribbled onto the log book. He carefully traced the lines on the map as Sawyer stepped alongside him and watched.

  42N70W

  Hank’s finger’s drew together from the top and the side of the map and met on a point that clearly matched the coordinates.

  Hank stared at the map for a long, silent moment and then looked up at Sawyer.

  *

  Pain.

  It came slowly through the darkness.

  Cody opened his eyes as a dull ache throbbed behind them, blinked as he struggled to focus on his surroundings. His mind was empty, devoid of thought. The faint glow from a lantern illuminated the hold around him, pillars and racks and barrels, and a deep rhythmic thump like a giant heartbeat reverberated through the hull as the ship shouldered through the waves.

  For a few blissful moments he felt nothing, recalled nothing and was strangely at peace. And then he remembered the hold. The fight with the crewman that had almost cost him his life. A rush of recollections raced through his mind as he sat in the dim light. The observatory at Alert. Bobby Leary’s injuries, the rescue. The voyage. Boston. Sawyer. The betrayal.

  Maria.

  Cody lurched to stand but he was bound to the mainmast by coarse ropes that bit into his skin. He struggled frantically against them.

  ‘They think you’re dangerous.’

  The voice was small, reaching out for him from somewhere in the shadows. He recognised the voice, felt his chest ache.

  ‘Bethany?’

  She stepped into view, balancing against the lethargic roll of the deck that caused the light from the lantern to shift back and forth as though the shadows themselves were swaying with the rolls.

  The small boy stood beside her, his hand clasping hers and his eyes watching Cody as though he were something to be feared. No words came to Cody, his mind an empty void through which Bethany’s voice echoed, lonely and afraid.

  ‘This is Ben,’ she whispered. ‘He was in the cage next to Hank and Charlotte’s. You couldn’t have known, nor could they. I was too scared for him to say anything to anybody, after what happened to you and Maria.’

  Cody stared at the deck as every emotion he had ever felt spilled from his body and drained away from him. Memories flashed through his mind: Bethany falling oddly silent after their capture and imprisonment by Sawyer’s men, her concern at Hank’s possible betrayal.

  As soon as she saw Ben she would have known that she must protect her little brother, just as Cody so needed to protect Maria from the brutal world that now surrounded them. But here, at the very last and most dangerous hurdle, Bethany had failed him.

  ‘Why?’ he whispered, barely able to speak. ‘You could have said something to me. Why?’

  Bethany’s face was a tear-stained visage of regret and self-loathing.

  ‘I had to make sure Ben was okay first,’ she gasped between sobs, her words coming in staccato bursts punctuated by sharp intakes of breath. ‘But the prisoners escaped and we got cut off and there was no time for us to reach Maria. There was nothing that I could do.’

  Cody stared at her in silence for a long moment. He had fled the building believing Maria to be safe, when in fact in his haste he had abandoned her to her fate yet again. If he had only waited. Searing regret churned like poison through his veins.

  ‘Where did you last see her?’

  Bethany managed to choke out the last few words.

  ‘The State House. I think Sawyer put her under guard in one of the ground floor rooms.’

  Cody stared down at the deck rolling around them. ‘How long have we been at sea?’

  ‘Twenty minutes, maybe a little more.’

  Cody shifted position against the mainmast and looked away from her. ‘I’m glad you found your brother.’

  He let the silence build in the darkness.

  ‘I had no choice,’ Bethany said. ‘You would have done the same.’

  Cody drew back against the mast, away from the light. ‘We all had a choice.’

  ‘You would have done the same,’ Bethany repeated.

  ‘I doubt that,’ came another voice from nearby.

  Seth stood at the entrance to the hold, a journal of some kind in his hands and delight on his face. He chuckled as he leafed through the pages, his features demonic in the dim light.

  ‘It seems dear old Jake was keeping a journal about all of you,’ Seth said. ‘He recorded every little thing that you did, right up until you went ashore.’

  Cody stared at the journal. ‘What for?’

  ‘Who the hell knows?’ Seth chortled. ‘But he sure as hell didn’t get his sums right, Mister Ryan. It says here that Bethany Rogers was a steadfast and loyal member of the team who could be relied upon and represented the voice of reason.’ Seth looked up at her. ‘A little off the mark now, don’t you think, Miss Rogers?’

  ‘Get out of here,’ Cody uttered.

  ‘What?’ Seth pleaded. ‘You don’t want to hear what he wrote about you, Cody?’

  ‘I’m amazed you can read at all,’ Bethany said.

  Seth flipped through a few pages and stopped at one. ‘Ah, listen to this: Doctor Ryan is the one member of the team who seems out of his depth. I suspect that he is more at home in a laboratory surrounding, as his nervous disposition and thinly veiled anxiety make his assignment here an unusual choice, especially for a family man.’ Seth grinned at Cody. ‘But we all know why now don’t we, Doctor Ryan? Sawyer told us about your brother. Tragic.’

  Seth snapped the pages of the journal closed and stepped down into the hold until he stood over Cody.

  ‘Not the kind of family man that Jake had in mind, eh?’ Seth challenged.

  ‘Because you’re an icon of virtue, right?’ Bethany spat.

  Cody kept his head turned away from her, unable any longer to bear the sound of her voice. Bethany stood in silence for a long moment and then the hatch above them was hauled back. The light from the deck above spilled into the hold as Cody saw Hank and Sawyer glaring down at him.

  ‘You lied!’ Sawyer screamed, pointing at Bethany. ‘The coordinates point to nothing but empty ocean!’

  Cody looked across at Bethany as it all became clear. She had shared the coordinates with Sawyer in order to get away from Boston. He saw the flare of guilt in her eyes as she averted them from his.

  Sawyer’s voice reached him from the hatch above. ‘Where are the coordinates?! Where’s your diary?’

  Cody felt a curious warmth spread throu
gh his body, hot rather than satisfying as he looked up at Sawyer and saw the tremendous rage etched into the psychopath’s features. In an instant Cody realised why: Sawyer had just lost everything too. He had lost his fortress, his control, his men and his chances of survival, not to mention his status.

  Cody’s face twisted of its own accord into a brittle smile.

  Sawyer screamed something unintelligible and leaped down into the hold. He landed with a deep thud alongside Cody, the broad sabre he kept at his side shimmering in the light as he drew it and placed it alongside Cody’s throat.

  ‘Tell me the real coordinates, now!’

  Cody felt the cold steel touch his skin, felt his own pulse threading its way past the blade. The smile spread further across his features and he began to laugh. He couldn’t help himself. Mirth wracked his body as he laughed out loud, his own booming chuckles echoing through his mind as he felt himself let go of the grief, of the regret, of the unspeakable fear for Maria that scalded through his veins.

  Sawyer stood back from him and looked up at Hank. The captain said nothing, watching as Cody’s macabre delight finally subsided. Sawyer turned and the blade flashed up to Bethany’s face. Sawyer caught the weapon a bare inch from her neck, his eyes fixed on Cody.

  ‘The coordinates,’ he snarled.

  Cody did not look at Bethany as he spoke.

  ‘She just killed my little girl,’ he managed to rasp, his throat dry. ‘I don’t care what you do to her. I don’t care what any of you do any more. I hope to hell that you sail this ship into a hurricane and spend your last moments listening to each other drowning and being eaten alive by sharks.’

  Bethany flinched visibly at his words. Sawyer snarled and raised the sabre high to bring it down upon Bethany. The sound of a pistol being cocked caused him to hesitate and look up at Hank. The captain aimed the pistol at Sawyer and shook his head.

  ‘Not just charts in that compartment, Sawyer,’ he snarled. ‘Bethany, get out of the hold.’

  Bethany cast one last look at Cody and then turned and fled. Cody looked at Sawyer, who stared down at him in a paralysis of volatile emotions, rage alternating with disbelief for space on his features.