The Devil's Tide Read Online Free PDF Page A

"What of Lindsay?"
    Rogers paused. Apparently he hadn't considered that. "Her family will want her returned safely, but her recent actions do not bode well her mortality. Lindsay has deprived me of my best man. If anything were to happen to her, I can't say my slumber would be diminished."
    "Noted," Nathan said. He wasn't sure what he would do if he encountered Katherine again, but it was good to know that his freedom was not contingent on her survival.
    "Nathan doesn't know where the island is!" Henry practically screamed, sweat trickling down his forehead.
    Rogers clutched Nathan's collar and drew him closer. "If you require this man, tell me now."
    The words came easily. "He's no use to anybody."
    Rogers nodded. "Then he will hang with the others." He patted Nathan's shoulder, just above the missing arm, and smiled for the first time. His gnarled jaw did not allow the smile much leeway on the left side. "And before you depart, you will witness the executions."

CALLOWAY
    "I must confess disappointment," Jacqueline Calloway said, strutting around her room in nothing more than a feathered tricorn hat. "I expected them to strangle for minutes on end. The snapping of their necks was shocking, but it was over too fast. I see no real punishment in such a brisk death, do you?"
    "You're lucky you got to see anything at all," Guy Dillahunt replied, watching her from the bed.
    "So are you," she shot back, turning away from the window to face him. The morning light projected her slender silhouette across the room. The establishment had no name, as yet. It was fairly new, and so far Calloway was the only tenant occupying one of the four rooms on the second floor above the tavern. She wondered how long this place could stay in business with only her to support it, and all of the pirates steering clear of Nassau.
    Dillahunt was sitting against the crude headboard, one hand behind his head, the other fingering a polished black pistol with silver sloops set into each side of the grip. Calloway had noted that the gun was never far from his person, which was probably smart for a man of his vocation. Dillahunt was a famed privateer who had lingered in Nassau over the past month to aid his friend, Governor Woodes Rogers, in ridding the Caribbean of piracy.
    The covers were drawn to his lean waist. His stomach was etched in muscle, ascending into a broad chest. He had large, bulky shoulders and biceps that were nearly the size of Calloway's thighs. Blonde strands permeated his thick brown hair. Calloway guessed he was somewhere in his mid-thirties. Upon close scrutiny, Dillahunt was not particularly handsome, with a narrow mouth, puffy cheeks, and eyes displaced too far apart. His nose was round and flat, as though he had been punched one too many times, and there was a perpetual crease between his brows. Still, Calloway found him irresistibly attractive. In her opinion, a man did not need a perfect face. Character and strength were far greater virtues, and Dillahunt possessed an abundance of both.
    "I've been afraid to ask," Dillahunt said, setting his gun on the cockeyed bedside table. "How old are you? Or, should I say, how
young
are you?"
    "I am fifteen as of two days ago," Calloway said, grinning proudly.
    Dillahunt considered that, chewing on his bottom lip. "You are considerably talented for a fifteen year old."
    "I've been at it since I was twelve," she admitted. Calloway's mother, a beautiful French prostitute named Elise, had raised her in a small brothel at Port Bayou St. Jean in Louisiana. Calloway's father had been an impossibly handsome, raven-haired explorer who her mother had spent no more than a single night with, or so she had claimed.
    "Your accent sounds vaguely French," Dillahunt said. "Yet your surname is English, is it not?"
    "I don't know anything about names, 'surs' or otherwise," Calloway said. "My mother probably took it off one of her many suitors. We had so many last names, you see."
    "Your mother? A stunning woman,