Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,2

one final reason why his captain shouldn’t do what he had made up his mind to do. The African possessed the most annoying ability to do battle with words as skillfully as he did with pistol and cutlass.

Masud scuffed his boot over the deck planks, the wood scarred by years of grappling hooks, cannon shot, bullets. “You know, Cap’n, I never guessed we’d actually make it this far. Thought for sure our old scow here would sink before we made it a mile out of the Carolinas.” He chuckled. “But it seems she’s in better shape than either one of us.”

Nicholas didn’t laugh.

Masud sighed heavily. “Just grant me one favor.” He set the bottle aside, and Nicholas heard him withdraw something from inside his frock coat. “Take this with you.”

Nicholas couldn’t see what it was, but he knew. “I won’t need it.”

“You might. Better safe than—”

“I don’t want it.”

All trace of humor left Masud’s voice. “Has it crossed your mind that this blackmailer might want your hide instead of your money? He might’ve sent that note hoping to flush you out. You might be playing right into his hands. What makes you think you can slip into England, take the bastard out, and slip away without firing a single shot?”

Nicholas swallowed hard. He clenched his fists against the pain that knotted his gut. He started shaking, and hoped to God that Masud couldn’t see.

Masud continued in that low, even tone. “You’ve had a bellyful of killing. I know. I was there. But you can’t go ashore tonight without a gun...”

Nicholas still couldn’t speak, barely heard the rest. Aye, Masud had been there. But he hadn’t seen everything. He didn’t know.

Didn’t know what Nicholas had done in winning the revenge he had wanted. Nicholas alone knew the truth, and he had never spoken a word of it to anyone.

He gripped the rail, his fingers tightening with bruising force as he fought the memories that assaulted him.

The faces. The voices. The blood.

And the sound of the single pistol shot that had ended his infamous career.

That sound still haunted his nightmares. Louder than the roar of the storm that had battered his ship on that insane day, sharper than the crack of lightning that had struck the mainmast like a bolt from God trying to stop him.

No force of heaven or earth had been able to stop him that day. He hadn’t even cared that his own ship was ablaze as he blew Captain Eldridge’s Royal Navy man-of-war out from beneath him.

Eldridge’s men had swept aboard Nicholas’s ship—some fighting his pirate crew, some simply trying to save themselves—but by then they had all known they were about to die together. Nothing could save them from the fire or the sea or each other.

Slashing his way toward Eldridge with his cutlass, Nicholas’s only thought had been to take the bastard with him when he died. But the navy men swarmed over him, protecting their commander. In a blind rage, Nicholas hacked one man down, drew his pistol, spun, and fired at the next blue uniform he saw.

And realized too late that it was only a boy.

A cabin boy. Ten or twelve. Too young to know the difference between guts and stupidity.

In that frozen instant Nicholas had felt the rain on his face, so cold. Like a slap from the grave. So icy, deathly cold.

Unspeakable horror held him immobile as he stared into the boy’s eyes, watching the lad fall. In that innocent gaze he saw himself at the same age. Saw clearly for the first time what he had become since. What his quest for vengeance had made him.

A soulless animal.

And in the boy’s face he saw other faces. Too many faces. So many lives cut short by his hand. So much blood spilled in fourteen years.

A second later an explosion turned the world black.

Days after that, he had awakened to find himself at Clarice’s in London—and every newspaper full of stories about his well-deserved fiery end. The admiralty mourned the loss of the heroic Captain Eldridge, and declared the hated Nicholas Brogan dead. Both buried at sea. The bounty on his head was never paid.

As soon as he was well enough to get out of bed, Nicholas had slipped out of the country and left it all behind him. Piracy. England. All of it.

Even pistols. Especially pistols. He hadn’t touched one in six years.

He did not want to risk unleashing the animal within.

“... listen to reason,” Masud was saying. “And just take the