“It would take too long to go back to the wagon for rope,” Munro added.
Brodie nodded and unbuckled his belt. “Take off yer belt.”
After they both removed their belts, they looped them through the bars of the grate and then tied them off.
“The water is higher,” Lily called out.
Brave girl, yet I heard the fear in her voice.
“Stand away,” Munro told her. “The timbers are rotted. If we can move this, they may give way.
And she could either be crushed or swept away by that rising tide.
“Miss?” She reached through the grate with a thin hand. “I thank ye.”
Farewell? Not bloody likely.
I took her hand in mine. “Itwillwork.”
I refused to accept that it would not.
She nodded then pushed herself as far from the opening as possible as Brodie and Munro both pulled on those leather straps they’d made at the edge of that iron grate.
It creaked and groaned, then slowly lifted, an inch, then two. As it did, the thick timbers that surrounded it buckled and then fractured, jagged ends protruding up from the deck as water swirled just below.
“More,” I told them. “Just a bit more.”
Another inch, and another. I thrust my hand down into that gaping hole. A cold, slender hand took hold.
Another timber gave way as they pulled again at the grate, and that opening widened.
I grabbed Lily by the back of her gown with both hands. She pushed her way up through the opening as water surged around her. We fell back, a tangled mass of arms and legs, very much like two fish flung onto the deck. But she was alive. I hugged her fiercely.
“Are you all right?”
“I knew ye and Mr. Brodie would find me. And Munro.” Her smile was a bit wobbly through the tangled mass of wet hair and some obvious bruises on her cheek and neck. And my first thought was if Carney wasn’t already dead, I would have gone back and killed him myself.
Munro had gone quiet, relief obvious on his face. Then he looked up.
“The hound.”
It was Rupert, but hardly the baying sound when he found Lily. The sounds were vicious, frantic barking and snarls.
Munro had warned there might be others, part of Carney’s smuggling business. He and Brodie had already found two others.
A man loomed up out of the darkness beyond the circle of Brodie’s hand-held lantern. He staggered and lunged, a knife clutched in his hand.
He was dressed in a frayed, dark-blue wool suit, white hair wild about his head, a crazed look in his eyes, and his face, his expression amid the vivid burn scars twisted as he threw himself toward us.
“You should not have interfered!”
His voice was thin, hardly more than a whisper, but the words were the same as in that note. He was almost upon us.
There was no time to retrieve the revolver. I pushed Lily behind me.
There was a different sound, then a dull thud as an axe embedded in the man’s chest.
He remained standing for a moment as though suspended by strings like a puppet as blood spread from the wound and soaked the front of his shirt. He tried to say something, but no sound came out as he fell back, just beyond that circle of light.
