A hand on my arm made me jump. I spun around to find myself staring into Marc’s smiling face. “You look much better without the clothes.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “Do we really have time for that?”
“Not really,” he agreed as he took my hand and pulled me down the hall.
“How are we getting to the ship if Fidel hid it around the island?” I wondered as we slipped past the desk and out into the chilly early morning street. “We don’t even have the small boat.”
He guided me down the road toward the wharf. “There’s always a way for a pirate to escape land.”
My eyebrows crashed down. “Are we going to steal a boat?”
“That’s what pirates do,” he reminded me as we ducked around a flickering lamp outside a tavern.
“What if a fisherman needs it to make a living?” I countered.
“Do you want to stick around and wait for our friends to find us?” he asked me.
My frazzled brain couldn’t think of a good comeback to his question, so I remained silent. We hurried down the street and reached the docks without seeing another soul. Still, I felt as though someone was watching us. I searched the area looking for the source of my discomfort.
“Don’t look around.” Marc’s cool voice snapped me to attention. “They’ll know that we know.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. We crept down the dock, the weakening starlight casting our shadows on the boards. Marc’s brilliant eye examined each ship until we came to a small dinghy. Patches covered much of the bottom.
My face fell as I turned to my companion. “Is this safe?”
“We’ll find out,” he mused as he climbed in.
He was helping me into the boat when a noise came from the end of the dock. Three shadowy figures and a small, lithe one hurried down the wharf toward us. Marc yanked me into the boat, and a faint glow came from beneath his eyepatch. The waters beneath us bubbled up, and the boat was propelled away from the dock. We were well away from the dock when the men and their cat reached the berth. Their eyes glowed bright red against the weakening shadows.
I sank into the seat at the bow, and Marc took up the place in the center. The waves splashed against the sides, and a little bit of seaspray sprinkled me with cold bay water. My heart still pounded in my chest as the dock and the creepy figures sank into the distance.
I shifted in my seat. Marc’s voice interrupted the stillness. “What’s wrong?”
I frowned at my companion. “I still don’t feel right about taking this boat.”
He grinned. “It’s no problem. I’m just borrowing it from an old friend.”
“An old friend? Who? Marty?”
Marc chuckled. “Barreto.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “How can you be so sure it belongs to him?”
He nodded at the bow. “The name on the front. Barreto was crazy about a girl named Iris when we were kids. He always named his boat after her.”
I leaned over and squinted at the bow. The name ‘Iris’ was emblazoned on the side. “What happened to her?”
“She left even before I did to make a name for herself as a singer in the capital,” he told me as he examined the horizon. We had crossed the gap between the two arms of the bay and were now out to sea.
“Did she?”
“One of the most famous.” He leaned forward and squinted his eye.
His stiff manner made me twist around. I noticed a strange whirlpool about fifty yards ahead of us. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
That scared me almost as much as his sharp tone. He steered the boat to the left away from the whirlpool. It followed us.
