Bayou Pirates Read online

  He really was red now, and even more flustered. Nina noted this with more than some amusement.

  “Yes, well,” he grumbled, staring down at the top of his water bottle. “I don’t know…”

  “Own it, Marston,” she told him with a grin. “You’ve still got it! That’s nothing to be ashamed of. Plus, we got quite a bit out of it, it seems.”

  “I guess so,” he relented, and Nina could’ve sworn that his cheeks looked a little flushed. He locked eyes with her and lifted an eyebrow in her direction.

  The sound of jazz music on boats off in the distance wafted across the water, a common occurrence in New Orleans, and always a pleasant one. Nina was honestly dreading having to go back to Virginia when she was done with this assignment.

  “It’s been good working with you, though,” she told him honestly. “And if you do ever make it up to Virginia—when you’re tracking down the real version of that journal you’re looking for, maybe—make sure to look me up.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to see you again,” he assured her, turning to face her.

  Their faces grew closer together, and Nina decided to go for it. She reached up and kissed him, and to her surprise and delight, he pulled her closer to him and leaned into the kiss. She felt a warmth course through her. Yes, she was dreading the end of this mission.

  “Oi!” Holm called to them what felt like hours later. “Care to break it up long enough to give me some directions?”

  Marston pulled away from her, looking a bit embarrassed, but Nina just grinned up again.

  “We’ll have to pick up where we left off,” she said, winking at him as she whirled around to go help out his partner. He looked more than pleased with this suggestion.

  Nina walked down into the main steering area, closely followed by Marston. The boat they were on was a small motorized fishing boat with an interior area for steering and a small bed and kitchen off behind it for longer trips.

  “Nice one, partner,” Holm told Marston when they walked in, flashing him a grin.

  Marston ignored him but still looked rather pleased with himself, which somehow just made Nina smile even more.

  “Alright, you said you needed help?” Nina asked the other MBLIS agent, placing her hands on her hips.

  “Yup, see right up there,” he said, pointing out the front window up and to the left, where the harbor branched off into several smaller lanes. “Which one do I take?”

  “The one farthest north,” she said, leaning up to the window and pointing herself. “See?”

  Holm squinted and then nodded.

  “I’ve got you,” he said.

  “How far hidden are we talking here?” Marston asked.

  “It’ll take a while,” Nina warned them. “And even when we do get to where I was before, there’s no guarantee this other ship is right by there. We could be out here for most of the night.”

  “There are worse places to be,” Holm remarked, staring out at the bayou in front of them as he rounded another corner, taking them further away from the hustle and bustle of the harbor.

  “There certainly are,” Marston agreed, smiling over at Nina.

  They passed the rest of their journey, enjoying each other’s company some more and soaking in the sounds and sights of the bayou. Eventually, the jubilance of the harbor gave way to the sounds of cicadas chirping, birds singing, and even the occasional crocodile roar.

  The more she talked with the MBLIS agents, the more Nina liked them. Especially Marston. She would have to stay in contact with him when this was all over.

  It was hard not to be lulled into a sense of complacency, given the charm and relative calm of their ride for the first couple of hours. It wasn’t until they rounded a familiar corner, next to a great tree covered in moss that Nina immediately recognized, that a sense of foreboding began to grow within her.

  “We’re getting closer,” she murmured to Marston. She was now seated next to him on two plastic chairs out in the front of the boat, while Holm continued to steer right behind them.

  He nodded and got up, pushing his chair off to the side.

  “We should head back in there,” he said in a low voice, gesturing in the direction of the main cabin. “Just in case someone shows up and recognizes you. Or me. I guess that’s also possible.”

  Nina nodded in agreement and let him usher her in front of him on their way into the cabin.

  “Getting closer?” Holm asked when they arrived, having been separated from their conversation by the cabin window.

  Nina nodded.

  “I recognize this area,” she said. “We’re getting closer to where the Haitian ship dropped off the drug.”

  “It would make sense that Solomon would come in the same way,” Marston mused. “I doubt there are many paths to avoid a lot of water traffic around here.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Nina agreed. “And he’ll be able to avoid the harbor entirely since he’s coming in from the opposite direction.”

  “You never heard of anyone coming in another way?” Holm asked.

  Nina shook her head.

  “Believe it or not, we get most of our drugs the old fashioned way,” she said dryly. “Good old smuggling over the border, or from other cities and gangs. Pirating isn’t as popular as it used to be, no matter how much people like those hotel owners would like to think otherwise.”

  “Ah, wouldn’t it be great if we found some more buried treasure?” Holm asked, grinning up at the other two.

  “We wouldn’t get to keep this batch, Holm,” Marston chuckled.

  “Why not?” he complained.

  “Because the odds of one of us being the descendant of not one, but two long lost pirates are quite long,” Marston said, giving him a pointed look and another laugh.

  “Ah, you always find a way to ruin the fun,” Holm scoffed, but he was still smiling.

  Nina continued to direct Holm all along the bayou. She’d been around there plenty of times at that point, but the scenery never grew old.

  Luscious green trees and moss abounded all around, along with wildlife of all sorts. During the day, there was often a muggy, steamy quality hanging in the air, which was pleasant in its own way, but at night it had a crisper, cooler feel, though it was still warm. It was also kind of eerie out there at night, even without the lingering presence of zombies and pirates in the area.

  “It really is something down here,” Marston murmured, reflecting Nina’s own thoughts. Fireflies were now zipping across the water, giving a pleasant dim light to the otherwise blackened night. There was no moon that Nina could see, but there were a lot of trees packed around, so it could’ve just been obscured.

  “Yes, I’ll hate to leave,” she admitted, voicing a concern she’d had for some time. “Virginia’s nothing like this.”

  “Well, you do have those mountains,” Marston said, knocking his shoulder against hers gently. “Those are pretty nice. And it’s not like you’re there all the time. I imagine you’re out on assignment quite a bit.”

  “I am,” she said with a nod. “Though after this one, I have a feeling they’ll send me to teach a class or two at the Academy for a while. They don’t like to send us on long, hard cases back-to-back.”

  “MBLIS doesn’t have that policy,” Holm chuckled. “We got sent on another case right after I was kidnapped!”

  Nina raised her eyebrows at this.

  “Kidnapped?” she repeated.

  “Yeah, it’s a long story,” Marston said, waving his hand dismissively in the air. “And technically, we were sent on a vacation after that, and that happened to turn into another case.”

  “Either way, we get sent on a lot of cases,” Holm said, doubling down.

  “We also don’t go undercover for months on end,” the other MBLIS agent pointed out.

  “Fair enough, but still,” Holm said with a long sigh. “I could use a vacation.”

  “We just had weeks without any kind of work, and we were practically
begging for a case,” Marston laughed. “We don’t need a vacation.”

  “After this series of cases, we sure do,” Holm argued, and Marston didn’t seem to have a response to this, so he just shrugged.

  “Weeks without any work?” Nina asked, giving the MBLIS agents a quizzical look. “How does that happen? Never heard of that at my agency.”

  “The government would never try to defund your agency,” Marston chuckled. “Or at least I hope they wouldn’t.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Nina said dryly. “Though yeah, we didn’t have anything like what you guys went through. I imagine it would take some time to get back up and running after something like that.”

  Just then, they turned another corner, heading west down a narrow portion of the bayou that seemed more like a river than anything else.

  Nina darted out of the cabin and ran back up front without explaining herself to the MBLIS agents, and she leaned out over the railing, squinting in front of her to try to see better even in the dark.

  The trees grew less dense in this area, and the moon began to poke out up ahead. Nina realized it was actually a full moon after all, even though she hadn’t been able to see it before.

  “What are you doing?” Marston hissed from behind her. He was leaning out of the door of the main cabin. “I thought we agreed to stay inside in case we ran into anyone who recognized us.”

  “I know, I’m just trying to make sure we’re where I think we are,” Nina hissed back, leaning forward even further on the railing until her knees were pressed up against the edge and she was balancing on the railing with her feet up in the air.

  Marston ran out to stand behind her.

  “Careful,” he said.

  “I can manage,” she snickered back, though she liked that he was concerned.

  She squinted out some more. The trees were even less dense now, allowing the full moon to illuminate their path forward, along with some fireflies that still trickled along the sides of the bayou.

  “What are you looking for?” Marston finally asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

  “I think this is where we met those Haitian men for that last shipment,” she said, deciding as she said it that this must be true. “We’re headed right down in that direction.”

  “You think it’ll be in the same place?” Marston asked in a hushed tone as if this was all suddenly becoming even more real.

  She nodded and hopped down from the railing.

  “Possibly,” she said. “They might’ve picked another place near here, but it’s a good hiding spot. Nice and away from where anyone would look, or happen upon it.”

  She walked back toward the cabin door and beckoned for him to follow her, leading him back to where Holm was still steering the small fishing boat.

  “We in the right place?” he asked eagerly when they reappeared, having guessed the purpose of their little excursion.

  “I think so,” Nina said. “Just keep going very slowly. If they’re down there, we want to avoid them figuring out we’re here for as long as we can.”

  “I don’t know about all this,” Holm said as he eased up on their speed a bit, bringing the boat down to an easy glide across the surface of what was now a small river. “The last time Marston and I looked for a ship with Solomon on it, we ended up getting blown up.”

  “No, we got off the ship right before it was blown up,” Marston reminded him.

  “Same difference,” Holm chuckled. “And I don’t like our chances of getting that lucky a second time.”

  “I don’t know about luck,” Marston chuckled. “I’d like to consider it skill and foresight.”

  “Also, same difference,” Holm laughed. “In a way, anyway. Besides, I’m the one who usually gets beat up in these situations, though you got yourself in a couple of sticky situations last time if I remember correctly.”

  Marston instinctively reached up to where he had a dull cut on the right-hand side of his forehead.

  “Oh, I remember,” he said, wincing as he brushed the wound. “How could I forget? But it is true you’re the one who usually gets yourself in trouble.”

  Somehow, Nina did not find this difficult to believe, given how many near misses she’d already witnessed with Holm in just the short time they’d known each other. Plus, there was whatever that kidnapping thing they’d been talking about was.

  “So you understand my reticence,” Holm chuckled as they inched ever closer to the end of the river.

  Nina couldn’t see it yet, but she knew it was coming. The closer they got, the more she recognized the area from when Rusty dragged her out there what felt like a lifetime ago but was really only a day or two in the past.

  “That’s the job, Holm,” Marston teased. “You signed up for it.”

  “I didn’t sign up to get blown up,” Holm grumbled, though he was smiling.

  Nina decided she liked the MBLIS agents’ rapport quite a bit. Maybe she would consider a transfer, after all. No, she knew her life was with the FBI. Though she complained, she cared a lot about her work.

  “We’re not going to get blown up,” Marston chuckled. “We already know Solomon’s a wild card, so we know to expect the unexpected. And I doubt he’d try to pull the same trick on us twice, though who knows. Plus, the ship would have to be designed the same way as the ghost ship to pull that off, which would be a stretch.”

  “Expect the unexpected,” Holm repeated, shaking his head. “That’s pretty much our entire job description, isn’t it?”

  “You could say that,” Marston laughed, as Nina continued to stare out the window ahead of them. “Besides, we have Agent Gosse this time. She won’t let us get blown up.”

  Marston looked over at Nina and flashed her a grin. She smiled back at him, but she was far too preoccupied with what was in front of them to engage in the MBLIS agents’ banter at right that moment.

  “Hold on,” she murmured, seeing something unusual appear up on the horizon out the window as they turned a final corner. “Back up!”

  She practically screamed the command at Holm, and he nearly jumped out of his skin since he wasn’t expecting it. But he pulled the boat back around the corner as quickly as he could.

  “What? What did you see?” Marston asked, looking around wildly to see if he could figure it out.

  “A ship,” she said, her voice hushed. “A small one. We’re right around the corner from the end of the river where we met the Haitians.”

  CHAPTER 25

  I stared at Nina and then out the front window of the small fishing boat. But it didn’t really matter. Holm had pulled the boat back around the corner so that whoever was up there couldn’t see us if they hadn’t already, and that also meant that we couldn’t see them, either.

  “You think it’s Solomon?” I asked breathlessly. “Or is it the same ship as before?”

  “I couldn’t tell,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know that it matters, though. We killed all the Haitians before and took the one survivor back to the hotel with us, where Williams killed him. Solomon could be hiding out on the same ship, for all we know.”

  “How big was it? Did you see anyone outside?” Holm asked, his eyes glued on Nina.

  “I don’t know,” she said apologetically. “It’s dark, and I only got a glimpse of it, and just an outline at that. We’ll have to dock the boat and see if we can head over there on foot. Would make us less noticeable that way, anyway.”

  “I wish there were still trees all over the place,” I muttered, looking out the side windows. The tall trees stretching far up into the sky had dissipated until they were gone altogether, leaving nothing but shrouds of tall grass in their wake on either side of the river.

  “Yeah, it’ll be hard to remain undetected,” Nina relented. “But it’s better than coming right at them in a bright white fishing boat.”

  “Fair enough,” I chuckled. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

  Holm docked the boat up against the under
brush, and we crept out as softly as we could into the tall grass, pressed down against the ground until we were practically crawling in order to avoid detection.

  It was slow going that way, but we eventually got there with Nina leading the charge since she knew the area best.

  Finally, a ship appeared on the horizon of my vision, its masts poking out above the grass above my head.

  And man were those masts something.

  My jaw dropped when I saw them, and slowly, I allowed myself to poke my head up a bit above the grass so that I could see more of the ship.

  It was majestic, an enormous, sprawling old ship made of wooden planks with high silk masts straight off an old pirate ship. It was clearly old, but looked as if it had been refurbished somehow. And it was large, too, stretching across almost the whole edge of the river over there.

  I blinked at it for several seconds before Nina grabbed my shirt and pulled me back down.

  “Careful,” she hissed in my ear.

  “That isn’t the same ship the Haitians came here on, is it?” I asked in a low whisper, still working through my disbelief.

  She shook her head slowly, her eyes wide.

  “That doesn’t look like any ship I’ve ever seen,” she murmured, her jaw dropping even more than mine probably was.

  “I can think of at least one,” Holm whispered, and I looked back to meet his eyes.

  I knew exactly what he was thinking. The Searcher’s Chance. Except this ship was refurbished and looked like it could probably actually sail pretty well.

  “Unbelievable,” I muttered under my breath, shaking my head in disbelief.

  “You don’t think it’s…?” Holm began to ask, his voice trailing off as he let the last part of his question falter, not daring to voice it.

  Nina looked from Holm to me and back again, trying to figure out what we were talking about.

  “Wait,” she said finally, catching our meaning. “You don’t mean… You don’t think that this is that old pirate ship?” She pointed between us and scoffed as if this would be impossible.