Beyond Sunrise (18 page)

An unexpected smile curled the edges of the Australian's mouth. "Only to be felled by a flowerpot. I must be getting old."

To Alex's surprise, the captain laughed. "What did it do to your head?"

"Miss India McKnight thinks I'm concussed, but I expect I'll live long enough to hang."

Simon Granger's smile faded. "It was wrong, what you did to that woman. Dragging her through a cannibal-infested jungle for the better part of three days."

"I know." The other man's chest jerked with a cynical sound that might have been a laugh, but wasn't. He tipped back his head, his eyes gleaming in the dim light. "And it wasn't wrong of you to use her as live bait in a trap to catch me?"

"I didn't expect you to hold a machete to her throat."

"You should have."

Simon Granger brought up one hand to rub his forehead in an oddly uncharacteristic gesture. "I understand she's saying you didn't abduct her."

"Have you spoken to her?"

"Not yet. But it doesn't make any difference what she says. You're going to swing, anyway. For what you did to the
Lady Juliana."

The man on the mattress sat quite still, only his chest rising and falling with the effort of his breathing. But as Alex watched, the man's face seemed to alter, as if pain had somehow stretched the flesh more tautly over the skull, causing the ridges of his cheekbones to stand out sharp, stark against the tanned skin. "I didn't send that ship up onto the reef, Simon."

With a sigh, the captain went to stare out the small, barred window. From where he still stood, Alex could see only a shimmering sliver of the distant sea, almost the same color as the darkening sky.

"I heard you myself," Granger said softly, his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze still fixed on the mist-shrouded horizon. "We all heard you tell Captain Gladstone that the charts were wrong. I know the state you were in that day, Jack. What Gladstone did to that native village was—" He paused, and a shudder passed over his face, an echo of a revulsion so profound, it sent an answering shiver down Alex's spine. "—an abomination. But that doesn't excuse what you did. You sent that ship onto the reef deliberately. Knowingly. You
killed
those men, Jack. You killed them. And now you're going to have to pay for it."

One hand braced against the wall for support, Ryder staggered to his feet, his face paling alarmingly as he stood swaying, his breath coming heavy and ragged. "Damn it, Simon, listen to me. The charts
were
wrong. Don't you understand? The old bastard changed his mind. He ordered the helmsman to keep to the originally plotted course, and
that's
why the ship missed the passage through the reef."

"You dare, sir!" Alex started forward, his clenched fists coming up. "That 'old bastard' you are attempting to slur was my mother's brother."

Granger's splayed hand slammed against Alex's chest, stopping him. "Lose control like that again, Lieutenant, and you'll be waiting outside with the gendarme."

Heat burned Alex's cheeks, but he set his jaw hard, and drew himself up tall. "Yes, sir."

The captain frowned at the pale, ragged man leaning against the wall. "Even if it were true, Jack... there's no way you can prove it."

"But I can."

"How?"

"What's left of the
Lady Juliana
is still caught on that reef. All you need to do is compare the ship's position with its charts and log, and you'll see I'm telling the truth. Gladstone followed the charts, not me."

Alex glanced from one man to the other. He was finding it increasingly hard to breathe in the hot, close atmosphere of the storeroom.

The captain's lips thinned into a tight smile. "The
Lady Juliana's
charts and log are at the bottom of the ocean. Along with whatever's left of her captain."

Ryder leaned his shoulders against the wall behind him, his hands flattened at his sides, his chest lifting with his labored breathing. It occurred to Alex that someone really ought to advise the man to sit down again, but the words stuck in his throat.

"That's just it, they're not," said Ryder. "Toby Jenkins has them."

Granger's brows twitched together. "Toby Jenkins? The seaman who spent those years on the island with you?"

Ryder nodded.

"And where is Jenkins now?"

"He's still there. On Rakaia."

Alex gave a small start of surprise, quickly suppressed. On the way out from Rio, the
Barracuda
had anchored at Rakaia, looking for Jack Ryder. They'd found the island deserted.

"You haven't heard, I take it?" said Granger.

Ryder's eyes narrowed, his body tensing, his voice low and wary. "Heard what?"

"Rakaia was hit by an epidemic. Four, maybe six months back. It's completely uninhabited now. Anyone who was there is dead, Jack. Jack?"

Granger surged forward, but Alex got there first, catching Ryder beneath the arms just as the man pitched forward in a dead faint.

Chapter Twenty-two

Clad in an exquisitely tailored man's white linen shirt and her own tattered but well-brushed tartan split skirt, India sat on a driftwood log that had been thrown up by some past storm
into
the shade of the line of towering coconut palms fringing the lagoon. From there, she was able to watch Captain Granger when he left the storeroom and took the rutted, refuse-strewn path that led down to the beach. He had another officer with him, a younger man, with light brown hair and a sharp-boned, earnest face. The two men were obviously arguing, the younger officer's hands flashing through the air in short, emotional chops.

They were too far away for her to hear their words, but India knew by the sudden turning of the captain's head and the break in his stride that he had seen her. Pausing at the edge of the beach, he said something to the other man and, after a moment's hesitation, the younger officer continued to the waiting jolly boat drawn up on the golden-white sand, while Captain Granger turned aside, the last rays of the setting sun falling golden and warm on his craggy face as he walked toward her.

"Miss McKnight." He paused some half-dozen feet from her to stand with his hands clasped behind his back and his legs braced wide in the manner of a man who'd spent most of his life on the pitching deck of a ship. "I was hoping to have the opportunity to speak with you."

His discomfiture was obvious, and if she'd been feeling more in charity with the man, India would have said something to put him at ease. Instead, she merely tipped back her head and gave him a steady stare. "Captain Granger."

He cleared his throat awkwardly and fixed his gaze on some point over India's left shoulder. "To beg your pardon after all you have been through seems woefully inadequate, I know, but you must allow me to do so, nonetheless. I can only assure you that I would never have involved you in this affair had I imagined that the consequences to you might be either dangerous or unpleasant."

India studied the man's face, tanned dark and lined by years spent squinting into sun and salt spray. "Do you honestly believe that? Or are you simply hoping that I will believe it?"

A muscle bunched along his tight jaw. Then a wry smile touched his lips and he shook his head. "You're right. I saw a way to get my hands on Jack, and I seized it. And the devil take the consequences."

India kept her gaze on his face. "I don't understand. Why are you so determined to capture him? Why now, after all these years?"

"My orders come from London."

"And do you always go to such lengths to carry out your orders?"

He swung to look directly at her. "I volunteered for this assignment. Did you know?"

India shook her head. "No."

"Most people thought I seemed the obvious choice, given what I'd been through because of Jack. But there were some who weren't so sure. They remembered that Jack and I had once been friends, and they worried I might not pursue him with as much energy as I ought." He nodded toward the jolly boat pulling away from shore, and the young officer who stood stiff and erect at its prow. "Even my first lieutenant suspects me of cherishing dangerously tender feelings toward my quarry."

"And so you're determined to prove them wrong, is that it?"

Simon Granger drew in a sharp, deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "What I'm determined to do is to get my hands on Jack before London decides I'm not trying hard enough, and sends someone else. Someone who might not be as careful as they should be."

India felt a chill touch her heart. "You mean, someone who would just as soon kill Jack Ryder as capture him?"

"What Jack did... Well, let's just say there are a lot of people in the Admiralty who would like nothing better than to see him dead. With or without the benefit of a hearing."

"He says he didn't do it."

The Englishman's gaze met hers. "And you believe him?"

"Yes. I do."

"That's because you don't know what happened."

"Then tell me," she challenged him. "Sit down, and tell me what happened. From the very beginning."

"It's a long story."

"Don't you think I deserve to hear it?"

He hesitated, then came to sit beside her on the white, wave-smoothed old log. For a long moment, he simply stared out at the reef, where the surf broke in a savage, noisy barrage of upflung spray and swirling foam. Then he said, his voice hushed, hoarse, "We were two days out of Tahiti when a storm blew up, fast." He paused, and India knew from the faraway look that crept into his eyes that he was hearing, again, the relentless shrieking of the wind, the thundering roar of foam-flecked, storm-blackened waves that could crush even a mighty ship of the line into kindling. "I'd been in the navy since I was thirteen, but I'd never seen anything like that typhoon. For a good thirty-six hours, it was all we could do to keep from disappearing into a cross sea. We had no idea where we were."

Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees, his clasped hands dangling loosely between them. "It was on the morning of the second day when the wind brought down the foremast and swept one of the men overboard, an old seaman by the name of Toby Jenkins. He was still alive, caught up in the rigging we were trailing, but with the seas the way they were, Captain Gladstone decided it was too dangerous to ask the men to try to haul him in."

India felt a wry, sad smile tug at her lips. "So Jack Ryder volunteered to do it."

He nodded, an echo of her own smile lightening his face, only to fade again. "He almost had the man pulled in when the ship swung around in the wind and a wall of water swept over the deck. What was left of the rigging tore free, and took Jack with it." Granger stared out over the distant sea, peaceful now in the rapidly gathering twilight. "We tacked back and forth for hours, trying to find them, but..." He shook his head. "It was useless. No one looking at that sea would ever imagine they could have survived."

"So how did they?"

He shrugged. "The rigging would have kept them afloat for a while. But even then, they wouldn't have lasted long. It was just sheer luck that at the time they were lost overboard, the
Lady Juliana
was only a few hundred yards off an island. We simply didn't know it."

"The island was Rakaia?"

Granger nodded. "It wasn't until almost two years

later that we started hearing rumors about a couple of Europeans who'd been lost off their ship in a storm and were living with the natives on one of the islands. Even then, it took another couple of months to find the right island."

India kept her gaze on the
Sea Hawk,
rocking back and forth in the gentle, blue-green waters of the lagoon. A light had appeared on the foredeck, a lantern that shone across the gathering gloom. Patu would come ashore after dark, Amok had told her; India had only to wait here, and he would meet her.

"When the
Lady Juliana
sailed into the lagoon," Granger was saying, "Jack came paddling out to meet us in one of those native outrigger canoes. At first, I didn't even recognize him. He'd always preferred going barefoot to wearing shoes, and he'd just as soon do without a shirt most of the time, as well. But after two years on Rakaia... Well, he looked like a Polynesian. A blue-eyed Polynesian with an Aussie accent."

"He told me he had married one of the native women," India said, her tone carefully kept emotionless, impersonal. "Had a child by her."

Simon Granger nodded. "He was glad enough to see us, but he really didn't want to leave. Not permanently. He was talking about getting out of the navy. Coming back to Rakaia to live."

"He loved her," India said softly, a strange pain squeezing her chest. "He loved her, and because he'd come to the island, because he brought the Royal Navy to rescue him, she died."

Simon Granger stared out over the distant sea, blue-black now in the starlit twilight. There was something strangely revealing about the tense, still way he held himself, and suddenly, India knew. "You were one of the thirty men who opened fire on that village," she said. "Weren't you?"

His jaw tightened. "The islanders had killed three British seamen. Captain Gladstone felt they needed to be taught a lesson."

"A lesson? Is that what you call it?"

"That's what the Admiralty called it."

India kept her gaze on the man beside her. "But how could you? How could you do such a thing? Innocent men, women, children..."

"It was an order."

"An order to commit a massacre," India said with feeling.

"Yes." His voice was hushed, torn. "Yes, it was." He sat silent for a moment, staring off into the starlit darkness. "You can't imagine what it was like," he said at last. "The sun was just coming up, spilling a golden light across the water when we were rowed ashore and ordered to form a line across the front of the village. I remember watching the morning breeze ruffle the fronds of the palm trees along the sand, and thinking how beautiful, how idyllic and peaceful it all looked. Like paradise." Simon Granger blew out his breath in a long, painful sigh, and dropped his gaze to his clenched hands. "Then the shooting started.

"The native huts, they were never made to stop a bullet. Some of the islanders were killed even before they made it to their doors. But Jack's wife... she came out running. I think she must have been trying to make it to the shelter of the trees, but she was heavy with child and she had the little girl in her arms, too." Granger paused, his voice becoming hushed, torn. "She must have been hit four, maybe five times."

"And Jack Ryder?" India asked quietly. "Where was he?"

"Captain Gladstone had sent him ashore with a detail of men, to gather fruit for the ship. He wanted Jack well out of the way before the shooting started, but they hadn't moved that far from the village."

"Did he see it? Did Jack see what happened?"

Granger's chest jerked with a deep, quick breath. "He ran straight into the line of fire. It's a wonder he wasn't killed himself before the seamen realized what was happening and stopped shooting. He probably saved the lives of half the natives by dashing into the village like that. But by the time he got to his wife, she was already dead. The little girl was screaming. When I saw Jack lift her up, covered in blood, I thought she'd been hit, too." The Englishman's face convulsed with a spasm of emotion, quickly suppressed. "But it was the mother's blood."

"I don't know how he bore it," India whispered.

Simon Granger shook his head. "He didn't. He went berserk. He must have wounded half a dozen seamen before they were able to wrestle him down, and even after we had him in irons and were dragging him back on board, he kept thrashing about, swearing he was going to kill Gladstone and every man on the ship."

"He was out of his mind with grief. You can't assume from what he said in such a moment that he then deliberately sank the ship."

"It's not an assumption." In the bleak moonlight, his face looked stark, cold. "We were supposed to set sail that morning, but the seas were running rough, too rough to navigate the passage through the reef by sight, the way we'd done coming in. Gladstone was planning to follow the charts, but Jack, he suddenly stops raving and says the charts are wrong, that if we try to follow them, we'll end up on the reef."

"And the captain believed him?"

"Not at first. But in the end, Jack somehow convinced him. Gladstone ordered the helmsman to steer by Jack's reckoning." He swallowed, the muscles in his throat working painfully. "The
Lady Juliana
ran right up on the reef."

India was silent for a moment. "You said half the ship's company died. Why? Were the seas so rough?"

He shook his head. "The first lifeboat cleared the reef without much trouble. But by the time the second boat was filled, the natives had realized what was happening and launched their war canoes.

"We tried to put back, to come to their aid, but the seas were running against us. All we could do was watch." He swung his head to meet her gaze. "They killed them all, Miss McKnight. The captain, and the rest of the ship's men. The only survivors besides those of us lucky enough to have made it into the first boat were Jack Ryder and Toby Jenkins. The islanders spared them."

India stood abruptly, her tented hands coming up to cover her nose and mouth, her boots sinking into the sand as she took a hasty step away from him. "If you told me Jack Ryder had killed a dozen seamen in a grief-stricken rage, then I might believe you. But to deliberately, diabolically plot to sink a ship? No. That's not Jack."

Simon Granger sighed. "He says Gladstone changed his mind. That the helmsman steered by the charts, and that's why the
Lady Juliana
hit the reef. But there's no way to prove it."

India swung to face him again, her hands falling to her sides. "There must be. Has anyone ever been back to Rakaia?"

He nodded grimly. "The
Barracuda
put in there just a few months ago. What's left of the
Lady Juliana
is still caught on the reef. If we had the ship's log and charts, the question would be answered in an instant. But as it is..."

India felt a hollow sense of dread, low in her stomach. "They were lost?"

"Everyone assumed they were. Captain Gladstone had them in the lifeboat that was attacked by the natives. But according to Jack, Toby Jenkins found them, and kept them."

"So where is Toby Jenkins now?"

"He was on Rakaia."

"Was? He's not anymore?"

Simon Granger shook his head. "The island is deserted. Completely deserted."

India stared at him in frustrated, frightened bewilderment. "How can that be?"

"I've seen it happen before. Sometimes it's typhoid, or influenza. But it doesn't need to be that serious. Something as simple as the measles or even a cold can wipe out the entire native population of an island in a matter of weeks."

"But—" India broke off as a new thought struck her, a thought that took her breath and brought a sick wrench of compassion and sorrow to her stomach. "Jack's little girl—the one his wife died trying to protect—he left her with his wife's family. On Rakaia."