Free Escape with A Rogue by Sharon Page

not. I love my country, even if it bloody well doesn’t love me.” Simon looked desperate. “Believe me, Jack. You looked out for me. There’ve been times you stopped me from getting whipped, many times when you stood up to Blenchley for me. So I helped you. I told them you were going to tunnel—and I gave them a bunch of false places where you’d do it.”
    Jack pointed to the roof below. “Hurry up.”
    The rest of the men dropped down, then Jack followed. From one of the sentry platforms, a soldier shouted, “I see them.” More shooting came, but it was erratic, and they were now hidden in shadow and mist.
    “We’ve got them trapped,” a guard shouted. “There’s no way out but to climb the wall.”
    “Not true,” Jack muttered. He ran for the door in the granite wall that separated the prisoners’ yard from the section that housed other prison buildings. Here he had to use a lock pick—he hadn’t seen the lock often enough to make a key. He worked the strip of metal in, worked it, and heard a soft click. Then he tugged on the padlock, and threw open the door. It took seconds. A dozen shots hit the ground close to them. But they were through the door, running like madmen.
    Ahead stood a row of small stone buildings—a drying house, a wash house, the hospital, surgeon’s rooms, and a dispensary. Beyond them was the circular wall that marked the outside of the prison.
    “Run around the hospital,” he ordered. “Keep in the shadows. Make for the surgeon’s house.” He fished a rock from a pocket tacked into his trousers. About the size of a billiard ball, it made a good missile. Using it as a distraction, he threw it at the first-floor window of the hospital and the glass exploded, showering inward.
    Shots hit the ground near the window. Jack ducked his head low and ran in a crouch through the swirling mist that filled the expanse of ground between the hospital and the circular prison wall.
    Behind him, someone shouted, “Christ Jesus!” He turned to see who had got hit—
    A bullet winged past him. Jack dove and rolled around the corner of the hospital. There was one sentry’s balcony on the wall, at the corner where the round exterior wall met the row of buildings.
    The redcoat on the post had his rifle raised.
    Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw movement and jerked around. Black raised his homemade pistol and fired. The shot hit the wall below the guard, but it bought them a moment’s pause—
    They scrambled for the prison surgeon’s house and Black smashed the window with the butt of his weapon. Jack lifted the sash and the other men jumped inside.
    “You couldn’t hit him with a pistol at that range,” Jack said.
    Black grinned. His midnight-black hair clung to his forehead and his eyes, a dark ivy green, looked surprisingly mischievous. Not the reaction Jack expected. “I didn’t expect to hit him, Travers. Just wanted to make him think he could get hit. It made him back away for a moment.” Black went through the window, and Jack followed, entering last.
    They were at risk here—no doubt the surgeon was armed. Jack left the window up, but they were in pitch darkness. Stealthy footsteps came from a barely apparent doorway.
    “Erk! Don’t hurt me!”
    Black had grabbed the surgeon, a white-haired man of small stature. The giant pushed the terrified man into a wooden chair and wrenched the pistol out of his hand. Wycliffe pulled the man’s belt from his robe and bound his hands behind him, securing him to the slats of the chair’s back. “That’ll do. Don’t make trouble, and nothing will happen to you.”
    A musket ball had grazed Wycliffe’s arm, so Jack bound up the wound with gauze. “Amazing,” muttered the smuggler, “that we got through that volley of shots with only this wound.”
    Jack had to agree. They made their way to the front of the surgeon’s house, which overlooked a wall to the west of the prison’s front gate. Here, just that one wall separated them