Free Patriot (A Jack Sigler Continuum Novella) by Jeremy Robinson, J. Kent Holloway Page B

the man’s ever-broadening shoulders. “Winfield! Set course around that ship!” He spun around. “All hands to battle stations! Needles! Keep yer eyes fixed on that frigate!”
    “Aye!”
    The deck of the ship erupted in a blur of activity as the crew saw to their captain’s orders. The rain was already starting to come down. If not for the pitch coating the deck’s planks, at least two of the crew would have been swept overboard as the ocean beneath them began to swell.
    “Cap’n, would ye care to join me at the wheel?” Reardon asked Lanme Wa. The Irish captain was putting on a good show of not appearing intimidated in the slightest by the pirate’s cadaverous appearance.
    Lanme Wa only nodded his assent, then followed Josiah Reardon up onto the quarterdeck and to the wheel. Relieving Winfield of his post, Captain Reardon gripped the wheel, and steered around an oncoming swell, making his way steadily toward the Presley’s Hound .
    Finkle was watching this when he sensed someone slide up next to him. “He doesn’t seem to like you very much,” he said to the vodou bokor.
    “I am sure he’s just disoriented from his long sleep, cher .”
    “Or, perhaps, he’s a good judge of character.” The old man turned to look at her and found her emerald eyes burning with contempt. “Strike a nerve, did I?”
    “Lanme Wa definitely be a good judge of character.” She sniffed while clutching her bag more tightly. Her mop of unruly hair was now soaked from the sudden downpour, only helping to intensify her wild countenance. “I’d say you best be on your own guard ’bout dat. Make sure your own character is shiny ’nough to make da cut.”
    He wasn’t sure what to make of her comment, so he ignored it, and moved on to the question he really wanted to know. “Can we trust him?”
    She wiped the rainwater from her forehead with one hand, then grabbed hold of a rope to steady herself against a sudden lurch of the ship. She stood silently for a moment, then shrugged. “He’ll do what is right by his reckoning, I s’pose. But don’t cross him— or me —or you might just regret it.”
    Finkle turned back to the port side rail, and watched as they carefully sailed past the gray sails of the pirate ship a mere two hundred yards away. As Lanme Wa had predicted, the Hound , its deck lifeless and devoid of crew, let them pass without incident, and soon the crew of the Reardon’s Mark were moving out of the storm, and heading directly for the mysterious shores of Florida.

 
     
    12
     
    “It’s time you explain yourselves,” King said, pushing his cleaned plate away. He leaned back in his chair, and looked up at his three hosts sitting around the captain’s table.
    Captain Reardon, Quartermaster Greer and Finkle stared back at him with wide wonder-filled eyes, no doubt mesmerized by the speed with which his body was mending itself. Already, the hard mummified leather of his flesh was being replaced by the more supple skin and muscle of a living person. His leg was completely whole once more. His hands were free of scars. And though he hadn’t seen his reflection in more than a hundred years, he imagined his face was already beginning to resemble that of Jack Sigler once more—or at least, it would, once he had a chance for a proper bath and a shave.
    King drank from his cup of rum, savoring the warmth spreading through his body after the first full meal he’d had since his hibernation. Though the food had been bland, and the bread stale and filled with grubs, he’d enjoyed every bite more than he could remember of any meal before. However, now was the time to finally get to the bottom of all this. Time to find out why he’d suddenly awakened submerged in the Atlantic Ocean, attacked by a trio of hammerhead sharks.
    He turned his attention on the older man of the group. Finkle felt so familiar to him, but the man had been right when he said there was no way the two could have possibly met before. King had