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  “Of course not. The storm just shoved the boat a little too far up on the sand, but as soon as the tide comes back in, we should be able to get it back out to sea.”

  The child looked inland, toward Black Heart’s stronghold. “My pirate might help, if we ask him nicely.”

  Frowning, Casey’s mother sighed as she looked toward the center of the island. He imagined she was wondering how much truth there was to her daughter’s words about a pirate being in the fortress. She scanned the groves of palm and the deserted beach, and her gaze swept right over the dune where he hid. Finally she turned back to the child.

  “Pirates aren’t very trustworthy, Case. I know how much you’d like to have one for a friend, but this time I think we’d better take care of ourselves, and right now that means we try pushing the boat.”

  The woman shoved up from the ground, brushed sand from her hands, and moved gracefully toward the vessel. She was a beauty, parading about in only that bright blue corset and some sort of pantaloon. Her slender thighs, her rounded hips, and her blessed bottom swayed when she walked, and when she applied that part of her anatomy to the side of the boat and pushed, her glorious breasts nearly spilled from the small bit of fabric she was wearing.

  Ah, but she made his body ache.

  “Come on, Case,” the woman pleaded to the child who stubbornly sat on the beach. “I really do need your help.”

  Black Heart could hear the child’s frustrated sigh all the way across the beach, sounding so much like his own beloved sister who’d often sighed when she couldn’t have what she wanted.

  The old familiar pain stabbed at his heart. God, how he missed Melody’s little-girl giggles, her bouncing black curls, the way dimples formed at the corners of her lips when she smiled.

  He’d never see those smiles again. Never hear her laughter, or wrap a curl around his finger as he bounced her on his knee.

  He’d never again hear her say, “I love you.”

  Thomas Low would pay for what he’d done, but, bloody hell, he could do nothing until he got off this island.

  He looked at the boat the woman was struggling to move. ’Twas just what he needed in order to find Satan’s Revenge, and it appeared it was not going to leave the island until the tide came in. ’Twould be nearly impossible, even then, for the woman to get the boat off the sand. ’Twould be difficult enough for him, but he’d deal with that problem when darkness fell and the ocean rolled high on the beach. The woman and child would be asleep by then, and he would take the boat unbeknownst to either of them.

  An ounce of guilt tugged at his heart. Perhaps he should take them with him, but he had more important matters to concern himself with now, and he didn’t need either of them in his way—or under his skin. He had no doubt that they’d be safe on the island and, being a gentleman by nature, he would send someone back to rescue them.

  Sliding down on the dune, he banished the woman and child from his thoughts. With the blazing sun beating down on him, he rested his dizzy head on palm fronds and cypress branches, and allowed just one thought to consume his mind—revenge.

  Soon even thoughts of Thomas Low left him, and once again he slept.

  Kate pressed her back to the hull and attempted to shove the boat at least one miserable inch through the sand, but it wouldn’t budge. “Damn!”

  “You swear too much,” Casey admonished, peeking over the side of the boat. “Aunt Evalena says—”

  “Aunt Evalena says a lot of things,” Kate interrupted, “and she’s going to say a whole lot more if we don’t get home soon.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t leave a sailing plan.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the weather report was good. Because I didn’t expect a hurricane to come up out of nowhere, and because I didn’t want Evie or Aunt Nikki to know we were going to the island.”

  “Why?”

  Kate smiled at Casey’s one-word refrain. “They don’t believe there’s treasure here, and they’ll think I’ve lost my mind if they find out I went hunting for something that might not exist.”

  “But it does exist. And when we find it, we’ll be rich; then you won’t have to take care of all those other kids anymore.”

  Casey jumped down to the sand and skipped to the water’s edge before Kate could remind her that treasure or no treasure, she wasn’t about to give up her day care center. She loved taking care of a house full of kids. They made her happy. She’d wanted half a dozen of her own, children she could love the way she’d wished her own parents had loved her, but she and Joe had been blessed with only Casey.

  Maybe if he’d lived longer…

  She let that thought drift away. She doubted that anything would have changed if Joe had lived longer. They might have had more children eventually, but he’d still be fun-loving Joe, the boy who didn’t want to grow up. She’d still love him, of course. It was impossible not to. But she had no doubts that he’d still be searching for treasure, he’d still be obsessed with pirates, and he’d still be spending money as if they’d had it to burn.

  She collapsed against the eighteen-foot sailboat that Joe never should have bought, and gazed at the storm-ravaged island—one more of Joe’s impractical and expensive whims.

  Joe was a doting father, a decorated cop, but he’d spent a portion of every paycheck buying things they didn’t need, like the crossed swords he’d hung over the mantel in the living room, the eighteenth-century pistols he polished monthly and kept in a locked cabinet in his office, and the leather chest that rested at the end of their bed. It had once held a bounty of pirate treasure, or so Joe had told her. “We can’t afford it,” was all she had said, but he’d only laughed. “There’s always money if you want something badly enough.”

  She remembered so well the call from the antique store the day after Joe’s funeral. “We’re sorry to bother you, Mrs. Cameron, but Joe was here the other night. He bought a trunk and said he’d pick it up later. We’d like you to have it. We’d like you to have the money back, too. It’s the least we could do, considering….”

  Joe had wanted that trunk so badly it had cost him his life. Now, instead of giving him pleasure, it held some of the things Kate treasured most—the uniforms Joe would never wear again, his medal for bravery, and the badge he’d honored.

  If Joe had listened to her when she’d said they couldn’t afford it, he wouldn’t have been in the antique store. He wouldn’t have walked outside just in time to see the kid robbing the convenience store. He wouldn’t have been blown away by a sawed-off shotgun.

  And Nikki wouldn’t have suffered so much remorse for emptying an entire barrel into the chest of the seventeen-year-old boy who’d murdered her brother.

  Kate had forgotten all about the treasure after that night. She had a daughter to support, a home to take care of, and fanciful thoughts about pirates and buried treasure were the last thing on her mind.

  But last night Joe had come to her in a dream. He’d told her to go to the island. “The treasure’s there. I know it, Kate. Please, baby. Go and find it.”

  She’d listened to him because even in sleep, she’d seen the sparkle in his eyes, and it brought back so many memories, like the way his face had beamed the first time they’d sailed to the island. “Black Heart used to live here,” he’d said, speaking the pirate’s name almost reverently. “Remember me telling you about him? He disappeared in a freak summer storm.”

  Kate laughed, wondering if that freak summer storm had been anything like the one she and Casey had just survived.

  “What are you thinking about, Mommy?”

  Casey’s voice brought Kate back to the present, and she turned to the little girl who was a dreamer—just like her dad. “I was thinking how much your father would have enjoyed this adventure.”

  “He wouldn’t have wasted so much time trying to get the boat back into the water when he could have been spending time with a pirate.”

  “No, I suppose he wouldn’t. In
fact, I don’t want to spend any more time worrying about the boat, either.”

  “Then can we look for the pirate?”

  Casey’s eyes brightened when Kate nodded.

  This would be the third imaginary pirate in her life. The first one she’d named Mr. Bones, the second she had called Captain Jack. They’d kept her company after Joe had died. They’d had make-believe sword fights with her in the living room and helped her dig for buried treasure in the backyard. Kate had never discouraged Casey’s imaginative streak, and it was time to give in to it once again.

  There was nothing else to do on the island—so they might as well have fun.

  “So, Case, where do you think we’ll find your pirate?”

  “In the fortress.”

  “Great. Wanna race?”

  A wide smile crossed Casey’s face. “Yeah!”

  “Last one to the fortress is a rotten egg.” Kate sprinted away from the boat, listening to Casey’s giggles as she ran close behind. They dashed across the beach, past an immense pile of palm fronds and cypress boughs that had blown against a sand dune, and jumped over puddles of water left from the storm. They laughed, as if the hurricane had never occurred, as if they had nothing at all to worry about.

  Blocking Casey’s way when they reached the entrance to the ancient island stronghold, Kate bent over, hands on knees, and took a long, deep breath. “Okay, Case. Let’s not rush. He might still be inside.”

  She took Casey’s hand and together they crept into the cavernous fortress.

  “This way,” Casey whispered, tugging Kate through the maze of empty rooms.

  The light breeze whistled through holes and cracks, making the place seem eerier than it was. She tried to imagine the stronghold as it had looked hundreds of years before, with a pirate captain leaning against the wall and half a dozen of his crew standing about swilling rum and stout, while buxom wenches swirled their skirts and touted their wares.

  Casey’s pull on her hand tore her from her imaginings.

  “He’s just around the corner,” she said, and Kate suddenly began to believe Casey’s pirate might really exist.

  Kate stilled her daughter and put a silencing finger to her lips.

  Gripping Casey’s arms, they cautiously peered around the opening and into…an empty room.

  Under her fingers, Kate could feel the sag of her daughter’s shoulders, her disappointment. In her own heart, she too felt a nagging sense of defeat.

  “He’s gone, Mommy. I told you we should have come earlier.”

  Maybe they should have, but it was too late now.

  “I doubt he’s gone far, Case. There’s no way off the island, except in our boat, and it’s not going anywhere.”

  “Do you think we’ll see him tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know about you, but after the stories you told me, I’m bound to have nightmares about him tonight.”

  Casey finally laughed. “Did I tell you he had rings in both ears? Did I tell you about his cutlass?”

  A picture of Casey’s pirate was beginning to form in Kate’s mind, and she definitely wasn’t seeing Errol Flynn.

  “I think you told me everything about him except his name. Do you think it might be Black Heart, the pirate who used to live here?”

  Casey’s lips twitched back and forth as she thought. “He didn’t look at all like the pictures in Daddy’s books.”

  “Those sketches aren’t very good, Case. They’re old, and they were usually drawn from someone’s imagination, or from what they’d heard about a person.”

  “Well, if it is Black Heart, do you think he might be watching us, waiting for us to fall asleep, so he can snatch us up and take us prisoner?”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s likely to happen.”

  “But that’s what pirates do, Mommy.” Casey poked her head through the gap of a window that looked out on the approaching darkness.

  “Do you think his pirate ship might be off shore somewhere?”

  Kate walked across the room, curling her arms around her daughter, giving her comfort, seeking the same for herself.

  “What do you think your father’s answer to that question would have been?”

  Looking up with a smile on her face, Casey cleared her throat, and said in a voice much lower than Joe’s had ever been, “Well, Casey, if there’s a pirate ship off shore, I guess it’s our lucky day. Maybe we can thumb a ride back to St. Augustine.”

  Casey giggled, and warmth radiated through Kate for her daughter, for the man they both had loved.

  God, how she missed him.

  Throwing her arms around her mother’s neck, Casey pressed a hard, loving kiss on her cheek. “I’m going to sleep,” she said in a rush of words. “I’m gonna dream about pirates,” she added, skipping out of the room, happily singing “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

  With all her heart, Kate wished that a pirate—a good pirate, she amended—would walk into the fortress and make Casey’s dreams come true. As for her own dreams, she had let them die right along with Joe. Now she was beginning to want them back.

  The caw of a bird turned her attention outside, to the sounds of the night. Wings fluttered overhead as island birds stole from tree to tree. In the distance she could hear the gentle lap of waves on the beach, and the crackle and snap of fallen brush, as if some night creature were stirring from its daytime abode.

  Could it possibly be a man? she wondered. Casey’s pirate? No, that was impossible. She’d just allowed her imagination to run wild. Even now she was seeing fairies dancing across the cobbled floor, when it was only the rays of the rising moon glinting through the window. And the ring poking through the sand was only….

  She moved toward the emerald glow and knelt so the moonlight could still illuminate her find. Calmly, deliberately, she scooped her fingers underneath a band of gold and shimmering jewels, and let the sand sift away.

  “Oh, my God.”

  A long, slender chain of golden links slid over her hand and dropped to the floor, but the ring settled in the center of her palm, staring up at her in all its glory. The emerald, if that’s what the radiant green stone really was, had to be nearly the size of a dime. It was set in a wide band of filigreed gold, with a trio of diamonds glittering like luminous stars at either side.

  It was the most beautiful piece of jewelry she’d ever seen, and certainly the most wonderful—and valuable—she’d ever touched. Could it possibly be real, and not just a piece of costume jewelry someone had once left behind on the island?

  She slid the ring on her finger, covering the tan line where, until a few days ago, she’d worn a simple gold wedding band. It seemed sinful to put another ring on that finger, when Joe’s ring had meant the world to her. But this new ring fit perfectly, as if it had been made just for her.

  She looked about her, for some odd reason afraid that someone might be watching. Afraid that she’d just fallen in love with a ring that rightfully belonged to someone else. No one was around, though. No one watched her. As far as she knew, the ring had been buried under the sand in this fortress for hundreds of years, a treasure waiting to be found.

  Perhaps it was the treasure Joe had sent her to find.

  A lone tear slid down her face. With all her heart she wished Joe had been the one to find it.

  Wiping the tear away, she swept the chain from the sand, studying the intricacy of the links, and the break where the unending circle of gold had torn apart. It looked like so many of the antique pieces of jewelry Joe had purchased, only this wasn’t dull from over a hundred years of wear. Instead, it sparkled like new.

  Were there more pieces buried beneath the stones?

  Slipping the ring from her finger, she tucked it and the chain into the pocket of her shorts and went in search of other treasure. She carefully brushed sand away from the cobbles, digging her fingers between the cracks, hoping the moonlight would stay with her a little while longer.

  Wouldn’t Casey be thrilled to know the treasure
her father had always talked about was right under their noses?

  She pulled one of the stones up from the floor, but there was only sand beneath it. She dug deeper. Still nothing.

  She tore up another stone, and another, until the moonlight ceased to shine on the spot where she’d found the first of the treasure, but there were no more rings, no more chains.

  Crawling to the last bit of floor that was still lit by moonbeams, she started to dig, but her fingers came to a sudden stop.

  A footprint seemed to rise up from the sand.

  The heavy impression of a man’s boot. There was no mistaking the heel, the rounded toe. Or the size.

  Oh, God!

  Another print rested beside it, and another at a different angle. She turned and saw the remains of another print—one that she’d crawled through. Even in the darkness, she could see more prints crossing to the door, some appearing as if the man had stumbled and dragged his feet across the floor.

  She felt her heart begin to beat hard inside her chest. Faster. Faster.

  She stood, jerking quickly to look out the window, then back once more to the floor. Her body trembled, goosebumps rose on her arms, and slowly she put her bare foot inside one of the prints.

  So large. So very, very large.

  Her lips quivered as she again looked out into the dark. Night had crept in far too fast.

  And someone—a stranger—was on the island.

  Chapter 3

  There was a laughing Devil in his sneer,

  That raised emotions both of rage and fear…

  LORD BYRON, THE CORSAIR: CANTO I

  The dizziness had gone, but Black Heart woke from a deep, dreamless sleep with a gnawing in his belly so strong that he no longer thought about dying from the wound to his head or the hangman’s noose. Hunger alone would surely do him in.

  Darkness had rolled across the island, and with the night came his chance to move around undetected, a skill he’d learned many a year ago while hiding from Her Majesty’s men. Someday he hoped he could again set foot in the homes of the gentlemen who’d once called him friend, sup at their tables, drink their wine, and romance their daughters. But he imagined that day would not come anytime soon.