Chapter 8: Stealing the Interceptor
Port Royal harbor gleamed in the morning light.
White stone, iron cannons, the ordered geometry of colonial power. Two ships dominated the mooring—the Dauntless, massive and bristling with guns, and the Interceptor, sleek and fast. Our target.
I crouched with the crew in a stolen fishing boat, waiting for Jack's signal.
"Remember," Gibbs whispered, "we're the distraction. Draw attention to the Dauntless, away from the Interceptor. Don't get caught, don't get killed, and for the love of rum, don't do anything heroic."
Anamaria was in the next boat over, her face set with grim focus. She caught my eye and nodded once—sharp, professional. Good luck.
I nodded back.
The signal came—a plume of smoke from somewhere near the docks. Jack was making his move.
"Go," Gibbs hissed.
We rowed.
What followed was controlled chaos. Alarm bells. Shouting officers. Sailors scrambling toward the commotion while Jack and a young man I recognized as Will Turner—Bootstrap's son, the curse-breaker—commandeered the Dauntless.
Our crew hit the water near the Interceptor, climbing aboard while attention focused elsewhere. The guards left behind were few and surprised. Gibbs directed the seizure with practiced efficiency while I worked the mooring lines.
Then Jack's voice echoed across the harbor: "Thank you, Commodore! For getting us ready to make way! We'd have had a hard time of it by ourselves!"
The swing. I remembered it now—Jack and Will swinging from the Dauntless to the Interceptor on a rope, leaving the bigger ship disabled.
Two figures sailed through the air, landing on the deck with theatrical flourish. Jack took the helm immediately, grinning like a madman.
"Make sail! Get us out of here before they—"
The boom swung.
I felt it before I saw it—tingling at the base of my skull, pressure from my left, danger screaming through my nerves. But the boom wasn't aimed at me. It was aimed at Cotton, the mute sailor with the parrot, who was stepping directly into its path.
I moved without thinking.
My shoulder hit Cotton's chest, driving him sideways. Wood screamed past—the boom, freed from its line, sweeping through the space where his head had been. Close enough to feel the wind of its passage.
We hit the deck together, Cotton wheezing beneath me, his parrot squawking in alarm.
"Bloody hell!" someone shouted.
I rolled off Cotton and found the crew staring. Anamaria's eyes were wide. Gibbs had stopped mid-order.
"You... you moved before it swung loose," someone said.
Damn.
"Lucky," I managed. "Just saw the rope fraying."
No one believed me. I could see it in their faces. The rope hadn't frayed—it had been yanked loose by the chaos of our departure. There was no warning a normal person could have seen.
But Cotton was alive. That was what mattered.
He gripped my arm, unable to speak but communicating gratitude with his eyes. His parrot landed on my shoulder and squawked: "Good man! Good man!"
"Wind in our favor!" Jack's voice cut through the moment. "All hands, we're making for open water! Move, move, move!"
The crew snapped back into action. I grabbed a line and hauled, throwing myself into the work, hoping the physical effort would distract from the questions in everyone's eyes.
[ANAMARIA]
She'd seen it clearly.
The boom had been secured—not well, but secured. Then the deck shifted, a rope pulled loose, and the heavy wood started its swing. Fast. Fatal.
And the new man—Micke—had moved.
Before the rope snapped. Before the boom started its arc. He'd crossed three feet of deck and shoved Cotton aside in the space of a heartbeat, exactly where he needed to be to save a life.
Nobody was that lucky. Nobody reacted that fast without knowing what was coming.
Anamaria filed this away with everything else strange about him. The too-old eyes. The way he'd nodded respect instead of challenge. The way he moved like someone pretending to be a sailor rather than being one.
She'd be watching.
Port Royal shrank behind us.
The Interceptor cut through the waves like a blade—fast, responsive, everything the sloop hadn't been. Jack held the helm with obvious joy, his fingers caressing the wheel like a lover's face.
"Beautiful," he murmured. "Absolutely beautiful."
I found myself at the rail, watching the horizon and processing what had just happened. I'd exposed myself. Not completely—lucky was still a plausible explanation—but enough to draw attention.
Careful, I reminded myself. You can't afford to stand out.
But Cotton was alive. His parrot still sat on my shoulder, occasionally squawking contentment. The mute sailor himself had found work on the other side of the deck, but he kept glancing my way with something like devotion.
I'd made an ally. At the cost of revealing something I couldn't explain.
"That was interesting."
Jack appeared beside me, seemingly materializing from nowhere. His voice was casual, but those eyes missed nothing.
"What was, Captain?"
"The boom incident. Very... fortuitous timing on your part." He leaned against the rail, watching me sidelong. "Almost as if you knew what was going to happen before it happened."
"Just fast reflexes."
"Mmm." He didn't believe me. "I've known men with fast reflexes. Fought beside them, against them, occasionally robbed them blind. You're something different."
"I'm just a sailor looking for work."
"No." Jack's voice dropped, losing its theatrical edge. "You're not. I don't know what you are yet, but 'just a sailor' doesn't fit." A pause. "I'm watching you, Mister Balmond. Very carefully."
He sauntered off before I could respond.
The pull in my chest throbbed, pointing at his retreating back. I'm bound to him somehow. And he's starting to figure out something's wrong with me.
As the sun set over the Caribbean, I wondered how long I could keep my secrets hidden.
The parrot on my shoulder ruffled its feathers. "Storm coming," it squawked. "Storm coming."
I hoped it was talking about the weather.
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