A Most Unusual Interest

A Most Unusual Interest Chapter Twenty Four (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… *glomp * Readers/Reviewers: Sorry for the delay! RL kicked my ass for a bit there…


It had been a relatively easy day so far, Jack reflected. He had not been back to his cabin since he had left Myrtle the evening before, the duties of ship captain encroaching on what would have been his personal time, but he did not find himself minding very much at all. The Pearl was his life, his love…mostly. It was what defined him, being a pirate, he thought as he kept one eye on the new crew members and the other on his jug of rum. Zoruba was fading into the horizon, the smells and sounds now a memory and the outline of the ramshackle port blurring and shadowing. The open Caribbean was before them and Jack sighed happily. They had returned from this unexpected port cwithwithout loss of life or limb and even with some extra men. All, he decided, was good.
“Whoa!”
Jack snapped out of his reverie in time to see one of the new crewmen fall from the rigging and land with an audible thud on the deck. Dead silence fell for a long moment, every man on deck looking between Jack and the fallen man. “Well don’t just stand there!” the captain snapped. “Make sure he’s not dead!” He corked his rum andode ode across the boards to join one of the younger crewmen in kneeling by the fallen man’s side. “Wake up, lad,” he ordered, smacking him lightly on the face. “Lad…” He smacked him again, a bit harder this time, and his eyes opened. “There we are…” The man—boy, Jack corrected himself—the boy stared glassily up at him. “There we are, says I…” With a rush of breath, the boy coughed, a gout of dark material splattering all over the front of Jack’s last clean shirt. “Hell’s bells!” he exploded, rocking back, away from the suddenly still youth. “That’s not right!” His mild rum induced haze cleared immediately as he crept forward again. “What’re you all starin’ at?” he snapped, looking up suddenly. “Get to work!” His hand shot out and he grabbed Gibb’s arm as the older man would move away. “Not you. You help me move him.” Jack had noticed something disturbing about the boy and he wanted him off the deck fast. He grabbed the lad’s feet and nodded for Gibbs to get his arms. “Below deck, now.” It was a small struggle to get the limp and heavy body up and moving, but they manhandled him below deck and into the holding area they had used for Goliath a few days previous. Jack dropped the legs unceremoniously, Gibbs following more carefully and lowering the lad’s upper body to the musty planks.
“What is it, Cap’n?” Gibbs huffed, trying not to let on the short journey had winded him a little. “He ain’t wakin’ up…”
Jack uatheathed the knife he kept in his belt and flipped it neatly. “We have a bit of a problem, Gibbs.” Quickly, he jabbed the still youth’s arm quickly and deeply. No blood rose from the skin but the strike remained an open, pink wound. “He’s dead.”
“Aye, I can see that, Cap’n. The fall prob’ly killed him…”
Jack gave Gibbs a pointed look as he replaced his knife in it’s sheath. “This,” he pulled his soiled shirt away from his body and made a face of extreme displeasure, running his tongue over his teeth and wrinkling his nose, “could not have come from a dead man…” He began pacing in the cramped space, his head bent and brow furrowed. “He must have been alive when we reached him!” he said quietly, turning so suddenly Gibbs had to jump back to avoid a face full of beaded dreds.
“Cap’n, how can a dead man ‘ave coughed up…that?” Gibbs tried not to look at the gout of blackish red mess on Jack’s chest but could not help it. “It looks like…”
“Dried blood, belike.” Jack was not quite curious enough to sniff at it or even, God forbid, taste it. Instead, he pulled his shirt over his head and folded it into a bundle. “Remind you of anyone?” he asked gruffly, nodding towards the slumping lad.
Gibbs blinked and a light dawned. “Goliath.”
“Exactly… Get someone to keep an eye on him. I’m going to shake the truth loose from our guest.” Shirtless and glowering, Jack strode from the holding area and headed to his cabin.

Anna Maria eyed Myrtle over the wheel of the ship. The girl was busy swabbing, she said, and from what Anna Maria could tell, that meant sloshing dirty sea water all over her nice, clean boards. “Myrtle!” she snapped when the younger woman was close enough to startle. “What the blue blazes are ye doin’?”
“Cleaning the deck,” Myrtle defended herself. “What’re YOU doing?”
Anna Maria abandoned her post near the wheel and stormed over to Myrtle. “You don’t speak to your captain that way! I should lash you for that!”
Myrtle arched a brow. It was not that she did not believe Anna Maria but rather that she was puzzled by her sudden shift in attitude and demeanor. “As captain, that is your right…”
Anna Maria narrowed her eyes, close enough to smell the faint tinge of sex still clinging to Myrtle’s skin. “You want to be a pirate, do as I tell ye. Jack weren’t keepin’ you for your skill on deck, lass. You remember the deal—your work for my help.” She slid her gaze to a strip of thin, braided cloth around Myrtle’s neck, disappearing into her shirt. Anna Maria hooked one finger around it and pulled it out, her eyes widening a bit at the item suspended from the braid. “Charms, girl?”
“Take protection where you find it,” she replied, a brittle smile on her lips. She tucked her necklace back under Jack’s shirt and tipped her chin in deference. “What are my duties for the day then?”
“Get below and peel the last of the potatoes. May as well we eat ‘em now ‘fore they rot,” Anna Maria snapped, turning her back on the girl and returning to her post. She felt a twinge of guilt at being part of the plan, of quite possibly being part of hurting Jack, but the charm around Myrtle’s neck had comforted her somewhat. An elaborate knot, a pattern she had seen on a few sailors from the west, fashioned of dark hair, ostensibly Jack’s, had hung about her tt. t. “She’s not hurtful,” Anna Maria sighed. “Just stupid.” With one final glance at the girl, she began shouting orders to her crew. The Pearl was heading east, so they would be going west, back to Zoruba.