“I’ve put the gun away,” Malachi began.
“No! Throw it across the floor!” Bootsie commanded.
Malachi took his weapon from the holster, bent down and let it slide across the floor to a corner of the room.
“My sword now, sir! Blue Anderson, it will be a fair fight.”
Bootsie, still holding his knife against Abby’s throat, thrust her away from the chest. “Get your weapon, Scurvy Pete, get your weapon.”
His eyes never leaving Bootsie’s, Malachi reached into the chest, piled high with swords and knives. He chose a sword.
He stepped back, lifting the sword. Abby saw him judge her position and that of Bianca, who’d sidled back against the cabin door and sat there now, eyes wide with shock, not making a sound.
“Shall we, Blue?”
Bootsie pushed Abby from him, sending her to her knees. He turned. Malachi was ready, and still Bootsie went after him with a vengeance that was startling.
Malachi fought hard. She didn’t know where he might have learned about this kind of sword fighting—and perhaps he knew nothing. At first, he struggled just to defend himself from the fury of Bootsie’s attack. And then, finally, he began to move forward, managing to attack rather than merely defend. The two men dodged and maneuvered about the room.
Abby rolled away from the action, coming at last to where Malachi’s gun had ended up. He carried a Colt .45.
She got her hands around it. It was a larger gun than hers with a higher caliber bullet, but she wasn’t afraid to fire it.
She tried to take aim; the men kept moving about.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap...
Bootsie could move fast with his peg leg; he could all but dance.
Malachi lunged forward, slamming Bootsie’s weapon, and the sword went flying across the room. Malachi staggered back, wearied by the fight.
“Stand down, Blue, stand down!” he cried.
Bootsie seemed to falter. Abby realized he was reaching down to his thigh—to grab a knife from its sheath.
She had a clear shot.
She fired as he drew the knife, about to throw it into Malachi’s heart.
The sound was deafening; the recoil sent Abby flying back, her arm in agony.
Bootsie froze. Then he crashed to the floor, his peg leg moving at an awkward angle as his twisted body fell.
Malachi rushed to Abby, drawing her into his arms, loosening the ties that bound her wrists. As he did, they heard sirens.
A floodlight suddenly lit up the interior of the boathouse.
“You are surrounded. Put down your weapons. Come out with your hands up!” someone ordered over a megaphone.
Bianca gave a strangled sob and Malachi started toward her.
Thankfully he didn’t have to leave Abby.
Police were pouring in, Jackson Crow and David Caswell at the head of the group.
*
Since Bootsie was dead, it was difficult to put together the complete history of what had happened—where his madness had begun and exactly how he’d managed all his feats of kidnapping, disappearances and murder.
David Caswell told them they might never know; it was sad to say, but there were people who might remain missing forever—and there were bodies that might never be found.
A search of his house led them to a stairway, which went to the cellar. There they discovered a pocket door that opened into the labyrinth of tunnels—and his hidden store of frock coats, breeches, hats and pirate weapons.
As the Krewe and David Caswell sat around the table at Abby’s house on Chippewa, they learned that the police had been examining other unsolved cases they’d had over the years. They couldn’t be sure. But Bootsie might have started his murder spree as much as a decade before. Back then, he might have lived out his fantasies at a slower rate. His wife had been alive then; she’d probably kept him from totally indulging in his longing to be a pirate captain who kidnapped women and tried to get them to fall in love with him. But they’d always wonder about a number of other situations. They’d uncovered a drowning victim in their records from ten years earlier. Foul play had been suspected, but the case had grown cold. Two years later, the body of a young woman, decomposed beyond recognition, had been found south of them, off North Hutchison Island in Florida. There were missing-person cases that had never been solved in the following years. So, yes, it was possible that Bootsie had begun killing slowly—and had then escalated into his mad world of piracy, seizing young women and killing them at a more frantic rate.