Missing in the Pages (Pirates #1)

Prologue

(EXCERPT)

Rain slams against the wooden deck of the ship, dousing the candlelight and plunging the ship's crew into darkness. The moon paints the frantic men in sallow light, reflecting the blanched panic on their faces as they rush to their posts, crashing into each other in the process. Thunder booms and lightning shoots from the sky, breaking through the thick darkness of the night. Offering Elizabeth just a moment to see him across the deck.

She hikes the skirts of her gown as high as she can and hurries toward him.

"Nathaniel!"

He turns and spots her. There is a look in his eyes that makes her blood run cold with a fear she has never known. Her throat runs dry and she almost stops in her approach. But she refuses to believe what his eyes are telling her.

She shoves through the panicked crowd of men until she reaches him. "Where is he?" she demands.

He drops his eyes to the ground, scratching his head sorrowfully. "I don't know." His voice is soft...mournful.

Her heart plummets to her feet and she can hardly breathe. "How can you not know? Were you not with him?"

"I was."

"Then where the bloody hell is he, Nathan?"

He doesn't answer, giving her that look again.

She shakes her head. Terror's cold tentacles wrap around her, chilling her to the marrow of her bones. "I have to find him."

He grabs her arm as she turns to go. "No, you can't—"

"I have to find him!"

Thunder claps and every single man on the ship falls silent as they stare at the edge of the vessel. For a moment, Elizabeth can't understand what's happened. But then she watches as the figure of the man she has been searching for staggers onto the ship.

It wasn't a thunderclap.

It was a gunshot.

Carter stumbles, clutching at his stomach, blood spilling out. He struggles to raise his head, but when he finally manages it, his eyes easily find hers across the expanse of the deck, a wealth of meaning in them.

Then those beautiful hazel eyes that Elizabeth adores so much roll back in his head.

"No," she breathes as he collapses. She runs for him, ignoring the way her corset digs into her skin or the way his crew remain frozen.

She drops to her knees beside him, cradling his face in her hands. His skin is pale and his muscles are slack. "Carter?" She shakes him hard, but he doesn't move. "No, no, no, no—Carter? Can you hear me?"

Silence.

His eyes, eyes that had gazed at her with such love, such passion, now stare unseeingly into the stormy sky. Blank.

Elizabeth cries, terrible, painful sobs as she looks into those eyes. Carter McLeod, the man who always manages to pull her back from the edge, the only man she has ever loved, is dead—

I snapped the book shut and practically threw it across the room where it landed on a round cafeteria table.

What! Carter was dead? Really, truly dead? But he was the male lead! How do you kill the lead?!