February 2023, somewhere in the Atlantic

JJ sat on the deck beside the easy chair belonging to the owner of this yacht, who would, by now, would be wandering around in some sort of stupor wondering when he had left the thing. The air was chilly, and JJ looked acoss to Aidan, who has wrapped himself up in the blanket.

"Does he care he has a sibling," Aidan asked JJ. He had put the yacht into cruise, compass-tracking north-east. It would take several hours to get to Wilmington and another hour to get to the first islands of the Outer Banks.

Sibling thought JJ. Not brother, not sister.

"He does," JJ conceded, looking up to Aidan from where he was sitting, on the deck, near the chair. "He is waiting for his "brother" to come back to the OBX, so he can talk to his "brother"." JJ put the word in air quotes to get the message across. Aidan sat up, concerned.

"Relax, I won't say anything - I haven't so far!" Aidan pulled the blanket around her shoulders. "I'm guessing it was all bluff about Kie, then? When we had our, you know - " he air boxed, "fight. Unless...?" He mimed a particularly vigorous looking French kiss, then turned round and grinned to Aidan.

Aidan said nothing, but let a small smile spread across her face. Boys. All the same. Full of testosterone, too much pent up energy. Dougie, the same. Where was he, Aidan wondered, not knowing she was entirely wrong, driving one of his dad's taxis, by now?

"You don't have to tell me anything," JJ added, looking over to Aidan.

"I know I don't."

"I'm, like, you know, just the guy that stopped you from being gunned down in the street."

"You have experience in these matters."

JJ turned round and got to his feet. He made to move quickly, as if drawing a gun from an imaginary holster at his hip. Aidan scrambled to her feet, fear as real as the dawning sun filling her and backed away, blanket held close to her chest. JJ stopped, and looked at her.

"Sorry if I scared you."

"I wasn't - "Aidan broke off, unable to bring herself to lie; the sight of Rafe Cameron on a street in Charleston was enough to make her jittery. "Just...we were talking about Kie. Your friend. Girlfriend?"

"Yeah, nah..." This time it was JJ's turn to look uncomfortable. "I wanted there to be...there was chemistry..." He looked up to Aidan. "You? A guy?" Aidan shook his head.

"Not like that. My best friend, Dougie. He was with me, through everything. My parents - adopted parents - liked him, we went to school together. We...got into a lot of trouble." Aidan took some steps towards the chair again. Gentleman that he was, JJ took a step back and let her sit back down again.

"We would hang out in one of his dad's taxis, he shouldn't gave driven, but he did, we would look at the bridges that cross to Wales, we would hang by the Channel, take boats out." Aidan looked out to the sea, watching the waves crest a little. The wind direction was giving them a little added boost.

Aidan turned and sat back down. "I was never unhappy when Dougie and I were together. Mum and Dad always took me back in. But I knew, I knew there was something not right - they weren't like other mums and dads. And then I found my birth certificate." Aidan patted her shirt. It was always on her, that which had driven him out of Bristol and into the wide, tumultuous Atlantic. "What?"

"I just like listening to how you talk." Aidan shot JJ a look.

"Sorry," he demonstrated, back to his latest rendition of an accent. It had softened, living at Carla's house with Renfield.

""I hung out with my Scottish friend, and we went hither and thither!"" JJ put on a faux pirate accent.

"I do not sound like that!" Aidan glared at JJ Maybank, then gave him a brief smile. "But we are enemies again when we get back off this boat," she told him, melancholy settling on his shoulders again.

"Enemies. As soon as we get back to Kildare," JJ agreed. "Here. Want some?"

"Kumquats?"

""Kumquats?"" JJ imitated.

"What would you call them?" SHe caught the packet of fruit. "Is there another name?"

"Small oranges?"

"You have some first," she told him. "Prisoners only take food from their captors once it has been tried first."

"Prisoneres"

"Prisoners who have any sense," Aidan tild him.

"That's just for emperors," he told her. "Food tasters?"

"I don't care, I'm hungry eniugh. But - " Aidan broke off. "I ate lat night. I can manage only one or two. " She had seen that look in a face before, that of hunger, and too much pride to admit it.

"You are a Limbrey," JJ asked her, eating the fruit as if he had never seen food before. "Aren't you, like. loaded?"

"I can't inherit the house or the money," Aidan told him. "Carla did not recognise me in law. But before the house and the money go to their next owner, I can visit."

"I visited. With Kie and Pope," JJ told Aidan. "He had an offer of school from her. And then we found out about Denmark Tanny and the cross. Limbrey was using him to get the shroud."

"This?" Aidan pulled it from her bag. She watched his face change to one of outraged incredulity. "You had it wrapped arpumd your...gear."

"It's just a cloth." JJ tod him, quietly. "John B gave it to me." He thougth for a second. "Big John must have had it."

"Big John was there when Carla died," Aidan clarified. "But it's not what they thought it was," she added. "Big John took it from the artefacts of a priest who had been on the Royal Merchant. He made John B tell her it was the shroud from the cross."

"And couldn't have been?" JJ's face fell as he realised the trick that must have been played.

"Why not? It cured my mother. Her condition improved until she was in remission. It was liver failure that killed her in the end, she was a big drinker."

"Except," Aidan added, looking at the cloth, "That this cloth comes from far deeper in history."

"At you going to say Blackbeard?" JJ asked her, the air rushing through his hair suddenly. They had changed course and Aidan had glimpsed the South Carolinan coastline through the clearing sea mist. She turned, and gave JJ as roguish a smile as he had given her.

"Not to my enemy," Aidan told him, then shivered, realising how cold she had become from the spray from the sea. JJ picked up the blanket from the chair that she had left and approached her. Aidan did not object when he put it around her shoulders.

Their hands caught for a moment. It would be a moment that Aidan would remember in the months to come, when the world seemed frightenein and all hope seemed to have gone. Just a lad and a lass and a boat that could sail to anywhere.

The engjne spluttered and the keel tracked a little.

"Wilmingon" showed her, pointing over her shoulder, JJ's other hand resting on the small of her back. "Gotta keep out of sight of the coastguard. This is bound to have been reported by now."

"Stolen?" Aidan was about to say, as JJ retreated from her and to the drive stick, the spell breaking. But, of course it would have been. She watched as the young man in front of her handled the boat as easily as walking, and was reluctantly impressed her as he took contol of the millions of dollars-worth of joyridden yacht and manoeuvred it in the inner reef.

"I'll put it with the other boats," he told Aidan, confidently, as they got to the marina at Figure Eight, looking over his shoulder and grinning to her. "I'll tell them I thought it was a Teturnhite, if anyone asks. They don't usually." JJ shrugged, and shook his head. "Kooks."

"Kooks," agreed Aidan, in that moment underatanding. Understanding that some people were so rich that the would not be bothered to find out where their expensive yacht was, as if it were a quarter coin they had mislaid.

Aidan stepped from the yacht, and felt a hand under her elbow. Her heart melted for a moment at this young man's manners, before turning round and offering him his, in a gesture of camaraderie.

"Thanks," he said, jumping past her. Aidan was about to push him, humorously, but remembered herself in time. Her hand tightened around her back pack. She, as Aidan, was on the OBX, was in trouble here. She must get to Tannyhill and then back to Charleston, somehow, find out about the skull, and anything to do with that governor's dinner in 1930.

And evade the police. At least she had given the young man his possessions back - Aidan had felt bad, in the end, for taking those after he had shared his breakfast with her.

And now this. Aidan looked around at the marina. He had out himself at risk to save her life.

He was about to stride away, the young man who had, she remembered on balance, had pulled a gun on her himself, twice, when she put her hand to his shoulder. He stopped, and turned back to her.

"Than you, JJ. Much appreciated." JJ nodded his head, briefly, and smiled.

"Thank you for the company."

"Quits?" AIdan asked.

"Quits," agreed JJ, and gave her that grin again.

"Enemies for life?

"Enemies for life," JJ confirmed. Then, he watched the girl AIdan Drummond cross the marina decking and race off down the coast untl she was out of sight.

88888888

"The OBX". The ferryman who had brought the ship from the mainland called the answer through the loudspeaker when Dougie Mourne went to ask the captain where thet were.

The OBX. The Outer Banks. Where the call had come in from. He had found where she was, his daring friend who must have been so distressed that she had made a call to his home, of all places.

He had something to say to her. In the meantime?

The weather seemed good, and the scenery was beautiful. Not Western Isles beautiful, but fine enough for photographs. And then he could find the Brooks' boat hire. And?

Dougie touched in his pocket. Tommy Ross, in the office of the police national computer, had not only traced Adeline's call, but had given him another contact. He read the name again.

Dougie looked out at the surf. For February, the weather was good, the surf was fine. If he were to find a board, he might like to sample the waves off the coast of this...Outer Banks place. He strode towards the beach, and thought back to the scrap of paper in his pocket.

"John B," he murmured aloud, before looking back to the waves again.