The Thirteenth Snare

An excerpt:

“Finish up,” said Shannon to Hedy. “Captain wants to see you.”

The little room Shannon took her to was practically wallpapered with maps. Paper maps, parchment maps and even a leather map lined the walls. Some were modern, some were out of date, and a few were labeled in Latin with incomplete continents and the requisite warnings about sea monsters.

“Hedy Nyborg, sir,” Shannon announced in the doorway.

The captain looked up from staring at something on his desk. “Good,” he replied. “Leave her here and shut the door.” He was smaller than Shannon, not much bigger than Hedy herself.

Hedy felt Shannon’s hand shoving her in the back, and the next moment she was stumbling forward into the cramped office.

The captain smiled and swiveled in his chair. “I’ve been working on your ransom note, but I seem to be having trouble getting the wording right. I want it to have a certain…panache. Care to give it a try?”

At that moment Hedy wanted to commit murder. It took all her self-control to keep herself from flying at the smug little man behind the desk. She had enough rage, she maybe could have taken him. But she’d noticed as soon as she’d arrived that there was a bone-handled pistol tucked in his wide fabric sash. Maybe it was a non-working antique, but maybe it wasn’t.