"Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum!" Ben cried.

"Rum," Meredith repeated. "I could use a good stiff drink right now. Are you buying?"

"I takes my man Friday with me!"

"Ah, Robinson Crusoe now, is it? Imagine my luck. I'm sharing a closet with a parrot more widely read than most of my graduate students."

"Aye, matey."

Maybe she shouldn't have come back to Ocracoke after all, but it had seemed the perfect setting to work on her newest scholarly endeavor. She'd taken a year's sabbatical from her teaching position at the College of William and Mary to finish her biography on Blackbeard-the book that would assure her spot on the top of the list for the Sullivan Fellowship. And once she'd been awarded the fellowship, she'd be first in line for a tenured position. After that, she planned to be the youngest department chairperson on campus.

She had arrived on the island off the coast of North Carolina right after Labor Day, and for reasonable rent, she'd set up housekeeping in a roomy cottage on the water overlooking Pamlico Sound and Teach's Hole, the channel where the infamous Blackbeard had once anchored his sloop, Adventure.

The first three weeks had been idyllic, the simple rhythms of island life settling back into her blood. Once an Ocracoker, always an Ocracoker, they'd told her. She'd been accepted into the tight-knit community as if she'd never left. After all, her father had been an islander and these people had all but raised her after her mother died. She was family and she'd come home.

When the first storm warnings had sounded, she'd considered leaving the island on the next ferry, but instead, she'd stupidly decided to face her fears and ride out the storm. After all, Horace had been declared only a tropical storm, not yet a dreaded hurricane like Delia, and Ocracoke had weathered much worse.

By the time Horace had been upgraded to a category-one hurricane, it had been too late to leave. The ferries were safely moored on the mainland and she was left to face eighty-mile-per-hour winds, driving rain and a surging sea-alone.