The Captain of All Pleasures

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 Nicole Lassiter’s first tingle of alarm came the moment she stepped inside the squalid tap house and its fetid warmth rushed over her face.

 Silence blanketed the den as the patrons inside took her measure, sensing she was out of place in the prostitute-laden tavern. She hadn’t dressed to attract notice. She wore boys’ pants and a shirt under an unadorned cloak. A hat covered most of the bright hair she’d prodded under it. Still they stared.

 Her breath shuddered out. She was here on a mission to find Captain Jason Lassiter, Nicole reminded herself. And now that she’d arrived alone, she would merely have to do her best not to get killed. With an up cast chin and an offhand gaze, she plowed through the throngs of roughnecks peopling the tavern. The tinny music from a badly tuned fiddle at last resumed.

 Obviously, the information she’d received pertaining to Lassiter’s whereabouts was mistaken; her father would never come to a place like this, a place where sailors found “company” before they shipped out. When a deckhand had told Nicole where her father was, she’d assumed the Mermaid had gone under new, less nefarious management since she’d been away.

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