Chapter 8: Counter-action
The loss of Enzo and Jamal, Carl discovered, was hard on all of the pirates. He was sufficiently sensitive now to how they expressed themselves, and it was nothing overt. There was merely a darkening of the mood in the ship. The pirates seemed to find it an ameliorating fact that they had died together—that it was appropriate.
Amid this general feeling, however, Carl cherished the new sense of connection that he and Armand now shared. He had never experienced anything like it before. It was a profound, almost painfully intense sense of love. The final bar of hesitation and judgment between them was gone. And Carl, by his actions, had proven himself to Armand as well as the other pirates.
He and Armand slept late and went to bed early, an indulgence that apparen
