Page 16 of Touchdown

A sandpiper made a sad, high-pitched sound and took off. A few others took off right behind him. Then they all circled around and flew back land in to the same spot.

The sky was getting darker by the minute. Without a phone, a clock, or a watch, I kept losing track of time, but twilight seemed to be coming way too fast.

A storm's coming.

Or was it? The air still smelled of sea and salt, not of ozone.

“One thing about the house,” I said. “It would be dry inside.”

“No, you were right the first time,” Noah said. “Anyway, now that I'm looking at that sky, I'm not so sure we'd be able to make it to the top before dark. I don't think it would be a great idea to be stumbling around in the forest with zero visibility.”

“The foliage might keep off the worst of the rain.”

“The foliage—also known as trees—might attract lightning.”

“Yeah. That's a thought.”

We walked a little way into the water. More sandpipers flew, then settled back down.

They think it's going to rain. They don't want to get far from the harbor in a storm.

People pay good money to walk along private beaches with the ocean running between their toes and a beautiful companion by their side. Why couldn't Noah and I be free to just be two men together discovering each other?

You didn't even have that back home. Your choice. Your closet. Not his.

“We could try to negotiate,” Noah said.

With what? We didn't even know who these people were or what they wanted. Noah knew that. He wasn't making a suggestion. He was gently leading me to a conclusion we'd both reached long ago but hadn't been ready to talk about.

It's impossible to negotiate with people who keep drugging you up and fucking with your memories.

Chapter 11

Irubbed my own chin stubble. “That isn't how we get back to our lives. Right now, we've got nothing to negotiate with. They hold all the cards.”

“Yeah.” Noah lightly pinched my arm a little above the elbow. It was a sweet but possessive gesture, and he probably didn't even know he was making it.

We couldn't lose each other. Not again.

An idea kept tickling at the back of my brain. If I could talk it out to where I could actually see it...

“We don't wait in the house, and we don't go to them,” I said slowly. “We force them to come to us.”

“Make them chase, make them work for it.” Noah's smile was small and grim. “I'm tired of being jabbed with knock-out drugs. I'd love to see them on my end of the needle for a change.”

“So it's settled.” I spoke with more assurance than I felt. “We lure where we want them. Somewhere they'll be a little more off-balance. That gives us the best shot at turning the tide in our favor.”

“Rah, rah, go team.”

“You make a cute cheerleader. I'd love to see you with pom-poms.”

He laughed.

My baby idea had plenty of holes. Easy to say we'd move them where we wanted them. But where did we want them? And how did we move them there?

Strategizing a football game was child's play by comparison.

I gazed back into the trees. The forest looked darker than it had an hour before. There must be something we could do with that. The Vietnamese did all right against an enemy with superior firepower as long as they stuck to forests and tunnels.

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