Page 50 of Touchdown

“It's brilliant.” I hated to give them credit, but we hadn't been taken by the Z list. “You could carry an entire army—or I guess it would be a navy—of hundreds around the world, ready to do your evil bidding. And a lot of the time you'd be in international waters, where nobody's likely to do anything to stop you. Who's got jurisdiction over the high seas?”

“Come here.”

I was already here, but I leaned forward a little. Noah wriggled his wet shirt off and draped it over my head as a sunshade. I did the same for him. Sun protection. It wasn't perfect, what with the sun reflecting so brightly off the water, but it was better than nothing.

A thin pencil of water ran down my face. I couldn't lick it off. Why did the sea have to be so salty?

He leaned forward too. Kissed me. His lips were chapped, but mine were too. Who cared?

“This isn't how it ends,” I said softly. “You know that, right? However we got brought together again, it wasn't so we could become a famous mystery. I'm not going to be that quarterback who got famous for disappearing.”

“Think of the loss to the true-crime podcast crowd.” Noah kissed me again.

“Fuck the true-crime podcast crowd.” I kissed him back. There was salt on his face. I licked it off.

He giggled. “Tickles.”

“I'll show you tickles.” My fingers curled dangerously. Splashing around underwater, I quickly located his sensitive underarms. Two sweet tufts of fur. The soft, sensitive cup of flesh beneath.

He laughed louder. A sound more beautiful to me than music.

We'd saved each other so far. All we had to do was keep on doing it.

Chapter 35

Kisses turned to laughter turned to kisses turned to napping. I'd taken off the bottom half of my scrubs. Used them to tie our life preservers together. No way I wanted us to drift apart in our sleep.

Despite the brightness behind my eyelids, I slept deeply this time. No images. No memories. Just the embrace of nothingness.

The next time I woke, the sun was beginning to drop in the west. My mouth was desperately dry.

Water.

Isn't that life all over? There's always something else to be desperately desiring.

I was a little surprised the enemy hadn't found us by now. At least, we'd had time to get some sleep. The reprogrammed helicopter must have led them on a merry chase before it finally drank its last drop of fuel and fell out of the sky.

My fingers and toes were nothing but wrinkles and crinkles. The ocean was like warm bath water.

Good for us—nobody needed a case of hypothermia right now—but I associated warm oceans with hurricanes. Nobody needed a hurricane either.

Don't borrow trouble.

The lack of weather was the immediate problem. The sky was still cloudless. All rained out.

Noah's face was mostly in shadow thanks to the tent he'd made of my shirt over his head, but his expression looked peaceful. I let him sleep on.

The weakness of our plan became obvious once we couldn't take it back. We didn't know how long we would have to drift in a sunny tropical sea before we got discovered. And we didn't know who'd discover us.

There was almost no chance that we'd be found by a friendly. We'd seen from the chopper that we were in a truly isolated region of the world. Maybe all we'd get was recaptured and brought back to that ship, where we'd face overwhelming odds against escape. With no land in sight even at altitude, the entire ocean was our prison.

We had one shot at freedom. Get discovered by somebody we could reasonably expect to conquer. Otherwise, we were toast, burnt toast.

Lord, if you can hear me, send a boat. Just do that, and I'll do the rest.

Being rested, I was confident I had what it took to steal a boat. A one-man boat anyway. If it was just one guy, I could tackle him with both hands and one leg tied behind my back.

They were up against training and discipline. They'd been toying with me for too long. They didn't give me the respect that was my due.

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