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.

What did they even want me for? I still didn"t understand that. Noah was the valuable one.

And not even Noah. Somebody else, somebody I didn"t even know. That is, if Noah was telling the truth about somebody else being the brains behind some of his more dazzling computer intrusions...

Washe telling the truth?

My eyes kept closing against the sparkle of sunlight on sea. I may have micro-napped again. Not because I needed more sleep but simply to rest my eyes.

"Slate," Noah whispered. "You awake?"

"Are you a real super-hacker or do you just play one on TV?" I didn"t bother to open my eyes. I just floated.

"I"m pretty good." Noah spoke softly, as if afraid of being overheard. Who cared if he was? I was so thirsty I didn"t much care anymore who found us as long as they had water. "But it doesn"t take a genius to break things. Anybody with a basic skill set could have done what I just did."

"Anybody with a basic skill set could have reprogrammed that helicopter to drop us off and then take off? I could have done it?" Sleep was healing indeed if I had the energy for sarcasm.

"Well, all right, maybe I was being too modest," Noah said. "But an intermediate-level hacker wouldn"t have had much trouble doing what I just did."

"You"re still being too modest."

"No, I"m not." He sounded troubled. "I am good, I"m not denying I"m good. But I"m nowhere near as good as the guy they think I am. They should know that by now. They must have had days of questioning me under the influence of the drug."

"Weeks." When I blinked to steal a look, his eyes were closed too. "You"ve been gone weeks."

"Weeks. It doesn"t seem real. When you lose so much time, you forget how much you"re lost."

These drugs are seriously bad. We can never let ourselves be darted again.

"There"s something wrong about all this," he said. "Street criminals do irrational things, but guys on this level?"

Of course, I"d thought of that. Hadn"t wanted to say it. But since he already had...

"If they"ve questioned you, and they still decided to abduct me to put more pressure on you, then they still believe you"re the guy." I swallowed hard in hopes of moistening my dry mouth. "You know that, don"t you? You are the target. The man everybody wants. Is there something you need to tell me?"