Chapter 8

We"d missed the boat. Our ship had sailed. All the usual cliches applied.

Noah kicked lightly at the backpack I"d let slip through my fingers to the sand. "It isn"t too late. You could still tackle him. You"re fast enough."

The lack of heat in his voice told me what he really thought. No need for me to say anything.

It wasn"t about how fast I was.

His hand found my hand. Squeezed. Standing hip to hip, we watched as the dugout glided away over turquoise water.

"So they hire a local guy to make the drops who doesn"t speak English," I finally said.

"Or Spanish," Noah said. "It"s logical, I guess. Hire some guy who doesn"t understand what the crazy tourists are saying. It"s another way to keep their distance from the crime."

"The lack of clothes and shoes wasn"t just a physical barrier to escape," I said. "They"re a social and psychological barrier too."

Noah nodded. "Yeah. You don"t have to tell me."

Dressed in a bedsheet, you were a lunatic party guy goofing around for fun. Even if you tried to convey a sense of urgency, you"d be perceived as somebody getting silly.

"Smart," I said. "Fuck. Beyond smart. It"s diabolical."

The dugout had already vanished beyond the rocks. I didn"t see it re-emerge.

How did it get out of sight so fast? I"d been hoping to see what direction it went. That would be the direction of the closest population center.

The direction of our best shot at freedom.

"Where did it go?" I asked.

"Away," Noah said.

"When you first spotted incoming, where was he coming from?"

Noah sighed. He knew what I was asking. "Sorry, Slate. He was already in the rocks when I saw him."

We dug into the backpack to check out the fresh supplies. Some items needed to be kept cool. Too bad, so sad. I was in no mood to haul ass back up that mountain just to unload the groceries into the fridge.

Opening the carton of orange juice, I passed it to Noah to give him the first swig. It wasn"t very cold, but it would never be colder than it was right now.

"I could have kicked his ass," I said. "Taken that boat. He wasn"t a physical match for me."

Noah drank deep and swallowed hard before he passed the carton back to me. "You know why you didn"t."

Did I?

I drank deep too. No use letting all that good vitamin C go to waste. We swapped the OJ back and forth until we emptied the carton.

Leaning forward, I wiped a bit of orange pulp off the side of Noah"s mouth.

"Maybe I should have snatched it," I said softly. "We need a boat."

"Not that boat," Noah said. "That guy needs that boat."

He did, but still.

Had I made a terrible mistake? Had I chosen a stranger over Noah?

At the time, I couldn"t make it sit right to grab a dugout canoe away from some shirtless, shoeless dude. It might be all he had to make his living with. Fuck, he"d probably carved it out himself with loving hands at home.

"We wouldn"t have got too far in a dugout anyway." Noah squeezed my knee.

"We need the real boat."

Of course, the real boat would be the one with the armed security and alarms and...

I must have said some of that aloud because Noah interrupted. "The real boat would have motors. And decks. And cabins. Maybe even beds."

He was right again. Paddling down the bayou was one thing. Paddling across an ocean was another.

"Also transponders," I said. Tom Hanks forgot to tell us, but it"s a good idea to show up on radar if you"d like to stop humongous automated tankers from running right over you.

Noah laughed and squeezed my knee again. "Yes. And transponders." A pause. "Actually, if they"re the bad guys, they might have removed the transponders. Why make it too easy for people to track them?"

I sighed. "Are you always right?"

"Are you always horny?" His hand was creeping up my thigh.

"The answer"s yes," I said.

"To both questions," he said.

Even without a transponder, we"d be safer in a modern ocean-going yacht. One good storm away from safe harbor, and the dugout was toast. There was no way that vessel went any great distance.

We"re so close to safety. We have to be.

The blue-gray clouds I"d noticed earlier were growing larger and more purple around the edges.

Hope that guy"s home by now.

Noah kissed me on the side of the mouth.

"Hey," I said. "What was that for?"