Opening one of the maps, he studied it for a moment and seemed to be doing a few calculations in his head. “We should be around here.” He pointed to an area on the map. “There should be a small archipelago about eight miles to our southwest.”
Eight miles was a long way to go in a storm-frenzied ocean in an inflatable. As the waves rose their speed would have to lower, especially as there were just two of them in the boat. On flat water, this boat would probably go twenty to twenty-five miles an hour, but in a storm they would have to be much more careful and be lucky to go a quarter of that.
“Will we make it?”
He grinned. “No problem. Even if I have to swim us there.”
He was joking. At least she thought he was joking.
“I’d rather not have to test out this life jacket or ruin what I have left of my wardrobe,” Annie said dryly. “I’ve already lost a phone today.”
He chuckled. “Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
She was, too. And when the first drop of rain landed on her nose a few minutes later, she suspected she was going to need it.
•••
Dean was glad she wasn’t looking at him as if he was a serial killer anymore, but the trust in her eyes didn’t sit much better.
The leak bothered him more than he wanted to let on, and the storm was going to complicate things. If the clouds and wind were any indication, the weather was coming in a lot faster and heavier than the forecasts predicted. Hardly unusual in Scotland but not great timing for them.
He also didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had no ideawhat they’d find when they reached the archipelago. For all he knew they were a couple of sea stacks with no place to land unless you were a bird.
But he wasn’t going to worry about what he couldn’t control. One step at a time.
A bad seam. He shook his head. It wasn’t common, but it happened. It was shit luck to have the first time it happened to him be in the middle of the North Sea in a storm. They were, however, fortunate that she’d noticed it before it had fully broken apart and the rain had started. Getting the tape to stick when it was wet would have taken a miracle.
These boats were built to stay afloat for a while if one of the tubes lost air, but he wouldn’t want to put it to a test in a storm. Water was already sloshing in from the waves, and it was bound to get worse.
He’d been forced to ditch most of his gear in Russia. After the LC had dragged him back from where the explosion had thrown him and rendered him unconscious, they’d tossed all their gear—anything that might enable someone to track or ID them—into the fire. But Dean had replaced many of the items in his E&E (escape and evade) survival kit—SEALs didn’t leave home without ’em—including the duct tape that had made Annie so nervous and a compass.
He preferred a full-sized military compass to the button-sized one that was standard issue in his kit. Good thing, as not only was it much more accurate, but it was also waterproof. A fixed marine compass with the lubber’s line aligned would have been better, but he would make adjustments. Besides, at this point beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Dean was so focused on navigating the boat he didn’t realize it had begun to rain until Annie shivered.
He swore, realizing her jacket—although down—wasn’t waterproof. Of course, one of the things he hadn’t replaced in his kit was the emergency Mylar blanket. “Here,” he said, starting to unzip his waterproof shell while holding the wheel with the other. “Take this.”
She shook her head and stopped him with her hand on his arm. “I’m not taking your jacket. You need it more than I do.Besides,” she added with a smile, “what kind of card-carrying member of NOW would I be if I let you do that?”
“A dry one,” he quipped. She laughed, and he looked at her sideways. “Let me guess. You have all kinds of cards in your wallet.”
She was the type to put her money where her mouth was. Or maybe he should say where her heart was.
She grinned—a little too happily to his mind—and started rattling off every bleeding-heart, save-the-whales type of organization he could think of and some he’d never heard of.
But he held up his hand when she got to the political ones. “Stop. I can’t take it anymore. You had me at that last one.” He gave a dramatic shudder.
“They do a lot of important things—”
“Annie?”
She paused to look up at him. The brim of his hat had kept most of the rain off her face, but one or two drops had caught in her lashes. Her eyes were gorgeous—especially when they were sparkling with amusement. “I’ll keep the jacket if you promise to stop.”
She smiled as if that had been her intention all along. “Deal.” It was her turn to look at him sideways. “Let me guess....”
He grinned. She didn’t even need to say it. “Cold, dead hands, baby.” He sobered. “‘Baby’ in the nonmisogynistic sense of the word.”
“Obviously,” she deadpanned back at him. “Although I’m surprised that they teach that word in caveman school.”
