How much of him is touching me.
“Luke?” I whisper, because I’m right next to his ear, and the dark seems made for soft voices.
“Yeah?”
I prop myself up on my elbow so I can kind of see his face in the dark. “I’m going to kiss you, but I don’t want to imply gratitude of any kind. This will be an ungrateful kiss. The most thankless of kisses. Purely recreational. Okay?”
“That’s quite a disclaimer,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “Do I need to sign something?”
“Shut up.” I lean down and kiss him. Just a touch of my mouth to his, until I know—
Luke kisses me back, and his moan sends a warm ache through me.
He rises onto one elbow and slides his other hand down my back. We’re both breathing hard, and suddenly the one-man hammock seems built for two after all.
“Hey, Maddie?” Luke says against my cheek.
“If you ask me how many experience points I think that kiss was worth, I’m going to knock out all your hit points with one blow,” I warn him.
Luke laughs, and his hand trails down my hair and over my back. “I was just going to ask if you want to do that again.”
I really, really do.
7 HOURS EARLIER
GENESIS
Around nine p.m.—three hours before the deadline—I look up from the chessboard to see Silvana, Sebastián, and one of the American guys who spends most of his time in the green tent head down the footpath toward the beach, from which we’d been hearing odd metallic pounding sounds for the past hour. They each carried a flashlight and a closed cardboard box. The five captors who haven’t gone down to the beach will be leaderless for at least the next half hour, by my guess, based on previous trips.
This is my best chance to sneak into the green tent.
“Hey,” I lean over the board and whisper to Indiana. “I need you to get the guards’ attention while I slip into the tent. And I’ll need a heads-up, if anyone else tries to go in.”
He glances around the clearing, then gives me a heated smile. “I’d rather sneak in there with you. But I’ve got you covered.”
I move to the fire pit closest to the military tent and pretend to be gathering empty containers. Indiana headstoward one of the open-sided tents across the campsite, and casually lifts Óscar’s guitar from the tent pole where he hangs it to keep it out of the rain. Indiana sits on a stump with the guitar, and when he plays the first chord, I’m so surprised by his obvious skill that I almost forget why he’s playing in the first place.
“¡Alto!” Óscar shouts.
Indiana plays a few chords. Everyone turns to look, including the guards. Then he starts singing.
His voice is clear, mellow, captivating.
Almost reluctantly, I take four slow, quiet steps to my left and slide through the entrance into the military tent. I have no idea how long they’ll let him play, so I assume I’ll have no more than a minute before I’m missed.
It takes the first five seconds for my eyes to adjust to the lower light level.
I scan the two closest folding tables, where scraps of wire, rolls of electrical tape, and the guts of some electronic device I can’t identify are spread out. Definitely bomb-making materials.
A third table stands at the rear of the tent, and I search the ground and every surface I pass as I make my way back, adrenaline firing in my veins.
Then the table comes into focus. Two rows of cell phones stand upright, like toy soldiers lined up for battle.
I lean forward for a closer look and see that each one is taped to a small, square package, connected to the phone with thin wires.
My heart racing, I pick one up, and am surprised by how much it weighs. The package on the back is soft, like clay, and the words stamped on its paper wrapper read, “C-4 High Explosive.”
I’ve seen enough action movies to know what C-4 is and to understand that they’re using the cell phones as triggers. One call to the phone will detonate the C-4 it’s strapped to. But ...
