And because he didn’t want her to know how shaken he was by her nearness, by her touch, he decided to play it cool. Play it smart. Give her exactly what she’d come to expect from him. “Babe”—he turned and flashed her an exaggerated wink—“I am the view.”
Even in the low glow of the spotlights on the seawall and the occasional flash of the lighthouse, he could see her roll her eyes and fight a grin. “And there’s the Bran I’ve come to know and love. Hi there. I’ve been missin’ you tonight.”
Hearing the word love on her lips in reference to him had him swallowing hard and searching frantically for some pithy reply. He couldn’t come up with one, so he went with the decidedly unpithy reply of a silent scowl.
Maddy considered him for a second before shaking her head and releasing his belt buckle. He heaved a sigh of relief when her knuckles were no longer pressing against his back. “He always like this?” she whispered to Mason.
“Like what?” Mason asked.
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“Pretty much.”
“I think they make meds for that.”
“Mmmph.”
“You two realize I’m standing right here, right?” Bran demanded in an incredulous whisper.
“Right,” Mason said. “So how do you want to handle the fatal funnel?”
“That sounds ominous.” Maddy curled her lip. “What’s a fatal funnel?”
“It’s when you enter through a narrow space, like a hallway or an alley or a damned bridge through an archway, and you’re silhouetted against the entry point to the defenders inside,” Bran explained. “That’s the funnel part, anyway. I suspect the fatal part is self-explanatory.”
He heard her gulp. Yeah. You got it, babe.
“And considering no one took any shots at us as we were making our way here,” he whispered to Mason, “that probably means the dickheads are holed up inside with a defensible position, biding their time and just waiting for us to go on the offensive. Makes sense. Considering they’re in a goddamned fort, which was built for exactly that strategy.”
“Wish there was another way in,” Mason muttered. “Maybe we could swim around back and try to scale the seawall and then the curtain wall. Get in that way.”
“Maybe,” Bran mused, turning to Maddy and looking her up and down. He frowned when he did some quick muscle-mass to body-weight calculations.
“What?” she demanded. “What’s with the face?”
“I was born with it,” he said drolly. Yeah. He was definitely Jekyll and Hyde. “And I was once again asking myself why I decided to let you come along, because no way are those scrawny arms of yours”—he dipped his chin toward the set of lithely muscled biceps under discussion—“strong enough to get you up that curtain wall. Not unless you get bitten by an irradiated spider between here and there and suddenly turn into Spider-Woman.”
“How awesome would that be?” Maddy feigned wonder. “And just so you know,” she continued, “you agreed to let me come along because I know another way into the fort.” She batted her lashes so fervently he was surprised he didn’t feel a breeze.
He and Mason exchanged a look. Mason was the one to say, “Do tell, Miss Powers.”
“The reason they call this place the Dry”—she made quote marks with her fingers—“Tortugas is because there’s no natural fresh water available anywhere on the islands. So when they were buildin’ this fort, they had to construct large cisterns to catch rainwater and store it.”
“Same thing we do on Wayfarer Island,” Bran told her. “So what?”
“So this fort was built with over sixteen million bricks. Just think about that for a second. Sixteen million bricks on top of shiftin’ sands.”
“Is this history lesson headed somewhere?”
She gave him a look that promised pain to some of his softer body parts. He wisely snapped his mouth shut.
“The main reason this fort was never finished,” she continued, “is because the mammoth weight of the structure kept crushin’ the cisterns, allowin’ seawater to seep in and contaminate the freshwater.”
The wind chose that moment to kick up. And the lighthouse made its revolution, briefly flashing over the beach and illuminating Maddy’s hair until it sparkled like corn silk.
Bran regretted not asking Ranger Rick if he had a ball cap she could borrow. He also regretted not considering that before they made their way along the beach to this bush.
“Over the years,” Maddy continued, “the crack in the foundation of the fort and the cistern grew. It’s big enough to swim through. It’s against park rules, of course. But there have been a few folks who’ve done it and posted pictures on the Internet.”
“And you know where this fissure in the foundation that leads to the cistern is?” he asked.
“Southwest wall. Between the two corner gun rooms.”
Bran tried to convince himself there was a better way. One that didn’t involve dragging Maddy through an underwater tunnel.