Page 95 of The Number of Love
Drake was out there, somewhere in France, searching through burned-out rubble for a codebook. Who knew which side of enemy lines it was on, or how safe he’d be. Whether he’d come back.
Lord...
What if he didn’t come back? What if the Sopwith was shot down, or enemy soldiers were guarding the wreck? What if he died and he never came home and Dot refused to speak to her again? What if that man who wasn’t Williams followed him or was lying in wait when he got back or planted a bomb in the plane?
What if he, too, looked at her one day like his sister had just done and decided she couldn’t possibly love him?
“Eighteen.” She whispered it to the glass and watched her breath make a patch of fog that expanded, halted, and contracted again so slowly. “Eighteen.” She lifted a finger and pressed it to the glass. To the fog. Drew a one. Then an eight.
It vanished, of course, as the fog receded. But her finger had leftits oils on the glass. It would come back if she breathed on it again. Faintly, but visible. It was there. A prayer. A declaration.
She pushed away from the window and trudged toward the door. The admiral would need his office. And she had work to do.
“Why did I let you talk me into this?” Camden pushed aside another pine bough and ducked under it, holding it out of the way for Drake too.
He checked his compass again and smiled. “Because you were tired of sitting in an office all day.”
“There’s that. But if we were going to steal an airplane, we could have gone somewhere more pleasant.” Hands on his hips, Camden surveyed the forest around them as if the mere power of his scowl could make any zeppelin debris rise from the undergrowth.
“We didn’t steal the airplane.” Drake angled back to the northeast and slid the compass back into his pocket. They’d gotten a bit off course when they had to bypass that stream. “We’ll be within the five-mile radius of the crash site in another minute or two, I should think.”
Margot would know it by the second. She could probably chart it all out in her head and keep them on course without even looking at the landscape around her. A compass, a watch, a gauge of their speed.
He glanced around. “You’re sure there are no enemy soldiers about?”
“Our reconnaissance said the area is clear.” Camden brushed a stray pine needle from his jodhpurs and struck out. “And the RNAS didn’t know I was the one flying it. If they had, they wouldn’t have let Hall requisition it. Ergo, I flew it without permission, which is, if I’m not mistaken, stealing.” Half his mouth tilted up in his usual mischievous smile. “Look at that. Another offense for which they can court-martial me.”
“You’re welcome.” Drake kept pace with ease. And paused to thank the Lord for it. His side didn’t hurt anymore, and he really wasn’t any slower now than he’d been before. Or if so, not by much. All that training on the stairs had paid off.
They both came to a halt when there was a break in the trees, a winter-brown meadow stretching out ahead of them.
“This must be it,” Camden said. “The place the pilots spotted on their descent.”
Drake nodded and looked at the treetops on the opposite side of the meadow for any sign of debris. “Assuming they told the truth.”
“They didn’t seem in a state of mind to lie well.” Camden turned in a circle, his neck craned up as well. “I’ve never seen anything like their disorientation.”
Drake squinted at something glinting across the way, in a branch halfway down one of the tall pines. He couldn’t make out what it was, but something man-made, surely, to shine like that. He pointed at it. “I didn’t realize zeppelins could fly high enough to produce altitude sickness.”
“They shouldn’t.” Camden squinted, too, at where he indicated and nodded. They started off across the meadow. “They must have gotten caught in an updraft. From what I could glean, it was their panic from the sickness that caused the crash, not the weather itself.”
They’d survived though and were now in Allied custody. Drake prayed with every step that it would work out to their benefit. That they’d find the codebook, the one they needed. That somewhere in those slips of yellow in the book about Go, there would be answers.
“Will you stop that?”
Drake angled a look at his friend. “Stop what?”
“Praying. I can tell you are, and it’s blighted annoying. Reminds me of my brother.”
Drake chuckled and looked forward again. Camden had always adored his younger brother—not that he’d ever admit it aloud, but woe to anyone who harassed the younger Camden at school. “I’ll stop praying when you stop trying to pick a fight with everyone you see.”
Camden pursed his lips. “It’s an embarrassment, having to claim a clergyman for a brother. I don’t need a pious friend too.”
“Apparently you do. Because so far as I’ve seen, you don’t have many others just now.”
“Fine by me. I’m not interested—”
“In making friends. Yes, I’ve heard your new mantra. How fortunate for us both that I didn’t need to be made.” He craned his head back again as they drew near the tree. Though of course, from this angle he couldn’t see anything flashing. “This is the one, isn’t it?”
