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“And I pick the box that hasmynumber on it. And that way we have a fifty-fifty chance again because either we both find our number, or we don’t.”
“I see,” I lied. Then, “I don’t see. Do I have any chance seeing?” I considered the matter a little further. “Do I care about seeing?”
“Probably not,” he admitted.
“Tell me anyway.”
“You want me to bore you?”
“You never bore me.”
“Now that sounds like a challenge, petal.” He danced his fingers idly against the wheel. “The thing you have to remember is that this is a situation where it either works for all of you or it works for none of you.”
I rested my elbow on the lip of the window and tucked my chin into my palm. “No wonder you worked it out so quickly.”
“What’s that?”
“Because you’re always looking for the best outcome for everyone.”
A sweep of sunset pink drowned the freckles along his cheekbones. “You think too well of me.”
“I do not.”
“I mean, I’m not going to argue with you.”
“Good,” I told him, loftily. “You’d l-lose.”
Adam gave me a look that turned my stomach to popping candy. “Is that so, you little scallywag.”
Scallywag. Origin excitingly uncertain. Possibly a portmanteau:scallag(from Scalloway) andwag(oh, could have been anything, wagger, the fourteenth-century term for an agitator, waghalter meaning gallows-bird, or wag itself—a fifteenth-century joker—possibly the old English wagian, or the old Swedish wagga). Sadly, never used by real historical pirates. Just the pirates of Penzance.
“What,” asked Adam, “are you thinking now?”
“Nothing.” I tucked my hands beneath my thighs to stop myself wriggling. “I’m just w-wondering if anything happens t-to scallywags.”
“Why would you be wondering that?”
“I don’t know.” I did know. “Perhaps because sometimes things happen to rascals. And scamps. And hussies. And b-b-brats.”
“That’s a good point,” agreed Adam.
“So what about scallywags?”
“Hmm.” He pondered the issue at length. “I think…”
“Mm?”
“I think scallywags…”
“Yes?”
“Get their questions answered. You see, Edwin”—Adam’s gaze was back on the road, his mouth all mischief—“our prisoners will always have the lowest probability of succeeding if they each attempt to find their number independently.”
I made a noise. And whatever it was a noise of transformed into a very different noise as Adam slipped a hand between my legs.
“Again?” He sounded deliciously incredulous. “Already?”
Another noise: a shameless approximation of shame.
