Free No Brainer ( The Darcy Walker Series #2) by A.J. Lape Page A

around us like the French outrunning the guillotine, but it didn’t faze me one bit. In truth, I loved the onslaught of the spray. It could jar you awake from an otherwise spiritually numb existence. I’d practiced shutting myself off for years. Sometimes it worked; others I was left raw with an open wound time refused to heal.

    The lake was crowded with boaters today, too. Teenagers joyrode up front, an elderly couple puttered near the shoreline, and dozens of others skied in the main path. Zander and I tangled our hands together as we skipped across the waves, but right when I closed my eyes to YOLO the moment, I heard Colton bellow then felt him zigzag the boat.
    Literature claims there’s a foreshadowing of bad before it happens. I watched “bad” unfold in slow motion before my eyes. Colton turned his boat sharply to the left, but not before he hit the wake of those on the opposite side. The tube bounced once, then twice, and the third time we went airborne and zoomed like a hovercraft. Zander’s head bonked with mine, our arms and legs twisted like a pretzel, and we both dove face-first into a watery grave.
    And that’s all she wrote…
    I stiffened then went limp, my head banging with an instant case of the dizzies when I crashed into the water. Clawing for the surface, my eyes burned with unshed tears as I tried to make sense of what’d happened. It felt as though someone had hit me with a semi-truck, backed up, then ran over me again. Water entered and exited every orifice of my body, but all I could manage to do was think, Whoa .
    Whoa … and my God I need a clean suit.
    Alternating between bloody and woozy, I viewed someone shuck their orange life vest and dive off the side of the boat. Something warm, thick, and rancid ran into my mouth, and I briefly thought about Lincoln’s text and the hanging victim, wondering if my head had popped off my shoulders, and splashed like a fish in the lake.
    Spitting out blood, my mind started singing the Kumbaya song.
    Someone’s cryin’, Lord, Kumbaya , it sang. Hum, hum, hum, hum-hum, Kumbaya .
    Holy. Moly. Even my involuntary thoughts were stupid.
    “Talk to me,” a voice murmured. I finished the song then concluded the Lord probably didn’t want to hear me sing.
    Someone said again, “It’s me, sweetheart. Talk to me.”
    Shaking my head brusquely, my eyes blinked open as Dylan wiped my face with both his thumbs. “Lord?” I choked out.
    “No,” he chuckled, “I do have some supernatural characteristics, but I’m not that high up the chain of command.”
    “What happened?”

    “You wiped out and took a little trip to la-la land. You nearly scared me to death.”
    I spit again, running my tongue across my upper teeth, ensuring they still clung snugly to the gums. My nasal cavity had swelled, but when I tried to sneeze it open, all that came out was a dribble of snot.
    “Do I need stitches?” I snuffed.
    Dylan caressed the bridge of my nose once more, tilting it back to peer inside, finally nodding in the negative. “I don’t think so.”
    At fifteen, I had the joints of a professional football player with a mass of arthritic injuries: ulna, cheekbone, finger, wrist, and ankle—all breaks, no stitches … well, darn.
    As I tread water, I cursed, “Holy crap it hurts.”
    “Ah, Darc,” Dylan moaned sympathetically. “Come here, and let me love on you.” Dylan was the take-charge type. When I continued with the dead fish routine, he clutched me to his wet, muscled chest, and I briefly went bye-bye. I longed to hug him. Kiss him. Roll all over him. Not necessarily in that order. This must be a concussion speaking because these just weren’t my thoughts—although no woman with functioning estrogen could deny the pull.
    “Darc?”
    What sounded like a moan hung in the air … my word, I think it was mine.
    To my silent protest, he gingerly lifted me back in the tube as he and Zander climbed in afterward.
    “Sorry,” Zander laughed, retying