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He didn’t fancy being on the receiving end of the Norwegian’s fist. This could spell the end of their friendship.
    And what about church tonight? He desperately wanted to go, needed to go, but would Anjelica still be willing for him to tag along? Would Erick come, too?
    He needed reinforcements, just in case.
    Kyle leaned over and shook Luke.
    Luke mumbled into his pillow and pulled the covers higher over his head.
    “Luke.” Kyle’s tone was firm.
    Luke threw back the covers. “What?” Sleep combined with annoyance did not make for a pretty face. This would be challenging.
    “I need you to do something for me today.”
    Luke’s face softened as he tried to wake. He widened his eyes several times before they fell closed again. He rubbed them as he propped himself up on one elbow. “What do you need, Bro?”
    “I need you to come to church with me this evening.”
    Luke shot upright. Creases crumpled his brow like the sheets that surrounded him. There wasn’t much in life that Luke Maskil didn’t do. Church was one of the things that fell into that small category. “You’re joking, right?”
    “C’mon, Luke. You could do with some getting closer to God. This is a triple one formation we’re attempting this week. Plenty can go wrong with so many fliers in the air. We’re dancing with death here.”
    Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Every time we get out of bed in the morning, Bro, we’re dancing with death.” He sat up. His feet fell to the floor with a dull thud. Kyle was certain the action was exaggerated to emphasize his point. “You’re just afraid to be alone with Anjelica tonight, that’s all.”
    And Erick.
    “That’s beside the point. I need to get to church tonight, and so do you.” Kyle could make excuses, but it didn’t change the fact that, despite everything he’d discovered, he still wanted to be with her tonight. Even if it meant having Luke tag along.
    Luke, however, didn’t bite.
    He’d have to try another tactic.
    “If you come with, I’ll fly across the Oslofjord after we’ve broken the formation record.” What possessed him to say that?
    “Promise?” That got Luke’s attention.
    Kyle nodded without giving another thought to the consequences.
    “Hmm. How about you do it across the longest straight path over water?” Luke was nibbling at the bait.
    Section 9.3—Flight Path—of the Phoenix-Fly manual popped into his mind: Avoid flying over or near large bodies of water. This rule had been ingrained in him since his first jump as an eighteen-year-old nearly fourteen years ago. So…rules were made to be broken, weren’t they? And tonight was important. “I’ll do it.”
    Luke scrambled out of bed and grabbed Kyle’s laptop, plunking both himself and the machine down beside Kyle. He opened a mapping program and typed in “ Oslo.”
    A familiar picture in varying shades of blues and greens emerged on the screen. Kyle had seen the same view in a myriad of countries, except in four dimensions as he experienced the depth, the width, and the height of the earth from above…all in the time it took to fly back down to earth.
    The shallower waters of the Oslofjord emerged as Luke zoomed in. Aquamarine melded to indigo, leaving the deeper waters shaded in a midnight blue.
    “Here.” Luke tapped the screen. “You can start on the west side of the fjord at Vollen and fly northeast across the inner fjord to Oslo.” He clicked on the ruler icon and drew a straight line across the blue area of the screen, narrowly skimming the edges of the islands that dotted the fjord. “Just over nine miles.”
    Kyle chewed on his lower lip as he contemplated the flight. Might as well be to the moon and back. That was a long way to fly over water. If anything went wrong…
    “You trying to off me?”
    Luke grinned. “What else? You’re my biggest competition—in the air and on the ground.”
    This had to be the toughest, dumbest challenge they’d put on the table in all their years of