“I hope not,” she said. “But being this close I wouldn’t want both of us to be asleep and have Yuri and his friends show up in the dark.”
Alex built kindling up in the center of the fire ring and lit it with a match. He had been about to argue the point of a watch, but her words gave him pause. “All right. But only if you will take the gun on your watch.”
She said she would. He handed her a foil pouch and a plastic spoon. In the dark he wasn’t sure if he had pulled out meatloaf or roast pork. His was meatloaf. They ate in silence, listening to the coyotes in the distant mountains. It was a spooky sound to hear all alone so far out in the woods.
When they were finished Jax said that if it was all right with him she was really tired and would rather sleep first and take her watch the second half of the night. Alex agreed. She found a comfortable place on a flat rock just out of the ring of light from the fire and told him that it was a good place to keep his eye on things without being blinded by the fire. She told him to make sure to keep wood on the fire.
She rested her arms on his shoulders and clasped her fingers together behind his head. “Come wake me when it’s my turn.”
Before he knew it, she was kissing him. It was a lonely, desperate kind of kiss. It was wonderful only in the sense that they at least had each other. He understood her emotion, and how it came out in the embrace. They were both dispirited by the killing of innocent people earlier that day. The kiss wasn’t passion so much as it was meant to be comfort.
Alex helped her get into her sleeping bag, since she’d never seen one before. When she was settled in, he went to the rock and sat, resting his gun in his lap.
The mist came and went, but at least it didn’t rain. He checked his watch every once in a while and waited longer than half the night to let her have a little extra sleep.
When he woke her, she put her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. It felt like a fearful, lonely hug.
He put more wood on the fire for her; then, when she sat on the rock, he put the gun in her lap. On the long drive from Nebraska to Maine he had explained how it worked in case she ever needed to use it. At night he had taught her to switch magazines and clear a jam. She was familiar enough that he didn’t feel he needed to give her another lesson.
Jax put her arms around his neck again and pulled him close. “Alex, you do know how much you mean to me, don’t you?”
Alex smiled in the darkness. He pulled back to gaze at her face. Firelight sparkled in her beautiful brown eyes.
He thought about that morning back at the motel in Westfield. He smiled to reassure her. “You made it quite clear.”
“I would do anything for you. I hope you know that. You won’t ever doubt me, will you?”
He smiled. “Never.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. She put her hands to each side of his face as she gazed into his eyes. “Alex. . would you do anything for me?”
He frowned a little. “What is it you want me to do?”
“To say you love me.”
Alex had wanted to say it a thousand times. He guessed he had always been waiting for the right time. That morning had been the right time. In his whole life, nothing had made him happier than when he’d heard those same words from her lips.
“I love you, Jax Amnell.”
“I love you, Alexander Rahl, defender of man.”
She kissed him softly, then pulled back just a little.
“Promise me,” she said as she looked at him from inches away, “promise me that you will never doubt that I love you, that you will never doubt that I will always love you as long as I draw breath.”
“Jax, are you all right?”
“I will be if you promise me.”
Alex ran a hand tenderly down her hair. “I promise — as long as you promise the same.”
“I do,” she whispered before kissing him again.
She let out a reluctant sigh. “You had better get some sleep. It will be light sooner than you think.”
Alex lifted an eyebrow. “Now you want me to try to sleep? After that, you think I will be able to sleep?”
She smiled a strangely sad smile and gave him a quick kiss. “Yes. You need to sleep. I want you to be strong tomorrow.”
“For you, anything.”
Alex crawled into his sleeping bag and tried to go to sleep. His heart seemed to be beating too fast for him to ever be able to sleep. He could think of little other than those precious words from her.
Yet his mind started drifting to the dangers she faced. What with alternating between fear and rage at those dangers, it was difficult to try to sleep, but somewhere in that wild swing of emotions, as thoughts of her filled every part of him, he was so overcome with exhaustion that it carried him into a sound sleep.
When he woke up, it was just getting light. He yawned, wondering why Jax hadn’t woken him up sooner.
As he turned, he saw the gun lying not far from his head.
Alex sat up in a rush, staring at the gun, trying to make sense of it.
“Jax?” he called out from the tent as he picked up the gun.
She didn’t answer. She should have been close enough to hear him.
He untangled himself from the sleeping bag and raced out of the small tent.
The fire was dead.
Jax was gone.
57
ALEX FRANTICALLY SEARCHED AROUND THE CAMPSITE, hoping against hope that he was wrong and that Jax was actually close at hand. He screamed her name as he looked. Panting in panic, he realized that he wasn’t mistaken. She was gone.
He searched the site, looking for the footprints of intruders. He didn’t see any. At the trail, he found a partial print left by her boot. It was headed in the direction of the mountain.
With a sinking feeling of icy dread, Alex knew what she had done, and why.
He snatched up his pack and threw it on. He left the tent and the gear they had gotten out. He took time only to grab the water bottles. Her pack was leaned up against the rock where she had been sitting. He left it and took off up the trail.
Before he had gone far, a man suddenly appeared directly in front of him in the trail. He was big, perhaps in his early twenties. He looked like he belonged in a biker gang. His matted brown hair didn’t appear to have ever seen a brush. Alex froze. The man grinned wickedly.
“Radell Cain has a message for you,” the man said in a deep, gravelly voice.
“I have a message for him,” Alex said as he drew his gun.
He put a bullet in the center of the man’s chest.
Birds took to wing at the resounding bang.
With a look of stunned shock on his face, the man crumpled to the ground, groaning. The sound of the single gunshot echoed through the woods to reflect back from the mountain up ahead.
Ben had taught him to quickly fire two or three rounds into the center mass of a threat, and if warranted, more. The man was seriously wounded. There would be no help for him out in the middle of such remote woods. The only thing that would find him would be the coyotes. Alex had a limited supply of ammunition; he wasn’t going to waste any on a man who clearly wasn’t going to present further threat or last long.
He stepped over the gasping, dying man and hurried up the trail.
As the morning wore on, Alex only pressed on harder. Instead of climbing down and then up to cross small
