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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 t
he 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 gullies, he bounded across. Instead of climbing down short drops, he jumped down. He knew that he had to be careful or he could break an ankle and then he would be helpless, but he couldn’t make himself slow down. He knew that he was in a race to stop Jax before it was too late.
He kept thinking of her asking him to promise that he would never doubt that as long as she drew breath she would always love him. He felt a lump rising in his throat as he ran. The limbs and brush he flew past turned to a watery blur.
He was furious at himself for not catching on to the things she’d said. He’d thought that it was because she was upset at hearing about all the deaths that morning. He should have known it was more. Having been sleepy was no excuse. Excuses couldn’t undo it if he lost her.
A few hours of grueling effort brought him to the base of the plateau that rose up out of the forest. Catching his breath, he looked up the rugged series of cliffs toward the top. Squinting into the iron gray light, he couldn’t see anything beyond the edge other than the wispy limbs of trees.
Jax had said that the ascending rift in the rock was in her world a road up the side of the cliff to the top. While not a road, the trail led to the craggy edge of rock that looked like a natural formation, yet went up along the face of the cliff at a steep angle. It looked like it might go all the way to the top. If it didn’t, if the lip of rock ended, he was going to find himself awfully high up with nowhere to go.
Alex couldn’t see that he had a choice and so he didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. He simply started climbing.
