Page 10 of Lost With My Enemy

We walk the canal path in the afternoon light. She points out the distances between locks. I photograph a heron standing in the shallows with its reflection doubled in the still water. When the shutter clicks, she glances over, studies the screen for a moment, then looks at the actual heron, then back at the screen.

"The photo's better than the real thing," she says quietly.

"That's the nicest thing you've said to me."

"Don't get used to it."

No promises there. But something tells me I'm going to try.

CHAPTER THREE

ELISE

Day three. Somewhere north of Parry Sound, Ontario has decided to stop pretending it's civilized.

The highway narrows to two lanes, trees pressing in from both sides so thick the GPS signal stutters every few minutes. Rock cuts rise in sheer pink granite walls, dynamited flat when they built this road decades ago. Cell service dropped out forty minutes back, which means my email hasn't refreshed, my weather app is frozen on yesterday's forecast, and my carefully mapped route is operating on cached data and optimism.

Jaxon hasn't noticed. Or if he has, he doesn't care. He's been humming something under his breath since Huntsville, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the open window frame. The wind pushes through the cab, warm and green-smelling, ruffling the edges of my itinerary where it sits on the dashboard.

We survived Ottawa without killing each other. The rental was clean, the couch was adequate, and Jaxon was asleep within five minutes of lying down, which I know because I could hear him breathing through the bedroom door. Slow, even breaths. The breathing of someone whose body has learned to sleep anywhere because nowhere has been permanent long enough to matter.

The Sudbury rental fell through. The host cancelled at 10 PM last night via a single-sentence message: Sorry, pipe burst. Full refund issued. My backup option was booked. My backup to the backup wanted a three-night minimum. By 10:47, Jaxon found a listing on his phone for a cabin near Lake Ramsey, one bedroom with a pull-out couch, available tonight only.

"It's got a fire pit," he said, as if that was a selling point and not an invitation for mosquitoes.

We booked it. We had no choice. Control, it turns out, is a limited resource on Highway 400 North.

"Detour request," Jaxon says now, slowing the truck.

"What is it?"

"Sign back there said lookout point, two kilometres."

"We're twenty minutes behind schedule because you took the wrong exit in Barrie."

"I took a different exit in Barrie. It added seven minutes and we saw a bald eagle."

"We saw a large bird."

"It was definitely a bald eagle."

"It was definitely large."

He grins, and there it is again. That full-face thing where his eyes crinkle before anything else moves. My stomach does something inconvenient in response, which I attribute to the gas station coffee I drank an hour ago.

"Thirty minutes," he says. "Veto power. That was the deal."

The lookout is two kilometres down a gravel road. The truck bounces over ruts while my laptop bag slides across the back seat, and every jolt makes me grip the door handle tighter. When we pull into a small clearing, Jaxon cuts the engine and I understand immediately why he stopped.

Northern Ontario opens up below us in a sweep of forest and lake that goes on until it meets the sky. The trees are every shade of green that exists, broken by silver veins of water cutting through rock. A breeze moves across the canopy, and the whole landscape ripples.

Jaxon is already out of the truck, camera in hand, crouching at the edge of the lookout to frame something. His ball cap is backwards now, brim against his neck, and he's completely still. Focused in a way I haven't seen from him yet. Every other version of Jaxon Mills I've observed over the last three days is loose, easy, unhurried. This one is precise. Intentional. A person who knows exactly what he's doing.

"Come look at this," he says without turning around.

The edge of the lookout has a low wooden railing that doesn't inspire confidence. My shoes aren't meant for gravel, and the wind is stronger up here, pulling at my blouse. But his voice has something in it I can't refuse, so I walk over and look at the camera screen he's holding up.

It's the view, but not the obvious one. He's shot a single birch tree growing sideways out of a rock face, roots gripping granite, trunk bent toward the light. Behind it, the whole expanse of wilderness blurs into bokeh.