The Law of Nines

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 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.

There were places along the way that at first looked impassable. In each case, though, he quickly found a way to pass. In other spots he had to climb over gaps in the narrow outcropping, but along much of the sloping, weathered rock ledge it widened to several feet, and in spots at least six or seven feet, where it presented no trouble at all, except that it sapped his strength to climb so fast at such a steep angle. His thigh muscles burned from the effort. He panted for air as he pressed on, refusing to slow for anything.

In a little more than an hour, he was getting near the top. As he came around a protruding rock face, two burly men were waiting. Alex took a hurried step back, at the same time drawing his gun. Without hesitation he fired at the closest man charging toward him. The bullet must have gone through his heart, because the man faltered and dropped.