by Jenna Kernan
The conversation with her father had crystalized that searching for praise from him was pointless. He didn’t know how, didn’t understand her need for it or just refused to offer even the merest encouragement.
So why was she still acting to please him?
She wasn’t. Would not. From this moment she would make choices on what was in her best interest.
The wiper blades couldn’t keep up with the snow, so she adjusted them again to the next higher setting. The other vehicles from her office had left her behind as they sped along, obviously anxious to be home before dark, while she was in no such hurry.
All she knew for certain was that she had made a huge case, her career was on track and she had never been so miserable.
The misery was the clue to the puzzle. Nothing good should make her feel this sad. Why didn’t she see before that leaving Axel would not be like leaving one case for another? He was too important to leave behind. And a week was long enough, obviously, because she was certain that she loved him. But uncertain if he loved her.
At the very least, she should have told him that she had fallen in love with him. The risk of finding out he did not share her feelings now seemed less chilling than not taking the risk and never knowing.
Rylee glanced at the road ahead, the southbound lane of the Northway, searching for an exit or a turnaround that would allow her to change direction. A few miles back, the highway had been a single lane divided only by a yellow line. Now the two directions ran parallel with a median ditch between them.
She considered trying her luck on the snow-covered grass, but the possibility of ending up in the ditch between the divided highway kept her rolling along. Finally, she spotted her chance. The green sign with white letters indicated that the upcoming exit for Exit 26—toward Pottersville and Schroon Lake. Her chance to change direction lay only one mile ahead.
Rylee had been so deep in thought that she had not even noticed that the vehicle behind her was a trooper until the driver hit his lights.
“Really?” she said, glancing from her speedometer to the rearview. “I was only five miles over.”
The Northway traffic was light on the two-lane highway, and she easily glided to the shoulder of the exit ramp to Pottersville, followed by the trooper.
It wasn’t until the man approached her vehicle that she recognized that he was not in a trooper’s uniform and was approaching with his handgun out and raised. She reached for her pistol as she adjusted her view in the side mirror to see the man’s face.
Quinton Mondello. Eldest son of Hal Mondello, she realized. The new head of the Mondello family of moonshiners and the one suspected of transporting their North Korean detainee over the US-Canadian border. With no solid evidence of human trafficking, Quinton had been released. He had not been present on the attack at the wharf and had also evaded federal custody at the raid of his family’s compound, slipping through the net when they had come to make arrests after the shooting.
He took aim, plainly deciding to shoot her from the back before ever reaching her window. Headlights flashed as a second vehicle pulled in behind Mondello’s. His backup, she assumed.
Mondello’s first shot missed its mark. Rylee had left her seat and scrambled to the passenger’s side as the bullet punctured the rear window and then cleanly through her headrest before shattering the windshield. The fractured windshield was held in place by the protective film but was now a mosaic of tiny cubes of glass.
Rylee exited her vehicle with her pistol drawn and the safety switched off. She used the open door as a shield. Mondello had reached her rear bumper. He had no cover.
She aimed at center mass, making a guess on his position because the light made it impossible to see him clearly.
Her shot broke the side window, showing her that he’d moved. Where was he?
She listened and heard only a vehicle’s chime, indicating a door was open. His backup, she realized.
No time to call it in. She needed to move. Rylee reached the front of her vehicle, the engine block providing cover.
“Drop it, Quinton.” She recognized the familiar male voice.
“She ruined my family. My father is in jail because of her,” said Mondello.
“Your father is in jail for human trafficking that North Korean across the border, and for manslaughter for kicking her into the canal. Did you know what she carried could have killed your whole family?”
Quinton Mondello’s voice rose an octave, making him sound crazed. “You’re on my list, too, Axel, and you just jumped to the number one spot.”
“Drop it or I will shoot you.”
Quinton laughed. “You haven’t shot at anything or anybody since coming home from the Sandbox. Everyone knows you are scared to shoot. A regular basket case, I hear.”
Rylee moved to look around the fender. The two men faced off like gunfighters at high noon. Only Axel’s pistol was aimed at Mondello and Mondello’s was still pointed in her direction.
Mondello spotted her now and smiled. Their eyes met. He had her now in his sights, and the fact that Axel would kill him after he made his shot seemed to make no difference. Mondello lifted his pistol and two shots fired.
She registered the surprised expression as she put a bullet in his chest. The second one, the one that removed the smug expression along with part of his face, had come from Axel’s weapon.
Mondello dropped, inert and lifeless, to the pavement with a sickening whack. Rylee flinched.
Axel ran forward, gun still aimed at Mondello. He reached the still body and placed his foot over the pistol that lay just beyond his curled hand. He stowed the gun in the pocket of his jacket. He made a quick check of Mondello. The sight of his ruined face told Rylee that no one could have survived such a grievous head injury.
Only then did Axel holster his personal weapon and run toward her. She stood to meet him, with time only to slip her gun back into the nylon case.
Then he had her in a crushing embrace. His kisses, frantic, began at her forehead and moved down to her cheek and then to her neck. There he tucked his face into her nape and muttered disjointed words.
“Almost too late... Could have... Almost... My God, Rylee.”
“I’m here.” She drew back to look at him.
In all the days and all the times they had been together, she had never seen him so pale. He was trembling.
“My hand was shaking. I didn’t know if I could make that shot.”
And then she remembered that this peace officer had never drawn his pistol since coming home from serving. He had told her he didn’t think he could take another life, not even to save his own. Yet, he had done it, to save hers.
“It was my bullet,” she said. Trying to take the blame. But they both knew that the way Quintin had dropped, as if his head were no longer connected to his body, meant that it had been Axel’s headshot that had killed him.
Her shot had been deadly but not incapacitating. Mondello would have had time to take that shot at Rylee.
Axel seemed to come back into possession of himself. He still looked pale as moonlight, but his gaze was steady as he cradled her head between his two strong hands.
“No. It was mine.”
“You saved my life,” she said.
“Thank God.” He dragged her in for another hug. “Thank God,” he whispered into her hair.
“How did you know?”
She drew back, needing answers and to call this in.
Axel blinked at her.
“How did you know Quinton Mondello was following me or that he planned to kill me?”
“I didn’t.”
She wrinkled her brow, trying to make sense of this.
“Then how did you get here? Why are you here, Axel?”
He let her go and glanced down at the dead body oozing blood onto the road. The thick red fluid oo
zed along the cracks in the tired pavement.
“Not a good time. Wrong place. Really wrong.”
He was muttering again.
“Axel. Look at me.”
He did. The trembling had ceased but he looked miserable.
“Why are you here?”
Axel looked at the pavement and the body again. He grasped her hand and pulled her away from the corpse of Quinton Mondello.
“Axel, I have to call this in.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “Yes. Call it in. I’ll use my radio.”
Rylee watched him go. He remained in his vehicle for a long while after lowering the radio. Finally, Rylee headed back to him.
“Climb in,” he said. “It’s cold outside. Troopers are en route. Be here in ten.”
She climbed into the quiet cab and the two waited in silence. Discussing the events would only taint their statements.
“Thank you for coming for me.”
Axel nodded but said nothing.
The sound of sirens was almost immediate.
“How is that possible?” she said, spotting the flashing lights of a large vehicle. Her hand went to the handle of her gun.
“There is a voluntary fire company at the southern half of the exit.”
And sure enough, the EMS vehicle rolled down the northbound ramp and across a utility road she had not seen beneath the snow cover. Clearly, this was a well-traveled route by the volunteers.
Soon the quiet stretch of road became an active crime scene and Rylee felt grateful that it was not her corpse being tucked in a body bag and rolled into the back of the emergency vehicle.
* * *
AXEL OPTED TO spend the night in a hotel, rather than drive back home. He didn’t sleep well and woke with that dull throbbing headache that came from too much caffeine and too little sleep.
He made it to the troopers’ station, reviewed and signed his statement. That left one piece of unfinished business and the reason he’d come in the first place: to speak to Rylee.
A text message, a reply and a location chosen, he headed to the small pub and bistro in Schroon Lake. Inside, he was nestled in the aroma of bacon and frying foods. The interior was all knotty pine bedecked with snowshoes and skis from another century. Hand-hewn beams stretched above him, and a kayak hung from between the ceiling fans. Rustic wooden furniture sat before a blazing fireplace and several customers occupied high stools at the bar, cradling their drinks. The men’s attention flicked from their drinks to the television, before returning to watch the busy woman behind the bar.
“Welcome,” she called. “Sit wherever you like.”
He scanned the room but did not find Rylee, so he took a place at a circular table near the stone fireplace and beneath a chandelier made of antlers. Out of habit, he took a seat facing the door and the wide windows that showed the parking lot and the road beyond. The light flurry was now making progress in coating the windshields of the cars parked before the bistro.
He had a cup of coffee that had been refilled once before he saw her step from a vehicle. It wasn’t the one she’d driven last night. That one was now in evidence, part of an active investigation. His first shooting and his first kill, at least since coming home from Iraq, or as he thought of it, the Sandbox.
Axel didn’t recall leaving the table or the room or the restaurant. But there he was in the lot with the snow floating down lazily and his breath visible in the cold air.
She was talking to herself. Then she sighted him and hesitated in her purposeful stride. Her steps became awkward, as she slipped on the icy pavement before she recovered and continued her forward momentum at a slower pace. She seemed in no hurry to reach him and glanced back at her vehicle with a look he thought might be longing.
Was this meeting an obligation for her, a duty to be discharged? The thought cooled him more than the wintery air. His coat was in his hand. He must have grabbed it on the way out. Axel slipped into it and waited.
“Hello, there,” she said. “I didn’t expect an escort in.”
They faced each other, him feeling uncomfortable in his own skin and her waiting. Should he hug her or kiss her cheek?
Instead, he fell in beside her, grasping her elbow and helping her toward the sidewalk. Her boots were gone and instead she wore the sort of shoes that corporate folks wore. She was changing back to the data analyst she had been.
Already leaving him, he realized. He had to stop her. Suddenly, he forgot how to breathe.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” she said. “I was just rehearsing how to tell you how grateful I am. That’s twice in one week you’ve backed me up.”
It was a job he wouldn’t mind taking full-time.
“Getting to be a habit.”
“Thank you, Axel, for saving my life. Again.”
“You’re welcome.”
They reached the door to the restaurant and he opened it for her. Like many places in the north, this establishment had a double-door system and a small room that was for waiting in the summer and, in the winter, for keeping the warm air from escaping when guests came and went. Here, they paused between the inside and the outside to face each other.
“You all finished here?” she asked.
“For now. Lots of paperwork, you know.”
“I imagine so.”
“What about you?” he asked.
“I am all packed up.”
She glanced past him to the second door, which led inside, catching a glimpse, he knew, of the log and pine interior.
“It looks like a nice place.”
It might be the place they would come back to over the years. That special place where he asked her to be his wife. Or, he thought, it might be that place he avoided forever, never to return.
They moved inside and he led the way back to his table and the cold cup of coffee that waited there.
Rylee took her seat beside him at the pine table. She held her smile as she turned her gaze back on him. Her hand snaked out and clasped one of his, her fingers icy. Their palms slipped over one another and he closed his hand. She gave a little squeeze.
“I know you don’t draw your weapon. Haven’t, I mean.”
“Quinton was right. Not since the Sandbox,” he added.
“You fired your weapon. Took the necessary shot. Are you going to be all right with that?” she asked.
“I will be, because I had no other option and my actions kept you here on this earth.”
“That just makes me doubly grateful.”
Gratitude was not the emotion he wished to engender within her heart.
“I wasn’t going to let him hurt you, Rylee. I don’t want anything to ever hurt you.” And if she’d let him, he’d be there for her, to keep her safe and watch her back. Why couldn’t he find the words to tell her so?
Her hand slipped away and the heat of their joined flesh melted from his tingling palm.
“When are you heading back to Kinsley?” she asked.
“That depends.”
Outside the windows to their right and left, the snow swirled in the gray afternoon.
“I’ve been wondering something, Axel.” She cocked her head, her eyebrows lifting. Did she know how beautiful she was? Just a look was like a dart piercing his heart.
“You said before that you didn’t know about Quinton. That he was coming for me.”
The jig was up, he realized. Of course, she’d come back around to that question. “That’s true.”
“Then why were you there?”
“I love you. I followed you yesterday to tell you that. To get on my knees and ask you to marry me.”
“You followed...” Her brow wrinkled, and the corners of her mouth dipped.
Panic seized his heart with sharp incisors.
“Rylee, don’t go.”
“What?”
“I love you. I don’t want you to go.”
Now it was her turn to stammer and stare. “Y-you...what? Axel, you’ve only known me a week.”
“Nine days.”
“It’s not very long.”
“Engaged, then. Going steady. Dating. Just not going away.”
“My job is in Glens Falls. I’ll be transferred soon.”
“Yes. I know that. And I don’t care. Let me come with you.”
Her mouth dropped open and she stared.
“That is a very different offer than asking me to stay.”
“It is.”
“Axel, are you sure?”
“I’ll follow you anywhere, Rylee. If you let me.”
She shook her head now, as if not able to understand his words.
“What about your job? You’re a county sheriff.”
He looked north, perhaps seeing the county and the people there.
“Special election. They’ll fill the spot.” Now he was looking at her again. “Rylee, I went back there after the military, stayed there because of him.”
“Father Wayne?”
“I needed to stop him from killing his followers, my mother, all of them. I knew he’d do it. It was part of his personality. The power of life and death, the ultimate test of his control.”
Axel pressed his palms flat to the table.
“I don’t need to watch him anymore. End of watch. Mission complete.” He stared across the table at her. “Do you understand? I’m free. For the first time in my life I can go anywhere I like, do anything I like and be with whomever I choose.” He reached out and she took his hand. “I choose you, Rylee.”
“But the county. Your home.”
“I hate it there. Hate everything about it, especially the memories. Let someone else take the job. Someone who is there for reasons other than duty.”
“Is that really how you feel?”
“Yes.”
“What about Kurt Rogers?”
