Chapter 3
Exhausted, Jax sat down heavily against the corrugated metalof his roof. The soft crooning of music hung in the air as he grabbed hiscanteen next to his radio. Relaxing the muscles in his back, he leaned againstthe cold inclined metal while his feet propped him securely to the lip of theroof's eaves. With the sun setting well below the trees, it was too dark tocontinue to work, thankfully, he just installed the last inverter. Technically,only one inverter to his solar panels went out, but what was the point ofclimbing all the way up onto the roof to fix just one when he could justreplace them all. Smirking, Jax couldn't help but think of his dad's voice atthat moment,“never do a half-ass job son, all it does is bite you in theass later.”His old man, Mississippi born and raised farmer, probably had ahundred or so of those sayings.
Murmuring from the radio mentioning tomorrow night'srain-filled forecast brought him out of his reverie. Reaching over, he clickedthe radio dial to "off” as he stared at the clear dark sky. Not forthe first time, Jax seriously allowed the idea of plans for a roof-deckaddition to steal his train-of-thought. Man, that would be a lot of work,though.
A cool breeze flew through the trees and Jax’s eyes snappedopen. Sitting up quickly, he got to his feet. The loud thumps of his bootsagainst his metal roof disturbed the night as he climbed further up to theroof’s peak near the chimney stack. There was an undertone of smoke on thebreeze. His fires were out in his house, so it wasn’t coming from him.
Narrowing his gaze, he scanned the forest from his vantagepoint. Someone else was out in his woods.
~*~
Poking at the fire with a long stick, Alessia sucked herbottom lip between her teeth as she sat on the edge of her tent, doing her bestto avoid staring out to the darkness. The sun had dropped a few hours ago andfor the first time in her life, she was introduced to the true meaning ofdarkness. A deep, inky black nothingness that surrounded her from all sides. Ifshe were to stand up and yell into the void of darkness, would the sound of hervoice even carry on, or would it just be swallowed up by the depths ofdarkness?
Wide-eyed, she sat there stiffly for a second beforereleasing a large breath with a shaky laugh. Okay, now she was just beingmelodramatic.
But still, it wasreallydark out. Even if she wasback home in her room with the door shut and the lights out, it couldn'tcompete with this level of darkness. Somewhere there would be one inkling oflight fighting its way through the darkness. Not here, though. Poking at a fewsticks at the side of her rock-lined fire-pit, she watched the flames slowlycreep across their lengths.
A sharp crack in the woods startled her.
Sitting straighter, she clutched at the hilt of her knife ather waist as she stared unseeingly into the dark. Her heart was pounding soloud she could barely hear anything over the sound. It was probably just asmall animal. If it was a bear, she probably would’ve heard more noise thanthat—she hoped. Relaxing after a long few minutes, she breathed a sigh andleaned back into her open tent and clicked on her headlamp. Pulling her bookfrom her bag, she opened it up to her bookmarked the page and kept a cautiousear out for any more sounds from the dark.
~*~
Standing a few yards away, Jax watched the girl from a tightcluster of trees as she lay down next to the fire reading her book. From hisroof, he had spotted the faint glow in the distance. It took him no time at allto slide down his ladder and grab his rifle by the door and set off into theforest. Jax was expecting to find some dumb campers or hunters who made theunfortunate decision to make camp near his land—a decision he was going topersonally set straight. What he did not expect to find was the vagrant girl,from the diner sitting in the middle of the forest, stoking a fire.
What the fuck was she thinking? Didn't she know there werewild fucking animals out here? Wolves, bears, and not to mention cougars roamprevalently in these parts. And that tiny hunting knife she clutched onto whenhe purposely broke the branch next to his feet wouldn't do shit but piss offthose predators even more so. Patiently, Jax stood there amongst the trees,concealed in their shadows as her fire slowly dimmed. Eventually, her headlampclicked off and she pulled herself fully into the tent and zipped herselfinside.
This wasn’t going to work, she couldn’t stay here in thesewoods. Not just for the obvious reasons, but for his own selfish reasons. Hedid not need the authorities traipsing through his land and beating on his doorfor questions when the idiotic girl inevitably turned up dead. He also didn’tlike the thought of some random young woman wandering aimlessly around hisproperty. He had come out here for seclusion from the world and its fucked-upproblems. How was he supposed to go about his day when he knew she was outhere?
Turning his back to the lone green tent, he headed back tohis cabin. The decision was made, she was leaving by morning.
Chapter 4
The next morning was thankfully warmer than the precedingmorning, which made it the perfect time to wash her hair. Alessia could not andwould not let her personal hygiene slip while she was out here. Horror storiesof other people’s experiences and similaroff-gridlifestyles keptthemselves on repeat in the back of her mind. Every day, she would follow theroutine she planned for herself. First, she would do her morning stretches,take her daily vitamins, drink plenty of water, and most importantly, bathe.
Sitting in her designated spot by the lake, Alessia checkedher phone again as she idly stoked the small fire she made. A small blackcast-iron pot sat on top of the charred sticks, slowly heating the waterinside. The signal bars on her phone were empty, with a white X on top of them.When she first walked into the forest, there was a little bit of a signal nearthe road. She had two blog posts that really needed to go up. The few followersshe did have expected weekly posts, and Alessia was not in the position to risklosing them. The tiny flow of donations she received from her followers wasabsolutely vital. It was how she was able to keep her phone on and buy herselfthe occasional meal. As long as she kept posting the pathetic and sometimestragic details of her life, the followers of the appropriately titled blog “fuckmy life girl” would hopefully keep donating. She was just going to have towalk up to the road to get them posted.
After the slow process of washing and drying her hair,Alessia dropped off her supplies at camp before heading through the dense treesback toward the highway. Fifteen minutes later, she finally stopped a couple ofyards from the road. Leaning against a nearby tree, she uploaded her posts.
Pocketing her phone, Alessia smiled as she thought of herfollowers’ reaction to the news that she finally left and even more so whenthey found out where she was now. Slowly, picking her way back to camp, sheavoided the tangled clump of bramble as she thought about one follower inparticular and her most likely worried reaction. The woman always gave her longlectures and advice on what she should and shouldn’t be doing. It wasn’t hardto imagine the level ofmotherly-likeworry that she was going to be hitwith the next time Alessia logged on. Although, in some way, Alessia liked theidea of someone worrying about her, it gave her a little bit of comfort.Brushing a low hanging branch away from her face, Alessia nearly let out a snortin disgust as she tried to imagine Diana's reaction to her own daughter'sdisappearance.
She was about to break through a cluster of bushes when shecaught sight of the figure ahead of her. Looking ahead to the small clearingwhere her tent was located, Alessia saw a man crouched down in front of it,holding the flap to her tent open as he peered inside. Holding herself in amotionless half crouch—half stooping position, Alessia tried to calm herbreathing as she stared at the stranger. He was big, she could tell that muchjust by his relevant size to her tent. Next to him, the extra-large one-persontent seemed like something for a child. Slowly, the man stood up to his fullheight with his back still towards her, he was wearing thick worker grade jeansand a thick brown canvas coat. The man held a long rifle slung across his backthat set Alessia’s nerves on edge. Was he some hunter who came across her camp?
From her hidden position in the brush, she couldn’t clearlymake out his face when he turned and looked toward the river. But she could seehis thick brown untrimmed beard and pulled back hair he kept in a bun low athis neck. Why was there some grizzly mountain-man looking through her stuff?Couldn’t he just see it belonged to someone camping there, why couldn’t he justmove on? Unless…
A trickle of cold dread ran across her heart and pooled inher gut. Unless he wanted to harm her. Maybe he was some sort of hunter whodidn't like other hunters poaching on his self-proclaimed territory. Alessiahad read about things like that online. Dread escalated to icy fear as anotherthought played out in her mind. Could he be someone working for Gary?
The thought should have been immediately dispelled themoment it came up. Her rational side should have told her that the idea waspreposterous. Gary didn't have the money or strong enough connections to sendanyone after her. There have been several occasions where she had overheardGary talking to whom she could only assume were his superiors in his gang.Gary's reticent tone told her just exactly how high his position was in theorganization—not very high at all. But right now, through her fear-laden mind,none of that mattered, all she could focus on was the worst.
The sound of buzzing vibration from her pocket trembled thesilent air around her hiding place.
A cold empty feeling stole the air from her lungs as theman’s head whipped around in the direction of her hiding place in the brush.Black eyes cut through the bramble with laser precision and found her wide eyesstaring back. She didn’t allow him to react first.
With every ounce of her strength, she launched from her spotand took off running. Blood pounded in her ears as she kept her eyes on herimmediate path, sidestepping various hanging branches and hurdling fallendebris. Alessia could swear she saw movement to her left, which only made herheart beat faster and threaten to explode in her chest. After what felt likeseveral minutes of running, Alessia slowed her pace looking in every direction.No flashes of brown from his coat, no snap of twigs or rustle of dead leaves,only the gloomy silence of the forest. Trying to suppress her laboredbreathing, she backed herself against a thick tree. Taking deep breaths, shewiped her sweaty hands down the front of her jeans. Remembering her knife onher belt, she quickly unsheathed it and held it tightly in her fist. Minutesticked by and she heard no movement. Cautiously, Alessia took a step out frombehind the tree and looked down the direction she came. Nothing, there was noone there.
She needed to get her stuff and get out of here! She didn’tknow where, but she could worry about that once she was far away from here aspossible.
Quietly, she walked the same direction in which she ran backtowards the camp. Occasionally, she would stop and listen for any sounds. Ascattering noise to her right made her whirl around with her knife still drawn.The sudden overwhelming presence enveloping her froze time and space aroundher. Everything happened so fast, her scream didn't erupt from her throat untilit was all over. His hand came around her and grabbed her fist, holding theknife, just as his other thick arm barred her underneath her chin. Alessiacould do nothing with the knife as she watched the man's large hand closed overher fist and take control of her arm. With one powerful thrust, he directed herweapon to jab deeply in a nearby tree, impaling the knife almost to the hiltinto the bark. Using his barring arm, he grabbed her opposite shoulder and spunher roughly away from him, letting gravity and momentum do the rest of the workfor him. Screaming, she landed on her butt in the leaves.
