“Hey, I was in the bar in Clear River when you came in,” he said defensively. “I know the hills back here pretty good. You don’t think I—”

Jim Post put a big arm between Jack and Dan and said, “Let’s do this. C’mon. We’ll sort it out later.”

And with that the team separated—Jack, Preacher and Rick up the road, single file, Preacher in front, moving a little too fast, Mike, Jim and Dan rounding the foot of the hill to go at Lassiter’s back. The climb was easy for Preacher’s group, not so swift for Jim and Mike, being led up an overgrown hillside with no path.

Once Preacher reached the top of the hill, he spotted the old truck. He stopped in his tracks and crouched, sneaking up on it, Jack and Rick close behind him. And not far from it, he saw her sitting against a tree, her chin dipped down to her chest. She could be dead or asleep.

The second Preacher saw Paige up against that tree, her name came out of him in a stunned whisper. He started blindly toward her. Jack whispered to him not to go and grabbed for his shoulder, but missed. The second Preacher’s footfalls began hammering toward her, she lifted her chin, her eyes wide with fear, and the next thing he knew there were a pair of arms around his ankles and he was on his way down. Midway there was a gunshot, a sharp, knifelike, stinging pain across his left biceps, and he hit the ground like a boulder, rolling with Jack.

There wasn’t a second shot, but there was a disturbance in the trees. Rick stayed behind the truck, his weapon at the ready with nowhere to aim. The sounds heard in the trees suggested Lassiter could be on the run, hopefully only to be caught on his way down by Mike and Jim.

Preacher kicked out of Jack’s tackle and belly-crawled toward Paige with incredible speed. He got behind the tree and reached long arms around, grabbing her arm harder than he ever had, and pulled her, still completely bound, to safety behind the tree with him. He put his fingers first on the tape that covered her mouth. “It’s gonna hurt, baby,” he whispered, then gave a sharp, quick yank.

She pinched her eyes closed tightly and held bravely silent. Then she said, “John, he’s been waiting. He means to shoot you and me.”

Preacher pulled his Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and made fast work of the bindings around her wrists and ankles. “Crazy son of a bitch,” he whispered, while slicing through the tape. He peered around the tree; someone was definitely on the run down that hill. Maybe even already caught and trying to fight his way out.

She touched his shoulder, the very top of his arm. Blood ran down his arm. “You’re hurt,” she whispered.

He put his finger to his lips and they froze, listening. The noise in the trees had weakened to a rustle; the night was otherwise silent.

A tense minute passed, then there was a shout. “Hey! Your bad guy’s down! We’re bringing him out!”

Paige whispered, “That’s not Wes.”

Preacher peered around the tree again. He saw Jack lying on his belly, his rifle up and trained in the direction of the trees. The man who’d led Jim and Mike up the hill had lost his shady brady, but he hauled Wes by the belt at his back, neatly folded in half, unconscious, through the trees. Wes dropped in a flop; the man wiped off his forehead with a hand. Then he shook his head. “Complicated,” he said. Preacher helped Paige to her feet and, keeping her behind him, cautiously approached.

“What the hell did you do?” Jack asked, getting up on his knees, then his feet.

“Ah, shit. I should’ve known you couldn’t hold off till we could get up on his back. Didn’t I tell you to wait? Till we could get up that hill?” He crouched, pulled handcuffs off the back of his belt and, yanking Wes’s hands behind his back, cuffed him. Jim was next out of the trees, holding two rifles, his and their guide’s. Right behind him was Mike, both of them panting.

Jack looked down at him. “He dead?”

“Nah.” He still gripped his flashlight. “But he’s gonna have a headache. Pretty good thing he didn’t see me—I can’t be in this. For obvious reasons.”

“You’re going to be counting on a lot of people covering you. Someone might just accidentally tell the truth.”

“Well, shit happens. Won’t be the first time I’ve had to relocate. But I’m telling you—life’s good right here, right now. I’d rather be left out of this.”

Wes Lassiter lay facedown on the ground, unconscious. Mike Valenzuela stepped toward Dan, still trying to catch his breath.

“You whack him?”

“Well, your man there provided diversion, and I couldn’t see good enough to shoot him….”

“You carry handcuffs?” Mike asked.

Dan grinned. “Yeah. You know. Kinky sex—you should try it.”

“Think I will,” Mike said.

Dan looked at Jack. “What if we made a trade here? Flashlights?” He pulled a rag out of his pocket and wiped his prints off his flashlight.

“Not this one,” Jack said. “I used this one to deliver my son.” He smiled. “I couldn’t find a midwife.”

Dan laughed. “I figured I owed you one. At least one. But seriously—I shouldn’t be in this.”

“Take mine,” Jim Post said, and this made Jack just slightly more attentive. Jim tossed Dan the flashlight, received the replacement by a toss.

Dan touched his forehead. “Lost my damn hat,” he said. “You’ll be okay now. He’s going away forever. No more trouble on that. I hear kidnapping’s huge.” He turned and moved down the hill, through the trees.

Silence reigned for a few moments while the sounds of his descent down the hill faded. The man on the ground began to squirm and moan. Preacher growled and pulled back a foot, but caught himself and didn’t kick him with a boot behind which there was two hundred fifty pounds of pure rage.

Jim Post tilted his head toward the departure of the man who traded flashlights. “You know him?”

“No,” Jack said. “He came into the bar for a drink with stinky Bens in a big wad. Then he took Mel out to a grow site to deliver a baby and I thought I’d lose my mind, it scared me so bad. Next time I saw him I told him that just can’t happen.” He shrugged. “He said she wasn’t in danger, but it wouldn’t happen again. Now this.”

“This,” Post said.

“The craziest part of our relationship so far,” Jack said.

“Well, he was making that climb a little faster than we were,” Jim said. “He must’ve heard you make the top of the hill, because he dropped his gun and took off up the hill at a run, through the growth. I heard the shot, then the struggle. He was taking a big chance there. If this guy was any better with a weapon, he could’ve turned on our man. Our friend.”

“He’s a good friend of mine,” Preacher said. Paige came around him and Preacher lifted his good arm to drop it over her shoulders, the other dangling at his side, blood running down it.

Jim made eye contact with each of the men and Paige, one at a time. “I hit this guy in the back of the head, okay? We all good on that? Because your cowboy buddy there—I think he’s not what he appears to be.”

“Shouldn’t the law decide that?” Jack asked.

Jim Post had been undercover in these mountains, in the cannabis trade, when he met and fell in love with June. “Leave that on me, okay? I still know a couple of people. Let it go. We owe him one.”

“At least one,” Paige said.

Wes Lassiter awoke from his head injury in the hospital, cuffed to the bed, with no idea who had struck him. He claimed no memory of abducting his wife and was, of course, a victim, not a perpetrator, in his eyes.

But there were many witnesses—from Paige to the search party to the man who found him pointing a gun at the location where Paige was bound and held, Jim Post. A witness testimony that would, strangely, never be required. The assistant district attorney promised they wouldn’t accept any plea agreements—for numerous probation violations from possession, breaching an order of protection, kidnapping and attempted murder—but in the end he did. Twenty-five years without parole for kidnapping, the other felony charges to be sentenced later with possible parole on those—but he would be a very, very old man before it became even possible for parole. If he’d gone to trial, it was possible for him to get life without parole. Paige and the town of Virgin River were extremely grateful.

Often Paige would awaken in the night with a cry on her lips, shuddering, trembling, shivering in fear. John would pull her close and say, “I’m here, baby. I’m here. I’ll always be right here.”

She would calm. She was safe. “It’s really over,” she would whisper.

“And we have the rest of our lives,” he always whispered back.

Nineteen

Rick had taken an afternoon off from the bar after his high school graduation to go over to Eureka and visit Liz. He asked Jack and Preacher if they’d be around the bar till closing—he’d like to talk to them when he got back to town. It was almost nine by the time he walked in. “Thanks for hanging around, Jack,” he said. “Preacher still in the kitchen?”

“Yeah. How’s Liz doing?”

“She’s getting by. She’s back in her old high school—summer school to catch up—and she’s getting some counseling there.” He shrugged. “She has some real sad days, but she seems to be holding it together. Better than I thought she would.”

“Glad to hear that,” Jack said.

Rick got up on a stool. “I’m eighteen now,” he said. “Not quite legal, but how about we have a drink together. You, me and Preach. Can we do that?”

“We celebrating something?” Jack asked, getting down three glasses.

“Yeah. We are. I signed up.”

Jack’s hand froze in midair. He had to force himself to complete the move, bring down the glasses. He banged on the wall that separated the kitchen from the bar to bring Preacher.

“We could’ve talked,” Jack said.

“There wasn’t anything to talk about,” Rick answered.

“What the—” Preacher started, having come quickly from the kitchen with a pretty scattered look on his face.

“Rick signed up,” Jack said.

His face fell from startled to stricken. “Aw, Rick, what the hell!”

“We’re going to drink to it, if you can get under control,” Rick said.

“It isn’t gonna be easy for me to drink to that, man,” Preacher said.

Jack tipped a nice whiskey over three glasses. “Want to tell us what was going through your mind?”

“Sure. I have to do something hard,” he said. “I can’t wake up every morning hoping that maybe today I’ll be a little less sad. I need something tough. Something that will show me what I’ve got. Show me who I am again.” He focused clear eyes on Jack’s face, then Preacher’s. “Because I don’t know anymore.”

“Rick, we could have found you something hard that wasn’t quite as dangerous. This is a warring country. They’re fighting Marines. They don’t all come home.”

“Sometimes they don’t even make it out of their mother’s womb,” Rick said softly.

“Aw, Rick…” Preacher said, hanging his head. “It’s been a real hard year.”

“Yeah. I thought about a lot of things. School, bumming around the country for a year, logging, construction. I could beg Liz to marry me—but it turns out she’s still only fifteen.” He smiled lamely. “This is the only thing I can do, Jack. Preach. It’s kind of what I was raised to do, if you think about it.”

“So now it’s not bad enough you’re doing it, you’re going to blame it on us?” Jack said.