Page 48 of One Last Chance

So many memories.

So many near tragedies.

“You sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Moose stood at the door of the garage. “We can take dad’s truck, put the four-wheeler in the back.”

“I feel the need for speed.”

“Oh brother.”

He grinned. “Listen. I’m just going to take a run out there. Four hours, tops.”

Moose made a noise deep inside his chest but nodded and headed to the house.

Axel grabbed his helmet, strapped it on, then eased the bike off its kickstand.

The machine roared to life as if angry, and he sat back on it, feeling it rumble under him.

Yeah, this was right.

He pulled out of the garage, got out and shut the door, then tucked his earbuds in under his helmet, turned his phone to a local channel, and motored out of the dirt driveway and down the highway.

The local radio station, WBEX, played country, and wouldn’t you know it, Oaken Fox crooned out one of his recent hits. Of course.

Axel thought he might have written it for Boo.

“Out on the open road, I’ve been searching high and low,

For a love that’s true, a heart that knows,

Through dusty towns and city lights, I roamed,

Seeking a love that felt like coming home.”

Yeah, that sounded like Oaken. Axel liked the guy, and the country singer had done a great job of putting Air One Rescue on the map, but frankly, some people were cut out for the limelight. Like Oaken.

And some people weren’t.

Like him.

Axel hunkered down, leaning into the song as he motored past the turnoff to Copper Mountain and headed south, ten miles until he turned off onto Bowie Road.

“But then you walked into my life, like a sunrise over fields,

I saw forever in your eyes, and all the past wounds healed,

Now I know, deep in my soul, I’m the luckiest guy alive,

For in your love, darlin’, I’ve found my guiding light.”

Oh brother, he’d started to hum.Whatever.

Really, he just wanted to thank her. Even if she was a fifty-year-old woman dressed in furs and wielding a shotgun. He owed her that much.

He shut off the music when he turned off onto the Bowie camp road. He followed the dirt along the river until it veered south, then turned off-road, north toward Jubilee Creek. The terrain was built for four-wheelers, the path narrow as he drove across meadow and tundra, and he slowed, bumping along, easing the bike over boulders and gravel along the shoreline. But it was faster than walking. Even when he slowed to cross the creek at the shallows, the water washing up to his feet. But he gunned the bike through the river, spitting up mud and gravel as he hit the other side.

The terrain fought him as he traveled along the gravelly, rocky shoreline. Around him, the mountains rose, and as he gained elevation, the terrain turned bumpier.

But he knew he’d made the right choice when a path cut through the forest.

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