Hello, everyone! This follows Nic's challenge that she issued in "A Beginning in a Way", and here are the lines I'm REFERENCING in these first two chapters (not plagiarism, Bunnies, Seal of Approval, remember?) I'll be adding a third chapter, but am posting now due to Bunnies-Made-Me-Do-It's insistence.

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They had watched the sun set. The day had been unbearably hot; a Tuesday in June somewhere near a little ghost of a town called Woodruff in Arizona. Now, as the air cooled off, the roof still radiated the pooled heat, warming their tired bodies. Peace surrounded them, an unexpected, but most welcome change from the never ending battles, the grandest of them yesterday when HE had found himself with his large knife to her slender throat, his vision clouded with anger, and SHE had found herself with HIS gun to HIS temple, trembling, furious, but determined to live.

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"What do we do?" She grabbed his arm. "Jackson. I'm so tired of running. We haven't even slept here one night yet, and it's late. Can't we just wait it out and see what happens? Maybe they won't come after us? Maybe they're too busy with whatever they're doing?"

He pursed his lips as he regarded her for a few moments. Then he cocked his head. "Hang tight, huh? You'd dare to take the chance?"

She stared back at him, seemingly considering the options, then she nodded. "Yeah. I dare." She dove into his bag and came back up with blue, heavy steel, weighing it in her hand. "Besides… I know how to use this."

The corner of his mouth lifted into half a smile. God, you're beautiful! Yeah, he'd seen her use it. They'd spent a whole day at a shooting range a while back. He'd said he never wanted her to miss again. Like she did with him once… And Lisa had been frightening.

"You never change, do you? Gun-slinging Lisa."

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Also, this series has a video made by animepeople01 on YouTube. Go to my profile to access the link. Thanks!

Jackson watched as Lisa steadied herself, taking deep breaths as he'd instructed, keeping her feet approximately shoulder-width apart. After a few seconds, she narrowed her eyes, took a breath, and fired.

The report boomed in his ears, despite the protective earplugs. He squinted at the target at the end of the range. It was hard to tell where she had hit from this distance. He tapped her on the shoulder, then pointed to the button next to her to retrieve the target. She pressed it, and they waited as the human figure outlined on the paper target approached, gliding along the pulley cables. Jackson pulled the earplugs out, and motioned for her to do the same.

"Fuckin' nice, Leese!" he whispered appreciatively, looking at the target. She had shot the gun twelve times, hitting within the bullseye eight of the twelve. The other four shots lay just outside the kill zone.

"Okay, can we go now? My arms are killing me and I stink like gunpowder." Jackson admired Lisa's lethal skill once more, noting the dots ripped through the red circle on the paper.

"You could've made a killing as one of my associates, you know?" His lips curled into a smile, and Lisa rolled her eyes at his lame attempt at a joke.

"I'm leaving, with or without you," she muttered, turning on her heel.

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The Scenic Route

Lisa had been on an outdoorsy kick ever since they had visited the Pacific Northwest two weeks ago. In rare form one afternoon after a Skittles and Orange Shasta binge, she had heard "Live Like You Were Dying" on the radio, and decided that there were "things and places she simply had to do and see" ... which resulted in a lot of logged miles on the Civic they had 'acquired'.

While staying up late and making out her list of places to go and things to do, she happened across some chick flick that was running on HBO. Jackson had paid little attention to it, until Lisa had suddenly found the idea of "being in two places at the same time" utterly fascinating, and decided she wanted to do the same. They took the obligatory picture with the Canadian Mounties and crossed back into the United States into Blaine, Washington after a two-day expatriate trip. Remembering Lisa's wish, Jackson had pulled a few hundred yards into the U.S., traveled a short distance to a small street called Harvey Road, pulled to the end of it, and turned off the car. Lisa had given him a questioning look, before Jackson explained that she had wanted a "two-fer", and pointed out that the U.S-Canada border was still only a few dozen feet away from the car. Lisa had bolted out of the Civic, checked quickly for Border Patrol, and happily put one foot into Canada, while leaving the other planted firmly in the States. She was in two places at once.

Following that had been 'detour' to Mount Saint Helens National Monument, where they saw entirely too much of a lustful teenaged couple just off of one of the scenic trails, which caused Jackson to be a smart-ass and call out loudly to the two, asking why were they making so much noise and did one of them had asthma, because they sure were panting hard. Lisa had never been so embarrassed in her life. They continued following the Cascade Mountain Range, and Lisa soon had a digital camera loaded with pictures of random things: a mushroom caught in a golden ray of light in southern Washington; a watering can filled with flowers in Salem, Oregon; a sunset over the lake in Nampa, Idaho.

They had traveled the scenic route across the American West, with Jackson complaining about the heat and Lisa snapping photos left and right. She even had a rare "Collector's Edition" photo, as she had dubbed it, of Jackson smiling. They had ended up fishing in one of Lisa's many requested stops, and he actually caught the biggest damned catfish he'd ever seen in his life --- for a total of three seconds, before it finned him and he dropped it off the wooden pier, back into the lake. Lisa had snapped the picture just as he had hauled it in. His mood had gone south during the remainder of that evening.

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The pair had continued traveling eastward, before swinging back north, and headed toward Glacier National Park in Montana. As much as he hated to admit it, Jackson wanted to see it, too. Lisa's always-bright mood had started to become infectious, and he even found himself smiling of his own accord on occasion. When they finally arrived at their destination, Lisa had been ready, camera in hand, and nearly dragged him along one of the designated trails. It wasn't long before Jackson began to get a gnawing feeling of paranoia in his gut, and found himself scanning the crowds more and more frequently from behind his shades. Lisa was oblivious, snapping photos of a little girl just ahead of them, as the toddler stared in wonder at the environment around them.

Jackson had seen the hitman then, following from a safe distance. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as he realized the man was staring directly at him and Lisa, not noticing that Jackson was returning the gaze from behind the dark sunglasses. The crowd had thinned, and he suddenly felt very, very vulnerable. He turned abruptly and grabbed Lisa by the arm, yanking her toward the Visitor Center.

"What are you doing? Jackson! Let go of my arm!" Lisa hissed, trying not to cause a scene. His grip hurt, and she was willing to bet money that she would have bruises that evening.

"We're being followed, Leese," Jackson replied coolly, cursing himself for not bringing a weapon. It was a stupid, stupid mistake, and if he lived through it, he'd try his damned hardest to make sure he never forgot again. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder, seeing the man pulling something out of his jacket. "Shit, Leese!" He ducked around the side of the Visitor's Center, yanking Lisa with him, just as a bullet embedded itself into the side of the building where Lisa had been standing a split-second earlier. A few people turned, hearing a noise, but unsure of its source. "Come on, we've gotta hide." He yanked her into the tourist group leaving the building, and the two disappeared into the crowd. They left Glacier National Park and the Honda Civic behind that afternoon.

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'Never Again'

Jackson tried watching the Red Sox game in the hotel room, but found that he couldn't keep himself from becoming distracted with other thoughts. It had been close. Too close. The assassins that he suspected were following them nearly shot Lisa, taking a chunk out of the side of the building he had pulled her behind at the last second. They had blended into a tourist group within seconds, and their assassins hadn't shown neither hide nor hair since. That had been three days ago, at Glacier National Park. Now, they were in Coeur D'Alene, had just returned from the shooting range, and despite Lisa's marksmanship, Jackson was nervous.

If he had waited a split-second longer before pulling himself and Lisa to safety, one of them would've been killed, severely wounded at the very least. The thought of not having Lisa tagging along on their haphazard journey made him sick, even though she got on his damn nerves every other day. He didn't want to chance getting shot either, leaving Lisa defenseless. If he was hit, Lisa would be dead shortly thereafter, which prompted the trip to the shooting range. He showed her basic techniques, proper hand position, and how to take the recoil. Her first attempts had been awful, and Jackson kept imagining their target being a live assassin, ready to gun both of them down, with Lisa missing horribly.

"I don't care how skittish you are, Leese," he had growled, pulling her arm back up into firing position, "If you hesitate, if you stop to take a breather, if you blink ... he will shoot you. And he'll probably have a hell of a lot more practice than you." He kicked her foot, knocking it back into place so that she didn't topple backward from the recoil like she nearly had the first few times. "So, I want you to imagine that that target, all the way down there, is one of the less-than-savory characters we've met as of late. It's five, hell, ten years down the road. You're married, you've got your white picket fence around the front yard, and two kids sleeping upstairs. And then ... he breaks into your house." He pointed to the target waiting at the end of the range. "He's got one thing on his mind: get what he came for, and get rid of whoever's in his way."

Lisa had shuddered and cast him a sidelong glance. "What am I supposed to do then, if he's hell-bent on getting what he wants?" Jackson gave her a sad smile and shrugged.

"If you're in that situation, Lisa, where you're protecting yourself and the people you care about, there's only one thing you can do." She looked at him expectantly. "You make sure you don't miss."

That had been earlier in the day, and Lisa had apparently taken his words to heart, showing impressive determination, which paid off. He looked up as she exited the bathroom, freshly-showered. She noticed the baseball game on the TV and Jackson's apparent disregard for it. "I thought ... you said you wanted to watch the game?"

Jackson sighed as Lisa sat on the bed next to him, turning down the blankets. "I can't keep focused on it, I've got too much shit running through my head right now." Lisa frowned, noting how he had seemed on edge the past few days.

"You're thinking about what happened a few days ago, in Montana, aren't you?" she asked. Jackson nodded.

"Do me a favor, Leese?" He turned, looking at her pleadingly. "If you're in that life-or-death situation we talked about earlier ..."

"Yeah?"

Jackson took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose before responding. "Don't hesitate. I never want you to miss an easy shot, like the ones earlier, ever again. Hesitating will get you killed."