As he said the words, I got a flash of his thoughts: a dense, wild mountain range, full of plummeting canyons and almost unpassable roads. You could hide up there for years and never be found. It was the best possible place to do what we needed to do and still keep me safe; he was sure of it. Even so, I caught a sense of cold dread running beneath the images.

“Alex? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said.

I hesitated, wondering whether to push it. “No, there is. I mean, if you don’t want to tell me, it’s all right, but I can feel it.”

There was a long pause; outside the tent, the wind stirred through the bare bones of the trees. Finally Alex gave a soft laugh. “Okay, I’m still getting used to this psychic girlfriend thing,” he said. “I’m fine, I just...” He sighed. And suddenly I knew, the thought dropping into my head as if it were my own.

“You’re worried about being in charge,” I said in surprise. I rose up, trying to see his face in the darkness. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

The dread flickered again like the tongue of a snake, then faded as if he were making a conscious effort to control it. “It’s nothing,” he said gruffly. “I just saw enough about what it’s like to be a leader when my dad was in charge. I’d rather work on my own, or as part of a team under someone I trust. But, you know...” His chest shifted under me as he shrugged. “That’s not the way it is; we’ve got to train new AKs and I’m the only one who knows how. So I’ll deal with it.”

It didn’t really feel like he was telling me everything, but I let it go – he obviously didn’t want to talk about it. And even though I was psychic, I’d never thought it was okay to go probing around if someone didn’t want me to. I closed Alex’s thoughts away from mine, so that I wouldn’t pick up anything by mistake. We were so close that this happened more and more now when I wasn’t even thinking about it.

“You’ll be great,” I murmured. I kissed his smooth neck. “And I’ll help all I can. Psychic consultant, remember?”

I could almost hear his smile. “Don’t forget mechanic, too. If the Shadow’s anything like the Mustang...”

The Honda Shadow parked outside our tent was over twenty years old; I knew Alex was suspicious of it. “Hey, you leave the Mustang alone,” I said. “It was a complete classic. And Shadows aren’t bad either, you know – for a cheap bike, they’re pretty classic themselves.”