rescue them. There’s going to be a fight where Vidar is injured and maybe Mandy, I haven’t decided. Vidar gets the killer in the end.”
She frowned. “Why do you need help with that? You do complex fight scenes all the time. You do fight scenes with sticks and all kinds of scary stuff.”
She had a point. He liked the fight scenes. He could block them out like a movie, going step-by-step.
“I guess I want them to talk,” he admitted. “But I don’t know what they’re going to say. I don’t want Mandy to be completely passive, but it’s not like she has any skills.”
“Is she tied up?” Renee asked. “Are she and her daughter bait?”
“Maybe. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“If they were bait, Mandy would be really scared, but also really mad. She doesn’t want to be the reason Vidar gets killed, and she doesn’t want anything to happen to her daughter. The kid kind of gets in the way of the two of them dealing with each other, though, so maybe the daughter is unconscious. That would scare Mandy even more. And if Vidar’s in danger, trying to save them, she’s totally on the edge. She cares about him, so she won’t want him to take any chances. But he cares about her, too, and her daughter. He can’t not save them and he’s the kind of guy who will put his life on the line.”
“He would do that for anyone.”
“I know, but it’s different if he’s in love with her. It makes the danger personal. He would take chances with her and her daughter that he wouldn’t take for anyone else. He’s more vulnerable.”
Jasper hadn’t thought about it that way, but she was right. Vidar was more vulnerable. He might push himself harder or take a different kind of risk.
He could see the scene in his mind. Having Mandy trapped worked. She would hate it and yet she wouldn’t want to die.
“What would they talk about?” he asked, more to himself than Renee. “She would want to warn him.”
“I don’t think they’d have a regular conversation, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m about to die, and we need milk?”
Jasper grinned. “I was thinking more about an emotional declaration.”
Renee wrinkled her nose. “Don’t do that.”
“Why not? What if one of them dies? Wouldn’t you want to hear you were loved before a serial killer slit your throat?”
“I guess. I’m just not sure how much it’s going to matter in those last few choking seconds. Plus, if they don’t die, then for the rest of their lives, they’re going to remember the first time they said they loved each other. The memory will be tainted.”
He wanted to disagree, but he wondered if it was a guy thing versus a girl thing. Would a guy want to say it so it wasn’t unsaid and would a woman...
“Would you say it, if you thought you were going to die?” he asked.
“Shout out ‘I love you’ right before my throat is cut?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems like a tacky way to do it. Why not last night at dinner or two weeks ago when she was folding your socks? If it takes a near death experience for you to get your feelings, then maybe they’re not real to begin with. Maybe they’re just the adrenaline talking. Love is flashy in the movies and stuff, but in real life, love is steady. It’s not the peak moments, it’s the everyday grind and how love makes it better. I’m not saying it has to be wine and roses but wouldn’t it be better to say it because you wanted the other person to know and not because one of you might die?”
He studied her. “When you fell in love with Turner, how did you know?”
She looked startled, as if she hadn’t been expecting the question. “I don’t know,” she hedged, glancing away. “We were dating and spending time together. He started to matter more and more. I realized over time. It wasn’t any one thing—it was a lot of little things. My feelings got bigger until they were love.”
He’d never been in love. There’d been the girl he’d left behind when he’d joined the army, but he’d been a kid and she’d been just as young. When things had ended, they’d both quickly moved on. He’d had a lot of short-term relationships in the military but those were never expected to be more than a way to get through the night.