Diego continued to survey the peaceful scene below. It’s possible, Rubin. We made good time. We know the terrain and they don’t. They were just as tired as we were. They have a large force and believe themselves invincible. They could have camped somewhere for the night and planned to bring her here sometime during the day. That means they’ll send a crew here to get a landing strip ready. They wouldn’t have bothered if they couldn’t acquire her. They wouldn’t want to raise suspicion.
Diego was right. The ground crew had to be close by. Already here. They wouldn’t use Gunthrie’s shack. They’d camp out using high-tech gear. Where would they camp that any locals wouldn’t ever spot them? And would they have spared Gunthrie until they actually needed to kill him? Probably not. He was a loose cannon. He would be too likely to spot them moving around in his part of the woods. At some point they would have to examine the meadow to see how difficult it would be to quickly build a landing strip for a plane.
They’re here, Diego, they’re here somewhere. They came here and they made the decision to kill that old man.
We don’t know that for certain. Diego was cautionary.
If there was one person on earth who knew Rubin, it was Diego. He knew that place inside of him that was deep and wide. Whitney had found it and just expanded it.
You know. Rubin breathed the truth into his brother’s mind. The burn of rage was slow in coming and it wasn’t red and volcanic. It was cold like ice, like a glacier. That cold. A flame that never died, that would hunt one to the ends of the earth if necessary, just keep going until it was done. That was Rubin’s way. That was the way he felt now.
Just the thought of these men, these outsiders, cold-bloodedly coming to Luther Gunthrie’s home and possibly killing him, took that last piece of civilization from him. He felt it go, just as he had felt it when he had found his sister’s body so long ago in that cold stream. His mind shut down to everything but the task of hunting.
Diego instantly felt the difference in his mind. We don’t know if Luther’s dead, Rubin.
Doesn’t much matter, Diego. They came here to kill him. An old man like that. They came here to take her. Wherever they plan to take her, it isn’t somewhere good. They’re here. I can feel them.
More, now that he was certain, now that he was fully in predator mode, he could smell them. They had set foot on Gunthrie land.
The ground crew won’t be their elite soldiers, Rubin surmised. They wouldn’t expect any real opposition. Jonquille was their opposition. They expected a fight from her. They didn’t know about us. They wouldn’t waste manpower on locals, so the elite soldiers were reserved for acquiring her. The ground crew assigned to building a landing strip at the last minute will be ordinary soldiers with maybe one elite soldier leading them.
There were few meadows like the one Gunthrie had. It was long enough for a small plane to land and take off in. A good pilot could easily do it. If Jonquille had been alone, and she had been surprised as the soldiers had hoped, they would have taken their time bringing her down the mountain. The last thing these soldiers wanted was to draw attention to themselves. That meant they didn’t want to tear up the meadow until they had to. Bulldozing the ground was definitely going to draw attention. The crew and equipment had to be close but hidden under camouflage, easy enough to do if one knew how.
Where are they, Rubin?
He thought about where the ground crew would be camping. They would be close enough to keep an eye on Gunthrie’s property and the meadow. They would be out of sight, completely off the beaten path of any stray hikers or any of the locals.
Diego, put a bird in the air, one of the early morning songbirds. Have it search the entire area for Luther and then have it fly over the old mill by Huntington Falls. Let’s see if anyone is camping there.
You still calling it that?
Rubin didn’t reply. Yeah, he had always referred to the little series of waterfalls as Huntington Falls. No one else did because the falls were really nothing more than a series of large rocks with water pouring over them. Rubin had an imagination, and he would name everything so he could go back and tell his sisters his stories. Huntington Falls had become the home of many fairies who hid when the trolls came out.
When he and Diego would return to the mountains to check on patients, and Luther wasn’t around, he would find himself telling Lotty the same silly stories he had told his sisters on the cold wintry nights that were so dreary and gloomy. She always acted delighted. Yeah, he would always call that place Huntington Falls and have fond memories of it.