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64
GAFFER'S RIDGE
EAGLE'S NEST
FRIDAY, MIDNIGHT
There was a full moon overhead, so bright Griffin could see the road and the mountain clear as day. He left his Range Rover against the side of a cliff within sight of the Eagle’s Nest gate. He looked over at Carson. “Listen, I’ve given this a lot of thought. You’re a civilian, you’re not trained. The last thing I want is to take a chance of your getting hurt. Bad enough I’m going in like this, without a warrant. Your coming with me only raises the stakes.”
Carson laid her hand on his arm. “Griffin, this all started with me. Rafer attacked me. He might have brought me here, with those girls. You know the girls are here, I know they’re here. In what shape? I can help. You’ll need me.” She paused, looked at his stone face. “We started this together, we’re going to end it together. I won’t do anything stupid, I’ll do exactly what you tell me to do.”
Still, he shook his head.
Okay, time for the big threat: “Here’s the deal, Griffin, unless you handcuff me to the Range Rover, I’ll sneak in after you.”
He knew she would, too. He’d let her talk him into coming this far and now he knew there was no going back, no matter what he said. He remembered Carson smacking Rafer on the head with the pipe. She had guts, showed she could handle herself. Still, he worried. He saw himself handcuffing her, then sighed. He reached down and pulled the small Colt from his ankle holster. “You told me you could shoot.”
She gave him a blazing smile. “Yep, I still go to the gun range with Dad every few weeks whenever he’s home. Up close I’m great. Maybe not so great from farther away, but I won’t shoot myself in the foot, or you.” She slipped the Colt in her jeans pocket. “This is right, Griffin.”
They both wore black from head to toe, hoping to avoid being picked up on cameras. He shrugged on his backpack and they climbed the fence, dropped to the rocky ground, and stayed low, walking upward on the edge of the paved drive toward the top, toward the house.
Minutes later, they rounded a slight bend and saw the large black monolith that was Eagle’s Nest, backlit by the full moon. The garage stood to the side, some twenty feet from the house. There were no lights anywhere, only the moonlight, but it was bright enough they could easily be seen if they weren’t careful.
They quickly walked inside the edge of the thick forest to within twenty feet of the garage. Griffin knelt and pulled off his backpack. He assembled the portable parabolic microphone, checked to make sure it worked properly. They listened, heard nothing. He set his cell phone camera to low light mode and walked behind the trees, taking pictures. He came back, dropped to his knees beside her. “Our range is about fifty feet, and that’s about what we’ve got. If there are rooms beneath the garage, there’s got to be access, a stairwell, probably hidden inside.”
They heard nothing from the garage. Griffin panned the parabolic microphone toward the house, and they hunkered down and listened. They heard very faint, low voices—adults, a man and a woman talking on the other side of the house. He shifted the microphone, but the voices were still too faint. Then they heard Quint Bodine’s voice rise with impatience. Griffin turned on his cell phone recorder and set it close to the microphone.
“You shouldn’t have sent Rafer out to get Subject S today without talking with me, Cyndia. It was far too dangerous. And look what happened, that FBI agent was here like a shot.”
They heard Cyndia’s voice now, higher, too, anger simmering. “Her name is Linzie Drumm, Quint, not ‘Subject S.’ I agree with you, the other two girls aren’t going to work, and we’ll have to figure out what to do with them. But maybe Linzie will be the right girl. There was something about her, I could feel it. So stop complaining about what’s already done and go get Rafer. I think he went to their quarters, and it’s late.”
Griffin whispered, “We’ve got it all recorded. Legal or not, we’ve got proof, and there’s a question of life or death here. Savich can get a search warrant with this tonight and we can be back here with Kraus before morning.”
They heard nothing else, but a minute later, the front door opened and closed. Griffin quickly took apart the parabolic microphone, put it into his backpack. He and Carson pulled back farther into the trees and went down on their knees. Quint Bodine came out of the house. Even the frown on his face was clear beneath the brilliant moonlight. He was wearing an ancient dark blue robe and western boots on his feet. He stood on the top step a moment, looking out toward the mountains. Then he stopped and looked directly at them.
Carson felt her heart gallop though she knew he couldn’t see them, even in the bright moonlight. They were on their knees, well back, well hidden. She jumped at the sound of Rafer’s voice. “Pa, what are you doing up? I thought you and Ma were in bed.”
They saw Rafer come out from the side of the garage nearest the house. “I was just coming to bed,” Rafer continued. “Everything’s okay. Linzie’s asleep—sorry, Subject S. She was tossing around from the drugs or maybe a nightmare, I don’t know, but she’s fine.”
Bodine said in an emotionless voice, “I know you’re concerned about her, Rafer. You worry about all of them.”
A brief pause, then, “I only wanted to check on her. I didn’t look in on the other girls—subjects. I guess they’re all sleeping, since I didn’t hear any music or TVs playing.” He scuffed his booted foot into the gravel.
“I’m sorry about this, Rafer. But you know your mother is desperate. This is what she wants. Badly. Her vision, you know she believes in it completely.” Quint paused, sighed. “I fear it’s pushed her over the edge, and we can only hope all this passes. You know what will happen to both of us if we don’t do as she asks.”
Rafer looked back toward the garage. “The FBI agent, he knows I took her. He’s not going to stop.”
“Yes, yes, let him try, but it doesn’t matter. Rafer, if he gets too close, well, it will be handled.”
“Handled? What is Ma going to do?”
“It doesn’t concern you. Come along back to bed. We all need our rest.”
Rafer said nothing more and fell into step beside his father. Quint Bodine paused once more on the top step and looked out toward the mountains. He stilled, breathed in deeply. “It was a full moon the very first time I hiked up this mountain decades ago, when I came up here with my father. It wasn’t quite this bright, but close. The mountain was wilder then, not a single trail, but I knew that night this mountain would belong to us, knew this was where my father would build his house, raise his family. This will always be my home, my castle.” Then Quint turned and looked directly at where Carson and Griffin were hidden in the trees. He frowned a moment, and walked into the house, his son following him.
When the front door closed, Carson whispered, “He stared right at us again, Griffin. I know he can’t see us, but do you think maybe he sensed us?”
Griffin shook his head, he had no clue.
“Sounded like the three girls are okay, well, other than being drugged to their eyeballs. I want to know how we’ll be ‘handled.’ What do we do now, Griffin?”
“They’re safe enough until morning as long as he doesn’t realize we were here listening. I’ll call Bettina Kraus first thing, get us a warrant and agents here.”
They made their way back downhill, keeping low and to the shadows, climbed the fence, and walked to the Range Rover. He shot her a grin. “Fear not, I’ve got all this great moonlight to help me make my signature K turn.”
Griffin cut it as close as he could, but the road was too narrow and he couldn’t make the turn. He cursed under his breath, managed to make a K turn on the third try, but he was still too close to the edge, his Range Rover stopping not six inches from the cliff. He prayed the earth wouldn’t crumble and send them over the side. He didn’t say a word until they were once again in the middle of the road, facing downhill. He was about to tell her that was the last time he would make a hairy turn like that one when there was a huge explosion above them, like a blast from a thousand shotguns. There was a tremendous rumbling, then rocks and soil came plummeting down the side of the cliff, slamming across the road in front of them, bouncing off into space and over the cliff edge to the base of the mountain hundreds of feet below.
The road shook and shuddered, making the Range Rover slide toward the cliff.
