Sanity Frontier
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
G. K. Chesterton
EIGHT
It had been ten minutes since Reid and Morgan had left the cabin, a couple of torches as their only light. Rossi was the ever vigilant sentry, ears attuned to every sound. He was multi-tasking, though. Trying to pin down a profile for the serial killer who was haunting the mountains. It was a difficult task – they had no idea who the victims were, when they disappeared, how they disappeared. The four agents had briefly examined the bodies; Reid had theorised that, taking the preservation into account, some of the corpses were up to three years old. Organized offender – he made sure the bodies weren't found. They were restrained, killed methodically. He would have to be either strong enough to incapacitate his victims, or charming enough to lure them to the cabin. The bodies were a mixture of genders, so Rossi assumed the former.
It wasn't as though a profile would do them a world of good – there was no database they could run it against, no suspects to interrogate. They really were isolated from everything they ever knew.
He jerked, hearing an unfamiliar sound. His eyes scanned the room, falling upon the unconscious man on the camp bed next to the fire. At least, he had been unconscious – he was stirring now. Rossi took the calculated risk of setting down the rifle. He found a water bottle and pressed it into the man's hands.
'It's okay,' he assured him. 'It's okay.'
The man looked at him, confused. 'No entiendo.'
Rossi recognised Spanish. He knew little Spanish beyond a few key phrases. '¿Hablas inglés?'
'No.'
'Un momento.'
He moved over to Emily, who was already in a light sleep. He knew she would want to be woken, but it didn't stop him from hesitating.
He put a hand on her shoulder. 'Emily.'
'Yeah?' she replied almost instantaneously, having perfected an almost seamless transition from sleep to wake.
'The victim's awake.'
'Yeah?' she sat up, leg throbbing in pain.
'He only speaks Spanish.' His tone was somewhat apologetic, and with good reason.
'This is what I get for minoring in Linguistics,' she muttered, though it was not in a particularly irritated tone.
Rossi returned to his sentry duties as his younger colleague questioned the frightened Spanish man.
He had been watching them for a few hours now. At first he thought it had been some kind of mistake, that they weren't even going to the cabin at all, but were taking a roundabout route to the nearby lake. He was angry – offended, almost – when he realised that, no, they were going to his cabin. They were going to ruin everything.
He had seen the two men leave by the light of their torches. They would have found the bodies, and they would be going to tell someone. They were going to ruin everything.
He could still fix things though. It was dark now, and they had split up. He couldn't have taken all four of them – five, if you included the Spanish tourist, which he didn't – but two he could deal with. Which two, was the question.
He shuffled in his position, and turned around. 'So,' he said to his companion. 'Which two do you want to take?'
'It doesn't bother me,' came the reply, and after a moment's discussion, the two separated, one heading in the direction of the cabin, one, the base of the mountain. It was going to be an interesting night.
A/N: Here's a short one for now. I have exams next week, so I really might have to start studying instead of writing these, but exams will be over by the 15th, so at most you'll be waiting a week or so. Which is a lot better than waiting until January, right? If there is a follow-up to this one, it might come after exams, or in January, but we'll see. I might be able to squeeze it in before I go overseas.
