looked like those of a small dog, or more likely, a fox. Now that he really thought about it, he might have seen a flash of orange darting out of sight into the forest.
He watched for any sign of movement for another minute before returning to the cabin to unpack his belongings.
***
Half an hour later they were all assembled in the front cabin, where they shared an awkward silence over a pot of strong coffee. In the time it had taken Gabriel to unpack his belongings, Cavenaugh had converted the main room into a kind of command center. Satellite images were tacked to the walls, overlaid with grids marking latitude and longitude in minutes and superimposed with topographical maps. There had to be twenty of them in all, and surely covered every inch of the National Forest. The corner of the room was filled with stacks of equipment Gabriel had never seen before. There were electrical boxes reminiscent of the components of a stereo tower, coils of coaxial cable, and what appeared to be two fancy metal detectors.
Gabriel hovered in front of them, away from the others. He paced from one wall to the next and back again. The coffee only seemed to amplify his nervous energy. He wished someone would crack a window despite the storm. It was starting to feel like a gym locker room in there.
Cavenaugh stood in the doorway to the kitchen. He waited for all of them to absorb their new surroundings. Gabriel couldn’t believe the amount of time and money Cavenaugh must have invested into the project. Now that he really thought about it, no one had asked him to contribute a single cent. His first thought was that Kelsey must have financed everything, but one glance confirmed that he was every bit as awed as the rest of them. He sat on the arm of the couch, attired in the newest and trendiest winter gear from L.L. Bean: a navy blue ski jacket, black snow pants, and furry Sorel boots. His pale gray hair had thinned over the last year, but he had taken such good care of himself that it was impossible to pinpoint his age at a guess. The fire reflected from the wire-framed glasses perched on his aqualine nose as he surveyed the room. Will Farnham slouched on the couch beside him, a stark contrast to Kelsey. He wore an old flannel shirt, dirty carpenter jeans, and Wolverine boots that betrayed the steel inserts over the toes. Long johns peered out over his collar and from his pant legs. He had a thick black beard and a shaved head, and brown eyes that appeared to track a little too slowly. Maura Aragon sat beside him, nervously tapping her feet and doing her best to avoid making direct eye contact with anyone. Her long black hair hung over a face which would have been unmemorable were it not for her crystal-blue eyes. She wore a heavy, knitted sweater featuring teddy bears and hearts, jeans that clung to her wide hips and thighs, and padded boots with faux fur lining the tops. Jess MacAuley leaned on the wall behind them by the front door, sandy blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. She had wide blue eyes, a slender face, and plump lips. Even without makeup she was striking. Her azure sweater brought out her irises, and her faded Levi’s traced her long legs into waterproof hunting boots. She and Gabriel had already exchanged clipped formalities in their cabin while they unpacked, but he had yet to speak with any of the others.
“All right,” Cavenaugh finally said. “I assume none of you need introductions. So let’s just get started. First off, thank you all for dropping everything in your lives back home to come here. I can only imagine the kind of sacrifices you’ve had to make to do so. With any luck, we won’t have to make this pilgrimage again, and this will be the last time any of us see this place or each other ever again.”
“Where did you get all of this?” Kelsey asked, gesturing around the room.
“The maps came directly from NASA’s Terra satellite. I had them blown up and printed. The originals are still on my laptop, which allows digital manipulation and zoom capabilities. They were generated just under a year ago, so they aren’t one hundred percent precise, but they’re the best available.”
“They must have cost a fortune,” Kelsey said.
Cavenaugh offered a weak smile and sighed before continuing. The firelight made his eyes appear recessed into darkness and highlighted wrinkles Gabriel hadn’t noticed previously. “Behind Gabriel over there are two GPR— ground-penetrating radar—machines capable of detecting remains buried up to fifteen meters beneath the ground under optimal conditions, and our communications and analysis equipment, all of which are on loan from the Denver Police Department.” He turned to Gabriel. “I trust you were able to secure an electron microscope.”
Gabriel nodded and tried not to imagine what the university would do to him if they found out he had borrowed it. Granted, it was an older model he had procured from storage, but he was still going to keep it in the trunk of his car until he absolutely needed to use it for fear someone might break it.
“Excellent,” Cavenaugh said. “So what we need to—”
“What is the deal with the microscope and the germs?” Will interrupted. “I don’t understand what you were saying about those germs on Nathan’s leg bone. How is that supposed to help us find out what happened to them?”
“Gabriel?” Cavenaugh said.
In a heartbeat, all eyes in the room were upon him. He took a final slug from his coffee and set aside the mug. Cavenaugh had prepared him for this eventuality, and had cautioned him that there was one key piece of information he intended to withhold in order to convince the others to join them. Specifically, he made no mention of the similarities between the bacteria found on Nathan’s femur and their fossilized twins on the Mars meteorite. Gabriel still wondered why the evidence techs at the Rocky Mountain Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, the FBI forensics lab that shared resources with the local police, weren’t tearing apart the hills in search of the almost mythological extremophile.
Gabriel cleared his throat and began. His gaze wandered restlessly around the room as he spoke.
“The organisms they found on Nathan’s femur bear an uncanny resemblance to a kind of extremophile called haloarchaea, which has several unique characteristics we feel could help us isolate the region where the mountain lion encountered the bone. Extremophile is the name given to microorganisms that require extreme environmental conditions to thrive. In the case of haloarchaea, they need at least a ten percent salt concentration in water to survive, preferably more, which implies that we’re looking for a small body of saltwater or a solar saltern.”
“There’s no saltwater in Colorado,” Will said.
“That’s not exactly true. There are specifically no bodies of water one might consider similar to seawater or that of the Great Salt Lake, but these mountains are rife with mineral springs with high contents of naturally recurring salts like sodium chloride, carbonate, and sulfate, and additional carbonate salts from calcium, magnesium, potassium, and lithium. If you’ve ever been to the hot springs in Glenwood or Idaho Springs, you know what I’m talking about.”
“So if we can find this hot spring, we should theoretically find this microorganism,” Jess said from the back. “And that should confine our search enough to presumably locate the remainder of Nathan’s body, and hopefully our family members as well.”
“Exactly,” Cavenaugh said. “Of course, that theory is predicated upon the assumption that Nathan’s femur wasn’t moved from another location to begin with. If it had simply been discarded there by someone or some other creature like a bear, then it may just be a wild goose chase.”
“There’s another interesting fact about haloarchaea we suspect may apply to this microorganism. They have an inordinately high concentration of carotenoid pigments for protection from ultraviolet rays, which cause them to take on a reddish or rust-colored hue. If we find our spring, we should know it right away.”
“And from there,” Cavenaugh said, nodding toward the equipment behind Gabriel, “the real work begins.”
000
They had spent the afternoon learning how to use the equipment. The GPR had taken some serious practice, but by the time dinner rolled around, they all had a pretty decent understanding of the various signals on the readout and were at least able to recognize the differences between ice, packed dirt, and various rocks. Human remains would be a different animal entirely, but there were no test subjects available. They could only hope they would be able to identify them when the moment of truth arrived.
After a meal of boiled hot dogs and baked beans, during which conversation had been sporadic at best, they had decided to retire early and gather again before sunrise to formulate their plans. They were all eager to begin, but the storm had intensified to the point that the blowing flakes obscured even the major landmarks. The first thing they were going to need to do was study the satellite images in hopes of finding the hot spring, and then make notes of the clues in the bible verses that might have led their missing family members to it. For now, Gabriel was content to allow the day to end. Granted, they had accomplished nothing, but simply being there in the cabins
