“That’s part of the land between Ham’s house and ours,” Jack agreed. “It seems they’ve made themselves at home.”
“How long, I wonder, have they been living in our woods?”
“Has anyone checked the ruins?” Victor called. “Perhaps Ham and I should do that.”
“We stay together,” Jack countered. “At least, we stay together and move slowly towards our objectives.”
“Agreed,” Ham added. “They’re fools, but they’re armed fools. They’re far more dangerous than criminals at this point.”
“Look,” Vi said, turning her attention, but not her hand, to what she was trying to show them. “Look at the river and look at the goblet. The first house wasn’t so far from that curve in the river, and there is a slightly bigger gouge there. It looks almost accidental.”
“But not,” Jack agreed with that winding curve.
“They must have thought of this before,” Vi told him softly. “They’ve been looking the whole of their lives. They’re missing a key piece of information and I seriously doubt we’ve uncovered it. We have to assume we’re behind them.”
Vi climbed back through the window and Victor helped her in, Jack following after her. Victor took the rope from around her waist and crawled out to see what there was to see while Vi faced the others.
“They didn’t shoot me when they could have, and they didn’t do more than bruise Denny.”
“I don’t care,” Ham told her flatly. “This is my home. That is my wife. My baby is on the way and if they were to have done that to Rita, our child might not have survived. I’m not saying I’ll shoot them in the head like they threatened to do to you, Vi, but I’m not feel very generous.”
Vi nodded and then said, “I vote for checking the ruins.”
“I as well,” Rita agreed.
She shifted and Vi gasped. “Is that an elephant gun?”
“It’s what I used in Africa,” Rita agreed. “Lions are a serious business, you know.”
“You’re never going to Africa again,” Ham said. “I didn’t even have such a thing on the battlefield.”
“I’m never going alone,” Rita agreed. “There is this place with giraffes. Ham, you’ll be forever changed.”
“Giraffes?” His disbelief was clear.
Rita patted his cheek lightly and repeated, quite seriously, “Giraffes.”
“We’ll all go,” Vi announced grandly and everyone groaned.
“Our luck is too bad,” Victor told her. “We’d certainly be trampled by giraffes right after they changed us forever.”
“Don’t you want to see the sun rise over the savannah? Don’t you want to see where Tarzan swang?” Vi demanded. “How many books do we have to read before you realize my needs?”
“Tarzan isn’t real, and don’t you want to go to Mars as well?”
“Obviously,” Vi shot back. “John Carter of Mars is almost as compelling as Tarzan, but alas, Mars is a bit more difficult to reach than Africa.”
Victor sighed and looked around for support, but no one else had even been listening to their byplay. It seemed that Rita with her elephant gun was far more compelling than the fictional settings of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels.
“Have I told you the premise of our new book?” Vi asked Victor when she noticed an edge of the blues in his expression, hidden behind all of that worry.
He lifted his brows in question and waited for her explanation.
“Pirates.”
“I feel like we’ve done pirates.”
“And werewolves.”
Victor just blinked and then said, “Rita, the elephant gun, and Vi and I are going to the ruins to see if there has been a disturbance.”
Jack frowned. “And separate again?”
“While,” Victor continued as though Jack hadn’t spoken, “you and Ham unite and head towards the auto. We’ll leave Denny, Hargreaves, and Smith armed.”
“I’m coming with you,” Smith said. “Beatrice, however, will be more than sufficient for anyone who dares to break into the house. Don’t be confused by her professionalism and brilliance. She’s spent enough time with me to also be vicious when necessary.”
“Look at it this way, Jack,” Victor told him. “We are separating with the knowledge that we might be attacked.”
“That doesn’t help.”
Vi grinned as she led the way from the attic. She changed her shoes to boots, deemed her day dresses suitable, and found that Jack was pressing a pistol into her hand along with a kiss on her forehead.
“Be careful,” he said.
“You be careful,” Vi told him. Adding quite seriously a moment later, “Also, don’t kill anyone and separate us forever.”
“We’ll just flee the country,” Jack told her easily and she considered for a moment and then agreed.
Before they left the house, they gave Kate the goblet and had her sketch out all the details on it she could see. She made two copies and then handed Jack and Ham the goblet. They left the house through the French doors at the back of the house that poured onto a lovely patio with a curved line that stepped down into the garden.
“Now that I look around and think about the fact that Rita is carrying a gun that could end a rampaging elephant, I feel ridiculous,” Vi confessed.
Victor glanced at Vi and then told her, “You had someone hold a gun to your head, Vi.”
Vi didn’t reply right away. Instead she considered. The memory of it was wispier now. It seemed that it had faded in the light of being with family and friends and among those who loved her. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been scared before. It wasn’t, even, that she hadn’t feared for her life before or that it hadn’t affected her. But, when it came down to it, this time it wasn’t lingering.
“I don’t think they were going to hurt me.”
“Because you’re all right now?” Victor cursed and Vi lifted a brow with a glance at Rita.
“Because it was alarming in the process, but I don’t have this lingering fear like I do from other circumstances, Victor. I would be terrified if I saw Preston Bates today because I know he would hurt me if he could. He followed me and terrorized
