Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Maybe wasn’t “no.”
I nodded. “Do you know how to get there? Or know what direction it’s in? We can take the ATV. And even in this form, you can smell better than I can, so you can help me find them, if you want to go.” I looked at Duncan. “You smell too and tell me if you sense them close, okay, Donut?”
“Yes,” Duncan agreed, his tail swinging behind him.
“Are they gonna get in trouble?” the little girl asked.
“I have no idea,” I told her. “But it would be better for them to get in a little bit of trouble than get hurt, or worse. Right?”
I’d known she was a logical child, but I definitely knew it when she agreed almost instantly.
When we got to the warehouse, there were a few vehicles missing, which wasn’t uncommon since it was the weekend. I got into the first one that fit four to six people. Agnes jumped on the bench seat to my right, and Duncan got in too, opting for the floorboard. I didn’t see a single person after I pulled out of the garage, so I tried to call Henri. He didn’t answer, and his voicemail was full. I tried calling Phoebe, but she didn’t answer either, so I left a voicemail.
“Hi, Phoebe, there’s a chance the boys might have gone looking for a waterfall. I don’t know where that’s at, but I’m going to follow Agnes’s lead. Please call me. Bye,” I rattled off before hanging up. I guess it was just going to be us. “Point where you think they might have gone, Mini Wolf,” I instructed the girl buckled into the seat next to me.
Duncan would figure out a way to tell me if he noticed anything, that went unsaid.
She pointed straight out into the woods to the side of the warehouse, but what was I going to do? Ask her if she was sure? I had no idea where to start, and one place was just as good as any other when we had no other leads, I figured.
Shiloh and Pascal were going to be dead meat, and I couldn’t say they weren’t going to deserve it.
With my two companions sniffing the air, we were off down the gravel road, going in the direction that Henri and Randall had both taken me on the times we’d ventured out into the more remote parts of the forest. Fortunately, the vehicle we were in was electric and quiet, other than the tires going over small rocks and loose branches too small to be relocated.
“Pascal! Shiloh!” I started yelling once we’d gotten some distance from the clubhouse. The road was getting less maintained and more dirt-packed but still visible enough to follow. Duncan and I hadn’t come out in this direction much when we went for walks. The paths were rougher over here than they were everywhere else on the ranch. “Do you smell them?” I asked the kids.
Agnes’s eyes swept the area. “Not close.”
“No,” Duncan answered.
I slowed down and stuck to the road that was getting narrower and bumpier the further we got from the residential part of the ranch. The trees were becoming slimmer and in thicker clusters, the magic in the air getting sweeter.
A small hand touched my arm eventually. “Around here.”
I let the UTV come to a stop, and Agnes unbuckled her seat belt and got out before I did the same, Duncan following. Agnes moved through the trees like she knew each and every one of them by name, taking big inhales through her nose as she walked forward a little bit, then turned one direction then another, visibly sniffing. Her face was pinched in concentration.
“Shiloh! Pascal!” I yelled again.
“This way,” Agnes instructed, her hand rising to point, before frowning. She looked so much like Henri making that face, it would have made me smile under any other circumstances.
Duncan and I followed her, walking on and on and on, further and further from the UTV. I really hoped I could remember where I’d left it. Eventually, we came up to a river. It was raging, gurgling over half-buried boulders, pushing an unimaginable amount of water every second.
“What are they doing coming out here by themselves?” I asked. “Why are they looking for the waterfall? Because they’re bored?”
That got her to glance at me, her eyes wider than normal.
“I just want to know. I’m not going to ground them. They’re already busted.”
She didn’t answer, but she did keep going, waiting a little bit before muttering something under her breath.
I asked her to repeat herself. “I’m not going to get them in trouble, Agnes. I promise. I just want to understand why they keep wandering off into the woods.”
“They want to see the waterfall,” she answered in a huff.
The urge to ask what freaking waterfall was on the tip of my tongue again. Matti, not Henri, nobody had ever brought up a waterfall of any kind. But the kids wanting to see it… that made sense. If no one wanted to take them… I could put the dots together.