Chapter 16
Fifty-Six Days Until the End of the Summer Excavation Season
On an afternoon like this, it feels impossible that the sky will ever be anything but Montana blue. Even the rising breeze wouldn’t necessarily have tipped Ripley off that the weather was about to change.
But this morning’s satellite weather report begged to differ. Even without the cartoon clouds added to the Doppler images, it was clear what the swirling, eastward-moving system would bring: water, and lots of it.
“Think it’s gonna rain?” Cara asks, watching Griff chisel underneath the small raptor she’s been working on.
“Hmph,” Ripley grumbles.
“Come on, that was funny.”
It is and it isn’t. Out here, rain can grant your wishes, washing away surface soil so fossils can shine through like the nerdy girl who finally takes off her glasses in a high-school movie.
It can also lay a curse, scattering bones and fracturing them into unreconstructible fragments.
It can flood any dig site that’s below ground level, which is pretty much all of them.
Beauty is safely above the canyon floor, but Cara’s raptor isn’t—hence the extraction. It’s small, but with the surrounding matrix, the cap, and the wooden supports, it’ll be pretty chunky.
“Ready, mate?” Griff puts his tools aside and rolls the specimen into Smithson’s waiting arms.
“How much plaster did you put on this thing, Ripley?” Smithson grunts, muscles popping in his neck.
“The perfect amount,” she shoots back tartly, darting to his side to thread her arm under his. The sides of their bodies brace against each other in a million-year-long line from shoulder to ankle.
It’s good to feel the fossil heavy in her hands. Good to have something to take her mind off his thighs, tensed like hardwood against her own. Her breast brushes the outside of his arm. He twitches like he’s been stung by a bee.
Even essential touch feels somehow loaded. Volatile.
The second they set the fossil into its crate, they step briskly apart. Griff glances back and forth between them, one eyebrow cocked at a disconcerted angle. Cara smirks openly.
Smithson looks away. “I have a conference-planning meeting scheduled, if you won’t be needing me?”
“Do me a sport and grab Cara an extra bag of plaster before you go?” Griff asks, filling a bucket from the hose. Smithson heads for the shed.
“Do me a sport? Did you make that up?” Cara sticks her tongue in her cheek.
Griff thinks for a moment. He’s been challenging himself to come up with new ways not to say no. “If I make anything up, it’s because you like it.”
“Oh, go away,” Cara says, blushing and flapping her hands at him. He grins and obeys.
Ripley wipes her hands on her shorts. The storm prep looks good, but she’s never left the dig during a weather event before. Only the investigation could’ve persuaded her to take a trip.
She didn’t think she’d care this much about what Will was doing, but that was before she read his abstract.
It’s hard to be sure his find is the same species as hers when she only has a wing and Will’s wings aren’t complete.
But from what she could see in the ridiculously pixelated images, the coracoid—the shoulder bone Smithson made such a big deal about—is very similar; so similar that she had to put her head between her knees for a minute.
Smithson was right about the data, though.
The fossil, the scans, the ash analysis—all perfect.
Too perfect. She’d give anything to get her hands on that fossil and rerun the tests.
But since Will isn’t exactly cooperating, that leaves one option: trying to find someone who knows something and getting them to talk.
Smithson thought they should start with emails and phone calls—might as well do the cheapest, easiest thing first—but so far, the grad-school acquaintances, private collectors, and museum directors Ripley knows have been cagey. Smithson’s luck has been no better.
Only Rita, the other woman in Ripley’s PhD program, was forthcoming—although not about Will. “My advice? Drop it. I know you won’t, but at least stop sending fucking emails. Take people for lunch. Booze them up. And do not let anyone—especially your ex—get wind of what you’re doing.”
Ripley immediately felt stupid and naive. Of course someone has to go see potential sources in person. And given Smithson’s travel issues, it has to be her.
“You going to be okay during the storm, C.?”
“I’ll be fine. If the weather gets too wild, me and James will drive to the big house. Naaáhsa will cook too much food and complain to cover up how much she loves having guests. I won’t be lonely,” Cara says, an odd note in her voice.
Ripley follows her gaze to where Griff squats beside Finn. He points at a couple of spots in Finn’s storm preparations, then gives his skinny shoulder a brotherly slap.
“He’s going to Bozeman with the crew, huh?”
Cara shakes her head. “He’s not the type who can be tied down. No matter what he says.”
“You want to talk about it?” Ripley asks cautiously. She’s been trying to open up more, but despite Cara’s lecture on closeness, the younger woman doesn’t always want to reciprocate.
“Don’t worry about me, Rip. Have fun in Canada.”
“Canada?” comes a voice at Ripley’s elbow, the word finished with a plummy extra consonant: Canader.
It’s unfortunate that when she hears his voice, it both scratches an itch and starts a new one. The second he stops speaking, she wants more. It’s not a great position to be in with two months to go in the summer. She has to try hard to act normal around him.
“Yup, you and me are getting left behind this weekend. Sorry, eh?” Cara gives Smithson a friendly nudge with her shoulder.
“Who’s in Can—”
Jordin trots up to them, vibrating at a near-audible frequency.
“Ripley, can you recheck my site?” Belatedly, she clocks Smithson, interrupted mid–hand gesture.
“Sorry, James. I just want to make sure everything’s flawless.
” Flawless is Jordin’s whole value system.
Except for the bucket and falling in love with the most careless guy in camp, she generally pulls it off.
Although Matteo’s far less unreliable these days.
Cara slips away, possibly to evade more questions. Ripley turns to Jordin. “I know you’re careful. I trust you.”
“I deepened the trench anyway. I couldn’t forgive myself if—”
Ripley sets a hand on each of Jordin’s shoulders. “Perfect is the enemy of good, Jordin. You did a good job. I know it’s hard to wait, but it’s all we can do.”
Jordin hurries away. “I’d hate to see her at the beach,” Ripley mutters. “She probably tries to hold back the tide.”
Smithson looks at Jordin’s retreating figure, then at Ripley. He has a way of making her feel like he’s genuinely taking her perspective. Like he’s standing at her shoulder without thinking about how he can step in front of her.
“It’s not easy to be away when disaster might be happening. The crew needs your reassurance more than anything.”
“You make it sound like I’m their mom.”
“You are, in a way. They want to do good work for you. They want you to be proud of them.”
Ripley makes a noncommittal sound. “I think you’re the president of the parental-pride department these days, Professor.”
“They’re infatuated with me, perhaps. When they have real problems, it’s you they want.”
Not for the first time, Ripley wishes her pleasure in his praise wasn’t so obvious: the flushed cheeks, the grin she can’t quite stifle. He’s good at compliments. She shouldn’t like that he notices what she’s doing and who she talks to. She shouldn’t wonder what else he notices.
“They’re good kids,” she says, trying to be cool.
“They are. So…Canada.” He says it mildly, but his body is tense, elbows cocked like his hands are planning a jailbreak from his pockets.
“Yeah,” she says. “Kind of a last-minute decision.”
“It was my impression we would be working on the investigation at weekends. Together.”
“Yes, but this weekend is the Fourth. No one’s checking their voicemail, because everyone will be some combination of sunburned, hungover, and sleep-deprived for the next ninety-six hours. And your paleobotanist friend is coming next weekend. I figure now’s the time to go see Charlie.”
“Ah.” He takes a beat. “Charlie is…a friend?” His face is glassy and reflective like the surface of the ocean at sunset, except for a muscle flexing in his cheek. Ripley can’t stop looking at it.
“Charlie Bassa,” she says. “In Drumheller.”
His jaw unclenches. “Dr. Bassa. Of course,” he says, and makes a little sound like ha. “He’s still at the Royal Tyrrell?”
“Yes, and he’s still a distinguished expert. Archaeoraptor doesn’t change that.” Charlie’s career never quite recovered from his support for the infamous “Piltdown Chicken,” even after he admitted he’d been fooled and then worked to discredit the fraud.
“His experience with hoaxes could be useful,” Smithson says, brows drawing down thoughtfully. “When do we leave?”
She laughs incredulously. “You do not have to come on a nonessential seven-hour car trip, Smithson. I wouldn’t put you through that.”
Also, seven hours in a car with him. His fingers would brush hers sooner or later.
They’d both go to adjust the stereo at the same time, or he’d open her drink before passing it over.
He’d stretch his shoulders; roll his neck; maybe even fall asleep.
His face would be unguarded, his body slack and tender.
The fact that she wants to glance over, see him sleeping, and turn the music down is precisely why he shouldn’t come. The reasons she needs to keep things professional with him haven’t changed, even if she’s having trouble remembering them sometimes.
She puts a hand on his arm, intending to talk him down. “It was my idea. I didn’t clear it with you. I know you don’t like cars.”
“Well, I can hardly cycle there,” he points out. “It’s a touch farther than my usual commute from Regent’s Park to St. Albans.”
“You bike around London?” Ripley asks, horrified.
“It’s rather a lovely city for cycling, actually.
” He hesitates, then adds, “London is a superb destination for paleontology. There really is nothing like the feeling of walking into the research collection at the Natural History Museum.” He’s wearing his inscrutable look again, like he’s dropping a line and waiting for her to bite.
“We’re getting off topic. I don’t want you to endure fourteen hours in a car for a one-hour conversation.”
“But if the car were no object, would you want me to come?” He’s examining her face the way he looked at the bones in the Clever Girl Museum, as if he’s cataloging every tiny reaction.
His eyes look like Montana, brown and green and blue together.
There’s no way she can lie to him when he’s looking at her like this.
“You’re relentless,” she says, a little desperately. “Yes, okay? I’d want you there. But—”
“Then I’ll come.”
“Smithson—”
“It’s my investigation,” he says, every inch the haughty Brit. “Besides, I can’t do any good here, and a friend would be helpful for you there. Correct?” He glowers at her.
“God, fine.” Charlie would enjoy talking to him.
“That’s settled, then. Given the choice, I will always go where I am most useful to you, Ripley.”
His voice is one part satisfaction, one part stubbornness, and one part something Ripley recognizes from when he tied her shoe. Regret, maybe? Penance? There’s something noble and something painful mixed together, like a lion with a thorn in his paw.
I’m keeping you alive, Ripley Adams. For science.
“We leave first thing tomorrow.”
“I’ll be ready.”