Chapter 32 #2
“I guess I want answers, Ripley,” he says, impatience leaking into his tone.
“Maury said you’d found something—ah, you didn’t think I knew about your little discovery,” Will says, pursing his mouth with the pleasure of serving her an unpleasant surprise.
“I mean, it’s one wing. I didn’t think much of it until I heard you were asking questions about me.
You and—this is where it gets really weird—James Smithson,” he says, lingering over the name.
“Unfortunately, nobody who mattered had heard from you for years. And Maury didn’t know where you were—Montana, the Dakotas, they’re all flyover states to him. So I went looking for Smithson instead.”
It bothers her to hear Will use that name. She turns and shoves her cart too forcefully into the return slot, drowning him out with the clang of metal on metal.
Will gives a single hard laugh. “Oh, so it’s like that. Same old Ripley, falling into bed with every guy she works with.”
The pleasure in his voice grates up her spine. She hates herself for not being able to keep a secret even when her mouth is closed. “Don’t be disgusting. And don’t think I don’t know it was you who started those rumors about me sleeping with you so I could steal your work.”
He shrugs. “It’s not my fault that people found those rumors very believable, Ripley.
In any case, Smithson was almost unfindable.
Oxford said he was at Berkeley. Berkeley said he was working remotely.
But luckily, when the author of the most important paper at the APS meeting had some crucial documents for the director of the theropod stream, the admin was more than happy to give me his PO box number in a little town called Hercules. ”
Will gestures grandly at the mountains. “You’d be surprised how hard it is to find someone in such a small town. I was about to give up when I spotted your dad’s car. I thought, What are the chances? And here you are.”
He winks broadly. “I’m up for a promotion this year.
Lot of pressure to publish something big.
Ballard’s never gotten over that paper you killed, you know.
He wants a piece of scholarship based on that idea but unique enough that we don’t have to credit your work. That is not very fucking easy, Ripley.”
Will takes a step forward, trapping her between his body and the car. “But I’ve been lucky for a change. And I don’t intend to let anyone mess with that.”
Ripley puts her hand on the side of the Charger. It’s warm from the sun, solid like her dad’s love. Nobody lets Steve Adams’s daughter do anything.
She raises her voice: “Leave, Will. Right now.”
Will’s eyes narrow. “I forgot how you like making a scene. That won’t work this—”
“I believe,” says a voice dark with unspeakable intention, “the lady asked you to leave.”
Will turns and takes a startled step back. His radioactive smirk falters as he clocks the hard set to James’s mouth, not to mention the drill in his white-knuckled hands.
Will’s over six feet tall. He can’t be too used to confronting someone who outstrips him in height and breadth and possession of power tools.
“S-Smithson,” he stutters. “Wish I could say I’m surprised.”
“Go. Now.” James steps forward, tightening his grip on the drill.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Will says, raising his hands like he’s the victim. Ripley should’ve expected him to take that role. “I hate to think what the APS would say about the director of the theropod stream threatening the incoming Othniel Marsh Chair.”
Ripley would give anything to take back the small, wounded sound that tears from her throat, but she can’t seem to stop betraying her secrets. “You’re getting the Marsh Chair?”
Will lays a finger across his lips. “Shh. It hasn’t been announced yet.”
The Marsh is worth two hundred thousand dollars a year, renewable for five years.
With a million dollars in peer-reviewed funding plus Maury as a backer, Will can do anything he wants, go anywhere he wants, work with anyone he wants.
He can cut a deal with someone who’ll “test” his frankenfossil in return for a cushy collaboration.
He’ll be bulletproof.
Ripley turns to James. “You knew about this?”
James’s cheeks pale. “I’m sorry, Ripley. I thought telling you might hurt our—” He breaks off, glancing at Will.
A dark flame ignites behind Will’s eyes. “Hurt your what?”
She and James stay silent.
“Hurt your what, exactly?” An oily smile slicks across Will’s mouth. He backs a few steps away, looking the pair of them up and down contemptuously like it’s his decision to leave. “I should be going. See you at the APS, Smithson.”
After twenty minutes of silence punctuated only by the downshifting of the Charger’s engine at the last stop sign on the way out of Hercules, Ripley finally breaks.
“You should go back to Berkeley,” she says dully. “It’s not safe for you at Clever Girl anymore.”
James turns in his seat, one long leg canted against the console. His face is solemn. “Are you sending me away?”
“Well, you’re not working on your taxonomy, and we’ve gone as far as we can go with the investigation. There’s nothing keeping you here.”
“I disagree,” he says. “Finding Beauty and Beast—finding the truth—is an extremely effective way to disprove Will’s lies. I’d argue we’re still working on the investigation.”
“Okay, but Will’s about to hold extraordinary influence over the global paleontology community. As he’s figured out, you nosing around his abstract looks like a pretty serious conflict of interest with your role at the APS.”
“The organizers know I have concerns about his research. If they don’t like what I’m doing, they can accept my resignation from the planning committee.”
“They don’t care about conference planning, James. You arguably misused confidential information. You could be charged with academic misconduct. Your career is on the line here.”
“No,” he says with simple, breathtaking confidence. “I have tenure, Ripley. The sensationalized accusations of a middling academic at a minor university are not to be taken seriously at Oxford,” he says in a sonorous tone like he’s quoting a press release.
“But they will be taken seriously in certain circles. You haven’t published in three years, and he’s a hot new prospect. Maybe he can’t take you all the way down, but he can hurt you. He can—he can say you’re sleeping with his competition.”
James’s eyes burn. “And what things should we risk our reputations for, then? Do we stand up for truth and honor and science? Or do we give up on what’s right and take on only the battles we know we can win?”
“It’s not the worst strategy in the world,” Ripley says quietly. She’s fought ill-advised battles and discovered pride doesn’t pay the bills.
“Did I ever tell you how much I admire you, Ripley?”
“James—”
He raises a gentle hand. “Hear me out, if you please. I’ve been very, very successful, but I’ve never been brave enough to blaze my own trail like you have.
I’ve never felt the thrill in my own career that I’ve felt even as a secondhand participant in yours.
You will show people what is possible for citizen scientists to achieve, and you will do it to a degree that has not been seen since Mary Anning sold seashells by the seashore.
“And that scares certain people. They will try to obstruct your progress regardless of the cost to paleontology. And though it pains me to say it, you and Cara and a few thousand dollars in funding will not be able to stop them.” His fingers twist an invisible signet ring.
“I find I no longer care what such people may try to do to me. If you allow me to, I will bring all my power and privilege to bear on your behalf, and damn the consequences. When you—” He stops, takes a breath, starts again.
“When you care for someone, you want your life to look different. You want that person to be happy, even if that means they’re happy without you.
“I’ll go if you want me to, Ripley. But for your sake and mine, I beg you to let me stay.”
Ripley’s hands clench on the wheel, indecision ripping her down the middle like a piece of paper whose edges will never come together properly again.
She can’t be objective, and neither can he.
They’ve tangled up themselves and the dig and their wants and needs beyond any reasonable ability to pick the threads apart.
Three weeks. That’s all they have left. In the span of a lifetime, it’s nothing.
For her and James, it might be everything.
“You should go.” She watches his chest crumple in her peripheral vision. “Staying would be the stupidest thing you’ve done in your life. If I know Will at all, he’ll be trying even harder to destroy me. To destroy us. You should lawyer up,” she says. “If you decide to stay, that is.”
He takes a jagged breath, lets it out on a broken sigh. Ripley heard him make that sound when his medication kicked in. It broke her heart a little then, and it breaks it a little now.
“All right, then,” he says softly, putting his hand over hers on the gearshift. “We stay.”