Jurassic Heart (16 page)

“We work hard for a few months at a time, but there are no guarantees of the next job in this industry. A few people get long-term contracts or university appointments, and most of us write for academic journals to earn extra money when we’re between gigs. You never exactly know where the next contract is coming from.

“Anyway. Why did you ask?”

Hunter looked nervous. “I’ve got this cabin, well, I part own it with my brothers. We built it out in the woods, a few hours from here. I was wondering if you wanted to go out there with me.”

“You want a dirty weekend away?”

“Yeah,” he said with a smirk.

As I mentally flicked through the amount of work that needed to be done, I berated myself for being such a nerd, for being so tied to my job (emotionally and otherwise) that I couldn’t justify going away for a couple of days. Especially when sex was pretty much guaranteed.

“I’ll try and arrange for someone to cover for me,” I said. “I can’t leave the dig without someone in charge.”

“Would Boner do it?”

“Maybe. I’d have to ask him.”

Hunter nodded. “Okay. Well, do that, because I’d really like to take you out there.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I repeated, but I kissed him again before I left to show him I was serious.

Boner was initially skeptical and questioned me for a full ten minutes on whether Hunter had any psychopathic tendencies. I got around his interrogation by telling him he would need to work closely with Raven while I was away. His blue eyes lit up at that suggestion, and his opinion on Hunter’s mental health suddenly changed.

I wasn’t sure what was going on between Raven and Boner, but the whole thing was slightly freaking me out, so I tried not to dwell on it too often. After reporting back to Hunter via text message that I was able to do the trip, I rushed the work I had to do in an attempt to get ahead.

I
T
HAD
been a couple of days since he asked me, so when Hunter turned up on-site, I thought he was there to bug me about his trip to the cabin. Instead, he caught me just after I’d gone through the morning meeting and dismissed the team.

He had a coffee for me in a neat recyclable cup, so I decided to listen to him instead of sending him away with a flea in his ear.

“What?” I demanded as I took my coffee.

“I thought it might be good for me to see how you work,” he said with a charming smile.

“You’ve never even seen us work before?” I demanded with a rush of irritation. How the fuck could he assess what damage we did without seeing it firsthand?

“Well, I’ve been on a few digs, but trying to watch the professionals is hard. Most aren’t that forthcoming when I ask to observe.”

“I guess I know why.”

“So… can I watch?”

I wasn’t convinced, but I was excavating something, so it was a good time, if any, for him to be around.

“Come on, then,” I said.

Hunter followed me down to the trench and crouched down a respectable distance away. I sniffed in amusement.

“I’m afraid you’re going to need to get your hands dirty if you really want to watch.”

I was pleased when he flushed with embarrassment. “I was trying to stay out of your way.”

“Go home, then.”

He pushed me in the shoulder. I deserved it, and shuffled over to make room for him in the trench.

“So we think this is likely to be another Othnielosaurus,” I said. “We’ve dug up a couple of them in this area already, and it follows the same body shape. I haven’t uncovered enough of it to make a formal identification yet, though.”

Hunter nodded and leaned in closer. “You haven’t uncovered much at all,” he said.

“I know,” I said, laughing. “But if you know a lot about the animal, then you can make good guesses. Because I’ve seen a few of these recently, I recognize certain things about it.”

“Okay.”

Since he seemed genuinely interested, I explained each of my tools in detail. They weren’t all “professional” tools, more like an accumulation of things I’d picked up over the years, either due to recommendations or experience. My kit ranged from things designed to remove tiny particles of dirt at a time—dental picks, artists’ brushes, toothbrushes―to shovels that could shift big clumps of soil or rock.

“How do you break through the rock layers?”

“Well, we already know from the reports on the strata—that’s layers of rock—which is likely to be a layer from the time of the dinosaurs. From there, we use the heavier machinery to remove the topsoil and the layers from more recent eras. Occasionally we find interesting stuff in those layers on our way down to what we’re really looking for.”

“So you do the reports, it says there’s the right rock layer, and you start digging?”

“Pretty much,” I admitted. “Sometimes it’s more complex than that, sometimes it’s a lot simpler. Every now and then, we get a call from someone—a member of the public—who has had a rockslide in their backyard after heavy rain and found something poking up out of the ground.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” I said, laughing. “Often this isn’t a precise science, not at the beginning.”

“So River is your geologist, right?”

“Right.”

“So she tests the layers of rock… what for?”

“Oh, all sorts of things,” I said. “She’ll go through that with you in detail if you’re really interested. In basic terms, she verifies what time period the animal was from based on what we know already. That can help us formally identify an animal when we’re not sure what it is.

“Can I get on with digging now?” I asked, only partly joking.

“Yeah, of course. Sorry.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

With Hunter watching, commenting, asking questions, I worked at a slower pace than I would normally, but it wasn’t the first time I’d had an amateur or an interested observer, so I was used to the disruption.

Since he was there and willing to be useful, I gave him the job of taking photos each time we had something new. And he seemed to be overly excited about the rubber cement we used, painting it onto the bones to protect them from the elements before they were removed from the ground, so I let him have a go at doing that, as well.

After a couple of hours, I’d uncovered a large section of the animal’s thorax, working up to what I was hoping would be a skull. It was another neat find, and I was quietly excited.

“I need to take a break,” I said, standing up in the trench and stretching.

“Oh. Sure. Of course.”

Before we left, I snapped a few more photos, first of the trench, then of Hunter, just to tease him. He pouted and made faces at me, but I just laughed, pleased I had some pictures of him.

“We need to protect the area every time we leave,” I said. “Often, you can’t get a whole skeleton out in one day, so we pin the tarps over the top to stop anyone—or anything—falling in and damaging what’s there.”

“What about the rubber cement?”

I shook my head. “That’s to protect the bones from the air, rain, stuff like that,” I said. “It wouldn’t protect them from a possum jumping in there and digging around.”

“Does that actually happen?”

“No… because we make sure to cover them up,” I said with a smile. He offered me a hand to pull me out of the trench, and I took it, even though I didn’t need it. When we were back on level ground, he seemed unwilling to let go, and I had to twist my hand out of his.

“Do you want coffee?” I asked. “River has just put a filter coffee machine in the trailer, so we’ve got good stuff, not just the instant crap.”

“That would be great. Thanks. I want to jot down some notes too, if you don’t mind.”

“Only if I can read them after.”

“You’re a tough one, Dr. Eisenberg,” he said with a little smile. When we reached the top of the hill, he grabbed my arm. “Can I show you something? It won’t take long.”

I nodded. “Sure.”

The path that led from the parking lot to the trailer extended farther into the trees. I’d noticed it before but never bothered to follow the trail. It was this path that Hunter hiked up, his long legs eating up the ground so quickly that I had to nearly jog to keep pace with him.

After a few minutes, we came to another clearing. It was a similar size to the site we were working, although more difficult to access, and the ground was a lot rockier. There was a stream running through the area.

“Okay, you don’t need to say anything. I get your point,” I said as we stood side by side, looking down the craggy hill.

“Who said I was trying to make a point?”

“You’re always trying to make a point,” I countered. “That’s what you
do
.”

“Are you going to restore the site to this when you’re done?” he asked, sweeping his arm out toward the hill.

“In my defense, I don’t think our site looked like this when Eric White arrived,” I said.

“Do you know what it
did
look like?”

“No. But there are photographs. I’ll find them for you.”

He nodded. “It’s just a good comparison, you know? From what I’ve been able to find out from aerial photographs and stuff, your site has always been much neater than this one. I think it was tidied up some back in the late eighties, early nineties, and used as a family picnic area. At one point, they had a county fair out here.”

“That would make sense,” I said. “The ground is a lot more even. They would have had to do that if they wanted to make it family friendly.”

“Exactly,” he said. “And that tree line is far too neat. Someone has removed some of the trees, planted others to form a natural barrier.”

“I can’t imagine anyone trying to dig here,” I said, taking in the mess of rocks, the stream, and the shrubs that sprawled over the clay-like ground. “It would be a nightmare.”

“I’m glad you said that,” Hunter said, turning to me with a little smile and a sparkle in his eye. “I was a bit worried you’d take it on next season.”

I laughed and turned to start back toward the trailer. “No. God, no. Do you know how much effort it would be to get equipment out there? From what I’ve heard, Eric had a bastard of a job getting it to where we are now. If someone was able to prove, without a doubt, there was something worth excavating, then I’m sure we’d be able to find a backer to fund getting the kit here. If not….” I shrugged. “It just wouldn’t be worth it.”

The trees and shrubs grew in closer on this path; there was no way anyone would be able to get a car through the space. In some places, we couldn’t even walk side by side without the undergrowth scratching at our ankles.

When we reached the lab, Hunter offered to make the coffee while I started filling in a find sheet, logging the work I’d done that morning. If River was surprised to see me being sociable with Hunter, she was good enough not to say anything, especially when he offered to make her one too.

“Apparently Eric woke up,” River said, glancing at me.

“Really? No shit. How is he?”

River shrugged. “I don’t know, I just took a call from one of the cops who’s working on the case. Said he came out of the coma yesterday sometime. They’re still keeping him under close observation, but he seems to be okay. Knows what year it is, who the president is, all the important stuff.”

“Good to know. Did he say who attacked him?”

“Nope,” she said, pouring acid into a shallow dish. “Can’t remember anything, apparently. The cop seemed quite disappointed, but they’re hoping he starts to remember stuff over the next few weeks.”

I hummed, processing that information. We had been relying on Eric to identify whoever it was who had beaten him up to lead us to whoever had been sabotaging the site. If he couldn’t remember, that particular line of investigation got closed down, and as far as I knew, the cops didn’t have any other leads. It was starting to get frustrating, and my patience was wearing thin.

For a while, we were content to sit in silence with the radio on quietly in the background, sipping coffee and doing the paperwork our jobs demanded of us. When both mine and River’s phones buzzed at the same time, we looked at each other, then reached to answer the message.

The message read:

Esteemed colleagues, employees, friends. It is with great pleasure I am able to announce that our good friend Miriam and her delightful partner Charlie welcomed their son, Sam, into the world during the early hours of the morning. Both mother and son are doing well.

I wasn’t sure I believed Mim would name her son Sam. In fact, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t. River was watching me when I looked up.

“Do you think the kid is really named Sam?”

“I doubt it,” I said.

About half an hour later, another message came through. This one was from Mim.

Esteemed colleagues, peers, friends. Please ignore the astonishing hubris of our dear friend Mr. Hetherington. My son is not named Sam. His name is Cayden. Thank you for all your kind wishes.

River laughed and lifted her mug in a toast. “I’m really glad she didn’t call the kid Sam. We’d never hear the end of it.”

“Whose kid?” Hunter asked.

“Mim’s. Um, Miriam Blume. She’s a colleague of ours. She used to teach most of us, actually, when we were at UCLA.”

He nodded. “I’ve heard of her.”

“Really? She’d probably love that. We all like being famous.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘renowned,’” River said. “Or, in my case, legendary.”

“Paired with Raven, you
are
legendary,” I said, teasing.

River made a “yucky” face. “I don’t want to be half of a whole, though,” she said. “That’s why we stopped working together. People were starting to expect both of us to turn up when they had only asked for one. And only paid for one.”

“That sucks,” Hunter said sympathetically.

“Tell me about it,” she said. “Nick and his dig were a special case.”

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

“Any time, darling.”

“I meant to tell you,” I said, hoping to sound casual. “Boner and Raven agreed to cover me so I can get away for the weekend.”

Hunter sipped his coffee and smiled like the cat who’d caught the canary. “Excellent,” he said and gave me a look that promised a lot more.