The find was exactly what it had looked like from the lip of the crevice—a femur from an enormous creature, probably one of the giants of the Cretaceous period. Mike slid an unobtrusive glance at the woman beside him. She’d stayed put at the top of the scar until he returned, as he’d asked, then she’d scrambled down the slope behind him, making no attempt to push past, and showing reasonable caution. He didn’t think that came easy for her, which made him wonder why she was suddenly so respectful of his authority.
They both set to work, exposing as much as they could of the find without damaging it, cautiously exploring to discover the extent of the bone bed. The sun was high in the sky before Liz stepped back and said, “I think we have an almost complete skeleton here.”
Mike nodded. He though so too. He also thought there might be more than one skeleton. This was a phenomenal find. “The only problem is the location.”
Liz rubbed her forehead with her arm. The cool of the morning had given way to a hot midday. “I’m going to have to get back to Scarr’s camp. He’s probably frantic by now.”
Apparently she hadn’t called in, either because she couldn’t get cell service or because she’d been so caught up in the find, she hadn’t thought to. Whichever, her need to get to Scarr’s camp suited Mike just fine. Once he was on his own, he’d be able to get his team working on staking out the find. Around here, possession was nine tenths of the law, especially when the person claiming that last tenth was not much respected in the area.
“So,” she said, breaking into his thoughts. “Are you going to tell me what the GPS reading is?”
He looked at her blankly, his mind scrambling for a reply.
She laughed. “You don’t think I missed you checking the readings earlier, do you? Come on, Edmonds, give. Who has the legal right to dig this creature?”
He cursed himself for assuming she’d be easily duped, just because her heart-shaped face, big blue eyes, and soft, lush lips were so totally feminine and, well, sweet, somehow.
She wasn’t sweet or soft. She was prickly and tough. He knew that from last night and from her reputation as Scarr’s site supervisor. She stood there, now, hands now in her pockets, her stance relaxed as she stared at him. There was challenge in those wide blue eyes, and the amusement in her expression somehow added a feminine power to her features. She was all woman, intelligent, strong, and determined. She wasn’t going to give in easily.
Slowly, he smiled. Nor would he. “What makes you think I took a GPS reading?”
“Because I would have,” she said with a shrug.
Well, that was unexpected. Still, he liked that forthright quality, so he said, “You’re right, I did do a check.”
She raised her brows when he didn’t continue. “Are you trying to make me beg?”
At that he grinned. “It’s a thought.” She shot him a fierce frown and he laughed. “Okay, I’ll give it to you straight.”
“That would be appreciated,” she said, her tone tart.
He chuckled again and touched the exposed bone that first drew them into the gully. “This is on my side of the border.” He walked the length of the animal’s body to the last bone they’d found, one from the creature’s neck and pointed. “This is on Scarr’s.”
She sucked in a breath and her breasts swelled beneath the thin t-shirt. “Shared jurisdiction?”
He was momentarily distracted by imaginings that had nothing to do with the workplace. He dragged his mind away from her body and back where it should be, on this momentous find. “Most of the skeleton is on my side of the line. I dig the site.”
She frowned at the bones for a minute, then looked squarely at him. Her expression was all business. “Scarr will dispute. He’ll get an injunction to keep you from digging and he’ll pull in every expert in the field he can to destroy your reputation before the case ever gets to court.”
She was right. He’d met guys like Dr. Alfred Scarr before. “I don’t have a reputation to destroy. I’m already an outlaw in the paleo field. What Scarr and his colleagues think doesn’t matter to me.”
She shook her head. Her short blond hair, cut long in the front, but short on the sides, fell into her eyes. She raked the bangs away in an impatient move. “You don’t know Scarr. Whatever has happened before, he’ll make it worse.”
“I’ll take my chances.” She actually looked worried. He appreciated her concern, but he didn’t think she had any idea of how far out of the tightly knit academic community he was. If Scarr dragged in professors and scholars to condemn him, they’d only be heaping their dirt onto an already huge pile.
“Look.” She drew in a deep breath. “There’s a good chance that there’s more here than one skeleton. This area has tremendous potential. It needs to be thoroughly explored. I think we’ll find there are more bones on Scarr’s side of the line and on yours. This will be a major site and you will have to work it with the professionals.”
The word grated. “I am a professional.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Okay, my mistake. With academics like me, or Dr. Scarr. The relationship needs to be cordial—”
Still annoyed, he said, “Not likely.”
She actually laughed at that. “Okay. You’re right. It’s hard to be pleasant to Alfred Scarr. Let’s say polite, then. I can do that. I can be polite, even cordial. Let me talk to Scarr. See what I can work out.”
“You want to carve out a place for yourself here.” The flush that ran up under her tan told him he’d hit the mark.
“What’s wrong with that? Yes, I want to stay. Yes, I want to continue a career in this field, and if Scarr sends me away before the season is over, I’ll have zero chance of ever finding another posting. So, yeah, I’m going to do what I have to, to make this work for me.”
Her jaw had hardened and her chin, which already had a determined jut to it, became more pronounced. Her expression had settled into bleak lines, exposing her desperation. He understood that emotion and he sympathized. Slowly he nodded. “Talk to Scarr, then. I’m willing to negotiate a compromise, but I’m not going to let him push me around.”
A flicker of relief showed on her face, though a shadow of concern remained. “Thanks.” She held out her hand. “Partner.”
Slowly, not sure he was doing the right thing, he reached out and closed his hand over hers. They shook. The deal was done.
As she walked into the admin tent, Liz heard the sound of voices coming from the area Scarr had partitioned off for his office. The undergrad who had been cataloguing finds when she stormed out the day before looked up as she strode into the tent. Her serious expression brightened and she opened her mouth to say something, by way of greeting, Liz thought. She didn’t want Scarr to know she’d arrived, though, so she put her finger to her lips. The girl frowned and closed her mouth. Liz smiled her thanks and continued on to the office.
The voices inside were male. She recognized Scarr’s light tenor, but not the deeper one that replied. That could only mean one thing—Zachary Doyle had arrived. It fit. He was supposed to arrive on the eleven AM plane today. Scarr must have used one of the other vehicles to drive into town to pick him up. She hid a smile. Zac’s presence suited her just fine.
Reaching the partition, she lifted the flap that served as a door and stepped into Scarr’s office. The two men were huddled around the simple wood table that served as Scarr’s desk. They both looked up as she entered. There was momentary astonishment on Scarr’s face, then the emotion morphed into an annoyed frown that edged into narrow-eyed temper. The butterflies that had taken flight in her belly the moment she parked the pickup in Scarr’s special spot, rioted in panic at the look. She fought the nerves they expressed. She wasn’t going to be Scarr’s victim. This time she was going to win their confrontation.
She smiled at Scarr, then she turned to Zac and held out her hand. “Hi, you must be Zachary Doyle. I’m Liz Hamilton. It’s nice to meet you.”
Zachary Doyle did not look like a man in his mid-twenties. His thick hair was blond and curly, even though he wore it cut short. On his round face a dusting of freckles marched from his cheeks across his snub nose, and there was a guileless expression in his wide blue eyes that Liz knew had nothing to do with the personality of the man himself.
He slid a look at Scarr before he accepted her hand. Liz glanced at Scarr too. He was watching the exchange with that same narrow-eyed look that promised painful repercussions, but he wasn’t making his move yet.
“Zac Doyle,” Zac said, completely unnecessarily. His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “I understand you are going to give me a tour before you head off.”
“Oh, yeah,” Liz said. “Do I have a tour planned.” Scarr was sitting behind his makeshift desk, while Zac had one of the two folding chairs on the other side. Liz grabbed the second chair and sat down.
“I wouldn’t make myself comfortable,” Scarr snapped. “You’ll be leaving as soon as you pack your gear.”
Now that she was into the confrontation, Liz was beginning to enjoy herself. The butterflies were still flapping around with more energy than she liked, but at least she could ignore them now. She grinned at Scarr. “You’ll want to come along, Dr. Scarr. This is a tour you won’t want to miss.”
From the corner of her eye she saw Scarr and Zac share a confused look, then Scarr said, “You took my truck yesterday. I should have reported it stolen. You’re lucky I didn’t.”
When she drove the long, roundabout detour from the washout back to the camp, she thought about how Scarr would react to her return and what he’d say. A less self-centered man would be frantic with worry about the absence of a team member during a storm of last night’s magnitude, but she knew Scarr and was quite sure he wouldn’t even think about the potential for danger. Scarr was a control freak. She figured he’d be angry that she hadn’t fallen neatly into his plans. She’d structured her whole defense based on that assumption. It looked like she’d been right.
“No,” she said, drawing the word out and smiling. “You’re lucky you didn’t.”
Scarr was so enraged by that cocky and, yes, cheeky, statement that his face flooded a bright red. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again without speaking. He half rose from his seat, a threatening move meant to prove dominance. Liz stayed where she was and kept her smile in place.
Zac said, “I’m new here and out of the loop. Can you fill me in?”
Scarr subsided into his chair, though his expression remained thunderous.
Nice gambit, Liz thought. Zac’s question had defused the situation and saved his mentor’s dignity at the same time. “Sure. If Dr. Scarr had notified the cops that the truck and one of his team members was missing, they might have found me last night before the storm made travel impossible.”
She paused to survey her audience before she delivered her punch line. “And that would have been a shame.”
Her statement didn’t make much of an impact on Scarr. His expression hadn’t changed. He was still furious. She suspected he wasn’t listening at this point. Zac, on the other hand got it. The guileless blue gaze sharpened, though his facial expression was still one of polite interest, nothing more.
“You see,” she continued, “I wouldn’t have found the washout this morning.” She watched understanding dawn on both their faces. Washouts were a gift from heaven, nature’s way of shifting layers of soil and exposing the strata beneath without any effort on the paleontologist’s part.
Zac sucked in a breath and Scarr frowned. “You found something?”
She nodded slowly, still smiling. Smugly now, she thought. “One full skeleton, maybe more.”
“Congratulations!” Zac said.
“You’ll take us there now,” Scarr said. He pushed back his chair, this time with the intent of leaving the office.
Liz didn’t move. “There’s a problem.”
Scarr hesitated. “What?”
“The washout is huge. It stretches from federal land across the boundary.”
“Into Discovering Dinos’ permit area,” Scarr said flatly.
“Discovering Dinos?” Zac said. “The paleo pirates?”
Scarr nodded. He pulled his chair back to his desk, then drummed his fingers on the rough wooden surface. He stared blankly, lost in thought for a moment, then he shot her a penetrating look and said, “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Yup. We took measurements and GPS readings.”
“We?”
That was Zac and Liz thought he had once again caught on faster than Scarr had. She said, “Mike Edmonds and I.”
“Mike Edmonds!” Scarr sounded shocked and furious at the same time.
“The pirate himself?” Zac said. He looked amused. There was a sneer in his tone.
Liz resented that. She resented that these two men had dismissed Mike Edmonds so summarily. She’d worked with him for hours this morning and he’d been meticulous in his documentation as he explored the extent of the find, careful to damage nothing. Yes, he worked in the private sector, funding his excavations through the sale of the bones he found, but he wasn’t a pirate. He didn’t steal the finds of other paleontologists.
“How much of the skeleton is on our side of the line?” Scarr snapped, still tapping the desk with his fingers.
“Probably half, maybe a third.”
“The head?”
She shrugged. “We couldn’t find it.”
More tapping, then Scarr pushed back his chair again. “We need to go out there and take a look.”
Liz nodded. “Sure. The skeleton is almost completely intact. It’s a huge beast. We’ll have to work with Mike Edmonds to excavate. A joint project, with joint reporting.”
“We?” Zac said. His tone was innocent. The word itself was a bombshell.
Scarr shot him a speculative look, then he nodded and said, “Zac is right. There’s no ‘we’ here. You’re headed home tomorrow.”
Liz expected Scarr to pull something like this. She thought she was prepared for it, for how she would feel when he tried to snatch the find of a lifetime out from under her. She wasn’t. She had to fight the rage that flooded through her and threatened to subvert her careful planning with a temper tantrum of epic proportions. She sat very still, breathed deeply and slowly.
She turned fire into ice before she said, “I’m not going home.”
“Sure you are,” Scarr said. “A find like this is too important to mess around with. Zac will be heading up this team.”
She shook her head, slowly, emphatically. “No, Dr. Scarr, he won’t, and I’m not going home, because the only person Mike Edmonds is willing to work cooperatively with, is me. If I’m not the one supervising our side of the dig, then you’ll only have half a dino when you’re finished.”