Liz drove Alfred Scarr and Zac Doyle to the washout using Scarr’s truck. He sat shotgun. Zac wedged himself into the extra seat behind. She didn’t bother with the long detour that would have brought her back onto Mike Edmond’s permit land. Instead she took Highway 25, from the place where it met up with the road leading into Scarr’s camp, all the way to the giant rift.
She parked well away from the edge, then turned to face the two men. “The washout is about six feet deep. The skeleton is on this side. We’ll have to find a place to climb down, then I’ll show it to you.”
Scarr stared out the windscreen. “Why don’t we use the path you found earlier?”
Did the man not listen? She dragged patience out from somewhere and kept her tone pleasant. “I was on the other side of the rift. To get there from our camp, we would have had to detour about fifteen miles. I thought you wanted to get here before Mike Edmonds came back and staked out his side.”
Scarr considered that, then he nodded. “Good point. Okay, let’s go look.” He opened his door, then paused, shooting her a dismissive look. “You realize that this may all be for nothing.”
Now what was he on about? “I don’t understand.”
Scarr shrugged. “You may have got it wrong. This may be a few bones from a previously well-documented species. It may not be the big deal you think it is.” With that he climbed out of the cab, leaving Liz staring after him feeling a mixture of outrage and concern.
What if Scarr was right? What if she had discovered the skeleton of an iguanodon, or a hadrosaur, or some other well-documented species with plentiful finds? She watched Zac work his way out of the back seat and crawl out of the cab. Sure, it was almost a full skeleton and from her initial review it was well preserved. There would be useful information to be found, even if it was just a garden-variety hadrosaur. But it wouldn’t be the find of a lifetime. A career-making find that would get her a teaching position at a reputable university and a guaranteed position on digs like this one for the rest of her career.
She watched the two men walk toward the rift and decided she should get moving. She slipped out of the truck and followed them along what was left of the road.
Scarr could be messing with her head. Priming her, so that she wouldn’t put up a fight when he nominated Zac to supervise the excavation. Not that Zac Doyle needed the glory of the major find this skeleton could be. He was already on his way to a high-flying career. But Scarr would want his name associated with Zac the golden boy, not with a plodder like Liz Hamilton.
The men had stopped at the edge of the rift, where the highway was no more. Zac had his hand to his forehead, shading his eyes from the harsh sun, looking, she supposed, for a way down into the crevice. Scarr had his hands in his pockets and his head was bent. She couldn’t see what he was looking at, but from his stance she thought he was tense. When she came up beside them, she saw the reason why.
There was a man in a hard hat standing in the bottom of the rift. His bright orange vest was blindingly bright in the harsh midday sunlight. He was looking up, presumably because he had heard Scarr and Zac’s footsteps. Beside him were two other men, also wearing hardhats and vests, holding what appeared to be surveying equipment.
“Who the hell are these guys?” Scarr said, as she came up to stand beside him. His gaze never left the men in the rift.
“Mike Edmonds’ survey team, I guess,” Liz said.
As if to confirm her statement, the man who wasn’t busy setting up equipment shouted, “One of you Alfred Scarr?”
Beside her, Scarr nodded. “That’s me.”
The man in the hard hat nodded. “I’m Don Conway, county surveyor. I’m here to see how bad the damage to the road is.” He pointed to what must be the skeleton, though from where she stood, Liz couldn’t see it. “Looks like there’s a nice little dino here, waiting for you or Mike to excavate it. I’ll take readings while I’m here and let you know the exact location.”
“The dino is mine,” Scarr shouted back. He gestured toward Liz. “One of my diggers found it.”
Diggers! How dare he! She was the site supervisor and she’d been keeping Scarr’s bevy of beauteous undergrads in line since she joined the dig after she’d defended her Ph.D. and become Dr. Elizabeth Hamilton, not just plain old Liz Hamilton.
Temper boiled and she brushed past Scarr, taking herself away from him before she said anything she would later regret. She saw Zac begin to move along the edge of the rift. He must have seen a path. She followed him and was rewarded when she saw him scramble down the rocky wall.
When he reached bottom she was already halfway down. He paused to wait for her. “Where’s the skeleton?” he asked.
She pointed toward the surveying crew. “There.”
Zac nodded. He was all business now and there was nothing of the innocent in his face. His expression was set, his eyes coldly assessing. He strode off to view the find, or maybe to confront the surveyor. Liz wasn’t sure which, but she had no intention of being left behind. She hustled after him.
Don Conway glanced over at Zac and Liz as they neared. He nodded toward the skeleton and said, “Amazing what nature will throw your way, isn’t it? I came out here thinking I had a pain in the ass problem, and what do I see? Something amazing.”
And he was right. The find was amazing. Liz stared at it again, the sight reassuring her that her initial assessment had been correct. This was a career-making find. Now she just had to make sure it was her career it made, not Zac Doyle’s.
Zac stepped closer to examine the exposed bones and she heard his intake of breath. Did he think it was a new species, as she hoped? Oh, how perfect it would be if it was!
She heard the rattle of sifting gravel and looked up. Scarr was no longer at his position on the lip of the cliff, so the sound must be him making his way down the path. Sure enough, when she looked over, he was down in the bottom and moving quickly toward them.
When he saw the skeleton, he sucked in a deep breath too. This was getting better and better.
Don Conway had moved off to instruct his crew, leaving Zac, Liz and Scarr examining the exposed bones. “Do you trust this local surveyor?” Zac said in a low voice. He was looking at Scarr. In fact, the two men were huddled closely together, with Zac’s back toward Liz, excluding her from their conversation.
Scarr said, “He’s a county official. I think he’s all right.”
Zac nodded, but his voice was tense as he said, “There’s a lot riding on what this guy comes up with. We don’t want to be shafted by some stupid yokel.”
Honestly, Liz thought. Talk about a paranoid jerk. The conversation continued on in the same fashion, both men speculating on what would have to be done to get rights back if Conway put the skeleton on Mike Edmonds’ side of the line. She listened idly, scanning the rift for the head of the great beast they were standing in front of.
Heads tended to get detached and drift away from the main skeleton. If they were lucky they would find it not far away from the neck, safely on federal land. She scanned the rift, looking for clues, hoping against hope something would catch her eye and tell her that the skull was close by, waiting for her to discover it.
No clues. No heart-stopping discovery, only the sound of Zac and Scarr, droning on, as they plotted how to secure the site. Suddenly she heard the rumble of an internal combustion engine.
Conway looked up from his computations. “That’s probably Mike Edmonds.” He grinned, evidently pleased by this development. “Looks like we won’t have to have a meeting in town. We’ll be able to discuss who gets what part of this skeleton right now.”
“Road repair, my ass,” Scarr said. Loudly.
Conway raised his brows over the dark sunglasses he wore. “If you’ve got something to say, spit it out, Dr. Scarr. I’m a straightforward guy. I don’t like hints and innuendo.”
Scarr shot him a look of loathing. “Do you work for Discovering Dinos?”
The truck engine stopped and in the ensuing silence Conway’s voice was hard. “I told you when I introduced myself. I’m the county surveyor. I work for the good people of this county and no one else. Understood?”
She thought Scarr understood perfectly well. Mike Edmonds was one of the good people of Twisted Butte County. Dr. Alfred Scarr was not.
There was another rattle of shifting dirt and gravel. She looked over, not at all surprised to see Mike Edmonds making his way down the path on his side of the rift, the one they’d used that morning.
The confrontation between Conway and Scarr was about to become a three-way battle.