Into the Badlands

“I don’t want to make trouble for anyone.”

“No, of course not.” What could be wrong? A dry bank account? Unsatisfactory field experience? Gossip at the quarry? The Bearpaw team was having an unproductive summer; tempers might be fraying. Even small problems could become irritating when a team worked for a long time under a hot sun.

After another moment of uncertainty, Kim seemed to make a decision. “You know, I think I should try to handle it myself first. It’s kind of embarrassing to come here and make a fuss, and then duck out.”

“Don’t worry about it. We can talk later if you change your mind. In the meantime, tell Paul he can go ahead with his bloodthirsty scenario.”

Kim dredged up a smile. “He’ll be so pleased. And I’ll stop at the bakery on my way to the quarry. Thanks, Susannah.” She left the office, still radiating worry.

Moments later, footsteps sounded in the hall, and Bruce appeared in the doorway, bearded and shaggy haired. When Susannah saw his face, her stomach began a free fall.

He got right to the point. “The board has gone with someone else, Susannah. Alexander Blake. Heard of him?”

She nodded. Alexander Blake was a high-profile kind of a guy. Anyone who dug up bones for a living had heard of him. Although she hadn’t seen him in more than ten years, the man had got in her way a few times.

“He’s a little older than you are,” Bruce said, “a little more experienced. Well traveled, good contacts. I made it clear what I wanted, but they had their own ideas. I don’t know—maybe it’s for the best. You came awfully close.”

Close? Susannah looked away from Bruce’s sympathetic eyes. “We’ll be lucky to have someone of Blake’s caliber here.”

IT WAS NEARLY NINE o’clock when Susannah finally let herself into her small cedar house. She had showered and eaten dinner at the museum, then poured her frustration into Bruce’s paperwork and got it done.

She moved quickly past the unconcerned eyes of relatives who stared from a family tree of photographs on one wall of the living room, then the unperturbed residents of a large aquarium that separated the galley kitchen from the dining area. She filled a glass with filtered water from the fridge, and drank thirstily before turning to the aquarium. She hardly noticed the fish pounce when she sprinkled flakes of food and some freeze-dried shrimp onto the water’s surface.

In what way was she inadequate? Knowing she was Bruce’s choice, the board had looked past her to a stranger. Timid. That’s what Blake had thought of her. Did the board agree? Was she too mild, too immersed in her own work, too female, too tall, too short, too young? Bruce had said it might be for the best. Did he doubt her ability to do the job?

Tired, but too tense to sleep, she went out onto the screened porch and sank into a wicker chair big enough to curl up in. She looked past the river that meandered behind the house, and watched as the setting sun turned the sandstone and ironstone of distant hoodoos gold and pink. Glossy blue-black swallows swooped to and from nests in the river’s bank, chestnut breasts and forked tails flashing.

There was a photograph she couldn’t get out of her mind, a picture illustrating one of Blake’s magazine articles. It showed a tall, sandy-haired man standing perfectly at ease in the hot sun and red sand of the Gobi Desert. He had a geologist’s hammer in one hand, and an open, boyish grin on his face. Huge white ribs curved out of the sand behind him. Susannah kept trying to file the photo away, under something harmless and dull like “miscellaneous.” Tuck it into the folder, close the drawer and forget about it. But the damn thing wouldn’t stay filed.

Staring into the gathering dark, she thought of the confusing summer she’d worked with Alexander Blake at an Australian quarry thirteen years before. He’d been a graduate student from the University of British Columbia then, assisting the leader of a joint Canada-Australia dig, but no one would have known it wasn’t his quarry. He was the kind of person who always seemed to be in charge. He’d probably advised his kindergarten teacher on the finer points of printing.

It had been her first quarry, her first trip outside Canada, the first time—the only time—she’d met a man like him. With the overbrimming confidence of someone who apparently had never done anything awkwardly and for the first time, he had noticed her just long enough to issue a damaging assessment of her performance.

She could take the disappointment about the job. She knew she was still young to head a research department. In a way, it was better not to have administrative distractions just when the hadrosaur quarry was looking so promising. It might even be interesting to work with Blake again. He might have changed. Maybe that photo was an old one, and really he had a potbelly and a mellow disposition and five kids.

Her smile faded. It was more likely that he hadn’t changed at all.

CHAPTER TWO

SUSANNAH WAS ALONE in the museum. Except for Charlie, of course, down in the preparation lab, always up to his elbows in work when most people were just pressing the snooze button. She’d come in earlier than usual, anxious to finish her report on the hadrosaur quarry. Almost the minute he’d got the job, Alexander Blake had sent a fax saying he wanted summaries of all the museum’s current projects on his desk when he arrived. There was less than an hour to go, and her report wasn’t anywhere near ready.

She swiveled her chair toward the window, turning her back on the computer screen and its constantly flashing cursor. Outside, the grassy hills edging the badlands rolled on for miles. Cars were beginning to arrive, almost as steadily as if there was going to be a wedding, or a funeral. She could see gradually smaller clouds of dust all along the road from town.

She missed Bruce already. After the farewell party on Friday, complete with Paul in his role as a dinosaur’s meal and a chocolate T-Rex that leaned heavily on a helpful vanilla centrosaur, he’d left with hardly more than a wave, suitcases visible in the back seat of his car. He’d seemed glad to go.

Now everything would change. Blake would take Bruce’s chair at the conference room table, armed with plans she knew wouldn’t be good for the museum. How could she go to his meeting this morning, listening meekly, when everyone knew she’d expected to get the job?

Abruptly Susannah turned off the computer, without bothering to save the changes she’d made. She wouldn’t sit timidly waiting for Blake’s arrival. There was plenty of work to be done at the quarry. Why should it stop just because a new staff member was coming to town?

She hurried to the closet for her backpack, always filled with water bottles, sunscreen, insect repellent, a hammer, chisel and brush. Halfway to the door, she stopped. The way was blocked by her closest friend, Diane McKay.

“Hey, Sue.” Diane sipped coffee from a mug that had World’s Greatest Mom emblazoned on its side. Dark smudges underlined her bleary eyes. “Ready for today?”

“Nope.”

“Me neither. I keep wondering if I’ve turned in all my samples to the lab, if Tim, when I let him play computer games, deleted all my notes…you know how it is.”

“Like Cinderella waiting to meet her stepmother for the first time.”

Diane smiled. “Will he be mean? Will he make us work too hard? I’m hoping he’ll be like Bruce was, and just leave us to get on with our work, but what are the chances of having two decent bosses in a row?” She started across the room. “Can I take the comfortable chair?”

“Help yourself.” Susannah didn’t move from her spot near the door. “You look as if you’ve been up for days.”

“Just about. I drove all night from Mount Field, got home in time to have breakfast with Richard and Tim, then felt my way here.” Yawning, she sank into the upholstered chair behind Susannah’s desk. “I still can’t believe you didn’t get the job. We all thought you were a shoo-in. Nobody knows this area better than you.” She took a long, restorative gulp of coffee.

Susannah smiled fondly at Diane. They both knew Blake was more qualified. “Dr. Blake has a few things going for him. He’s worked at all the major quarries…he’s been published in all the major journals…he’s been on the Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel and a couple of major networks. The board probably thought he’d do a better PR job. I’m terrible at hooking people’s interest. Look at our articles. Mine are as dry as sandpaper, his are pure entertainment.”

Diane nodded. “Tim loved the one about Blake and his team stumbling across Paleolithic cave paintings by accident while they were looking for fossils.”

“Exactly. Wherever he goes, he and his sidekicks always have adventures.” Susannah heard a trace of resentment in her voice and tried to cover it with humor. “Just call him Indiana Blake.”

“He won’t stay long, Sue. He’ll get bored in no time. Then our employers will wonder what on earth they were thinking and do what they should have done in the first place.” Diane noticed Susannah’s backpack. “Are you going somewhere?”

“To the quarry. James has his hands full out there.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Blake won’t care where I am.” Susannah lifted her hand in a quick wave. “Good luck today.”

She hurried downstairs and out the back door to the staff parking lot. She chose her usual field vehicle, a faded blue pickup truck that tended to be temperamental. The engine’s irregular rasping didn’t start a moment too soon—as she steered out of the parking lot, a black Dodge Stealth glided past her. Susannah caught a glimpse of the man inside. She got an impression of height and strength.

Sending up clouds of dust that obscured the Stealth’s reflection in her rearview mirror, she accelerated. The old Ford rattled over the narrow access road, turned onto a gravel road and continued through a treeless landscape, past arid fields dotted with rhythmically dipping oil pumps.

When she was out of sight of the museum, she drove more slowly, unhappy eyes on the lookout for potholes and prairie dogs. She was already having second thoughts about playing hooky. Provoking her new boss might not be a wise strategy.

After a long ten miles, Susannah turned onto an uneven rock-strewn track leading into a gully. She stopped beside the science camp’s school bus and sat for a moment, fascinated as always by the extraterrestrial appearance of the deeply rilled hills and time-carved hoodoos.

He can’t change this.

She grabbed her backpack and slid from the truck to the rocky ground. A fifteen-minute walk would take her the rest of the way to the quarry.

ALEXANDER BLAKE TURNED into the museum parking lot just as a battered pickup truck clattered out. He got a quick look at the tense-faced woman at the steering wheel. Dark hair pulled back from a pale, oval face. Slender. Whoever she was, she was in a hurry.

He parked in a reserved spot, then stood beside his car surveying the place that had lured him away from the field. The museum was long and low and the color of sandstone. It fit right in with the sedimentary hills and dry, rolling prairie. To the east, there was a wide, winding river. Far to the west, the Rocky Mountains’ faded blue foothills merged with the horizon. Not a bad place to spend a couple of months.

He swung open the staff door and stepped inside. To his left was the preparation lab. Through the small window that let visitors watch technicians free bone from rock, he saw that someone was already at work.

The galleries, off to the right, were still quiet. They’d be humming with voices soon, when visitors crowded in to see the displays: the primordial invertebrates, the fish that had dragged themselves from the sea onto the land, and the dinosaurs, frozen in flight and ravenous frenzy.