It would be best if he didn’t find out about the critter. Whose wing bulges were looking kind of suspicious. Who was blowing out smoke too often for comfort. But if I had to show him the critter, so be it.
At this point, I didn’t have much choice.
32
SECRETS
HAINES, ALASKA
“Luggage,” Josh said, “doesn’t usually move all by itself.”
The girl looked down and sighed. Bryn, she’d said her name was. Which started with a B. Supporting Josh’s theory that she was the one he’d called.
She’d come running back to the truck, splashing through the puddles in the parking lot, and straight off apologized for being rude. She’d confessed to her recent crime spree—stowing away in the camper, stealing the duffel. She’d asked Josh to help her get to Anchorage. Said she needed to see someone there. Some professor. Didn’t say why. But when Josh had asked her about the duffel, she’d lied again.
Badly. Just her luggage, she’d claimed.
Now she admitted, “It’s my pet.”
“What kind of pet?”
“He’s a lizard.”
Yikes. Big lizard. And she didn’t strike Josh as the lizard type. He’d thought it must be a cat, maybe, or a ferret. “Can I see?”
Bryn shrugged. “Okay.”
Slowly, she unzipped the bag. Peeked inside. Then spread the edges so Josh could see.
The pet coat threw him at first. Argyle microfleece. Truly hideous. Lumpy, sort of. A long, spiny lump down the middle of the back, and two oval-shaped humps on either side. Then Josh got a look at the tail—long, pinkish, with spiny ridges all the way down. The thing seemed to be asleep; its head was mostly hidden under its claws, which looked strange. Not exactly lizardlike. But familiar.
Just then, the thing raised its head, yawned, stretched, and curled up again.
Josh drew in a sharp breath.
Quickly, Bryn zipped up the bag.
“See? Just a big old lizard,” she said.
Josh tried to arrange his face so that his shock didn’t show. Which was hard. Because he had chills. Actual chills. Because what he really wanted to do was unzip that duffel and stare.
Just a lizard?
Yeah, right.
He’d never thought he’d actually see one. Not alive. Not sleeping in a duffel in the front seat of his truck.
Not in his wildest dreams.
Josh started up the engine, just to give himself something to do.
“Where are we going?” Bryn said.
“I, uh, I’m kind of hungry,” he said. “I could use one of those sandwiches myself.”
“Me too,” Bryn said. “The one I bought was for my lizard. Well, I was going to share it, but he ate the whole thing.”
I’ll just bet he did, Josh thought.
By the time they got back to the deli, the downpour had ended. Josh waited in the truck while Bryn went inside to order two more foot-longs—one for herself and one for him. She’d almost left the duffel in the truck, but at the last moment she reached back for it, slipped the strap over her shoulder, and took it along with her.
So she didn’t quite trust him yet.
Just a lizard.
Uh-huh.
If he hadn’t seen the fossils up there in the cave, he might have bought it. But Josh could trace the memory of those bones in the living shape of the animal in Bryn’s duffel. This animal was familiar to him, like the face of an old friend.
Maybe it was the bony ridges above the eyes, which made them look fierce, even when they were closed. Maybe it was the proportions of the head—the mammalian-looking nostrils, the high forehead—that gave the animal a look of intelligence. Hinted at the possibility of a good-size brain cavity in there. Josh couldn’t put his finger on it exactly. But he knew. Beyond a doubt, he knew.
He’d known it even before he grasped the significance of the twin bulges beneath that pet coat, on either side of the animal’s spine. Where wings would be.
No—where they actually were.
And Bryn knew. She had to. Wings were the reason for the coat.
A flying lizard.
Dinosaur.
Cap would love this. Josh remembered the time when he and Zack were little and Cap had taken them out in a tundra buggy. They’d come across a mother polar bear and her two cubs. One of the cubs had caught its paw in a fox trap. Cap had run at the mother with the buggy to scare her off, then moved the buggy away from the cub. Josh and Zack had watched while Cap went out alone and worked like crazy to release the rusty trap before the mother bear came back to maul him. It had been close, but he’d sprung it just in time.
Cap would know what to do to save this animal, too. He could use his connections to get them a flight.
Josh pushed Cap’s speed dial number, then hit END.
Pushed speed dial. Hit END.
Sat there, feeling funny.
He hadn’t talked to Cap in a while. And their conversations were different, since the cave. Cap seemed cautious now with Josh. Holding back. And truthfully, Josh felt different too. He couldn’t believe Cap had been in on the break-in at the professor’s. But what if he had? What if he’d changed that much?
Still, this thing was alive. Not a fossil. A totally different deal. Cap didn’t poach live animals. He just didn’t.
And if Josh didn’t help Bryn, what would happen? Realistically, it was a miracle she had gotten this far, but her luck couldn’t hold out much longer. Clearly, she was a runaway. She’d as much as admitted that. So the police would be looking for her. And if word got out about what was in her duffel, the poachers would come swarming. Sooner or later, someone was going to catch up to her. Depending on who it was, she could be in a load of trouble. Depending on who it was, he might be brutal.
So brutal, Josh didn’t even want to think about it.
Cap, though, he’d protect her. He’d protect that animal of hers—just like he’d protected the cub.
Josh hit speed dial again.
Cap picked up. “Josh,” he said. “What is it?”
Josh clicked off as he saw Bryn push open the sandwich shop door. The call hadn’t lasted long. Cap could process things fast, grasp all sides of an issue, see past the parts of it that seemed to make sense to the problems that lurked in logical bends and blind alleys. Josh hadn’t told Cap everything, but enough. Enough, probably, to get himself on a plane to Anchorage, along with Bryn and her duffel.
Enough to hear Cap say, “Good work, son.”
Cap had mentioned a blog. Word was out, apparently, about Bryn and her so-called lizard. There were pictures of the thing. Vid links. Pictures of Bryn too. People were looking for them. Posting comments. The crazies were in on it, going on about fire-breathing dragons.
So he’d been right to call.
Bryn opened the door, handed Josh a sandwich, settled the duffel on her lap. “You said mustard, right?”
Josh nodded. He started the engine, headed north toward the Haines Seaplane Base on Portage Cove. Cap was going to call some pilots he knew: Stan Howard first, then Ron Lehman. Last resort: Sam Mills.
Josh hoped it wasn’t Mills. Mills could be difficult.
Josh explained the plan to Bryn—that his father would hire a pilot and meet them on the dock in Anchorage. He, Josh, would be coming too, he said. He explained about his family, that his parents were divorced, that his father lived in Anchorage and Josh lived with his mom in Haines.
Bryn nodded. Said thanks. He couldn’t tell if she was happy or not that he might be coming along. Mostly, she seemed to be eating. Really chowing down. Poor kid. She was probably starving.
Late-afternoon sunlight reflected off the wet roads, making it hard to see. Josh pressed his right elbow against his side, felt the shape of the sat phone in his pocket. Bryn’s mother’s sat phone, presumably. Which he hadn’t told anyone about and hadn’t thrown away.
There were a lot of secrets, come to think of it. Josh usually thought of himself as a straight sh
ooter. What you see is what you get. But he hadn’t been exactly straight with this girl. If he told her he knew the truth about the animal, she might get spooked.
In fairness, there were things she hadn’t told him, either. Completely bogus parts to her story. Where had she gotten the thing? Josh wondered. Her mother, who had gone missing … had she poached it?
He looked over at Bryn. She’d finished her sandwich now and leaned back against the seat, still clutching the duffel in her lap. Her “pet.”
Had she run away from home because of it?
How much had she sacrificed to protect it?
She probably loved it. She must.
It would all work out, Josh told himself. She might be upset at first, when she found out what Josh knew and that Cap was in on the secret. But she’d thank him in the end.
33
CRYPTOMAN
EUGENE, OREGON
Taj had the graveyard shift. Every night at midnight Jasmine came into the bedroom and tapped him on the shoulder. “Yours,” she would say. She would slip under the covers as he rolled out the other side of the bed and stumbled into the nursery to pick up the screaming baby.
Daria. That was her name. Daria Antonia. Lovely, lovely name. Lovely, lovely baby … in the daytime. Truly. Taj could have stayed home all day, stared into that sweet face for hours.
But at night, it was a different story. Colic, the doctors said. Nothing much to worry about. Lots of babies have it. Gets better all by itself. Four months—six max. No cure for it; all you can do is hold her, rock her, gently rub her back. Talk to her softly, let her get used to your voice. Let her know she’s loved in the middle of the night.
But Taj felt so helpless, holding her, when he knew that she was hurting.
It usually started around dinnertime, about six. Their beautiful, smiling, joyful baby would begin to whimper. Her face would wrinkle up and turn red; she would draw up her tiny knees. Taj could tell she was in pain. Before long, she was full-out screaming. Jasmine would pick her up; Taj would head for the bedroom, wedge the wax plugs into his ears, try to sleep until his turn. All too soon, it came. Graveyard shift: midnight to five a.m.
Tonight, Taj felt especially groggy. It had taken forever to get to sleep, and it seemed like he’d just dozed off when Jasmine had come in to wake him. Handed him Daria. Who was screaming.
Taj rocked her. Rubbed her back. Hummed to her. Logged onto his e-mail, cradling the small, wailing Daria in one arm. It surprised him how much he could do, in a sleep-deprived state, with a baby crying on his chest. When he saw the message from cryptomanOI, he blinked. Cryptoman. Who was that? He scrolled to the bottom of the message. It was signed Mungo.
Slowly, through the screaming and the haze of fatigue, he put it together. Mungo. Dr. Mungo Jones. He was a friend of Robin’s. Taj had met him several times. Mungo was the one who had invited Robin to Anchorage, before she’d disappeared. He’d had a skiing accident in his twenties that confined him to a wheelchair. Taj liked the guy. Mungo had been trained as a zoologist at Cambridge. He came from money. He didn’t really need a job, but Alaska State gave him a light teaching load and let him do the work he loved: finding overlooked species. Cryptids. He’d discovered several previously unknown species of lizards and mammals, plus one new bird, as Taj recalled.
Cryptoman. Must be some reason he didn’t want to use his Alaska State e-mail account.
The subject line read: Robin’s daughter?
Taj clicked on the message. Read it. Mungo had surfed his way to a blog with a picture of something that looked like a cryptid lizard. Apparently, it belonged to a girl. A girl whom Mungo suspected, for reasons he didn’t say, was Bryn.
Bryn?
Daria eased back on the screaming. Just fussing now. Maybe she’d go to sleep.
Taj clicked on the link: www.andersonblogstheuniverse.com.
And there she was. Bryn.
The picture Mungo had linked to was kind of blurry. Scrolling up, Taj saw a dim photo of a lizard. The lizard, Taj was pretty sure. In a pet carrier, looked like. Taj scrolled up again. More pictures, pictures of Bryn on some kind of ship.
A ship?
What was she doing on a ship?
Taj clicked on a short vid of Bryn feeding the lizard a piece of cheese. It was making that funny noise, like purring. Bryn smiled down at it, then something caught her attention, and she looked up. “Anderson!” she said. “What are you doing here? Get that thing out of my face. Ander—” The vid went black.
Bryn!
Taj began to read the posts, starting with: Burmese Water Dragon? I Think Not! He read all the way up—through the descriptions of and links to Komodo dragons, Gila monsters, and Chinese water dragons; through the story of Anderson’s encounters with Bryn. Apparently, Anderson had met Bryn on a ferry on the Inside Passage to Alaska. Anderson was heading for Skagway. But Bryn and the lizard had disappeared from the boat one night. And hadn’t been seen since.
Taj groaned, cradled his forehead in his free hand. Daria ramped it back up to a scream.
Taj clicked on the comments. Some people interested in lizards in general. Way more people interested in this one in particular. And in Bryn. Though Anderson never referred to her by name. “Lizard girl,” he called her.
The most recent picture, which Taj had missed the first time through, was of a strange, semi-squarish, plastic-looking thing sitting on top of a Dumpster. The pet carrier, Anderson had written. Melted. Burned up from the inside. Dragon fire?
Of course that would get Mungo’s attention. He probably searched “dragon” every day.
Bryn!
Taj had totally let her down. He’d been texting back and forth with a herpetologist he knew, trying to find a safe place for the lizard. But there were times when he hadn’t even looked at his messages. Days, actually. The days surrounding Daria’s birth. Days when he’d just been too dragged out. Days when he’d been preoccupied with the lab. Reynolds wanted him out of there, but Taj had found something, something that could be huge. He needed someone to confirm his findings before he packed it in.
Preferably, someone who’d had some sleep.
Taj hadn’t seen the news for days, had no idea what was going on in the world. He searched now, found what he was looking for: Local Teenager Missing.
Bryn!
He’d just assumed, since he hadn’t heard from her, that she was holding down the fort.
What was she doing? Where was she now?
Was she all right?
He looked at his watch. Two a.m. Couldn’t call anybody yet. He clicked back on Mungo’s e-mail, hit REPLY. You’re right. It’s Bryn. Help me find her, please! Call me on my cell and I’ll tell you everything I know.
Mungo called just as the graveyard shift was ending and Daria was winding down. Taj handed her off to Jasmine and took the phone out into the hall.
“So it’s she,” Mungo said.
It’s she. Only Mungo talked like that. “It is,” Taj said.
“There’s an APB out on her. I’ve made inquiries. Apparently, her people are frantic. Do you know anything about this?”
“I didn’t know she’d left. But that lizard she’s got … I’ve seen it.”
Silence on the line. Taj could hear Jasmine crooning in the bedroom. Then, “Do tell,” Mungo said.
Taj told everything he knew about Bryn and the lizard. He told what he’d learned by carbon dating some of the shell fragments. One hundred years old. That thing had hatched from a hundred-year-old egg! But he held back about the microbes. The microbes from the Alaska dirt with the shell fragments, which acted exactly the same as the microbes on the lizard’s shell, droppings, and saliva. Microbes that were doing things no known microbes had ever done before. Eating up endocrine disruptors lickety-split—so fast, Taj still couldn’t quite believe it.
“We have to find her,” Mungo said.
“Or tell the police.”
Mungo was against this, for predictable reasons. The authorities would take
the lizard, possibly destroy it. Or give it to someone who had no idea what it was or how to take care of it. Anyway, the whole episode would reflect badly on Robin. It might be considered poaching even to possess the thing. He, Mungo, would find Bryn, get her back with her family. By hook or by crook.
Taj believed him. Or at least, he thought it likely. Mungo was honest, first of all. A man of his word. Plus, Taj had heard stories about Mungo from Robin, and he knew that Mungo was competent in all sorts of surprising ways. He had an amazing network of connections, and if he said something would be done, it would. You might never see Mungo’s fingerprints on it—he’d probably never tell you what had gone on—but a little while after you talked to him, things would happen. Problems would get fixed.
Still, Bryn was out there all alone, nobody knew where. Her friends and family must be out of their minds. And it was Taj’s fault. At least, partly.
“I received a phone call,” Mungo said, “from a friend. I think I know where Bryn is. Or, not precisely where she is, but where she may be soon. We have some contingencies to work out. My friend is … reluctant, but I suspect she’ll come around. Meet me up here. I need someone Bryn will trust on sight.”
Taj sighed. “I’d do anything for Bryn. But that … Jasmine would never forgive me.” He explained about Daria.
“You old devil!” Mungo said. “I had no idea.”
“Right,” Taj said. He had no desire to discuss his personal life with Mungo. “What about Bryn’s father?” he asked. “Do you know if he’s come back? Or what about her aunt?”
“The father, no,” Mungo said. “He’s still away. The aunt … not someone I’d care to deal with. Not likely, from what I hear, to be cooperative. Might there be a friend? A mutual friend?”
Mutual friend. That triggered something in the dim caverns of Taj’s brain. There’d been an e-mail….
“Just a sec,” he said.
He scrolled through his “deleted” folder. He’d trashed it without reading it, he was pretty sure. Subject line: A mutual friend. It had sounded like a solicitation. Like one of those “Russian girls” looking for a “friend.”
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