Conard County Watch

by Rachel Lee

  “Yes,” Renee answered.

  Jake reached his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a card, passing it to her. “You guys want any help for any reason, I can get here faster than the sheriff because I’m closer. And Gage won’t mind if I step on his toes a bit.” With one motion he drained his coffee and passed the empty cup back. “Don’t hesitate to call if anything worries you. I don’t like the feeling that somebody’s screwing around out here, and worse that he’s doing it on sacred ground.”

  He tipped his hat, turned his mount and headed back the way he’d come.

  “Nice guy,” said Renee.

  “Yeah, he is,” Cope agreed.

  * * *

  Well, hell, thought Stockman. More people were getting involved in this than a church barbecue. Now the chief of police? Not that he could put handcuffs on anyone out here, but that didn’t make him much less of a problem.

  Last night Broadus had been annoyed with him, wanting him to do something more spectacular. “Make the place haunted!”

  Haunted. Judging by that flute last night, the mountain was already haunted. So what was he supposed to do? Bring a sound system out here to play weird sounds at night? As if he could conceal it. Besides, these people didn’t even sleep up on the mountain. No help. Stupid idea.

  Then, out of the blue, he remembered his old cat, Thumbelina. Whenever his larger tom bothered her, she could let out a scream that made his skin crawl and his adrenaline hit the roof. Hadn’t he seen some recordings of that scream on the internet? So maybe a small tape player? Maybe he wouldn’t need huge speakers or an amplifier. All he needed to do was make someone’s skin crawl enough they never wanted to go back.

  Thumbelina’s cry had instantly evoked images of an eviscerated animal, although she’d never, not once, been hurt. Nope. She was just terrified.

  Maybe that would work.

  Those Bear brothers prowling around weren’t making his life any easier, though. Keeping a step ahead of them was difficult, complicated by trying to hide his tracks anytime he got close to that ravine. So far, they hadn’t seemed to get wind of him, but they’d probably walk right across him if he got too close to the dig again. That kind of dirty trick was definitely off the table now.

  Of course, if he just killed somebody, they’d be scared off, all right. The cops would swarm over the place, the digging would cease, and Broadus would be essentially free to carry out his plans, whatever they were.

  Stockman had a little Native American blood in him, from his grandfather, and yet he couldn’t begin to imagine why anyone would want this piece of land. Sacred to the tribe, maybe, but beyond that and a few fossils, it seemed like a lousy piece of real estate.

  What the hell did it matter, anyway? It was Broadus’s problem. Stockman’s assignment was to clear the area for a while. Spook noises might rattle them, but he doubted they’d be enough to keep that woman and her students away. Hell, the flute had sent him running last night, but the woman hadn’t budged.

  He kinda admired her for that. Of course, she probably didn’t feel like she was being followed, the way he had.

  Dang. He made sure the stones around him were arranged in a semicircle facing east. An alignment for a vision quest, his cover story if he happened to need one.

  But he didn’t need a cover story. He needed to find a way to run a bunch of people off this mountain. He sensed a growing impatience in Broadus, one that might dictate that someone had to die.

  Stockman sighed when he thought about that. It sure wasn’t to his taste, but he’d do what was necessary. He always had, no matter who was giving the orders. And man, he really needed the money.

  Chapter 12

  Two weeks passed and nothing more untoward happened. The egg was revealing itself beautifully, no more flutes had been heard in the night, and Renee had concluded that some mischief maker had set off the rockslide more as a joke than a threat. The rest of the team, except for Cope and Larry, who was stuck at their base camp, seemed to agree with her.

  In fact, Renee thought as she finished up another day of working to remove the egg from its trap in time, denial was doing a great job for all of them.

  “But really,” she said to Cope that night as she prepared to bed down on a new air mattress in front of the egg, “why would someone go to all that trouble, then just vanish?”

  “Maybe the Bear brothers are making them nervous,” he answered.

  She almost sighed, then looked at him straightly. “Am I being a fool?”

  “No, you’re being human. We all play the denial game. Done it a time or two myself.”

  She nodded. She supposed everyone did. “You know, I haven’t seen Gray Cloud in over a week. Or Claudia. Did she say anything to you?”

  “Only what she said to you, that she had some business.”

  “Well, it must have been important. I’d like to talk to Gray Cloud, though. Find out if the Bears have learned anything at all.”

  “My guess is not at all, but I thought I heard someone say that Gray Cloud has disappeared from the face of the earth. Good luck finding him for a conversation if he’s doing a vision quest, or something equally important.”

  Standing, she reached for the brightest flashlight she had with her and turned it on, angling it against the rock face. She drew a long breath. “I didn’t realize we’d come so far. Do you see it, Cope? Man, I hope Denise has this all recorded.”

  Awash in sudden awe, Renee looked at the remnants of a long-lost world beginning to emerge from the rock face. Here and there she could see what appeared to be a foot, or a snout or a tail, just parts but evocative nonetheless. Some of those feet were identifiable to certain species and she recognized them at once, even though they were only partially revealed. Other items still held their mystery, waiting to reveal it on another day.

  This whole rock face was worthy of a museum. She wondered if someone would replicate it for display. Because they sure couldn’t take it out of here in one piece, especially since there was no telling how deeply the fossil bed reached.

  “Oh look,” she exclaimed, training her flashlight on one spot. “Do you see it?”

  “What?” Cope stepped closer.

  She moved in and touched it. “Skin. I think it’s armored skin.”

  “Looks like pebbles to me.”

  Renee laughed. “It’s too regular. These were armored plates, I’m sure of it.” She ran the palm of her hand over it. “And this is why we have to protect this. My God, it’s so rare to find preserved skin and scales.”

  She felt Cope’s arm slip around her waist, let herself be drawn to his side and rested her head on his shoulder. “It’s beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.”

  She didn’t need to turn her head to know he wasn’t talking about skin and armor plates. The sizzle between them that, for her at least, had never quite quieted, leaped to life as if someone had poured gasoline on the flames.

  Every instinct warned her not to let this grow. Remain professional. But there was another need, deeper than instinct, that made her want to move toward him on an entirely different voyage of discovery. Helplessly, she began to turn into him, ready to become putty in his hands. He shifted his stance, welcoming her, murmuring her name.

  Then a screech filled the forest and sent ice water running down her spine. At once she found herself backed up against the rock face, with Cope standing firmly in front of her, back to her.

  “What the heck?” Her mind had trouble processing the sound except that it was terrifying. Her mind immediately summoned images of an animal being torn apart.

  Then it came again. Cope swore. “Don’t move, Renee.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Nothing I’ve ever heard before. Just don’t move.”

  That’s when she realized he somehow held a knife in his hand, and now she felt that every muscle in his body was
poised to spring.

  “I’ll take the mad flute player,” she whispered shakily.

  “You and me both.”

  She waited, hoping not to hear that bloodcurdling sound again.

  Just as she became sure she couldn’t stand the tension for one more minute, she heard the pounding of feet on the path.

  “Here comes the cavalry,” Cope remarked, but didn’t relax his stance.

  Mason and Maddie burst out of the shadows into the beam of the flashlight that now lay at Renee’s feet. “What the devil was that?” Mason demanded.

  “You heard it, too?” Cope remarked, sounding as if nothing were unusual about it. “Sounds carry well at night.”

  “No kidding,” said Maddie, drawing closer. “That still doesn’t say what it was.”

  “The others?” Renee asked as Cope stepped forward, giving her room to move.

  “Denise, Bets and Carlos thought they could be more useful down there. Larry’s still not getting around very well. He sure couldn’t run if he needed to. But that still doesn’t answer the question. I swear I never heard a sound like that before, and it’s not like I haven’t heard animals die in the night woods.”

  “It was unique, all right,” Cope agreed. He bent and picked up the flashlight, using it to scan the woods around. “Whatever, it seems to be over.”

  “Small comfort,” Mason remarked drily. “Well, if you don’t need us, we’ll head back to our coffee klatch. If you get the urge, join us. Bets went into town and bought some poppy seed bread and some pound cake, all of which are to die for.”

  The weather had warmed up, so Renee’s hands didn’t feel like ice as she accepted the flashlight back from Cope. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I wish I knew. That’s why it wouldn’t surprise me if Gray Cloud is indeed on a vision quest.”

  Renee thought about that, part of her rebelling at the entirely unscientific idea of a vision quest, but another part of her wanting to believe that Gray Cloud might get answers out of the ether.

  “For sure,” she said after a moment, “if this mountain talks, it’ll talk to him.”

  He caught her hand and squeezed gently. “Feel safe to go down or should we stand guard?”

  She hadn’t done so for the last five or six days, and that weird death-scream didn’t seem to require sleeping on the egg. There was so much richness in that rock wall that she seriously doubted anyone could do total damage to it. As for the egg... Denise had a thousand photos by now. Important details were recorded. So...

  “Let’s go down,” she said. “I can’t live on top of that egg.”

  “Unless you’re trying to hatch it.”

  The humor blew through her like a healing wind, and she laughed aloud. “Cope, you’re the best medicine in the world. Like a pill for my obsession, or one for my too-serious nature. Thank you.”

  Smiling, he walked hand in hand with her down the slope. She made him feel pretty good, too, and he wasn’t about to analyze it.

  * * *

  Stockman was reaching his limit. Haunting this damn mountain for weeks on end with an unclear purpose except to find a way to get the scientists to abandon the dig was wearing on him. He wasn’t built for living in the rough indefinitely. In fact, if he had a choice he’d never use a tent again.

  Darting away from the Bear brothers, leaving no sign behind, had been an amusing challenge for a while. Stockman could mess up a trail really good.

  But Broadus was driving him nuts. The guy’s original orders, to get these folks out of here before the place became some kind of historical site, had originally made sense. Get ’em to move on. Except they weren’t moving on. The rockslide should have been enough, a second one should have finished it, but the damn people had called the cops, ruling out any possibility of another slide.

  Broadus was beginning to dither. He had things “in the works” and he needed the team gone. Except he wouldn’t authorize anything that might get his hands dirty.

  Not yet, anyway. Stockman was chafing and he didn’t much care what Broadus’s timetable might be. Enough of those damn fossils were starting to emerge from the rock wall that Stockman was convinced that they already had enough to get the place declared a historic site, and would as soon as they published their findings, or whatever it was they needed to do. He was just holding his breath for the day he saw park reps from the state out here looking around. Too late then, most likely.

  Broadus didn’t much care about the fossils. He just wanted to make sure the ravine was useless. No trail of curious visitors, no park guards, nothing like that. Obliterate it before...

  Before what? Broadus’s intentions were still unclear. All Stockman knew for sure was that that ravine couldn’t remain even partially intact. It had to be rendered useless.

  But the longer Broadus waited, the harder it was going to be to eliminate the problem. Nor did that really matter to Stockman. He wanted out of this place as fast as possible. The cat calls hadn’t scared anyone. The rockslide had done nothing. In fact, the only person scared by this mountain seemed to be Stockman himself. Thank God he hadn’t heard that flute again.

  Indeed, Broadus seemed to be slipping steadily to the back of Stockman’s mind. He was developing an obsession of his own: getting rid of those paleo-whatevers. Getting rid of the fossils. And he was rapidly passing the point where he cared if it looked like an accident.

  He had to clean up whatever mess Broadus was worried about, collect his final check, already in a lockbox at a bus terminal, and get the hell out of here. The longer he stayed, the more likely it was that he would get caught doing something.

  Pulling out his long-range scope, he settled belly on the ground and watched the group gathering around their campfire. Cozy. Not for long, if he had anything to say about it.

  * * *

  Cope sat back, a little apart from the others, only half attending their conversation.

  He was still trying to put pieces together in his mind, knowing he lacked information. He was used to that. You just had to move the pieces around until you could almost pick out the picture.

  And he was getting worried. The rockslide could be perceived as an outright threat. The flute and the screaming animal were nothing but a scare show.

  So what the hell?

  The longer this dragged on, the more he feared that whoever was behind this would take drastic action of some kind. What’s more, after all this time, he doubted the Bear brothers were keeping a really tight eye on anything. It was natural to relax, to begin to assume that nothing more would occur.

  After all, even some ordinary pranksters could have jimmied that rock loose just to cause a scare.

  But the feeling of being watched seldom lifted. The strange sounds out of the woods might mean nothing or might mean everything. Someone was trying to scare them off.

  The certainty was growing in him, and along with it a strong feeling that he’d been lax. He’d been too quick to rely on the Bear brothers for the kind of work even a trained Marine could slip up on if it went on too long without results.

  He’d spent his time with Renee, thinking to protect her if there was a threat, but now he was beginning to believe he’d failed her.

  Those fossils meant everything to her. What if they were getting in someone else’s way? He couldn’t imagine how. A takeover of tribal land wouldn’t be easy, not these days. They’d need a damn good reason.

  Or maybe they just wanted the fossils gone. How would he know? The reason didn’t matter. The growing conviction that this was taking too long, that someone was moving slowly for a reason, worried him.

  He needed to stop sitting on his can. He had no one else to rely on, not even really the Bear brothers. He was sure they’d been trying to do what Gray Cloud had asked, but they were young and with time, interest waned.

  He needed to do some prowlin
g on his own. Maybe he’d find something the brothers had overlooked. Or maybe they were dealing with someone who was good at covering his tracks. Cope was also good at ferreting those people out.

  Eyes half-closed, watching the dancing flames, half listening to the chatter, he waited. Some instinct inside him was awakening. Warning.

  Between one breath and the next, the horrible screech they’d heard before tore down the mountain, bringing with it visions of blood and evisceration. God!

  Just once, but it froze everyone around the fire. Then came a distant, almost inaudible sound of chanting, as if some ceremony were taking place higher up.

  “This mountain gives me the creeps,” Maddie said, standing. “I’m sleeping in town. I keep waiting for the whole thing to just collapse on me like an avalanche.”

  Pretty much everyone seemed to agree with her. Soon the crew were packing up their backpacks, apologizing profusely to Renee and looking downright sheepish.

  “It’s okay,” she said to them. “Camping out here wasn’t part of the original plan. Better if you go sleep where you feel safe.”

  “You, too,” Cope said. “I can keep an eye out here.”

  She shook her head. “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away, pardon the cliché. I want to know what the hell is going on out here. I wish Gray Cloud hadn’t disappeared.”

  Cope wasn’t sure what Gray Cloud was supposed to do about any of this. Maybe if he’d gone on a vision quest he’d learn something up there. Maybe not. Cope himself was betting on human problems.

  There was, thought Cope, something exceedingly lonely about watching the others drive away to town. He wasn’t usually prone to such feelings, but for some reason he was feeling it now. Maybe because they’d all become buddies.

  What really bothered him, however, was Renee’s refusal to leave. He wasn’t one to question her judgment. He had the sense she wouldn’t take it well, might even consider it sexist. He just knew he’d feel better if she were safe. He knew he could take care of himself, and probably her, but another person in the equation made it all more difficult.