But if Szabo discovered that Cade was alive, he’d put a bullet through his brain before she could drop her line and turn.
Shouldn’t have gambled. Should have done it Cade’s way, gone and hidden… She was risking his life for a damn dinosaur? What’s wrong with me? I must be out of my—
“Hey, Brutus!” Szabo’s hoarse whisper came floating. “Where’s your headhunter pal?”
He’s in the dino cave! Standing over Cade. Too late for second thoughts now. Raine drew in a shaking breath, and lifted her pull string to waist height—reeled in a foot of line for a final test.
Some sixty feet farther down the passage, on her same side, the decoy glided a foot on his clothesline, then stopped again.
Her pull string crossed the corridor at a steep angle, till some thirty feet farther on, it reached a stalagmite on the right-hand side. This smoothly rounded spike served as a rough pulley. Turning counterclockwise around this column in a wide-mouthed U, the pulling line angled back across the corridor, leading deeper into the mountain, till it reached its attachment point. It was tied to Carleton’s skull, which hung from its own “clothesline.”
This clothesline was stretched tightly from the back of the passage, left, to the pulley stalagmite at near right.
Raine had only to rapidly reel in her pull line and Carleton would come flying along his clothesline, angling gradually from left to right as he approached.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Szabo sang under his breath.
He must be circling the dino on its sledge in there. Making sure nobody hid in back of it, to creep up behind him, after he’d hunted on.
Trust a woman to make it too damn complicated, Cade fumed, lying with his cheek in the dust. I should just grab the crazy bastard’s ankle. Yank him down, pound him to mush.
If he could see Szabo’s ankle.
But he couldn’t. Not ten feet away, the Cracker seemed to be circling the dino skull. Cade stole another peek.
And saw—nothing! A darkness to confound the eye. His optic nerve frantically served up expanding purple rings and swirls to fill the midnight void.
Shut your eyes, he reminded himself, as Szabo chuckled. Maybe you can’t see, but he sure can.
Raine’s plan was to scare him into shooting his gun. Shooting off his whole round of bullets. Then they’d jump him while he reloaded.
Might work, if we knew how many rounds his gun held, Cade thought acidly. It could be a seven-shot, a nine, or—oh, joy—a fourteen. Though he was to blame for their ignorance. If he’d focused on Szabo’s pistol, instead of which way he intended to leap…If he hadn’t been so busy imagining what a shattered kneecap would feel like…
“Ain’t in here,” muttered Szabo. “Maybe we should just leave the little dart man be?”
Only feet away, his boot scraped the dirt. Cade tensed his muscles. To hell with the plan! If he got the chance…
“Naa, you’re right, Gran. Can’t trust him to stay put. If he sneaks up on me while I’m busy pulling teeth…”
Another scuffling sound, but harder to locate, coming from almost overhead. What the—?
“God damn, it itches!” Szabo whimpered. “My arm, Gran, it’s allover black streaks. That can’t be good.” He sighed mournfully. “Yeah…Yeah, I know…Can’t quit now. Just get the damn teeth.” His voice dropped half a vicious octave. “Then if you want the rest of it, you can come get it yourself, you greedy ol’ bag!”
Get him. Here he comes.
“No, ma’am, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!” His voice dipped to a spiteful whisper. “Not much I didn’t.”
Now! Cade told himself—
Just as Szabo’s weight came grinding down on his right hand. “Oops! Sorry there, big guy,” he chortled. “So much for leaving a beautiful corpse.”
DON’T yell, don’t yell, do not yell! Blackness layered upon blackness layered on throbbing red. If he couldn’t yell, he’d faint! Get the hell offa me!
The load lifted as Szabo stepped on over him, padding on toward the rear exit.
Eyes streaming, nose running, Cade shuddered with the raw pain. Broke something for sure.
Forget the hand. Remember what comes next. Pain bloomed in his brain, crowding out all thoughts but one: Raine, out there alone in the corridor.
Here he came, out from the dino cave, soft-footed as a ferret! The merest shuffle and slide along stone.
Wait for it, Raine warned herself. Wait till he hits his mark. When Szabo reached the glass beads they’d strewn across his path, he’d be positioned precisely where she wanted him, in the middle of the passageway, on the opposite side of the pillar behind which she lurked.
Meanwhile, Cade should have risen from the dead. He’d be standing barely out of sight in the dino cave, holding their flashlight and half her blowpipe for a club. Waiting for his cue.
Crunch…creak…pop!
“What the fuck?” whispered Szabo as his boots ground the glass beads into the stone.
NOW! Raine yanked on her pull line.
Far down the corridor, Carleton should be lunging out from the left-hand shadows. A white, grinning skull that topped a broad-shouldered body, made by half her blowpipe run through a Save the Whales T-shirt.
When Raine stopped hauling, he’d halt and sway and grin—about ten feet closer to the gunman.
“What the—”
Blam!
Raine tugged again—set the skull to flying and swaying nearer, attacking with a toothy smile.
Blam!
Quick, oh, quick, oh—
“God, what the hell are you? Getthefuckawayfromme—”
Blam!
Tinkle! Plop!
The pull line broke free, lashing Raine in the face as she yanked. Jeez, he’d shattered the skull in only three shots!
“Wh-wh-what the hell was that?” whinnied Szabo.
He still had four bullets left—maybe more—but there was nothing for it. Stick to the plan. She gave a bat squeak, Cade’s signal, a sound hard to trace.
“Shit! What the—!”
Szabo should be whirling her direction, staring wildly, and now—
Thunk! That would be Cade, reaching out from the dino cave to drop a rock, draw Szabo’s gaze on around.
Squint. Count one and count two and then—
“Yahh!” Szabo screamed as Cade’s flashlight snapped on. The beam nailed him square in the eyes—it switched off the goggles strapped to his face. Now they could see and he was the blind man!
Raine stooped, grabbed her net and rose—as Cade charged down his beam of light.
Blam!
Five!
Blam!
Six! Oh, God, Szabo hadn’t waited to turn on his goggles—he was shooting blind!
Blam—tinkle—crack! The flashlight exploded—the black slammed down—Cade yelped in pain.
Szabo burst into a mad cackling—hyena in the dark. “Yeah, and who’s sorry now?”
Oh, God, where is he? A deliberate shuffling, drawing away from her. Of course, he’d switched his goggles back on; he was going after Cade! With—what?—at least one bullet left? No, no, no—oh, no, you can’t! Careful of all the hooks she’d added—Raine raised the circular net.
“UNH!” The sickening sound of metal slamming into flesh and bone! The sound of a body falling.
Oh, Cade! Raine edged around her column, head craning back and forth.
“The big guy!” Szabo cried. “You were fuckin’ darted! Dead! I saw you!”
“Hide,” Cade mumbled blearily.
He was talking to her! Raine homed in on the sound, turning slightly to her right. There? Oh, God, let it be there!
“Too late for hidin’, pal. Yeah, yeah, Gran, I’m doing it. No problem, yeah, right this minute. He’s—”
Raine cast her net through the dark.
“What the—yieeeeeeoo-o-ow!”
“Hooks, that’s what!” She’d tied fifty fishhooks into her net, so that they dangled on short lengths of fish line bel
ow it. “Try dancing with that, you troll!”
Blam!
His last bullet slammed the rock over her head—last bullet, if his gun was a seven-shot. Raine didn’t care. Drawing her knife, she ducked low and slid in toward the squeaks and wails and stomping.
Whirling, squealing, Szabo bumped into her—she slashed at his leg. He shrieked—fell, kept right on rolling. She started grimly after him by sound—kicked something and paused.
Oh, could it be? She knelt, touched…his fallen goggles! “Yes!”
She brought them to her eyes—saw nothing. Broken, maybe, or—She tried the switch. Still nothing. Cracked when they fell? “Whatever.” She lobbed them off into the dark. Heard the distant, soul-satisfying crunch and tinkle as they hit stone.
Not far away, Szabo sobbed and gibbered brokenly to himself, but in this sheltering dark, she’d nothing to fear.
Nothing but the loss of Cade. Oh, sweetheart, where are you? Raine took a tentative step—and glass beads crunched underfoot. Ahhh. She stood for a moment, visualizing the passageway, orienting herself. A half turn to her left?
Maybe. She knelt again, stretched full length, swept hands and feet out through the dark…touched nothing. “Cade?” she called softly.
No response.
If Szabo had cracked him in the skull with his pistol. Cracked bone. Oh, please, no! No way to fix that out here in a screaming wilderness. She crawled forward a foot, starfished her limbs again—grazed warm flesh. “Oh, sweetie, oh, love!” She felt her way up his limp body. Traced the dear shape of his skull, his hair wet and warm with blood. “Cade? Please don’t leave me.” She caressed his motionless face; sobbing, bent to kiss him.
His lips answered hers.
Chapter 30
They’d strung one last line, an escape line, in case all else failed.
Raine used it now. Supporting Cade with one arm around his waist, she steered them slowly and blindly along the thread. It led down the corridor, then swerved off deep into the mountain.
Trudging along, she could hardly keep her eyes open. They needed a rest. Someplace where she could examine Cade’s wounds. Someplace where they wouldn’t have to listen to Szabo’s mad chuckling and whimpering.
They limped right past him in the dark and he never noticed. Too busy cursing his grandmother, cursing Raine, cursing the dino and Lia and Borneo and his grandfather and “these hooks—these fucking hooks!”
Deal with him in the morning, she told herself. She couldn’t imagine he’d be able to find the T. rex in the dark, much less damage it. Right now, Cade was her sole concern.
At last their line turned a right angle around a stone, leading them into the alcove. She walked them to its far end, then stopped where the nylon was anchored to a stalagmite. “We’re here. Can you—”
With dazed obedience, Cade sagged toward the floor. She staggered under his solid weight, then eased him on down. “There, love. Lie still and let me do the rest.” She’d stowed her pack here earlier in the night. Now Raine found her candle lantern and her matches, positioned it so its light wouldn’t reach beyond their hiding hole.
By its homely glow, she could see Cade’s face at last. The gash just above his forehead, his blood-matted hair. Ruffling gently through it, she blew out a thankful sigh. If Szabo had hit him square in the temple…But he hadn’t. I can fix this. She framed his face with her hands and murmured, “Look at me?”
His lids struggled open. His amber eyes glowed in the candlelight. Their pupils were wonderfully, perfectly symmetrical. “Jus’ need a little rest,” he muttered. “I’ll be fine.”
“You will be. You are!” She kissed him full on the lips…tasting her own tears. Tasting laughter to come.
Sometime later they woke in each other’s arms. For a moment, half dreaming, Raine assumed that they’d been making love, must have drifted off afterward. She stretched blissfully—let out a yelp as every muscle complained—remembered it all.
She lit the pocket lantern and, when Cade’s eyes still showed no signs of a concussion, she went ahead and injected him with morphine. Then set and taped his poor battered fingers.
Afterward they curled up again, sharing warmth under her rain poncho. Raine could have slept for a year, but the morphine had made Cade giddy. Talkative.
Might as well take advantage of his mood. Reaching for her necklace, she pulled the stone feather up from between her breasts, put it into his hands. “Tell me about this?”
“The feather. Do you know I’m the one who found it?”
She jolted with surprise. “No, I thought—” Oh, this wasn’t going to be good! “Tell me?”
“Well…’bout twenty-two years ago, your uncle opened a dig site on the next ranch over from my grandfather’s—the StarO Ranch in eastern Montana.”
Cade lived on the StarO with Matthew Oates, his mother’s father. They were all the family each other had in the world. Cade’s young parents had died in a car wreck when he was eight, and his grandfather had gladly taken him in.
They ran their modest outfit with the help of a couple of hired hands. Although the work was unending, still it was filled with satisfaction and freedom. To be a cattle rancher under the wide Montana sky was the only life Matthew had ever known or wanted. The only life Cade could imagine at age fourteen. Someday the ranch would be his.
But though Cade was a rancher through and through, he’d still found himself fascinated when Joe Ashaway and his crew began to turn up fossils on the land next to the StarO. He’d ride over when he could, to see what they’d dug up, and to hear tales of the awesome monsters that had been discovered in other parts of the West. “Like a lot of boys, I’d been crazy about dinosaurs when I was a kid. So when your uncle came along, I could see myself being the hero who found some new, amazing critter. He made me welcome around his dig all that summer. I took to bringing him fossils I’d found, trilobites and such, asking him what they were.”
Then one day, out on his own land, repairing a fence line, Cade had noticed an outcrop of sandstone similar to the formation Joe Ashaway was excavating. He’d explored the ledge, turned over a fractured layer of rock, and below it…He rubbed the stone against Raine’s cheek in the dark. “I found this.”
With further digging, he’d discovered the rest of the Archaeopteryx.
“Oh, Cade!” Raine murmured helplessly. Archaeopteryx ashawayi was the foundation to her family’s fortune. Their fame and reputation were built upon it.
“Right,” he said bitterly. “I showed it first to my granddad, then we persuaded your uncle to come have a look. He acted pretty cool when he saw it. Said it was nothing too special, but it was a nice, complete specimen.”
“He said that?” Raine cried. Joe Ashaway had always been the ruthless one, the driven one of the twins, but still—this was unforgivable!
“Yep. And he asked to buy it straight out, there in the ground. He wanted the fossil and he wanted the right to name it.” He’d offered five thousand dollars.
Matthew had been staggered by the princely sum. All that money for an old rock with a feathered lizard in it?
It had crossed Cade’s mind that if the fossil was worth that much, maybe it could be worth more? But his grandfather was eager to sell. Five thousand would just about bring them up to date on the mortgage they’d taken out on the ranch, a few years back. It had been a bad season, with cattle prices falling and a drought that had cut their production in half.
And Cade liked and trusted Joe Ashaway. So they’d accepted his check for the fossil, signed a bill of sale.
Three months later they’d learned that the Archaeopteryx ashawayi had been resold to a museum in Pittsburgh. For five hundred…thousand…dollars!
“The absolute worst of it,” Cade mused huskily, “was that Matt felt he’d let me down. It wrecked his pride. Here he’d thought he’d cut a fine deal, to take care of me and the ranch—and he’d been rooked. Cheated like a child or an old fool.”
Meanwhile the fall cattle sale had been
the poorest one in a decade. Matt had already used up the five thousand, paying off their debts. Now he realized that if he’d charged Ashaway what the fossil was really worth, they wouldn’t be teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. “It preyed on Matt’s pride…and his sense of justice. On his trust in his fellow man. His sense of his own competence in the world.”
He’d gone to town and hired a lawyer, who assured him that indeed he’d been cheated. That with a lawsuit—even the threat of a suit—the fossil could surely be recovered.
But Matt had no way to pay the lawyer’s stiff retainer fee. So he’d gone to the bank, signed another note—with the ranch as collateral.
“Oh, no, Cade!” Raine buried her face in the hollow of his shoulders as she wrapped her arms tight around him. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“Yeah, it was sorry all the way around.” Cade rested his chin on her hair. “The lawyer lost the suit, of course. We’d signed a sales contract, fair and square. He claimed with some more money, he could appeal. That we still had a chance to win. But the bank was yelling for its payments already—we were falling behind. Matt realized he’d be just shoveling money down the rat hole if he took out another loan.
“So instead, he went to see your uncle. Found him out on some dig.”
Cade never knew quite what happened, what was said, but clearly Joe Ashaway offered no relief. Must have showed some fatal disrespect. “Matt was sixty-five. Thirty years older than your uncle. But he was a big man, tough as rawhide from working outdoors all his life. I guess he lost his temper.”
He’d beaten Joe Ashaway within an inch of his life. Maybe would have killed him, if Raine’s father and other members of the crew hadn’t pulled him off and subdued him. “You don’t remember any of this?”
Raine shook her head. “I was only—what—seven? I remember visiting my uncle in the hospital. His jaw was wired shut, and he couldn’t walk, but I don’t think anybody told me what put him there.”
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