Dangerous Ground

by Grant, Rachel

She had to hold it together.

  She tightened her grip on the wheel and fixed her gaze on the foggy road visible in the glow of the headlights. She would deliver them to safety. Then, when she was alone, she’d fall apart.

  It was after eleven p.m. local time when they arrived at the village. Dean was pretty sure Fiona was operating on fumes, but somehow, she managed to give the village chairwoman a coherent description of what had happened, and the leaders of the village were all called to a meeting as phone calls were made and they each were handed phones to give their accounts to different authorities. Some tribal, some state, some federal.

  The FBI said they’d send a team from the Anchorage field office first thing in the morning. Promises were made for a medevac airlift for Dylan at the same time. Sometime in the wee hours, there was nothing left to be said. Their hostess was asleep in her room, while Dylan was asleep in Marion’s guest bed, where he’d crashed after enjoying a hot meal prepared by one of the elders.

  Fiona was unsteady on her feet, suffering full adrenaline crash, and Dean wasn’t doing much better.

  “You should sleep in the guest bed with Dylan,” she said. “I’ll take the couch.”

  It was the first time in days they didn’t have to sleep curled up in the same sleeping bag, and . . . he didn’t like it.

  He hadn’t shared a bed without sex with a woman in more than ten years, and now, he didn’t want to sleep alone. It was a little unsettling, but he figured given the week they’d had, he could tell that part of his brain to shut the hell up. He wanted to lean in to this feeling. “I want to hold you. Now. Tonight.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Why not? I’ve held you for the last four nights.”

  “Because you had to. Not because you chose to.”

  “Tonight, I choose to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I care about you.”

  “Because you want to seduce me.”

  “I don’t want to seduce you tonight. Not here. Not like this.”

  “I know. But that’s your end goal. It’s not me. It’s sex.”

  “I want you and sex. Sex with you. I want you. All of you. But tonight, I just want to hold you. We’ve been through hell together, and I want to feel you, alive and breathing in my arms.”

  Those words were truer than he wanted to admit. In the end, when Violet had faced her last weeks, all he’d wanted was to lie by her side in the hospital bed they’d set up in their living room and hold her. To live every minute they had left with her in his arms.

  This wasn’t that. He wasn’t trying to repeat what he’d shared with Violet, but he did understand the deeper intimacy of holding someone you cared about and just experiencing the preciousness of life and being together. Sharing the same breath and orbit.

  He wanted to hold Fiona so he could be there for her if she fell apart. As she’d been there for him that night in the volcano, when he’d cried at the possibility of losing Dylan.

  Fiona had held back her story from him. He knew it. Tonight, he wanted nothing more than to give her the space to feel.

  She leaned against him. “I’m afraid I might cry.”

  “All the more reason to let me hold you.”

  “I don’t want you to see me cry.”

  “Then we’ll turn out the lights. Just like in the volcano.”

  She gave in then, her whole body relaxing against his. “Promise me you won’t turn on the lights.”

  “Promise.”

  They set up a bed on the floor, once again employing the narrow sleeping pad and extra-wide sleeping bag, but now they had pillows and extra blankets for padding, so they opened the bag as they’d done when Dylan joined them in sleep.

  After brushing teeth and using the bathroom, Dean turned out the side table lamp and crawled into their makeshift bed beside her and pulled her into his arms. She smelled of soap and flowers—they’d both taken showers between phone calls, and Dean had helped Dylan wash as well.

  Dylan had grumbled at the indignity of needing his brother’s help to bathe, but after six weeks of sponge baths without soap, he wasn’t about to refuse, and Dean was skilled in this area after taking care of Violet.

  It was glorious to be clean again, the diesel fuel scrubbed from his skin, but the sleeping bag had absorbed the odors of their journey, including the black smoke of the contaminated gas fire, making sure his olfactory senses kept the memory of what happened tonight front and center.

  He pressed his nose to Fiona’s clean hair and breathed deeply. “There’s something you’ve been holding back.”

  He felt her nod against his chest.

  “If you want to tell me, I’m here. Listening.”

  “I was certain Dylan was dead.”

  He nodded in the dark, his arms tightening around her. He’d suspected that, and he understood. She didn’t need to feel bad about it, but he sensed she did. “I understand. I probably would have too, in your shoes. But for me . . . I just couldn’t.”

  “It’s not that. I mean, yeah, that’s part of it. But there’s more. You see, five years ago, my sister went missing.”

  His heart squeezed. This was an ominous beginning. She’d never once mentioned having a sister, even as he’d spent days talking about his brother. He’d . . . assumed she was an only child?

  But all he said was, “Your sister?”

  “Regan. My baby sister. I have an older brother too, Aidan. But this is about Regan, who was three years younger than me and brighter than the sun.”

  The name Regan rang a bell. Why was that? But what he said was, “You’re using past tense for Regan.”

  “It’s the only tense that applies.”

  “I’m so sorry. You don’t have to tell me, but I want to be here for you.”

  “That’s the thing. I couldn’t tell you before. Because I didn’t want to take away your hope.” Her hand settled on his chest, over his heart, pressing on the violet tattoo. His clothes were all rank, so he’d stripped to his underwear for sleeping inside a warm house, and she wore underwear and a T-shirt. They were closer to naked than they’d ever been together, and her hand was on his bare skin. But nothing about this touch was sexual, and he didn’t want it to be, didn’t react as if it were.

  “Tell me.”

  “She went into archaeology because of me.”

  Again, the name Regan tickled at his brain, but he shoved it aside so he could focus on her words.

  “When I was a junior in college, I did my archaeological field school—it was like summer camp for people who could drink and screw around without consequences, and it was a blast, if you liked that sort of thing. Regan visited the camp for a weekend—eighteen and a senior in high school, it was such an adventure for her—and this guy from my field school was all over her. I’m pretty sure she lost her virginity to him, and while I wasn’t thrilled, because he’d been hitting on every woman in camp before Regan showed up, it was also a case of her body, her choice, and I wasn’t going to freak out and get judgy on her. She wasn’t that into him, so it’s not like he broke her heart or anything.

  “She decided to go into archaeology after that—she wanted her own field school and the adventure of dig bumming. It can be a nomadic existence if that’s what you want, and that was totally Regan. I was the one who wanted the stability of working for one company and living in the same place. She wanted to live out of her car and bounce from project to project. She was a free spirit all the way, dig bumming in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Nevada. She had half a dozen companies she worked for, and some projects lasted only a few days, some several months. More often than not, she hooked up with one of the guys on the crew.”

  “Did that bother you?” he asked as his hand stroked her back.

  “Not at all. Except for the guy at field school, she was generally a good judge of character, and she always got involved on her own terms. She was so much better at flings than I was—I’d had a few field . . . relationships
at that point, and they never ended well. Found out when it was over that one guy had a girlfriend—who was pregnant! Another guy just never intended for it to be more, even though he said otherwise when we were sharing a tent for a month. I was pretty sour on the whole field-fling thing out of the gate, but not Regan. No. She loved the ephemeral nature of fieldwork and fieldmen.”

  So she came by her aversion to flings both naturally and in response to some assholes. He felt a surge of anger for the cheater and the liar and the scars they’d etched into this amazing woman’s heart.

  “Anyway, five years ago,” Fiona continued, “she was on a project in Eastern Washington, near Coulee Dam. It was a survey of the Lake Roosevelt area for flood control. She was twenty-seven years old, and this time the guy she was sleeping with was her boss, the owner of the small consulting firm. It wasn’t a sexual harassment or pressure issue—she had no trouble getting field jobs and didn’t care if she advanced with his small company. I’m fairly certain she was the one who pursued him. She’d first hooked up with him on a project down in Richland, but when that ended, he didn’t want her to move on, so he convinced her to do the Lake Roosevelt job with him.

  “She had misgivings—she had a longer project lined up in Eastern Oregon she wanted to take—but he begged her, said he needed her, and she liked him, so she decided to take the job. She showed up at the campground her boss had reserved, expecting to find a full field crew, but it was just Jeff. She drove to town—there was no cell reception at the campground—and called me that night. Freaked out. Said she was worried there wasn’t even a project, that it was all fake.

  “I begged her to quit. To drive to Seattle. Told her she could live with me for a few months until she lined up another job. I knew a company that was hiring lab techs. She could have worked for them and been safe.” Fiona’s voice broke on the word safe.

  And now he knew why Regan’s name was familiar. He cleared his throat. “I spent weeks looking for you. Online. All I had to go on was the name Fiona and archaeologist.”

  “You found Regan instead.”

  He nodded and pulled her close. He couldn’t hold her tight enough now that he knew what she was about to tell him. “The news article didn’t identify you as an archaeologist, so I set it aside.”

  “There was no need to identify my profession. I was just the sister who found her body.”

  That was the part that was the sucker punch. This past week, as he was searching for Dylan, she was reliving the nightmare of finding her sister.

  Of course she hadn’t believed he’d find Dylan alive. How could she believe anything else?

  He knew from the article that when it was reported that Regan was missing, a huge hunt ensued. Her sister had driven out from Seattle to join the search and was the one who’d found the body.

  According to Jeffrey Koster, who’d given a statement to the reporter, Regan Carver had fallen from a cliff into the lake during the archaeological survey, and her body had been swept away.

  “You don’t think Regan’s fall was an accident,” Dean said.

  “I don’t. For good reason. I mean, aside from Regan’s call when she told me she was uncomfortable with Jeff.” She cleared her throat. “You see, when I was sixteen and Regan thirteen, our dad died in a climbing accident.”

  Dean’s breath left him in a rush. He should have guessed when she’d said her climbing days were over, and then there was her fear of the steep cliffside hike and natural bridge.

  “Yeah,” she said, proving she could read his thoughts. “That’s where my fear of heights comes from. We all loved climbing with our dad, but after that, neither Regan nor I could stomach it. Given that, I know there is no way she would have been standing close enough to that cliff edge to fall.”

  He tightened his arms around her and stroked her back.

  “She wasn’t ever diagnosed with acrophobia or basophobia—which is fear of falling—so there was no real proof except my word. And Jeff did have a survey project there. Regan was wrong about that.”

  “Is he still working in the Pacific Northwest?”

  “Yes. He’s the reason I don’t go to local conferences. I’m not part of the Pacific Northwest archaeological community—beyond the job, that is.”

  He pressed her head to his chest, so close to his heart. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry you lost your sister. So sorry you were the one who found her. And so sorry you had to relive it all this week, as I was relentless in my need to search for Dylan.”

  “But you found him. So maybe I can start having hope again.”

  “You found him. Or maybe he found us. I’m not entirely sure about that part.”

  She let out a soft laugh. “We found him. Or we all found each other. I’m elated the outcome was different. Happy for you and for Dylan.” But still he heard a sad note in her voice, and his heart ached. He never wanted this woman to feel pain. He wanted to protect her from grief and loss. But it was too late for her, just as it was for him.

  He threaded his fingers through her hair. “It’s okay to let go, honey. I’ve got you.”

  “I know you do.”

  It was her confidence in him that made his heart surge. Her utter trust. He kissed her hair and held her close, and after a long while, she let out a shuddering breath; then he felt her body quake against him, and he knew the dam had broken, and she was letting out the trauma of reliving her sister’s death over and over as they searched the caves for Dylan.

  He rubbed her back and held her, and as she’d cried with him when he let loose his fears for Dylan that night in the cave, now he cried with her, deeply saddened that there had once been another amazing Carver archaeologist whom he would never get a chance to meet.

  FORTY

  Marion Flanders watched as Dylan Slater was loaded into the navy Osprey; then his brother the photographer and the archaeologist climbed inside. She and the rest of the people in her village had gathered in the schoolyard to watch them leave, and as one, they waved when the military aircraft lifted from the ground like a helicopter.

  Once they were high enough, the helicopter would become a plane, and Dylan Slater would be ensconced in a hospital in Anchorage far faster than if a simple helicopter had been employed for their rescue.

  She turned to her people and nodded to the elders. It was time for their meeting. They had decisions to make with far-reaching implications.

  The families dispersed, but all the adults of the village—twelve people; eight women, four men—headed straight for the meetinghouse next to the church. They each took their place around the table, with her at the head.

  Henry led the opening prayer. He was brief this morning, a sign they were all in a hurry to discuss the issues at hand.

  Without preamble, Marion passed around her iPad with photos downloaded from Dean Slater’s camera. Photos of the sacred site her people had protected for well over a thousand years.

  “It can’t be a mistake that the photographer was Dean Slater,” Henry said.

  There were murmurs of agreement around the table. Slater had been approved by their most esteemed elder five years before. And his recent photos were respectful. No images of the ancestors, just the artifacts that proved the stories handed down by the generations.

  “They found it, then. The stone.” The speaker was Lorraine, the village teacher, who made sure the children learned English and Unangam Tunuu.

  “Yes,” Marion said. “But they don’t know they found it. Don’t realize the meteorite was hidden by the remains of the ancestors. They have no idea how close they were to the source stone.”

  “And now that the remains of the ancestors are known to be there, law prevents anyone from legally entering the chamber,” Noah said.

  She nodded. “Fiona Carver has assured me the burial chamber will be protected—at least from legal desecration. We will have to remain vigilant for Russian looters.”

  “What about that geologist Trevor Watson? He asked far too many questions abou
t the meteorite when he was here with Dylan weeks ago.”

  “He was arrested this morning,” Marion said. “Carver was notified of the arrest before the sun was up.”

  “Good,” Lorraine said, and heads around the table nodded in agreement.

  They’d all been concerned when the geologist asked so many questions that day. Her people had been protecting the secret of Kanuux̂ for centuries. Kanuux̂—heart, in their language—wasn’t the name of Mount Katin, as they’d told Dylan once upon a time; it was the name of the stone buried in her depths. Their oral history of the volcano went further back than they’d ever told any anthropologist or colonizer.

  “If what is said about the meteorite’s elemental content is true,” said Virgil, the youngest among them, “then shouldn’t we consider claiming it for ourselves? We could buy so much for our people. We wouldn’t need the submarine base to get the navy to build us roads and a reliable power plant.”

  She’d known to expect this question and also knew Virgil would be the one to raise it. And it wasn’t an idea she could dismiss out of hand. There were Alaska Native Corporations who did sell access to their prehistory, and while it was easy to cast judgment, it was harder to survive. Their decisions, she knew, while they might not match her own, would never be taken lightly.

  Henry was not so gentle with his feelings on the matter. “Absolutely not.” The words, delivered with steely calm, were as good as a shout coming from him.

  Lorraine placed her hand on her husband’s arm. “We will hear out the pros and cons and then vote.”

  The pros were long, and all were about money and infrastructure for the island. The cons were fewer but deeply felt.

  “We will get the navy to pay for those things anyway,” Noah said, adding to the cons. “They will build everything we need if they place the submarine base here, plus they will protect Kanuux̂. Russian looters will not be able to access the island as long as there is an active US naval base here.”

  Lorraine stood from her seat, and Marion saw the teacher rising to impart knowledge to her students. “One thing we must remember is the warnings that were passed down by the ancestors, the reason we protect the secret of Kanuux̂. They felt the explosive power of the meteorite. Many were injured and a few died. Remember what the ancestors said: ‘The end of the earth will come from a sickness of the heart.’ They referred to the explosive reaction, but now we know hafnium is even more dangerous. If it can be used to make gamma ray weapons, that is indeed a sickness of Kanuux̂ that could destroy the world. I hereby motion we continue keeping the secret and charge the generations that come after us with doing the same.”