by Tara Janzen
“The FBI?” Her voice rose in surprise from the end of the bed, where she was putting his suitcase on a porter's bench. “And Christian Hawkins? Together?”
“Yes, yes. I know what you're thinking, but Hawkins turned out okay. Never could believe that other, about him murdering that senator's son. You know, your grandmother was a worrier, so you come by it naturally enough.” And wasn't that the truth. Evelyn had worried about him all the time. He reached up to turn on the reading lamp next to the chair. The boy had already set out a pot of tea and a few cookies, just the way he liked, the tea from England, the cookies from a French bakery on Sixteenth Street. The chop shop boys had definitely come up in the world.
“Quinn told me Hawkins had been exonerated, but still, the FBI? He didn't tell me you were actually working with the FBI.”
“Doubt if the boy knew. He hasn't been there, I don't think.” He had Quinn's address, that was it, but he didn't think he'd actually seen him at the warehouse. “I meant to be in Vernal by now, with Stan Ryan, chipping away at that big old Stegosaurus he found this spring.”
“You missed your presentation up at Casper.”
He had?
“Darn.” He leaned forward, resting one hand on his knee, and looked at her. The Casper speech at the Tate Museum was the highlight of his whole darn year—and he'd missed it.
Well, shoot. He'd have to call Vic Sutter and reschedule. That's all there was to it.
She'd opened up his suitcase and was staring at the contents, clearly surprised. She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “Somebody has been taking very good care of you.”
He grinned. There was nothing like a suitcase full of freshly pressed and wrapped laundry to impress a woman. The laundry service Hawkins used even pressed and wrapped his darn socks.
“And I'm getting paid a consultant's fee of a thousand dollars a day.” He was far from being used up and put out to pasture, even if he couldn't remember every darn thing that happened.
“A thousand dollars a day?” Her eyebrows lifted almost up into her hairline.
He'd really surprised her with that one, and it gave him a good chuckle. It was hard for him to get one up on his girls anymore. Nikki had always run circles around him. She was all energy, and creation, and lightning strikes coming from unexpected angles. Regan was just the opposite, always organized, doing things by the book, step by step, brilliant in her own way, but never reaching her full potential, because she always played it safe.
Wilson took some of the blame for that. He'd raised a son pretty much in his own image of the rough-and-tumble field researcher first and professor second. To say Wilson had been unprepared for taking on his little granddaughters was an understatement. Not that he ever, even for one second, had considered an alternative. Nikki and Regan were his, all he'd had left after the Peru disaster. Still, he could have done better by Regan than just being content to let her tag along in his footsteps. Nikki had just exploded in her own direction, but he'd always felt he should have exposed Regan to more options, encouraged her more to try different things.
He sure as shoot should have put his foot down with that idiot Hanson. One of the biggest regrets of his life had been letting her marry Scott. She'd been almost immediately miserable. But if he hadn't been ready for little girls, teenage girls had completely hog-tied him. Emotional hadn't begun to describe Regan at seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. Hormonal tornado would have been more accurate.
He'd actually, briefly, once, hoped marriage would settle her down a bit, and it had—too much. By the time of the divorce, she'd gotten so miserably settled, it was as if her spark had gone out.
She seemed to have a little spark left in her tonight, though. Not now, not while she was organizing him for bed, and no doubt getting ready to give him the third degree on his meds, and probably figuring out how to lay into him again for not calling her, but earlier, when she and Quinn Younger had first shown up. She'd been practically glowing, she'd had so much spark.
He looked at her more carefully, noticing things, unusual things. She was wearing an overlarge T-shirt, which was not Regan's style at all, ever, and it was only half tucked into her skirt, which was even more out of character. She liked feminine clothes, the girlier the better. Her hair was a mess, an unheard-of circumstance. Personal tidiness was a religion to Regan. Nikki, on the other hand, spent hours on her grooming to ensure that she looked like she'd just walked out of a blender. Between the two of them, Wilson never had figured out which end was up. He only knew the downstairs bathroom was the only safe one in the house.
But Regan, tonight . . .
Something flipped over in his brain, and he knew he had to tell her something tonight.
Something of incredible importance.
He furrowed his brow and let his gaze drift to the floor, thinking, thinking.
“What is it, Wilson?” He heard the concern in her voice, heard her walking back across the room. Then she knelt by his side, her hand coming up to hold on to his. “What's wrong?”
He couldn't remember. He was too tired to remember, too weary. It had been an awfully long day. He shook his head and looked at her, but it wasn't coming back. He did remember the soft gray of Evelyn's eyes, and Regan's were the same color, the same beautiful color. His wife had been blond, too, and small-boned, just like Regan. Though Evelyn most definitely had not had Regan's other attributes. The girl's figure had been a cross to bear, with him trying to keep her covered up and buttoned down, and giving his evilest evil eye to every boy who had ever come calling.
Maybe that had been the problem. He'd scared off all the young ones who'd wanted a chance with her when, if he'd had more sense and less panic to work with, he might have spent his energy scaring off Scott Hanson.
“A thousand dollars a day. That's incredible, but not a penny more than you're worth,” she said, giving him an encouraging smile.
A thousand dollars? For a moment, he wondered what she was talking about, then he remembered—the money.
He wouldn't go so far as to say he was worth more than a thousand dollars a day. Dylan had been very generous with his offer, but then, he'd not only been buying expertise, he'd been buying silence. The whole operation at the warehouse in Lafayette had been very secretive. Besides the FBI, a couple of military types had shown up every now and then doing God knew what besides looking serious and acting officiously. He certainly hadn't been able to tell if they'd accomplished anything or not. Then, over the last few days, the whole atmosphere had changed, going from “red alert” to “the party's over,” and he'd been left pretty much on his own.
“Don't zone out on me, Grandpa.” She tightened her grip on his hand, her voice bringing him back to the present. “We're in a lot of trouble because of those dinosaur bones you've been checking out for Dylan Hart, and I need to know if you found anything.”
That was it. His mind cleared in one brilliant flash.
“Yes!” A broad smile curved his mouth. “I did find something. Something remarkable.” Excitement edged his voice. “Regan . . .”—he leaned close, his voice falling to a whisper—“there was a nest, a Tarbosaurus nest, a real Mongolian monster. It's all there, a fully developed embryo, broken eggshells, and a couple of eggs still intact, and I'm sure it's a Tarbosaurus. When I cut open the plaster, the whole thing smelled like the Gobi Desert. The sand, the wind, the heat, it was all there. The other fossils didn't have that sense about them, but this one did, and the skull inside the egg was pure carnivore, with serrated teeth and the shape of a Tyrannosaurus rex.”
She tightened her grip on his hand, utterly speechless. He understood. What he'd just told her was as close to impossible as finding a four-carat diamond in a cereal box.
He paused for a second, his mind caught on something, but the moment passed, and then his attention was back on Regan, who was clearly stunned. His smile got even bigger, almost as big as her eyes, which were damn near bulging.
“A—a Tarbosaurus nest?” she finally ch
oked out. “My God, you disappear for two weeks and come up with a Tarbosaurus nest? With a visible embryo?”
“Yes, yes, I know,” he said, still excited, despite her obvious doubts. Heck, who wouldn't doubt such a find? “But it's there, Regan, and it's real.”
It was enough to make a person's head spin. It had made his head spin—the mighty Cretaceous carnivore he'd always wanted had appeared from out of nowhere and been waiting for him in a warehouse in Lafayette? Stranger things had happened in science, but this was definitely one for the books, definitely one to set young Dr. Houska back on his heels.
“Mongolia,” she murmured in a tone filled with awe. “Grandpa, this is amazing. My God. We have a Mongolian Tarbosaurus nest right here in Denver?”
Yes, he was sure. He might have been old, and he might have been forgetful, but by God, Wilson McKinney knew his Cretaceous carnivores.
She grinned up at him, her smile going from ear to ear. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, her smile disappeared. She swore softly, and rose to her feet, then paced back toward the bed.
“What's wrong?”
“Well,” she hedged, drawing the word out before coming to a stop and turning to face him. “We have to give it back now, don't we?”
Well, yes, eventually, probably. Okay, for sure, some- day, but . . . but not yet. They didn't even know yet who to give it back to, and there was something else she needed to know.
“Does anyone else know what you found?” she asked, interrupting his train of thought, and for a second he was confused. He hadn't told her yet what else he'd found.
Or had he?
“Did you tell Christian Hawkins?”
He shook his head, knowing the answer to that question at least. “Hawkins hasn't been around much, and I'm supposed to report to Dylan, but Dylan . . . left.” That's what he knew. Dylan had left, so he'd kept his report to himself, but he'd written up part of it, the part about the Tarbosaurus. He'd only found it two days ago, after most of the FBI guys had left, after Dylan had left. For hours there had been no one there to share the news with. Then Hawkins had come, but they hadn't had time to talk much before another FBI guy had shown up.
The two of them had pretty much left him on his own, and then this morning he'd found something else with the Tarbosaurus. Something . . . odd.
“Grandpa?” Regan was back by his side, shaking his knee, trying to get his attention.
That was the whole darn problem, of course. His darned attention kept wandering.
He focused on her, wondering what had upset her. He'd just given her great news.
“Grandpa. I have to leave now, but you're going to be safe here. I'm going to go check on Nikki, make sure she's okay. We'll both be at the Southern Cross Hotel tonight. Call if you need me, and I'll come back. Hopefully, by tomorrow, we can all go home.”
That's where he wanted to go: home. Working was stressful, having people depending on him, trying to meet a schedule, being part of the hustle and bustle, answering all their darned questions all the time. It was enough to rattle anybody's concentration. Giving up driving hadn't been easy, either. As a matter of fact, it scared the hell out of him. If he couldn't drive, what was going to happen to him? Was he going to be housebound, a real old man? Washed up at seventy-two?
“We should take a vacation,” he said, suddenly getting an idea. “Use the money I made and just go.” That's what he loved, just getting up and going, traveling around, seeing what was out there. He didn't want to give that up. “Maybe the three of us could go to Rabbit Valley for a month.” Just the thought made him feel lighter, younger.
SURE, Grandpa,” Regan said, unable to say anything else even though she knew when push came to shove she was lying through her teeth.
God, she had always been such a disappointment to him, but there was nothing on earth she hated more than camping in a pup tent in one-hundred-degree heat, in the middle of Desolation Nowhere, USA, with a five-gallon container of tepid water they'd had to haul from forty miles back. No showers, no toilet, no sink, no bed, no shade, but plenty of sandy grit, and flies, and skin-sizzling sunshine—the list went on and on.
Both her parents had loved that kind of life, roughing it in the desert or the jungle. She must be some kind of genetic throwback to some long-lost ancestor who'd spent her life in a day spa. A vacation was the Caribbean, Hawaii, a week in New York.
Rabbit Valley was an endurance test—and it didn't take the thousands of dollars he'd made to get there. A tank of gas, a bag of groceries, and a stick to poke around for snakes with would do the trick.
He looked good, though, well cared for, and for that she was grateful. At a thousand dollars a day, she couldn't exactly say the guys at Steele Street had taken advantage of him—not hardly—and he was safe. Steele Street was a fortress. Even the rickety old freight elevator had a state-of-the-art security system. She'd seen other signs of security around the building—cameras, keypads for all the doors, alarms. More than any of that, the place had a feel about it, a very tight feel, as if with the push of a button, one man could lock the place up tighter than a drum. She'd never been in a building where she'd gotten such a feeling of impregnability.
“It'll be wonderful.” Wilson was practically beaming.
Okay, help me, God, she silently prayed. She'd go, but not for a month. For a weekend—max.
Of course, none of them were going anywhere until they got out of the mess they were in with Dylan Hart's fossils. My God. A Tarbosaurus nest.
“Sure, Grandpa,” she repeated. “It'll be wonderful.” She had to talk to Quinn before he made any more plans. “Do you have everything you need for the night?”
He glanced at the bed and nodded. “Yes, a real bed and air-conditioning. Is the boy staying around?”
“Johnny?”
“Yes, Johnny,” he said, putting emphasis on the name, his smile broadening.
“Yes. He'll be here all night, if you need anything. He'll stay with you tomorrow, too, until Nikki and I come and get you, or until he can take you home.” She rose to her feet and leaned down to give him a kiss. “Good night, Grandpa.”
Leaving him for the night, she closed the door behind her and walked across one of the most beautifully decorated offices she'd ever seen. Her mind was racing, but not beyond the point where she didn't recognize the exquisitely appointed furnishings—exquisitely expensive. Everything was sleek and creative. There was nothing hodgepodge or mundane. The beautifully crafted leather chairs had simple, modern lines. The rugs were thick-piled and artful on a clean oak floor. The desks were Scandinavian, in pale hardwoods. The office equipment was simply mind-boggling, all state-of-the-art, from computers to phones to the surround-sound CD system and wall-size movie screen.
The only incongruous piece in the suite was a two-foot-by-three-foot metal sign hung between two of the windows with the word WEATHERPROOF on it, the same as the logo on the T-shirt she was wearing. She was going to have to ask Quinn about it. WEATHERPROOF showed up all over Steele Street. There'd been a long row of WEATHERPROOF bumper stickers stuck to the wall inside the iron door off the alley. There was a WEATHERPROOF decal on the window of the door separating the garage from the office, and there had been license-plate-size WEATHERPROOF signs in the freight elevator.
Actually, she was going to have to ask Quinn a lot of things. He was no car salesman. No one at Steele Street was. Not even close. This was a million-dollar suite of offices—which didn't exactly bring government work to mind, either.
Whatever he was up to, they needed to talk and regroup, right now, immediately. The Tarbosaurus nest changed everything. It could not be given back to Roper and Vince Branson and all the other criminals breathing down their necks. The nest was an unprecedented find, a vital piece of the fossil record, and she'd be damned if she'd let Quinn and Hawkins give it to those thugs. Now more than ever, she needed to see those stolen bones.
On the other hand, if they didn't give the fossils back, all the fossils, she and Nikki
and Wilson would still be targets.
“So now what,” she whispered to herself.
“Regan?” Quinn walked in from an adjoining suite.
“You startled me,” she confessed, feeling her heart slow back down from the jump it had taken. All in all, she guessed her nerves were just about shot. The last twenty-four hours, since she'd found the note on Wilson's desk calendar, had been the wildest of her life.
“I'm sorry.” He walked farther into the room and pulled her into his arms. He held her and kissed the top of her head. “Did you get Wilson all tucked in?”
“Yes.” He felt so good, so solid, so warm. She felt warm, too, especially across her face. She'd made love with him three times and she still hardly knew a thing about him. “He had some information that changes everything.”
“What was it?”
Her smile returned. Wilson's news truly was amazing. “One of the fossils he's been working on is a Tarbosaurus nest, one of those Cretaceous carnivores he's spent his whole life hoping to find. I know it's unbelievable, but you have a seminal, rare treasure in your possession that's probably worth whatever else was stolen and then some. You can't possibly give it back to Roper, not at least without letting me—”
“Oh, yes, I can,” he interrupted, his gaze darkening.
Okay, she'd expected him to say as much, given the very persuasive reasons for giving the fossils back. She cared at least as much about everyone's safety as he did, and probably more.
“Then you have to at least let me see it.” That was her backup plan. She hated it. She wanted the damn nest, every little bone, in situ, in toto, intact. “I'll need to photograph it, before you give it back—oh, God.” She stopped abruptly and squeezed her eyes shut. No, no, no. The backup plan sucked. Big-time. “We can't give it back,” she said, holding up her hand as if to ward off any possible argument. “No, we just can't. Not if it's what Wilson thinks it is. Not if it's a Mongolian Tarbosaurus nest. Honestly, Quinn. There's got to be another way. It's that important.”
