Jurassic Heart (22 page)

“Hm? Oh, thanks,” he said, pulling his hair back into a ponytail. The wet ends turned his T-shirt a darker shade of blue.

It didn’t take long for him to make the eggs, fry the bacon, and turn bread a perfect shade of toast. He used real butter in the eggs and on the toast, saying since we were suffering from the night before, it was completely allowed, and we weren’t supposed to think of how fattening it was.

When he presented me with the plate—four neat triangles of toast, a big pile of buttery, cheesy eggs, and crispy bacon, complete with a steaming mug of coffee―I nearly whimpered.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “You were right. This is awesome.”

“I can’t cook much fancy stuff in the way of breakfast, but this—this I can do.”

Step three of the hangover cure fixed the nauseating rock and roll in my stomach, and by the time I’d washed the dishes—since he’d cooked, I insisted—I felt almost human again. We didn’t have any work planned for the day; everyone had the day off to recover from the night before. I’d made sure of that in advance.

“You wanna go for a walk?” Hunter offered as we hovered in the kitchen, no immediate other options making themselves known.

I nodded. “Sure.”

I only had sneakers with me, so I couldn’t agree to any proper hiking, but the woods around the dig site were a lot flatter than the area around his cabin, so it wasn’t too hard on my feet.

“It’s a gorgeous day,” Hunter said, breathing deeply as we set out.

“It won’t last.”

He just slung his arm around my shoulder and squeezed.

F
ROM
THE
moment I found the spine, I knew. There was no way of knowing for sure, of course, but I knew all the same. The skeleton was buried at an awkward angle, facedown in the dirt, meaning I needed to work a small trench down the side of the animal before trying to excavate sideways.

It was difficult to keep my excitement under control as I worked steadily through the heat of the day, although it was cooler down in the earth than it was on top. After a certain amount of digging, I couldn’t deny it any longer—I needed help.

Tearing myself away from the dinosaur was more than a little heartwrenching, but Boner wasn’t too far away.

“Hey, dickhead,” I called until he stuck his head up. I knew he had something and felt guilty for taking him away from it.

“What?”

I laughed and shook my head. “I can’t believe you answer when I call you dickhead.”

Boner stuck his tongue out at me. “What do you want?”

“Come take a look at this.”

He trudged over in his khaki pants and boots, shirtless and showing off. Down in my ditch, he looked over what I was working on.

“Holy shit.”

I laughed and leaned against him. “Yeah.”

“That’s not a Velociraptor.”

“Nope.”

“But it’s too small to be a Deinonychus.” Deinonychus were the American cousins of Velociraptors; they were larger but had the same overall body shape. Several had been found in Montana and Wyoming, and, to my frustration, I couldn’t remember where else.

“That’s what I was thinking. These bones are fully formed, Boner. It’s not an infant.”

Boner looked at me, eyes wide. “You think it’s a new species?”

“I don’t know,” I said quickly. “I honestly don’t. I need Mim to look at it. And some other people, I guess. But right now I’m excited.”

“How long have you been working on this?” he demanded.

“A couple of hours,” I admitted.

“Bastard.”

“Wanna help me?”

He looked at me like I’d grown another head. “Of course I do.”

I gave him a grateful smile. “Do you need anyone to cover your area? I’m sure we can bring one of the others in if you want.”

Boner shook his head. “Nah. It should be fine. I wanna see this.”

We worked together quickly, each knowing the other’s particular way of doing things. The more of the animal we excavated, the more excited I got. This was something I hadn’t seen before, and I’d seen a lot.

“Look at this,” Boner murmured, brushing away the dirt around the animal’s leg and anklebones.

I nodded. It was perfectly preserved but not the right size for me to be able to make a formal identification. “This is crazy.”

“People work for
years
before getting something like this,” Boner said, sitting back on his heels to look over the whole animal.

At a guess, the animal was about four feet from snout to tail and would have stood about five to six feet tall. It was a standard theropod: thick tail for balance, long neck, short arms, powerful legs.

“What are you going to call it?” Boner asked. “Name your find, Nick.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to give it a nickname, I want to give it a Latin name.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That’s a pretty bold statement.”

“But justified?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’m just gonna put it out there: I don’t think ‘Bonersaurus’ has been taken yet.”

I pushed him over in the mud. “No.”

“Fine. You should call Sam.”

Sam would definitely want to hear about this in person. It wasn’t like the baby Ornithopod—that had been exciting, but not on the same scale as this. I was looking at something I was pretty sure was a new species.

“Nick,” Sam said shortly as he answered. “I’m busy. Make it quick.”

“You’re always busy,” I said. “I found something.”

“Well, super-special snowflakes for you.”

“No, Sam, I found something. Something new.”

He was silent for a long moment. “Well, spit it out.”

“Can you remember that Othnielosaurus that Eric dug up months ago? With the bite marks on the bones?”

“Yeah.”

“I think I found the animal that did it. And it’s not a Velociraptor. Or a Deinonychus.”

“Okay. Nick, you’re killing me, here. What the fuck is it then?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the point. I think it’s a new species of raptor.”

“Fuck. Fuck!”

“I know!” I exclaimed. “I need verification. I’m going to get River working on that right away and cross-reference with some finds from Dinosaur Park. I heard a while back the university has several unconfirmed new species they’re in the process of identifying. I was wondering if you could ask them to take this sample too….”

“I’m on it,” he said curtly. “Leave it with me. And… well done, Nick.”

He hung up before I had chance to answer.

W
HEN
M
IM
turned up on-site to verify my find, I couldn’t help but laugh.

It had taken three days for Sam to make the arrangements and for Mim to make the journey up to Alberta. Boner and I had shown the skeleton to the group, reluctantly at first, still unsure of whether the sabotage was coming from inside our little team. With no way of hiding the find, we’d played down its importance, presenting it as an “unknown predator” that would be properly identified once it was taken out of the ground.

Night security had been stepped up, with Boner, Hunter, or me doing a full check of all the fences before we locked up for the evening. I wanted 24/7 security, but we just couldn’t afford it. Instead, I spent most nights worrying about whether or not the find was safe.

“It’s all coming full circle,” I said as I pulled Mim into a gentle hug. Her son, only weeks old, was asleep, strapped to her chest.

“I know,” she said and held me at arm’s length. “My babies are all grown up.”

“We still need you, though.”

“Of course you do.”

Miriam had never looked like a motherly sort of woman. When she decided to turn it on, she leaned heavily to a 1950s rockabilly sort of style, which suited her pale complexion and big brown eyes. On her off days, she was more likely to be found wearing scruffy jeans and band T-shirts with her hair pinned back from her face instead of in elegant curls.

Having a baby in her arms certainly made her look more motherly.

I offered to show her around, but she wanted to get straight down and check out my baby while it was still in the ground.

“How’s Cayden?”

“He’s good,” she said, brushing her hand over her son’s hair. “He sleeps a lot.”

“That can’t be a bad thing. And Charlie?”

“Fine,” she said with a serene smile. “We’re all good, Nick.”

I reached for her hand and squeezed it. “I can’t believe you flew all the way out here with a baby.”

“There are some things you just can’t walk away from. I’ll admit, if it was anyone other than you and Boner asking, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

“There’s someone I want you to meet while you’re here, if you have time,” I said impulsively.

“Oh? Did you meet someone?”

“Yeah. I did.”

Mim gave me a look but didn’t press. I guessed she was more interested in dinosaurs than boyfriends, not that that was anything new.

“Is this it?”

I nodded. However much I’d tried to stop the swarm of people down to my secluded corner of the site, the team wanted to dig and find more of whatever it was I’d excavated. And for once, I didn’t blame them.

River bounced over to share hugs with Mim, who passed over her baby without a second thought. River seemed delighted. Mim fixed her attention on the rock and dirt in front of her.

“Well, fuck me,” she muttered.

“Nah, you’re not my type,” Boner said. He was sitting in the trench working on sketches for lack of anything better to do.

“You found this, what, four days ago?” she demanded.

“Yeah. We called Sam right away.”

“It looks good, guys,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a complete skeleton, but I reckon you’ve got well over three quarters of it here.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

She gave me a bright smile. “Congratulations, Nick. What’s he called?”

“Bonersaurus,” Boner called up to her. Mim snorted.

“I’m waiting to give it a Latin name,” I said, repeating what I’d told Boner. “And anyway, it would be Boneraptor, not Bonersaurus.”

“I don’t mind,” he said, pushing his dreads out of his face. “Boneraptor works for me.”

To my surprise, she just nodded. Mim had started the tradition of naming our finds. I had thought she would have told me off for not following the rules.

With River still cooing at the baby, Mim hopped down into the trench and leaned in close to the skeleton. This was the woman who had been my hero and mentor for years: cool, precise, focused. There was a reason I’d wanted to bring her to look at the find while it was still in the ground; seeing a skeleton in situ where it was discovered was completely different to looking at photos and reading reports.

Mim spent nearly thirty minutes in the trench. I took the baby from River after a while and sat on the edge, watching her work, silently bemused at how she never changed when she got absorbed in a skeleton.

“Well, I’m not confirming anything from that alone,” she said when she finally hauled herself out. “But I’m as excited as you guys. Whatever it turns out to be, you’ve got yourself a really beautiful specimen.”

I nodded, pleased at her reaction since I felt the same way.

We walked back to the trailer where she could wash her hands and check over the paperwork River had managed to get from the university. The next part wasn’t so much fun; the logging and researching and referencing and writing reports. Having Mim’s support, and her name on the papers, would go a long way toward verifying the find.

Mim had a car seat for the baby in her rental, so after she’d fed Cayden, she put him in the seat to be safe and out of the way while she continued to work. When Hunter turned up, he ignored me completely and headed straight for the kid.

“Oh, great. I’ve been dumped in favor of a baby,” I said, snarking at him.

“But he’s so cute!”

“That’s been established,” I said darkly. “Mim, this is Hunter, the guy I was telling you about. Hunter, this is Miriam, my former teacher and current mentor.”

“Nice to meet you,” Hunter said with one of his most charming smiles, offering Mim a handshake.

“Nick hasn’t told me anything about you at all,” she said, ignoring me completely. “Tell me all about yourself, Hunter.” Then her eyes widened comically and her jaw dropped just a little bit. “You’re Hunter Joseph.”

“Yes, ma’am. I am.”

“Christ on a bike.”

“I guess you know of each other, then,” I muttered.

“Sorry,” Mim said, shaking her head. “That was just a bit of a shock. I didn’t know you were even in the area, let alone dating my… dating Nick.”

“Your Nick?” he asked, bemusement shining in his voice.

“Okay, he might be your Nick now,” she said. The conspiratorial smile they shared made a little flutter of happiness tickle in my belly.

“Nick is his own man, thank you very much.”

“Of course you are, dear,” Mim said, giving me a pat on the head. “So, how did the two of you meet?”

“Um,” I said, looking over to Hunter for support.

“Nick hit me in the face,” he said candidly. “And then I hit him back. Then, a few weeks later….”

“It’s okay, I can finish that story for myself, thanks.”

“Can I pick him up?” Hunter asked, nodding toward the still-sleeping Cayden.