ONE WAY OUT: Chapter Two
"Be careful," Cassie panted. "If you drop her now, I swear I'll shoot you...Wyatt! Could you possibly pay attention to what you're doing?"
After meeting with Martinelli, Cassie had returned to her Hell Creek lab -- which was more of a glorified shed -- and was now hefting her precious find from its protective crate to a worktable. All her staff, plus a few rand hands, had gathered to watch the momentous event, and the two dozen bodies crammed into the small building made maneurvering that much more difficult.
"Ow! Goddammit. Cassie, you just dropped the fu --"
"Wyatt, children present."
"Mom. Please. Like I haven't heard worse."
Cassie glanced over her shoulder, breathing hard from the physical exertion, her fringers cramped from the strain of holding on to the solid rock. A baby rex might be small, but baby and rock and plaster combined were heavy as hell. "Not from Uncle Wyatt, I'm sure."
Her fifteen-year-old son, Travis, looked suspiciously innocent -- a look helped along by the fact he'd inherited his father's fine blond hair and thickly lashed gray eyes.
"Nope," Travis said brightly. "Not at all."
"Goddammit!" The low, sharp curse brought Cassie's attention back to her younger brother, whose temper was as frayed as his work clothes -- and whose expression was as dark as his eyes and hair.
A frequent look for him these days.
"Wyatt, I am trying to raise a civilized child here. It may be just another of my pipe dreams, but I'd appreciate it if you'd tone down the cursing when Travis is around."
"Raisin' the kid to be a pussy, you mean." He glowered. "And do you think I can put this thing down here or not?"
God, she hated that word. With an effort, she reined in her own temper and repeated, "Yes, but carefully. This is worth a small fortune, if it's what I think it is and as well-preserved as I hope it is. Mae ... grab that side and help Wyatt, would you?"
Her lab manager, the epitome of mousy geek girl, was only too happy to rush to Wyatt's side. Cassie had long suspected Mae had a thing for Wyatt, since she had a habit of materializing out of thin air whenever he was around. Cassie occasionally considered pointing out that while her brother might look like a man, he had the emotional maturity of a three-year-old. But Mae was an adult, smart, and capable of making her own decisions and screwups.
"Okay, just a little more to the left and we're set," Cassie said, her voice tight with strain as she lifted her side.
A moment later, with Wyatt's and Mae's help, the precious burden of rock and plaster was settled safely on Cassie's worktable.
"Hey," Travis said from behind her shoulder. "If she died while she was just a baby, then her mom sucked at being a mom."
Giving a sigh of relief, Cassie stepped back from the table and turned to her son. "I wouldn't say that to her mom."
"Like I'd diss a T. rex. Even if I could." A gleam lit Travis's eyes. "But you're a good mom."
"Flattery will get you many places -- but not to the mall to buy an Xbox."
"Mom, you said --"
"What I said and what you're rewriting in your head are not the same thing," Cassie said. "And I'm not arguing about this again, Travis. I have a lot of work to do with this specimen. I don't have time."
"So what's new," he muttered under his breath, loudly enough for her to hear.
Even though she knew he was up to his usual trick of "guilt out Mom," it worked. Which only made her more annoyed.
"Travis, you know I love you, and you're too old to pull this guilt shit!"
"Language," murmured Wyatt from the other side of the worktable. "Tsk-tsk."
She briefly closed her eyes, wondering if she were the only woman in the world who struggled with such overpowering urges to bury her family in a hole. A very deep hole.
"Playing poor little abused child will not et you an Xbox. It will not change the fact that I have work to do." Travis backed down, but his jaw was still thrust outward in a familiar, mutinous angle.
Cassie turned and faced everyone gathered in the spartan, well-used lab. "And let me take a moment here to remind all of you once again that no one is to speak of this fossil to anybody without my express permission. No exceptions."
She made a point of meeting each and every pair of eyes: Wyatt, Travis, Mae, her mother, Ellen, the lab's computer guru, Amy Gupta, all her diggers and the ranch's hired hands, and the part-timer who'd been the one to unearth the fossil.
"Don't look at me like that. I promise my lips are sealed," said her newest employee. Russ Noble was a slender, black-haired man with a mixed white and Cheyenne heritage who also freelanced for a wilderness travel outfit. "But I don't know about Vern. The old guy's really the one who found her."
Despite her stern orders, Cassie knew better than to expect her discovery to stay under wraps for more than a week or two, which, if all went well, would be more than enough time. "I don't want this news leaking out until I get all my ducks in a row. Which is why I have to leave in a couple hours to pay a visit to a certain somebody and make a few arrangements."
"Oh, great," Wyatt muttered, and Cassie didn't miss the look of commiseration that passed between her brother and her son. "And we all know who that somebody is, just like we know those visits always leave you in a shitty mood."
"Can't be helped, but this time I have the last word to end all last words." With a smile, she turned to the table where the lump of rock and plaster lay, all its secrets safely hidden within. A little tingle of excitement shot through her, an excitement of the kind she'd almost forgotten.
"I have the first intact specimen of an infant Tyrannosaurus rex. It's the find of the century. He'll never top that, and he'll know it. I don't expect him to give me any trouble at all."
Beyond the little stuff, anyway.
"Excuse me, but who the hell are you talking about?" Russ asked and immediately glanced at Travis, grimacing. "Sorry. I'm not used to having kids around."
"I'm not a kid! I'm -" Travis began hotly, but Cassie quickly interrupted him.
"Yes, you are. The law says so. More importantly, I say so." She turned back to Russ. "I keep forgetting you're new and don't know about Alex Martinelli."
"Boo, hiss," said Amy Gupta, with a wide grin. She was a lushly built woman whose New Delhian ancestors hard given her shiny black hair, black eyes, and a toffee-colored complexion that worked wonderfully with the bright orange shirt and pink and lime striped capri pants she wore. Her wrists were smothered in bracelets that tinkled and clacked, rings adorned every finger, and a diamond stud pierced her nose. If Mae had the mousy geek look down pat, then Amy had colorful eccentric covered.
Come to think of it, her lab was a little heavy on the estrogen.
"He's our enemy," Travis added helpfully, drawing Cassie's attention back. "He and Mom have been in a feud for years."
"A rat bastard," Wyatt elaborated, winking at his nephew.
"And I'm still way confused," Russ said flatly.
Cassie folded her arms across her chest, smiling. "Let's just say he has something I need."
"And it starts with a P," explained Mae. She glanced at Wyatt and turned pink.
Russ eyed Mae -- and her blush -- and his face split with a grin. "Ah, a penis, huh? What's the big deal? Because, hey, I've got one of those, and you wouldn't have to go to any trouble for that."
"Ack! Child present!" Despite his shout of mock horror, Travis was grinning.
Sex talk and the fifteen-year-old male of the species -- the combination was so predictable, although in a very entertaining way. Cassie couldn't keep her smile from turning into a grin. "And I'm sure it's a very nice one, Russ, but one which will have to remain an eternal mystery to me."
"That's so gross," Travis added, nose wrinkling.
Ignorning her son's dramatics, Cassie added for Russ's benefit, "And the P is for Ph.D. It's a nuisance, but all my scientifically significant finds have to be verified by a real paleontologist."
"And you're not a real one?" Russ looked surprised. "You seem real enough to me."
Silence filled the lab.
"Remember he's new." Mae brushed a tendril of brown hair from her thin face, her Bambi eyes wide. "Please don't eviscerate him."
"I'm not 'real' in that sense," Cassie said curtly. "I do all the things a degreed paleontologist does, and probably better than most of them, but because I don't have those three little letters after my name I don't get to play with the big boys."
"Oh." Russ looked embarrassed. "Sorry."
"Don't worry about it. But that's why I need it verified. And since I have to be the maid of honor at my best friend's wedding in a few weeks, I'm also short of time. And that, Travis, is why your dad is coming by in an hour or so to pick you up to spend the rest of the month in Laramie with him."
A look of disappointment crossed her son's face, since he truly enjoyed helping out around the lab, but when the disappointment faded, she suspected he was already calculating how he could talk his father into buying him an Xbox. And Josh probably would, because Josh spoiled the boy something awful whenever he had him.
But that was a small price to pay for a few weeks of around-the-clock, interruption-free work time.
"Travis, why don't you and I go pack for your stay with your dad," said Ellen Parker, and her frowning glance at Cassie broadcast disapproval of her daughter's maternal skills
Ah, well. Nothing new in that. She and her mother came from different generations; they'd never see eye-to-eye on certain matters.
"Will you call and tell me how it's going with the baby?" Travis asked.
Even knowing he'd hate it, Cassie affectionately ruffled her son's hair. "You know I'll call."
"What are you going to name her?" he asked, ducking away from her hand.
"We're not sure it's a girl, and I haven't given it much thought." She hesitated, sensing that he wanted to name the find but for some reason was too self-conscious to ask. "Would you like to name her?"
He brightened. "Can I?"
"Yes, but don't go overboard," Cassie cautioned. "Think posterity. It has to look respectable in the history books."
"Trixie," Travis immediately stated with finality.
Baffled, Cassie stared at him. Wyatt repeated "Trixie? Where the hell did you come up with a name like that?"
"It's a pun. You know, a play on words," Travis said, defensively. "She's a T. rex, so Trixie sounds a little like T. rexie. Get it?"
Cassie laughed. Sometimes she forgot how smart he could be. There were days she missed the little boy who thought his mother was the center of the world, but mostly she was enjoying the young man who'd taken that little boy's place.
Even when he was being a total pain in the ass. Or when he still looked young and vulnerable and hopeful, and made her worry that she wasn't paying as much attention to him as she should.
"You know, I really like that name. Trixie it is."
"Yes!" Travis crowed, raising both arms in a show of victory. "I win!"
"It sounds like something you'd name a dog," Wyatt said.
"Wyatt, zip it and put those muscles you're so proud of to good use. I want her turned with that bumpy part facing up. I have a feeling that's where we'll find the rest of the skull, if it's still there, and where I want to start working."
Her brother put his impressive musculature to good use, as ordered. Mae watched in admiration, but all Cassie could wonder was why she couldn't seem to exchange a civil word with Wyatt these days.
They'd always had a fractious relationship, but when had it devolved into something so tense and ... bitter?
"Now what do we do?" Mae asked.
"We get back to business as usual and nobody comes near Trixie but me. Then later, I have to go lock horns with Martinelli." She sighed. "Twice in one day. What a lucky woman I am."