“Yeah?”
“Next time, use the damn shoelace clips.”
11
June 11:
Seventy-Eight Days Until the End of the Summer Excavation Season
Ripley braces one hand on the center console of the jeep and laces the other one through the oh-shit handle as Cara leans into another sharp turn, her pink beaded earrings swinging. The car shoots out of the curve like they’re racing ahead of a hungry tyrannosaur inJurassic Park.Grassland bounces by in a blur, bales of golden hay dotting the rapidly regreening fields.
A hundred yards ahead, the dig’s second jeep, carrying the other members of the crew, speeds toward the ranch house, kicking up pale brown dust that crusts the windshield where the wiper blades don’t reach.
“I’m too old for this, Cara,” Ripley says, her voice bouncing with every pothole. “On your twenty-eighth birthday, you get a form letter saying that shots, dares, and reckless driving are now canceled. Also, if you sleep wrong, your neck is allowed to murder you. Oh, Jesus, not the—” Ripley’s stomach swoops as the other woman floors it up a blind hill.
“Griff’s not complaining.” Cara jerks her chin toward the back seat.
Griff leans forward, popping out an earbud. “You summoned me?”
“We’re talking about Cara’s driving.”
“She’s smooth,” he says immediately. “Smoother than a lot of pilots I know.”
“Pilots of planes you’ve jumped out of,” Ripley points out. “Into wildfires. You might not be the best judge ofsmooth.”
He shrugs, then replaces his earbud and leans back. She shouldn’t have expected him to critique Cara. He won’t bite the hand he’s hoping to put a ring on.
“I’m not slowing down. You know Matteo will eat all the pepper jack if we’re not there to stop him,” Cara says.
“I’d rather not die for cheese, Cara.”
Every couple of weeks, Geraldine hosts what she calls Frybread Taco Thursday. For Ripley, dinner will be a nice break from checking her empty inbox. She’s emailed all the private collectors she knows, plus a few potential sponsors she vetted before signing with Maury. So far, no one has volunteered a spare hundred grand to save her excavation.
“Fine,” Cara says. “I was trying not to point this out because of your irrational vendetta-slash-crush, but the crew has James.”
Ripley’s cheeks heat. “What? There is no crush. Those are also canceled.”
“That’ssoweird,” Cara says, “because every time I look at you, you’re looking athim.”
“I have to make sure he’s trustworthy.” Smithson irritates her like a burr inside her sock. The more helpful and supportive he is, the more obsessed she becomes with catching him being selfish or self-interested. It’s like she can’t calm down until she knows which warning label to slap on him.
This morning, they acted like last night never happened. But all day, she’s felt thatDo go onsound humming between her shoulder blades. She feels incomplete, like a knuckle that needs to be cracked.
“What exactly are you afraid of, Rip?” Cara shouts over the engine noise, half exasperated, half sympathetic.
“Same thing as always. That people will assume he’s leading the dig because he’s a professor and he’s a man. Or that he’ll somehow weasel his way into taking credit for our work. Hell, maybe he’ll decide to get a case of cravats overnighted and accidentally reveal our location and God knows what else.”
“Cravats?”
“Doesn’t have to be cravats. Maybe he’ll run out of spectacles. Or tweed.”
Cara sighs, blowing out her cheeks. “What if you focused on thegoodthings he could do? He’s working really hard, Ripley.”
He is, in his unbending way. From breakfast until midmorning, he brushes Cara’s specimens and sifts buckets of her soil. After that, he parks himself at the picnic table with his laptop until lunchtime. He takes calls in his cabin in the early afternoon, then comes back to the dig for a few hours before dinner.
“He’s just sopompous.It’s like he has to be the expert on everything.”
“He’s trying to impress you.”
