“Wow. I didn’t think that was possible.” Like a lot of paleontologists, Ripley studied human anatomy, so she’s pretty certain his trainer is lying to flatter him.
“Hard to believe I’m forty-eight,” he crows, exhaling with each rep.
His Wikipedia page says he’s fifty-five, but whatever.
“I have news, Rip-a-Roni,” he says cheerily.
“Good news for us both, I hope?” Like most people who own private jets, Maury’s a bit of a sociopath. He forgets that good news for him might not be good news for other people.
“More like interesting news. You know my bones. My one-of-a-kind dino-bird. Well, I got an inside tip. Turns out someone foundanotherdino-bird in Montana. Remind me how long you said it would take to get mine ready?”
The bottom drops out of Ripley’s stomach. It has to be Will’s fossil, but how did Maury find out about it so fast? She squeezes Cara’s shoulder, trying to project calm. The younger woman looks like she might lose her oatmeal.
“You don’t want to rush a fossil prep, Maury…um, Maur-bore,” she says soothingly. “Bird bones are fragile, which is why they’re so rare. And valuable. I think six months would be reasonable.”
“But can you do it faster? Because this other one is ready to go now.”
“I’ve heard that’s not quite true,” she says carefully. “Andyourfossil will still be the only one available to private buyers.”
“See, that’s the thing, Ripster.” There’s the rattle and clang of a bar dropped showily into its cradle. “I called this scientist. Dr. Will Stone. Turns out I was able to create an opportunity to sponsor his bones. Same deal as with you. I loan them to his university for a couple of years, and they give me a reproduction—museum-quality, very nice—until I get the real thing back. He sent me a video of his fossil. Looks like yours would if you had the whole thing. And they haven’t yet named the species, so…”
Fear trails down the back of Ripley’s throat, cool like the Montana wind at summer’s end. Will is an assistant professor at the University of Eastern Montana, scrabbling for tenure like every other junior faculty member. If he could attract a gigantic private donation while still retaining the research rights to a fossil of this significance, of course he’d take that deal. “We don’t know that his fossil is the same bird as ours. As yours,” she corrects herself.
Maury lets out a slightly impatient breath. “I dunno. I see seagulls in LA, I see them in New York. Birds get around, you know? And I want the holotype, Ripley. Thefirstone. I want thename.I’m not some basic Bezos or Musk, convinced that gettingoff the planet is the key to living forever. Already nobody remembers I was the first to sell my dot-com start-up for over a billion even though the NASDAQ was in the toilet in ’97.Thisis my shot at the afterlife. A million-year-old killer bird with my name on it.”
“Ahundredmillion years,” Ripley says, forgetting not to challenge him. Sometime in the past minute or so, Cara has walked away.
“Whatever,” Maury says, irritable now. Ripley hears splashing accompanied by an undisguised grunt of satisfaction. “Hate to call and run, but I need to submerge my delts and traps. Long story short, I’m investing in the product that’s first to market. And then”—his pause reads like a careless shrug—“it’s dino-mission accomplished. Nothing personal, but I’m cutting your funding. With a month’s severance, so you can’t say I’m an asshole. Right? I’m not the asshole here.”
“Summer is only tenweeks,Maury. Please. I’ve heard this other find might be—”
“I’m going to stop you right there, because I like you, Ripley. You’re cool, like if Indiana Jones spent his time digging holes instead of shooting Nazis. Let’s not end this on a bad note.”
“I don’t think we should end this at a—Maury? Hello?”
Ripley stares at her phone as if she can summon the broken connection back from the ether.
Thirty yards away, the team obliviously chatters among themselves while wolfing down mass quantities of breakfast. Matteo is finishing his private stash of the sugary cereal that leaves him hungry and cranky by ten a.m., but he’ll still buy more when the crew drives into Hercules next week.
Maybe for the last time.
A month of money means two weeks to dig and two weeks toshut down the site. Even if Ripley pulls everyone from their other projects to hers, that’s barely enough time to extract Beauty’s wing, let alone the rest of her—if they even find her. And if Ripley has to get another job over the winter, six months of prep work—stabilizing the bones with glue, air-drilling the matrix away a millimeter at a time—could balloon to two or three years.
Her dad doesn’t have that kind of time.
Beauty doesn’t either.
She forces her heavy legs to walk over to the rock where Cara sits, her bright pinkNDN Girls Book ClubT-shirt pulled over her bent knees.
“Naaáhsa took out a loan to build the cabins and the museum,” she says flatly. “That’s on top of the mortgage on the ranch. We were counting on this sale, Ripley.”
Ripley reaches for Cara’s shoulder. “I know—oh!” she says, finding herself yanked into a startling hug.
“Shut up and hug me back. Tight,” Cara commands. “It’s really early and I’m really sad.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“Not with your mouth, you didn’t. God, you’re so bad at this, Ripley. You probably shook hands with your stuffed animals every night.”
