Forbidden Ground (21 page)

“But I heard somewhere that he’s buying the old insane-asylum grounds outside of town. I can see why he’s attracted to it. That place must matter to him.”

“Are you implying something is off with Bright Star? It will be Eden on earth for us there. We pray it will come to pass soon. So, will you heed the warning about not digging up the mounds, clinging to the demonic past?”

“Demonic? Look, Lee, the Adena hardly had the benefit of hearing vast pseudo-wisdom from the blessed lips of Bright Star Monson.”

She’d done it again: let her temper get the best of her. For the second time, she’d managed to insult Bright Star, but the drivel Lee was spouting really upset her. He looked shocked.

She forced her feet up the hill before she could say something more direct about that horrible, screwed-up cult leader. Monson was the one who was demonic! He obviously went to great lengths to control people, scare people. She was certain he’d left those stars on the mounds and that was what poor Grace was trying to tell her. He no doubt wanted Kate out of the area at any cost.

21

“O
kay, I get it,” Grant said with a tight smile when they’d finished a fish-and-chips dinner uptown at the English pub that evening.

“Get what?” Kate asked.

“You’re fidgeting like a kid having to wait to open presents Christmas morning. Let’s head back, and I’ll show you the vein of mica. We’d better take a spade and trimmer out with us, because, like I said, it’s pretty hidden by undergrowth.”

“I have tools in my car—but right. We’ll use yours. The foliage is probably why I didn’t spot the seam when I was looking for a water source out there. That was the day I saw Brad and Lacey together.”

“Maybe she’s going to be good for him. But he said she’s only here for a few more days visiting her parents before she heads back to Cleveland. I think he may be the one who got her to disband her greeniacs, because it sure wasn’t me. I got the idea they intended to protest at the mill at least a second time. Brad was also helpful today, telling people he was just filling in for Todd, so maybe everything will work out if he can sell his paper mill or get it back on its feet. And stay off the booze.”

They went home—was she thinking of it as home now?—changed their clothes and headed out back with a spade and large pair of hedge clippers. Kate was excited to be walking out toward the mound with tools, even though they were soon headed past it.

After they’d returned from Keith and Velma’s and Grant went back to the mill, she had spent the afternoon at Tess and Gabe’s new place, making sure it was ready for their homecoming. Workers had completed the remodeling of their old house on the other side of town, and Tess’s attached day-care center was almost finished. The sawdust on the floor and sawhorses still there reminded Kate of the sad remnants they’d found of Grant’s bird’s-eye maple tree up on Shadow Mountain. The precious, living heirloom that had held his childhood tree house and had watched over Mason Mound for decades had been slaughtered like some Adena had been in death chambers uncovered in this area. And she was still as far from getting into Mason Mound as—as she was from forgiving her father.

Once Tess and Gabe returned, if Grant still refused to let her excavate the mound, what excuse would she have for staying here? She couldn’t impose on him longer. And she certainly wouldn’t stay with newlyweds setting up a house and business. Should she work with Carson to convince the state legislature to force Grant to let them dig, and turn him against her forever? Carson had hinted at marriage more than once, but that once-cherished goal of them as more than research and excavation partners seemed all wrong now. She wanted to hold Carson off, as much as she wanted to urge Grant on.

As they approached the mica seam, she saw that Grant was right. The side of a shallow ravine they walked into was completely overgrown with ivy and bishop’s weed spilling over it from a treed ridge on top. But she could tell there was something dark beneath the drooping foliage. A frisson of excitement shot through her. She would feel this way if she was about to uncover the entrance to the mound, but at least she might find some clues that the Adena had used the mica here. She was going to find the right moment and ask Grant for permission, hoping he’d give her that, at least.

“So how did you know this was here, since it’s obviously been overgrown for years?” she asked as he began to cut some of the foliage back, then pulled the tangle of vines away. In the dim light under the forest cover, the rock beneath glinted.

“Our gang of friends knew every foot of this forest when we were growing up. In the autumn, when the leaves were off the trees and we’d had a couple of frosts, we used to be able to see this from the tree house, and we checked it out.”

“Did you make things out of this mica, like little arrowheads, or something like that? Adena usually used flint or chert for their working arrowheads and spear points, even ax heads. But mica is so shiny, they liked it for decorations and oversize ceremonial weapons—like those left in their tombs.”

“I hear you, Professor. It’s a short walk from here to the mound, so you’d expect to find mica artifacts in there.”

“Exactly. Grant, since you still don’t want me to excavate the mound, would you mind if I worked here? If enough of this plant growth is cleared away, I might be able to see where someone chipped at the mica, maybe even the shapes of what was taken out. Everything I’d need to see would be close to the surface here, no deep digging. It’s a long shot, but...”

“You’d never prove it was the Adena, rather than the Shawnee or even pioneers, would you?”

“The Adena had distinctive shapes for their arrowheads and ax heads. I could make a good case for the Adena because, especially in their burial chambers, some of their tools and weapons are oversize, as if they had to be special for the afterlife.”

When he didn’t answer, she stopped talking. She didn’t want to upset him about digging even here. But another idea suddenly hit her. Little Jason’s dreadful drawing included a huge ax head. Did it mean the boy had seen an Adena ceremonial one? More likely he just drew it large because one he’d seen in a book looked scary or important. It had impressed him. Kids that age paid little attention to size or perspective. Grant had said he would talk to Jason, then hadn’t mentioned it again. She’d have to question the boy on the sly.

“Well, if you think you can get something useful for your research out of this mica bed, sure,” he said to her delight and surprise. “I’m all for your studies, Kate, as long as it lets the dead stay dead, as my grandfather said. But maybe you should only work on this with someone out here, considering we’ve had trespassers who cut the tree, and you thought you heard something outside last night. But I’d rather you don’t get Carson Cantrell out here.”

“How about Kaitlyn?”

“Can you trust her?”

“To help me work on this, at least. My instinct is to trust her, but I’ll need to know her better to be sure. Thanks, Grant.”

“Oh, yeah. I haven’t mentioned the fee.”

“The fee?”

“Kind of like a finder’s fee, not only of this mica, but because I’ve found you.”

He put the clippers down and took the spade from her hands and dropped it to the ground. The mica seam glinted beside and above them in a sudden shaft of setting sun. Grant’s hands came strong around her waist as he pulled her to him.

“Just a couple of these for a down payment,” he said, his voice husky, as he kissed her lightly, then lingeringly and tugged her even closer.

Every nerve in her body came alive. “How many is a couple?”

“Oh, forgot to say—kisses are just for starters.”

She was going to say something flip but, as ever when Grant touched her, everything except him flew out of her mind. She tilted her head so the kiss could deepen and looped her arms up around his neck to hold him tight. Her breasts flattened against his chest. If he had pulled her down on the gritty ground at the edge of the mica wall, she would not have protested.

They seemed to prop each other up as their kisses lengthened and deepened. She loved the feel of his hard back muscles, his shoulders, the crisp hair on the nape of his neck. His body seemed carved from the wood he loved. He pressed her against the mica wall, which was good, because she wasn’t sure she could stand, even clinging to him, without that solid wall of rock behind her.

His hands left her bottom and marauded over her hips and waist. He pulled her T-shirt hem up and lifted one hand under it to cup a breast through her bra. His kisses came harder, more demanding. He was devouring her, and she wanted more.

He turned them so that his back was against the mica and locked her to him again, hips to hips. She felt dizzy, no longer earthbound but soaring. The slight stubble on his chin scraped her cheek. She was certain the whole world was tumbling down around them in bright, sparkling shards of—

Grant broke the kiss and looked up. They heard a cascade of mica before it hit them, like a waterfall of tiny rocks coming down at them from above. Grant yelled and pulled her away from the wall as more mica gave way above them and then a big chunk bounced down, just missing them. He dragged them back as more rocks fell and exploded in smaller pieces where they had stood.

Despite their ragged breathing, they heard a grunt from above, then footsteps spitting mica that rained down again in a fine, black powder.

“Someone did that,” Grant muttered. “Stay here—stay back.”

He turned and ran out of the ravine with her right behind him. They clawed their way up to higher, flatter ground, then raced to the spot above where they’d been standing.

“No one here I can see,” she gasped, out of breath.

“Gone by now. I told you to stay back, but I should know by now you do your own thing.”

“Wish I could.”

He turned and looked at her, squinting into the red, setting sun. “We won’t argue about that now. Let’s check for footprints.”

She glanced at the open glade fringed by a thick stand of trees, wondering if someone could still be there. If he or they had run, they hadn’t gone far and could be watching. Wasn’t that area ahead of them where Brad had buried his dog? She followed Grant over to the lip of the ravine. “Could it have been a natural occurrence? Mica stratifies and flakes easily.”

“Not a coincidence,” he insisted. “Awfully good timing, especially with all that’s happened lately. I didn’t see much previous rock litter down there, so rocks hadn’t fallen recently.”

Her heart was hammering so hard from his touch and her run up here and from her renewed fear that someone or something was still stalking them. They stood carefully on the mica ledge, peering down. “You know,” she said, “the forest—ravines, too—are usually the sites of lurking evil in primitive myths and more recent fairy tales.”

“Thank you, Professor Grimm. Would you quit talking like that? The dead Adena are not haunting you—or me—and we’ve got to find what living bastard is. Let’s go back to the house before it gets dark. But what just happened means you can’t excavate here or you might get hurt—or buried from above.”

Buried from above.
The words snagged in her brain. Like the Adena dead nearby.

“Grant, please. I didn’t mean this should spook us—keep us away. I’ll ask Kaitlyn to bring another student or two, and we’ll set up a guard above us.”

He didn’t answer until they made their way back into the ravine. If she excavated only the mica seam here, would someone harass her? Considering what had happened to Paul and Todd, maybe this wasn’t even about her. That would mean Grant was the target.

* * *

Grant was shaken but also angry. The rockslide had missed them only because they’d jumped away, warned by the fine mica dust and chips before the larger rocks crashed down. Those could have broken bones—or caved in their skulls. All he needed was another nightmare that he was back in the death chamber, stealing from skeletons with crushed skulls. And, unlike Kate, who he thought was hearing things outside windows or even making that up, they had both heard someone scurry away above them, and it sure as heck wasn’t some Adena ghost or Beastmaster running amok in these woods.

But who would profit from his demise, or Kate’s? The same idiot who had shot at them up on Shadow Mountain? Surely not Brad or Lacey, though Brad was his heir in his will—and knew it. Grant couldn’t quite picture Carson Cantrell getting his hands dirty, though of course, like Kate, who had seemed fine with dirt and mica on her hands and under her fingernails this morning, Cantrell must excavate with the best of them. Or could Cantrell have seen him kissing Kate and her eager response? Who else hated his guts?

“I guess,” he told her as they trekked back toward the house, “you can check out the mica seam if you can get a couple of guards as well as Kaitlyn for company. Not Professor Cantrell, okay?”

“No, I’ll only use him to get permission for the others to come. He’s got a busy teaching and speaking schedule anyway and can’t get away much. I can’t thank you enough, Grant, really.”

“We were rudely interrupted back there,” he said, taking her hand in his as they neared the mound. He’d agreed she could research the mica only to keep her working on something Adena that wasn’t the mound itself. “Let’s remember the finder’s-fee payment continues daily if you’re so eager to dig.”

“It will keep me out of trouble during the day, right?”

“Except for getting in trouble with me at night, and—” He released her hand and ran toward the mound as they neared the house.

She saw what had upset him and chased after him. The hawthorn bushes guarding what she was certain was the opening to a horizontal entry shaft were not just sick and old, but very, very dead. He’d steered her away from the entrance on their way out to the mica seam, or they would have seen this earlier. It was almost dark, but he could see yellow leaves scattered under the brittle branches. Even the grass and moss at their base was brown and dead.

“I know those were old, but someone’s poured some kind of herbicide on the ground. You didn’t?” he muttered.

“No way! I wouldn’t. I swear it wasn’t me. When I get some help out here—just for the mica seam—I’ll have them take a sample of the moss or grass to the lab, see if we can find exactly what killed these bushes.”

He gripped her wrist as they stared at the entry area to the mound behind the skeletal hawthorns. She didn’t flinch, but, unspeaking, slid her hand up to entwine her fingers with his. He tried to stay strong, but he feared whoever had killed Paul and hurt Todd was now after him.