Dinosaur Lake (32 page)

“I don’t like that idea, either, but it might be one way to draw it out.”

Justin fell silent and the men kept moving.

Greer believed there were other entrances to the cave. That it honeycombed around and came out somewhere else, maybe under the lake itself. He became more sure about it with every mile they chalked up.

“I know another exit is down here somewhere,” he told Henry. “And I know the monster’s in this cave, or has been recently. I feel it in my gut.” He tapped his abdomen. “It’ll be back. I promise you.”

“You get these
feelings
very often, Greer?” Henry teased.

“Sometimes. I’m usually right.”

“I bet you are.” Henry recalled Patterson’s warning about Greer. That he had special talents most people couldn’t understand. Henry was beginning to. Greer’s special talents had to do with intuitions and a sixth sense that frightened most people. Not Henry, he was open-minded.

By the second night, their bodies more used to the strenuous activity, they had the energy to sit around and talk before they went to sleep. Sitting on their sleeping bags, MRE’s balanced in their laps, their faces and clothes caked in lava dirt, they speculated as to what the creature really was.

“Remember that picture I showed you in that one book, Henry? Of the Nothosaur?” Justin asked. “You thought it was so ugly?”

“It was.”

“I believe our creature’s a far advanced hybrid of the Nothosaur, no doubt about it, the next evolutionary rung up. Or two. The one that was never allowed to be born before the comet fell, or whatever it was that happened to plunge the world into dinosaur genocide.

“Somehow, this particular creature’s egg was preserved and protected and remained viable. And it actually hatched. Astonishing. Certain circumstances, the earthquakes and the warmth of the lava, most likely, uncovered and incubated it.” Justin reclined on his sleeping bag, propping his head on his backpack, wincing, reminding everyone his bruised ribs were still giving him discomfort.

“You mean this thing we’re chasing hatched…from an egg?” Francis sputtered. Sitting cross-legged besides Greer, for being the old man of the group, he’d weathered the last two days better than any of them. He didn’t appear tired and his eyes were alert. He’d begun to act as if he were enjoying their strange crusade. In the end, he’d accepted his friend’s death quietly, though sometimes spoke affectionately of the missing man as if Lassen were still alive somewhere.

Henry sympathized with him about his absent friend. He couldn’t think of George as dead, either. It was easier to pretend the Indian was just out wandering the woods, happy and free. That he’d see him again someday.

“That’s where dinosaurs come from. Eggs.” Justin had closed his eyes. He looked about twelve years old at that moment.

“Wait a minute,” Greer interrupted, bending towards the paleontologist. “Then it’s possible there are more eggs somewhere? Unhatched or ready to hatch?” His eyes gleamed blacker in the lantern’s soft circle of light that separated them from the cave’s outer darkness.

“You’re correct. There could be more eggs or more…dinosaurs. None of us can say for sure there’s only one of the creatures, can we?”

“Oh, boy. I’d never thought of that possibility. That there could be more than one,” Henry growled in a low voice. “One’s enough for me. Oh, boy.”

“Not necessarily,” Justin rationalized. “Our hostile antagonist has only been sighted for the last two years. Where was it before that? In an egg or living somewhere else where it didn’t have easy access to humans?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? And if there are two or more of the beasts, why haven’t we seen them together? Dinosaurs are herding animals. But, hey,” he put his hands up in an apologetic gesture,” that’s only my opinion. A lot of paleontologists don’t believe dinosaurs ran in herds and cared lovingly for their young. I do.”

“But there could
still
be other eggs somewhere and someday there could be more of the creatures?” Greer wouldn’t let it go.

Justin sighed, his face sleepy-looking. “There could be or this creature might be the only survivor.” He yawned.

“We can only hope.” Francis was studying the blackness beyond their camp. “We’re having enough trouble tracking and trying to kill just one.”

Greer was brooding. There was an odd expression on his face and his thoughts seemed elsewhere. Henry wondered what he was fixating on, thinking about; where his mind truly was.

After a while, Greer turned towards Henry, changing the subject. “How was your wife doing when you left her?”

“So, so.” Henry fluttered his hand. “She’s trying to cope.” The sorrowful image of Ann’s tear-stained face came back to him. “She blames herself for George’s death and nothing I said changed her mind.”

“It wasn’t. It’s the monster’s fault George is dead, no one else’s. From what I’ve heard of her, she’s a strong woman. She’ll get through this. Just give her time.”

“I hope so.” But in his heart, he, too, knew Ann would be okay. Greer was right, she was a strong woman.

And with the video Henry had found when he’d searched the dead reporters’ camp site, Ann might be in a position to help save Zeke’s newspaper and her job and that would give her some happiness. What she’d done hadn’t been totally in vain. It wasn’t getting George’s life back, but it was something.

Henry found himself telling Greer about the video. How it showed the monster in all its glory. Close up. It played like a horror movie with great special effects. Frightening to watch.

“I hope Ann makes a bundle off it, writes the most sensational story ever to go with it and wins a Pulitzer. Any reporter, especially a woman, having the guts to chase a story the way she did, danger and all, deserves it.”

“I hope so, too,” Henry could only say.

Greer was attempting to be kind with his comments. But his words only reminded Henry of Ann’s despair and those poor reporters’ and George’s awful deaths. All in all, the price for the video had been too high.

“Ann didn’t want you coming down here, did she?” Greer pressed Henry.

“No, she didn’t. But she knows catching this monster is necessary. It’s my park, my responsibility, our lives. She understood.”

“Remarkable woman. You’re lucky to have her.”

“I am, and I know it.”

Ann hadn’t understood him coming on this mission. She’d been terrified that he wasn’t only reentering the park, but was going into the lake in a flimsy (as she’d put it) submersible to hunt for the creature. Too dangerous, she’d said. Far too dangerous.

She’d tried talking him out of it. Had cried. She hadn’t done that before, not in all the years he’d been a cop. More than anything he’d wanted to stay with her, hold her in his arms and promise he wouldn’t put himself in danger again, but couldn’t. He had to do what he had to do.

When Ann had seen he was going to go, no matter what, she’d clung to him, told him how much she’d always loved him, would always love him.

“You’re the best man I’ve ever known. The bravest. Come back to me, Henry,” she’d whispered. “Please come back to me.”

He’d never forget the love in his wife’s touch, her smile or her sad eyes as he left Zeke’s house. They’d held each other and she’d cried silently as he’d given her a final goodbye kiss.

He’d hated to hurt her. Hated to see her cry.

He’d never loved her more than that moment, except perhaps that other long ago morning when he’d awoken in a New York hospital after being shot and had found her head bowed on his bed. She’d slept nights in a chair by his side, refusing to leave. When he’d come out of the coma and she’d looked at him, well, he’d never forget that look, that smile ever, either.

The four men talked among themselves, of things only men liked to talk about. They expressed their fears of what lay ahead and went over their plan again on what they’d do when they finally confronted the leviathan.

Henry was touched by the camaraderie growing between them. He hadn’t been this close to a bunch of guys since he’d been in the Marines. These men were his equals, his peers, while his rangers had always been like his children, George being the exception. He’d held himself back. But true danger sometimes brought people close in a way nothing else did and there’d never been any real danger being a park ranger–until now.

“You’ve never been married have you, Francis?” Henry was munching on a Hersey’s bar. Dessert.

“Never have. Oh, there have been women. Some were good women. I’ve loved a few of them. But none of them could take me away from the sea, the water or my submersibles. My job has consumed me. My exploring. It’s been my only passion, my obsession. If I stay out of the water too long, I get homesick.” He smiled. “I’d always thought it’d be too cruel on a wife and family to be away as much as I am. Wouldn’t be fair to never be home.” He spread his hands in the gentle light, his face melancholy at what might have been, but never had.

“Lassen was married, though, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, and he was in love, really in love, with his wife, his family. It wasn’t the same for him. He didn’t love the job as I did. He went home often, while I kept working.”

Everyone was quiet, Lassen on their minds.

“And you, Greer? You been married?” Now it was Francis’s turn to ask.

For a long time there was no answer. The ex-FBI agent seemed lost in his own thoughts. Francis must have thought he’d hit a raw nerve and dropped the subject.

Henry swallowed the last piece of chocolate.

Then, “I was married. Once,” Greer confessed.

Henry stared at the man. He wouldn’t have guessed. Greer never seemed to need anyone but himself.

“Divorced, huh?”

Another silence.

“No,” low voiced. “Her name was Amy. She was an artist. Beautiful. Loving. And she died a long time ago. Murdered by a serial killer.”

He stopped talking, his dirty face blank, as if the memories could no longer bring pain, as if he’d accepted her death, the way she’d died. Unless you looked into his eyes.

Greer would reveal nothing more about his deceased wife, that’s what his eyes said.

A slight jolt went through Henry. He’d received a sudden insight into the man of stone. Was his murdered wife the reason he’d initially joined the FBI, or was it the reason he left? Had his wife been one of that serial killer’s victims…the man he’d killed in cold blood? Was it why he came across as an extremist, especially concerning killers? Hmmm. Perhaps, one day, Greer might tell him.

Justin asked, “Francis, with all your submersible time in the oceans, have you ever gone down looking for buried treasure?”

And the three of them listened in fascination as Francis launched into stories of his early treasure hunting days, until exhaustion claimed them.

Henry was about to nod off; Justin and Francis, Francis snoring softly, were asleep and Greer was sitting guard when he startled Henry by saying, “Ranger, remember when I said that this was the strangest situation I’d ever been involved with?”

Henry groaned. He was next in line for guard duty and had almost been asleep. Was walked and talked out. Yet something in the man’s hushed tone brought him back.

“I remember.” Henry shoved himself into a sitting position, rubbing his face. What he wouldn’t have done for a shave, a bath. Putting on clean clothes tomorrow or brushing his teeth with water from a canteen wouldn’t do it. Maybe they could find a shallow pool sometime tomorrow and take a quick dip. His tired thoughts touched on his wife. He missed her as she slept in her safe, clean bed at Zeke’s.

“I lied.”

Henry waited, wondering what this was leading to, and why Greer was telling him now.

“All right, you lied.”

Greer’s eyes turned to meet Henry’s half-lidded ones. “You know, there’re things in this world we can never understand. Oh, I didn’t doubt you in the beginning when you told me about your monster in the lake. I’ve just learned to keep a low profile. Because, you see, I’ve come across things in my life I simply cannot explain away. Don’t even want to anymore. Though, lord knows, I’ve tried.”

Bingo
, Henry thought. Perhaps he was going to learn why Patterson believed his partner, Greer, was so unusual.

The exagent gave him an unsettling smile, his voice a low rustle so that Henry had to scoot closer to hear him.

“Especially this one experience I had. A case from my earliest days in the bureau. Heck, I was a kid. Not even twenty-five. Only been in the agency for about a year. I was real green back then, never questioned anything they told me to do. Always followed orders, no matter how idiotic they seemed. Like I said, I was young. Later, as I grew older and smarter, I’d question things more. That was one of the reasons I eventually left the Bureau. I couldn’t trust them anymore and couldn’t, wouldn’t, blindly obey.”

“Go on, tell me about your experience,” Henry encouraged. “I’m listening.”

Greer took a deep uneven breath. “I’ve never talked about this before to anyone. No one knows this, except the men with me all those years ago. I believe they’re dead now. Unexplained accidents and suicides, all. I guess it’s time I tell someone. Someone else should know, in case it ever happens again. Though, I don’t want to put you at risk, for knowing, that is.”