tempted to call him right away-but no, there could be no mistakes now, no risks taken.
He accelerated, the car lurching along the potholed dirt road as it climbed
through a series of foothills. In ten minutes he had reached the area where the pinon-juniper forest gave way to tall ponderosa pines, dark and restless in a night wind.
He finally reached the gate in the ugly chain-link fence that surrounded the property. He got out, unlocked it, drove through, and locked it behind him. A couple hundred more yards brought him to the cabin. The moon hadn't risen and the old cabin loomed up pitch-black, a stark outline blotting out the stars. Maddox shivered and vowed to leave the porch light on next time.
Then he thought of the woman, waiting for him in the darkness of the mine, and that thought sent a nice, warm feeling through his gut.
9
SALLY'S LEGS ACHED from standing in the same position unable to move, her ankles and wrists chafing under the cold steel. A chill flow of air from the back of the mine penetrated her to the bone. The dim glow from the kerosene lantern wavered and spluttered, filling her with an irrational fear that it would go out. But what got to her most was the silence, broken only by the monotonous drip of water. She found it impossible to tell how much time had passed, whether it was night or day.
Suddenly she stiffened, hearing the rattle of someone unlocking the metal grate at the mouth of the mine. He was coming in. She heard the grate clang shut behind him and the chain rattle as he relocked it. And now she could hear his footsteps approaching, becoming louder by degrees. The beam of a flashlight flickered through the bars and a moment later he arrived. He unbolted the bars over the door frame with a socket wrench and tossed them aside. Then he shoved the flashlight in his back pocket and stepped inside the small stone prison.
Sally sagged in the chains, her eyes half-closed. She moaned softly.
'Hi there, Sally.'
She moaned again. Through half-lidded eyes she saw he was unbuttoning his shirt, a grin splitting his face.
'Hang in there,' he said. 'We're going to have ourselves a good time.'
She heard the shirt land on the floor, heard the jingle as he undid his belt buckle.
'No,' she moaned weakly.
'Yes. Oh, yes. No more waiting, baby. It's now or never.'
She heard the pants slide off, drop to the floor. Another rustle and soft plop as he tossed his underwear.
She looked up weakly, her eyes slits. There he was, standing before her, naked,
priapic, small key in one hand, gun in the other. She moaned, drooped her head again. 'Please, don't.' Her body sagged-lifeless, weak, utterly helpless.
'Please do, you mean.' He advanced toward her, grasped her left wrist, and inserted the key into the manacle. As he did so he leaned close over her bowed head, put his nose in her hair. She could hear him breathe in. He nuzzled down her neck with his lips, scraping her cheek with his unshaved chin. She knew he was about to unlock her left hand. Then he would step back and make her unlock the others. That was his system.
She waited, maintaining her slackness. She heard the little click as the key turned the tumbler and she felt the steel bracelet fall away. In that moment, with all the force she could muster, she lashed out with her left hand, striking at his gun. It was a motion she had rehearsed in her mind a hundred times, and it caught him off guard. The gun went flying. Without a pause she whipped her hand around and clawed her fingernails into his face-fingernails she had spent an hour sharpening into points against the rock-just missing his eyes but managing to score deeply into his flesh.
He stumbled back with an inarticulate cry, throwing his hands up to protect his face, his flashlight landing on the mine floor.
Immediately her hand was on the unlocked manacle. Yes! The key was still in there, half turned. She pulled it out, unlocked her foot in time to kick him hard in the stomach as he was rising. She unlocked the other foot, unlocked her right hand.
Free!
He was on his knees, coughing, his hand reaching out, already grasping the gun he'd dropped.
In yet another motion she had rehearsed in her mind countless times over the past hours, she leapt for the table, one hand closing on a book of matches, the other sweeping the kerosene lantern to the floor. It shattered, plunging the cavern into darkness. She dropped to the ground just as he fired in her direction, the shot deafening in the enclosed space.
The shot was following by a raging scream, 'Bitch!'
Sally crouched, creeping swiftly through the darkness toward where she remembered the door to be. She already knew she couldn't escape the mine through the outer tunnel-she had heard him lock the grate. Her only hope was to go deeper in the mine and find a second exit-or a place to hide.
'I'll kill you!' came the gargled scream, followed by a wild shot in the dark. The muzzle flash burned an image on her retina of a raging, naked man clutching a gun, twisting around wildly, his body distorted-wrapped in the grotesque tattoo of the dinosaur.
The muzzle flash had shown her the way to the door. She scuttled blindly through it and crawled down the tunnel, moving as fast as she dared, feeling ahead. After a moment she chanced lighting a match. Ahead of her, the two tunnels came together. She quickly tossed the match and scuttled into the other fork, hoping, praying, it would take her to a place of safety deep in the mine.
10
IAIN CORVUS, WAITING in an idling cab across from the museum, finally saw Melodie's slim, girlish figure moving up the service drive from the museum's security exit. He glanced at his watch: midnight. She had taken her bloody time about it. He watched her diminutive figure turn left on Central Park West, heading uptown-no doubt she was heading back to some dismal Upper West Side railroad studio.
Corvus cursed yet again his stupidity. Almost from the beginning of their conversation that evening, he'd realized the colossal mistake he'd made. He'd tossed into Melodie's lap one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time, and she had caught it and run with it to a touchdown. Sure, as senior scientist his name would be first on the paper, but the lion's share of the credit would go to her and nobody would be fooled. She would cloud, if not eclipse, his glory.
Fortunately, there was a simple solution to his problem and Corvus congratulated himself on thinking of it before it was too late.
He waited until Melodic had disappeared into the gloom up Central Park West, then he tossed a fifty to the cabbie and stepped out. He strode across the street and down to the security entrance, went through security with a swipe of his card and a terse nod, and in ten minutes he was in the Mineralogy lab, in front of her locked specimen cabinet. He inserted his master key and opened it, relieved to see a stack of CD-ROMs, floppies, and the prepared sections of the specimen arranged neatly in their places. It amazed him how much she had managed to do in just five days, how much information she had extracted from the specimen, information that would have taken a lesser scientist a year to tease out-if at all.
He picked up the CDs, each labeled and categorized. In this case, possession of the CDs and specimens was more than nine-tenths of the law-it was the whole law. Without that she couldn't even begin to claim credit. It was only right
he should have the credit. After all, he was the one who was risking everything- even his own freedom-to claim the tyrannosaur fossil for the museum. He was the one who had snatched it from the jaws of a black marketeer. He was the one who handed her the opportunity on a silver platter. Without him taking those risks Melodic would have nothing.
She'd have to go along with his seizure of her research-what was the alternative? To pick a fight with him? If she pulled something like that, no university would ever hire her. It wasn't a question of stealing. It was a question of correcting the parameters of credit, of collecting his due.
Corvus carefully packed all the material in his briefcase. Then he went to the computer, logged on as system administrator, and checked all her files. Nothing. She'd done what he said and wiped them clean. He turned and was about to leave when he suddenly had a thought. He needed to check the equipment logs. Anyone who used the lab's expensive equipment had to keep a log of time in, time out, and purpose, and he wondered how Melodic had handled that requirement. He went back to the SEM room, flipped open the log, perused it. He was relieved to see
