Into the Badlands. Caron Todd

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      “Is there something about me in particular you distrust, Susannah, or are you just paranoid?”

      Paranoid? How many judgments did Alex Blake intend to throw around? “It’s something about you.”

      “I see. I can take a certain amount of unpleasantness but you’re part of a team. This kind of behavior could sabotage the museum’s work if it goes on too long. Care to have it out?”

      That would be some conversation…make that some outburst. “There’s nothing to have out.”

      “Then I suggest you hold your bitterness toward me in check. I wouldn’t want it to be a barrier to the way the museum functions.”

      It was a threat. How on earth had she gone from being Bruce’s anointed successor to being seen as an expendable liability?

      She stood as straight as she could on her sprained ankle. “I’m not confident that you have this museum’s best interests at heart, Dr. Blake. If you don’t, you can expect a lot more than a few hostile words from me. So it’s really up to you how well the museum functions.” She wished she could stalk out of his office, but lopsided hopping was the best she could do….

      Dear Reader,

      I’ve gone three times to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta, and although I just got back from the third trip, I already want to go again. The place fascinates me. From small pieces of smooth shale bearing detailed imprints of tiny organisms that lived more than five million years ago to huge-jawed carnivores that make you gulp even now, the museum explores the variety and complexity of living things. There’s a time line in the layered hills and hoodoos nearby. You can see dark shale deposits where the skeletons of marine reptiles might be found, lighter shale where tyrannosaurs might lie and the thick K-T boundary containing iridium from a meteor that may have contributed to the dinosaurs’ extinction.

      During the drive home after my second visit, I began planning Into the Badlands. The museum in the story is a fictional place, and some details of the surrounding area have been changed to suit the story’s needs, but the qualities I find so intriguing—the exotic terrain, the anticipation of discovery and the dedication of the people who search for clues to our planet’s distant past—are part of the daily lives of paleontologists Susannah Robb and Alexander Blake.

      I’d be glad to hear from you. You can reach me at P.O. Box 20045, Brandon, Manitoba R7A 6Y8 Canada.

      Sincerely,

      Caron Todd

      Into the Badlands

      Caron Todd

      

www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE BONEBED LAY in a narrow, winding gully in the Alberta badlands, edged by layered hills and eroded hoodoos. Susannah Robb worked in the shade of an orange tarpaulin surrounded by members of her team and a dozen children—dinosaur enthusiasts who had signed up for two weeks at the museum’s science camp, eager for a chance to dig at a real paleontology quarry.

      She had found the fossil site that spring, after hiking along the same dry riverbed where she’d walked many times before. Nearly at the point of returning to the museum for the day, she’d sat on a boulder to rest, and looked down to see part of a hadrosaur skull protruding from the wind-worn rock at her feet. Now there were bones everywhere, nearly spilling out of the ground, helped by each gust of wind and every rainfall.

      With an ungloved hand, she brushed debris from a tibia that peeked through the crumbling sandstone. “This is a beauty.”

      Her assistant didn’t look up from the trench he was digging on the other side of the fossil. “It’s in great shape,” he agreed. James had been working for Susannah off and on for five years, as his studies allowed. This summer he was running the science camp, as well.

      She let one fingertip drift over the huge specimen, tracing its curving line, feeling gravelly rock matrix, fine dust and solid fossil. Like a psychic trying to sense someone’s whereabouts or history from an article of clothing, she rested her hand on the sun-heated leg bone. She imagined the powerful muscles that had driven it, contracting and expanding with leisurely heaviness during the animal’s constant foraging, then letting it explode into desperate flight when a predator appeared at the edge of the herd.

      Cretaceous herbivores were Susannah’s specialty. The contradiction of their power and vulnerability had drawn her to them. They could have easily crushed a human, if a human had existed to get in their way, but their only real defense was that they traveled in herds. Good for the species; not so good for the individuals whose capture and demise allowed the others to escape.

      “I think we’re going to find a complete skeleton here, James.”

      “Are you backing that opinion with anything more than wishful thinking?”

      She reached for the clipboard that held the project’s grid maps. “Look what we have so far. There’s the skull, the spinal column—”

      “A few sections of it, anyway.”

      “We haven’t dug far enough to find the rest, but it’ll be there.”

      “No ribs, yet.”

      “But the legs have begun to appear. Look at the way the bones are lying. There’s form to it—they’re not just scrambled like most of the others.”

      James nodded slowly as he studied the drawing. “That would be great…exciting for the kids, too.”

      With a soft groan, Susannah straightened her back. “I’m getting old.” Her age was usually the last thing on her mind, but her most recent birthday had startled her. Thirty-three little flames gave off a surprising amount of heat.

      James grinned. “That’s okay. I like older women.”

      “Too bad for you. I’m no cradle robber.”

      “You wouldn’t be stealing.”

      Susannah smiled tolerantly and stepped out from under the tarp, stretching to loosen stiff muscles. James followed, brushing sand from his bare knees.

      “It must be forty degrees out here today.” She threaded her fingers through French-braided hair, lifting the dark strands to cool the skin underneath. In seconds, that slight relief was erased by the burning sun. Despite the August heat, she wore khaki slacks and a long-sleeved loose white shirt to protect her skin. “The kids are wilting.”

      “I’ll take them for a swim soon,” James promised. Not far from the camp there was a swimming hole, a loop in the Red Deer River shaded by wolf willows. The children spent most afternoons there, and returned to the quarry in the cooler evening.

      Susannah pulled a watch out of her shirt