she said ominously, “if you don’t want to wind up wearing it. Whoa, does anybody hear a hissing?”
“Wow! Doughnuts!” Donny exclaimed, his eyes belatedly lighting on the two paper bags Eric had left on the grass.
“Yeah,” Paul said after a beat. “I do. Strange.”
Midway to the doughnuts Donny froze. “Don’t tell me there’s a snake?”
TiJean crowed laughter. “Who’s a wimp now, Eskimo Boy? Afraid of a little bitty old snake.”
“Whoever heard a snake hiss that continuously?” Allison asked.
“Or that loud, to hear it over this wind,” Paul said.
“Wait,” Donny said. “Did you guys see a shadow move? Off there to the left—”
“Shadow?” Paul said, feeling an inexplicable chill that had nothing to do with the wind.
“Yeah,” Allison said. “I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Like a dog or something.”
“Shit,” Donny said, “that’d be a big dog.”
They were all turning and staring around. Paul felt a little woozy. Maybe he was turning too fast, getting dizzy.
“We should all chill,” he said. Then he noticed that Eric James had drawn the slab-sided .45 automatic he wore on his hip and was holding it two-handed with its muzzle tipped toward the unfriendly sky. His face was the consistency of stone.
“This is starting to freak me out—” Donny began.
Allison’s scream, sharp as glass, made Paul spin toward her. As he did something hot splashed across his face.
For a moment he thought she’d thrown scalding coffee on him.
Then the darkness hit him.
1
It was all over the flat-screen TVs hung from the rafters and tuned to CNN when Annja entered the airport terminal. Five dead and one gravely injured in an inexplicable attack on an archaeological dig in western Oklahoma.
It’s so tragic about those other poor people, she thought as she headed to the baggage claim. Does it make me a bad person that I feel glad that Paul’s the one who survived?
She hadn’t been coming to rekindle any old embers. It had been good with Paul while it lasted. And when it was done, it was over. He was still a sweet guy, if a little bit of a player, and a good archaeologist on the tenure track at the university.
Now she just hoped he was still on any track at all.
She collected her single black bag. And I thought I was due for a little relaxation here, she thought as she walked briskly through the crowds toward the car rental desk.
Because of the severity of his injuries, Paul had been taken by helicopter from the site west of Lawton to the trauma unit in Norman, right outside Oklahoma City.
Finding the trauma center wasn’t hard. Once inside amid the bright lights and muted sounds and quietly purposeful traffic of the hospital, things got a little dicier. The staff initially tried to keep Annja from seeing Paul in intensive care.
It seemed to be a well-run facility, so Annja didn’t even try playing her journalist-cum-TV-personality card. It was never her first choice in any event. But Paul’s family had yet to arrive, given that the crime had actually occurred while she was in transit from New York to Houston. His next of kin, it seemed, would only arrive late that evening. Though the nurses wouldn’t say so, Annja got the sickening impression they didn’t expect him to live long enough to see them.
In the meantime, Paul was asking incessantly for Annja Creed so his doctors and the police officer in charge of the case agreed to let her in.
Sunlight streamed through the window. The early online weather reports had showed clouds over western Oklahoma, but they’d dissipated by the time her flight touched down.
Paul was all tubes and bandages and taped-on wires. Half his face was obscured by a bandage. But his good brown eye was open. It turned toward her as she walked in the door.
“Annja,” he said. His voice was a croak. He tried to sit up.
“Paul.” She stopped in the doorway, momentarily overcome.
The nurse who had escorted Annja to the room—a short, wide woman—moved past Annja. Though a head shorter she was heavy enough to push Annja aside as if she were a child. Annja frowned, but held her temper. She’s doing her job, she told herself.
“Now, Paul, calm down,” the nurse said. She turned and glared back with narrowed blue eyes. “Ms. Creed, I’m afraid you’re going to have to cut short your visit, after all.”
“No,” Paul said. Alarms shrilled as his heart rate spiked. “Please, Roslee. Please! I have to talk to her. I have to tell her.”
The nurse gave Annja a speculative scowl. The businesslike amiability with which she had initially greeted Annja was long gone.
“Okay,” she said. “He seems to really need to get something off his chest. It may be good for him to have company. I’ll give you five minutes. And I do not want you stressing my patient. Please tell me you understand.”
Annja took no offense at the woman’s words or her tone. A good nurse had the same outlook on anyone or anything that might prove detrimental to her patients as a mother grizzly bear toward potential threats to her cubs.
“I understand,” Annja said. And she did. Perfectly. Herself a chronic defender of innocence, she could only approve of the nurse’s protectiveness.
The nurse looked at her a beat longer. Then she nodded. “All right. Call me if any changes happen. I’ll be right outside.”
The nurse left. Annja sidestepped to give her plenty of clearance. Then she moved forward and took Paul’s unbandaged hand.
“Paul, what happened?”
The torn lips quirked into a painful smile. “Something right up your alley, Annja.”
“What’s that, Paul?”
Suddenly his fingers clenched hers in a death grip. “A monster,” he said.
For a mad moment she thought he was making a joke well beyond good taste. But his lone visible eye showed white all around, and a tear rose in the corner of it and rolled down his cheek. His whole body seemed to tense.
“Paul,” she said, trying to keep her own voice low and steady. “Please calm down.”
“No! There’s no time. There’s something out there, Annja. Something awful. It killed them.”
“What did?”
His fingers dug into her hand. “I told you. That—creature.”
“Paul, please. Settle down. You’re getting upset and not making
