Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(61)

“You guess?”

“He’s been my mentor, my sounding board and champion for years. I owe him a lot. He believed in me from the first and opened doors for me.”

“And now that must be the case with him and—what’s her name?—Kate Blake?”

“Kaitlyn, but I get your point. I’m not an idiot, Grant.”

“Far from it. The fact she resembles you—and seems so, well, bright and ambitious—could just be a coincidence.”

“The thing is, I understand her, can’t dislike her. She’s more like me than Tess or Char in looks, head and heart.”

He drove toward the hospital. “So you don’t think she’s a setup. A participating or even an innocent go-between for you and Carson, reporting in to him, someone on his side.”

She turned in her seat belt to face him full on. “Grant, I’m on Carson’s side. We both agree that archaeological discovery is an important endeavor for all mankind. You’ve heard if we don’t learn from the past, we’re condemned to repeat it. I believe that.”

He frowned. The car interior dimmed as he turned into the parking garage, where he stopped and punched the button to take a timed ticket and make the gate lift. She thought he’d say she should forget plans for the mound again, but he didn’t. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to talk to Todd alone for a little while tonight.”

“Of course. I’ll show the pictures the boys drew for him to Amber, and she can show them to Todd if she thinks it’s a good thing to do. Jason’s was pretty awful. He may need some counseling to get over seeing his father fall. He’s imagined it in a different way. He drew the injured figure on the ground with his arm cut from some sort of handleless ax head with blood all over. I didn’t even see any blood on Todd. I hope Jason hasn’t been allowed to watch one of those ax-murder or slasher movies.”

As they drove upward through the spiraling levels of the garage, Grant looked stunned. She could almost hear the cogs of his mind clicking, and it surely wasn’t just over finding a parking spot in this crowded place.

“Grant?”

“Yeah, I’ll talk to Jason tomorrow. I didn’t see that drawing, only the scribbles from the younger two. Show it to me in the lobby before we go up to his room, okay?”

Once they were inside the hospital, Kate pulled the drawing out of her big purse and extended it to him. “Strange, huh?” she prompted when he just stared at it, silent and frowning. She couldn’t believe it, but this big, solid man’s hands were shaking. He almost rattled the paper before he thrust it back at her.

“Yeah, weird, but pretty good art,” he said.

“Especially the detail on that oversize ax head. Definitely looks like an Indian one, but he’s drawn it so large. Wherever he got this idea, it made an impression on him.”

“Maybe we have a fledgling artist who will pick up where Paul left off someday.”

“The ax is probably something his grandfather showed him, along with those sheriff’s badges that went missing. Maybe he thought it was an arrowhead. Back to cowboys and Indians. That sort of artifact’s been found in our area at home, only much smaller.”

She could tell his smile was forced as he took her elbow, and they started toward the bank of elevators. “A Shawnee Indian relic probably,” he said and punched the elevator button hard. “And I like the way you said in our area at home.”

“I did, didn’t I? But I’m glad you’re going to talk to Jason because there’s a lot of fear in that drawing. Out West, Char has the Navajo kids draw to get them over violent domestic situations where their parents drink and fight. And Tess said she drew some pretty strange stuff after her captivity when she was getting some counseling.”

She stopped talking as others got in the elevator with them. Funny, she thought, how modern life put strangers so close together in small spaces, as if they were intimate. Everyone stopped talking and didn’t really look at each other as the elevator went up. Kate said a little prayer that, since she and Grant were getting closer every day, he would continue to open up more, but it always seemed he was holding something back.

*

They both hugged Amber, and she gave them a progress report on Todd. “He’s awake and alert, but still, like he told me, not out of the woods,” she explained, “and I think he meant saying it that way as a joke. But he’s angry, mostly at himself.”

Amber and Kate went down the hall to the waiting room. Amber had said Grant should go on in to Todd’s room. Grant shuffled over to the elevated bed framed by monitors and racks with dangling IV tubes.

Todd was staring at the ceiling as if he could see something there. His narrow-eyed gaze darted to Grant. “Yo, best bud and boss.”

“You bet I’m still your boss, and I need you back as soon as you can get around at all.”

There was a chair next to the bed, but Grant stood, leaning over so he could see his friend, who lay flat on his back. Both legs were in casts. One arm was in traction, the other in a cast, elbow to wrist with his black-and-blue fingers sticking out. He was bare-chested, his ribs wrapped with tape. His bruises were every hue from black to pale green, and scratches crisscrossed his bare skin, including his face. Grant tried not to let his dismay register on his own face.

Todd looked up at him through swollen, purplish eyelids. “I can’t believe I fell. I never fall.”