Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(68)
“I hear you, Professor. It’s a short walk from here to the mound, so you’d expect to find mica artifacts in there.”
“Exactly. Grant, since you still don’t want me to excavate the mound, would you mind if I worked here? If enough of this plant growth is cleared away, I might be able to see where someone chipped at the mica, maybe even the shapes of what was taken out. Everything I’d need to see would be close to the surface here, no deep digging. It’s a long shot, but...”
“You’d never prove it was the Adena, rather than the Shawnee or even pioneers, would you?”
“The Adena had distinctive shapes for their arrowheads and ax heads. I could make a good case for the Adena because, especially in their burial chambers, some of their tools and weapons are oversize, as if they had to be special for the afterlife.”
When he didn’t answer, she stopped talking. She didn’t want to upset him about digging even here. But another idea suddenly hit her. Little Jason’s dreadful drawing included a huge ax head. Did it mean the boy had seen an Adena ceremonial one? More likely he just drew it large because one he’d seen in a book looked scary or important. It had impressed him. Kids that age paid little attention to size or perspective. Grant had said he would talk to Jason, then hadn’t mentioned it again. She’d have to question the boy on the sly.
“Well, if you think you can get something useful for your research out of this mica bed, sure,” he said to her delight and surprise. “I’m all for your studies, Kate, as long as it lets the dead stay dead, as my grandfather said. But maybe you should only work on this with someone out here, considering we’ve had trespassers who cut the tree, and you thought you heard something outside last night. But I’d rather you don’t get Carson Cantrell out here.”
“How about Kaitlyn?”
“Can you trust her?”
“To help me work on this, at least. My instinct is to trust her, but I’ll need to know her better to be sure. Thanks, Grant.”
“Oh, yeah. I haven’t mentioned the fee.”
“The fee?”
“Kind of like a finder’s fee, not only of this mica, but because I’ve found you.”
He put the clippers down and took the spade from her hands and dropped it to the ground. The mica seam glinted beside and above them in a sudden shaft of setting sun. Grant’s hands came strong around her waist as he pulled her to him.
“Just a couple of these for a down payment,” he said, his voice husky, as he kissed her lightly, then lingeringly and tugged her even closer.
Every nerve in her body came alive. “How many is a couple?”
“Oh, forgot to say—kisses are just for starters.”
She was going to say something flip but, as ever when Grant touched her, everything except him flew out of her mind. She tilted her head so the kiss could deepen and looped her arms up around his neck to hold him tight. Her breasts flattened against his chest. If he had pulled her down on the gritty ground at the edge of the mica wall, she would not have protested.
They seemed to prop each other up as their kisses lengthened and deepened. She loved the feel of his hard back muscles, his shoulders, the crisp hair on the nape of his neck. His body seemed carved from the wood he loved. He pressed her against the mica wall, which was good, because she wasn’t sure she could stand, even clinging to him, without that solid wall of rock behind her.
His hands left her bottom and marauded over her hips and waist. He pulled her T-shirt hem up and lifted one hand under it to cup a breast through her bra. His kisses came harder, more demanding. He was devouring her, and she wanted more.
He turned them so that his back was against the mica and locked her to him again, hips to hips. She felt dizzy, no longer earthbound but soaring. The slight stubble on his chin scraped her cheek. She was certain the whole world was tumbling down around them in bright, sparkling shards of—
Grant broke the kiss and looked up. They heard a cascade of mica before it hit them, like a waterfall of tiny rocks coming down at them from above. Grant yelled and pulled her away from the wall as more mica gave way above them and then a big chunk bounced down, just missing them. He dragged them back as more rocks fell and exploded in smaller pieces where they had stood.
Despite their ragged breathing, they heard a grunt from above, then footsteps spitting mica that rained down again in a fine, black powder.
“Someone did that,” Grant muttered. “Stay here—stay back.”
He turned and ran out of the ravine with her right behind him. They clawed their way up to higher, flatter ground, then raced to the spot above where they’d been standing.
“No one here I can see,” she gasped, out of breath.
“Gone by now. I told you to stay back, but I should know by now you do your own thing.”
“Wish I could.”
He turned and looked at her, squinting into the red, setting sun. “We won’t argue about that now. Let’s check for footprints.”
She glanced at the open glade fringed by a thick stand of trees, wondering if someone could still be there. If he or they had run, they hadn’t gone far and could be watching. Wasn’t that area ahead of them where Brad had buried his dog? She followed Grant over to the lip of the ravine. “Could it have been a natural occurrence? Mica stratifies and flakes easily.”