“That’s right, but before that I witnessed Robert Taylor backing not only into this sign but also into Ida Purdy’s husband’s ’57 Apache pickup.”

We started toward the front of the grocery store, and I slowed to allow Lucian to keep up.

He looked at me. “You know, I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I became aware of you.” As we stood there, the automatic door slid open and he walked in like he owned the town, which he pretty much had for nigh on sixty years. “Where are the pickled pig’s feet in this damned place?”

A long-haired teenage bagger at the checkout raised a fist. “Save Jen!”

I raised a fist in return and watched as Evelyn Clymer, an elderly woman who I remembered used to work at the hardware store but must have changed jobs, smiled at the old sheriff. “Hello, Lucian. We heard you had a stroke?”

He limped toward them. “I did, but it must’ve been a backstroke because here I am.”

The coy smile remained on her lips. “Well, I know that to be the truth.”

The teenager looked Native, and when he turned I finally realized who he was, even though his hair was pulled back and he wore an apron. He spoke to the Bear first. “Nahkohe, what’s up, innit?”

“Just prowling, Taylor, and you?”

The young Lone Elk leaned against the counter and gestured around him. “Living the dream.”

He glanced at me. “Didn’t know I had a job at the market?”

I shrugged. “No, I just figured you ran away for a living.”

“I mostly walk into town.”

“That’s close to twelve miles.”

He smiled. “I run it most times.”

Evelyn rested an elbow on the check-writing stand, propped up her pointed chin with a freckled hand, and glanced over Lucian’s shoulder at us. “Something tells me this is a business call.”

The old sheriff turned to me. “What’s her name?”

“Jennifer Watt, blonde, about five-seven, midtwenties, might’ve been in here in the last day or so?”

Evelyn shook her head. “Nope, doesn’t ring a bell, but I don’t know everybody—especially this time of year.” She reached behind her and picked up a phone. “Dan, the sheriff and his bodyguards are down here.” She hung up, and we watched as a middle-aged man in glasses approached from the offices to our left. “They’re looking for a young woman by the name of Watt.”

The manager, Dan Crawford, pulled up and raised a fist. “Save Jen!”

I returned the salute; this stuff was wearing me out. “First name Jennifer, works out at the High Plains Dinosaur Museum.”

He continued nodding. “She was in here when we opened this morning at six. I thought it was kind of strange in that most people aren’t usually in that big of a hurry to buy groceries.” He motioned toward the youth. “Taylor was here and spoke with her a long time, as I recall.”

We all turned toward him, and he looked pretty unsettled. “Toilet paper—she bought a lot of toilet paper.”

I avoided Lucian’s eye.

 • • •

“It’s a large county.”

Dino-Dave leaned forward and looked at the map unfolded on the hood of my truck, the fuzzy edges of where it was folded betraying its age and use. “I’d imagine you want to concentrate on the areas where we’ve had digs, the places she’d be most acquainted with?”

The breeze was picking up, and the tail end of the storm that had hit us the day before was subsiding only to kick up its heels a little at the end. I glanced back at the vague shimmer of platinum light that was being swallowed by the mountains, and began wondering if it really was over. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

“There’s the dig on the northern part of the county that’s associated with the University of Montana.” He pointed to a different area on the map. “This one is south, down near Powder Junction on property owned by the University of Wyoming in that red Hole-in-the-Wall country.” He stood up straight. “If I was looking to get away from everyone . . .” He glanced at McGroder, his arm hanging over my side-view mirror. “. . . you know, till things cooled down, that’s where I’d go.”

Lucian added his two cents’ worth. “Hell, it’s where Butch and Sundance holed up.”

I noticed Dave didn’t mention the site where Jen had been discovered. “Why not the Lone Elk place?”

“That’s a working ranch—there are people on it.” He pointed back at the map and the site farther south, tapping it with a nail. “That’s where I’d be.”

“Yep, but is that where you would be if you were Jennifer?”

He looked up. “Well, you have a point; she does have a connection to Jen.” He glanced at me. “The tyrannosaur, I mean.”

“Right.”

“She found it, after all.”

I thought about the overhang where we’d taken cover until the flash flood had flushed us out. “Has she ever gone down there and stayed?”

He nodded, thoughtful. “Well, we practically lived down there when we were working the dig, but with the animosity that Randy and his family have shown lately, I find it hard to believe that she would be back down there.”

A niggling feeling was working at the back of the reptile stem in my brain, the part of me that was closest in lineage to Jen, the tyrannosaur. “Give me those exact coordinates, and I’ll have Saizarbitoria use a GPS to find this spot and we’ll go ahead down to the Lone Elk place.”

I noticed the acting deputy attorney standing to the side of my truck and looking none too patient. “Sheriff, if I might? I need a word.”

“Make it a short one—I’ve got a missing woman on my hands and a little over four thousand square miles in which to look for her.”

He stepped closer and looked up at me with a severe expression. “You missed the press conference.”

“Excuse me?”

“The national outlet press conference I arranged.”

“I’m not aware of having said that I would be there, Mr. Trost.” I thought about the conversation I’d had with Joe Meyer and attempted to suppress my temper. “I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that the importance of a missing woman supersedes any obligations I might have to you.”

“Some random woman.”

I stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“This is some random woman who’s missing?”

I stood there for a moment more and then began folding my map. “Not that it matters in the random scope of things, but the woman happens to be Jennifer Watt, the paleontologist who discovered Jen, the fossil remains that are the centerpiece of your investigation.”

He was held in check by this information for a moment and then turned to McGroder. “Why was I not told this?”

The special agent frowned. “Um, because we just found out about it.”

He turned back to me. “The press conference was embarrassing.”

I stuffed the map in the interior pocket of my jacket, nodded, and started for the door of my truck. “I know that; I’ve been to your press conferences before.”

 • • •

Lucian fumbled with his pipe and tobacco bag but then remembered he was forbidden to smoke in my truck. “Who was that asshole?”

“Somebody I’m supposed to be nice to.”

He nodded. “Well, you’re doin’ a hell of a job.”

Henry leaned up between the seats. “Why are you thinking the Lone Elk Ranch?”

I navigated the truck off of the main road and headed out of town south by southeast. “Because, when you hauled us out of that overhang in that back-door canyon, I noticed there were the remains of a campfire, and it looked like someone had done some work to make the place habitable.” I wheeled off the road and slowed my acceleration. “In all the excitement of potentially drowning, I kind of forgot about it.”

The Bear’s eyes went to the windshield and the clouds, tinged mercury of all things, swelling above the hills of the high plains. “You are thinking that she is staying out there periodically?”

“Somebody is.”

“Or you think that whoever it is that is impersonating Danny might be living out here?”

“That’s a theory. All I know is that somebody’s staying out here and we’re looking for somebody who we’re assuming wants to stay out of sight, so whether it’s her or somebody else, maybe we can get some answers.”