Nora walked back to her trailer in the dark, still reeling from what had just happened. It was crazy, it was wrong, it was exactly what should not happen on a project like this—and yet she felt a powerful glow, a whole-body tingle, that made her reservations seem trivial, if not irrelevant.
As she came in the door, a marvelous scent, underlaid by Mitty’s welcoming bark, brought her back to the present.
“Where have you been?” Skip called from the galley. “A little longer, and you would have ruined dinner.” He quickly poured her a glass of wine and gestured to the kitchen table, where he’d been making inroads into chips and guac. “Have some while I work this up.”
“Thanks,” she said, slipping into her chair. She was famished. She scooped a mass of guacamole onto a chip.
“I was getting worried,” he said from the galley, “because someone said you’d gone into Tappan’s RV. You were in there an awfully. Long. Time…” His voice trailed off suggestively.
“Tappan was just showing me some charts,” she said briskly. She found herself flushing, to her great dismay.
“Charts…etchings…of course.” Skip tipped a bit of red wine from his glass into the sauté pan with a great hiss of liquid. He stirred it gently, shook the pan, tasted the contents, and then spooned them onto plates, along with roasted potatoes and baby bok choy.
“Sauteed foie gras with red wine, balsamico, and mission fig reduction,” he said with feigned nonchalance as he slid the plates onto the table.
“Wow, this is amazing, Skip.”
“Least I could do.” He sat down beside her and poured himself a fresh glass of wine. “You know, it wouldn’t be so shabby having a billionaire brother-in-law…” His voice trailed off suggestively.
She hit him on the shoulder rather harder than she intended.
26
BITAN ARRIVED KITTED out as if on safari, with a day pack, two water bottles strapped to his belt, a gigantic straw sun hat, sunglasses, and his nose coated with sunscreen. He carried an elaborate GPS unit.
Mitty spied him approaching in the dark and gave a bark, then rushed forward for a greeting. Bitan took a moment to rub his ears, murmuring affectionate words in Hebrew.
“We’re going to walk in the direction the trench points us in,” he said, immediately setting off, striding so fast Skip struggled to keep up, Mitty bounding ahead eagerly. “The oval I described is about five miles away, in the Atalaya plains, and it extends two miles into the hills.”
“Right.”
“I worked out a search pattern last night. I’ll Bluetooth it to you. We’re going to split up once we reach the valley to cover more ground.”
The sun mounted over the horizon into a cloudless sky, casting golden shadows. It was still chilly in the early morning, but Skip knew it was going to warm up quickly. Hopefully it wouldn’t get too hot.
For a man close to fifty, Bitan proved to be full of energy. As they walked, he told tales of growing up in Be’er Sheva in the Negev desert, which he mentioned was also the ancient Biblical town of Beersheba; and he talked about its history, the place where Abraham planted the tamarisk tree and the Lord spoke to Isaac and Jacob, and later where the Battle of Beersheba took place during World War I. He was a fount of knowledge and stories, and Skip hung on every word.
After about two miles, Skip saw they were coming to the edge of Diablo Mesa, the vast, low formation on which the camp was situated. A cliff abruptly dropped away to a huge, treeless valley with a dry lake bed in the middle.
They stood at the edge of the mesa in the morning light while Bitan consulted his GPS. Skip took a moment to give Mitty some water.
“According to the map, that valley is called the Plains of Atalaya,” Bitan said. “The white area is Dead Lake, and those hills on the other side are the Horse Heaven Hills. The buttes beyond are Los Gigantes, and the blue mountains, Los Fuertes.”
“Picturesque names.”
“It amazes me how much this landscape looks like the Negev. But now we have to find our way down into the valley.”
Skip peered over the edge with a frown. It was only a few hundred feet, but the rimrock was sheer.
“From the topo map,” said Bitan, examining his GPS, “it looks like there might be a way down the cliffs to the left.”
They walked along the mesa edge as the sun climbed in the sky. The views were endless. There were no roads, no trails, no signs of human existence. It was a landscape that made Skip feel small, but in a good way. And the possibility of being part of a discovery that would change the world filled him with excitement and wonder.