Dinosaur Thunder Read Free Page B

don’t have any rangers available. They put us on a list.”
    Fanny Mills wore cargo shorts with a navy blue polo shirt. She was pretty—very pretty—with short black hair, large expressive brown eyes, and another smile full of bright-white teeth. Her face, arms, and legs were genuinely tan, not the spray-on fake tan that gave you the color without the cancer risk. Coming directly to Carson, Fanny took his hand, shook it, and then held it while she spoke to him sincerely.
    “You’re not alone, are you? It’s too dangerous to do it alone. We won’t let you, will we, Marty?”
    “No, of course not,” Marty said.
    It took Carson a few seconds to realize the Millses were genuinely concerned about his safety. “Mr. and Mrs. Mills,” Carson began.
    “Marty and Fanny,” Fanny said, finally releasing Carson’s hand after a final squeeze.
    The squeeze gave Carson a warm rush.
    “Look, I have been doing this for a long time. Let me take a look at what you’ve got, and if I need help I’ll call in one of my crew.”
    “It’s a velociraptor,” Marty said.
    “Probably more than one,” Fanny said, taking him by the arm. “They run in packs. Of course you would know that.”
    “Velociraptors are illegal,” Carson assured them. “If it’s a carnivore, it’s more’n likely an oviraptor. They keep them in the ranges as scavengers to keep the range free of carcasses. The problem is that they keep escaping because the barriers are built for the big animals. If it is an oviraptor , there’s not much to worry about. Might eat your cat if you have one, but that’s about it.”
    “I heard an oviraptor killed a baby in California,” Marty said.
    “Urban myth,” Carson said. “Do you have a baby?”
    “No, but we’re trying,” Fanny said, taking Carson’s arm, and leading him down the hall.
    Fanny and Marty were uncomfortably open, Carson thought, but Carson liked them. The Millses took Carson down the hall to the biggest kitchen he had ever seen, with a breakfast bar and kitchen table. The back wall was glass, with more French doors that opened out to the pool deck. The tile floor in the kitchen was the same as the tile around the pool, so with the French doors open, the pool area and the kitchen would seem to be one large room. There was another set of stairs along one wall of the kitchen, and the Millses took Carson to the second floor and another large open space sprinkled with arcade games and a foosball table. A large wet bar sat against one wall, and another glass wall led out to the deck. Two pairs of binoculars sat on the bar. Marty picked them up, and Fanny led Carson onto the deck.
    Fanny was unusually physical for a married woman, holding Carson’s arm, leaning against him, guiding him with a hand on his back. Carson enjoyed the contact, feeling it was somehow illicit. Carson also knew that if the plumber showed up later that day, Fanny would be just as attentive.
    “Here you go,” Marty said, handing Carson one of the binoculars. “We saw the velociraptor down the valley by the old barn.”
    Marty took the binoculars, following Marty’s point. The binoculars had image-stabilization technology, and the view through the lenses was as stable as looking out a window. Carson found the old barn. It was a half-collapsed structure that looked like a pile of weathered scrap wood.
    “We saw it run from the tree line on the south into the barn,” Fanny said.
    Carson studied the barn but saw nothing.
    “We’ve seen it twice now,” Marty said. “Fanny saw it yesterday early in the morning, and I saw it last night.”
    “Have you been to the barn?” Carson asked.
    “No!” Fanny said emphatically. “Marty wanted to go, but I said, ‘Don’t even think about it.’ I told him, I said, ‘Marty, we need a professional,’ and so we called you.”
    “Did you find me in the yellow pages, online, word of mouth?” Carson asked.
    “Online.”
    Carson made a mental note to drop his yellow pages