ADAPTATIONS
5 – What Is and Isn't Off Limits
Pet jerked her arm out of Grant's grasp and shot him a warning glare. He chose to ignore it in his dragging the newcomer to a small, white trailer. Ellie was following, leaving Billy watching from outside the tent, curious to know what was going on.
Once inside the trailer, Grant released his grip on the hybrid's arm. Ellie closed the door behind them, allowing the site leader a chance to interrogate the hybrid. "What exactly are you doing here?" His voice had more of an 'I dare you' sound to it than anything.
Pet was offended by the less than friendly welcoming she was getting. After coming to the realization Hammond had led her on, she at least hoped her helping him on Isla Nublar those years ago would award her some favor. Apparently not. "I'm here to help you at your site."
"I don't need you here." Grant's tone of voice was almost a growl, now.
Pet scoffed disbelievingly. "Last time I heard, you were running out of funds and only two months shy of losing your dig. That is, unless generosity started flowing." She held out her hands. "My being here is flowing the generosity. Be thankful."
The trailer door opened, revealing Muldoon. He could tell the air was tense and paused in the doorway, looking between Grant and Pet. He had a feeling this was going to happen after Hammond told him Dr. Grant wasn't entirely aware of who the raptor specialist was. Quietly, he entered the cluttered office like interior and stood against a nearby counter of what was supposed to be a kitchenette. Littering the top of it were boxes for sifting through dirt and plastic containers holding different sized fossils.
Grant paid no attention to the other man and continued aiming his focus on the hybrid. He tossed his signature hat to the side on a chair and neared the younger woman's face. "What are you really doing here?"
"I told you!" She snipped back.
Blue eyes of the scientist thinned on the woman with thin growing patience. "There's more to it than that."
Ellie cut in. "Like what?"
Grant continued. "I remember what John Hammond said in the helicopter as we were flying away. InGen wanted you dead and planned to shoot you on the spot once back on mainland." His eyes cut down more on the worried young woman. "They don't even know you're here, do they? InGen., that is…"
It was Muldoon's turn to speak up, seeing how Pet was already a nervous wreck. "They're not even completely sure she's still alive."
Grant's already tempered expression hardened on the scarred man. "Then why were just here a couple weeks ago, tearing up my excavation trying to find her? Tents, trailers...even vehicles. I had a hell of a time trying to explain that to my volunteer site workers, not to mention my protégé." Grant studied the hybrid, again. "Now that Hammond sent you here, it's only a matter of time before InGen comes back."
Pet interrupted. "I'd like to know how they know I'm still alive and not on the islands anymore, since the were here looking for me. The last time anyone from InGen saw me alive was on Isla Sorna right before I sent a T-Rex crashing through their hunters' camp." Muldoon snickered in the background with the memory of, a proud smile stretched across his face.
Grant questioned, "Hunters?" and looked back at Muldoon.
"With a shoot to kill order, too," Muldoon concluded. "It wasn't the first time, either."
Pet continued. "Anything InGen can do to end me before I end what remains of their empire, they'll do it."
The paleontologist ran his hands through his dust layered hair and sighed. "What happens when they discover you are in fact alive? They'll come back here and find you! I can't risk losing my site to legal issues over you being here should that happen."
Ellie's disappointed eyes fell on the man next to her. "Well, we can't just abandon her, honey!"
Pet's shoulders sunk as her overall posture slouched. "Alan, please..." Grant met her gaze and winced at hearing the young woman call him by his first name. "I'm begging you." His blue eyes fell on her raptor ones and he frowned. "I really need your help right now. If I can't hide here then tell me where I can."
Grant studied the silently pleading watches of the two women before turning his attention to the intimidating stare of Muldoon. Something about that man's stare was unnerving. Maybe it was the scars, or even the memory of the island and the thought of the potential dangers that lurked, there.
Grant sighed, guilt tugging at his insides. "Fine." Ellie threw her arms arounds the man's and hugged him tightly. "But…if at any time you do something I don't like, you're gone."
Pet shoved her hands back into her pockets and hoped the people couldn't see her knees shaking in relief. "Define what you don't like…"
"For starters, the moment I find out or even suspect someone from InGen is trying to find you, you're out of here. Second, I saw what you did to that T-Rex. I also know you have a bit of a short tempter and can be confrontational, too. Should you become a threat to the wellbeing of anyone at this dig site, you're out of here. Thirdly," he began, his voice lowering in warning, "don't think I forgot about your little stunt in the visitor center." Pet's brow wrinkled in confusion before her eyes widened in knowing what he was talking about; her brazenly kissing him. Her cheeks filled with blush. "Don't…you…even…think about…trying it…again." He bit out each word with precise emphasis that was easily implied she best keep her hands to herself or else. "Got it?"
Pet nodded in agreement. "Alright. Sounds fair."
Grant gave a satisfied, but cautious nod of his head. "Then we have a deal," and he outstretched his hand to the hybrid. Her callous hand wrapped around his, bringing back the sharp memory of seeing her partially covered in the T-Rex's blood post their skirmish. It sent a blood freezing tingle down his spine that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. "I'll be watching every move you make."
Pet didn't say anything or even move as Grant walked out. Ellie gave her a sympathetic look over her shoulder and too, left the trailer. Pet met gazes with Muldoon and bit her lips together. "That went well…considering."
Muldoon cocked his head at the still nervous hybrid. "What was Dr. Grant talking about when he said he remembered your little stunt?"
Pet pursed her lips and darted her eyes off to the side to look at anything other than her best friend's gawk. "I uh," she awkwardly cleared her throat, "I sort of…kissed him." There was a highly amused glint in the man's eyes, either at her current plight or the fact she doubted he was surprised by the revelation. Or both.
Muldoon tried not to chuckle, but failed. "Sort of?"
Pet rolled her eyes and snorted. "Shut up, Robert. I was young and stupid and didn't think I'd see him again." She stormed past him and slammed the trailer door shut behind her in frustration.
Grant paused shy of the fossil plastering tent and sighed, staring blankly at Ellie. She pressed out a sincere smile and lightly gripped the man's arm. "Honey, I'm sure it'll be alright. We do kind of owe it to her to at least help her, if only for a little while. Until we can find somewhere else for her to go. Okay?"
About that time, Billy walked up to the two scientists with another stranger following him. Grant studied the other man and questioned. "Who are you?"
Muldoon called out from exiting the trailer. "Damn it, Derek, I thought I told you to stay in the car!"
Grant shot his attention to the scarred game warden and pointed a finger at the younger man accompanying his protégé. "Who the hell is this?"
The younger man answered for his uncle. "Derek Muldoon."
Grant questioned, "Your Robert's son?"
Muldoon cut in. "He's my nephew."
Ellie questioned in all smiles. "Are you a game warden, too?"
Derek chuckled and shook his head. "No, ma'am, I'm a bounty hunter."
The color in Billy's face drained and he slowly turned his attention to the seemingly innocent, slightly older and smiling man standing next to him. Bounty hunter? Something about this guy didn't seem normal and Billy nonchalantly increased the distance between him and the other man.
Grant threw his hands up in the air. "Lovely. Absolutely great. This keeps getting better and better." He stomped off, but stopped to continue. "I'm leaving this to you, Ellie. I've got more important things to do."
Billy nervously scratched his neck and stammered, "I, uh...I'm gonna go help Alan," and scurried off.
Ellie's face was blistering red with embarrassment and she spoke, trying to sound calm and collected. "Is it just the three of you then? No one else?"
Derek shook his head. "I'm not expecting anyone else." He looked to his right. "Uncle Rob? Pet?" The two addressed people glared at the third member of their group, him smiling. "Nope. No one else. Looks like you're good."
The paleobotanist folded her hands in front of her and nodded. "Okay. Next thing is; where to put you guys for the time being." She studied their expressions, squinting against the overhead sun. "Maybe a trailer or something, unless you brought your own."
Pet answered. "All we have is a Jeep and like hell I'm staying the night in that thing with him." She pointed at Derek, who looked offended. "Hey, you chloroformed me so don't give me that look!" Ellie's eyes widened as she looked to the two in speechlessness.
Derek proudly beamed. "Girls can't say no when they're unconscious!" Simultaneously, the young man got hit by hybrid backhanding him in the gut and his uncle slapping him in the back of the head offensively. "Owe! I was kidding! Sheesh..."
"Okay, well..." Ellie turned her gaze to where Grant was, talking to Billy beside the fossil cleaning tent. "Maybe Alan has someplace you guys can stay for the time being." The three watched her as she approached the man to discuss their residential issue.
Pet stood with her travel companions and cocked a sly smile across her slightly chapped lips. "He's cute."
Muldoon rolled his eyes down on the hybrid standing next to him and smirked. "I thought Dr. Grant warned you…"
She scoffed. "I'm not talking about him! I'm talking about the guy he was talking to. He's not too bad a looker."
Just as Pet was studying him from a distance, he was doing the same. Billy eyed the young woman of the group, curious to know what it was about her that had his boss so on edge. She seemed innocent enough to him, unless she was another one of those over obsessed fan girls who came to the dig site swearing how she desired nothing more than to be a paleontologist only to not.
Pet saw Derek go into the large tent they were standing next to and decided to follow. Muldoon just stood there, hands on his hips and watching the two meander off. "Try not to touch anything, will you?" It was not a question, but more of an insistence.
Billy broke away from the two senior scientists to make sure their new guests didn't make a mess of anything. He sprinted to the tent and went inside to see one of the volunteer workers with arms plastered up to his elbows trying to shoo the newcomers out.
Billy spoke. "It's okay. She's going to start working here with us as a raptor specialist." That seemed to relax the on-guard worker. He nodded at Billy and returned to mixing a new bucket of plaster. Billy looked to the quiet young woman, her blue-green eyes taking in everything she saw. "This is where we bring fossils and fossil fragments for plaster preservation until the museum can come pick them up at the end of the month."
Derek looked dissatisfied at the two long fold out tables in the middle of the tent. On top of them were several newspapers and junk mail advertisings he could barely read. Speckles and globs of both dry and wet plaster dotted their surfaces and even portions of the ground beneath the tables' edges. He wasn't sure if he was looking at a femur or a fibula or whatever. He was never really good at identifying bones, no matter human or animal and sure as hell not of a dinosaur! On the table across from it were smaller bones, one being curved that he could easily identify as a rib. Maybe? It had to be…
Derek spoke. "Sure doesn't look like a whole lot to pick up."
Billy laughed. "That's because the dried pieces are in a separate tent for temporary storage. We can't keep them in here or it'd get too cluttered to work."
Pet nodded. "Makes sense." Her attention drifted over to meet his hazel eyes, a pleasant smile on his face.
Grant's shadow filled the tent's narrow doorway and he scowled at the hybrid. He ignored Derek standing next to her and approached her, whispering harshly in her ear, "We had a deal."
Pet didn't meet his tempered gaze, but shifted her observation to the volunteer worker resuming his plastering the femur and responded in a dull whisper. "You said to not do anything to you." She then met scientist's frustrated stare. "You said nothing about your site workers…or protége." She sneered and looked back at Billy, now talking with the plastering worker. "Which I don't plan on doing." Pet turned around to better face the senior scientist. "Maybe next time you should better specify what is and isn't off limits when laying down the ground rules." With that, she left the tent. Derek was pretending he didn't hear the whole conversation while wearing his best poker face.
She strode past Ellie arriving to the plastering tent. Ellie saw the intense exasperation on her close friend's face and grimaced. "Is everything okay?"
Grant watched the hybrid rejoin Muldoon and sighed. "She's going to kill me before age can."
Behind him, Derek rolled his scarred shoulder with the memory of getting attacked by the hybrid on Isla Sorna. He could definitely relate to the doc's statement.
