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is Sheriff Gearhart."
    Hannah was waking up fast. With the possible exception of Caltrans, no one hated her more than Sheriff Gearhart. The prospect of getting them both to talk to her was the kind of masochistic challenge Hannah loved.
    "I would've sent Jimmy to cover this," Karen said, "but he's rushing to make deadline and before calling in any stringers I figured you-"
    "Absolutely," Hannah said. "Caltrans is mine." The headache, lethargy, and exhaustion were gone. "Where's the sinkhole?" Hannah asked.
    "It's just east of the cave itself," Karen told her.
    "Did they say what shape the road's in?"
    "Route 154 and East Camino Cielo are open," Karen said, "though the area around the sinkhole is closed off for two hundred yards in both directions. You'll have to park and walk."
    Hannah thought for a second. It was less than three hours before today's edition went to press. She also liked to push herself with breaking news. This was doable.
    "I should be there in about a half hour," Hannah said.
    "Have Walter meet me at the site and tell Weezie I'll E-mail the story in. Save me two columns above the fold."
    "You got it."
    Hannah thanked her and hung up. She didn't bother finishing her hair. The dampness on the hill would cause it to frizz anyway. Pulling on black jeans and a
Coasted Freeway
sweatshirt, she slipped on her dog tags and then grabbed her red leather shoulder bag and dropped the cell phone inside. Her office-on-the-hoof, she called it. A high school graduation present from her mother, the bag contained two audio microcassette recorders, her nearly indispensable Palm VII electronic organizer, a no-tech notepad and pens in the event of Palm VII battery crash, and a digital camera in case Walter got a flat.
    Within five minutes Hannah was in her red Blazer, listening to the radio talk between Caltrans headquarters and the crew as she tore along the damp, deserted side streets toward the mountains.

Chapter Five
    Thanks to three cups of coffee, two hundred pushups-using just the first three fingers of each hand to strengthen them- and eagerness to get out of the house, Jim Grand was alert as he drove to the office.
His
office. The mountains.
    The terrain of the peaks in the upper Santa Ynez Mountains was extremely steep and unstable, with loose boulders, muddy slopes, and ledges made of leaf-thin layers of rock. Eroded by millennia of wind, water, and tectonic activity, the ledges crumbled easily underfoot. Caves here were often the home to bobcats and brown bears while tumbleweeds and scrub frequently concealed deep pits and crevasses. On days when the clouds were low and covered the peaks, visibility was no more than three or four feet. At night, temperatures typically fell to well below freezing. During the winter, snow and fine, clear ice made the mountains as deadly as higher, more infamous ranges. During the warmer seasons, unwary climbers often rappelled into fields that were used for turkey shoots. Smug mountaineers who saw the peaks as a warm-up for tougher challenges frequently had to be hauled out by the highly skilled members of the Los Padres division of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Search and Rescue Team.
    Jim Grand had climbed, fought, and studied the Santa Ynez Mountains for nearly seven years, ever since he'd returned to UCSB to take over the classes of his former professor Joseph Stroud Tumamait. Tumamait had abruptly left his post to found the environmental group
Hutash
, the Chumash word for earth. Grand knew the mountains well, he respected their moods, and above all he enjoyed the challenge of what Tumamait-when he still had a sense of humor- once referred to as "one of earth's most seductive and temperamental erogenous zones."
    But then, the world of mountains, canyons, caves, cave paintings, and especially prehistoric civilization like the Chumash was one that Grand had loved for nearly thirty years.
    Crouched on a narrow ledge in a dark, dome-topped cave, Grand was surprisingly rested. For