recommends,” she finally responded. “There is such a thing as safety in numbers. The grad students will be arriving tomorrow, and after they do, you’ll have a hard time finding anyplace to go without tripping over someone else. This quiet, this… privacy will soon be a thing of the past.”
Thank gawd. Right about now, Gabe would appreciate having more people around. Anything to cut through this… tension that now wafted between them, as stubborn as wood smoke.
“Let’s check out the dig site.”
Gabe followed Lorin out of the tent. She locked her cabin, the workroom, and the bunkhouse before zipping the key ring in her jacket pocket, and then led them on a steady, single-file jog down a trail winding through the tall tamaracks and jack pines. Years of fallen needles carpeted the trail. Birds chirped, and something rustled in the underbrush. He focused on his footing, avoiding the strewn pinecones. Anything to keep his eyes off her ass.
Lorin slowed as the trail dumped out to a clearing, to the excavation site that looked nothing like it had in Alka’s season-ending status report last fall. That site had been neat and orderly, with the active area’s grids laid out with military precision, and shaded by protective overhead tarps. Now it was a muddy mess, and the shallow pit’s north wall was partially caved in. Off to the west, the treasure that the site had spit up years ago—the residence, dug into the side of a hill, with its priceless wall of glyphs—was protected by the pole barn that Alka had erected around its entrance.
Lorin worked her way over to the corner of the pit where he knew she’d found the command box, put her hands on her hips, and sighed. “I can’t tell whether anyone else has been up here or not. When I found the command box, I was on my feet, my knees, my stomach.”
Gabe’s thoughts skittered to Lorin sparring with Chico Perez, her toned stomach streaked with mud.
“We should be just about done with overnight frost,” she continued. “Once we know the dirt won’t liquefy under our feet, we’ll be able to grid this area off again.”
He pointed to a corner of the knee-deep hole, approximately twenty feet square, where a large ring of boulders was surrounded by rotted wood logs, too precisely placed to be random. “That’s the cooking ring?”
Lorin nodded. “Excavated last year. The charred wood dates back about a thousand years. I found the command box over there,” she said, indicating the other side of the pit. She fell silent as she stared.
He shivered, and not with the evening chill. If her theory was right, their ancestors’ ship had crashed nearby. People had lived here, died here. They were standing on hallowed ground. “Any indication of burial mounds?” he asked, loath to speak into the hushed silence.
“Not that we’ve found,” she responded softly, “but there’s a lot of the property that we haven’t yet explored. The radiocarbon dating aligns with our oral histories. Written records pick up in the early twelfth century, and most of those come from Europe. Wyland and Bailey are doing what they can to digitize and store what we have, but some of the documents are crumbling to dust right in front of us.”
Gabe listened carefully, all senses on alert. It wasn’t often that anyone not on the Council received any visibility into its inner workings. He’d been so busy dealing with Lorin as an epic pain in his ass, and more sensitive body parts, that he’d forgotten that she represented her species—hell, she represented all of them—as a Council member. It had to be a crushing responsibility.
He had to ask. “Why is a human working on our archives?” Prior to Bailey Brown’s arrival on the scene, Lukas’s business partner Jack Kirkland was the only human alive with confirmed knowledge of their existence. Dr. Brown’s very presence at Sebastiani Labs had lit up the office grapevine for weeks. One day he’d helped the little human shove a
Thank gawd. Right about now, Gabe would appreciate having more people around. Anything to cut through this… tension that now wafted between them, as stubborn as wood smoke.
“Let’s check out the dig site.”
Gabe followed Lorin out of the tent. She locked her cabin, the workroom, and the bunkhouse before zipping the key ring in her jacket pocket, and then led them on a steady, single-file jog down a trail winding through the tall tamaracks and jack pines. Years of fallen needles carpeted the trail. Birds chirped, and something rustled in the underbrush. He focused on his footing, avoiding the strewn pinecones. Anything to keep his eyes off her ass.
Lorin slowed as the trail dumped out to a clearing, to the excavation site that looked nothing like it had in Alka’s season-ending status report last fall. That site had been neat and orderly, with the active area’s grids laid out with military precision, and shaded by protective overhead tarps. Now it was a muddy mess, and the shallow pit’s north wall was partially caved in. Off to the west, the treasure that the site had spit up years ago—the residence, dug into the side of a hill, with its priceless wall of glyphs—was protected by the pole barn that Alka had erected around its entrance.
Lorin worked her way over to the corner of the pit where he knew she’d found the command box, put her hands on her hips, and sighed. “I can’t tell whether anyone else has been up here or not. When I found the command box, I was on my feet, my knees, my stomach.”
Gabe’s thoughts skittered to Lorin sparring with Chico Perez, her toned stomach streaked with mud.
“We should be just about done with overnight frost,” she continued. “Once we know the dirt won’t liquefy under our feet, we’ll be able to grid this area off again.”
He pointed to a corner of the knee-deep hole, approximately twenty feet square, where a large ring of boulders was surrounded by rotted wood logs, too precisely placed to be random. “That’s the cooking ring?”
Lorin nodded. “Excavated last year. The charred wood dates back about a thousand years. I found the command box over there,” she said, indicating the other side of the pit. She fell silent as she stared.
He shivered, and not with the evening chill. If her theory was right, their ancestors’ ship had crashed nearby. People had lived here, died here. They were standing on hallowed ground. “Any indication of burial mounds?” he asked, loath to speak into the hushed silence.
“Not that we’ve found,” she responded softly, “but there’s a lot of the property that we haven’t yet explored. The radiocarbon dating aligns with our oral histories. Written records pick up in the early twelfth century, and most of those come from Europe. Wyland and Bailey are doing what they can to digitize and store what we have, but some of the documents are crumbling to dust right in front of us.”
Gabe listened carefully, all senses on alert. It wasn’t often that anyone not on the Council received any visibility into its inner workings. He’d been so busy dealing with Lorin as an epic pain in his ass, and more sensitive body parts, that he’d forgotten that she represented her species—hell, she represented all of them—as a Council member. It had to be a crushing responsibility.
He had to ask. “Why is a human working on our archives?” Prior to Bailey Brown’s arrival on the scene, Lukas’s business partner Jack Kirkland was the only human alive with confirmed knowledge of their existence. Dr. Brown’s very presence at Sebastiani Labs had lit up the office grapevine for weeks. One day he’d helped the little human shove a
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