City of Screams by James Rollins Page B

a tarp over the skeleton. Once she was done, Nate reached down and helped her out of the deep trench. As expected, his hand lingered on hers a second too long.
    Trying not to scowl, she retrieved her hand and dusted off the knees of her jeans. Nate took a step back, glancing away, perhaps knowing he had overstepped a line. She didn’t scold him. What would be the use? She wasn’t oblivious to the advances of men, but she rarely encouraged them, and never out in the field. Here she wore dirt like other women wore makeup and avoided romantic involvement. Though of average height, she’d been told that she carried herself as if she were a foot taller. She had to in this profession, especially as a young woman.
    Back home, she’d had her share of relationships, but none of them seemed to stick. In the end, most men found her intimidating—which was off-putting to many, but oddly attractive to others.
    Like Nate.
    Still, he was a good field man with great potential as a geophysicist. He would grow out of his interest in her, and things would uncomplicate themselves on their own.
    â€œShow me.” She turned toward the khaki-colored equipment tent. If nothing else, it would be good to get out of the baking sun.
    â€œAmy’s got the information up on the laptop.” He headed across the site. “It’s a jackpot, Professor. We hit a bona fide bone jackpot.”
    She suppressed a grin at his enthusiasm and hurried to keep pace with his long-legged stride. She admired his passion, but, like life, archaeology didn’t hand out jackpots after a single morning’s work. Sometimes not even after decades.
    She ducked past the tent flap and held it open for Nate, who took off his hat as he stepped inside. Out of the sun’s glare, the tent’s interior felt several degrees cooler than the site outside.
    A humming electric generator serviced a laptop and a dilapidated metal fan. The fan blew straight at Amy, a twenty-three-year-old grad student from Columbia. The dark-haired young woman spent more time inside the tent than out. Drops of water had condensed on a can of Diet Coke on her desk. Slightly overweight and out of shape, Amy hadn’t had the years under the harsh sun to harden her to the rigors of archaeological fieldwork, but she still had a keen technological nose. Amy typed on the keyboard with one hand and waved Erin over with the other.
    â€œProfessor Granger, you’re not going to believe this.”
    â€œThat’s what I keep hearing.”
    Her third student was also in the tent. Apparently everyone had decided to stop working to study Nate’s findings. Heinrich hovered over Amy’s shoulder. A stolid twenty-four-year-old student from the Freie Universität in Berlin, he was normally hard to distract. For him to have stepped away from his own work meant that the find was big.
    Amy’s brown eyes did not leave the screen. “The software is still working at enhancing the image, but I thought you’d want to see this right away.”
    Erin unsnapped the rag clipped to her belt and wiped grit and sweat off her face. “Amy, before I forget, that child’s skeleton I’ve been excavating . . . I saw some unusual marks that I’d like you to photograph.”
    Amy nodded, but Erin suspected she hadn’t heard a word she’d said.
    Nate fidgeted with his Stetson.
    What had they found?
    Erin walked over and stood next to Heinrich. Amy leaned back in her metal folding chair so that Erin had a clear view of the screen.
    The laptop displayed time-sliced images of the ground Nate had scanned that morning. Each showed a different layer of quadrant eight, sorted by depth. The pictures resembled square gray mud puddles marred by black lines that formed parabolas, like ripples in the puddle. The black lines represented solid material.

    Erin’s heart pounded in her throat. She leaned closer in disbelief.
    This mud puddle had far too