Page 112 of False Flag

But how?

They’d tried everything last night, and nothing had penetrated the firewalls, nor could they get past whatever was blocking cellular and satellite signals. Before going to sleep, they’d agreed to take Rosalie out on the water today so they could send an update.

Why go without her? Surely if NSWC had reached out, he could have waited long enough to give her an update?

Had something else happened? Had Casper issued an order for the boat to leave? If so, Jake would have said something. There’d been no note in her room.

But he’d clearly been there. He’d taken the laptop.

Without Jake, without Rosalie, there was no way for her to tell FMV and NSWC that Casper Osborne claimed to have archaeological evidence of a biotoxin composed of shellfish and tree sap.

She looked to the shoreline where it curved around the harbor. The cut bank showed a half-meter-thick band of crushed white shell. A shell midden site that could be thousands of years old. Her gaze flicked over the trees that flanked the forest path. Tall western redcedars.

Shellfish and tree sap.

Both were known to cause anaphylaxis.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Refresh.

Refresh.

Refresh.

Staci was going to wear out the button on the tablet. Surely Jake would email her Lost Civ email address with a coded message. Or Freya would email her. Then there was Vicki, who had the excuse of taking care of Fezzik as a reason to reach out.

But after a long, nearly sleepless night, dawn had broken without a word.

Why had he left without talking to her first?

She set aside the tablet. She needed to shower and prepare for filming. Nothing had changed in spite of the fact that Jake had abandoned her. Today, she had to go into the field and try to teach Gerard’s fans about real archaeology.

Given that she wasn’t bothering with makeup, getting ready didn’t take long, and she was down in the kitchen before the rest of the team, filling her thermos with coffee. Breakfast would wait. She didn’t have the stomach for it.

Thirty minutes later, the team gathered by the garage. They divided into groups, film crew in one side-by-side utility vehicle driven by Beau, Staci and Gerard in another driven by Theo.

Staci sat in the backseat, the space next to her empty. No Jake. No Casper, who’d decided he wouldn’t take part in the filming. She guessed this was because Gerard couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t spout off about the benefits of Nazi research again. No doubt revealing that during the podcast recording yesterday had been a mistake that Gerard didn’t intend to repeat.

He’d need to muzzle the man if he wanted to put him on camera.

Dahlia, Riley, and Philip rounded out the crew in a third vehicle, with another member of the security team at the wheel.

The remaining three team members—Matty, Stephen, and Kyle—wouldn’t be in the field. Staci had no clue what the three men contributed to the team, and it appeared she’d continue wondering for another day.

The ride was a bumpy one, even though Theo was a skilled driver. The road was minimally maintained and even more minimally able to claim the definition of “road.”

Staci sort of loved the bounce, jarring though it was. It felt like she was doing something at last and reminded her of the Cultural Resources Management jobs she worked on after finishing her undergraduate degree.

Living in a tent. Evenings spent by the campfire with a crew of two to ten people. Even the most boring fieldwork felt like an adventure, and the fact that she was getting paid to do it had been a dream come true.

This project was easy compared to sleeping on a thin pad in the woods, but no amount of comfort could make up for the lack of camaraderie.

Dammit. She missed Jake.

But she was never supposed to have been here with Jake, so it was time to pull up her big-girl panties and do her job.

The narrow road reached a clearing just as it crested the summit. For the first time, Staci viewed the north side of the island from the ground.