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"Give me that," I snapped, wrenching it out of her hand and unlocking it.
Luca's text message was just two words: Found something.
We all looked toward Luca's faraway silhouette. His arm arced through the air in a sweeping beckon.
"Come on," Raheem said, dropping the rest of his bread and scrambling to his feet. He took off at a near sprint with Vanessa and me close on his heels.
"Archaeology is—not supposed—to be this fast-moving," Vanessa gasped as we approached Luca. Her face was bright red. She doubled over, hands on her knees, then tumbled forward in slow motion until she was lying on the ground. "Whatever you found better be worth the heart attack I'm currently having," she said to the sky.
Luca barely glanced at her. His eyes were on the small radar screen. "I just finished this grid section and went back to check the read-out before I started the next one. Look at this," he said, pointing. Ribbons of color were smudged together over a dark blue background. A splash of red filled the center of the screen, radiating outward in orange and yellow.
Raheem and I glanced at each other.
"Uh…” Raheem said. "What exactly am I looking at?"
The GPR I'd worked with back home had been grayscale, a model bought decades ago with grant money. I had no idea what Luca was pointing at. The image looked like the box of crayons I'd microwaved when I was eight.
But Luca didn't seem annoyed by our ignorance. Instead, he pulled up another image. "Here," he said. "This was in the first quadrant. I can't say anything for sure until I get these images onto my computer, but there seems to be a structure. There is a wall—stone, maybe." He pointed at the field. "Fifteen meters long by about fifteen meters wide."
I felt my heart rate pick up. "That's bigger than a house," I said. Was this the footprint of the chapel we'd been looking for?
"Yes." He moved through more images. "Gaps here and here, then more stone toward the north side of the building, you see?"
I did, kind of. But—
"What's that?" I pointed to the middle of one of the images. Another large flare of color, but the shape was strange—a hollow ring. And in the center, there was—nothing. Not even the dark blue of the background. It was a solid black blot, appearing almost like faulty pixels on the screen.
"That," Luca intoned, "is why I called for you."
"But that shouldn't even be possible," Vanessa said at my shoulder. She'd gotten up off the ground and was hovering behind me, squinting at the image. "Don't the anomalies show up in color? Is it an error? Did you change software or something?"
"I did not change software," Luca said. He closed the image and looked up at me, his green eyes burning. "Come. We need to get to my computer."
Luca pushed the radar and Raheem and I did a sort of anxious walk-jog behind him, exchanging excited glances behind his back. Even Vanessa seemed to have forgotten about innuendos and double entendres—she was scrolling through her phone as she walked, muttering under her breath. When at last we reached the tent, she scurried ahead.
"Alicia!" she called, waving frantically at Dr. Blanton, who must have just returned from the lab. "C'mere!"
Fifteen minutes later, we were crowded around Luca's laptop. I was right behind him, close enough that I could smell spicy aftershave and the faint scent of sweat. The skin on the back of his neck was golden from the sunlight; I could practically feel his warmth.
Ugh. I forced myself to focus on the images onscreen. I did not need to be getting all hot and bothered during a data analysis.
"Okay, I'll bite," Dr. Blanton said at last. "What is it?"
"Honestly?" Luca changed a few settings, but the black circle didn't even flicker. "I do not know. At first I thought maybe a problem with the equipment, but now I think not. Some kind of anomaly, but I have never seen anything like it."
Dr. Blanton raised her eyebrows. "Well," she said. "Guess that's where we start digging.”
"Lucky me," I muttered to myself. It was late in the afternoon, but I'd long since lost track of time.
Vanessa, the computer whiz, had assigned herself to Luca for the remainder of the data analysis. I reminded myself that she had seniority, and that I loved fieldwork. I just tended to forget how grueling it was.
At least Raheem had chosen to mark out his own section in the area where we hoped to find the corner of the chapel wall. That meant I got dibs on the anomaly. But between the sun beating overhead and the jetlag that was rapidly catching up with me, I'd barely gotten my test pit marked out and the topsoil removed before I was exhausted.
I leveled out the bottom of my unit, dumping the last of the soil into the bucket by my side, then dropped my hand trowel in the nearby grass. My knees creaked as I levered to my feet and dumped the soil into the mesh screen propped on two sawhorses nearby, then used one gloved hand to shake the loose dirt through as I examined what was left. I wasn't far enough down to find anything interesting yet. Sure enough—just a few loose pebbles and a displaced worm.
I made a few quick notes on my level record form, then sank back down to the ground and picked up my trowel. One more layer, maybe, and then I'd call it a day.
A long shadow fell across my grid section. I looked up, and blinked. It was apparently much later than I'd thought. The sun was so bright that the figure who cast it was silhouetted completely against the fiery rays. I shaded my eyes with one gloved hand and squinted at whomever-it-was.
