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I pocketed the card next to my trusty silver penlight—a practical talisman I always carried with me. No harm in keeping it handy.
“Oh, and Callista?” he added as I was about to turn and head back to the parking lot. “Please be careful. Accidents at these sites have been known to happen, and I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
A friendly warning?
Or a veiled threat?
He stared at me in that odd way again, then snapped out of it and gave me a polite nod. “Thank you for speaking with me, Callista. I’ll talk to you very soon.”
Thorne left, and I quickly I shook off this oily sensation that slid down my spine and double-timed it around the building back to Maggie’s Jeep.
“What was that about?” she questioned, turning the ignition as I closed my passenger’s door.
I shook my head. “Just some last minute instruction.”
Or warning.
Or threat.
We drove in silence up the winding forested highway, only the noisy growl and rumble of the Jeep filling the tense, empty airspace. Periodically I would make an attempt at small talk, but the questions and comments were just as briefly answered and shut down with the unspoken meaning that it wasn’t necessary or wanted. When the radiating resentment finally became too much, I decided to address the elephant in the room.
“Look, I know you resent me invading your territory, but remember that it was your own elder council who called me, not the other way around. I promise to do this as quickly and painlessly as possible without stepping on your toes or reputation. So can we please call a truce?”
Maggie grunted. “What do you want to do, smoke a peace pipe?”
“Whatever it takes. I’m warning you now that I’m allergic to Peyote though and may throw up in your Jeep.”
The woman ignored my feeble joke and faced the deserted mountain road, not responding for several long minutes.
So much for being pals.
Giving up, I turned to gaze out the passenger’s window at the towering pines we passed.
“Do you know why Logan Thorne and Tom Black specifically wanted you, McEwan?” she finally remarked. “Some little high school teacher from the east coast.”
Really? Another snarky dig about my lack of Ph.D. and published articles?
“Because I’m good at what I do, and I’ll get the job done,” I said with full confidence. “More importantly, your leaders took a major hit on the last failed discovery, so they don’t want egg on their faces this time.”
Okay, so that last part was hitting below the belt, but the good doctor did deserve it, and there was that nasty, vindictive streak deep inside of me that sometimes reared its ugly head. Not one of my finer qualities.
Maggie snorted. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?”
She arched a brow at me. “Here’s some news you obviously weren’t informed about. Last year’s hieroglyphs I discovered were authentic.”
I processed this newsflash a long moment.
“Authentic? Wait,youdiscovered? I was told that some grad student made chalk drawings.”
“There was no grad student,” Maggie cut in. “Those were not modern etchings either. What I found was the real deal and dated back hundreds, maybe thousands of years.”
Yes, this was indeed news.
“I wasn’t told that,” I admitted.
“Of course, not. Neither Tom, nor Thorne wanted you to know this, because Newcastle Industries is in negotiation with our tribe to build a casino on our land and doesn’t want anything to stand in their way. Including an inconvenient archeological discovery near the area where they plan to build.”
