by Nora Roberts
debt.
He wouldn’t think of it as he plowed and planted and harvested. So she, and those like her, would think of it for him.
It was a good place, she decided, to work.
The higher hills were upholstered with forest that climbed up toward a sky of glassy blue. Ridge tumbled into valley; valley rose toward ridge, giving the land texture and shadows and scope.
The sun sheened over the hip-high corn and gave it a wash of gold over green and gave a young chestnut gelding a bright playground for romping. Old houses made from local stone, or their contemporary counterparts of frame or brick or vinyl, stood on rises or flats with plenty of elbow room between them.
Cows lolled in the heat behind wire or split-rail fences.
The fields would give way to woods, thick with hardwoods and tangled with sumac and wild mimosa, then the hills would take over, bumpy with rock. The road twisted and turned to follow the snaking line of the creek, and overhead those trees arched to turn the road into a shady tunnel that dropped off on one side toward the water and rose up on the other in a jagged wall of limestone and granite.
She drove ten miles without passing another car.
She caught glimpses of more houses back in the trees, and others that were so close to the road she imagined if someone came to the door she could reach out and shake hands.
There were plenty of summer gardens in evidence, bright plops and splashes of color—heavy on the black-eyed Susans and tiger lilies.
She saw a snake, thick as her wrist, slither across the blacktop. Then a cat, pumpkin orange, skulking in the brush on the shoulder of the road.
Tapping her fingers on the wheel in time with the Dave Matthews Band, she speculated on the outcome if feline should meet reptile.
Her money was on the cat.
She rounded a curve and saw a woman standing on the side of the road pulling her mail out of a dull-gray mailbox. Though she barely glanced toward the Rover, the woman raised a hand in what Callie assumed was an absent and habitual greeting.
She answered the wave, and sang along with Dave as she rode the roller coaster of a road through the sun and shade. When the road opened up again, she punched it, flying by a roll of farmland, a roadside motel, a scatter of homes, with the rise of mountains ahead.
Houses increased in number, decreased in size as she approached Woodsboro’s town line.
She slowed, got caught by one of the two traffic lights the town boasted, and was pleased to note one of the businesses tucked near the corner of Main and Mountain Laurel was a pizza parlor. A liquor store stood on the other corner.
Good to know, she thought, and inched up as the light went green.
Reviewing Leo’s directions in her mind, she made the turn on Main and headed west.
Structures along the main drag were neat, and old. Brick or wood or stone, they nestled comfortably against one another, fronted with covered porches or sunny stoops. Streetlights were old-timey carriage style, and the sidewalks were bricked. Flowers hung in pots from eaves, from poles and porch rails.
Flags hung still. American, and the bright decorative banners people liked to hoist to announce seasons and holidays.
The pedestrian traffic was as sparse and meandering as the vehicular. Just, Callie supposed, as it was meant to be on Main Street, U.S.A.
She noted a cafe, a hardware store, a small library and a smaller bookstore, several churches, a couple of banks, along with a number of professionals who advertised their services with small, discreet signs.
By the time she hit the second light, she had the west end of town recorded in her mind.
She made a right when the road split, followed its winding path. The woods were creeping in again. Thick, shadowy, secret.
She came over a rise, with the mountains filling the view. And there it was.
She pulled to the side of the road by the sign announcing:
HOMES AT ANTIETAM CREEK
A Dolan and Son Development
Snagging her camera and hitching a small pack over her shoulder, Callie climbed out. She took the long view first, scanning the terrain.
There was wide acreage of bottomland, and from the looks of the dirt mounded early in the excavation, it was plenty boggy. The trees—old oak, towering poplar, trash locust—ranged to the west and south and crowded around the run of the creek as if guarding it from interlopers.
Part of the site was roped off, and there the creek had widened into a good-sized pond.
On the little sketch Leo had drawn for her, it was called Simon’s Hole.
She wondered who Simon had been and why the pond was named for him.
On the other side of the road was a stretch of farmland, a couple of weathered outbuildings, an old stone house and nasty-looking machines.
She spotted a big brown dog sprawled in a patch of shade. When he noticed her glance, he stirred himself to thump his tail in the dirt twice.
“No, don’t get up,” she told him. “Too damn hot for socializing.”
The air hummed with a summer silence that was heat, insects and solitude.
Lifting her camera, she took a series of photos, and was just about to hop the construction fence when she heard, through the stillness, the sound of an approaching car.
It was another four-wheeler. One of the small, trim and, to Callie’s mind, girlie deals that had largely replaced the station wagon in the suburbs. This one was flashy red and as clean as a showroom model.
The woman who slid out struck her as the same. Girlie, a bit flashy and showroom perfect.
With her sleek blond hair, the breezy yellow pants and top, she looked like a sunbeam.
“Dr. Dunbrook?” Lana offered a testing smile.
“That’s right. You’re Campbell?”
“Yes, Lana Campbell.” Now she offered a hand as well and shook Callie’s enthusiastically. “I’m so glad to meet you. I’m sorry I’m late meeting you here. I had a little hitch with child care.”
“No problem. I just got here.”
“We’re so pleased to have someone with your reputation and experience taking an interest in this. And no,” she said when Callie’s eyebrows raised, “I’d never heard of you before all this started. I don’t know anything about your field, but I’m learning. I’m a very fast learner.”
Lana looked back toward the roped-off area. “When we heard the bones were thousands of years old—”
“ ‘We’ is the preservation organization you’re representing?”
“Yes. This part of the county has a number of areas that are of significant historical importance. Civil War, Revolutionary, Native American.” She pushed back a wing of hair with her fingertip, and Callie saw the glint of her wedding band. “The Historical and Preservation Societies and a number of residents of Woodsboro and the surrounding area banded together to protest this development. The potential problems generated by twenty-five to thirty more houses, an estimated fifty more cars, fifty more children to be schooled, the—”
Callie held up a hand. “You don’t have to sell me. Town politics aren’t my field. I’m here to do a preliminary survey of the site—with Dolan’s permission,” she added. “To this point he’s been fully cooperative.”
“He won’t stay that way.” Lana’s lips tightened. “He wants this development. He’s already sunk a great deal of money into it, and he has contracts on three of the houses already.”
“That’s not my problem either. But it’ll be his if he tries to block a dig.” Callie climbed nimbly over the fence, glanced back. “You might want to wait here. Ground’s mucky over there. You’ll screw up your shoes.”
Lana hesitated, then sighed over her favorite sandals. She climbed the fence.
“Can you tell me something about the process? What you’ll be doing?”
“Right now I’m going to be looking around, taking photographs, a few samples. Again with the landowner’s permission.” She slanted a look at Lana. “Does Dolan know you’re out here?”
“Uh-huh. Jesus, how many people have been tramping around this place? Look at this shit.” Annoyed, Callie bent down to pick up an empty cigarette pack. She jammed it in her pocket.
As she got closer to the pond, her boots sank slightly in the soft dirt. “Creek floods,” she said almost to herself. “Been flooding when it needs to for thousands of years. Washes silt over the ground, layer by layer.”
She crouched down, peered into a messy hole. The footprints trampled through it made her shake her head. “Like it’s a damn tourist spot.”
She took photos, absently handed the camera up to Lana. “We’ll need to do some shovel tests over the site, do stratigraphy—”
“That’s studying the strata, the layers of deposits in the ground. I’ve been cramming,” Lana added.
“Good for you. Anyway, no reason not to see what’s right here.” Callie took a small hand trowel out of her pack and slithered down into the six-foot hole.
She began to dig, slowly, methodically while Lana stood above, swatting at gnats and wondering what she was supposed to do.
She’d expected an older woman, someone weathered and dedicated and full of fascinating stories. Someone who’d offer unrestricted support. What she had was a young, attractive woman who appeared to be disinterested, even cynical, about the area’s current battle.
“Um. Do you often locate sites like this? Through serendipity.”
“Mmm-hmm. Accidental discovery’s one way. Natural causes—say, an earthquake—are another. Or surveys, aerial photography, subsurface detections. Lots of scientific ways to pinpoint a site. But serendipity’s as good as any.”
“So this isn’t that unusual.”
Callie stopped long enough to glance up. “If you’re hoping to generate enough interest to keep the big, bad developer away, the method of finding the site isn’t going to give you a very long run. The more we expand civilization, build cities, the more often we find remnants of other civilizations underneath.”
“But if the site itself is of significant scientific interest, I’ll get my long run.”
“Most likely.” Callie went back to slow, careful digging.
“Aren’t you going to bring in a team? I understood from my conversation with Dr. Greenbaum—”
“Teams take money, which equals grants, which equals paperwork. That’s Leo’s deal. Dolan’s footing the bill, at the moment, for the prelim and the lab work.” She didn’t bother to look up. “You figure he’ll spring for a full team, the equipment, the housing, the lab fees for a formal dig?”
“No.” Lana let out a breath. “No, I don’t. It wouldn’t be in his best interest. We have some funds, and we’re working on gathering more.”
“I just drove through part of your town, Ms. Campbell. My guess is you couldn’t come up with enough to bring in more than a few college students with shovels and clipboards.”
Annoyance creased Lana’s brow. “I’d think someone in your profession would be willing, even eager, to focus your time and energy on something like this, to work as hard as possible to keep this from being destroyed.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t. Give me the camera.”
Impatient now, Lana edged closer, felt her sandals slide into dirt. “All I’m asking is that you—Oh God, is that another bone? Is that—”
“Adult femur,” Callie said, and none of the excitement that was churning in her blood was reflected in her voice. She took the camera, snapped shots from different angles.
“Are you going to take it into the lab?”
“No. It stays. I take it out of this wet ground, it’ll dry out. I need proper containers before I excavate bone. But I’m taking this.” Delicately, Callie removed a flat, pointed stone from the damp wall of dirt. “Give me a hand up.”
Wincing only a little, Lana reached down and clasped Callie’s filthy hand with her own. “What is it?”
“Spear point.” She crouched again, took a bag out of her pack and sealed the stone, labeled it. “I didn’t know much about this area a couple of days ago. Nothing about the geological history. But I’m a fast learner, too.”
She wiped her hands on the thighs of her jeans, straightened up. “Rhyolite. There was plenty of it in these hills. And this . . .” She turned the sealed stone in her hand. “This looks like rhyolite to me. Could be this was a camp—Neolithic campsite. Could be it was more. People of that era were starting to settle, to farm, to domesticate animals.”
If she’d been alone, if she’d closed her eyes, she could have seen it in her mind. “They weren’t as nomadic as we once believed. What I can tell you, Ms. Campbell, from this very cursory study, is that you’ve got yourself something real sexy here.”
“Sexy enough for a grant, a team, a formal dig?”
“Oh yeah.” Behind her tea-colored lenses, Callie’s gaze scanned the field. She was already beginning to plot the site. “Nobody’s going to be digging footers for houses on this site for some time to come. You got any local media?”
The light began to gleam in Lana’s eyes. “A small weekly newspaper in Woodsboro. A daily in Hagerstown. There’s a network affiliate in Hagerstown, too. They’re already covering the story.”
“We’ll give them more, then bump it up to national.” Callie studied Lana’s face as she tucked the sealed bag in her pack. Yeah, pretty as a sunbeam, she thought. And smart, too. “I bet you come across real well on TV.”
“I do,” Lana said with a grin. “How about you?”
“I’m a killer.” Callie scanned the area again, began to imagine. Began to plan. “Dolan doesn’t know it, but his development was fucked five thousand years ago.”
“He’s going to fight you.”
“He’s going to lose, Ms. Campbell.”
Once again Lana held out a hand. “Make it Lana. How soon do you want to talk to the press, Doctor?”
“Callie.” She pursed her lips and considered. “Let me touch base with Leo, find a place to stay. How’s that motel outside of town?”
“Adequate.”
“I’ve done lots worse than adequate. It’ll do for a start. Okay, let me do some groundwork. You got a number where I can reach you?”
“My cell phone.” Lana pulled out a card, scribbled down the number. “Day and night.”
“What time’s the evening news?”
“Five-thirty.”
Callie looked at her watch, calculated. “Should be enough time. If I can move things along, I’ll be in touch by three.”
She started back toward her car. Lana scrambled to catch up. “Would you be willing to speak at a town meeting?”
“Leave that to Leo. He’s better with people than I am.”
“Callie, let’s be sexist.”
“Sure.” Callie leaned on the fence a moment. “Men are pigs whose every thought and action is dictated by the penis.”
“Well, that goes without saying, but what I mean in this case is people are going to be a lot more intrigued and interested in a young, attractive female archaeologist than a middle-aged man who works primarily in a lab.”
“Which is why I’ll talk to the TV crew.” Callie boosted herself over the fence. “And don’t shrug off Leo’s impact. He was a digger when you and I were still sucking our thumbs. He’s got a passion for it that gets people stirred up.”
“Will he come in from Baltimore?”
Callie looked back at the site. Pretty flatland, the charm of the creek and the sparkle of the pond. The green and mysterious woods. Yes, she could understand why people would want to build houses there, settle in by the trees and water.
She suspected they had done so before. Thousands of years before.
But this time around they were going to have to look elsewhere.
“You couldn’t keep him away. By three,” she said again, and swung into the Rover.
She was already yanking out her cell phone and dialing Leo when she drove away.
“Leo.” She shifted the phone so she could bump up the air-conditioning. “We struck gold.”
