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Chapter 17

Annie was in his arms.

David absorbed that fact as he studied his surroundings in the early dawn light filtering through lace curtains on tall, narrow windows. He'd started his night in Annie's bed on top of the covers, telling himself he'd put at least that much distance between himself and temptation. But sometime during the night the room had grown colder and he had grown lonelier, and, less than half awake, he had tunneled under the comforter and electric blanket, wrapped his arms around Anne Locke and dragged her close.

She hadn't awakened—he remembered that much—just given a little sigh as she relaxed against him and slid deeper into sleep.

And she wasn't awake now, just snuggled trustingly against him as though seeking his warmth.

Trustingly.

Well, hell.

He felt his mouth twist in a wry grin. At least something in his life was going well. As an oath, that one had been downright mild. There had been a time in his life, not too long ago, when his thoughts, spoken or not, would have been a lot more colorful.

There had been a time in his life when he wouldn't have had the need to swear, because he wouldn't even have considered what he was now doing: freeing his arms from their protective embrace of the woman they held. Sliding out from under the covers. Feeling the chill of the floor seeping through the braided rug beneath his feet.

Annie moaned softly in her sleep and turned toward him, reaching but finding only empty bed. With another moan, she snuggled into the pillow he had just left.

No. He could not get back in that bed with her. He could not lie there with her as the world came to life, as she awoke. He wanted more from her, much more than she was apparently willing to give. And more than he was able to return. And if he ached, those feelings paled when he considered the ache and emptiness he'd feel if he did something to shatter Annie's trust in him, if he did something that would make her drive him away completely. But he did reach down and brush a wayward, tangled red curl from her cheek. And he could and did lift the comforter to cover her shoulder and the slender arm embracing the pillow he had so recently used.

He helped himself to Annie's shower and to a new toothbrush from the stash she kept on hand. Finding that the razor he had used a week before had not been tossed away, he tested it carefully, then used it again.

He didn't go upstairs.

He stopped with his hand on age-blackened varnish of the newel post and his foot on the bottom step, listening. Had he heard something? God, he hoped not. He had no idea what there was about that room that bothered him so. What there was about that skeleton—even before all the strange happenings began—that . . . haunted him. Yes. Haunted was exactly the word. He'd seen burial exhibits before, numerous times. Even an Egyptian mummy in its blackened wrappings. But none of those had created more than a vague unease about the just use of a past culture's dead in public exhibits. Homicides, especially those when the body hadn't been discovered until only science could produce identification, were the only things that came close to evoking this reaction in him.

No. He wouldn't go upstairs. Not until he had to. God knew that would be soon enough.

He had the coffee made, the fires turned up, and the chill off the kitchen by the time he heard a pickup climb the driveway and brake to a stop outside.

He met Wayne Samuels at the kitchen door. Margaret waved from the truck but left without coming in.

"Anne's still asleep," he said, warning the other man to silence.

Samuels nodded, shrugged out of his jacket, hung it on a peg, and crossed to the coffeepot. "Rough night?"

Rough night, rough week, David thought. "Yeah. Coffee?"

"Always."

Samuels took his coffee hot and black. He leaned against the cabinet as he sipped it and glanced at the completed ceiling. "Not a bad job for a cop and a lady doctor," he admitted.

David studied Samuels. "Hell, if I'd known you were an expert," he said cordially, "I'd have invited you to help Thursday."

Samuels raised an eyebrow. "And risk having three angry women driving us out of the kitchen for spoiling their meal?"

David shrugged, and Samuels turned serious.

"You want to run out to the Tompkins place and grab some clothes? I can look out after your lady while you're gone."

"I don't think so," David said.

"I didn't either," Samuels admitted. "I know I wouldn't. What is it I'm supposed to be looking for?"

"I told Blake you probably wouldn't find anything this time, either."

"But I'll look anyway. So tell me why he thinks I need to look, and why, after a week you've suddenly decided the doc needs your protection at night."

How much could he tell this man without telling him everything? How much of the truth did he owe Samuels? Enough to keep him from getting killed.

"I don't suppose you and Blake will just go away and let Annie and me work this out by ourselves?"

Samuels gave a short bark of laughter. "Me, Blake, and Maggie," he corrected. "I told you she liked the doc. If it wasn't for Maggie, I never would have come Thursday, and Blake would still be trying to talk me into coming today."

"Right." David motioned toward the table. Samuels shook his head and remained at the counter. With a grimace, David leaned back against the sink. "Friday morning I told Blake what you thought you'd seen up here Wednesday night, and asked him about mountain lions—No, hell no. It goes back farther than that. Probably a lot farther. But for now, let's just go back to Wednesday.

"Anne and I found—a couple of things in the house, things that we now believe her Uncle Ralph brought in when he was dealing in artifacts from the Spiro mounds. Wednesday we sent them out, one to a collector I know in Dallas, another to a pathologist Anne knows in Chicago. Wednesday night you saw the cats. Yesterday, the collector was killed by some sort of wild animal. Also yesterday, a lab tech in Chicago was killed by some sort of wild animal. And last night we heard something, something big, pacing."

"Where?"

That was it? No reaction other than to ask where? As though this were an old story Samuels was hearing repeated?

David glanced at him. No. He saw no mockery, no ridicule, just a patient waiting.

So why not tell him? Why the hell not? "Upstairs."

Samuels scratched at the back of his neck. "And outside?"

"Maybe Wednesday," David admitted. "About the time we found the things."

"Wednesday night?"

"No. Earlier. One, two o'clock in the afternoon."

"You're right. I probably won't find anything. My uncle didn't when Marian Hansom took her dive down the stairs and blamed it on a couple of cats, and he was the best tracker ever born."

"That story again. Anne's mother mentioned it, but she also said Marian is 'crazy as a bessie bug,' whatever the hell one of those is."

"Yeah, she's that all right. Cats and curses. Uncle James said that was all she talked about. He looked for cats, outside, but found no sign of them. And, according to him, the curse sounded like an even bigger figment of her imagination."

"Anne's mother mentioned that, too. She said Marian claimed Ralph had infuriated some ancient god."

David expected Samuels's short bark of laughter. What he got was silence, and a reflective look.

"More than likely he infuriated some supplier or collector," Wayne said finally, "if what I've heard about his business dealings is anywhere near the truth. That would probably explain why his Buick went off the side of the mountain after leaving a quarter of a mile of real erratic skid marks."

"Murder?"

Samuels's mouth twisted in what could have been a smile, could have been a frown. "Maybe."

"Maybe. And nobody checked it out?"

"Hey, I'm telling tales I heard as a kid from someone who wasn't even there years before. But as I recall the story, no one thought old Ralph's death was any big loss to anybody. But it wouldn't explain why—Holy hell!"

"What?" David asked.

Samuels's mouth twisted again, and this time it was obviously into a bitter grin. "Why his body was mauled. Everybody thought it was probably a bear. But nobody checked."

"Your uncle?"

"Was logging at Pine Valley. Didn't come home until a couple of months later."

The two men exchanged troubled, silent questions.

"Look," David said, and knew he was going to have to say more. "I think we're safe. I can't tell you how I know this, but there seems to be a pattern in the attacks, at least the ones yesterday—I won't know about the others until I can talk to someone who remembers, and Annie and I planned to start doing that today. In fact, I had considered asking you to stick around while we're gone, not because of any supernatural threat but because I don't trust Joe not to send someone up to snoop around if he knows we're gone. But for God's sake, be careful."

"And Maggie? She's coming back for me later. Will she be in any danger?"

"No."

Annie's voice sounded from the doorway. Both men swiveled to look at her. She'd dressed warmly for their trip, and had her hair scalped back in that no-nonsense knot she wore it in when working. She looked rested, as though she had gotten a good night's sleep for the first time in a long time. Well, David was glad someone had. But she was pale. Too pale. How much had she heard?

"No," she repeated. "Neither of you will be in danger. Because you won't be here."

"Annie—"

"No, David. I won't put anyone else in jeopardy."

"But we can't leave the house unattended. You know what that could mean. And I won't leave you here alone."

She smiled at him. "If you would leave my friends here, if you're sure they will be safe, why shouldn't I be just as safe, alone, without you?"

"Because you won't stay out of the damned room."

Her smile drained from her. She closed her eyes as a wave of memory moved visibly over her features. "I won't, will I?" she said softly.

"Annie, damn it." In four long strides he was at her side, his arm around her shoulder. Supporting her? Or keeping her from running back to grieve at the feet of a long-dead man? "Here," he said, guiding her to the table. "Sit."

She popped up from the chair like a damned jack-in-the-box, thrusting her chin out. "Don't be silly. I'm all right. And I'm perfectly capable of—"

"Maybe you'd both better sit," Samuels said, stretching up from his slouch at the counter. "I've got work to do outside before the frost melts."

 

Wayne returned to the house just as David and Anne were leaving.

David didn't have to ask if he'd found anything; Samuels nodded at him as he shrugged out of his jacket.

"What?" David asked.

Wayne crossed the room and waited until David and Anne stepped back into the kitchen before turning and looking at David's boots. "You been out back lately? Taken anyone with you?"

"I walked around the barn Wednesday, and I took Hank Foresman on a tour of the outbuildings a week ago when he showed up claiming to want work."

Samuels shook his head. "Hank wears Redwing work boots. Whoever was out there hadn't been there when I checked out the place Thursday morning. His tracks cross the ones we left in the soft ground later that day. He was wearing a western boot, riding heel, about a size ten. It could have been Thursday night. It could have been last night. The ground didn't freeze solid till way after midnight this morning."

"It wasn't Thursday night; I checked out the place Friday morning. Hell, I was out there last night, looking for a damned cat. Where?"

"You name it. He scoped out the well house, the barn, most of the windows on the ground floor, came up on that porch outside the room where we watched the game Thursday, maybe tried the doors, maybe just looked."

David felt Anne's fingers clutch his arm. "All the windows?" she asked.

Samuels nodded.

"You'll stay?" David asked. "I'm not sure how long we'll be, I guess that depends on what we find and who we find to talk with, but it's got to take at least a couple of hours just to get up there and back."

"I'll stay. You take as long as you need. Maggie's coming back for me and we don't have anything else planned for the day. But you two be careful."

"Thanks. You, too."

They were on the porch before Samuels spoke again. "What room?"

Annie's hand jerked on his arm. David turned to look at the man.

"I don't intend to prowl your house, Doc. But if I hear something, I need to know which room I shouldn't go in."

Annie looked up at him, her eyes shadowed with the doubts and questions written in them. But damn it, they had to trust someone. And if they trusted Samuels enough to leave him here to guard this mystery, they owed him at least enough knowledge to, maybe, keep himself safe. Annie drew in a deep breath and nodded.

"Marian's sitting room," he said. "The one at the end of the first hall toward the back of the house. The one with the lavatory and parlor stove."

"The one that looks like it doesn't belong in this house?"

"Yeah," David told him. "That one."

 

They took the Blazer. David drove. Anne stared out into the fog that had descended into the cracks and crevices of the mountains, then down at it when the road climbed to follow the upper ridges. At this altitude, the hardwood trees had shed their leaves, and their bare limbs reached upward toward the pale early-morning winter light. Pleading, or prayer, she wondered as she studied those outstretched branches. Sometimes she wondered if there was a difference. Yes. Yes, there was. At least with prayer you had a hope of being answered.

She glanced at David. He didn't notice. All his attention seemed to be focused on something, probably the twists of the road as it wound along the ridges, dipping into patches of fog, rising out of them into the light.

He'd gone back into her house before they drove away, leaving her in the kitchen while he went into the interior for several minutes. He didn't tell her what he'd done, or what he carried in the small box he placed in the back of the Blazer. She didn't ask. She didn't want to know. Then they'd made a brief stop at his cabin, where he changed clothes and filled a small bag, before they headed north. He was once again crisply starched and pressed, as he had been that first day. And he looked so solemn. So unapproachable. Was this the man who had led her from the upstairs room last night, so fierce and yet so gentle, and who had held her through the night?

What had happened last night? What in God's name had happened?

She never sleepwalked. Not even as a child. But the dream had been so real. So real. And now she couldn't even remember what it had been about. But David had been in it. Oh, yes. David had definitely been in it.

And he had been in the one that followed, the one she remembered too clearly in every intimate detail, after he had returned her to her room. After he had plopped himself down outside the covers and anchored her in place with his arm. After he had burrowed his way under the blanket with her and dragged her against him. He hadn't awakened then, but she had, enough to hear him murmur her name, enough to feel him nuzzle at her throat and moan before dropping deeper into sleep.

The road wound its way down from the ridge into the valley surrounding Fairview just as the fog began to lift. Dim, thin light surrounded them, but it was growing brighter.

"You didn't have any breakfast this morning," David said, breaking the silence. "Do you want to stop? We can have fast food—the real thing."

She heard the teasing in his voice and felt herself relaxing marginally. He hadn't gone completely away from her after all. "Stop if you want. Coffee would be nice, but I'm not really hungry."

"I know what you mean." He stopped at a convenience store on the south edge of town. "Do you want to go in?"

She shook her head.

He came out a few minutes later with two large cups of coffee. He also had a couple of brochures and a bag of fresh doughnuts.

"They had a tourist information rack by the cash register," he told her, handing her the brochures. "These don't look as though they have a whole lot of information, but it's got to be more than we know."

"Spiro Mounds," Anne read aloud from the cover of the first brochure, which bore the picture of some sort of small statue of a kneeling male figure.

She opened the first brochure. "Did you read these?" she asked.

"No." David perched the cups in the slots of the plastic holder some previous owner had rigged on the dash and started the Blazer. "I just grabbed them. Why don't you fill me in as we drive?"

Anne nodded and opened the brochure. A drawing of a man, stretched forward probably in a ceremonial dance, dominated the center. "Oh."

"What?" David asked sharply.

She held the brochure so that he could see. The man's legs and feet were bare except for bands of beads, much like bracelets on each ankle and just below his knees. But his upper body and arms were covered in a form-fitting pelt, which flowed into a mask completely covering his head. At least, she thought it was a mask. Four strands of beads circled his neck. Other beads circled his wrists. And his hands—Were they hands? Were those claws part of the costume for the dance? Or were they—

"Jaguar," David said. "Hell. Read."

Anne read. About the twelve mounds the park encompassed. About the civilization that had built them between A.D. 850 and 1250. About the site's importance in the commerce of the day, about its association with other mound sites throughout the southeast. About the ceremonies for the celebration of the seasons and the rituals centered on the death and burial of the elite.

There wasn't much, just enough to whet an appetite for information. But there were pictures. Pictures with no captions showing shells with the designs Anne had been seeing all of her life, pictures of a pleasant, tree-shaded, park-like setting with a series of hillocks.

Anne dropped the brochure to her lap and picked up the next one and turned it over, and then almost dropped it too.

"Oh. Oh, no. No."

"Annie?"

"It's him," she said, clutching the brochure in both hands. "It's him."

David pulled to the shoulder of the road and set the emergency brake. "Let me see," he said. He reached for the folder. "Annie, let me see."

She gave him the folder, appalled by the protectiveness she felt for no more than a line drawing.

And it was just a line drawing, she realized as David looked at it, as she looked at it again. A face, dark eyes, strong chin, firm lips. The hair, the roach, the back of the head—these were not drawn, merely represented by a series of lines that could indicate shadow. A face. A part of a face. The long forelock drawn through two round beads. The visible earspool carrying the image of—of what?—an elephant? If so, an elephant as she had never seen one. And around the eye, a painted design pointing to the ear.

She traced that design with her fingers.

"It's called forked eye," David told her.

He returned the brochure and sank back against his seat. "It's a drawing. Just a drawing. Probably a composite the artist made up. I'll concede the similarity in the earspool, but there's not an ounce of copper showing. What makes you so sure this is our guy?"

"I don't—Yes. Yes, I do. The medallions. The ones in the cedar box."

"They're symbolic, Annie, and highly stylized. How can you see a resemblance between either of them and this drawing—"

"Because I looked at them, David, really looked, and you didn't. Just as you haven't really looked at this drawing. Why?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he held out his hand. She placed the brochure in it and watched him. He looked, but it was obvious he didn't want to. Why not? What could it cost him to look? But it was costing him something; that much was as evident as his forced examination of the drawing.

"Maybe," he said. He thrust the brochure at her and started the engine. "Maybe."

The state park containing the Spiro Mounds was miles from the little town of Spiro, miles off the state highway, almost on the Arkansas River, and within sight of one of the many lock and dam structures that had made the river once again navigable.

David circled the small, almost empty parking lot and pulled the Blazer into a slot near the sidewalk leading to the front door.

The building was unobtrusive, built low to the ground and partially earth-bermed, with a concrete and square-post bower guarding the walk, while a concrete table and benches sat beneath a nearby tree. Anne waited quietly while David got out of the Blazer and walked toward the front of the truck. From this angle, she could see a group of low mounds off to the right, against a backdrop of trees as stark and winter-bare as the one that guarded the picnic table. She didn't want to get out. She didn't want to go any closer. But when David started toward her door, she opened it herself and stepped out.

He turned, and she saw that his attention, too, had been trapped by the stepping-stone mounds to the right.

"Those have to be the ones in the brochure," she said.

"Yes." He reached for her hand and clasped it. "Yes."

Why couldn't the place be closed? This was, after all, a holiday weekend. But no, they found the door unlocked, their path unimpeded.

The entryway faced a small counter of what appeared to be gift items and a rack of publications. A guest register lay open on the glass countertop. David picked up the pen but put it down without signing. She looked at him but recognized the wisdom of remaining at least partially anonymous for the moment. She nodded and turned toward the open area to the right.

Clearly visible through the walls of windows that faced them, the mounds spread out across a well-tended lawn: the stepping-stone ones to the right, a large one almost directly in front of them that beneath its mantle of tan winter grass looked as though someone had taken a backhoe to the very top of it and had left it ravaged, others behind and to the left of that. To the right, below the cluster of mounds, was a primitive thatch-roofed house.

Only then did she notice the display cases of exhibits placed tastefully throughout the room. Only then did she turn and see the mural. She sucked in her breath. There, larger than life, the cat-man of the first brochure crouched in eternal dance among a group of other, symbolic dancers.

She felt David step closer to her and drop his hand on her shoulder. She raised her hand to his and fought the urge to shrink against him. This was a museum, nothing more. Those hills out there had been built hundreds of years before and had been ransacked decades ago. Did anything remain of the people who had built them?

A woman dressed in a pressed khaki uniform stood talking to a family near the doors leading out to the park. Two children, a boy perhaps ten and a girl about eleven, seemed to be the ones questioning the guide. David gave Anne's shoulder a squeeze and guided her into the display area.

Shells. Lots of shells and fragments. A small statue identified as a pipe. Ear spools. Small pieces of what was probably a cedar pole. A tattered remnant of lace. Fragments of a civilization long gone.

Three folio-sized books occupied pedestals placed in front of the waist-high window ledge. Anne walked to them, avoiding the view outside those windows. She scanned the books' captions until she found one containing drawings of the copper artifacts found during the excavations.

Slowly she leafed through the book. Hawks. Dancers. Gorgets. Human heads. Feathers.

She looked up at David in confusion. "There are no cats."

"Sshh." He nodded toward the guide and visitors.

"But where are the bodies?" the boy asked. "Skeletons? Bones? Mummies?"

His parents both gave self-conscious laughs.

"No bodies," the guide said pleasantly.

"Well, what kind of graveyard is this?"

"Daniel! Hush!" The mother took the boy's arm and began leading him toward the front door. "Thank you for your time—"

"Well, where are they?" the boy asked again, with a voice full of unthinking bloodlust.

In my closet, Anne thought. David rubbed his hand up and down her arm as a shudder worked its way through her.

The guide watched quietly until the family left, then shook her head and chuckled. She walked to where Anne stood with David beside the book of drawings.

The badge on the guide's uniform shirt identified her as Frances Collins. The slight, almond slant to her eyes, the café au lait tint to her flawless complexion, and the reddish cast to her straight, dark hair, identified her as a blend—a beautiful blend—of races: Choctaw, black and—What? Irish? Anne felt an instant affinity with her. And why not? If the woman was from this area, they probably had at least one ancestor in common. Wouldn't that thrill her mom's cousin Harriet?

"Hello. Can I help you with anything? Answer any questions?"

Lots of questions, Anne thought, if she only had the nerve to ask them.

David stepped forward and extended his hand. "Thank you, Ms. Collins. We're rank amateurs so we'll probably have lots of very basic questions."

"That's my job," she said cheerfully.

"I heard the boy ask about bodies," David said. "These were burial mounds?"

"Some of them." She pointed out the window to the stair-step mounds. "That's Craig Mound, the site of what we call the Great Mortuary, and, to the south, on that smaller mound, the crematory basin." She turned slightly and pointed toward the hillock from which the top had been gouged. "But Brown Mound also contained a significant number of burials."

"Crematory basin?" David asked. "Then the charming little boy who just left would have trouble finding a body, wouldn't he?"

Again the guide chuckled. "Not so much. While most of the burials were secondary burials . . ."

She broke off when she recognized Anne's puzzled glance.

"Secondary, in that the dead were buried once, then later exhumed, the bones cleaned and reinterred."

Anne nodded, an understanding of the term but not of the images it called forth.

"While most of them were secondary burials, a number of the higher ranking burials were primary, or just the one time, litter burials."

"With grave goods?" David asked.

"Yes. That's what makes the Spiro site such an important find." The woman frowned slightly. "And what almost destroyed it."

"Pothunters?" David asked.

"Oh, yes. Full-time, commercial ones."

"Who were they?" Anne asked. "The people who built these mounds?"

Ms. Collins cocked her head slightly, but accepted the change of subject. "They were a Mississippian culture, probably related by trade and religion with other Mississippian centers, such as that at Cahokia in Illinois and Etowah in Georgia."

"And the Aztec?" David asked. "I see a similarity in some of the designs—the snakes, the speech symbol, the cats."

"You're not such a rank amateur after all, are you?" Ms. Collins said with a grin.

"About Spiro, yes, I really am," David admitted. "But I have done some reading about meso-American prehistory." Anne saw his bad-little-boy smile dart out and waited for whatever outrageous statement he would make to disarm this woman. When it came, it wasn't so outrageous after all. "Searching for my roots."

"Yes, well . . ." But it had disarmed. Frances Collins paused for a moment, smiled her understanding, and continued. "There's been an ongoing controversy about the meso-American connection for the past fifty years. Depending on who you read, and in what decade, either there was no connection whatsoever, or the Spiro people were engaged in trade with the southwest. What has become accepted is that the Spiro site evolved from one of several cultural centers in this area to the major cultural and trade center of the vast interior of this country. We've found evidence of trade with the Great Lakes, or Mexico, once again depending on your source and time frame, in the copper sheets used for engraving, to the Gulf of Mexico, probably the Florida peninsula, for the conch shells that were found in such profusion, and to the Rockies, although that was argued for a while, too, for various Bison products."

"Didn't a number of cultures use the conch shell?" David asked.

"Yes. In small pieces. And even entire, for storage containers, but we've yet to find the intact shells engraved as they have been here."

David walked to another of the large books, which had been left open to a drawing of a small statue that appeared to be a warrior or executioner decapitating the figure over which he crouched. "Young Daniel would have been right at home," he said. "Warlike, weren't they?"

"Maybe. But we found no evidence of any fortifications of this site. They did control the river, which was the major trade route. And maybe their spiritual leaders were so strong, they grew out of the need for fortifications."

"What happened to them?" Anne asked.

Ms. Collins shook her head. "No one really knows. The best guess is a prolonged drought and the subsequent reduction in the supply of food to support the population in the villages surrounding Spiro, and perhaps a subsequent reduction in the faith necessary to support the hierarchy of the elite. In any event, by then this location was strictly ceremonial, with only a very few of the highest leaders living on the grounds.

"The villages shrank and finally disappeared as the remaining people became more nomadic, more 'hunter-gatherer' than farmer or craftsman. But we believe descendants of these people were still here at the time of European immigration—still are, as the Caddo or possibly Wichita peoples."

"They weren't conquered and hauled away as happened in so many other places?" David asked.

"No. This world ended more with a whimper than a bang. However, an early rumor, started, I think, at the time the railroad was built through what was then the Choctaw Nation, held that a huge battle had been fought in the Redland Bottoms just west of here. That rumor persisted for years, still does among some of the locals, even though we've learned that what the railroaders uncovered was probably no more than the cemetery for one or more of the villages surrounding Spiro."

"Then they weren't all buried here?"

"No. At least not in the later days. I don't know what the cut-off rank was, because not all of the burials here were of equal rank, but it was probably pretty high. And there seems to be evidence to support that if one were that rank or above, his body, his grave goods, and maybe even his retainers were brought here for their final rest. Which might account for a number of the secondary burials."

"You're very knowledgeable about these people," Anne said.

Ms. Collins laughed. "I hope so. I grew up three miles away, hearing these stories from before I can remember, and I finished my master's degree in archaeology last spring." She grinned conspiratorially at David. "My own roots, you understand. I start work on my doctorate next fall, but I had to take a year off to be near my grandfather."

"Then you're the archaeologist in charge of this location?"

Ms. Collins' easy smile faded. "No. No way. I'm strictly interim. One year while my grandfather recovers and while the state finds someone qualified to take over here. Why don't we go out into the park? We have an interpretive walk."

Now it was Frances Collins who changed the subject. How interesting, Anne thought, but she followed the guide to the door leading outside, even managed to step one foot though it, when she realized she couldn't go any farther. Not even with David's arm around her shoulder. Not even with him close enough for her to feel his warmth. Not even with the questioning look Frances Collins shot her as she stopped and refused to move forward.

"Go on," Anne said. "Please. It's—I—I'm sorry. I can't go out there."

Ms. Collins turned abruptly and ushered them back into the building. Taking Anne's arm, she led them through the displays, outside, and to the picnic table. "Sit," she said.

Anne did. Gratefully. While David watched, not puzzled but concerned.

"Annie?"

She felt his hand on the back of her neck. She wanted to speak, to assure him that she was all right, that she was not going to faint. What kind of wimp did he think she had become? But she seemed to have lost the strength necessary even to form words.

"It affects some people that way," Ms. Collins said. "Not many, but some. God, I wouldn't have this as a full-time job if my life depended on it."

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