Concrete Evidence (21 page)

JT
FACED
E
RICA ACROSS
the breakfast table. He had to deal with his screwup now, before she went to the office and ruined the perfect cover he’d created for Lee. “I have a favor to ask.”

She cocked her head, inviting him to speak. Her hair captured the early morning sun. Her beauty today was remote, reserved, a far cry from the relaxed, warm woman he’d had dinner with last night. She was a puzzle, and he worried that Lee, the most cool-headed and rational man he knew, was preoccupied with solving her.

“I don’t want you to tell anyone at the office Lee is staying in my apartment. And, of course, it’d be best if you don’t mention you’re here either.”

“I understand what people would think if they knew about me, but why Lee?”

“He needs to make his own name for himself at Talon & Drake.”

She scoffed. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”

“I know you’re pissed right now, and I don’t blame you. But he’s a good kid with a good mind—when he chooses to use it.” He smiled, knowing how his words would grate on Lee.

“Why is he working for Talon & Drake?” she asked. “He doesn’t really have a burning interest in archaeology. None that I’ve seen, anyway.”

Shit. She’d asked the one question they’d hoped to avoid. Why couldn’t Lee have been paired with a flake who didn’t give a crap? Weren’t archaeologists supposed to be crystal-hugging Indian-wannabes? As one-quarter Indian, he’d met his share of wannabes and suffered through their thoughtless questions and bizarre adulation of a genetic heritage they couldn’t claim. None of those people would have noticed Lee’s lack of interest.

He sighed in a heavy but not overblown manner. “I wanted to place him with technical support, but he refused. We compromised on archaeology.”

“I don’t get it. Why did you give him a job at all?”

“His mother asked me to. She’s hoping—and I am too—the experience of working in a professional office will help him to find his focus.”
Good luck getting into her pants now, Lee.
He wasn’t
trying
to sabotage Lee’s chances with the potential artifact thief; it was just a side benefit of this cover story. He continued. “His mother told him if he doesn’t complete the internship, she won’t pay his tuition in the fall.”

“So he can’t quit.”

“No, he can’t. And I won’t fire him.”
So don’t even try, sweetheart.
“It sounds like he hasn’t been much help to you, and the database needs a major overhaul, so for the next week, he’s going to work on that.”

“You’re going to pay him minimum wage to do technical work worth several times that?”

He smiled at her obvious glee. “Yup.”

“I hope it’s a task he hates.”

“Don’t worry, he hates everything about this job.” That was the truest thing he’d said to her since they’d met.

E
RICA TOOK THE
M
ETRO
to her apartment and picked up her car, which she’d left there because she had an underground, secure parking space included with her monthly rent, and it was impossible to find parking by the Watergate. The drive to the office was maddening, and she cursed the stop-and-go traffic as she inched up Wisconsin Avenue. She much preferred the Metro, but today she needed the car.

Traffic only soured an already poor mood. She alternated between anger and disappointment. The ridiculous way she’d thrown herself at Lee yesterday nagged at her. Why had she kissed him like that? Worse, she’d lain awake half the night wishing he’d come to her room to apologize. And make amends.

He was an irresponsible, immature pretty boy who showed no sign of growing up. Except for the rest of the time…when he was the exact opposite.

He was a distraction she didn’t want or need. Her week was up, and Thermo-Con was due. She would deliver the report to the tribe today and hopefully find an excuse to see Riversong.

Lee had the good sense to skip his morning workout. Alone with the bag, she opened a new sore on her foot, but her imaginary Jake and Marco were broken, bleeding messes by the time she finished. After she showered and changed into clothes she’d purchased at a thrift store on Saturday evening, she headed to her office. Within an hour, she had the Thermo-Con EA polished and ready for printing. She e-mailed the document to Rob Anderson, marked for urgent review.

Now what?
It was a rare moment when she had downtime before she needed to jump to the next project, and she couldn’t deliver the report until after Rob and Janice approved the draft. She turned her chair and watched Lee, who had arrived a half hour ago. They hadn’t spoken since she’d left the table last night.

He caught her gaze, and, instead of looking contrite, he gave her a heated look worthy of yesterday, pre-argument. His glance raked the length of her with appreciation; then his bright green eyes returned to hers. His eyebrow rose in a suggestive way, and she felt instant and unwelcome desire. Damn him.

“Give it up,” she said.

“Never.”

She was saved from responding by a knock on their open office door. She looked up to see Lily Davenport standing in the doorway. “I’ve got a FedEx for you, Erica,” the buxom blonde chemist said.

Since when did chemists deliver FedEx packages?

The woman’s eyes fixed on Lee, and Erica understood her sudden desire to play receptionist. Lily had called dibs on the hydrologist from Boston, and now she wanted to check out the good-looking archaeological intern. She’d never once stepped foot in the archaeology lab, but now she breezed into the room and dropped the envelope on Lee’s desk. She then sat on the worktable and expertly flaunted her cleavage, miniskirt, and heels, all of which were more appropriate for a Friday night on the town than a Monday morning at the office.

The fact that Lee appeared to enjoy the display irked Erica. She supposed Lily was pretty—if one liked cougars. The meow that accompanied catty comments rang through her mind, and she acknowledged that even though she didn’t want Lee for herself, she didn’t enjoy watching him admire someone else.

“What is it?” she asked Lee, drawing his attention away from Lily’s cleavage.

He ripped off the strip on the cardboard envelope and pulled out the single sheet. “It’s the radiocarbon test result for the bone from the Thermo-Con sump.”

“How old is the bone?”

He studied the page. “It’s unclear.”

“I don’t understand most of the technical data either, but there’s always a line that gives the conventional age and another that gives the calibrated age—that’s where they adjust for carbon fluctuations due to nuclear testing or something like that. What’s the calibrated age?”

“Like I said, it’s unclear.”

She sighed and crossed the room to read over his shoulder. The conventional age was -2 ± 3 BP, but next to calibrated age it said, “Some probability for 19th or 20th century antiquity.”

“You’re right,” she said. “It
is
unclear.”

He smiled. “Yeah, one thing I learned in all my years of college is how to read. I can recognize numbers too.”

Lily snickered.

“Smart-ass,” Erica said. She pointed to the conventional age. “Nineteen fifty is the baseline year for all radiocarbon dates. Every date before present—which is what BP stands for—is a calculation from AD 1950. So the uncalibrated test indicated the bones date between 1949 and 1955. But when they adjusted for the extra carbon in the atmosphere due to nuclear testing they couldn’t narrow it down beyond a two-hundred-year range.” She glanced at Lily. “Does that sound right to you?”

The chemist shrugged. “Not my field.”

“I need to call the lab.” She nearly tripped over Lily’s legs as she made her way back to her desk. “Thanks for delivering the envelope.” Her voice was polite but dismissive.

“No problem.” She glanced at Lee. “You taking your morning break soon?”

“We’ve got to deal with this,” Erica said, waving the paper and hating herself for jumping in because she didn’t want Lee to take a break with Lily.

Lee’s grin was self-satisfied. To Lily, he said, “She’s the boss.”

“Well, I should go, then.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt in a way that practically waved her butt in Lee’s face, then left.

The room was silent for a minute. Finally Erica said, “Need a cold shower, Romeo?”

“She doesn’t turn me on nearly as much as you do.”

The memory of exactly how much she’d turned him on caused her breath to catch.

“I love it when you make that sound.
Now
I need a cold shower.”

She shook her head and reached for her phone, smiling slightly. He did have a certain relentless charm.

Ten minutes later, she hung up the phone, exhilarated. “We’ve got a problem. We can’t say with certainty whether the bones are prehistoric or not, and if they aren’t prehistoric, then this would require a criminal investigation.”

“You think if the bone really dates from 1952, then it could be the remains of a body that was hidden there,” Lee said.

“Most likely the bones are prehistoric, but we can’t ignore the fact that the house was built in 1952 and the uncalibrated test came up with that year, plus or minus three. I don’t believe the army would have built the house over a recent grave, but after I deliver the report, I’m going to check the tribal archives and see what information they have on how the land was used by the military, on the off chance there was a cemetery and they missed moving a grave.”

“If that was the case, shouldn’t the bones have been inside a coffin?”

“Good point. Another reason to think the date is wrong and the bones are prehistoric.”

“I’m going with you.”

“You’ve got work to do for JT.”

“Your job will go faster if I help you search the archives.”

Now he was willing to do some work? She didn’t want to bring him along. She intended to finagle a meeting with Riversong over this issue and wanted to talk to the chairman alone.

But then again, she might need him. Lee could beat Riversong at pool with a broken cue and one arm behind his back, and she wanted the chairman to authorize another DNA test for these bones. And, more than anything, she wanted Sam’s DNA for the comparative sample.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
T
WO

L
EE’S CODE-BREAKING PROGRAM
flashed on his laptop screen. He’d finally unlocked the last of the Iraq project files. He clicked on the icon and the list of files loaded. Several files had an unfamiliar extension. A quick search told him the files were blueprint documents. He opened the readable text files and learned the blueprints were for something called SARAC.

He felt a jolt of recognition and went to his databank of captured messages to search for a text he’d read last Friday. He found it immediately. A text message, sent from a prepaid cell phone from inside the building, to a prepaid cell phone located in Menanichoch, Maryland when the text was received. The text was short and sweet:
Sara C will be back a week from today
. He’d flagged the message, but it could have been innocent, referring to Sarah Castleberry, a Talon & Drake structural engineer, and Talon & Drake had several tribal projects; any number of employees could be on the reservation or communicating with a client.

Sara C had to be SARAC, and whatever the equipment was, it was being shipped back. From Iraq. Probably with one of the many drawdown shipments. Matt Weber’s e-mail to JT had said,
Broken Talon & Drake equipment is being shipped back to the US via military transport
. Lee was certain whatever was being smuggled would be hidden inside SARAC.

But even more important, he’d identified the cell phones of two conspirators.

Lee was anxious to tell JT, but knew he was meeting with Joe. The campaign was only days away from becoming official.

An hour later, the Thermo-Con EA was approved, printed, and bound. Lee hadn’t gotten hold of JT, but as he climbed into Erica’s car, he was still flying high from his discovery. If all went well, he’d be done with this spying job by Friday. He looked over at Erica as she fastened her seat belt. When she was cleared, he could take her out to a fancy dinner, convince her to forgive his lies, then take her home and prove he was neither lazy nor a kid.