Bird of the Gods

Chapter Eighteen

A Year and a Half Later...

Conrad picked up the trowel and started scraping away at the next thin layer of soil he'd exposed from the pit. Some sixth sense of his had gotten triggered when he and Franklin had started working in this particular annex a few days ago and he couldn't shake the feeling.

"Sun's down." Franklin popped his head through a wall opening. "I'm gonna go fire up the SLS."

"Yep. I'm just going to keep playing in the dirt here," Conrad said.

"Good. That's why we're paying you the big buck." Buck no 's', of course, which was why he laughed along with Franklin who left to go play with the structured light scanner.

Man, you'd think he'd be fed up of hearing the guy's daily one-liner after three months, but Conrad was just too damn grateful for the opportunity he'd been given.

Jerry Franklin had reached out back in the spring. Turned out his old Harvard acquaintance was now working for U of I's Anthropology department. 'I heard you were back in town, Conrad, helping your mother out. Listen, I could use a skilled pair of hands to help out with a dig I've got going at the Cahokia Mounds. You could help me with the night work. The 3D scanner we got on loan only operates properly in the dark.'

What about Kinley's accusations against him? That had been the first thing out of Conrad's mouth. The whole blacklisted thing?

'Guess you haven't heard? Glen Kinley was convicted and imprisoned in Mexico for stealing Aztec antiquities.'

Well, whaddya know... Karma could be a real bitch after all.

'As for your rep,' Franklin had continued as if having read his mind, 'I never believed any of that rank bullshit. Kinley was nothing but a jealous prick who wanted to fuck you over the first chance he got. Shoe's on the other foot now. Kinley dug his professional grave. In perpetuum.'

'You were the best at what you did, Conrad,' Franklin had gone on in their first convo over coffees face-to-face. 'That knack of yours for finding hidden things? That was the stuff of legend back in the day. Listen, these mound excavations have been going on for years, and if there's anything more to find, you're the guy who'll do it. C'mon. Whaddya say? Come back and play in the dirt for a few months? The pay sucks...'

'...but the thrill is real,' they'd both quipped at the same time.

So yeah, he'd taken the job. Why not? He spent his daytime hours doing the house renovations his mother needed after her hip surgery. Fiona was still travelling back and forth between here and London. The former was to apply and interview for teaching positions at private schools in the region, the latter for sorting out her inheritance from her now deceased grandfather.

Conrad still couldn't believe she'd attended Paul's funeral. The stolen bird had ended up shitting on many of her heartfelt ideals, but whereas he'd have flipped her old coot of a grandfather a different sort of bird posthumously, Fiona was made of stronger stuff. She possessed a profound sense of right and wrong. And two wrongs for her definitely wouldn't have made a right. She had gone to the funeral.

Just something else he admired in the woman who'd found his heart and ended up making him the marrying kind aft–.

Conrad froze. The trowel had struck something solid.

And an old, yet familiar tingle ran up his arm.

Grabbing a vacuum cleaner, he quickly...

Holy. Fuck.

"Jerry?! JERRY!"

Pounding footfalls echoed off the packed earthen walls.

"Wh-wha-what–" Bursting into the annex, a breathless Franklin drilled him with a panicked gaze. "Are you ok?" he asked. Then the man blinked...and blinked again, as he caught sight of what lay in the ground before Conrad's knees.