Old Bones by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Author:Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child [Preston, Douglas & Child, Lincoln]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Thriller, Mystery, None
ISBN: 9781538747223
Google: NpG9wAEACAAJ
Amazon: B07PLM7YVX
Barnesnoble: B07PLM7YVX
Goodreads: 43522585
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2019-08-20T05:00:00+00:00

23

May 11

THE FOLLOWING DAY dawned clear, and the night had been cloudless, allowing Nora and the rest an excellent view of the comet Skip had reminded her of before she set off. Around noon, however, thunderheads began piling up over the surrounding peaks. Nora’s first task was to open the quad containing the lower half of Samantha Carville’s body. After removing the layer of grassy turf on top and putting it aside, she and Clive began, using paintbrushes and bamboo picks in addition to the ever-present whisks, working with agonizing slowness down through the soil to the level of the bones. As before, the dirt was piled in a tray to be sifted and floated later.

Working even a shallow quad like this was a lesson in patience. Nora was used to it, but Clive was sweating and had a tendency to hurry. While they worked on the Carville quads, Salazar and Adelsky were opening another quad at the edge of the midden heap.

“Easy there, Clive. Those bones aren’t going anywhere.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Curiosity makes me impatient. Does it do that to you?”

“Yes. I had to learn to slow down—just like you need to.”

Clive laughed and turned his blue eyes on her. “We seem to have a lot in common, you and me.”

Nora said nothing, but Skip’s parting words came to her mind unbidden. Opening herself to new people was not being disloyal to Bill. She needed to move past him and get on with her life. She had already dated a couple of losers, but Clive was certainly no loser: smart, a Stanford PhD—but most important for her, someone with real intellectual passions. And he was obviously interested in her.

She found herself coloring at this train of thought and the guilt that it caused in her, and she quickly bent her head to conceal it and continue digging.

“Got something,” Clive said.

Nora looked over. It was clearly the leading edge of a small bone.

“I’ll take over, if you don’t mind.” This had become their informal working arrangement, Clive turning over the delicate labor to Nora.

She moved to the spot and began brushing away the dirt, exposing more of the bone, while Clive watched. She could feel his breath on her hair. “Looks like the left patella.”

“That’s the knee bone, right?”

“Right.”

Working down, Nora exposed the bottom of the femur and the top of the tibia, along with a stray button and a scrap of cotton, which she placed in artifact envelopes with tweezers. As she worked down the leg toward the foot, a ragged row of buttons appeared, along with some withered scraps of leather—the girl’s tiny button-down boot. Leaving it in situ, Nora worked around it, uncovering the entire left leg. When it was fully exposed, she took a series of photos.

Meanwhile, Clive moved over and began working the opposite side of the quad, loosening the surface with the bamboo pick and gently working the dirt off with the whisk. Nora felt a certain unease as he deepened his half of the quad, exposing more and more of the right leg.

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