Silent Evidence

by Rachel Grant

  As agreed, Sean arrived at seven a.m. sharp to drive Hazel and Isabel to work. Hazel answered the door and felt a rush of fluttery nervousness as she greeted her bodyguard/fake boyfriend. She’d have to get over that damn quick if she was going to pull off the ruse.

  Sean smiled. “Good morning. How’s the foot?”

  She glanced down at her bandaged appendage. “Tender, but your glue held, so a lot better. I can walk as long as I keep my weight on my toes.”

  He reached to the side of the door and produced a pair of mud boots and a cane with a sturdy base and four legs. “I figured you’d need something like this for wading in the lake.”

  “Thank you. That was very thoughtful.” She looked at the boots. “And these are my size. How did you manage that?”

  “I checked your muddy shoes before I left last night.”

  She’d left her sneakers by the back door before she’d gone up to shower while Alec and Sean worked out the details of her and Isabel’s protection. She smiled and placed a hand on his arm to balance herself as she rose on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she repeated. She got a whiff of soap and Sean and wanted to close her eyes and just breathe him in, but she restrained herself and pulled back.

  “You’re welcome.” His face turned serious as he studied her. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you didn’t sleep well.”

  She grimaced. “I didn’t.”

  He raised a hand as if he would stroke her cheek, but then dropped it. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Hazel.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not scared of the threat Alec received—well, except for being worried about Isabel. You know I’m not the target.”

  “We don’t know that, and assuming such a thing is dangerous,” Alec said, stepping into the foyer behind her. He shook Sean’s hand and looked approvingly at the mud boots and cane. “Just got off the phone with Keith. Daniel Howe is lined up and will arrive at the site by one p.m.”

  Daniel must be the Menanichoch tribal member who worked for Raptor. Hazel was relieved to know Isabel would have protection in the field, because Isabel was the one they really needed to be worried about.

  “Dan’s solid,” Sean said. “And he’s done a lot of wilderness trainings at the Anderson Lake property. He’s familiar with the area.”

  Alec nodded. “He’s also had a run-in with Sheriff Taylor while working there and isn’t a fan of the man. He’s more than happy to act as tribal monitor if it will irk the sheriff.”

  Isabel stepped into the foyer, entering from the kitchen. She was dressed for the field and holding a cup of coffee, her corkscrew curls contained in a ponytail. Hazel envied her hair. Isabel always looked gorgeous without any effort at all. “We all set?” she asked.

  Hazel was glad to see Isabel hadn’t lost sleep over the threat. She’d taken the whole thing in stride, insisting that she go on with business as usual. She wasn’t about to let anyone control her by manipulating her fears.

  Alec slipped an arm around Isabel’s waist and pulled her to him. He kissed her, then said, “I’ll bring Daniel to the reservoir at one. Sean and Hazel can leave then and head to Baltimore to get the supplies she needs to analyze the bones here. Dan will drive you home at the end of the day in the Range Rover. He’ll stay with you until Sean and Hazel return to the estate. If I’m still at the Capitol, you’ll both be safe with Sean until I’m home. I’ve hired four security guards to monitor the grounds twenty-four seven, but Sean or me or someone with personal protection experience needs to be in the house whenever either of you are home. Preferably in the same room with you.”

  Hazel glanced from her cousin to her bodyguard. There was no way she would start bunking with Alec and Isabel, so surely the “same room” rule didn’t apply to her. Unless he intended to ask Sean to move in?

  Seeing her gaze flit back and forth, Alec must’ve read her mind. “I haven’t decided yet, Hazel. This week it might be best to have you move to the room next to ours while we establish the relationship cover story.”

  “You can’t be serious,” she said.

  “This is what I do, Hazel,” Sean said softly. “Working twenty-four seven on a regular basis is why Raptor pays me the big bucks. The only reason I can’t stay over before we take off for the weekend is my mom is staying in my condo. She’d ask questions about why I’m moving in with my new girlfriend on day two of our relationship, and she’d be more than a little upset that I’m not spending time with her.”

  Hazel turned to Alec. “You need to hire someone else to babysit me.”

  “I’m fine with it, Hazel. Unless there’s a reason you don’t want me?” Sean’s voice was cool, and the look he gave her was spiked with anger.

  Don’t want him? No. That definitely wasn’t the problem. Wanted him too much was far closer to the truth.

  She gave a sharp shake of her head. “No. I just don’t think this is fair to you. Your mother is visiting. Your sister is sick. Your best friend is getting married. You should be taking a vacation, not working while at the wedding and lying to all your friends about it.”

  “That’s a fair argument,” Isabel said.

  “If I don’t have a problem with it, and you don’t have a problem with me,” Sean said, “then this isn’t up for debate.”

  Yeah, Sean was definitely pissed. Did he think she was trying to sabotage his job? She was trying to save him from an awkward situation so he could enjoy his mother’s visit and his friend’s wedding. But she wouldn’t argue about it in front of Alec and Isabel. She firmed her jaw. “No. No problem.”

  “Good. Now, I’ve got a job to do and you and Isabel are going to be late for work.” He picked up Hazel’s field pack which she’d set next to the door, and shoved the handle of the cane toward her hand as he opened the front door.

  She took the cane and hobbled outside, following him down the front walkway to his big company-issued SUV. She climbed into the backseat as Sean placed her pack in the rear compartment.

  She’d had a bodyguard for less than ten minutes, and already she’d managed to piss him off. She should have stayed in Croatia. She’d be quite happy to have an ocean between herself and Sean Logan right now.

  He hadn’t meant to snap at her in front of Rav, but damn, he’d broken off a date and rearranged his entire life so he could protect her and she was looking for ways to get him fired? And all because the party girl was embarrassed about Grand Cayman.

  Thank goodness he hadn’t slept with her. He could only imagine the drama she’d have created if that were added to the equation.

  And why did she think he was so judgmental about her advances that night? He didn’t care that she’d been drunk, and frankly, he’d been flattered by her advances. There was no reason for this drama now. They’d have to air this dirty laundry the next time they were alone, because there was no way they’d pull off the relationship lie with this much tension between them.

  Isabel lingered inside the house saying good-bye to her husband before finally climbing into the front seat and closing the door. Rav stood beside her window, his focus entirely on his wife, and Sean recognized his worry over Isabel’s safety overrode everything. The man probably hadn’t even noticed Sean’s anger or Hazel’s stiff response.

  Rav just wanted Isabel to be safe. Protecting those he loved was the only thing that mattered to Senator Alec Ravissant.

  Sean glanced in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of Hazel’s auburn hair, and he was flooded with a thousand and one fantasies. Some of his fantasies of Hazel were dirty and some were sweet, but in each and every one, he had his fingers in her hair.

  Rav just wanted to protect the woman he loved. What did Sean want?

  He watched Hazel in the mirror and didn’t like the immediate answer that surfaced. I want the same thing.

  But that could mean his sister, who was battling a disease. Or his mother, who struggled with watching her daughter fight something that was beyond her ability to soothe, after losin
g Sean’s dad to cancer almost five years ago. And maybe, just maybe, it included Hazel too, but it wasn’t necessarily a romantic love. He’d known Hazel a few months shy of five years. They were friends and had shared moments that hinted at something more. One way or another, she mattered to him. It could be as simple as that.

  The only thing he knew for certain was he felt a fierce need to protect her, strong enough to lie to his closest friends if it meant he would be the one by her side. Taking a bullet for another human being was literally in his job description, and he was the only person he trusted to watch Hazel twenty-four seven. If someone came after her, he wouldn’t hesitate to do what needed to be done.

  He met his boss’s gaze and recognized how hard it must be for the man to watch Sean drive his wife to the lake. But Isabel wasn’t going to give up her work and freedom because of a threatening letter, and Rav had his own rather important job to do. These variables put Sean in the driver’s seat, responsible for the safety of the women in Rav’s family. “I won’t let you down,” he said to his boss.

  Rav nodded. “I know. That’s why I asked you. See you at one.” He stepped back and rapped on the roof, sending them on their way.

  After the tension at the house, examining the submerged bones was downright relaxing for Hazel. Isabel and her crew were busy recording an archaeological feature that had been exposed by the drawdown, while Hazel photographed bones in situ. She collected several more skulls for examination in the lab after recording their three-point provenience and photographing them. Other skulls she simply photographed. Craniums were the most obvious and simple way to estimate minimum number of individuals, but there were so many bone fragments in addition to the intact craniums that it was likely her MNI count would be lower than the actual number if she based it on skulls alone.

  At the end of her first sweep of the bone garden, she’d counted a minimum of twenty-six individuals, all adults, and the majority of the bones weren’t gracile, leading her to believe most, if not all, were male.

  The remains were a little too uniform for a slave or prehistoric burial ground, both of which would have women and children in the mix. The back of her neck twitched with her preliminary field assessment, but she was a scientist and expert witness who didn’t rely on neck twitches for confirmation.

  She glanced up to see the entire crew gathered on the shore. Sean and Isabel sat apart from the field techs. They must be on break. She vaguely recalled hearing a call announcing the break ten minutes before, but she’d ignored it, too engrossed in her work. Plus she was a contractor and would be leaving the site early. No need for her to break with the crew.

  She leaned on the cane and studied the submerged, robust bones. Had these men been slaves? Was she staring at the remains of humans who had never known freedom? Men who had either been transported from Africa or born in the New World and spent their lives in labor for masters who considered them property?

  As always, she would remove herself from the narrative and speak the truth the bones told her. When she spoke for these departed souls, would she be speaking for dead slaves?

  The voices of dead children slaughtered in the Bosnian genocide surged forth. She’d been a coward and fled instead of speaking for them, and they were pissed. Images of the dirt-coated skull of a five-year-old child—gender unknown due to the prepubescent skeletal age—flooded her. She’d failed that child. She’d failed them all.

  She stared into the occipital opening of a submerged skull, not seeing the adult male cranium before her. She smelled the dirt and heat of a dry site more than an ocean away. She wasn’t in a lake; she was in a field in Croatia. Sweat trickled from her temples and down her neck in both worlds. She swiped at her brow as she gazed down on the high, straight frontal bone of a child the same age as her nephew, Julian.

  She could hear Julian’s laugh as she stared at the empty eye sockets. She remembered the mnemonic device someone in her undergrad human osteology class had come up with: “No, Mom, Larry eats Spam.” Those words translated to: nasal, maxilla, lacrimal, ethmoid, and sphenoid, the names of the eye socket bones starting at the medial—or center of the body—and moving toward the lateral.

  She was long past needing mnemonic devices to remember the names of bones, and the sudden reminder of that silly phrase triggered an uncontrollable laugh followed by a sharp pang of grief.

  This skull before her wasn’t Julian, it wasn’t that child in Croatia, and it wasn’t her childhood friend Chelsea. She was staring into the empty eye sockets of an adult male who had probably never eaten Spam nor was he named Larry. But he was a man. Who’d lived and died.

  He was an adult, so it was safe to assume he’d experienced the full range of emotions that came with humanity. He’d laughed. He’d cried. He’d probably fucked. Hopefully he’d made love. And maybe he’d loved. But given his ignominious internment in this fake lake in Virginia, he’d been wronged in his life or in his death. And odds were, no one would ever know his name.

  But she’d try.

  Tomorrow in the lab, she’d assign this skull a number based on the location where he’d been found. He would henceforth be known as Specimen X101 or whatever naming convention she chose. The impersonal designation would probably be the only name he’d ever have in death.

  She couldn’t stop the garden of child skulls from flooding her vision. Even though she was thousands of miles away, working a wet site of questionable origins, not a dry mass grave, known to be part of a genocide. She couldn’t fight the mental images.

  She stared into the empty eyes of not-Larry-who-didn’t-eat-Spam and grief—or panic—overtook her. Her weight shifted, and her hand slipped from the top of the cane. Her brain drained of blood and thought. Darkness closed in. She pitched forward into the shallow lake.

  4

  Sean was on his feet in an instant, charging across the water, staring at Hazel’s still body, shouting to Isabel to stay put. If Hazel had been hit with a tranq dart, he didn’t want Isabel in the line of fire. As he ran, his gaze darted to the woods that surrounded the lake, looking for the source.

  Before he reached Hazel, she jolted and pushed up from the water, coughing, but breathing.

  Thank God.

  Still crouching in the water, she shook her head and swiped her hand over her eyes. Finally at her side, Sean scooped her into his arms. She let out a squeal between coughs and pushed at his chest. He held her tight and headed toward the shore.

  Her coughing subsided enough for her to speak. “Sean! Put me down. I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. You passed out in the water. We need to check you out.”

  “I didn’t pass out. I fell. I was standing with my head down, examining the bones too long, got a little dizzy when I raised my head, and tripped. That’s all.”

  “You were still in the water for five to ten seconds.” It had seemed like a minute, but she’d been less than thirty yards from shore. He’d sprinted the distance, only slightly hampered by water. Ten seconds was a high estimate. She’d probably only been still for seven or eight. But if she’d simply tripped while dizzy, she wouldn’t have been still at all.

  “I’m fine, Sean. Please put me down.”

  He ignored her and made a beeline for Isabel, who’d obeyed his command—something he was grateful for. It was vital that clients cooperate or he couldn’t protect them. Rav must have underscored that point with Isabel last night, because her instinct to help Hazel must’ve been high.

  The three people on her crew were on their feet, as anxious as Isabel. They were probably confused by the order to stay on shore, but they’d stayed with their supervisor. Now that it was clear Hazel was conscious and breathing, Isabel told the trio they should get back to mapping the site while she and Sean checked on Hazel.

  “You okay, Dr. MacLeod?” one of the young men asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said as Sean set her on her feet. “Just clumsy and embarrassed.”

  The man nodded, then turned with the others to
grab his tools and resume work. The site they were recording was fifty yards down shore, giving Sean, Hazel, and Isabel enough privacy to talk freely as long as they kept their voices low.

  “What happened, Haze?” Isabel asked.

  “I was bent over too long and the blood rushed to my head and I got dizzy. That’s all.”

  “You landed face-first in the water and didn’t move,” Isabel said. “It looked like you passed out.”

  “I didn’t pass out. I’m fine. I was just dizzy.”

  Hazel was lying. He’d bet anything she’d fainted. She’d said she’d had problems in Croatia. That was why she’d come home early. She hadn’t been exaggerating. She would probably claim it didn’t relate to his job of protecting her, and from her closed-off body language, she didn’t want to discuss it.

  “I should contact the university,” Isabel said softly. “The professor was busy yesterday, but he can take over now that the sheriff isn’t breathing down my neck.”

  “No!” Hazel said sharply. “I can do this, Iz. I was just dizzy.”

  Yeah, and maybe if you say it enough, it will become true. But Sean said nothing. This wasn’t his fight, and the last thing he needed was to piss her off by voicing his concerns. He needed her cooperation if he was going to be able to do his job.

  “Really, I’m fine,” she insisted. “I need to do this. For Larry.” She mumbled the last part.

  “Larry?” Sean asked.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Just a lame osteology joke.” She turned and walked over to her backpack, pulled out her water bottle, and took a long drink.

  Isabel leaned toward Sean and said, “I need to get back to my crew. You got this?”

  He nodded, and she left. He turned back to Hazel to see her tilt back her head and splash water over her face, rinsing off the lake water. Water dripped down her cheeks and neck, drawing Sean’s gaze to where it disappeared into the V of her top. Not appropriate for him to be staring, given the situation, but he couldn’t help it that a different memory surfaced.