Artifacts Read Online Free PDF Page B

persona.
    “A steak dinner says my team finds them,” Magda asserted.
    “Steak? At Wally’s?” Faye asked.
    “Better than Wally’s. Lots better than Wally’s.”
    Faye said, “Then you’re on,” and they plunged outside into a hungry pack of reporters.
    The students in Faye’s charge were calm, considering the circumstances, yet she felt that their composure would evaporate the second she displayed any emotion that wasn’t ice-cool. They accepted her as a leader because Magda did. Faye was still amazed every time she found the skills to function in that capacity. Apparently she’d always had them, but Magda was the only person who’d ever noticed.
    Faye divided her side of the island into three sectors and sent a pair of students to search each one. They fanned out from where she stood, atop the highest point. Her breathing controlled, Faye turned one step at a time until she had spun completely around.
    Where were they? Faye was a finder, the winner of every childhood Easter egg hunt. For lack of a better idea, she decided to start in the area scheduled for excavation that morning. Neat rows of orange plastic surveyor’s flags gridded over that piece of ground, evidence that Sam and Krista had been there. Faye walked among the flags like a slalom skier in slow motion, looking for a clue or at least a little inspiration.

    Anthony Perez was enjoying his notoriety as the only journalist, on an island overpopulated by journalists, who had gotten footage of Faye’s dramatic discovery of the missing students’ boat. He was a small man, but his reputation grew larger all the time. Anthony stood again in the spot where he had seen Faye rushing away from her colleagues, drawn toward the water where her discovery waited for her. The woman had intuition. This was something he trusted.
    He was not surprised to find her in the same spot, wandering around like someone who almost remembered where she had left her glasses. He would have been a fool not to hide and watch.
    Crouching behind a live oak, he watched her move through the underbrush, stooping now and then to examine something on the ground. Footprints? Maybe.
    When she squatted and started scraping at the pervasive mat of leaves and pine needles, he knew what she’d found, but still he waited to be sure. When she put her hand to her mouth and began digging with precise, rapid strokes, he got his confirmation. He hightailed it to fetch his cameraman, who was standing among all the other journalists waiting to find out where the missing kids were. Anthony Perez, ready to grab his second scoop of the day, knew exactly where they were.

    Faye started at one end of the hastily covered grave, knowing she would find either faces or feet. It was a fifty-fifty shot and she was sort of hoping for feet.
    Fate handed her a face, Sam’s face, a broad, full-lipped face with a day’s growth of beard. There was dirt caked around his eyes and mouth and she wanted to wipe it away, as if it would make him more comfortable, but she couldn’t take the time. The grave was big enough for two.
    She dug to Sam’s right and was rewarded, if that’s the proper word, with another face. Krista was barely recognizable, her freckles obscured by powdery white sand.
    Faye screamed for someone to get Magda, then she kept screaming because it seemed the right thing to do. A rustle alerted her to the cameraman rushing up behind her and she threw her body over her dead friends, refusing to move aside so their fate could be recorded for the evening news.
    She screamed for Magda, over and over, and the tough little archaeologist came running, yelling at the reporters, cursing them, whapping at them with a handy tree branch. Fearing for their equipment, Anthony Perez and his cameraman beat a swift retreat.
    As they left, Faye unbuttoned her shirt, saying, “I’ll be damned if those reporters will climb a tree and use a telephoto lens to get a picture of this.”
    Magda helped Faye spread her