Free Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear Page B

her fluster, she thought she caught the subtle rise of his eyebrows as he admired her long leg. After a moment, he added, “No. Not a word. I thought he was going from Farmington back to his house in Albuquerque after he dropped Alevy off at the airport. I expected to run into him at the lab today when we took in the Pueblo Animas stuff.” Another long silence. “You tried him at home?” Dusty frowned as he listened to Maggie. “No, Maureen and I will drive down there and see if there’s any kind of message or anything. You know Dale. He probably met some archaeologist and went out to look at Rinconada, or the stairway, or one of the small houses, got involved in the project and left with the other guy. He’s probably planning to come back later and get his truck.”
    Maureen, having managed to pull her pants up, took a deep breath to settle her blush and read the mild concern on Stewart’s face. Dale did do that sort of thing. He might have been one of the greatest archaeologists the world had ever known, but sometimes real-world concerns, things like National Park Service regulations, didn’t compute.
    “I’ll be in touch as soon as I know,” Dusty promised. “Thanks for calling.” He bent down, hung up the phone, and turned puzzled eyes on Maureen. “When Dale left Pueblo Animas, he didn’t say anything to you about going to Chaco Canyon, did he?”
    Maureen shook her head and pulled back a fistful of unruly black hair that kept trying to tumble over her
face. “No, but you know Dale. He rarely, if ever, gives you advance warning.”
    “Yeah, I know. He got carried away with petroglyphs in Tsegi Canyon one time and left a ten-person field crew abandoned on a mesa thirty miles south of Kayenta.” Dusty slipped his hands into the back pockets of his jeans.
    She saw concern line his forehead and asked, “Should we start to worry?”
    He considered; then his expression cleared. “No. I’ve been doing this for years. It’s just Dale. I go through this about once every six months. He doesn’t show for a meeting, or vanishes without a trace, and he can’t figure, for the life of him, why you were concerned.”
    Relieved, Maureen caught herself studying him: The morning light pouring through the windows gave his muscular body a golden glow. She was happy that she could ignore the way his flat belly tapered into a thin waist. A lesser woman would have caught herself outright admiring his broad shoulders and the swell of chest.
    “So, what’s the plan?” She used her casual voice just to demonstrate her nonchalance.
    “I say we get showered, dressed, find some huevos , and drive down to the office in Albuquerque. We’ll check and see if Dale left any messages, unload the artifacts, and if we still haven’t found him, we’ll drive by his house.”
    “What’s the ‘we’ business?” she asked, crossing her arms.
    “You don’t want to come?”
    “You said, and I quote, ‘we get showered and dressed.’”
    It took a half second before he grinned. “Well, you know, we do live in a desert environment; water, as the Anasazi knew, is something that you treat as a precious resource. It’s not to be squandered lightly. Showering together is environmentally—”
    “Not even in your most deluded dreams, Stewart.” She picked up her suitcase, walked past him, and made her way through the kitchen and down the narrow hallway toward the cramped bathroom. Over her shoulder she called, “You do have clean towels, don’t you?”
    “That little cupboard to the right of the sink,” he replied. She shot him one last glance, seeing him still in the cramped living room, his attention fixed on the phone where it lay in a nest of his rumpled shirts. She thought about his expression as she locked the door behind her.
    Despite his cavalier words about Dale, he looked worried.
     
     
    THE SCENT OF death fills this old kiva. My wounds have festered. Every time I take a breath, white-hot pain lances my body and I