Free Nightbound by Lynn Viehl Page B

made her feel even more resentful. If anything, it would be good to have a strong, capable man to help the interns with the heavy lifting and other physical work, something she’d always had to handle herself. Sharing the responsibilities with Beau would give her more time to focus on finding the evidence she needed, and for that, she could show a little more gratitude. “Thank you. I appreciate the assistance.”
    “I think you’ll need more of it.” He picked up a roll of the enclosure mesh, checked the straps, and eyed the edge of the canvas. “This is used for the walls?”
    Alys showed him how to clip the mesh straps to the grommets in the canvas, which he then accomplished in a few minutes. She followed behind him, releasing the ties and securing the edge of the mesh to the ground.
    Beau circled around the tent, finding and opening the entry flaps to step inside. “Is this where you’ll have your meals?”
    “The canopied table over there is our dining area,”she said, pointing at it. “We use this tent for our lab work.” She followed him in. “We’ll bring everything we process in here for cleaning, labeling, and cataloging.” She touched the inside of the mesh. “This keeps the area reasonably clean and isolated from the rest of the excavation, which prevents any accidental contamination of the finds. You’re very handy for someone who has never worked a dig. Are you a camper, or a hunter?”
    “A bit of both.”
    On impulse she asked, “Have you ever been to France?”
    “I came to America from England when I was a boy,” he said smoothly. “I’ve not left the States since.”
    “I see.” She felt disappointed, and then, strangely relieved.
It couldn’t have been him anyway; he would have been only a boy.
“You should visit it sometime. France, I mean. It’s a beautiful country.”
    “So I’ve heard.” He went to hold back a flap for Chan and Paolo, who carried in one of the long folding worktables. “What do you expect to find out here?”
    “Typically Florida sites yield unorganized burial sites, some pottery sherds, refuse pits, shell middens, stone tools.” She nodded toward the church. “Spanish priests, like the ones who founded this mission, introduced things like glass beads and forged metals.”
    “Dr. Al gives a great seminar on coprolite analysis,” Chan told Beau. “She’s profiled the cultural features of a bunch of villages based solely on accretional deposits.”
    Alys waited until the boys had left the tent before she said, “My interns are prone to exaggeration. I’ve only profiled two villages. You don’t know what coprolites are, do you?”
    He rubbed the back of his neck. “Something you dig out of the ground, I expect.”
    “They’re preserved feces.” His expression made her smile. “Don’t look so disgusted. We learn a great deal by analyzing human waste and other preserved ecofacts. Latrine pits and garbage dumps help us identify what the inhabitants hunted, the crops they might have planted, the seasonality of their diet, even who in the surrounding region traded with them.”
    “All that,” he said, “from digging through shit?”
    “We are what we eat, Mr. York. In a few hundred years some scientist may examine what you left behind in order to know who you were.” Alys saw the odd look he gave her. “Do you wonder what his conclusions will be?”
    “No.” A strange sadness flickered over his features. “I’ll take care not to leave anything behind.” With that, Beau strode out of the tent.

Chapter 5
     
    O nce the equipment had been sorted and the work areas prepared, Beau excused himself from sharing a meal with the team and busied himself by adding fuel to the generators and stowing unneeded packing materials and empty cases inside the church. When he emerged, he found Alys setting up a second, smaller tent to one side of the tower. “What is that used for?”
    “Me.” She finished knotting a cord through the loop of a ground