Birthright

breath between his teeth, he tried to shift into comfort. And saw Callie was gone.
    Panic was an instant ice ball that formed in his belly. Pain forgotten, he sprang up and bolted from the room. The silence of the house added another tier to the panic and had him shouting her name before he was halfway down the stairs.
    When she rushed out of his office, he didn’t know whether to laugh at the annoyance on her face or fall to his knees and kiss her feet.
    “What are you yelling about?”
    “Where the hell were you? Where the hell is everybody?”
    “You need a pill.” She stomped into the kitchen to dig out the pain medication. “I was in your office. My computer was fried, remember? I’m working on yours. Take the pill.”
    “I don’t want a pill.”
    “Don’t be a big, stupid baby.” She ran a glass of water. “Take the antibiotic, too, like the nice doctor told you to do when he gave you the lollipop.”
    “Somebody’s going to get a pop.” He fisted a hand, tapped it against her chin. “Where’s the team?”
    “Spread out. On-site, waiting to let us know when the cops clear it. At the college, using some of the equipment, in Baltimore at the lab. No point in everybody lazing around today just because you decide it’s nappy time.”
    “Nobody’s here but you and me?”
    “That’s right, which doesn’t mean it’s time for sexcapades either. Take your meds like a good boy.”
    “How long has everybody been gone?”
    “About an hour.”
    “Then let’s get started.” He ignored the pills she held out and headed out of the room.
    “With what?”
    “We’re going to look through their things.”
    Callie’s fingers curled around the pills. “We are not.”
    “Then I’m going to, but that’ll take twice as long.” Hehefted the backpack in a corner of the living room, dumped it on the table and unzipped it.
    “We’ve got no right to do this, Jake.”
    “Nobody had a right to blow up Digger’s trailer in our faces. Let’s make sure whoever did isn’t right in our faces, too.”
    “That’s not enough to—”
    “Question.” He stopped what he was doing long enough to look at her. “Who knew we were heading to Virginia the other day?”
    She lifted her shoulders. “You and me, Lana and Doug.”
    “And everybody who was in the kitchen when we were talking about schedules. Everybody who heard you say you had some personal business in Virginia.”
    She sat down, hard. “Jesus.”
    “Busybody across the street said they were loading up about ten. We were getting up from the table right around nine. It only took a phone call, telling them you were coming and to get the hell out.”
    “Okay, okay, the timing works but . . . What the hell do you think you’re going to find?”
    “I won’t know till I look.” He started a systematic pile, setting aside notebooks, pens, pencils, a handheld video game before he looked up at Callie again. “Are you going to help, or just watch?”
    “Damn it.” She knelt down with him. “Take the pills.”
    He grumbled about it, but he swallowed them.
    Shaking her head, she picked up one of West Virginia Chuck’s notebooks, flipped through. Then she frowned, and did the same with the second.
    “These are empty. Jake, there’s nothing in them. No notes, no sketches, no nothing.” She turned them around, flipped them again. “Blank pages.”
    “Did he have any on him when he left?”
    “I don’t know. He could have.”
    No longer reluctant, she searched through the clothes, into pockets. When all the contents of the backpack were on the table, Callie got up and retrieved a notebook of her own and listed them.
    Once the items were catalogued and replaced, they started the same procedure on Frannie’s.
    They found another notebook wrapped in a T-shirt and buried in the bottom of the pack.
    “It’s a diary.” Callie sat cross-legged now and began to read. “Starts on the first day they joined the dig. Blah, blah, blah, just general excitement over the project. Huh, she thinks you’re really hot.”
    “Yeah?”
    “If things don’t work out with her and Chuck, she could really go for you.”
    She scanned words, flipped pages. “Rosie’s nice. Patient. Doesn’t worry about her trying to put the moves on Chuck. But she wasn’t so sure about Dory. Snooty and superior. Sonya’s friendly, but kind of boring.”
    She paused, scowled. “I am not scary and bossy.”
    “Yeah, you are. What else does she say about me?”
    “Jeez,