Birthright

again.”
    She looked pale and drawn in the softening light, he thought. Honed down to worry and determination. And remembered how she’d looked in the moonlight when she’d risen over him in bed. The way her face had glowed with laughter and arousal. There’d been freedom there, for both of them, to simply be.
    And while they’d given themselves to each other, while they’d steeped themselves in each other, someone—close—had been planning to hurt her.
    “It was one of our own team.” He said it flatly, the anger dug too deep to show.
    “The site was crawling with people today. Towners, media, college classes.” Then she sighed. “Yeah, it wasone of ours. I had the damn jug on the counter with the lid off. I’ve gone back over it. Leo came in with the present. I took it over to the table to open it. Back to the counter. We were all around somewhere. Everybody knows that’s my jug, and most days I work solo, at least through to lunch break. That’s my pattern. Whoever did it knows my pattern.”
    “You didn’t go for the tea this morning.”
    “No. The water jug was handier. Rosie—” She broke off, confused when he turned around and walked away. When he just stood at the edge of her sector, staring down, she walked over, put a tentative hand on his back.
    He whirled, grabbed her and held so tight she expected her rib cage to shatter. “Hey. Whoa. You’re shaking.”
    “Shut up.” His voice was muffled against her hair, then against her mouth. “Just shut up.”
    “Okay, now I’m shaking. I think I need to sit down.”
    “No. Just hold on, damnit.”
    “I am.” She locked a hand around her own wrist. “I’m starting to think maybe you do love me.”
    “You could’ve passed out down there. Who knows how long it might’ve been before one of us noticed?”
    “I didn’t. It didn’t happen. And Rosie’s in the hospital because of it.”
    “We’re going to take the team apart. One by one. We not only keep the project going, we keep the team intact until we find the one responsible.”
    “How do we keep the team intact?”
    “We’re going to lie. We’ll use the mummy’s-curse angle. Start the rumor. Some local rednecks want to pay us back for screwing up the development, and they’ve been sabotaging the project. We make them believe we believe it, convince them we have to stick together.”
    “Rah-rah?”
    “Partly, and partly for science, partly for personal safety. Everybody’s one big happy family. While whoever’s done this thinks we’re off on that angle, we narrow the field.”
    “We can eliminate Bob. He was on the team before I knew about the Cullens.”
    Jake shook his head. No chances now. “We can put him on a secondary list. We don’t eliminate anyone until we have absolute proof. This time, we’re working on the guilty-until-proven-innocent theme.” He brushed the back of his knuckles over her cheek. “Nobody tries to poison my wife.”
    “Ex-wife. We need to bring Leo in on this.”
    “We’ll have a closed-door meeting back at the house. Make it very obvious and official.”
    L eo argued, blustered, cursed and eventually caved in to the twin-pronged assault.
    “The police or the state are bound to shut us down in any case.”
    “Until they do, we stick.”
    He stared at Callie. “You really think you can convince the team, one of whom you believe is a murderer, to continue to dig?”
    “Watch me.”
    He took off his glasses, squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to go along with you, with both of you. But there are conditions.”
    “I don’t like conditions. You?” she asked Jake.
    “Hate them.”
    “You’ll live with these, or I’m going out there and telling those kids to go home. Kids,” he repeated.
    “Okay, okay,” Callie grumbled.
    “The conditions are that I’m calling in a couple more men. Men I know and trust. They’ll be fully informed of the situation. They’ll work, but their main purpose will be to watch and to form impressions. It’ll take me a day or two to set it up.”
    “That’s agreeable.” Callie nodded.
    “I also want to speak with the authorities about the possibility of having a police officer join the team. Undercover.”
    “Come on, Leo.”
    “Those are the terms.” Leo got to his feet. “Agreed?”
    They agreed, and called the rest of the team in for a kitchen-table meeting. Callie passed out beer while Leo started things off with a booster speech.
    “But the police wouldn’t tell us