Birthright

an easy jump.”
    “Maybe. Still interesting though. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “I don’t think—”
    “Uh-uh.” She shook her head, put her hand on the door. “A deal’s a deal. Seven o’clock. Roger has my address.”
    C allie worked with Jake, wrapping exhumed bones in wet cloths and plastic to preserve them. They’d been photographed, sketched and logged. Tests would reveal more.
    Other scientists, students, specialists would study them and learn.
    She knew there were some who would see nothing but atibia or a humerus. Nothing but bones, remains and the dead. That was enough for them, knowledge taken was enough for them.
    And she found no fault with that approach.
    But it wasn’t hers.
    She wondered. And in her mind from a bone she could build a human being who had lived and died. Who’d had value.
    “Who was he?” she asked Jake.
    “Which?”
    “The femur.”
    “He was a man, about thirty-five. About five feet, ten inches tall.” But he knew what she wanted. “He learned how to farm, how to grow food for himself and his tribe. How to hunt for it, fish for it. His father taught him, and he ran the woods as a boy.”
    She swiped an arm across her damp forehead. “I think the humerus, those finger bones are his, too. They’re the right age, the right size.”
    “Could be.”
    “And the hand ax we found here.” She squatted down. “That’s what killed him. Not that one—they wouldn’t have buried him with what killed him, but with one of his own. That slice in the humerus, it’s a blow from a hand ax. Was there a war?”
    “There’s always a war.” There was one in her now, Jake thought. He could see it on her face, and he knew she was using the picture of the man they were building together to keep it at bay.
    “Another tribe,” Jake said. “Or maybe a more personal battle within this one. He’d have had a mate, children. He could have died protecting them.”
    She smiled a little. “Or he could’ve been an asshole, gotten himself hyped up on fermented juice, picked a fight and got himself killed.”
    “You know, Dunbrook, you’re too romantic for your own good.”
    “Ain’t it the truth. Macho jerks aren’t a modern phenom. They’ve been around since the dawn. Guys bashing eachother’s brains out with a rock because it seems like fun at the time. It wasn’t always for food or land or defense. Sometimes it was just for sheer meanness. Respecting remains, studying, learning doesn’t mean painting our ancestors in pretty pastels.”
    “You ought to do a paper on it. ‘The Macho Jerk: His Influence on Modern Man.’ ”
    “Maybe I will. Whatever he was, he was someone’s son, probably someone’s father.”
    She circled her head to relieve the tension in her neck, then glanced over at the bullet shot of a car door slamming. Her lips twisted into a sneer. “And speaking of jerks.”
    “You know this guy?”
    “Douglas Cullen.”
    “Is that so?” Jake straightened as Callie did, measured the man, as Callie did. “He doesn’t look very brotherly at the moment.”
    “Stay out of this, Graystone.”
    “Now, why’d you have to go and say that?”
    “I mean it.” But as she boosted herself out, so did Jake.
    Doug strode across the site like a man striding into a battle he had no intention of losing. He noted the man standing beside Callie, and dismissed him.
    He had one purpose, and one only. If anybody wanted to give him grief about it, that was fine, too.
    He was in the mood.
    He stalked up to her, bared his teeth when she tilted her chin up, planted her hands on her hips. Saying nothing, he yanked the legal papers out of his back pocket.
    He held them out so she could see what they were, then ripped them to pieces.
    Nothing he could have done would have earned her anger—or her respect—quicker. “You’re littering on our site, Cullen.”
    “You’re lucky I didn’t stuff it in your mouth then set fire to it.”
    Jake stepped forward. “Why don’t you pick up the pieces, champ, and try it.”
    “Stay out!” Callie jammed an elbow into Jake’s belly and didn’t move him an inch.
    Work around them stopped, reminding her of her confrontation with Dolan. It passed through her mind that she and Douglas Cullen might have more in common than either of them would like.
    “This is between her and me,” Doug said.
    “That much you got right,” Callie agreed.
    “When we’re finished, if you want to go a round, I’m available.”
    “Assholes