One Grave Less

mentally going over their route to Benjamin Constant in order to keep from nodding off. She had seen some of the tribe wandering around in the dark with only a small torch to light whatever route they were taking around the compound. That had surprised her. She had been under the impression that everyone pretty much stayed inside and under some kind of mosquito netting. She had wondered if they were waiting for her to fall asleep. Deeply asleep.
    Maria opened her door, pushed the lock, and quickly closed the door, locking Rosetta inside the truck, wondering if that was a good idea. Rosetta might need to run to the forest.
    “What is it you’re after?” she said when she faced him, hoping she looked a lot less afraid than she felt. A good thing about being almost six feet tall was that she could mimic being intimidating with a fair amount of accuracy.
    “Peace,” he said. “I just want some peace. Get the kid out. I mean it, or I’ll shoot up the truck.”
    “You would do that?” she said. “Kill a child?”
    “Shut up and do what I say. Do you want to take that chance?”
    “Rosetta, sweetheart, unlock the door and come stand by Mommy,” she yelled.
    “I know who you are,” he said. “You’re name isn’t Maria. It’s Linda Chambers or something like that. I saw you at a meeting. Some big-time archaeologist everyone was afraid of.”
    That surprised her. “You’re kidding. Afraid of me? What the hell for?”
    “They said you pick at any little mistake in a paper and rip it to shreds in front of everybody.”
    Absurdly, she felt like arguing with him. It wasn’t true, for heaven’s sake. He must have been with someone whose paper she had taken exception to. But no one was afraid of her. She wasn’t that intimidating in real life. Instead she said:
    “The nice thing about being female is that you can change your name every time you get married. I use my maiden name professionally. When I was in graduate school, I danced competitively. I used a different name there too.”
    She was surprised at how easily lies came out of her mouth. Ironically, she wanted to convince him she wasn’t lying to him. Confessing to a lie didn’t seem to be the way to do that.
    “You know who I am, I’ll bet,” he said.
    Keep him talking. There must be some way to talk our way out of this. Find out what he wants.
    “I thought you looked familiar. It took a while, but I remembered seeing a story about you in the Chronicle . Does your family know you aren’t dead?”
    “No, and I want it to stay that way for now,” he said.
    Rosetta had scrambled out of the truck. Maria gently shoved Rosetta behind her.
    “Why? I would imagine they would love to hear that you are alive.” Maria hoped she sounded sympathetic.
    It was hot and sweat trickled down Kyle’s face to his chest, making trails through his body paint.
    “Oh, they would at first. Then I’d have to explain that I was a failure. My family expected great things from me. My wife, my in-laws expected greatness. Sylvi was always telling everyone I was going to be a professor at Harvard when I graduated. At family reunions my in-laws and my parents would say the same things to people. I wasn’t going to be hired by Harvard or any of those Ivy League schools. Or they would say I would probably be a Rhodes Scholar. They just wouldn’t let up. Kept setting the bar higher and higher before I had even jumped the first one.”
    Maria watched his rifle waver slightly. He wasn’t as tall as she and he was skinny. His ribs showed and he had little muscle. Though Maria was slim, she was muscular. She rode horses, ran, worked as an archaeologist. She was strong and she was desperate—she could take him. She needed an opportunity that would make sure Rosetta would be safe.
    “You were at Chicago, weren’t you? That’s a good school. You must have been doing well. You’re here studying a rare indigenous tribe. That makes for good credentials. Not many opportunities to have a tribe like this to study.”
    “I have no idea what to say about these people. They sleep, they eat, they reproduce, they move from place to place. Not much else.”
    He doesn’t have any idea how to do anthropology , she thought. She had had students like that—good in the classroom, bad in the field, no idea how to apply what they learned. She had whiners too. But Kyle was one of the biggest she had ever come across. Clearly he wanted to go home, but here he was sweating in the middle of