The tension in Maddie’s chest and shoulders had ratcheted up with each mile of the drive to the Kocher Mansion. Now that they were in the horseshoe driveway and she stared up at the gothic monstrosity, she was almost paralyzed by it.
“I usually like this architecture style,” Chase said. “But knowing there’s a crypt underneath with stolen human remains gives this house an ominous look. Like it belongs in a horror movie or something.”
“It’s even worse on the inside.”
She rolled her shoulders. Time to get this over with. She grabbed her bag and opened the SUV door. Raptor had a thing for big, beefy SUVs, even when it was a rental, and once again, she had to jump down to exit the vehicle. It was a good thing she was wearing sensible shoes, because she landed wrong and stumbled.
She huffed out a breath. She was rattled, and she wasn’t even facing Troy yet.
Troy, who had unknowingly changed the path of the last weeks of her life by creeping her out on the first day, which led to her calling Trina.
A warm glow settled in her chest at the thought of this afternoon with Ava and of the quiet ease with which Josh had joined them. Things weren’t settled, but they were on the right track, and she used that feeling to bolster her so she could face Troy.
“You okay?” Chase asked.
“Fine. Just short and clumsy.”
The front door to the mansion opened, and there was Troy. He hadn’t been happy with her request for a meeting after her no-show yesterday, but then, he wouldn’t have been happy either way. “You’re all over the news,” he said, and the prick had the nerve to smirk.
She ignored him as she climbed the front steps to the wide wraparound porch. It really was a beautiful house. Too bad it was hopelessly tainted.
“Who’s the new guy?” Troy asked, nodding toward Chase. “Did you dump that dick Warner already?”
She debated whether or not she needed to provide an answer. Given that she was entering his private residence, she was probably contractually obligated to name the person who accompanied her. “Troy Kocher, this is Chase Johnston, my bodyguard.”
Neither man offered the other a handshake.
Maddie reached the threshold, and Troy moved to constrict her so she’d have to squeeze by him.
“Step back from the lady,” Chase said, his voice hard and cold.
“Lady? She’s a Christian girl who’s fucking a Jew. She’s trash.”
Faster than lightning, Chase had the bigger man in a tight hold, Troy’s face pressed to the door panel and his arm wrenched behind his back.
“You can’t do this,” Troy said, his voice cracking with pain as Chase torqued his arm. “This is my house.”
“I can do whatever I want if I think Maddie is threatened. Did you miss the part where I’m her bodyguard?”
“I didn’t threaten her.”
“I didn’t like your tone. Or your words.” His voice went really low. “After what Maddie’s been through, the cops will believe me over you, especially given that there are photos of you with her abductor for all the world to see.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that! Hell, for all we know, she made it up.”
Chase wrenched Troy’s arm higher. “Let me tell you something, Troy.” The name sounded ominous the way Chase said it. “I might look like a nice guy, but deep down, I’ve got a shit ton of rage, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to let it all out. So don’t fuck with me.”
He released Troy and stepped back. Without missing a beat, he turned to Maddie. “Which way to the crypt?”
Maddie had seen him in action in the gym and knew he was fast and formidable, but even then, the sparring had been friendly, with no intent to hurt. His boyish face did make him look like a nice guy. But all traces of that were gone now. This was a different man altogether, and he was powerful. And he hadn’t been kidding about the banked anger.
She felt like she’d just glimpsed Bruce Banner’s inner Hulk, and she was so very grateful to have both versions of Chase as her bodyguard right now.
She smiled, said, “This way,” then led him to the interior crypt entrance.
Troy followed, but unlike before, he did not ride her or Chase’s heels down the narrow staircase, and he even gave her room to breathe once they were in the crypt.
Maddie went straight to vault 138 and opened the iron door and removed the box that contained the contents. She set it on the work table, donned her gloves, and then laid out the bones as she’d done weeks ago.
“You already did that. Why are you looking at this one again?” Troy asked.
She ignored him. It went against her natural instinct to be rude like that, but Troy had lost his right to respectful treatment even before his anti-Semitic words today.
“Is something wrong with those bones?” Troy asked.
She continued to ignore him. She flipped on the switch for the light on the large magnifying glass, picked up the left clavicle from the bones, and studied it under the bright light of the magnifying glass.
There were a few tests she was allowed to run, and pollen analysis fell within that category. If she could get a sample, maybe she’d get an idea of what the reddish staining was.
The clavicle didn’t provide any soil, but she had many bones to go over—cranium, long bones, pelvis, scapulae, a few ribs, and a half dozen vertebrae. She frowned looking at the right ulna. If she remembered correctly, it had been in two pieces when she documented this skeleton weeks ago. She pulled up her notes on her phone and searched on the burial number.
As expected, the right ulna had been broken with both parts present. She lifted her gaze and turned to Troy. “What happened to the distal end of the right ulna?”
Troy’s jaw clamped tight and his nostrils flared, and she’d bet he was trying to decide if he could get away with a lie.
“This skeleton is missing part of a bone. That will go in my report, and I will go through all two hundred and thirty vaults again to see if other bones are missing. If it’s determined that you knowingly destroyed or withheld remains after they were inventoried, we’ll have documentation of your violation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and restitution will be required. These remains do not belong to you.”
“No. They belong to Shields now. He took it,” Troy said.
Shock rippled through her. “What? Why would he do that?”
“He did his own inventory of all the remains, to make sure you do it right.”
“Oliver Shields lacks the expertise to conduct a NAGPRA inventory. And his conflict of interest means he cannot double-check my work.” This would only harm the curator in the long run. What was his agenda here?
Troy shrugged. “I don’t care. He wanted to look, so I let him. Like you, he thought that skeleton was weird. He took the bone because he wanted to run a DNA test.”
Rage shot through her. “Those tests destroy the bone. DNA tests are strictly forbidden to prevent further harm to the remains. It’s another desecration.”
Now Troy gave her a full smirk. “What are the tribes afraid of, that we’ll discover the truth?”
“Truth?” she asked, although she had a feeling she knew what he was about to say.
“Yeah. The truth. That white people were here first. That this isn’t really their land. It’s ours. Oliver Shields took that bone because he thinks that skeleton looks Caucasian. He sent it in to a lab to prove that the idea that Indians were the only people here before 1492 is a lie. We’re going to prove it and take our land back.”
In the car on the way home, Chase said, “When you were arguing with Kocher, you said something about Kennewick Man, but I didn’t quite follow what you were talking about. Kennewick is that old skeleton found about twenty-five years ago in Washington State, right?”
“Yes. The remains—which tribes call ‘The Ancient One’—are one of the most complete Paleoindians ever found, and the remains date to about nine thousand years BP—before present. The archaeologist who first examined The Ancient One described the skull as having Caucasoid features, which set off a lot of the controversy around whether or not scientists had the right to study it versus the tribes’ rights to rebury the remains without study as is required under NAGPRA. Along the way, others weighed in, including a group that was white-identity, and which might have neo-Nazi leanings. They joined the lawsuit for the right to study the remains because they wanted to prove white people were here first and undermine treaty rights, et cetera.”
“But you told Kocher that the DNA tests proved the tribes’ claim?”
“Yes. After the lengthy court case, the tribes lost the fight for immediate reburial without examination, and the remains were studied extensively by several experts, and eventually, a DNA test was run which proved the tribes’ assertion all along: the remains were closely related to several Pacific Northwest tribes. The remains were finally returned to the tribes a few years ago, and The Ancient One was reburied in an undisclosed location.”
“So why would Kocher and Shields pull this stunt now? What’s in it for them?”
“I have no idea. Yes, the remains are different from the others, but it’s ludicrous for them to think a DNA test will get different results from that of Kennewick Man. And I’m going to see to it that Shields’s museum will pay a steep price for stealing a bone. It’s immoral and unethical, not to mention just plain stupid. If it wasn’t a Saturday, I’d be on my way to see the State Historic Preservation Officer right now.”
“The skeleton was taken from the Painted Hills area?” Chase asked.
“As far as I can tell. The sample I took today will be sent off for pollen analysis, which might give us more information. It’s actually one of the burials that was mentioned in correspondence between the Kochers and the Nielsens. There’s some discussion of funerary objects that were found in association, which Otto Kocher gave to Clifford Nielsen the first. I wonder if those items are in C-IV’s possession. If I could get a pollen sample to match from the artifacts, it would be a slam dunk provenience-wise. Unfortunately, artifacts are usually cleaned differently from bones, so it’s unlikely pollen would remain. But still, a girl can dream.”
“From what I’ve heard about Nielsen, there’s slim chance he’ll give you access to his family’s collection.”
“He seems so eager to own a senator—if my brother is elected, maybe he can put pressure on him.”
Chase laughed. “You’d pimp out your brother that way?”
She shrugged. “I disagree with my brother on almost every major political issue. The least he can do is use his power to provide closure of sorts for the tribes.”
“Would your brother do it? Put pressure on Nielsen?”
“I doubt it. But it’s always worth a try.”
“Do you get along with him?”
She shrugged. “It’s hard. We can’t talk politics, which is pretty much his life, but he’s also fifteen years older than me, so we’ve never really been close. I worshipped him when I was a kid. I miss the man he was before he got into politics.”
“What did he do before?”
“He was an attorney. He had a lot of clients, but really made a name for himself representing the timber industry.”
“Did he ever represent Kocher Lumber Mills?”
“No. KLM closed down thirty years ago.”
“But someone bought their land and assets, right?”
“Yes. Evergreen Timber Resources bought most of their assets.”
“Were they one of your brother’s clients?”
“Probably.”
“Is there any chance Troy Kocher knew you were related to Alan Tisdale before you were doxed?”
“Actually, yes. Alan said Troy was complaining about me at the reception Josh and I went to last Saturday. I thought it was odd at the time, but forgot in the wake of hearing about Tricia.”
It was all so convoluted. Yesterday, Hoffman had brought her to a forest that had once been harvested by Kocher Lumber Mills. And what was Nielsen Steel’s role? The Hoffman brothers worked for Nielsen, not Kocher.
She rubbed her temples. “I think all this is going to break my brain. Plus I’m still so angry at Kocher and Shields, I want to scream. They might not suffer any consequences from this stunt. NAGPRA is a process, and it’s not set up to be punitive.”
By the time they reached the hotel—after a lengthy surveillance detection route—Maddie’s temper had cooled. She was tired and hungry, having consumed the tiny tea sandwiches and cakes far too many hours ago. Before she and Chase left Ava and Josh, they’d all agreed to order room service for dinner and dine in Chase’s room so they could discuss the coming rally and come up with a plan for Maddie and Ava’s protection.
She was thankful for this preparation because the food had already been delivered by the time they reached Chase’s room, and it smelled wonderful. Josh and Ava had taken the two chairs from their room, and the four of them took their seats at the small table as if it were a family dinner. Josh poured each adult a glass of red wine.
Maddie met his gaze across the table and felt a flutter of heat reemerge. They hadn’t spoken privately this afternoon, but the ease between them had returned after watching the last third of Wonder Woman.
His eyes held an intensity that was just for her. Questioning. Hungry. And hot.
For the first time since Sunday, she knew without a doubt this thing between them was far from over. It hadn’t even begun, really.
Chase gave a rundown of their visit to the Kocher Mansion, and Maddie again explained the significance of Kennewick Man.
“We learned about that in school,” Ava said. “When I was in eighth grade, my social studies teacher spent a whole week talking about Paleoindians, but I was confused because she said paleontologists study dinosaurs, not paleohumans, and the Paleo diet is something else too.”
“Paleo as a prefix comes from the Greek word that means ‘ancient,’” Maddie said, “and the definition is ‘older or ancient—especially when it comes to the geological past’ as well as, ‘early, archaic, or primitive’ so when used scientifically, it can describe dinosaurs who first evolved two hundred and forty-five million years ago, or nine-thousand-year-old humans like The Ancient One. There are also disciplines like paleobotany—study of fossil plants—or usage for things like the modern Paleo diet, which is based on what humans had available to consume pre-agriculture.”
“So paleo can mean both humans and dinosaurs, even though they’re separated by sixty-five million years of Earth’s history,” Chase added. He met Maddie’s gaze. “When I was a kid, I had dreams of being a paleontologist. Read everything I could. I could’ve told you the difference between Deinonychus and Parasaurolophus. It’s been a while, but some childhood memories stick.”
She wondered what Chase had been like as a child. She had no clue if he had family beyond the Raptor employees who’d claimed him as their own after his ordeals.
Josh’s phone buzzed. He checked the screen and let out a curse, then added, “The gym alarm is going off. I need to go.” He met Chase’s gaze. “You good with being on duty a few more hours?”
“Always.”
“Thanks, man,” Josh said and rose from the table, leaving his salmon dinner barely touched.
Maddie felt a pang of disappointment. Tomorrow, Josh would be busy from dawn to dusk with the rally. She’d hoped to talk to him tonight.
Their reunion would have to wait another day.
Josh met Arthur at the building, arriving just minutes after the police. He felt a burn low in his stomach as he took in the damage. Racial slurs and a swastika had been painted on the side of the old warehouse. The front window had been smashed, but bars had prevented the vandals from entering the building.
After the police filed their report, Josh helped Arthur secure two panels of plywood in place. Arthur had the plywood on hand in the storage room in expectation of something like this. There wasn’t a lot you could do to a concrete building with bars on the windows.
They painted over the graffiti with powered paint sprayers. Two hours after the alarm had sounded, the damage was covered. There might be more attacks in the night, as word had gotten out that the number of volunteers expected at tomorrow’s rally could be as high as a hundred. And that was just the volunteers who would protect the counterprotesters.
With such a large number of protectors, it was expected that there could be as many as four times the number of counterprotesters—they might even outnumber the White Patriots. For sure, many who were on the fence about going to the rally might think twice before marching without a hood when they were clearly in the minority.
Josh felt strangely content as he drove back to the hotel. It was after ten p.m. Ava would still be up, and maybe they could watch a movie together. He doubted she would tell him about her conversation with Maddie, and he wouldn’t ask, much as he wanted to know.
His gut clenched as he relived the moment Maddie had gripped his hand as they watched the movie. All the kisses and even the sex they’d shared, and that was the touch that gave him an intense rush. Hope.
Much as he wanted to hurry back to the hotel, he did a full surveillance detection route. Raptor was paying for the hotel through an affiliate—Lee Scott’s tech security company—and they were registered under false names, so there were no financial transactions to lead the White Patriots to the hotel where Ava and Maddie were staying. Josh wouldn’t jeopardize their security with a sloppy SDR because he was tired and eager to get back to his family.
Family.
It had been a loaded word for him since childhood, made worse when he had to abandon six-year-old Ava for her protection.
His SEAL team and later his Raptor team had become his family. The misfits who lived in the Virginia compound, wounded Owen and Chase—each less damaged now than when they’d first moved in—frustrated Nate, who had fallen in love last winter and moved out of the compound and was no longer dissatisfied with his job at Raptor. And then there was Tricia, saving up for a future that she might not get to have.
Those and others in the compound, along with Keith and his SEAL team, had been the only family he had for the last fifteen years. Now his real and found families were merging.
Would Maddie be part of his family moving forward?
The idea of it made his heart quicken. How was it possible to be in so deep this quickly? But then he’d seen it happen with Nate and Leah and even Keith and Trina. For some people, it happened fast. Then there was Sean and Hazel, who took five years to get off their asses and commit.
He reached his hotel room and knocked. Ava was under orders to have the inside bar latched at all times. She answered the door, opening it as wide as the metal latch would allow. “I want to be alone,” she said as she shoved his toothbrush through the gap. “You need to find somewhere else to sleep.”
Alarm shot through him. Her voice sounded fine, but he couldn’t really see her face through the narrow opening. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just want to be alone right now. You snore.”
He did, in fact, snore, but he didn’t think that was the issue.
“I can’t sleep somewhere else. This is my room. I need to protect you.”
“The connecting door is open. Chase is here. I’m fine. Get another room…or maybe Maddie will let you stay in her room.”
“Ava,” he said, using his brand-new fatherly warning tone. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing. I just want to be alone. Take your toothbrush. Go. I need to sleep.”
She waved the toothbrush in the gap, and it looked like she was about to toss it, so he grabbed it. The moment the item cleared the door, she closed it, and he heard the lock turn.
He could still get into the room through the connecting door.
He should knock on Chase’s door. Should sleep in his own bed. Ava’s gambit was cute, but it was up to Maddie to extend the invitation, and she hadn’t.
He strode the short distance to Chase’s door and raised a hand to knock, then froze, staring at the toothbrush gripped in his other hand.
He could go to Maddie’s room.
He wanted to go to Maddie’s room. She…might even welcome him.
There was only one way to find out.