Die for Me Read Free Page B

land?” Vito asked. “Who has access to it?”
    “Anybody with an ATV or four-wheel drive, I guess. You can’t see this field from the highway and the little drive that connects to the main road isn’t even paved.”
    Vito nodded, grateful he’d driven his truck, leaving his Mustang parked safely in his garage alongside his bike. “It’s definitely a rugged road. How do you get back here?”
    “Today I walked.” He pointed to the tree line where a single set of footprints emerged. “But this was the first time I’ve been back here. We only moved in a month ago. This land was my aunt’s,” he explained. “She died and left it to me.”
    “So, did your aunt come out to this field often?”
    “I wouldn’t think so. She was a recluse, never left the house. That’s all I know.”
    “Sir, you’ve been a big help,” Vito said. “Thank you.”
    Winchester’s shoulders sagged. “Then I can go home?”
    “Sure. The officers will drive you home.”
    Winchester got in the cruiser and it headed out, passing a gray Volvo on its way in. The Volvo parked behind Nick’s sedan and a trim woman in her midfifties got out and started across the field. ME Katherine Bauer was here. It was time to face Jane Doe.
    Vito started toward the grave, but Nick didn’t move. He was looking at Winchester’s metal detector sitting inside the CSU van. “We should check the rest of the field, Chick.”
    “You think there are more.”
    “I think we can’t leave until we know there aren’t.”
    Another shiver of apprehension raced down Vito’s back. In his heart he already knew what they would find. “You’re right. Let’s see what else is out there.”
    Sunday, January 14, 10:30 A.M.
    “Everybody’s eyes closed?” Sophie Johannsen frowned at her graduate students in the darkness. “Bruce, you’re peeking,” she said.
    “I’m not peeking,” he grumbled. “Besides, it’s too dark to see anything anyway.”
    “Hurry
up,
” Marta said impatiently. “Turn on the lights.”
    Sophie flicked on the lights, savoring the moment. “I give you . . . the Great Hall.”
    For a moment no one said a word. Then Spandan let out a low whistle that echoed off the ceiling, twenty feet above their heads.
    Bruce’s face broke into a grin. “You did it. You finally finished it.”
    Marta’s jaw squared. “It’s nice.”
    Sophie blinked at the younger woman’s terse tone, but before she could say a word she heard the soft whir of John’s wheelchair as he passed her to stare up at the far wall. “You did all this yourself,” he murmured, looking around in his quiet way. “Awesome.”
    Sophie shook her head. “Not nearly by myself. You all helped, cleaning swords and armor and helping me plan the sword display. This was definitely a group effort.”
    Last fall, all fifteen members of her Weapons and Warfare graduate seminar had been enthusiastic volunteers at the Albright Museum of History, where Sophie spent her days. Now she was down to these faithful four. They’d come every Sunday for months, giving their time. They earned class credit, but more valuable was the opportunity to touch the medieval treasures their classmates could only view through glass.
    Sophie understood their fascination. She also knew that holding a fifteenth-century sword in a sterile museum was but a shadow of the thrill of unearthing that sword herself, of brushing away the dirt, exposing a treasure no eyes had seen in five hundred years. Six months ago as a field archeologist in southern France, she’d lived for that rush, waking every morning wondering what buried treasure she’d find at the dig that day. Now, as the Albright Museum’s head curator, she could only touch the treasures unearthed by others. Touching them, caring for them would have to be enough for now.
    And as hard as it had been to walk away from the French dig of her dreams, every time she sat at her grandmother’s side as she lay in a nursing-home bed, Sophie knew she’d made