Petra interrupted. “Thank you,” she said to Ximi.
They got into Ximi’s car, Cleo claiming the front seat, and Petra sliding in beside Jen, who was distracted by Petra’s watching intently as she clicked her seatbelt on. Maybe seatbelts in Greece were designed differently? She couldn’t remember any difference, but the Greece trip had been years ago.
In the front, Cleo examined the dashboard. She was still marveling over it when they pulled up adjacent to the old parking lot on the top of a cliff. Most of it had been closed off by yellow tape. Big slabs of cement had been upturned at the other end of the lot, before the abrupt end of the cliff above the landslide.
A small group of people stood around some kind of digging equipment. Jen’s gaze blipped past some strangers, Joey Hu, and Mikhail Long, to land on Nikos. He was one of the tallest, the sea breeze tangling with his blue-black, wavy hair.
The girls left the car, and as the visitors ran ahead, Ximi joined Jen. “I was going to wait in the car, but I thought that their dad, or whoever that guy is, might want to meet me and ask a lot of questions.” She shot Jen an inquiring look that Jen interpreted immediately.
“I think he’s more like a chaperone—their martial arts teacher. And if he asks, I’ll vouch for you.”
“I hope that’ll be enough. Well, he can always call my dad,” Ximi said doubtfully.
But when they caught up to Petra and Cleo, who were talking fast in Greek, Nikos turned Jen’s way. “These people are known to you?”
Jen nodded. “For pretty close to twenty years.” She was about to add that she’d babysat infant Ximi every chance she could get, but remembered Doris telling her once that talking about their infancy was embarrassing to even the most easygoing teens.
“We’ll be back before
ten,” Ximi said. “I have a curfew when I’m driving.”
Nikos gave a small nod. “Petra. Cleo. Do you remember Mikhail’s and Bird’s address?”
“Yesyesyes!”
“We do.”
“Have a good time.”
And that was it—no third degree, or demands about insurance and so forth. It was clear that on their home island, things were a lot simpler than they were here.
Cleo bounced and Petra gave a blinding smile, then the three ran back to Ximi’s car, as Jen made herself look away from Nikos. She now had absolutely no reason to be there—whatever was going on.
But then Joey caught her eye and waved her over. “I know you’re a journalist. Are you interested in old petroglyphs and the like?”
Jen wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Robert would have asked if there was a story in it—that is, a wrong to be righted, or some kind of crooked deal going on that needed investigating. If so, yes would always, always be a right answer. But was it her answer anymore?
Jen remembered stretching out across the entire bed—and the world hadn’t ended.
“I’m interested in everything,” she said firmly.
“This’ll be going on for a while.” Joey indicated the digging machinery parked next to the rubble. “We’ve borrowed some equipment from the geology department at the university. These two are grad students who know how to operate the machinery.” He indicated two women, the younger, Asian one who was probably a college junior or senior, and a white woman almost as tall as Jen, and probably her age, who was intent on transferring numbers from her tablet to the screen of a machine that reminded Jen of a gigantic insect with a drill at the front. “We were in the process of examining some very old caves down below when the collapse happened—I’m sure you remember it.”
“We thought it was another quake,” Jen said. It had happened around the time Bird had met Mikhail, that much she recollected.
“We’re hoping that we can get past the rubble with a camera to take a look around down there,” Joey explained. “We invited Nikos, as he’s familiar with similar excavations in the Aegean. If you’ll stand over there with Nikos, I think my colleague Ann is ready— ”
It was so smoothly done that Jen found herself within touching distance of Nikos, looking in complete ignorance at the machine squatting sinisterly over a pocket in the rubble that had once been a sizable cliff.
But the older woman looked up at the mention of her name, and scowled. “No, we can’t. The camera, or the retractor arm that we borrowed from the oceanography lab, or both, aren’t communicating.” She turned to the student. “Miyoko, one of us has to go back to the lab. Seq says he’s got another arm to swap out.”
Miyoko said, “I’ll go, Professor, since we came in my car.”
While the student departed, the professor walked aside with Joey and began an earnest conversation. Mikhail was pacing slowly around the machine, examining it intently, leaving Nikos and Jen alone.
She felt the urge to speak. “So I take it you have an interest in ancient artifacts?”
“They are more a part of my life,” Nikos said, after a slight hesitation.