Running Back (New York Leopards 2)

“Oh, honey.”

He stared at her, and then grabbed my hand. “Come on.”

I stumbled. “Where—”

Behind us, Kate’s worried voice piped up. “Michael, don’t leave—”

He didn’t turn. “Sorry, Mom. I need to think.”

We didn’t speak until we walked up the stairs, and he held open the door to his room and I hesitated. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted—Because I slept in my own room last night.”

His eyes widened, and then he nodded. “Right. Not a problem.” He walked through and let the door close behind him.

I stood there for half a second, and then banged on in. I might have imagined it, but I thought he looked at me with relief. I offered a hesitant smile. “So, on a positive note, no guns.”

He dropped onto the bed. “I’m such a fucking idiot.”

“What? No. You were a kid. You misheard a conversation. It happens.”

“My mom thinks I’m insane.”

I shrugged. “So does mine.”

He rolled an arm out. “Come lie down with me.”

I happily obliged, curling against his side on top of the floral quilt. But I didn’t stop with my listing. “Hey, I had an idea.”

“A brilliant one, no doubt.”

“I was going to hire someone to do a survey about substructures on Kilkarten. Why don’t we have someone come down and do one to see if they find any weapons? Just so you know for sure.”

Mike grinned at me. “And just in case you happen to see your lost city, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, look. That is not the primary purpose. But if there happens to not be any weapons, and there does happen to be, say, a quay, wouldn’t that all just be wonderful?”

He was silent a long, long moment. Then he sat up and spoke with absolute certainty. “All right. Get me the contract.”

It took a moment for his words to make sense. “The contract?”

“Consider it a second positive note.”

I tucked my legs underneath me and stared at him. “Are you serious?”

He laughed a little. “Yeah.”

He’d rendered me speechless, at least for a minute. “Thank you.”

And I had my permission to dig at Kilkarten.

So I wrote to Dr. Sam Gregory, the Dublin specialist I’d always meant to contact for the electrical resistivity survey. He came down on Wednesday. He brought two assistants, grad students my age, and we spent three afternoons walking over Kilkarten, staking the land with metal probes and taking readings of the voltage. The survey created a map that showed the resistivity of the land. If we had any large, subsurface features, they’d show up.

Not much showed up.

I’d hoped for a very obvious footprint of a ship, but nothing indicated that strongly. There were some areas that looked promising enough to dig units there, but not what I’d been hoping for. The entire northwestern quadrant of the site was impenetrable by radar because the soil was too dense, so that was a waste.

It would be fine, I was sure. I’d just sort of wanted Jeremy to arrive and to be able to say, “Look! Here it is! I found Ivernis!”

However, I had good news for Mike. “Oh, hey,” I said as we lay out on the grass, and his head rested in my lap. “No weapons.”