Page 49 of Obsession

“I’m trying to deal with some of my anger issues. And if you could find it in your heart to forgive me...” He let the request dangle, then he smiled. “And maybe give me a second chance? Unless you have something going on with Sam.”

She didn’t know what to do with this turn of events. It was easier to lump Trey in the bad-guy category than to think of himin a new light. “I forgave you months ago,” she said. “But as for dating again, I’m not dating anyone for a while.”

He stiffened and glanced toward Sam. “Doesn’t look that way to me, but if you change your mind, you know where to find me,” he said.

“Uh, sure. Thanks.” Time would tell if Trey had made a real commitment to changing or if he was conning her again. After he left, Emma gathered the tools she needed in the pit.

Nate and Sam approached, and the sheriff eyed her hand. “Do you think you can work with your wrist wrapped like that?”

“I’ll use my left hand for most of it, and I brought a bread wrapper to put over the bandage to keep it clean.” She glanced toward the tent over the pit. “Can I start digging?”

“Yep. Everyone’s finished.” Nate cocked his head. “But could Corey Chandler have actually stopped us?”

“I don’t know, but he certainly could have delayed us.”

Nate made a face. “Then I need to stop by and see Judge Thorpe sometime today to make sure he understands this is a crime scene just in case Corey changes his mind.” Then the sheriff nodded toward Chris and his 35mm camera. “He’ll be staying with you today and will maintain the chain of evidence should you find anything.”

“If you’re shorthanded,” Sam said, “I can document everything.”

“I’m not that shorthanded. In the unlikely event we find evidence to make an arrest, it’ll be important that I used my deputy to maintain a clear chain for court—it’ll be one less link to account for,” Nate said. “I would like to use a forensic anthropologist instead of Emma, but then we’d have to delay the investigation since Southern Miss can’t send anyone for two weeks.”

Sam turned to Emma. “I can help you,” he said. “You can start at one end, and I’ll take the other. It’ll take half the time that way.”

His presence in the pit would distract her. “Uh, let me explorea little first. The area is kind of small for both of us, especially right now. I promise, if I have trouble with my hand, you can take my place, and I’ll direct you. Right now, you can be my surgical nurse.”

“What do you mean?”

She grinned. “When I call for a tool, you can hand it to me.”

“You mean I can be your gofer,” he said dryly.

“I thought nurse sounded nicer.” Emma slipped the plastic wrapper over her hand. The easy banter they sometimes slipped into reminded her of times past, times she missed. After wrapping rubber bands around her forearm to secure the plastic, she grabbed a handful of orange flags to mark her work area and hopped down into the pit, where the earthy scent was much stronger. Emma frowned when her feet sank into loose dirt.

“There’s a loose layer of dirt here,” she said.

Sam peered into the pit. “Our thief probably scattered dirt to cover up any impression left in the ground.”

“Let’s just hope he didn’t have time to pack the dirt, and I can find an impression of what he was trying to hide. Let me stake a grid, and then you can hand me the mason trowel and a bucket.”

Once she marked the first area she planned to work, Emma looked up at Sam, who held a trowel in each hand, one flat, the other beveled.

“Which one?”

“The flat one.” Over the years, Emma had found the pointed, flat-bladed trowel usually used in bricklaying was the best tool for scraping loose soil away. “And hand me one of the brushes.”

She set to work, scraping away a thin layer of dirt and depositing it in a bucket. Half an hour later, she straightened up and peeled her jacket off. Working with only one hand was difficult. She called Chris over. “I’m back to the hard ground in this section. Do you want to photograph the area?”

He moved in to take photos with a zoom lens, and Emma stepped out of his way. When he finished, she went back to work.If there was an indentation, the loose dirt would have filled it in, which made a brush the best tool to use. She swept the section carefully, her pulse increasing when two narrow trenches appeared. She’d done enough archeological work to know she was looking at impressions of a tibia and fibula.

Emma stared at the shallow trenches, heaviness settling in her chest. It was one thing to think she was working on a grave site, and quite another to actually see evidence of it. “Okay, gentlemen, I do believe we have leg bone impressions here,” she said grimly and continued to brush dirt away.

“Are you sure?” Sam asked.

“Unfortunately, yes. Help me out so Chris can photograph it.”

While he took pictures, she grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler the sheriff had provided. Her hope that this wasn’t a grave was gone, and given the extensive work completed twenty years ago, it didn’t belong to a slave. Which meant the body had been buried in the intervening years.

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