Page 135 of Till Death Do Us Part

I rolled my shoulders, the tension in my neck matching the tightness in my chest. “You can access it from your home computer?”

“Afraid not,” he said. “Only from the museum.”

“Grab your keys,” I said. “Let’s fucking go.”

“No problem.” He nodded. “But can I change my clothes first?” He looked down at his pants.

“Get the fuck outta here.” I pointed to his room with my gun.

He walked backward.

Chapter48

Roma

“Maggio!”

It took three calls of my name to get me to look up from my phone and peek outside of my tent.

Beatriz. She and a few of my fellow paleontologists were staring at something they found around the roped-off dig site.

She looked up and our eyes met.

“Roma!” She waved. “You need to see this!”

“Be there in a second,” I called back.

I looked back down at the picture on my phone, not believing my eyes. My husband in front of my father. Babbo had a gun pressed to his temple. Lo tried to send a video, but reception out here was slim. I hadn’t even bothered to check my messages in a few days.

A text was underneath it.

Lo:I know you probably won't respond, but Babbo had dinner with John after this...in the dining room.

Tears streamed down my face, but I hurriedly wiped them off. I composed myself and stepped out of the tent and into the hot sunshine. We’d been at it for seven months in Argentina, after Beatriz and her team’s prospecting operation turned out successful. They found fragments of fossils on the surface, which meant there was a good chance there was more below.

There was.

We’d found the remains of anArgentinosaurus, a herbivore, and one of the largest land mammals of all time. She was a hundred and twenty feet long, about the size of a tennis court in length. Not far from where she was found, the fossil of aGiganotosauruswas excavated.

TheGiganotosauruswas considered one of the biggest carnivores. It’s lesser known than the T-rex, because its bite force was three times less, but it was no less impressive. It weighed around seventeen thousand pounds and measured around forty-three feet.

“Do you see this?” Beatriz nodded to an area further out.

Claw marks I could fit in.

She held onto my arm, and I smiled.

“Foreplay,” I said.

“Can you imagine?” she breathed.

“How loud it was when they mated? I suspectloud.”

Like the exhibit had explained, it was suspected dinosaurs had similar mating dances to birds. They made love and war with ceremony. So much energy and showing off. There was no way they were quiet when they actually mated. Not after all that fanfare.

“Hot.”

We both started laughing. It brought back memories of Cassio at the museum on Valentine’s Day, when he was there for the mating exhibit. I tried not to think about it, though. Cassio only brought me to John, and my heart was barely hanging on as it was.

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