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nearby made her suspicious. Odd. Crockett kept a tidy site.
    A rancid odor grew as she turned the back corner of the tent and stepped into a pool of congealed blood. She quickly took in the blood spatter that had dried to brown across the tent canvas.
    “Garin!”
    She tracked the path of blood until she came to the edge of the pitoned-off dig square. A body had been rolled into the four-foot-deep area, which measured about sixteen by twenty feet. Earth had been hastily shoveled over it, but the booted feet, hands and the back of a dark-haired head showed.
    “That is not good,” Garin said as he sidled up to her and looked over the scene. “You think it’s the dig supervisor you wanted to talk to?”
    “Someone looking for me?”
    They turned in unison, Garin with pistol extended, to find Jonathan Crockett standing behind them. Holding an AK-47.

4

    “I believe my Kalashnikov trumps your Glock,” Crockett said to Garin.
    Annja felt Garin’s elbow twitch against her arm. He was the last man Crockett—any man—should issue a challenge like that to.
    “You think so?” Garin held the pistol barrel skyward and finger off the trigger.
    Crockett gestured with the machine gun for Garin to toss the pistol aside. Annja knew that wasn’t going to happen.
    Before Garin could react, Annja reached into the otherwhere, felt the sword’s power tingle in her fingers and clasped the grip. She swung out, sweeping the blade across Crockett’s wrist and taking him by surprise. The man yelped. The machine gun dropped to the dusty ground. In an agile move, Garin bent to claim it.
    Crockett clutched his bleeding wrist. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he winced with the pain. He looked to Annja, but she’d released Joan of Arc’s sword back to where she’d found it.
    “Nice,” Garin said. He hooked the Kalashnikov under his arm and held both guns on the whimpering professor. “She’s my backup,” he said with a nod toward her. “Who would have thought I’d need her in such an innocuous place? Pothunters shouldn’t play with guns.”
    “ Pothunter is a derogatory term,” Annja corrected him. Had Crockett turned into a merciless pothunter? Had he killed the man in the pit for his own gain?
    James Harlow had intimated he didn’t trust Crockett, yet she’d brushed if off as all-too-common collegiate rivalry.
    “I was trying to protect myself.” Crockett sank to his knees, clutching his wrist against his chest. Blood soaked into his white shirt. “They came so quickly. Yesterday evening. Hours after you left, Annja.” He gasped. “Took everything. When I heard the vehicle drive up just now I thought they’d returned to finish me off, so I hid in the gorse.”
    “You didn’t kill this man,” Annja stated.
    Crockett shook his head. “No, they did. Yesterday.”
    And the body was still lying out in the open? Annja winced. Why hadn’t Crockett contacted the authorities? And for that matter, why was he still here?
    “Who are they? ” Garin demanded. “Did they take your field phone with them, too?”
    “Let’s move him inside the tent for some first aid. We need to bandage your wrist before you lose too much blood,” she said to Crockett, then with a glance in the direction they had come from, added, “We should take him to the hospital.”
    She met Garin’s fierce stare, leaving her in no doubt that he thought her suggestion a bad one. Cleaning up the mess by taking out the professor with a bullet to his heart would probably be his suggestion. Joan of Arc wasn’t into vigilante justice. Neither was she.
    “No hospitals,” Crockett said as Annja led him into the tent.
    “Why? You got something against hospitals?”
    “My sister died five years ago when she caught an infection following surgery.”
    “I’m sorry. But we do need to alert the authorities to the dead man. He’s been lying in the pit since yesterday?”
    “No police, either,” Crockett pleaded as she helped him settle onto the cot, and