She still had the most amazing eyes he'd ever seen.
'Philip,' she whispered. 'You shouldn't be here.'
'He's beautiful, Jess.' He nodded to the baby. 'How old is he by now?'
'Phil...'
They stood in an awkward silence for several long moments.
'You remember what today is?' Preston finally asked.
'Of course,' she whispered. 'Do you honestly think I could ever forget?'
He shook his head and looked across the lawn toward the forest.
'What happened to us, Jess?'
'I'm not getting into this with you again.'
'Does he at least treat you well?'
'Who? Richard?' Anger flashed in her eyes. 'He's emotionally stable, physically available, and isn't hell-bent on his own systematic destruction. And I don't cringe when he touches me. What more could a girl want?'
'But does he make you happy?'
She sighed. 'Of course, Phil. I wouldn't have married him if he didn't.' The baby started to cry, and quickly received the bottle. Jessie shuffled softly from one foot to the other in a practiced motion Preston remembered well. Only it had been with a different child, in a different lifetime entirely. 'Why are you really here?'
'I needed to know that you were okay.' He glanced back at her and offered a weak smile before looking away again. It was still impossible to think of her as anything other than the woman he had loved for the better part of his life, since the first time he had laid eyes on her. It hurt deep down to think of her as anything other than his wife. 'That's all.'
He had to turn away so she wouldn't see the shimmer of tears in his eyes, and used the momentum to spur his feet back toward his car.
'Phil.'
He paused, blinked back the tears, and turned to face her again. Even with the recent addition of the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes, she was still the most stunning woman he had ever seen. And the baby seemed to make her glow. He couldn't bring himself to ask her his name.
'Are you all right?' she asked.
He shook his head, releasing streams of tears down his cheeks. No, he would never be all right ever again.
'Do you still blame me, Jessie?'
'You invited the danger into our home, whether intentionally or not,' she whispered. 'I will always blame you.'
'So will I,' he said, and struck off toward his car again. 'I hope you have a good life, Jess. You deserve to be happy.'
He heard her start to softly cry as she closed the door.
'Don't ever let him out of your sight,' Preston said. 'Ever.'
His heart broke once more as he walked away from the love of his life.
III
Les stood beside one of the cairns in the outer ring and watched his students perform their tasks as they had been taught. Jeremy guided the magnetometer in straight lines between the short walls that formed the spokes of the wagon wheel design. He wore the sensing device's harness over his shoulders and held the receptor, which looked like an industrial vacuum cleaner, a foot above the ground. It interpreted the composition of the ground based on its magnetic content, and forwarded its readings into a program on Les's laptop that created a three- dimensional map of the earth to roughly ten meters in depth. Every type of rock had varying content of ferrous material and left a different magnetic signature, as did extinguished campfires, the foundations of prehistoric ruins, and various artifacts lost through the ages. Often, one ancient site was built upon another when a more modern culture eclipsed its forebear, like the Acropolis in Athens rose from the rubble of a Mycenaean megaron. If there was an older structure beneath this one, they would be able to find and map it without so much as brushing away the topsoil, but of greater importance were the relics left behind by the Native Americans who had meticulously crafted this ornate design. Hopefully, these buried clues would provide some indication of the function of the medicine wheel, the identity of its creators, and the reason it had been erected in the first place.
The magnetometer would also serve a secondary function he had chosen not to vocalize. Primitive societies often built cairns to mark the burial mounds of individuals of significance. If there were indeed corpses interred under their feet, then the magnetometer would reconstruct their unmistakable signals as well in hazy shades of gray. Fortunately, they had yet to isolate any remains. Based on the condition of the stones and the level of preservation, he feared any bodies they discovered might not be as ancient as he might prefer.
So far, the only signals had come from rocks under the soil, in no apparent pattern and of varying mineral content, save one square object roughly a foot down, midway between where he stood now and the central ring of stones. Breck and Lane had cordoned off the square-yard above it with string and long metal tent pegs, and had begun to excavate in centimeter levels. They were only six inches down, and had yet to sift through anything more exciting than the coarse dirt.
'I still don't think this thing is working right,' Jeremy said. 'I can't seem to get rid of that strange, streaky feedback a couple yards down.'
'I told you that you were putting it together wrong,' Breck said.
'You could always switch with me and lug this thing around, princess.'
Les rolled his eyes and tuned them out. Their bickering was grating on his nerves. Besides, he needed to try to sort out his thoughts, to figure out exactly what was so wrong with this site.
'There's another one over here!' Jeremy called. 'Same size, same shape, and same location within this section.'
'Mark it and try the next section over,' Les said. Two could be a coincidence. Three was a pattern. 'Let me know immediately if it's there.'
What was roughly five inches square, half an inch thick, and crafted from metal? He would know soon enough, he supposed, but the objects made him nervous. The Bighorn Medicine Wheel predated the development of Native American metallurgical skills. If what they uncovered was manmade, then this site wasn't nearly as old as it had been designed to appear.
The wind shifted, bringing with it a scent that crinkled his nose. It smelled like something had crawled off into the forest to die. He stepped around the cairn and walked into the wind, but the smell dissipated. A cursory inspection of the forest's edge didn't reveal the carcass he had expected to find. Perhaps the detritus had already accumulated over it. The breeze waned, and he returned to his post, where he resumed his supervisory duties.
'Right here,' Jeremy said. 'Just like the other two. What do you want me to do?'
'For now, just mark it and keep going with the magnetometer. I want to map as much of the site as we can before sundown.'
'I could just dig it up really quickly.'
'That's not how it works and you know it.'
Les sighed. The impatience of youth.
'Can't blame a guy for trying,' Jeremy said with a shrug, and went back to work.
Another gust of wind brought the stench back to Les. The breeze made a whistling sound as it passed through the stacked stones of the cairn.
He crept closer and the smell intensified. The source of the vile reek was definitely somewhere under the cairn. He leaned right up against it and tried to peer through the tiny gaps between the stones. At first, he saw only shadows, so he crouched and inspected the lower portion, nearer the ground. He gagged and covered his mouth and nose with his dirty hand.
There was a dark recess behind the stacked rocks. He could barely discern a smooth section of something
