Though he did better than I had first guessed, the unknown phoenix beat him to a bloody pulp. As the crowd booed, Nariti staggered out of the cage. I turned to join him but the phoenix caught me and dragged me close.
His voice was a growl most unbecoming from a bird. "I heard you say you have a meeting, you prissy bitch. That's the only reason I didn't break his fucking neck. Didn't think you'd want to be mourning your boyfriend during your little business luncheon tomorrow."
I slapped his hand away and withdrew, ignoring him. Instead, I followed my wingmate over to the bar and settled in to have a drink, having decided that I had sorely earned one.
Chapter 2
Olivia
My shower was freezing by the time I got out of it, but I desperately didn't want to go into work today. The big brass would be bustling around, meeting with the billionaires that wanted to push us out of the project. I knew I was being irrational but even as I dried off, I sighed.
They knew that we had every right to investigate to the fullest extent of the law. That was fine with the Fontaines, a big pet food manufacturing company that had taken the world by storm a while back. It wasn't fine with their lawyers or with the pet food company itself, which kept begging us for a timeline in which we would be done.
The discovery of the newest set of fossils had been nothing more than a bunch of shells from mollusks that still had relatives roaming the world today. It wasn't impressive or shocking, but the first fossil had been. And we had to keep searching for more of those.
"I don't want to end their building project," I told my locket as I closed the clasp around my neck. "But if it's the right thing to do, I'm doing it." I pulled my clothes on and hid the necklace beneath them, touching it and whisper, "Love you, Mama."
Three years she'd been gone but it felt like three days. The pain never really went away, but neither did my fury.
With a press of a button my phone, I summoned a rideshare to my house. I couldn't remember if it was Uber or Lyft or some off-brand one that didn't operate in any city larger than a few stoplights and it didn't really matter to me. The bed and breakfast was a nice place to spend a few weeks, but I didn't want to live here the rest of my life.
I stepped out of the car and choked on the swampy air. In the short time it'd taken to get from my room to work, it felt like the temperature had tripled. Though I had wanted to work outdoors my entire life, and I'd always had a passion for the past, I didn't want to die of heatstroke, either. First stop? Check-in under the shadiest tent we had up.
"Olivia, sweetheart, there you are," chirped a lean woman in a lab coat. "Did the traffic keep you? It's been hell for most of us."
No doubt it had. They had decided to stay downtown in a place that looked like it served caviar for breakfast. I was much happier on the quieter suburbs, even if the commute took a little longer. "Yep. You know how these places are. You're going along no problem for ten miles then all of a sudden, huge traffic jam for no reason. Where am I today?"
"Managing site 16 with Dr. Pender. Be careful. She had a bad night last night."
I tilted my head, asking the question without words.
"Boyfriend broke up with her. Too much time apart, never any time for him; supposedly. But, and you didn't hear this from me, last I knew he was dating his own secretary when Nicole was out of the office," she said.
They always made long-distance relationships seem so romantic on those dating app commercials, but I'd seen time and time again as people failed to make a match when they were a few states away. Doctor Nicole Pender had been away from her boyfriend for the past six and a half years on regular trips like these. It was no wonder the guy was tired of her never-there lifestyle. I didn't think I could do that long, either.
Not that I knew anything about relationships. I wasn't social enough to have a social life, not quite dead enough to be studied by my cohorts. I made my way down to site 16 and rejoiced that we had a tent down there, too. "Hey Nicole."
She was as blonde as I was and covered in dust up to her elbows, but when she saw me, she smiled. "Olly, aren't you a sight for sore eyes."
"I heard about Larry," I said, walking down the ladder to join her.
The light in her eyes went out. "Oh. Jennifer?"
"Yeah. Told me as I was coming in. Probably telling everybody. I'm sorry," I shrugged. "But I never thought a lot of him anyway. He was a jerk in high school."
She shook her head and squatted back down in the filth, brushing at some fragment that looked like it might be a bone. More than likely, it was some old pottery or a piece of a septic drain. We'd found an entire leech field the other day and had to call in hazmat to deal with it. You never knew what was lurking in those
