same kind of plank-and-sawhorse worktables that she herself had used so often. The clearing itself looked newly created, dotted with fresh-cut stumps of trees. At its edges there were piles of cuttings that were just beginning to rot, and on the opposite side of the clearing from where Rob had just parked the Explorer a shirtless man was hacking away at the undergrowth with a vicious-looking machete. A few yards to the man’s left Katharine spotted what looked like a trailhead. “Does that lead to the site?”
Rob nodded. “From here, we walk. It’s about another two hundred yards farther, but there’s no way to get a headquarters any closer to the actual dig.”
“Before we go up, may I take a look at what you’ve found so far?”
“Absolutely.” He led her into one of the tents, where two large tables had been set up. One of them was still empty, and the other displayed only a dozen artifacts, consisting of little more than roughly worked pieces of lava.
“How long have you been working here?” Katharine asked, picking up a smoothly worn oblong object that looked no different from hundreds of other primitive grinding stones she’d seen.
“Two months,” Rob told her. “And I’ve been pretty much on hold since you agreed to come. Been spending most of my time in a village out past Hana.”
Katharine picked up another of the objects, turned it over, and again saw nothing particularly unusual about it. “Let’s go up and see what you’ve got.”
The path leading up to the site was steep and rocky. “How’d you ever find it in the first place?” Katharine asked as she stepped over a rotting log and tested the solidity of the ground on the other side before she shifted her full weight to it.
“I didn’t. One of Yoshihara’s gardeners was looking for a particular kind of fern up here, and he found one of the artifacts you saw back in the tent. Even after he brought me up, it took us a week before we were really sure we’d found something.”
Fifty yards farther on they came into yet another clearing. This one, though very small, had been carved meticulously out of the rain forest, and Katharine could tell at a glance that the crew who had cleared it had been careful to disturb nothing on the floor of the forest. Except that the site wasn’t actually on the floor of the forest at all, but on a ledge high up in one of the myriad tiny ravines that scarred this side of the mountain. A few yards farther up Katharine could hear the sound of a waterfall cascading into a pool — the alluring cascade in Rob’s photos, she decided. The stream that drained the pool twisted through the bottom of the ravine.
“There was a vent up here, back when Haleakala was active,” Rob explained. “Most of the ravines in this area are the result of erosion, but this one’s different. It seems to have been formed by the volcano itself.” He pointed to some yellowish deposits on an overhanging rock. “You can see the sulfur, which wouldn’t be here if it had been formed by erosion.”
Katharine moved closer. “You can still smell it! Are you sure the vent isn’t active?”
“This is the year they declare Haleakala extinct,” he told her. “There hasn’t been any activity for two hundred years.”
“Two hundred years is nothing, geologically speaking,” Katharine reminded him.
“A nanosecond on an archaeologist’s clock. But if the volcano boys say it’s extinct, who am I to argue?”
Shrugging, Katharine shifted her attention to a rough circle of stones. It had not yet been completely uncovered, but even half buried, it was clear the rocks formed a fire pit. “You’re going to want to be careful excavating that,” she warned Rob. “You should be able to get some very datable material out of it.”
“What do you mean, ‘I should be careful’?” Rob asked. “I specialize in architecture, remember? Polynesian architecture.” His glance scraped the rough rocks. “And I don’t call this architecture. I call this a campsite.” He smiled, his eyes taking on their mischievous twinkle. “Which is why I called you, and why I am paying you a king’s ransom. Time to get out your little picks and brushes, Kath.” His smile broadened into a wide grin. “And be careful as you excavate it,” he added. “Someone told me there might be some very datable material in it. But the real reason you’re here is this,” he said, his tone serious now, as he stooped down to peel back a sheet of plastic that had been spread over an area a few yards from the fire pit.
Katharine exhaled sharply.
Bones.
No more deeply excavated than the fire pit, they barely showed above the surface, but even what little earth had been peeled away revealed what Katharine instantly recognized as the occipital area of a skull and part of a jaw. When she dropped down to her hands and knees to explore the bones with a slender dental pick she fished out of her backpack, Rob crouched down next to her.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Katharine, already concentrating on the nearly buried bones, hardly heard him, and several seconds passed before she answered his question.
Seconds during which a strange feeling gripped her.
Though she had no clear idea why, and though she could barely see them yet, she was certain that there was something wrong with these bones.
Something very wrong.
CHAPTER 6
“You’re sure you don’t want me to drive you?” Katharine asked.
Michael stifled a groan. It had been bad enough on Friday, when she insisted on going with him to the school to register. It wasn’t like it was any big deal — all he had to do was fill out a couple of forms, and then they transferred all his records from New York through the computer. She’d only had to sign one form, and he could have brought it home, had her sign it over the weekend, and taken it back this morning. But no — she’d had to stand there peering over his shoulder like he was in the fourth grade or something, while all the kids who’d come into the office stared at him like he was some kind of geek who couldn’t even get himself into school without his mommy holding his hand.
And now she wanted to drive him to school on the first day.
“I think I can walk to the bus stop, Mom,” he said. “It’s right at the end of the driveway, remember?”
“Just asking,” Katharine told him, glancing at the clock and picking up her backpack. “I can drop you at the bus stop if you’re ready.”
Michael shook his head. “I’ve got half an hour before the bus.”
“Then you can clean up the kitchen, okay? And I’ll see you tonight.” Kissing him on the cheek, she made her exit before Michael had a chance to argue.
A moment later he heard the engine of the nearly worn-out car that Rob Silver had loaned them grinding in protest as she tried to start it. For a minute it sounded as if the battery was going to give up before the engine caught, but then he saw a great puff of exhaust burst from the tailpipe, and the battered four-wheel-drive Explorer jerked down the drive toward the road.
Finally safe from the embarrassment of having his mother drive him to school, Michael cleaned up the breakfast dishes, ignored the mess in his room, stuffed his gym clothes, running shoes, and a notebook into his book bag, and got to the end of the driveway just as a mud-streaked yellow bus appeared around the uphill bend.
Climbing onto the bus, he spotted an empty seat near the back of the crowded vehicle and started down the aisle.
He felt every eye on the bus watching him.
Watching him, and sizing him up.
He could almost hear the word that was going through their minds:
Haole.
“White.”
Josh Malani had warned him it was going to happen. “Some of the kids even got a special day here,” he’d said on Saturday while giving Michael his first lesson in body surfing. “Kill a haole day. ’Course they don’t actually
