Birthright

held out a hand. “Make it Lana. How soon do you want to talk to the press, Doctor?”
    “Callie.” She pursed her lips and considered. “Let me touch base with Leo, find a place to stay. How’s that motel outside of town?”
    “Adequate.”
    “I’ve done lots worse than adequate. It’ll do for a start. Okay, let me do some groundwork. You got a number where I can reach you?”
    “My cell phone.” Lana pulled out a card, scribbled down the number. “Day and night.”
    “What time’s the evening news?”
    “Five-thirty.”
    Callie looked at her watch, calculated. “Should be enough time. If I can move things along, I’ll be in touch by three.”
    She started back toward her car. Lana scrambled to catch up. “Would you be willing to speak at a town meeting?”
    “Leave that to Leo. He’s better with people than I am.”
    “Callie, let’s be sexist.”
    “Sure.” Callie leaned on the fence a moment. “Men are pigs whose every thought and action is dictated by the penis.”
    “Well, that goes without saying, but what I mean in this case is people are going to be a lot more intrigued and interested in a young, attractive female archaeologist than a middle-aged man who works primarily in a lab.”
    “Which is why I’ll talk to the TV crew.” Callie boosted herself over the fence. “And don’t shrug off Leo’s impact. He was a digger when you and I were still sucking our thumbs. He’s got a passion for it that gets people stirred up.”
    “Will he come in from Baltimore?”
    Callie looked back at the site. Pretty flatland, the charm of the creek and the sparkle of the pond. The green and mysterious woods. Yes, she could understand why people would want to build houses there, settle in by the trees and water.
    She suspected they had done so before. Thousands ofyears before.
    But this time around they were going to have to look elsewhere.
    “You couldn’t keep him away. By three,” she said again, and swung into the Rover.
    She was already yanking out her cell phone and dialing Leo when she drove away.
    “Leo.” She shifted the phone so she could bump up the air-conditioning. “We struck gold.”
    “Is that your scientific opinion?”
    “I had a femur and a spear point practically fall in my lap. And this is in some hole dug by heavy equipment where people have been tramping around like it was Disneyland. We need security, a team, equipment, and we need that grant. We need them all ASAP.”
    “I’ve already pulled the chain on the funds. You take on some students from the U of M.”
    “Grad students or undergrads?”
    “Still being discussed. The university wants first crack at studying some of the artifacts. And I’m doing some fast talking with the Natural History Museum. I’ve got a buzz going, Blondie, but I’m going to need a hell of a lot more than a couple of bones and a spear point to keep it up.”
    “You’re going to get it. It’s a settlement, Leo. I can feel it. And the soil conditions? Jesus, they couldn’t be much better. We may have some hitches with this Dolan. The girl lawyer’s pretty firm on that. Small-town politics at play here. We need some big guns to get his cooperation. Campbell wants to call a town meeting.”
    Callie glanced wistfully at the pizza parlor before she made the turn to head out of town to the motel. “I drafted you for that.”
    “When?”
    “Sooner the better. I want to set up an interview with the local TV late afternoon.”
    “It’s early for the media, Callie. We’re just gathering ammo. You don’t want to break the story before we’ve outlined strategy.”
    “Leo, it’s midsummer. We’ve only got a few monthsbefore we’ll have to pack it in for the winter. Media exposure puts the pressure on Dolan. He doesn’t step back and let us work, he refuses to donate the finds or pushes to resume his development, he comes off as a greedy asshole with no respect for science or history.”
    She pulled into the motel’s lot, parked and, shifting the phone again, grabbed her pack.
    “There’s not that much you can tell them.”
    “I can make a little seem like a lot,” she said as she climbed out and went to the back of the Rover to pull out her duffel.
    With that slung over her shoulder, she pulled out her cello case. “Trust me on this part, and get me a team. I’ll take the students, use them for grunts until I see what they’re made of.”
    She yanked open the door of the lobby, stepped up to the desk. “I need a