Unmasked E-Book

Mayer Dale

• Herausgeber: Valley Publishing Ltd.
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Psychic Visions - Book 14

Childhood dreams can come true—so can nightmares…

Lacey always dreamed of a trip to Pompeii but never thought it would happen, until her cousin calls out of the blue, asking if Lacey would like to replace their photographer on their archeological dig.

Sebastian wasn’t expecting Lacey to be, well … Lacey. But he’s intrigued from the start, and then he sees what she can do— even before she does.

As the images of the past rise in front of Lacey, taxing her artistic ability to document them, strange events start happening. Without reason, the atmosphere on the dig shifts to something supernatural that scares her, intrigues her, then consumes her.

For Sebastian these events all bring back memories of the worst dig in his life, and he can see history repeating itself. He needs to stop it this time. He must protect his team and his friends, but especially Lacey … before everyone dies—just like they did last time.

Leseprobe

Unmasked

A Psychic Visions NovelBook #14

Dale Mayer

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About This Book

Complimentary Download

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Sneak Peek from Deep Beneath

Author’s Note

Complimentary Download

About the Author

Copyright Page

About This Book

Childhood dreams can come true—so can nightmares …

Lacey always dreamed of a trip to Pompeii but never thought it would happen, until her cousin calls out of the blue, asking if Lacey would like to replace their photographer on their archeological dig.

Sebastian wasn’t expecting Lacey to be, well … Lacey. But he’s intrigued from the start, and then he sees what she can do—even before she does.

As the images of the past rise in front of Lacey, taxing her artistic ability to document them, strange events start happening. Without reason, the atmosphere on the dig shifts to something supernatural that scares her, intrigues her, then consumes her.

For Sebastian these events all bring back memories of the worst dig in his life, and he can see history repeating itself. He needs to stop it this time. He must protect his team and his friends, but especially Lacey … before everyone dies—just like they did last time.

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Chapter 1

Lacey Paulson stepped outside of the Naples International Airport building, stepping away from the crowds where she could take a moment to realize she truly was in Italy. Not just Italy but Naples, almost at her last stop, Pompeii. She was a long way from Kansas. Lacey tilted her face to the sun and took a deep breath—loving the hot dusty air. Inside, she wanted to shout and cheer and scream for joy. This was her dream trip, the one she never thought she’d take.

Lacey wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her cousin Chana phoning to say their photographer had just quit on her archaeological dig. And that Lacey could come join Chana for a couple of weeks this summer and take the other photographer’s place. Lacey had screamed yes. What perfect timing. She was a teacher, and her summer holidays had just started. But she’d have done anything to make her dream trip finally happen.

Ever since she was a little girl, she’d dreamed of Pompeii—as in seriously dreamed of that place.

She didn’t understand why, but her fascination was soul deep. The older she got, the more Pompeii had taken over her life.

This was an opportunity of a lifetime. And her first trip overseas. Her first true vacation in years. And this one was paid for. What luck!

She’d never had a chance to go into archaeology, even though she was a history buff. Still, her hobby was photography, hence Chana’s suggestion. Lacey slung her duffel bag over her shoulder and walked toward where all the cabs were lined up. Chana had said someone from the dig would pick her up. Lacey stood still, her gaze glancing across the multitude of faces, wondering how she was supposed to find anybody in this crowd. There—a big white placard with her name on it caught her eye. She walked toward what looked to be a twenty-seven, twenty-eight-year-old male, still dusty from being on the dig, but his smile was bright when he saw her.

“You must be Lacey,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Tom Masters, one of the interns working the dig. Chana sent me to collect you.”

Lacey gave his hand a good shake and smiled back. “I’m glad to see you. I haven’t traveled much, so I was worried how I would find you.”

He chuckled and motioned at the vehicle behind him. “Not a problem. Come on. Let’s get out of the crowds and head to the apartment.”

“We can’t go to the dig first?”

He shook his head as he turned on the engine and carefully pulled the vehicle out into the traffic. Of course many others were leaving the airport too. “No, it’s after five o’clock. There’s no point. Chana should be at the apartment when we get there. Hopefully there will be time before we go out for dinner. Gives you a chance to freshen up or to take a nap to help with jet lag.”

Lacey nodded, holding back her disappointment. What did she expect? Of course it was too late today. “How’s the weather these days?”

“For the work we do, it’s not too bad. It’ll get hotter and dustier as the summer deepens. But, at the moment, it’s quite nice out there.”

“And where exactly are you working?”

“We enter at the Stabian Gate then continue into one of the back, less traveled corners. We’re not interested in a dig with all the big mansions and temples. We’re doing the work on the common people. It’s a much less popular area of Pompeii for both archaeologists and tourists. But, for us, it’s very satisfactory to uncover the day-to-day routines of the people who supported the city of Pompeii.”

Lacey sagged back in her seat with a happy sigh. “Sounds fascinating.”

“It is,” he said, “even for those of us who work here day in and day out. It’s like opening small windows into people’s lives, seeing what they’re doing, and how they did it, even though it was thousands of years ago.”

“I’ve been dreaming about coming to Pompeii for decades,” she said. “I’m sure that’s the only reason Chana invited me.”

“She speaks of you very highly and very affectionately,” Tom said with a laugh. He turned the vehicle onto a big roundabout, caught another right-hand exit and kept going. “I think she’s really looking forward to your visit.”

“Not as much as I am,” Lacey said, staring out the side window, watching so much new and old whip by, enjoying the surrounding areas. “It’s really beautiful here.”

“Have you ever been to Italy?”

“No,” she admitted. “I had always planned to visit, but I never seemed to quite have the time or the money.”

“Right. Both of those things need to happen at the same time for vacations. Unless, of course, you find a way to make the holiday your job.”

“Which would be absolutely wonderful,” she said, “but hasn’t happened so far.”

“Are you looking for paid work over here?” he asked in surprise. “I mean, there’s lots of work, but it’s usually internships. And often you have to be an archaeology student to qualify for most of the ancient sites.”

“Understood,” she said, her gaze never leaving the world outside the window. “I haven’t been seriously looking. It was just in the back of my mind.” She pointed out several buildings. “The architecture here is something else.”

“Very different from North America, that’s for sure.”

“Where are you from?” she asked, suddenly turning to look at her companion.

“I’m from Indiana, but I’ve been over here now for most of the past eight months. Long enough for it to be home but not so long that I’ve lost that joyous awareness of how lucky I am to be doing what I love.”

She appreciated that about him. “That’s a good thing,” she said. “Most people forget very quickly.”

Tom drove in silence while she gasped, oohed and aahed at the world around her. She twisted as they went past something too fast to take a close look and then bounced in her seat to lean forward and see what was happening on his side.

Finally he laughed. “I’ll be happy to take you around the city a little bit when you’re ready to do some touristy day trips.”

“And I’ll take you up on it,” she said, beaming. “I’m sad I’m only here for fourteen days.”

“Well, if you love it that much,” he said, “I’m sure you’ll find other opportunities.”

“I hope so,” she said fervently. “I’ve thought of nothing else for years and years.”

“About coming here?”

“Coming to Pompeii,” she confessed. “Sometimes I think it’s in my DNA. It started as a little girl, and that dream never disappeared.”

He slowed in the traffic, took several more corners in quick succession and said, “We’re almost there. We have several apartments we all share. There can be up to fifteen people here at any given time. But there are always a couple coming or going. You’ll be sharing a bedroom with your cousin. I hope that’s okay.”

“It’s absolutely perfect,” she assured him. “We’ve shared living spaces before.”

He nodded. “She said you’ve done some weekend trips with her when you both lived in the same town.”

“Exactly,” she said. “I was in Washington when Mount St. Helen’s blew. But I was young. That was just another reminder I needed to come to Pompeii.”

“Did you like Mount St. Helens?” he asked curiously.

She nodded. “I did, but it’s not the same as seeing an entire city reawaken after such a catastrophe.”

“And such a volcanic catastrophe is one of the reasons why I’m here,” he said slowly. “I try to never forget that what I’m doing on a dig and everything we’re learning about a place and a time was brought about by a major catastrophe with a massive loss of human life.”

That sobered her up. “I know. It’s a terrible reminder. The only way to make it any easier is to realize it happened so long ago.”

“But it could easily happen again in another location,” he said. “For all intents and purposes, the original people of Pompeii had no clue they were living on top of a massive volcano. And, when it erupted, I don’t think any of them knew how to protect themselves.”

“Do we even know now?” she asked him thoughtfully. “I guess we evacuate, but I don’t imagine it would have been very easy to have escaped a city as large as Pompeii back then. It’s not like they had vehicles to clear people out or to move the lava flowing through to the ocean in any contained manner.”

“True. There were other dangerous elements besides the lava too. The gases, the ash, the lack of oxygen, the panic … it’s amazing anyone survived. Many sites in Pompeii have been excavated, but massive amounts of the city remain undiscovered to this date.”

“But you’re not working the main tourist spots?”

“We call it the forgotten corner,” he said with a laugh. “It’s close to the Stabian Gate, but it’s a hell of a long way out of the public paths, overgrown with plants and greenery because nobody started any work thereabouts. We’re not expecting much in the way of wealthy individuals at our dig site. Like I said, we’re more interested in the way of life of the common people.”

“I like that,” Lacey said. “So often people are only concerned with the royalty of a civilization. But, in order to keep that royalty functioning, thousands of people work for them.”

“Exactly,” Tom said. Finally he pulled up in front of a small apartment building and shut off the engine. He turned and grinned. “We’re here.”

Lacey bounced out of the vehicle, reached into the back seat and grabbed her duffel bag. There she stopped and stared. “You can see the ruins from here?”

He nodded. “It’s only a couple blocks away.”

She gasped. “Oh …”

“Tomorrow,” he said firmly. He grabbed her elbow gently and nudged her toward the corner of the block. “The front entrance is around here.”

Twisting her head so she could still keep an eye on the ruins and the surrounding area, she allowed herself to be led around the corner until the ruins were out of sight. With a sad smile she said, “I guess I’ll be there tomorrow.”

He just shook his head with a smile on his face, pushed open the door to the main entrance and let her inside. “We’ll take the stairs.” He glanced down at her bag. “Do you want me to carry that?”

She shook her head. “No. I only travel with what I can carry. If I can’t lug this around the world, then I need to learn to take less.”

He shrugged as if he didn’t care and led the way upstairs.

She followed along. By the time she got to the top of the second landing, her arm had registered the extra weight. She sighed, shuffled the bag so it was slung over her other shoulder and carried it on up.

The air was even different here. She wasn’t used to the heat and humidity. And it sounded silly, but there was no dirt in the air back home, while a fine dust floated around her here.

She was thankful when Tom opened the door at the top of the landing of the third floor. She followed him into the hallway as he stepped to the door right across from the stairwell.

There he pulled out keys, unlocked the door and pushed it open. She stepped in behind him, sadly disappointed to see it wasn’t a whole lot different from a basic apartment in the States, except no carpeting was anywhere. Probably due to all the dust in this region. She wanted to experience Pompeii as authentically as possible. And yet, of course, she wanted to live in today’s contemporary world too.

Running water, electricity and cell phones weren’t something she wanted to do without. At least not for long.

He motioned toward the bedrooms and said, “Yours is on the left with your cousin.”

She walked into the bedroom on the left, saw two single beds, one messed up—evidently her cousin had been sleeping there—so Lacey put her duffel bag on the other.

As she turned around, she walked over to the window and smiled. This window showed her the entranceway to the Pompeii sites. She gave a happy sigh and returned to the living room.

She could hear voices as she stepped into the living room. She caught a look on Tom’s face. There was worry. He held out his hands, his voice whispering something she couldn’t quite hear. The woman he was talking to, her face also creased with fear, caught sight of Lacey. A serene mask immediately dropped down on the woman’s face, and then, as if realizing who the stranger was in her apartment, her face exploded with joy.

She raced over to grab a hold of Lacey. “Oh, my goodness, you’re finally here.”

The two women hugged joyously. They’d always been the best of friends. Very similar in age, with Chana about six months older.

Finally she stepped back, held Lacey by the shoulders and took a good look at her. “I’m so happy we could finally get you here.”

Lacey chuckled. “Not half as happy as I am.”

The two women hugged yet again, and then Chana turned to speak to Tom, but he had left them alone. She glanced at the front door, but it was closed.

“I’m sorry. Did I interrupt something?” Lacey asked. “I should have just stayed in our room.”

Chana chuckled. “No. It’s just there’s been a bit of an upset. We’ve had a couple accidents on the site. Tom left early today, and, of course, something else happened at the end of the day.” She shrugged. “Not a whole lot we can do about it now.” She glanced down at herself. “I need a shower before we go out for a meal in an hour or so, unless you’re really hungry now.”

“I’m fine for a little while.” She waved at her cousin. “Go. I’m sure you’re hot and dusty after a day on the excavation site.”

“That I am,” she said. “No matter how much I tell myself that I’ll take it easy, I just can’t. I end up working long physical days, and that’s just part of the job.”

Chana had said it so simply and without any anger or regret that Lacey realized just how much her cousin enjoyed her work. “I have some emails to send,” Lacey said. “You go have a shower. We’ll talk when you come out.”

Chana smiled and nodded as she walked into the bedroom. She called back, “Thanks. You’re a doll.”

Lacey waited until her cousin had whatever she needed from the room and headed into the bathroom; then Lacey went to her carry-on bag and grabbed her laptop. She took it over to the little table in the kitchen and sat down. She’d forgotten to ask her cousin for the internet password. She walked over to the bathroom door and, not hearing the water running yet, called out, “Chana, what’s the password for the internet?”

“Pompeii,” Chana called out with a laugh. “What else would it be?”

Smiling, Lacey returned to the table, sat down, typed in the password and crowed with delight when the internet connected. With that up, she opened her email and sent off several messages to friends and family, letting them know she was happily here at Chana’s apartment.

After that, she went onto Facebook and downloaded a couple photos she’d taken with her cell phone, posting them on her Facebook page with the caption, I’m finally here.

As soon as she posted it, she got comments from lots of her friends. She answered a few until she looked up to see her cousin walking in, a towel wrapped around her head and the rest of her covered in a light cotton shirt and shorts.

“Did you get on the internet?” her cousin asked.

Lacey nodded. “I did indeed.” She finished the last of her comments, shut down her social media sites, closed the lid to the laptop and smiled up at her cousin. “I don’t know how many times I’m going to say it, but thank you for inviting me.”

Her cousin smiled, waved a hand at her and said, “Are you kidding? I had to get you over here. All I’ve heard about all these years is how much you wanted to visit Pompeii.”

“When I found out you were here, I did hope I might get an opportunity to come. I could have made the trip sometime in the last five years, if I’d really tried harder. But you know what it’s like. Sometimes the money and time just don’t sync up together.”

“More like both went into caring for your mother.”

Lacey’s smile fell away. No reason to argue with Chana’s statement because it was true.

“You’ve also been working your ass off to keep your mother’s medical bills paid,” Chana said. “You deserve a vacation more than anybody I know.”

At the second mention of her mother, Lacey’s shoulders sagged. “I was happy to do it. I wish all the money had gone to something beneficial. At the end, all we could do was manage the process so she could die peacefully.”

“Finding out you’ve got breast cancer at that late stage, there really isn’t a whole lot anybody can do.”

“True, but she fought the good fight. It just dragged on to a painful end. It was sad because she was still so young.”

“She was always quite …” Chana fell silent, and then she shrugged. “There’s no real easy way to say it, but your mom never seemed to quite recover from your father’s death. Maybe, in the end, she was happy to go.”

Lacey nodded. “As much as I hate to admit it, I think you’re right. Dad died a good ten years ago, but she never got over the loss.”

“And I think, at that point, maybe slowly, but a definite shift in the roles happened between the two of you. You know we’ve talked about this many times. But your mother became more and more dependent on you, as if she was already taking that one step across the line. As if she were waiting for you to be old enough so she could join him.”

In spite of Lacey’s attempts to hold back her tears, they still burned in the corner of her eyes. She gave a misty smile to Chana. “And, in that case, I’m very happy to think she found him.”

“Me too.” Chana walked to the fridge, opened it and pulled out a bottle of wine. “Will you have a drink with me?”

“Absolutely.”

She poured two glasses of chilled white wine and brought them to the table. The women clinked their glasses gently together with a cheer to the days in front of them.

“Now that you’ve relaxed a little bit, what kind of problems are you having on the dig?”

“It’s really hard to say,” Chana said, “but definitely a couple of unexplained accidents that shouldn’t have happened. Like, a wall more than strong enough to be standing on its own suddenly falls, tools go missing, one long-handled shovel snapped in half.”

Lacey frowned.

“See what I mean? Nothing major in each event, but it adds up. Some of the locals working with us say we have a site with bad juju to it.”

Lacey laughed. “Wouldn’t that be something? Almost like a scary movie where you excavate something horrific,” she joked.

But her cousin was serious when she replied, “We have to accept that not everybody holds our views, and some people here are very superstitious. Compounding that are the thousands of buried people who lost their lives here, and it’s their graves we’re disturbing. That can bring on a lot of different beliefs and fear factors.”

“I hadn’t considered that,” Lacey said. She nodded slowly, thinking about what it would be like to live in a world where religious beliefs were being tampered with by strangers, foreigners who came into your country, your world, and were, maybe in their minds, desecrating graves of their ancestors. “I guess it’s a balancing act between the locals and the tourists and the researchers, isn’t it?”

“It is, and that’s stressful. You get down, emotionally, mentally. If some unknown person is causing trouble, you look at everyone else suspiciously,” her cousin said wearily. “This started over a week ago, after we opened up one new section of the dig. But there’s nothing new or unusual about that area. It’s another house we opened up. So far, we’ve reached a room in the back, but it’s empty as far as we can tell. Quite possibly it’s only a storage room.”

“So it’s likely not connected to what you’re doing but maybe more about the fact that you’re even in that corner perhaps?”

Chana opened her mouth to say something, but two men walked into the apartment, and the women’s conversation was over.

Chapter 2

After introductions, the group set off for the restaurant. Dinner was a little later than planned. By the time they walked into the small café and ordered, it was almost nine o’clock. But then it was Italy, and that seemed to be pretty normal for them.

Lacey was in love with everything she saw—the atmosphere, the smells, the cheerful happy voices. Very little vehicle traffic occurred in this area, but there were loads of foot traffic.

They sat outside in a small enclosed patio, people from the dig site on both sides of the long narrow table, and watched the world go by as they waited for their meals to arrive. Before the food came, the rest of the dig crew arrived. Lacey was quickly introduced to the gang and was told several more would arrive in a few days.

“It’s a popular time for vacations among the interns,” Tom said. “One’s traveled to a wedding, and one’s gone back for a family vacation.”

Lacey loved hearing the insights into these people’s lives. And this archeological-dig life seemed so normal to them. And yet, to have a job like this was anything but normal to her.

When her pasta arrived, she was enthralled at how pretty it looked. After the first bite, she fell in love all over again. “This is fantastic,” she mumbled around a mouthful.

Chana laughed. “It is, isn’t it? It’s also one of the cheapest places here. In the midst of a heavy tourist spot, we have to watch where we eat. Otherwise our budget money doesn’t go very far.”

“What about buying groceries and cooking?” Lacey asked.

“We do that too. We always have breakfast at home and make our own lunches, but dinners out are just the perfect thing at the end of a very long hot day.”

Agreed. How many times did Lacey come home from dealing with a classroom of difficult kids, their homework laden in her arms, knowing she had hours and hours of marking to do, and the last thing she wanted was to cook a full meal? “I tend to go for salads at a time like that.”

“But it’s hard to keep functioning in a physical job on just salads.”

She winced. “Never thought of that.” Her pasta was made with olive oil, fresh tomatoes and some local cheese she’d never heard of.

It was simple fare but extremely tasty. When she finished her meal, she pushed away the empty bowl, picked up her glass of wine and settled in to listen to the conversations. There had been a lot of muted discussions about the troubles at the site. She could hear some but not all of it. She was at one end of the table, so it was hard to hear the conversation at the other end. She leaned closer to her cousin and said, “They seem to be worried.”

Her cousin nodded. “They are.” But she didn’t elaborate.

Not wanting to intrude or to bring up issues while they were still in public, Lacey sat quietly. By the time they made it back to the apartment, she thought they were all returning to the same place but then the group split into two.

Back in the apartment she was still keyed up and didn’t think she could sleep, but she knew her cousin was desperately in need of rest. Not only had the worry of the day taken its toll, but Chana had put in long physical hours.

After Chana finally changed into her pajamas, she lay down in bed. “I know you probably still aren’t ready to go to sleep yet, but I’m just beat. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lacey said. “I can sit here in bed on my laptop for a little bit. I should be tired, but jet lag is a funny thing.”

“See you in the morning.”

Lacey wandered through the internet, stopping at her favorite news sites and then checking out her daily horoscope. She read them with a wry expression, always wondering how much these people got paid to make up this stuff. But, every once in a while, they noted something so on target that Lacey found it very difficult to completely dispel astrology. As it was, all her horoscopes had mentioned her upcoming trip. Sure, she was reading into it what she wanted to, but it was interesting to see what they would say. The weekly one though caused her a little concern. Danger stalks your footsteps. Be careful. Be extra-vigilant. Don’t trust anyone.

Lacey slowly closed the lid on her laptop, tucked it on the floor beside her bed and pulled the blankets over her. That last horoscope was hardly guaranteed to help her sleep. Still, she was someplace she’d been trying to get to for a long time, and it was hard for that euphoria to calm down.

Eventually though, she did fall asleep. She woke several times in the night to audible footsteps in the strange space. At one point, she got up and walked out to the living room to see who was up. But the area appeared to be empty. The bedroom door to the other room, where the two men slept in similar beds, was closed. Lacey could have sworn she’d heard somebody leave. And, of course, they could have. They could have walked right through the living room and out the door. It wasn’t like she had come out of her room immediately.

She looked out the window to see a city covered in darkness. Enough lights were all around to shine in an odd, eerie glow. But nothing was ominous about it. To her fascinated gaze, it was just one more fantasy element to her trip.

She turned and walked back to her room, feeling an odd chill to the air. She dashed into her bed and pulled the covers up. The bedroom was warm, intensely so. Eventually she fell asleep again. When she woke, it was six a.m. Her cousin was already up, making coffee from the wonderful aroma reaching her nose. Lacey quickly dressed and joined Chana in the kitchen. “What time are we starting?”

“We’ll try to be there at seven,” Chana said calmly. She poured Lacey a cup of coffee, placing it on the table. “The earlier we can work the dig, the cooler it is.”

“That works for me.” Breakfast was granola with yogurt and fresh fruit. She enjoyed it. At home she tended to either skip breakfast or to grab a piece of fruit or toast as she raced out the door. She knew it wasn’t healthy, but sometimes she didn’t care. She was so busy that breakfast seemed too much effort.

By the time they had packed up and were ready to go, she was beside herself with impatience. Her cousin just laughed at her.

“Look at you. You’d think we were going on some big trek or something. We’ll cross to the gates and head up to the site. It’s a fifteen-minute walk.”

Lacey bounced from side to side. “But that’s okay. You know how I feel about this.”

“I do indeed,” Chana said, shaking her head. “What I don’t know is why?”

“I can’t explain it rationally,” Lacey said.

On that note, they left the apartment, walked down the stairs and outside.

Lacey continued, “But I’ve had a ton of dreams, and I’ve always felt drawn to this place.”

Her cousin nodded, watched the traffic, led Lacey across the road and moments later they walked through the ruins.

Lacey gasped in joy. “Just look at it,” she cried out. “How can anybody not stop and stare?”

“I’ve done this trek a thousand times,” Chana said, “and it never fails to astound me how advanced the society was for their time and how absolutely devastating the volcano eruption was.”

“That’s the thing to remember, isn’t it?” Lacey nodded, rushing to catch up with her cousin. “All of this joy inside me came about because of a great human catastrophe.”

“Well, technically it was Mother Nature’s catastrophe with an extremely high count of human devastation.”

They kept walking until Chana pointed out Stabian Gate. “This is the entrance we use. This gate, in itself, is very famous.” She launched into a historical recital about when it was unearthed and opened up in the early 1800s, but it wasn’t until the early 1900s that people came back to do more. “Pompeii is a never-ending archaeological site,” she explained. “And still probably ninety percent of it is buried.”

At that, Lacey studied how much was open and unearthed. “It’s absolutely amazing that so much has been excavated already.”

“It is,” Chana said. “And it’s ongoing. A vast number of houses and walkways and tunnels and markets are left to be explored. But it won’t all happen in my lifetime.”

That hint of sadness in her cousin’s voice had Lacey turning to glance at her. “Is that just the passage of time you feel, marking your life, or is something else going on?”

Chana looked at her in surprise. “Nothing is going on. Why? Did I sound sad?”

“Yes, you did,” Lacey said with a laugh. “I was afraid for a moment there that you had some sort of illness you hadn’t told me about.” Her cousin didn’t answer, so Lacey pushed the issue. “If something was wrong, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” Her cousin had been off all morning, pensive, as if thinking about all the problems at the site—or something else. It was the something else that bothered Lacey. “Right?”

“Of course I would,” her cousin rushed to reassure her. “You know I would.”

Lacey frowned, not sure she believed her cousin. “How is your family, by the way?”

“You’d probably know better than me. I understand Mom attended your mother’s funeral, but I haven’t talked to her much since then.”

“I saw your mom a few weeks ago, before I left.”

“Did she know you were coming over?”

“Not until I told her,” Lacey said, remembering she found that odd too. “I wondered if you were going to tell her.”

“I don’t think at that point you had booked your flight, so I held off, in case something came up and you didn’t come.”

It was on the tip of Lacey’s tongue to ask why Chana hadn’t wanted to let her own mother know about Lacey’s arrival here in Pompeii. But it wasn’t any of Lacey’s business. Chana and her mother. There was a distance between them from way back when. They were more cordial strangers than relatives.

Chana’s mother, Lacey’s aunt Charlie, had married four times already. Chana had walked away from any remaining relationship with her mom somewhere around the time of the second husband’s divorce, not approving of her mother’s system of catching her next husband or those individual partners. But Chana had gone her own way early in life, so she had a tough edge to her, whereas Lacey was the nurturer. She’d stayed home to look after her mother, and losing her had devastated her. She’d buried herself in her work and in the kids she loved so much.

“Mom is Mom,” Chana said. “I learned early on not to get too involved or to tell her too much. She reads things into the conversations that I never intended.”

“I can understand that.”

“Can you? Aunt Millicent was absolutely divine. I’d have done anything to have had her as my mom,” Chana said. “I’d have given everything for that kind of a relationship.”

“I’m sorry. I know Aunt Charlie wasn’t the easiest to live with.”

“Not in the slightest,” Chana said. She motioned up ahead. “We’re just around the corner.”

Lacey had been busy looking around and keeping track of the conversation, but there was just so much to see. She knew she’d be dazed this whole two weeks, just sitting and absorbing the completely different geographical looks to the place. So much history was here, and so much of the finds they uncovered here on a day-to-day basis were steeped in personal stories. She said out loud, “Two weeks won’t be enough, will it?”

“Nope, not even close.” Her cousin glanced at her and grinned. “What happens if you don’t go back in September?”

“I won’t have a job,” she said simply. “I could stay for the summer though.”

Her cousin nodded but didn’t say too much. “We’ll see how it goes,” she said.

“Besides, it’s not your decision anyway, is it?”

Her cousin shook her head. “Nope. None of us ever has job security here. These are all charity foundation projects. I know I have a job for the rest of this calendar year, but, past that, it’s anybody’s guess.”

“Hey, at least you know that much,” Lacey said with a big grin.

“Absolutely,” Chana said. “Some things in life are just what they are. One day at a time. That’s what we work on here. But it’s a slow process. There’s only so much we can excavate.”

“And you must get value from your finds, whether intrinsic or economic or historic.”

“Which is why you’re here,” Chana said. “Take pictures, find the story of what we’re unveiling and make it real. Something people can relate to.”

“That’s a tall order,” Lacey said lightly. “Pictures, yes. Maybe a story, yes. But making it magical so everybody can relate? I don’t know.”

“I do. Our photographer isn’t coming back. We’re not paying you because we can’t afford to,” she said.

Lacey interrupted her. “You know I don’t want a paycheck.”

“Good thing,” Chana said cheerfully. “Because there’s no budget money. But, at the same time, you could make a huge difference here, and I think it could lead to an incredibly valuable change in your career, if you wanted, if you did it successfully. You’re very talented in many ways. I know you think you suck but you used to be a great sketch artist too.”

“Ha, I haven’t done any artwork in a long time. Besides two weeks isn’t terribly long though to accomplish all that.”

“Well, two weeks will give you plenty of time to take many photographs,” Chana said. “Afterward, when you’re back home for the rest of your summer vacation, how you pull it all together and present it, now that’s a different story.”

Lacey thought about that as they approached the wide-open dig. It went down approximately twenty feet at one side and was only about ten feet deep at the other. Some of it was surface level. It was fascinating because it looked into several houses, a stone walkway between them—those stones laid by hand by people and used to build roads and homes and businesses from centuries ago.

Lacey walked up to the first building and placed her hand on one of the cornerstones, amazed at the sense of homecoming she felt. And yet, there was no reason for it. Maybe it was just the years of wanting desperately to come here.

She sat down—more a leaning against the cornerstone—and studied the world around her. “It’s amazing how much you’ve done,” she said.

“Oh, no, it’s not,” Chana said. “It’s slow. We can’t use any heavy equipment in this area, so it’s all done by hand. Lots of trowel work.” She tossed a laughing look at Lacey. “Don’t worry. You might get roped into doing some of that too.”

“I can’t say I’ve done much hard physical gardening-type work in my life,” she said, “but you know I’m up for anything at least once.”

“Well, no complaining if you do, you’re forewarned,” her cousin said. She walked to a far corner. The site was approximately fifty feet by maybe sixty-five. “I’m working on the house over here. We’ve unearthed the kitchen area. Little bits of pottery are showing up. We’re identifying each piece, tagging it for the foundation to take back to the center to do some research. I highly suggest you get out your camera gear, take a bunch of test photos, figure out where and what lighting you need, how it’ll work with all this rock, so you can get the best photographs possible.”

With the reminder how she was here to work, Lacey put down her bag and pulled out her camera. She’d splurged on new lenses before coming over, money she could ill afford with her mother’s estate still hung up.

But the probate process was already many months in, and she did have enough money to handle her day-to-day needs because of her own teaching position. Only she’d thought her mother’s mortgage was paid off, and it wasn’t. Her mother had never once mentioned it. That left Lacey covering the costs of her mother’s house atop Lacey’s own monthly bills, along with everything else pertaining to her mother, including her funeral and medical expenses, out of Lacey’s own pocket. She’d taken a big hit. The legal paperwork had just gone through a couple months ago that had given her access to her mother’s bank account. That had gone a long way to ease things while paying her mother’s ongoing bills.

As Lacey put the strap around her neck and took off the cap, checking the light around her, her cousin called out, “Is that a new camera?”

“No. It’s the same SLR I’ve had for about two years, but I did buy a couple new lenses.”

“The lenses cost more than the camera, don’t they?” her cousin asked in a dry tone. “Remember how we told you not to spend too much money on that stuff for this dig?”

“It gave me an excuse to buy the lenses I’ve always wanted,” Lacey said, mollifying her cousin, who appeared to be irritated at the concept. “Besides, it’ll take some practice shots for me to figure out the lighting and the subject matter.”

“The other photographer only had a simple point-and-shoot camera,” Chana said, waving at Lacey’s camera with all the fancy lenses. “You’ve got a lot of money tied up in those.” She chewed on her bottom lip, as if considering how much Lacey had spent.

“Are you worried something’ll happen to my gear?” Lacey studied the bag at her feet, frowning. Indeed, she had a lot of her money tied up here. And it wasn’t insured.

Her cousin shrugged. “Like I said, we’ve had some incidents around here. Could you at least make doubly sure you look after your stuff? I’d hate to see you, or your camera gear, have any kind of mishap.”

Her cousin’s wording was kind of odd, but obediently Lacey closed up her camera gear in its camera bag, but it had double shoulder straps, more like a backpack. So she wore it on her back and then walked around the area. She focused first on the rocks, trying to get the different striations to show up with only the natural light. With so much gray in those rocks, she wanted to highlight the light bouncing off each one in this pathway between the two buildings. It was stunning to think how many people had walked on each of these stones. How many years these blocks been here, helping people to go where they needed to go? Then in hiding, until brought into the light again.

Thinking of the hands that had touched each of these stones, she lost herself in her work, snapping photographs of her surroundings. She started wide, laying a grid of what she would be looking for as reference points later. Then she went in closer, making a grid out of each quarter section.

By the time she put down her camera and reached for her bottle of water, it seemed everybody else had shown up for work too. She walked over to join them. There were smiles and a couple of teasing comments about the size of her lenses. She’d heard it all before. “What are you all working on this morning?” Lacey asked. There was a sudden silence. She raised an eyebrow. “Did I say something wrong?”

They shook their heads. “We’re chipping into a new section this morning,” Tom said, “if you want to take some photographs before we start.”

She walked over to the indicated area, about eight feet long, three feet wide at the one side and about five feet high. “If this is a room, why the strange shape?” she asked as she picked up her camera and clicked. The roof was slopped off to the side.

“We suspect something’s underneath it or in it, but we don’t have any way to know until we get there.”

Tom, Mark and two other men gathered around and chipped carefully away at one corner. Lacey took several photographs and realized this would entail long hours of tedious work. She stepped back a little to take more photos and then lost interest as they worked intently. Chana was right about how slow the handwork was.

She heard a cry and turned around to see Tom standing, holding his finger against his mouth. Chana walked over. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. “Just a foolish accident.” He headed to where they had their bags gathered and pulled out a large Band-Aid. He wrapped it around his injured finger, then picked up his bottle of water and took a drink.

Lacey kept clicking, thinking about the human efforts that went into all this work. The blood sweat and tears to open up these places of interest. As she watched, one of the other men, Brian, cried out when a rock crumbled from above, striking his shoulder. They all turned to look at him. “Lots of accidents,” Lacey murmured.

Silence.

She glanced over at the interns. “I’m not accusing anyone,” she said hurriedly. “I was thinking of all the effort that goes into this work.

“There are always accidents on sites,” Tom said brusquely. “As long as no one is seriously hurt, our work keeps its integrity.”

“Lots of times it’s Mother Nature, … and sometimes it isn’t.” Chana nodded. “We came in one day, and one of the mummies had been damaged.” She glanced at the others, then added, “At least that’s what we reported, but the damage looked more human oriented than due to Mother Nature.”

Lacey winced. “I’m sorry. That’s not easy to deal with.”

“It’s catastrophic,” Tom said harshly. “Our reputation is only as good as our work is. And, if people see damage like that, then there’s a good chance we’ll get run out of here.”

“Sabotage?” Lacey asked slowly. “Maybe the locals wanting to stop the dig?”

Tom and Chana both looked at her and nodded slowly.

Lacey’s stomach sank.

Chana pointed at one of the new spaces they’d opened. “Somebody cracked open the coffin cover and attempted to steal the mummy inside and damaged it in the process.”

Lacey stared at them. “That’s terrible. Why would someone do that?”

They looked at her, looked at each other, then back at her. “We have no clue.”

“And you should have reported that to us,” a voice on ground level announced in exasperation and anger.

Chapter 3

She spun to see a man in jeans and a T-shirt but also wearing a mantle of authority that had everybody backing up slightly.

“I know that,” Chana said quickly. She stepped forward as if realizing what her instinctive step backward had meant. “I was going to tell you …”

He waved a hand and cut her off. “When?”

She glanced helplessly over at Tom.

Tom stepped forward and said, “I asked her not to, until I could figure out what the hell was going on.”

The stranger stood with his legs in a wide stance and his hands on his hips as he glared at them. His gaze drifted from one person to the next before coming back to land on Lacey’s face. He frowned. “Who are you?”

She stepped forward. “Lacey. I’m the new photographer.”

His frown deepened as if sifting through faces and people’s names and relevant memos in his head. Then he gave a clipped nod. “Right. I do remember that.” His gaze returned to Chana. “I want to know exactly what’s happening here. And I also want to know why nobody contacted the office. The only way this foundation functions is if we have complete transparency.”

“We do understand that, sir,” Tom said. “It was a misjudgment on my part.”

“No,” Chana said sadly. “I was okay to go along with it. We were hoping we could solve it before we had to tell you we were having trouble.”

Lacey’s gaze went from Chana to the stranger. This must be the Sebastian Bentley she’d heard about. She took another step forward. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry it’s not under better circumstances.”

Some of the tension eased from his shoulders. He dropped down into the dig site so he stood on the same level as she was, reached over and shook her hand. “Ditto.” He turned to the other two. “Now I want the full explanation. Then you’ll show me all the damage.”

A frisson of fear whispered across Chana’s face. Lacey wondered what was behind it. There were undercurrents of something strange going on here. She followed along helplessly as they explained about the mummy they had worked so hard to excavate and how they had returned the next morning to find the back of the mummy’s head caved in.

Sebastian stooped and took a closer look. Frowning, muttering to himself, he pulled out his cell phone, turned on the flashlight and tried to see inside the coffin. He nodded but didn’t say anything. He straightened to look around. “Other accidents? Even small ones?”

Chana listed off the same events she had given Lacey last night.

“And then this morning, I cut my finger, but that was my fault,” Tom said, holding up his bandaged hand. “Plus one of the guys got hit in the shoulder by a falling rock.”

Sebastian nodded. “Show me where both happened.” They took him toward the area Tom had been working on when he’d hurt himself.

Lacey went to follow, but Chana held her back. “Something is weird about those newest sites over there,” she muttered in a low tone. “Better for Sebastian to see it right now, and, if there’ll be a verbal thrashing about this, it’s best it happens while we’re a little farther away. It’s hard on Tom to get a dressing down in front of us.”

Lacey glanced at her in surprise. “It’s hard on anybody. I don’t know why it would be any worse in front of us.”

Chana rolled her eyes at her. “That’s because we’re female. Tom’s male ego might take a bit of a beating.”

Lacey didn’t think so. There didn’t seem to be anything retiring or shy about Tom’s ego. Thankfully though, she wasn’t witness to any altercation as Sebastian crouched in front of the area where the rock had come down.

“How long ago was this?” Sebastian asked.

Tom looked over at Chana.

She checked her watch. “An hour maybe?” She glanced at Lacey for confirmation.

Lacey nodded. “It probably wasn’t much more than that.”

Sebastian studied the large oddly shaped room they’d been unearthing. “It’s empty.”

“That’s not unusual, is it?” Lacey asked, curiosity piquing her voice.

“Yes,” he said, “it is. Everything had a purpose in the Old World. Time, energy, money was all at a minimum. When you only live to be forty-seven, and that’s considered a ripe old age, time takes on a very different meaning. To have an empty room like this, it’s odd.”

“Grain storage?” Lacey hazarded a guess.

He turned to look at her.

The expression on his face had her cracking-up laughing. “I guess that was a foolish answer, huh? I’m not a student of archaeology. I’m a history teacher. Although not of Pompeii. They would never allow me to teach much on that curriculum. I really wanted to though,” she confessed.

He nodded absentmindedly and wandered off to one of the other corners, Tom anxiously at his heels.

She glanced over at Chana. “Are you guys in big trouble?”

Chana shook her head. “No, but we should have told the head office. They can only minimize the bad press if we let them know what’s happening, and too often this stuff gets ahead of us, and we don’t see or hear anything until it’s too late. That’s not fair to the bosses. Control is a necessity if we want funds to keep flowing.”

“Ah, grant funding. Yes. Got it.”

Leaving the others to sort out the problems, Lacey returned to her photographing. Now that she was where the mummy’s coffin had been opened up, she took a moment to take photographs of the entire thing.

No matter what she did, she couldn’t stop looking at Sebastian. He was obviously in great physical shape. Not exactly required for an office worker or an overseer for a group of workers. Something about that heavily muscled chest under his T-shirt and his bulging biceps as he shifted and moved. She felt like an idiot for even thinking about it. She put it down to hormones and too long since she’d had a serious boyfriend.

Yet it was more than that—he had presence, radiating power just standing here. It was very attractive. When she’d decided to move in to look after her mother, her boyfriend at the time had decided Lacey was more of a burden than he was willing to bear. She’d watched him go and hadn’t felt a pang of regret. Because, if that was his attitude, she wanted nothing to do with him.

But it had meant the next year and a half had been sometimes very lonely as the grief threatened to overwhelm her for her upcoming loss. There was no cure for her mother’s condition. It was a case of taking every moment they had together and enjoying it. And, for that, she was grateful her former boyfriend wasn’t in the picture, so he didn’t steal any of those moments from her and her mother.

Almost an hour later, intent on capturing the photos she’d been asked to take, Lacey heard that deep rumbling growl of Sebastian in the background.

He didn’t fit her concept of an archaeologist in any way. Yet he seemed just as comfortable here among the rocks as he would commanding a big company. It had something to do with that presence of his.

Heavy footsteps sounded the team’s approach. Trying not to make it obvious, she took photos as they studied their array of broken tools, making notes of the tools now gone, stolen.

Sebastian’s striking voice was hard as he demanded, “Are you sure you locked everything up, put everything away?”

Her cousin Chana said, “Yes. We have a routine. We do it every night. And the locks weren’t broken.”

He straightened and pivoted slightly to look at her.

Lacey pointed her camera and caught that jaw, that nose, those aquiline cheeks. Click. Click. Click. Then catching Chana’s gaze, Lacey quickly turned away.

Chana frowned as she understood what Lacey had been doing.

Feeling the heat roll up her neck and cheeks, Lacey hid behind the camera. She changed the angle ever-so-slightly to get a panoramic view. She slowly, methodically took pictures of the entire circle around her. If nothing else, it would provide a hell of a memory afterward.

Finally the group walked away with Sebastian. Lacey stayed behind, taking pictures of the broken tools and visible footprints. It was so fascinating to see where people walked now versus where they had walked thousands of years ago. She couldn’t help it. She bent close and took photographs of one shoe imprint and then another and then another.

“What are you, a detective?”

She gave a shriek and spun around to see Sebastian glaring at her. She took a deep breath, stabilizing her shaky hands. “I was thinking of the contrast,” she said steadily but had enunciated very carefully, so there was no misunderstanding. “Of footprints today versus the footprints of nearly two thousand years ago.”

He stared at her suspiciously for a moment before he relaxed and gave her an approving nod. “That could make quite a story.” He turned and strode away.

She let out her pent-up breath, only to suck it in again as Chana whispered angrily in her ear, “What are you doing?”

“Taking photos,” Lacey said, hating her defensive tone. “What was I supposed to be doing?”

“You don’t need to be taking pictures of the boss.” Chana spun on her heels and followed Sebastian.

Lacey stayed where she was, needing a few minutes away from the group and Chana’s prying eyes.

Calmer, Lacey wandered this section, seeing stairs appearing out of the dirt. No way to know how far down they went because the undisturbed ground met the seventh step downward, still not fully uncovered. They hadn’t excavated any farther. She walked to the top of the stairs and snapped a photo as she took every step down, thinking about the people who had walked these stairs, carrying burdens, holding children by the hand—the old, the young, the weak, the pregnant. She moved carefully, and, where the stairs stopped, she bent to capture that partially buried step from many angles. The wonder of the past meeting the present flowed through her.

She gave a happy sigh and slowly straightened to find she wasn’t alone. She looked up to find Sebastian staring at her, an odd look on his face. She frowned and asked in a low voice, “Have I done something wrong?”