leaning forward to hear her answer.
Kyra stirred the straw around in her iced coffee. “All kinds of places. I go horseback riding sometimes, grab ice cream with some friends, maybe even just sit quietly alone or go to the movies with four or five teenage girls.”
How was any of this a way to honor God? Josh felt really confused about that. Kyra didn’t look confused at all. She appeared perfectly happy with her choices. This discussion was going to take a lot longer to finish than Josh had figured on.
Before he could ask more questions their entrées arrived along with a bowl of rice. “This all looks great,” Kyra said with enthusiasm, and she surprised Josh by reaching over and taking the serving spoon in his pad thai.
Maybe she was confused about what she’d ordered. “Hey, Kyra? I think the pad thai is mine,” Josh said.
She smiled but didn’t put down the spoon. “Well, yeah, but you’re okay with sharing, right? I think sharing dinner is fun. It gives us both something new to try.”
This was totally outside his experience. “I guess. It’s just a little different for me.”
Kyra giggled softly. “What’s the matter? Don’t bureau people share their food? Or don’t you like green curry? I didn’t get it too hot, honest.”
When he didn’t answer right away, Kyra looked more serious. “This really isn’t something you’re used to doing, is it? If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll just stick to my own dish and you can have yours. Sorry.”
She started to put down the spoon, and Josh found himself reaching over gently and taking her wrist. “No, it’s okay. You’re right, it’s not something I usually do. I just didn’t grow up in a sharing kind of environment. And you are correct about the other part, too, because bureau folks are pretty protective about their property, including food.”
“That’s too bad,” Kyra said with a soft smile. “They’re missing out on a lot.”
“I imagine so.” Josh looked down to realize he was still holding on to her wrist and let it go. “But I think it’s time I stopped missing out.” He took the spoon in the rice and served himself a little, spooning the fragrant green curry on top of it. Kyra’s answering grin lifted his spirits like nothing had in days.
Later, after coconut ice cream, Kyra argued when he told her he was going to follow her back to the lab. She stood in the parking lot near her truck with her arms crossed, frowning slightly. Josh explained, “I know you’re no delicate flower who needs constant protection, but I was raised to treat women a certain way. If that bothers you, I apologize in advance, but it won’t keep me from following you back to the lab if you’re going to go back to work.”
“I’m definitely going back,” Kyra told him. “Although, after this dinner I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to work before I’ll want to go home and doze. Ranger will like that.”
Josh struggled to find something to say to that. With his allergy to pets he wasn’t real enthused about Kyra having a cat. At least she hadn’t brought enough cat dander into the office to make his eyes water. “Once you’re in the building, I’ll head home,” he told her. “I just want to make sure everything is all right.”
Her answering hug was brief but warm and the surprise of her giving it to him rocked him back slightly on his heels. “You’re sweet and I won’t argue. Thanks.” In a moment she was in her truck and Josh walked quickly to his car so that he could follow her as he’d promised. Around him the jasmine notes of her cologne filled his senses and followed him the rest of the evening through his drive to the lab and all the way home.
Everything was gone. It was Saturday morning and the Watcher stood in the mud under the trees at the park, looking in surprise at the yellow caution tape surrounding several shallow impressions in the earth. What had happened here? The last time he’d visited, the two bird-watchers were calling the police, but he hadn’t expected this much action this quickly. All they could have found were a few unconnected bones.
Now that the tall weeds and scrawny saplings that had grown up in his private garden had been washed away by the spring rains, it looked like a different place. Having the police mess around with things on top of that made it unrecognizable. His things were gone. Or at least they’d been uncovered from their hiding places. Somebody had found them, that was certain. The yellow tape and spindly orange plastic fencing might have been made to look like this was just an area the parks service was trying to keep people out of because the ground was swampy, but he knew differently.
How dare they mess everything up! This was his place, with his secrets. Now what was he supposed to do? As he stood there wondering, there was a rustle behind him, and a voice called tentatively. “Sir? I’m going to have to ask you not to go any closer to the fenced area. If you’re bird-watching, we’re directing people over to the South Trail.”
For a moment the Watcher felt as if he was going to jump out of his skin. “What? Oh, sure.” Relief washed over him as he realized that to the young park ranger, or whatever he was, the binoculars around his neck and his nondescript jeans and shirt made him look like any other guy out to enjoy a Saturday in the park. “Sorry, Officer. I wasn’t trying to do anything illegal.”
The kid smiled. “Don’t worry, you haven’t done anything wrong yet. I’m just supposed to keep people from getting into areas like that one where it’s too swampy for us to be sure of your safety. And I’m not an officer or anything, just working here for the summer.” The kid pointed toward his yellow name badge and the Watcher could see that it gave the kid’s name below the bright green line that proclaimed him a volunteer. So he hadn’t done anything yet, huh? Wouldn’t this kid be surprised if he knew? But with any luck, he wasn’t going to know, and neither was anybody else. The Watcher tried to walk nonchalantly away from this ruined place. Somebody was going to pay for this; he just needed to find out who was responsible.
It was time to go home and look through the newspapers to see what the police said about their finds. That would tell him who had dug up his treasures. Didn’t they realize that it would be their fault when he started hunting again? Without his secrets here, how could anybody expect him to access his memories? Now it would be time to find a new place, and new things to fill that place, even sooner than he’d planned.
By ten o’clock on Saturday morning, Kyra’s back ached. Her shoulders tightened with the focus of her efforts with the magnifier and the smaller pieces of bone. Sometimes when she was busy like this she remembered Gran sifting through a jigsaw puzzle. The difference was that Gran did her puzzles for fun, humming softly while she matched the pieces. Kyra did her work in a much more serious way, but the painstaking business of matching the pieces was the same. And when she finished putting together one of her “puzzles” it could mean closure for a family somewhere who finally knew where their loved one was.
More bone pieces, and larger ones, were coming out of the cleaning room now. In the work area she’d set aside just for this purpose, Kyra kept turning bones in different directions, angling them slightly while examining their color and texture. They’d separated out the pieces that were most likely human at the dump site. Bringing them back to the lab allowed Kyra and her researchers to separate out anything that wasn’t human bone.
Now, after the cleaning, it became clearer which pieces went together. The set of bones that went back the farthest had softer details around the edges and an entirely different color to their surface from the ones that had been in the ground
