“I don’t want to do anything disrespectful,” she said. “Do you think the locals would be angry with me if I did agree to have the bones examined by an expert?”
Andreas gave her question proper consideration.
“No,” he said after a beat. “Greeks, we are nosy. It is in our nature.”
“What would you do?” she asked.
“For me, the knowledge always wins. If it happens that the bones are human, there is no reason why they cannot be buried again in the right way.”
“You mean these weren’t?”
A series of lines dappled his forehead.
“There is no casket,” he said. “No sign of anything wooden inside the soil.”
“So they most likely aren’t human, then?”
The shutter of Adam’s camera clicked. Skye glanced up, only to recoil slightly at the flash.
“Most likely,” Andreas agreed. “However…” He paused to retrieve his phone from his jeans pocket and activated the compass function. “Ah, it is as I thought.”
“What is?” she said, standing on tiptoes so she could see the screen.
“In Greece, it is customary to bury the dead facing east.”
A shiver passed through Skye.
“And that grave is facing…?”
“East,” he confirmed.
They looked at each other.
“Will you call them for me?” she said. “The police, I mean.”
Andreas brushed his fingers lightly against her arm.
“Nai,” he said. “I will do it now.”
She watched him stride away with his phone to his ear, heavy workmen’s boots sinking into the rain-softened earth. He’d been her first thought upon discovering the bones, and somehow he’d appeared before she could even call, the familiar purr of his truck’s engine easing the knot of tension she hadn’t realized was there.
“Have you two developed some sort of psychic connection?” Joy had joked, at which Skye had laughed a little too hard.
Adam, who had finished his impromptu photo shoot, was squinting down at the screen of his digital camera, scrolling through the images he’d taken.He should really go into the shade, Skye thought, wincing at the sight of his burned cheeks and forehead.
Victoria clearly agreed.
“Your pink bits are turning purple,” she chided, steering him toward home. “We’ll catch up with you guys later.”
They both waved to Andreas as they passed, but he was too intent on his conversation to notice.
“He on the phone to the cops?” Joy asked Skye. Mia had returned to the hole and was on her haunches, peering at the bones.
“I thought it made sense to know for sure what we’re dealing with,” Skye said. “Though it still makes me feel uneasy, the idea of removing them.”
“You’re a history buff, aren’t you?”
“You could say that.”
