Incarnate: Mars Origin "I" Series Book III by Abby L. Vandiver Page B

car, she got quiet. And now she wasn’t
answering my question. So I asked again.
    “Where
did you find it?”
    She
glanced at me while she was driving. “You know that a lot of the area around
the excavated pyramids have shown, through ground penetrating radar, that a
large part of the complex is still unexcavated, right?”
    “No.
I didn’t know that. But go ahead.”
    “Hold
on, Mommy.” She took a quick left, missing the exit out to the highway. “I’ll
tell you all about it in a minute. I want to trade this Focus in while I’m here
at the airport. I need a 4x4. This car is not practical at all out in the
jungle.” She pulled into Hertz. “I already have the reservation, won’t take but
a minute. Just stay there until I pick up the jeep, then we’ll transfer your
stuff.”
    She’d
left the car running and the air conditioner on. Thank goodness. I ran my
fingers through the tangle of the curls on my head frizzled out by the
humidity. I noticed her phone in a hard vinyl covering with a huge, thick black
antenna. I picked it up, just as she was opening the car door on my side of the
car.
    “What
kind of phone is this?”
    “Satellite
phone. That way I can use it out in the jungle. Otherwise I wouldn’t have any
reception. It’s really a good thing to have. Now, c’mon. I got the jeep. Grab
your satchel and I’ll get your luggage.”
    I
handed her the phone, and pulled myself out of the car. “Are you going to leave
the car running?”
    “Yeah,
they’re coming out to get it. Here’s the new car.”
    The
Hertz attended pulled up and jumped out of the black jeep. He tossed Logan the
keys and we loaded me and my stuff in. After few minutes after we took off, it
was Logan that started the conversation about what she had found.
    “So.
You asked me how I found it. Okay. I decided to just go out and walk around in
the area still unexcavated. Just to get a feel of it. Possibly expand this
session out farther. Show some initiative.” She glanced over at me. “Cover new
ground.”
    “Yeah,
I get it. And?”
    “And
I found a large – I don’t know, it must weigh at least three thousand pounds –
carved stone panel. Laying face up. From the looks of it, I’m thinking at some
point it had to have been attached to a pretty large pyramid.”
    “Like
the one where you’re excavating?”
    “Yeah.
Maybe that one. Maybe one not yet discovered. I did go back and look to see if
there was an area on the pyramid at my dig where it could have been attached at
one point.”
    Logan
was maneuvering through the streets like she had lived there for years. I
pulled at my clothes trying to get them unattached from my damp skin.
    “Did
you find one?” I asked her.
    “Not
definitively.”
    I
frowned and looked over at her. “What does that mean?”
    “You
know, I could see a lot of places where something could have fallen off. And I
did find one spot . . .”
    “Yeah?”
    We
pulled up to the hotel and Logan turned into the underground parking garage.
    “Come
on, Mommy. I got a room for you already. I’ll grab your suitcase and satchel.”
    I
looked at my daughter as she got out of the car and threw her canvas knapsack
over her head, stuck her arm through and let it rest on her hip. All grown up
on a dig of her own. She looked just like an archaeologist. Her long black hair
pulled back in a ponytail pushed out the back of a baseball cap that had “DIG”
written across the top, khaki-colored cargo shorts, and a white cotton shirt.
    “So,”
she said as we headed toward the elevator to take us up into the hotel. “The
slab could have come from this one part and then slid – on its own, or was
pushed down one set of the steps. There were some areas on the steps that
looked as if the stone had been dragged over it.”
    “So,
what’s the problem with that being where the slab fell from the pyramid?”
    “Because
of what else I found.”
    “So,
wait.” I interrupted her. “This stone slab was just laying out in