were to be included, even insisted he accompany us on the dig." She shrugged. "It was a substantial grant. We get money from lots of weird sources. Dr. Clarke didn't imagine Bartlett could do anything to hurt the dig."
Her laughter was as hard as the unyielding wood they sat on. "Isn't that funny? Those manuscripts were priceless, probably worth millions on the black market, absolutely irreplaceable. That hurts almost more than anything else. Lost plays by Euripides, some of Plato's missing work, Julius Caesar's Oedipus and some of his poetry. They weren't even charred, the way the scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri were, because they'd already been buried. The most beautifully preserved ancient manuscripts ever found—and I didn't even get to read them."
Her eyes had filled with tears again. Charlie shook his head. Good grief.
"Sorry," she muttered. She attempted to wipe her cheeks dry. Then held out a hand still wet with tear trails. "I'm Sibyl Johnson, from Newberry, Florida. Well, close enough. Maybe ten miles outside town limits."
Charlie grinned. It must be nice to have such permanence. Apartment living was for the birds. "Charlie Flynn, Ms. Johnson. From Jersey City. Lately from Miami."
The chains at his wrists clanked as they shook hands formally. Hers trembled ever so slightly in his grip. She looked so calm. Charlie knew the stress signs and feared it wouldn't take much more to break her. A brief silence held while Charlie tried to figure out what to say next. She solved his problem.
"Are we really headed for Herculaneum?" That came out sounding little-girl scared. He got the strangest impression she wasn't thinking of Publius Bericus at all.
"Yeah. Should be there in a few hours."
Her face, which had gradually regained some of its former color, paled rapidly, leaving her waxy-pale. "Do you, uh, happen to know . . . What year is this? By our calendar?"
"Are you kidding? What year is it? The only thing I knew about Romans before I got dumped here was what I saw on videos of Ben Hur and Spartacus." He decided to take the risk. "I'm a cop, lady, not a history professor. I got no idea what year it is."
"A cop?" She rocked back and her eyes went round. She actually squeaked when she said it. "You're a cop?"
Charlie squirmed. He'd been undercover—deep undercover—for months when he'd stumbled onto something Carreras didn't want anyone to know. Not even Carreras knew he'd been a cop. He was two thousand years away
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