Emil stood, walking over to the kitchen counter and picking up an e-cig. “Well, I sure as hell wasn’t going to give up on the find of a millennium. I changed my name, and as soon as I could get a visa to come over here and work, I took it. I’ve worked at a dozen different factories since I’ve been here, a good twenty years. Salt mines by day, excavation in the hills by night. I met Raymond Contreras at the shoe plant about five annums ago. I don’t remember how it came up, but he mentioned that his father-in-law was Hector Garcia.” He blew white vapor out between his teeth and sighed. “There’s a name with some clout attached to it. I thought he could help me, being an archaeologist and all. Maybe he’d co-author a paper with me, help me release my findings, get my reputation in the scientific community back. I didn’t realize Raymond was such a dumbass—no offense—or that he and his in-laws weren’t exactly speaking.”

I leaned on my elbows, looking down at the scuffed surface of the table. “So you guys were excavating in secret?”

He nodded.

I glanced up at him. “What did you find?”

He flashed a yellow-toothed grin at me. “Now there’s the question.”

He turned off the e-cig and moved into the living room. A beat-up tan couch took up one wall, and across from it, the remnants of a fire smoldered in the hearth of a dingy fireplace. A tall bookcase stood next to the fireplace, its shelves lined with cheap paperbacks. He pulled a couple off the shelves and dumped them on the table in front of me. “Have a look through those,” he said.

I cocked an eyebrow at him, then flipped open the tawdry-looking romance on the top of the stack. The contents were not, in fact, The Taming of the Duke. Like the Sports Illustrated in my dad’s box, every page was covered over with writing in felt-tip marker. Detailed diagrams of dig sites, intricate sketches of broken fragments not unlike the items Joseph Condor would close our dig site for—everything recorded in minute detail.

“Record-keeping by paper,” he said. “Slow and old-fashioned, but the ideal choice when you’re trying to stay off the grid. I couldn’t have GSAF finding out what I’ve been up to.”

I looked up at him in amazement. “Abuelo said you weren’t an archaeologist.”

He chuckled. “I wasn’t. I had a midlife career switch, if you will. All self-taught.”

“This data is amazing, though,” I breathed. Just as thorough as Abuelo’s own record-keeping. He would be impressed.

I flipped through another book as Emil looked on proudly. “And here I thought you were crazy,” I said.

“Maybe this will teach you not to throw words like that around.”