He had the document camera, the rubber gloves, and the lock-pick set all hidden in the side panel of the front door of his Jeep. Tonight would be a good night to go raid the office at the site. The cops had all gone away, and with the workers back on the job, Calligan had no reason to be nervous. And no one with any sense broke into a site office; there was never anything worthwhile there. Not even pawnshops took electric typewriters anymore. That, and oversized calculators and beat-up old office furniture was all anyone ever kept at a site office.

And, of course, records. …

Not that I’ve ever been caught, he thought, not bothering to hide a smirk, since he was halfway to his car and there wasn’t anyone to see it. Damn, I’m good. … We’ll just see if there’s something in those records at the site that leads back to Jennie—or anything else that can be used against Calligan himself.

Kestrel-Hunts-Alone was on the hunt—armed to the teeth, metaphorically and spiritually speaking—crouched at the edge of the fence surrounding Calligan’s construction site. It was very dark out here with no moon and only the light of the stars and very distant streetlights, but she wasn’t depending entirely on her night vision. She had already spent some time here before sundown, memorizing the positions of bits of cover, planning the route she would take to get to the ground that had held the relics.

Both she and Mooncrow had decided that it was time to do a little more investigation; after dark, during the Little People’s most active hours, this time. Mooncrow had armored her to the best of his ability, and she had layered on her own protections and “assurances” on top of his. At best, the Little People would recognize her as an ally against the real enemy. At worst, she had enough defenses that she would not need to fear their anger.

She hoped.

There was only one way to be sure, however, and that was to test it all under fire, in the field.

No one had plowed anything else up since the explosion, but that was because Calligan had put off digging any further into the disputed corner until after the forensics and university people got done checking the area out. Calligan was pretending to cooperate; at least, she thought it was pretense, despite his claim that he had contacted people at O.U. to come check out the disputed area. Of course, he could have assumed that the explosion had powdered every relic left. He could be assuming—probably correctly—that O.U. was too short on money to send anyone to do a real archeological investigation. Or he could have come in on his own and removed everything—it would have been a little harder with the cops here, but it could have happened.