"I don't believe this!!!!" Argent muttered loudly into the little communicator. "These records are hundreds--thousands of years old, the people even older, and you're saying they have some connection with the weird light show I'm picking up over the lake here? What is this, "E.T. Gets Even"??? He was feeling upset, and he knew she could tell it from his voice.

As always, Teresa knew what to say, and as always, listening to her made him calmer and saner, and even smarter. She spoke for almost a whole minute.

"OK, honey. You're right. Listen, send me those histograms and the lab's data parsing on the possible combinations of segments. We'll just play the damn thing as it lies, even if it lies in la-la land."

He smiled at her retort, and folded up the communicator. His face had cleared, and he looked around at the late afternoon pastoral scene -- the single lenticular baby cumulus cloud over the lake, the gently rolling hill down to the cookhouse, and the apparently furious redhead who burst out of the galley and stormed into the woods. She was shaking and trying to look nonchalant at the same time, which perplexed him. He shrugged. He had a good twenty minutes before Terry would get him the analysis files.

He reached in the back of the truck, took out his Wesson, and checked it, shoved it into his back pocket and strode quietly down the hill toward the galley door, keeping one eye on the direction the girl was taking into the woods beyond.

Things were getting interesting, he had to admit that much. He wondered what Blake Madison was doing. The thought worried him for some reason he couldn't put his finger on, and he brushed it to one side.