Chapter Sixteen
“Want to explain all that?” Hailey started up as soon as we got back in the Camaro. “Where’d you get those pictures? Can I see them?”
Her questions were rapid-fire. I settled in my seat and handed my phone over. “From Naira. They’re the last thing she ever sent me.”
Hailey turned the phone every which way, pinching her fingers, then expanding them just like Barry had done.
We’d left him back on the docks worse than how we’d met him.
It was like I’d confirmed UFOs were real.
Now any story he told about the Isle would be backed by the strange woman he’d encountered on the boat ramp.
“I think I’ve seen this necklace before. At the Endowment Research Lab.”
“I think we should go there next.” I buckled up, tightening the strap as I thought about our drive here. She handed back the phone and pressed the ignition button, making the engine roar to life.
Hailey’s eyes met mine. “I agree. But we might have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“You’ll see.”
The campus was busy with activity. The quad was decorated with school paraphernalia, and in the center stood a large stack of wood pyres with a huge papier-maché lion on top. There were too many people, sending my senses into overdrive. I quickly stuffed my earbuds in to help mute the noise.
Hailey tapped her ear, and I pulled a bud out to hear her.
“Start of the school year is coming up so they’re having a new student–orientation kickoff,” Hailey informed me as we walked through the maze of students on the lawn, sprawled out on blankets and playing games like Frisbee, beer pong, and horseshoes.
“They have all this on your magical island?” Hailey smirked. I hoped my straight face let her know how very unfunny she was.
We entered the newly built facility, where I noticed the security was pretty tight with guards posted up at the entrance. I brought it up to Hailey as we got in an elevator and she scanned her ID badge. The button for LL lit up.
“Everything’s pretty valuable. It’s underground because the researchers and restorers don’t want a lot of light deteriorating the stuff before they have a chance to study them and prepare to return them to their rightful owners.”
“But what if their rightful owners aren’t around anymore?”
Hailey shrugged. “Then we donate it to a museum specializing in that particular culture, if there is one.”
The temperature in the lower level was ten degrees cooler, and she undid the tied sleeves of her plaid sweater, shrugging it over her shoulders. I did the same with the sweatshirt I’d stuffed in my backpack.
We walked down a lit hall lined with several empty labs, each displaying different artifacts on large steel tables that we could see through the bay windows. Only a couple of labs had people working in lab coats, masks, and white gloves, holding a variety of tools.
We stopped at the end of the hall, where a young South Asian woman stood taking notes on the clipboard she held.
“Dr. Patel.”
The woman looked up, mildly annoyed at the interruption, but then smiled when she saw who was speaking.
Hailey peered in the darkened room through the glass. She frowned. “Still no word about Dr. Franco? Nothing from the investigators? Or my uncle?”
Dr. Patel mimicked the frown, twisting her lips back in annoyance. “No. Seems like I’m the only one who comes to work these days.”
“Who’s Dr. Franco?” I asked, peering around them to try to see for myself.
Dr. Patel’s frown remained, her expression saying it all. Who the hell is this?
“This is my—” Hailey turned to shoot me a quizzical look. She didn’t know what to call us. We definitely weren’t friends. Acquaintances? But in this short amount of time, we had shifted into some kind of alliance on our quest to figuring out what happened to Naira and Luke.
“This is Ada. She’s from the Golden Isle. Born and raised. Dr. Patel, one of our researchers.”
Dr. Patel studied me with renewed interest. Her eyes moving over me like I was a specimen in a petri dish. I tried not to take it personal. “We have been trying to interview a native to the island for the longest time, the woman who owns the land especially.”
“She’s my grandmother.”
Hailey wasn’t surprised. Either Luke had clued her in, or he hadn’t been the only person Naira had been chatty with.
“Remarkable.” Patel looked like she’d won the information lottery.
“We can trust her,” Hailey said, reassuring me, though I intended to come to my own conclusions.
“A few days ago, our lead researcher, Dr. Franco, took the amulet from the lab, and we haven’t seen him since,” Dr. Patel explained.
“It’s the archaeological find of the year, and probably the century, and we didn’t even get a chance to carbon date it, let alone run enough testing to determine its origins. ”
She paused when a guy who’d stepped off the elevator, pushing a cart stacked with folders, approached us. “Excuse me for a moment,” she said.
I stared into the room as if the amulet would magically appear from thin air. “How’s this not on the news?”
“How’s it not on the news? My uncle would never let the public know an Endowment employee walked off the premises with not only a priceless ancient amulet, but a priceless ancient amulet that was likely stolen from African people and brought here.”
Patel returned, holding a bundle of mail to her chest. “You know, there was another young lady touring the lab with…” She trailed off. Her eyes shot to Hailey, whose head ducked away.
“She’s my best friend,” I said, ignoring the way my stomach twisted whenever Naira was referenced.
“I’m sorry for your loss as well,” Patel said, followed by those awkward seconds of silence when no one knew what to say next.
“We’d love to talk to your grandmother. We’ve been speaking to members of the Gullah people on some of the other islands and here in town. It’s amazing, the way you all have retained your culture. It helps build a complete story around the artifacts we find. Do you think she would speak to us?”
Patel was saying all the right things, but I couldn’t forget she wanted something I had, information on the Isle.
“The island was founded long before my ancestors arrived. Several Indigenous tribes were there first.” That was history I wasn’t sure was common knowledge.
“Then they were either massacred or run off by the Spanish armies who were trying to colonize,” I said matter-of-factly.
Hailey kept quiet. Dr. Patel nodded sagely.
Hailey walked the length of the long table, which held various old-looking items under glass casing. A Bible, some coins, other stuff. But one of the cases was empty. It was the biggest case, and the blanket that the artifact was supposed to be on was empty.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” Hailey said, directing my attention to the empty glass box protecting nothing but air inside of it. Next to the box was a photo of what should have been there. All the items on the table had photos beside them.
I leaned in to look at the photo of the mysterious amulet.
This picture was clearer than the one Naira had sent me, and I could finally study it properly.
I’d never seen anything like it before, with its rows of draping golden chains that all connected to the central precious gem.
I’d never seen it before, and yet, it was undeniably familiar.
This missing artifact belonged to my grandmother’s people, to mine. It wasn’t just an artifact to us, but a piece of who we were, of the land we were taken from.
This amulet was a vessel of my ancestors’ power.