Ancient Ones
An Emmett Parker and Anna Turnipseed Mystery

Though there are signs of foul play, BIA investigator Emmett Quanah Parker and FBI special agent Anna Turnipseed arent looking for a killerthe remains dug out of a riverbank by an illegal fossil hunter are 14,000 years old. Parker and Turnipseed are sent to Central Oregon as official witnesses to the examination of John Day Man, as he is dubbed, for the bones have quickly provoked a controversy that threatens to erupt into violence: the skeleton is not Native American but distinctly Caucasian, shattering longheld tenets concerning who the first inhabitants of this continent were. Emmett, with his Comanche and white ancestry, and Anna, a reservationborn Modoc with Asian blood, share a sensitivity to both parties concernsand a forbidden attraction thats causing them professional and personal problems. Theyve broken the unwritten law that partners should never get emotionally involved. Having crossed that line, Emmett and Anna are too distracted by each other to see the escalating suspicion and fear around them when a young tribal anthropologist is swallowed by the misty night and within hours of her disappearance the fossil hunter who discovered the skeleton is found disemboweled. The Warm Springs Indians insist that the unburied bones of the Ancient One have been turned into a skep, a murderous spirit that haunts the darkness. As winter closes in on the steppes of the Colombia Plateau, accusations of ritualized murder fly between the Indian and white communitiesand the fight turns deadly when a second skeleton is unearthed. In the midst of the turmoil, Emmett and Anna are paralyzed by their own demons. This estrangement could prove deadly if they stop watching each others back long enough for a killer to target them too. And at the center of it all are the Ancient Ones, exacting a terrible price as the dark path to resolution runs a gauntlet through the boneyards of prehistory.