Read The Eden Factor (Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Romance Adventure Series Book 2) for Free Online Page A

his mid-forties, nice looking and slender.  He had only been in power
as the SCU department head for a little more than a year, having been hired
away from Marcus' alma mater where he had been dean of the Historic Sciences
Department. He knew both Kathlyn and Marcus very well, Marcus longer because
they had worked together since nearly the beginning of Marcus' career.  He was
a sharp man, fair to the bone, and his presence had been a tremendous boost for
SCU in the wake of the Walter Dougray scandal which had also had links to Dr.
Ronald Abrahams, former head of the department and the man that McGrath had
replaced.
    "Kathlyn, you look great,"
he sat her down on the big fluffy couch in his office. When Marcus went to take
a seat beside his wife, McGrath beat him to it and waved him off to another
chair. "It's been too long. How are the boys?"
    Having left them a few hours
before, Kathlyn had only recently gotten over the weepies about leaving them.
She tried to be very brave about answering.
    "They're doing great,"
she said. "Teething, walking, talking. They're monsters on the
prowl."
    Marcus lowered his big body down
into an armchair next to the couch. "We just spent the past two days with
them. In that time we've discovered that Trent likes to bite and Ethan likes to
ram into things with his head." He laughed softly at the memories.
"It's a kind of wonderful crazy, I've got to say."
    McGrath smiled; he hadn't seen
the twins since they were born. But he clearly remembered how enormous Kathlyn
had been carrying them. "Having no kids of my own, I can only
imagine," he turned back to Kathlyn. "So tell me about Zubayr. What
in the hell did you find over there?"
    The pleasantries were behind them
quick enough. McGrath wanted to get to the point. "Did you read my
email?" Kathlyn asked.
    McGrath nodded. "Four
times."
    "What wasn't clear about
it?"
    "Nothing at all. It was just
the most fantastic thing I've ever heard. Are you sure... well, certainly not
to doubt you, but are you sure it's what you think it is?"
    She was ready for the questions.
Ballard's interrogation had only been a foretaste.
    "I'm sure that it looks like
an angel," she said. "Jobe, it's the most amazing thing I've ever
seen, and I've seen a lot of amazing things. The skeletal structure is large,
the skull absolutely massive, and then there are these protrusions out of the
shoulders that look suspiciously like wings. Ask Marcus; he examined it."
    Marcus nodded. "I took some
crude measurements of it while we were there. The village of Zubayr is very
primitive and I think the people, though Muslim, are inherently superstitious. 
They asked that we take no pictures or make any drawings, which left things
like fragment samples or measurements kind of in the air. What I did was use my
hand as standard measurement and then calculate the skeleton based on that. 
From the base of my palm to the tip of my index finger is a little over eight
inches. The right femur, the long bone I had access to, was a little under four
hand lengths long, about twenty eight inches. The tibia of the same leg, which
was basically intact, was about twenty four inches long.  This gives us a man
with a leg that is four feet, three inches long.  Even if is torso is only
three quarters of his leg length, it still makes him ninety one inches
tall."
    McGrath's eyebrows rose.
"This skeleton is over seven feet tall?"
    Marcus shrugged his big
shoulders. "If the calculations hold true."
    McGrath didn't know what to say.
He looked at Kathlyn, who smiled weakly. "We have no idea what the wing
span would be. Obviously there were no tissues left and the bones were very
small. It would take months, even years to reconstruct."
    McGrath took a long, deep breath.
He rose from his seat and went to a small refrigerator on the opposite side of
the office. Withdrawing three diet colas, he went back to the couch.
    "You know," he said,
handing Marcus and Kathlyn a cold can. "This would be a hell of a find