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Chapter One
Hot. Summertime in Georgia could be entirely defined by that one word—hot.
Sweat twisted down my spine as I entered the cheap little motel the network had booked. The shoot on the dig today had been grueling, and I was feeling it.
The icy blast of air-conditioning as I stepped inside the lobby was nothing short of heaven. I paused under a vent for a moment, casting a semi-embarrassed glance at the young girl working behind the front desk as I let the cool air dry the sweat on my skin.
She grinned eagerly in return, and I squirmed a bit at the attention. Digging Discoveries with Dr. Dunn, a reality show that followed me as I worked on different archaeological finds around the world, had earned me more attention than I’d ever imagined it would. I wasn’t Taylor Swift by any stretch of the imagination, but back in my second season, Ms. Swift herself had tweeted about her new guilty pleasure—aka, me. She might have included a cringe-worthy comparison to Indiana Jones, but even if it had embarrassed me, it had also launched my career.
When I went out in a city like New York or L.A., I attracted a minor buzz of attention.
In a small town like Meadow Ridge, Georgia, where we were filming now, I drew something a little more extreme. In this case, a bit of hero worship from a high-school girl who dreamed of leaving her small-town beginnings, much as I had.
So, yes, I was exhausted, and my inner temperature was set to molten, but I did my best to smile at her.
“There should be some bottled water in your mini-fridge,” she called after me as I finally, reluctantly, dragged myself away from the artificial breeze and trudged down the hall toward my room. I waved a hand in thanks, too weary from the day in the sun to respond more than that.
All I wanted right now was a shower. A nice, cool one, which shouldn’t be a problem, since the motel had sporadic hot water supply anyway. After that, I planned to lie naked on my bed until the air had taken my core temperature down from geothermal to bearable.
A splash of yellow caught my eye from halfway down the hall. I squinted—that wasn’t my door, was it?
It was. My steps quickened, the sound muffled by the worn green carpet as I hurried to see what the hell was going on.
BITCH, scrawled in yellow across the door.
What the hell?