Seven years after saving McKenzie\u2019s life, Angela Bjork has a request. She\u2019d like him to track down the Ankylosaurus skull valued at $6 million that was taken from a dig she was working near Powderville, Montana, before it had even been completely cleaned. Dr. Nicholas Larsen, the University of Minnesota professor who\u2019s one of the project\u2019s leaders, suspects that whoever carried off the skull in a stolen truck was getting inside information from one of the participants. If he\u2019s right, that narrows the suspect list to 10 professors, graduate students, and undergraduate interns. Instead of spending time questioning them, McKenzie confers with Andrew Cooke, the wealthy, dying owner of the site, who\u2019s determined to recover the skull even if he has to pay for it, and partners with con artist Heavenly Elizabeth Petryk, with some disavowed help from the FBI, to launch a proactive initiative to recover it by using high-profile fence Louis Bergeron\u2014who says he knows who has the skull\u2014to promise the thieves a ransom they have no intention of paying. McKenzie\u2019s masquerade as Heavenly\u2019s bodyguard grants him admission to a five-minute online auction for the ancient prize at the risk of some serious repercussions if anyone finds out who he really is. As McKenzie\u2019s cop friend Bobby Dunston says, \u201cI have to admit, this is different, even for you.\u201d After a slow start, Housewright sweats the details and explores every new possibility of a double cross to produce high-stakes, low-tension entertainment.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seven years after saving McKenzie\u2019s life, Angela Bjork has a request. She\u2019d like him to track down the Ankylosaurus skull valued at $6 million that was taken from a dig she was working near Powderville, Montana, before it had even been completely cleaned. Dr. Nicholas Larsen, the University of Minnesota professor who\u2019s one of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}