The Moses Riddle (Thomas McAllister 'Treasure Hunter' Adventure Book 1) by Hunt Kingsbury Read Free Book Online Page A

related to archeology, Francis! Not The Communist Manifesto !”
“The Communist Manifesto is approved reading, Thomas.”
“God help you all.” Thomas muttered as he slammed the door to the Dean’s office.
His eyes welled with tears as he walked down the stairs of the administration building to his car. His dream was over. It would never be. He got into his car and started to drive. It was ten o’clock in the morning. An hour later, he was on a dirt road a mile from Highway 89, just south of Florence, with no recollection of how he’d gotten there.
He pulled over and put his head on the steering wheel. Archeology was his life. Teaching had been his passion; his dream, to become head of the department. Because of his driving ambition, he’d put everything else on hold. Now the Board was going to teach him a lesson? It was like living in a nightmare where everything was reversed, where those who tried the hardest, and cared the most, were punished. He was more dedicated, more passionate about teaching students, about expanding their minds, than any member of the Board. And what had it gotten him? Fired.
Thomas felt shattered. His life, its structure, what psychologists would call his “world view,” was toppled. Every decision he had made in the last six years had been filtered by the knowledge that someday soon, he’d be head of the archeology department. But now everything had changed. He was a different person entirely, yet still surrounded by things he’d purchased as part of his old life. He was living in a stranger’s world. A silent tear careened off the steering wheel, then made a dark circle that widened as it spread on his pant leg.
CHAPTER 6
    When Thomas was treasure hunting as a boy, he had always felt that whatever he was looking for was just under the next rock or only one more scoop of dirt away. He had loved the thrill and the excitement of the chase, and he still did. “Never give up,” had been his slogan, and it still was. Keep searching. Never give up. The treasure will be there, just as it was left thousands of years ago. The adrenaline rush of always being on the verge of finding a treasure had always been with him . . . even in his day-to-day life.
    This perpetual excitement, this eternal optimism, pervaded everything he did. People sometimes wondered why he was always in a good mood, always ready with a kind word. Occasionally, he wondered if he were too nice. Too happy. But he always shrugged off that notion. No such thing. It was his nature. He’d found what he was passionate about at a young age. Archeology.
    An archeologist has two career options. Really only one, but the romantic side of Thomas, and the adventurous side, liked to believe there were two. The first, and more conservative of the two, was to teach. That was what 99 percent of all archeologists did. They taught, wrote and did field work during summer breaks or on a sabbatical. That was the road Thomas had chosen. He had decided to teach and his legacy would be the fine department he would build at Arizona State. He would be Head of the Department, possibly become Dean of Faculty, then retire and spend winters in Egypt, exploring and writing. His course was set.
    To that end, Thomas had spent the first six years of his career, the critical building years, working towards that goal. Investing in it. He could have been out in the field searching for treasure, looking for undiscovered tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, but he hadn’t done it that way. He had chosen to contribute to what he thought was a greater good.
    Now that dream was gone. With this suspension on his record, he would never chair a department. He couldn’t go out and demand a job at a Harvard or Yale or Stanford, like before. He’d be lucky to get a regular teaching job at an average school.
    The second, more romantic pursuit for an archeologist, was fieldwork, but field work was expensive. The 1 percent of all archeologists who dedicated 100 percent of their