My nervous stomach did a flip as soon as the construction site came into view.

"This is it?" Victor questioned.

He had been kind enough to insist that he drive us to the location given the doctor's order for Tammy's limited movement.

"This is the place," Tammy said, forehead scrunched in pain.

Since her pain pills made her feel out of it she had stubbornly refused to take anything before we left. She said that it would only make things needlessly more complicated and dangerous, but I was still worried about how often she was squeezing her hands into fists when she thought no one was looking.

The foremen we had previously encountered exited the future front entrance of the home as Victor pulled the car into the soon-to-be driveway. As expected, the man's face curled up into an angry scowl the moment he laid eyes on who it was in the car. Before I could even get out of the car, he had already pulled the radio from his wasteband and was talking rapidly into it.

"Hello, again!" Tammy said cheerfully as soon as Victor helped her out of the car. "I believe we briefly met the other day."

The man lowered the radio and attached it back to his belt, the crossed his arms over his chest and let out a dissatisfied sniff.

"As I said then, I'm Dr. Tammy Phillips, biologist, here to investigate local species. My student, Elsie, is here again and I've brought along Victor here seeing as I stumbled into a bit of trouble and was injured."

"You were sneaking around," the foreman said in a thick accent.

His face gave away that he knew exactly what had happened to her.

"Sneaking around?" she questioned as she carefully got closer to him with her crutches. "I don't think that's accurate. I was merely having my friend Victor here show us around the jungle so that we would know where and what to document. Surely I am not the first scientist to be interested in the rainforest of this area."

She had closed the distance between them until he was close enough to reach out and touch her. I realized then that she was much, much braver than I. I hadn't even stepped away from the car or closed the door, I was stuck watching what I was sure was going to be some kind of confrontation.

"You are not, but I told you that you are not welcome," he snarled.

"Your boss says otherwise."

The smile on Tammy's face had no signs of faltering. If she hadn't already, she needed to take regular trips to Vegas with a poker face that strong.

The foremen's upper lip trembled in anger like he wanted to spit in her face, but instead he turned away from her and stomped back into the house.

"Well, I guess that means we're free to look around," Tammy chirped.

Victor's face was a mask of confusion and he gave me a concerned look while motioning for me to come talk to him. Tammy was already slowly and awkwardly making her away around the house to get to the backyard.

"What was that about?" Victor said in hushed tones to me when I made it over to him.

"We tried to get a look behind the house before and that man was very... well, aggressively against us doing so," I explained.

Victor tilted his head slightly to the side. "Why did you want in the backyard? Is that what she was trying to get to when she asked me to be a guide?"

"It's kind of a long story..." I didn't exactly know which version to tell him, the real or the one we had manufactured. It felt bad to lie to someone who had been extremely helpful, but we really couldn't afford for him to ditch us now. "In short, there was a report that this building may be distruping an endangered or unknown species, so we're here to check it out."

A look of understanding washed over his features and his shoulders relaxed. "Oh, so they didn't want to let the doctor in because they want nothing to interupt the build."

"Yes," I confirmed with a nod of my head and a crooked smile, "something like that."

"That is a big relief," he said with a small laugh, "I thought it had to be something much more serious by the look on that man's face."

Still chuckling to himself, Victor began to follow Tammy. I let out a small sigh at having to lie and followed as well.

"This will be one nice house," Tammy commented between huffs of air. It seemed like she was having real trouble moving on her crutches. "Looks like a lot of floor space and the backyard is huge."

The backyard was currently not much more than some torn up circles and lines that would one day hold a swimming pool, patio, and walking paths, but she was correct in how spacious the space was. Whomever was the owner of the land and home had to be fairly wealthy or notable. Stepping carefully over the various colored flags and ropes that delineated different areas, we slowly made our way to where the vegetation line of the jungle began. It seemed very odd that there was no one we could see working on anything in the back of the lot and a shiver went down my spine as I realized no construction sounds were coming from the house either. If either Victory or Tammy noticed, they kept it to themselves.

At the vegetation line, Tammy stopped and leaned heavily on her good leg, panting heavily.

"I feel so out of shape now," she puffed. "Walking on crutches is hard work, I'm glad we brought you Victor, you might have to carry me out of here."

Victor let out a little chuckle as Tammy dragged herself half-hopping to a fallen brance big enough for her to sit on and be a bit off the ground.

"You're going to be my legs today, Elsie," she instructed. "I need you to first go down each side of this edge of the backyard and look for evidence of any animal, probably large, bedding down for the night. Broken sticks, compact vegetation, tufts of fur, anything like that."

I nodded, but nervously gave a sidelong look to the house. I didn't know how I could sense it, but I knew without a doubt that the foreman was staring a hole into me from one of the windows.

"Don't mind him," Tammy said with a smile, catching on to my worry. "He's just upset that I pulled the boss card on him. Pay it no mind."

I definitely didn't feel comfortable with the foreman staring a burning hole into me, but I figured that the quicker I completed what we were here for, the quicker we could leave. Besides, even though I was scared, it was also thrilling to think that I was potentially standing in the same area where a centaur had been found. The thrill of possibly being able to uncover the truth and potentially validating the years I had spent arguing with friends and family about my interest in cryptids drove me into action. I clicked open the camera app on my phone and began to carefully make my way along the back edge of the yard, moving slowly so that I would not miss a thing.

The vegetation along the very edge where the proper yard met the jungle line had been left to go wild while the rest of the yard was dug up, it looked like it had been so for a while, potentially the last time it had been landscaped being before the first record of the discovery. There also were not any disctinct foot prints, man or beast that I could make out going from the upturned soil into the vegetation. It appeared that perhaps the soil nearest to the jungle had recently been plowed under, destroying any evidence that had been visible.

Approximately half way across the yard, I chanced a glance towards the house, but nothing had changed, though I still was pretty sure he was watching.

"You're doing great!" Tammy called out.

A couple of broken twigs caught my eye, they had been both broken in the same dirrection, likely by the same incident. I followed the direction of the break with my eyes and my heart fluttered in my stomach. It was very faint, but I could clearly make out a depressed area in the vegetation large enough that it looked like I could have curled up in with room to spare. Whatever caused the depression seemed to have been heavier on the right with the indent deeper on that end. It was a rough guess, but it felt right to say that the right side of whatever had been there had been about twice as heavy as the left. In my excitement, I fumbled with my camera, temporarily stuck dumb and unable to remember how it worked. With a deep breath in and a minor pep talk to myself, I got a hold of myself and began to snap pictures from all different directions

I was so deep into my giddy feelings about my having actually found something, I had blocked out the commotion going on at the sidelines. When I finally stood up, satisfied that I had captured everything I could, I was surprised to see that Tammy and Victor were in a heated discussion with a police officer. Quickly stuffing the phone in my pocket, I jogged back over to where they were. The foreman had also just emerged from the house and was marching to the same destination.

"I am Dr. Phillips," Tammy said, her face flushed. She snapped her wallet out of her pocket and pulled out her I.D. "See? Tamsyn Irene Phillips!"

"I was told that there was someone impersonating an official," the police man said, pointedly not looking to the I.D. thrust nearly into his face.

"Well obviously that report was incorrect," Tammy snapped, "the foreman on this job is just mad that I pulled rank on him."

"I want them gone," the foreman rumbled. He had barely beaten me to the scene. "All of them and I want them trespassed."

The officer looked between the foreman, then back to our triad. "He is supposed to be here and he knows who is allowed on the premises, please leave, if you return to this site, I will arrest you."

Tammy grumbled and shoved her wallet back into her pocket. "The company he works for gave us permission to be here. He is lieing because he doesn't want us to see anything. Why would he be so concerned, we are only biologists?"

The foreman's eyes narrowed and his posture became aggressive, I looked to Tammy hoping that my pleading eyes would convey to her how very much I wanted to leave before the situation escalated any further.

"We will go," Victor said loudly, handing Tammy her crutches.

Tammy looked to him like he was a traitor for a brief moment, before letting out a frustrated huff and taking the crutches. Defeated, she began to angrily walk back to the car, but not without a lot of complaining and choice words muttered under her breath. I practically sprinted to the car, partially because I wanted nothing more to do with the situation, but also because I couldn't wait to sit down and analyze the photos.