by Ann Charles
“Hell, no.”
Pedro pointed down at the trees. “That’s the site.”
A small clearing amid the trees sat below them. Located only a short distance from several crumbling gray stone structures was a group of army-green tents.
Quint mulled over Pedro’s words as they began their descent. They’d almost reached canopy level when something slammed into the helicopter’s windshield and then ricocheted up into the blades.
Feathers flew.
Pedro cursed in rapid-fire Spanish.
“What was that?” Quint asked, peering up through the windshield.
“Very bad news.”
“What do you mean?” The helicopter seemed to be unharmed.
“It was a screech owl.” Pedro shot him a quick frown. “A muan.”
“What’s a muan?”
“The evil bird of bad tidings.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s a sign.”
“Of what?”
“Yum Cimil, or as some call him, Ah Puch. The lord of death, ruler of the ninth level of the Maya Underworld.”
According to the book Quint had read on Maya gods and religion, the Underworld was the Maya version of Hades. “And a muan is his pet bird?”
“Not a pet, a messenger.” Pedro craned his neck, checking the landing area as the ground loomed beneath. “When you see or hear a screech owl, someone will die,” he said as he set the helicopter onto the grass with a soft bounce.
“And what about when you chop it up in the blades of your helicopter?”
As the engine wound down, Pedro turned to Quint, his brow wrinkled. “I’m afraid to find out.”
* * *
At the sound of the helicopter landing, Angélica sent their “researching” author, Maverick, after her father to help Pedro unload the supplies he’d picked up in Cancun.
Her father needed to take it easy on his damned leg. His doctor had given the green light to switch from crutches to a cane, but Juan still needed to rest his leg every afternoon as ordered. Angélica worried that the strain of cleaning up this dig site was going to cause further damage.
After a glance at her watch and then a frown in the direction of the helicopter landing site, she grabbed her machete and headed southwest toward the Chakmo’ol Temple. She’d check in with Pedro later to find out what had delayed him an extra day on his return. Her fingers were crossed it wasn’t something to do with his mother or his many sisters.
In the meantime, she had more clearing to do around the second-largest temple at the site, which was another potential location for the stela her mother had written about in her notes. She paused on the way past the partially excavated ballcourt to check on one of her INAH-appointed female field workers, Daisy Walker.
Daisy had more spunk in her mid-fifties than most twenty-year-olds. Her steely determination had struck a chord in Angélica, who’d recognized a fellow lonely soul in the silver-haired sprite. Their first night here, Angélica had brought her crew together into a circle, old and new, and had them tell a bit about who they were and why they had signed up for a remote dig site in the middle of the Mexican jungle.
Semi-recently widowed, Daisy had returned to college a couple of years back to find a purpose, something to keep her from focusing on her very empty nest. Archaeology had been her passion in her younger years, but she’d chosen to devote thirty years to a husband and three children instead of digging in the dirt. Now, with nobody waiting for her at home, she’d decided to follow through on the other love of her life—Mesoamerican history, which was something else Angélica had in common with Daisy.
Angélica paused at the northeast corner of the ballcourt near the end wall, looking around the masonry structure with sloping stone-block walls. It was a modest court, unlike the Grand Ballcourt at Chichen Itza with its tall vertical walls covered with elaborate reliefs. This court’s design was T-shaped with one enclosed end zone at the bottom of the T. The narrow playing alley was filled with grass and weeds that had long ago worked up through the packed dirt and taken residence. The sloping lichen-coated walls, or aprons as her father had corrected her earlier, were only about eight feet tall and topped with a crumbling flat cornice. A two-foot-high bench bracketed the base of the aprons, with one corner of the far bench wall partially demolished under the weight of a strangler fig tree.
With a lot of work, including structural repair, the ballcourt had the potential to be one of the highlights of the site. Tourists would be able to step down into the T-shaped playing alley and imagine how it felt to be a Maya ball player. These players, whose job was to hit a six- to eight-pound ball made of chicle through a small stone ring high up on the aprons without using hands, feet, or head, were an elite group. Unfortunately, the price of losing was sometimes death.
At breakfast, she’d instructed Esteban to focus on the far end of the narrow playing alley beyond the aprons. He was to begin by training Daisy how to measure off and string test areas. Just beyond the strangler fig she could see Daisy down on her hands and knees, but Esteban was walking along the bench wall, searching the weeds.
“Did you lose your keys again?” Angélica asked. Most ballcourts were designed acoustically so that there was no need to yell to be heard from one end to the other.
He squawked at the sound of her voice. “Hola, Dr. García.” A smile filled his round face as he approached her. “Señora Walker encontró esto.”
“Inglés, Esteban, ¿recuerdas?” She’d spoken to her Spanish and Maya crew about trying to use English in front of the new field workers in order to make them feel more at ease. If the team was going to meet the objectives she’d submitted to INAH for their month here, she needed everyone to enjoy working together in spite of the heat, humidity, insects, and lack of running water. In her experience, she’d found that a common tongue facilitated cooperation tenfold.
“What did Daisy find?” she asked.
He dropped a dirt-covered jade piece into the palm of her hand. “There es más,” he said in a blend of languages.
Esteban spoke both Maya and Spanish fluently in a smooth tenor, but he stumbled with English. However, next to Fernando and Teodoro, Esteban had worked the longest with Angélica and her father, starting from when his arms didn’t look strong enough to swing a rope, let alone a machete for hours on end.
“You mean there are more jade pieces like this?” she asked. She blew some of the dirt off the cut stone and then held it up in the sunlight. It looked like a carving of a head—a mixture of a skeleton with monkey-looking cheeks and ears.
“No, Dr. García. Un yugo.” His forehead furrowed as he glanced at Daisy, who’d joined them with her trowel in hand and a sunny smile on her face. “A … que es word …” His brown eyes widened. “Ah, sí, a yoke.”
“A yoke?” Angélica’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me. Where?”
Esteban led the way to the other end of the narrow playing alley to where Daisy had been stringing one-meter squares in the weeds and dirt off to the side of the ballcourt. Angélica dropped her machete and took the paintbrush he held out for her, kneeling next to the prize they’d found. Sure enough, the U-shaped ballgame costume piece was visible next to the tree root that had apparently upended the buried treasure.
“Damn,” she whispered in awe. She’d seen plenty of stone yokes on display in various museums, but this was the first time she’d ever come across one on a site.
“Esteban says the ball players used to wear these around their waist to block blows.” Daisy knelt next to Angélica. She smelled like lemon eucalyptus oil and olive oil thanks to the natural bug repellent Daisy had made and used in place of the store-bought versions, which she claimed gave her a rash. “Is it a rare find?”
Angélica brushed off more dirt. “No and yes. Over a thousand yokes have been found throughout Mesoamerican sites, but usually they’re found in tombs, not out in the open like this.”
“How could they wear something so big and heavy while playing the b
allgame? This must weigh twenty pounds.”
“Probably closer to thirty,” she told Daisy. “Most archaeologists agree that these stone yokes were more for ceremonial purposes. The yokes that were actually worn by the ball players were most likely made of wood and disintegrated long ago.”
“Oh.” Daisy sounded a tad deflated.
Angélica squeezed her shoulder. “But you finding this here on the ground rather than in a tomb is a rare treat. We need to be careful clearing it. Some stone yokes have iconography to decipher that will tell a story about a famous ball player or an important game.”
“Like a trophy?”
“Exactly. How did you find this?” Angélica had traversed this end of the ballcourt several times since they’d arrived on site and begun beating back the trees and brush.
Daisy shrugged. “I saw the jade piece first. It was sticking up out of the dirt here.” She touched the ground where a rainstorm runoff had cut a rut through the earth. “As soon as we started digging it out, my trowel hit stone and voilà, there was the yoke.”
Angélica shook her head in amazement. “Do you know how unusual it is to stumble onto finds like these?”
The older woman’s cheeks rounded even more. “Well, I’ve always had a knack for finding ‘lost’ items around my house—car keys, toys, socks, my husband’s wallet. My family used to call me Radar O’Reilly.” Daisy’s grin took on a sad slant. “You know, from that old television show—”
“M.A.S.H.” Angélica nodded. “It’s one of my dad’s favorite shows.” She held up the jade piece for a closer look. The late morning sun shone from behind her, lighting up the jade piece, showing all of its wear and tear as well as its artistic beauty. This one was more turquoise than green. She’d have to research the sources of this particular color of jade back at her lab in Cancun.
“My husband loved it, too,” Daisy said. “I always had a crush on Alan Alda. He was such a flirt.”
“Gatita,” Juan called out from the other end of the ballcourt where she’d stood moments before. “You have company.”
The jade piece seemed to be slightly jagged at the neck, as if it had been broken off at some …
Company?
Daisy looked across the court, shielding her eyes. “Broad shoulders and long legs.” She whistled in appreciation. “My, oh my, this one is tall. He looks like trouble.”
Tall? Angélica lowered the jade piece and turned to see for herself, squinting across the length of the ballcourt into the sunlight.
Her breath hitched.
Her heart stumbled.
Her thoughts about Maya jade pieces, ballgames, and yokes crashed down around her.
Quint Parker strode toward her.
Son of a bitch. The dark-haired heartbreaker had finally arrived.
“Oh, he’s trouble all right,” she told Daisy, rising to her feet. “Trouble with a damned capital T.”
Chapter Three
The Snake or Serpent Dance: For the ancient Maya, public dances acted as mechanisms for social, political, and religious endeavors. Many glyphs have been found showing nobility dancing with snakes.
“He’s handsome trouble at least,” Daisy said for Angélica’s ears only.
“The worst kind.” Angélica grabbed her machete and leveled her shoulders, readying for battle.
“Good morning, Dr. García.” Quint’s tone was cool and respectful, very professional. His heated stare, on the other hand, blazed a trail from her head to her boots, getting hung up along the way on a couple of bumpy parts.
He’d cut his hair shorter, ditching the wavy, tousled look he’d sported at the last dig site. Other than that, he was the same as she remembered—chiseled jaw and cheekbones, long eyelashes, and great lips. Did he still smell like sunshine and citrus?
Damn, she’d missed him. “You’re late, Parker.”
Her father chuckled as he limped toward them with his cane and walking cast. “See what I mean, boy?”
Quint’s hazel eyes returned north, searching her face. “Your father said you’d give me the lay of the land.” His lips twitched at the corners.
She snorted at his pun. Oh, she’d lay him, all right. She’d start with a sucker punch in his breadbasket and then deliver a haymaker, laying him out flat for not sending even a single postcard and then showing up a week late with no notice.
“Dad,” she said, skirting Quint without touching him. She couldn’t yet, not in front of her crew. “Take this jade piece and help Esteban and Daisy with that yoke over there, please.”
She placed the broken figurine in her father’s hand and aimed a frown at him. If he knew about Quint coming today and hadn’t said anything in order to surprise her, she was going to hide the Zane Grey book he was in the middle of reading, maybe even throw it in the pit toilet with a loud war cry as it hit bottom.
Juan caught her hand and squeezed it, shooting a warning glare in return, his gaze darting to Quint and back. She knew better than to think the warning was for her heart’s safety. He knew her temper too well.
She pulled free. Fine, she wouldn’t fillet Quint with her machete, but she might tie him up and give him a close shave around his tender spots.
After a good-bye nod to Esteban and Daisy, she strode toward the tents. “Follow me, Parker,” she called without looking back to see if he obeyed her order.
Quint swished behind her through the dry grass across the open plaza. She shoved through the flap of the tent she was sharing with her father. Quint joined her inside, zipping the insect mesh flap closed behind them.
The sunlight shining through the tent canvas lit them in a green hue.
They were alone.
A howler monkey barked in a nearby tree.
Well, sort of alone.
She stared at Quint, suddenly speechless now that the exasperating man stood in front of her, live and in his all-too-attractive flesh. The many rants she’d practiced in the small mirror hanging in the camp’s makeshift shower faded to a whisper in her mind.
He fanned his white camp shirt. “Would it help if I told you that I’ve been miserable since I left?”
That made two of them.
“Not one word from you in almost four weeks, Parker. Not a letter, a text, or even a fucking postcard.” She’d left an embarrassing amount of voicemails the first week he’d been gone. Voicemails she wished she could erase.
“I lost my phone in the Atlantic my first day in Greenland. With it went the number for your satellite phone.”
That was a good excuse, but it wasn’t going to cut it with her, not when there were other ways of communicating across vast distances in this day and age.
“And on top of that,” she continued, crossing her arms, “you arrive a week late. Hell, I’d just about given up on ever seeing you again.”
“I had a small job come in after Greenland that I needed to take so that I could stay down here longer.” When she growled in response, he added, “Hey, it’s not like there was an easy way of getting a message to you at this remote site. Word on the street is that the carrier pigeons have gone on strike.”
The logical side of her understood how his job worked, but right now she wanted to tackle him and pummel the crap out of him. She took a deep breath, needing to handle this like a grownup. “I don’t think this long-distance relationship business is going to work, Quint.”
He didn’t argue.
His silence made her wring her hands.
“While I think there’s an interesting spark between us, I’m not sure it’s worth pursuing any further.”
His face was frozen, unreadable.
She pressed on with her rehearsed breakup speech. “If you’d like to volunteer to stay here at the dig site, we can certainly use your help, but if you’d rather skip out on the bugs and sweating, I understand.”
His chest rose and fell, the only indication that he hadn’t hardened into a statue.
“I can pay you for your time from my private resources, of course, if the lac
k of funds is an issue. It’s probably not anything close to what you usually make for a photojournalist job, but it includes food, a cot, and a nighttime jungle serenade.” Her joke sank as fast as his cell phone probably had. She hesitated with the wrap-up, waiting for him to give some indication he was actually participating in this conversation.
One of his dark eyebrows lifted. “Anything else, boss lady?”
His use of the nickname he’d often called her made her heart pang. It was one thing to practice this speech to a mirror, but saying it to Quint’s face made her lips feel like wood.
“Yes.” Her gaze traveled downward, stopping at his khakis. “How are your leg and shoulder doing?”
He’d taken bullets in both for her at the last dig site, and one of her nail-biters during his complete and utter silence for weeks on end was that infection had set in while he was on the frozen tundra. That he’d died a painful death because of her.
“I’m fine. I’ve always been a fast healer.”
She’d like to see both wounds for herself, but inspecting his naked flesh probably wasn’t a smart idea. “Good.”
“I’m not leaving, Angélica.” His tone was matter-of-fact.
“Okay, then. Dad and I will appreciate your help. There’s a lot of work to do here to open the site to archaeologists and their crews again. It’s going to take even more work and time before it’s ready for the public.” She was rambling and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “There’s no way we can have tourists crawling all over the temples in their current crumbling state, not to mention the dangers that come with the wildlife patrolling the grounds each night.”
“My staying has nothing to do with helping your father, although I do enjoy his company when he’s not trying to scare the hell out of me.” The hard set of his jaw gave her a clue about why he was staying.
She lifted her chin. “Let me guess, you’re here to rescue another damsel in distress.”
Quint had a bad hero-like habit of diving in front of firing guns for the opposite sex. She didn’t need him sticking around to try to save her. This site might be in bad shape, but she could handle what the jungle threw at her and then some.