by Ann Charles
She tensed, shooting another look toward her father.
“Loosen up. I’m just trying to get better access to these muscles here,” Quint told her. His thumbs dug in, making her flinch as he strummed a knotted bunch of banjo strings under her skin.
Closing her eyes, she let him work his magic on her shoulders for several minutes. Her mind stopped spinning and her focus returned to something in her mother’s notes that had made her grind her teeth earlier.
“Quint?” she asked, tipping her head to the side to give him more access to the tight chords running up her neck.
“Hmm?”
“I have a feeling there’s something going on here that’s not as it seems.”
“Well, if you must know, I am thinking about you naked right now and where I’d like to massage next. But otherwise, I’m just enjoying the feel of your skin under my fingers and trying to relax you enough so you can get some sleep tonight.”
She smiled, scooting back further between his shins so she could rest her temple on his knee. He smelled soapy clean. “I was talking about this dig site, smartass.”
He switched sides, tipping her head the other way and tugging down her tank-top strap on the other side. “What makes you think there is something else going on here besides cleaning up after looters and fending off creatures with sharp claws and venom-filled stingers?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a gut feeling, really, but I keep wondering if this place has been left alone for reasons other than the previous archaeologist not meeting his objectives.”
“Do you think that the helicopter crash had something to do with INAH shutting down operations?”
“Maybe.” She wrapped her arm around his leg, clinging to his calf as he worked loose another tight bunch of her muscles. “But there are too many flags here for me to ignore or write off as happenstance.”
“Like what?” His thumbs moved to the base of her skull.
“For starters, why is the stela my mom wrote about missing?”
“Maybe it’s inside the Baatz’ Temple.”
“I guess we’ll find out if it is tomorrow.”
He tipped her head back into his lap, his fingers moving to her temples. “What else?”
“Why is Daisy finding so many items in the ballcourt?”
“Is that unusual?”
“Sort of. But what’s more odd is her ability to home in on an object. It’s like she has LiDAR in her head.”
“What about Maverick?”
She opened her eyes, looking at his upside-down face. “What about him?”
“Has he been acting suspiciously at all?”
“No. Mainly he’s been quiet, keeping to himself.”
“You don’t find that odd for a writer?”
She snorted. “Maybe. You were a much louder pain in the ass right out of the gate at the last site, that’s for sure.”
His laughter was low and quiet. “Yeah, but I was that sweet and achy kind of pain, right? The sort that makes you want more of it.”
“If you say so.”
“You’re so sassy on the inside.” He leaned in and gave her an upside-down kiss, the breath-stealing kind, then began to feather his fingers over her cheeks, tracing the bones of her face. “Yet so soft on the outside.”
She closed her eyes. Her thoughts flitted over the possible dangers they might face over the next few days as they continued to peel away the jungle and years of neglect at the site. She needed to talk to Pedro and make sure he had the helicopter at the ready for an emergency flight at any time.
“What are you going to do if you can’t find the stela your mom wrote about before your time here is up?”
“I don’t know.” She yawned, scooting closer, resting her cheek on his bare thigh. The hairs on his leg tickled her cheek. “Come back here again instead of handing it over to another crew.”
His hands stopped. “You mean to tell me that if you find the stela, we may not have to come back to this particular site again in the future?”
She peeked up at him through one eye. “You don’t have to come to any of the sites I choose, Parker.”
“Don’t play games with me, Angélica. We’re beyond that and you know it.”
“Sorry, but I don’t want you to feel stuck.”
“I don’t, and I’ll accept your apology on one condition.”
“What?”
“You come up here with me.” He patted the cot.
She pointed at her father’s sleeping form. “Have you forgotten about someone?”
“I’m not going to try to seduce you.” He pulled her up and onto his cot, spooning her body into his on the narrow strip of canvas. “I’m going to stretch out my aching body and I want you next to me.”
The frame creaked under their combined weight as she settled back against him. The feel of his warmth against her made her feel like purring even though the night was humid and the air in the tent still. She sighed, settling into the pillow. It smelled like Quint, spicy with an undercurrent of lust.
He toyed with her hair, his breath tickling her ear. “We’re going to find that stela, sweetheart.”
“How can you be sure? I’ve been here for weeks and haven’t had any luck.” If the stela wasn’t in the Baatz’ Temple, she was out of places to look.
“Because I’ve seen you locked onto a scent before. You’re like a bloodhound on the hunt. You’ll practically kill yourself trying to find it before you give up.”
That wasn’t the most flattering of descriptions. She entwined her fingers in his, wrapping his arm around her. “Aren’t you going to try to talk sense into me?”
He was silent for a moment, his breathing the only sound. “Tell me something, Angélica. And I want you to be honest.”
“What?”
“Have you thought that maybe there could be something on that stela that brought about your mother’s death?”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to start down the curse path, too, Quint.”
“I wasn’t thinking it was a curse.”
She rolled enough to look over her shoulder at him. “Then what?”
He leaned on his elbow, his forehead lined as he looked down at her. “You’ve said your mom believed there was a warning on the stela.”
“Yes.” She flipped all of the way over onto her back so she could stare up at him without getting a crook in her neck. “She has something written along those lines in her notes as a possible theory of the stela’s overall meaning.”
“What if the warning has something to do with a danger at this site? Some kind of ancient danger.”
She gave that some thought. “A danger that has lasted for centuries, waiting for my mom to arrive and read the glyphs?”
“It sounds crazy, I know, but just play along for a moment.”
“Okay.” She waited, trying to open her mind to whatever he was going to throw at her.
His palm slid across her lower stomach, cupping her hipbone through the old boxer shorts she was using for pajama bottoms since her father was sharing her tent. “Do you know what happened to the last group of Maya who lived here?”
She shrugged. “There’s not been anything definitive found, but I’d guess they relocated to another site due to famine, disease, or the Spanish invasion.”
His gaze held hers, the vertical lines between his brows deepening. “What if something bad happened here? I mean really bad, not a food or sickness issue. Something so bad that whoever was the last to exit the place left that stela behind as a warning to keep others away.”
“And my mom’s reading it put her life in danger?”
“No. Reading it put others’ lives in danger.”
She frowned. “You’ve been hanging around with my father too much the last couple of days.”
He didn’t even crack a smile at that or argue about it. “Did Marianne ever actually decipher the stela?”
“No. She took notes and made several drawings of what was on it, but she was heading ho
me to decipher it fully.”
“But she never made it home.”
“Of course not. You know that story.”
“And her notes were on the helicopter with her?”
She nodded. “But I have them now.”
“All of them?”
“She only had one notebook with her, Quint.” She pushed up on her elbows, looking at him eye to eye. “What are you getting at? That someone killed my mom in order to get to her notes?”
“More along the lines of killing her to bury the secrets she’d discovered along with her and her notes.”
Angélica’s gut tightened. She shot a worried glance toward her father, watching to make sure his breathing was still rhythmic. “But the crash was ruled an accident,” she whispered.
There was something unsettling in the way Quint was looking at her. She sat upright. “What is it?”
He opened his mouth, and then hesitated, shaking his head. “Nothing.”
“Quint, what?”
He continued to shake his head. “I was playing out what-ifs in my head, that’s all. I got carried away.” She squinted at him in disbelief. “I’ve read too many supernatural thrillers and mysteries in my travels, sweetheart. I swear. Now come back down here.”
She let him pull her back down, staring up at him from his pillow. Did he know something about her mother’s crash that she didn’t? How could he? She and her father had been there with her mother as she’d died. They’d collected her belongings that were left after the accident and visited the crash site. The government reports had been copied and sent to them upon request in their search to find closure. Copies of all articles and news reports from the internet, and those from local Mexican papers, were filed away in a drawer in her mom’s old desk back in Tucson.
“Angélica.” Quint’s fingers trailed up her arm and along her shoulder, lightly tickling her as they feathered their way across the upper swell of her breasts. “We’ll find the stela and then all of your questions will be answered.”
She caught his fingers before they traveled further and landed the two of them into trouble. “I should move to my own cot.”
“Not yet.” He leaned down and kissed her temple. “Close your eyes and let me help you silence that big brain for a few hours.” He clicked off his flashlight, leaving them in darkness.
She turned onto her side, returning to their spooning position. “Are you going to tell me another comic book tale about your impressive biceps?”
“No.” He locked onto her hips and pulled her closer. “Tonight, I want to tell you about my time in Greenland and how sad and lonely I was.”
“Oh dear, is this going to be a drama? I tend to lean more toward action-adventure stories.”
“Criminy, everyone’s a critic.” He nuzzled her neck below her ear, whispering, “Now shush up and listen.”
She closed her eyes and let her mind meander along with him as he told her about a troublemaking pair of polar bear cubs. Then the sandman came dancing through and buried her under a mountain of sleep.
Chapter Seven
Sascabera: Ancient mines (open and capped) where granular limestone was extracted to be used as lime plaster.
“This isn’t a cave,” Quint told Angélica the next morning. “It’s a death trap.”
He shone his flashlight into the partially concealed entrance that Pedro had stumbled onto yesterday. He hadn’t been kidding about the thickness of the strangler fig roots covering the opening. It looked like a tree from a Dr. Seuss story—one that was planted crookedly on top of a shoulder-high mound and then melted down over the cave’s entrance with wax turned to roots.
How long had it taken for the tree to grow to this size? More important, what were the chances of Pedro’s root hacking causing the tree’s weight to shift and triggering a cave-in while someone was inside? More specifically, while Quint and Angélica were inside?
The scarred-up ground and deep ragged cross-cuts on several of the strangler fig tree’s large roots were proof of Pedro’s shovel and machete work the day before. As Quint leaned closer to the narrow opening Pedro had made, a breath of air seeped out and swept over his sweaty skin. It felt slightly cooler than the sauna surrounding him. He sniffed, expecting something rank like bat urine or guano, but all he could smell was the cave—dirt and rocks.
“What do you see, Parker?” Twigs and dry leaves crunched under her boots as Angélica moved up next to him. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail today instead of a braid. Auburn tendrils stuck to her glistening skin along her hairline. Her yellow T-shirt had damp spots across her shoulders and down the front. Beads of perspiration dotted her forehead.
The stifling humidity had her sweating like him for once. It also seemed to have spiked her temper, or maybe waking up in his bed had done the trick. One way or another, something had her more tense this morning, her smile harder to lure to the surface.
“You mean besides a hot woman who likes to hog the bed?” He tried to joke, wiping away a drip of sweat sliding down his temple.
“You should’ve let me leave your cot when I mentioned it.” She nailed him with a frown. “When did you move to mine anyway?”
Was that what was bothering her? That he’d left her alone in his bed?
“Shortly after you turned in your sleep and drove your knee in my upper thigh. An inch or two to the left and I’d be singing soprano this morning.”
Her frown deepened. “I didn’t knee you where the bullet went in, did I?”
“No. You took aim at my good leg.”
“Sorry about that.”
“You were sleeping, sweetheart.” Rather than risk another kneeing, he’d extracted himself from her side and moved to her cot. Unfortunately, her father had woken before Quint and Angélica this morning and noticed the switcheroo.
“Looks like you have a bedbug problem,” Juan had whispered while Quint stretched awake. A melancholy expression replaced her dad’s grin as he watched Angélica sleep for a moment before he left the tent. The old buzzard was having way too much fun with their nightly slumber parties.
“So, did I turn you into a nervous nelly after kneeing you?” The corner of Angélica’s mouth twitched, her smile almost emerging. “Send you scurrying to safety?”
“Poke fun, boss lady, but I prefer my boys to remain south of my throat, especially while I’m asleep and unable to defend them from knockout blows. I’m going to need to wear a cup for protection the next time we share my bed.”
“I should have gone back to my cot.” Something in her tone made him wish he’d stayed put last night and risked a second kneeing.
“Angélica, it was an accident.”
“I don’t know about that. It might have been my subconscious trying to pay you back for losing my phone number in the North Atlantic and almost breaking my heart.”
He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. “Thank God it was only ‘almost.’ I’d hate to see what you’d do to me if I actually broke it.”
Her jaw hardened. “Let’s not find out.” She pointed at the cave, her expression rigid, her boss lady shield back in place. “Tell me what you see inside there or move aside so I can take a look myself.”
“Keep your pants on, ramrod.” He leaned closer to the entrance, shining his light between the roots. “I see … a cave.”
“Funny man. Don’t give up your photojournalist gig.”
“And here I was thinking about signing up to be your number one cook, comedian, and bottle washer.”
She snorted. “And give up María? No chance. Stick to doing what you do best.”
“Which is what?”
Her narrowed gaze met his. “Charming the ladies.” She reached out and turned his chin back toward the cave’s entrance. “Now, do you see bat guano mounds on the floor?”
He shone his beam around inside the cave. “No.”
“What about bat urine stalactites hanging from the ceiling?” When he didn’t answer right away, she continued, “The stalactit
es look like melted brownish-yellow plastic dripping from the ceiling, and can be—”
“I know what bat urine stalactites look like, sweetheart,” he said, interrupting her science lesson. “I wrote an article once about spelunking in the Great Smoky Mountains. The crew I traveled with came across several bat colonies along the way.” He’d been happy as hell to reach the end of that gig. His time under the earth had given him a whole new respect for miners. “I don’t see stalactites or stalagmites or any other sign of bats. Nor do I smell them.”
“Neither do I. That seems odd, don’t you think?” She nudged him over so she could peer inside with her flashlight. “I’d expect there to be bats in there.”
“Maybe the cave has been inaccessible thanks to these roots and vines and … would you look at the size of the thorns on this little tree. What’s it called?”
“A ceiba tree. When it’s young, the trunks and branches are armed with thick conical spines. Eventually, if left to grow to its full potential, it will be the tallest tree in the forest. Like that giant over there.”
“Holy shit, that’s huge.” The big tree had what looked like buttresses at its base, making it almost ten feet in diameter. Up through the other trees, its umbrella-shaped crown hogged the sunlight, which he was grateful for on this sizzling day.
“They’re amazing specimens. Ceiba trees are considered the ‘first tree’ or ‘world tree’ in the Maya world, believed to stand at the center of the Earth. Even the modern Maya tend to leave the tree alone out of respect.” She carefully pushed aside the ceiba sapling and sliced off a braid of vines that had wrapped around the young trunk with her machete.
“Ceiba wood is soft and light, not really useful for furniture, but down south in Costa Rica they are using it for pallets.” She reached out and knocked on a fig root that bisected the opening. It was as thick as Quint’s leg and didn’t budge. “We’re going to need a hatchet for this puppy.”
“You ask, my queen, and I deliver.” He pulled out a hatchet from the leather bag Juan had given him after finding out at breakfast that Angélica was taking Quint to check out the cave.
Her smile had a brittle edge. “Well-equipped and decent in the sack.” She held her hand out for the hatchet. “You’re one helluva package deal, Quint Parker.”