Make No Bones About It ( a Dig Site Mystery--Book 2)

by Ann Charles

  There it was, Quint thought, one of the main roots leading to her struggles. Her mom’s death still haunted her.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Angélica.” Not without her, anyway.

  She scowled. “You’ll be leaving again in a few weeks, remember?”

  “That’s temporary.”

  Temporary. There was that word again. A label she’d given him at the last site that had given him plenty of heartburn.

  “But you and I are permanent,” he reiterated, wanting to cement that in her head.

  “You don’t know that.” She rubbed her brow. “You could get hurt while you’re gone.”

  “I could get hurt here. We both could. Rattlesnakes aren’t exactly teddy bears.” Not to mention that if Pedro was right, she was in mortal danger the longer she stayed here.

  “Your plane could crash.”

  He didn’t miss the correlations she was making between her mother’s death and his traveling. “The odds are against it.”

  Silence filled the tent again. He wanted to reach out to her and reassure her, to blanket that vulnerability she was letting him see. But this was something she was going to have to come to terms with on her own. All he could do was continue to wait and hold on tight, refusing to let go.

  “Angélica, I’m like a tick,” he quipped, trying to lure her smile again. “You can try to tear me off, but I’ll just dig in deeper.”

  “A tick?” One side of her mouth lifted. “That’s not very sexy, Parker.”

  “Neither is sweating my ass off next to you day and night in this sauna Mexico calls ‘paradise’ in its commercials, but I’m playing for keeps here. I’ll do whatever it takes for a shot at winning you.”

  Her eyes darkened as she stared at him. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

  “For you or me?”

  “Either of us.” She stuck her hands in her back pockets. “I’m hard-headed and you’re stubborn as hell. Not to mention your overflowing love for this place and all of its difficulties.”

  “True, but you and your machete will battle the jungle for me, and I’ll make you laugh.”

  She chuckled. “That you will.” Her focus traveled lower. “Not to mention that you’re really good in the sack.”

  He grunted. “There’s that damned word again.”

  “Really super duper?” She bridged the distance between them. Her eyes flirted, lashes batting a couple of times.

  “That sounds like something you’d say before sticking a gold star on my cheek.” He pulled her closer.

  She didn’t resist, wrapping her arms around his waist. Her chin rested on his chest. “How’s this? Every time you touch me, Quint Parker, you rock my world.”

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  She went up on her toes. “Actually, I’m getting very hot.” She kissed him, her lips soft and searching. “And bothered,” she breathed against his mouth.

  His hands slid along her jaw, framing her face, holding her close. He deepened the kiss, touching her tongue with his. Lust quickly took over, his mouth growing more demanding, her response more frenzied. It’d been so long since he’d had her that his control was slippery at best.

  “Sweet Jesus,” he said when she slid her hand over the front of his pants, pressing, teasing.

  “Quint?” Her breaths came faster.

  He groaned when her touch grew bolder. “What?”

  “I want you.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Bad.”

  His mouth took hers again, rougher now. His hunger freed, running the show. “I’m all yours, sweetheart.”

  “We don’t have long.” She unbuttoned his pants.

  “I don’t think speed is going to be a problem for me.” The feel of skin on skin alone might blow his gasket if he wasn’t careful. He trailed his mouth down her neck.

  Her moan rose from low in her throat. “I want to feel your—”

  “Angélica?” Juan called. It sounded like he was at the edge of the tent clearing.

  She winced. “Fuck me.”

  He seconded that emotion. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he pushed her back a step before he lost what little restraint he had left and told Juan to come back after he’d finished ravaging the man’s daughter.

  “Angélica?” Juan called again, close enough this time that Quint could hear the creak of his cane.

  “In our tent,” she called out. “I’m changing my clothes. What do you need?”

  Quint could hear Juan breathing on the other side of the canvas. “We found something inside the Baatz’ Temple that you should see.”

  She looked up at Quint, her eyes widening. He raised his eyebrows in reply while fixing everything south of the border and zipping his pants again.

  “Is it the stela?” she asked.

  “No, but you still need to come see this.”

  She cursed under her breath. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

  “When you finish getting dressed?”

  “Yes. I’ll catch up with you before you make it back to the temple.”

  “Okay. I need to refill Maverick’s and my canteens.”

  “Sounds good, Dad.”

  “That should give Quint enough time to help you finish getting dressed. He can join us as well.”

  She looked at the ceiling, shaking her head.

  Quint laughed. “I’ll be sure to hurry her along, Juan.”

  Her father’s chuckles faded along with the creak of his cane.

  “He has the worst timing,” she said.

  “No, if he’d shown up ten minutes later, then he would’ve had the worst timing.”

  “Ten minutes? It’s been over a month, heartbreaker. You sure either of us would have lasted that long?”

  “You’re right. Make that five.” He leaned down and gave her a slow kiss, taking his time tasting her since Juan would be a couple of minutes refilling canteens. When he stepped back, he shook his head to clear it of lust.

  “Damn, Parker.” She blew out a breath.

  “Apology accepted, by the way.”

  “Apology for what?’

  “Insulting my virility the day I arrived.”

  Her smile teased. “Well, I can’t let your ego get too big now, can I?”

  “Encouraging it a little every now and then certainly wouldn’t kill you, would it?”

  “I’ll see what I can do, big boy.” She winked and then led the way outside of the tent. When he joined her, she said, “In the meantime, you need to prepare for a shit storm.”

  He zipped the tent flap closed behind him. “What do you mean?”

  She pointed toward the mess tent. “See for yourself.”

  Quint did, his gaze landing on Juan, who was limping their way, carrying two canteens. A grin hung from ear to ear on her father’s face. “Here we go,” he muttered, grabbing his hard hat from the grass.

  “So,” Juan said, handing Quint one of the canteens to carry when he reached their side. “Was it productive?”

  “Our visit to the cave?” Angélica asked.

  “No. Making feet for children’s stockings in the tent just now.”

  Cursing, Angélica snagged her hat from the ground. “We’ve created a monster.”

  “I have a feeling your old man’s just getting rolling.”

  Juan’s laughter filled the camp.

  Chapter Eight

  The Olmec People: One of the earliest major civilizations in Mesoamerica, thriving from roughly 1200 BC to 400 BC. Among their many great feats: They were prodigious traders, traveling far to the north and south.

  “What in the hell is that doing here?” Angélica knelt inside the sweltering Baatz’ Temple, taking a closer look at the mask leaning against the wall. The upper quarter of its round head and one of the hoop earrings were missing, but there was plenty of the mask remaining to recognize its style.

  “That was my thought as soon as I saw it.” Her father blotted his neck with his handkerchief. “We probably shouldn’t stay in
here too long. The heat is much worse than it was earlier this morning.”

  Quint moved up next to her, his shirt mostly soaked but with a few islands of dry spots here and there. “What is that?”

  “It’s not Maya, that’s what it is.” Angélica wiped the bead of sweat rolling down her forehead with the back of her hand.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s Olmec,” Juan explained. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s quite a few centuries older than the Maya people who built this temple.”

  “You can tell that just by looking at it?”

  “The Olmec had a different style from the Maya.” Angélica tugged a small paintbrush from her back pocket. She dusted the packed-dirt floor of the temple around the mask. The missing piece might be nearby.

  Quint sat down next to her, leaning against the wall, careful to avoid the glyphs. “It seems like I read there are theories about the Olmecs being the ancestors of the Maya but not of the Aztecs. Sort of like it’s now thought that the Ancestral Puebloan culture was the predecessor of the Hopi and Zuni Puebloan peoples farther up north.”

  “Ancestral Puebloan?” Angélica glanced at Quint, her eyebrows raised at his use of the preferred name for those who were formerly called the Anasazi. “You know the difference between that term and Anasazi?” Not many outside of the Native American tribes of that area and those in the fields of study involving their cultural history knew the distinction.

  He shrugged. “I wrote a piece several years ago about the area near the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico.”

  “You were at Sky City?” Juan asked.

  “Actually, we were right next to it in the El Malpais lava fields, but I spent some time nearby at the cultural center and museum. That’s where I learned the actual meaning of the term Anasazi and why the Puebloan people don’t like it being used in relation to their ancestors.”

  “I can’t blame them.” Juan moved to the opposite corner of the chamber, checking out the cracks lining the ceiling. “I’m not sure I’d like my ancestors being referred to in the history books as the ‘ancient enemies’ either.”

  “Did you do an article at some point on the Olmec and Aztec cultures as well?” Angélica asked, thinking about his response to her back at the cave regarding the Great Smoky Mountains and bat urine stalactites.

  Quint shook his head. “But I’ve been studying up on the Mesoamerican civilizations.”

  “Studying? You?” She grinned. “And here Dad and I thought you were just another pretty face.”

  “I didn’t call him pretty.” Her father used his cane to tap on the ceiling in several spots. “But I did say he had a nice personality.”

  Quint chuckled at their teasing. He took a swig from his canteen. His brow wrinkled as he watched Juan tap on the bridge stone at the top of the corbel vault leading out of the chamber. “I’ve seen a thing or two in my thirty-eight years.”

  Angélica’s gaze returned to the mask, but her focus was on Quint’s words. Of course, he’d seen a lot in his time, especially with all of the traveling he’d done, but hearing him say it made her realize how little she knew about him. What secrets from his past lay hidden behind those hazel eyes? Maybe she needed to take her paintbrush and trowel to Quint, sweeping away the surface dust, digging deeper into his past. She didn’t want a repeat of the mistakes she’d made with her ex-husband.

  Wiping her hands off on her pants, she stood. “The Maya people have several of the same gods as the Olmecs. They also shared in the ritual of bloodletting and played a similar style of ballgame. These and other subtle commonalities between the two cultures have led many archaeologists to believe that the Maya are descendants of the Olmecs.”

  The sound of Juan’s tape measure retracting made her glance at her father. He was tugging his notebook from his back pocket. “But there is much debate about this still,” he said around the pencil between his teeth.

  Angélica grimaced down at the mask, rubbing the back of her neck. Sharing the same gods and practices didn’t explain what that piece of Olmec art was doing in here.

  Back to Quint, she added, “When it comes to Olmec artwork, most of the pieces are easily distinguishable from other cultures. Notice the thickness of the lips and nose on this mask along with the arch of the eyebrows. You’ll see this same style on many Olmec pieces, including those colossal head statues made famous by many of Mexico’s tourism ads.” She offered her hand to help him stand.

  Quint took her up on her offer, careful not to hit his head on the ceiling. He dusted off the back of his pants. “But I thought the Olmec sites were farther north, closer to where the Aztecs settled.”

  “They were centered near the lowlands of the Gulf coast in southeast Veracruz,” Juan said, scribbling something in his notebook. “Sites like La Venta and San Lorenzo are part of the Olmec heartland.”

  “So why would an Olmec piece be sitting on the floor of a Maya temple this far south?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” She looked at the carvings and glyphs on the temple walls. Her pulse leapt at the stories this temple might tell them about the past. “Maybe there’s something in here that might give us a clue.”

  Juan joined them, spotlighting the wall above the Olmec mask. “I glanced over the glyphs and carvings in here before coming to get you, thinking the same thing, but didn’t see anything Olmec based. But then again, I’m not the one who reads Maya glyphs in her sleep.”

  Angélica stepped toward the wall, keeping her face averted from Quint and her father. Lately, her dreams had been about something much more disturbing than anything she’d read on a Maya glyph.

  Since she had arrived at this site, her dreams often included her mother. This was no surprise after all the studying and pondering she’d been doing about Marianne and her notes. But with each passing day that Angélica didn’t find that damned stela, her dreams were growing more warped, taking a turn toward something more sinister.

  For the last week, she’d spent each night reliving her mother’s helicopter crash from both inside of the helicopter and out. Sometimes she was there after the crash watching her mother die all over again, while at other times she was the one who plunged to the ground and lay bleeding while the darkness swallowed her whole. Waking up gasping was becoming normal.

  But last night things had taken an all-new frightening turn. Marianne hadn’t been the only one in the helicopter this time. She’d had company with her on the flight out—Quint.

  Angélica had watched as the two of them buckled up, lifted off, and crashed to their deaths. Screams, both theirs and hers, had echoed through the jungle as they burned alive in the explosion that followed. At the fiery end, she’d jerked upright and found herself with a pounding heart and sweat-soaked camisole in Quint’s cot. Her pulse had continued to jackhammer in her ears as she’d pulled on her pants and a dry shirt.

  She’d escaped to the mess tent, seeking caffeine to wash away the nightmare, and found it empty other than Maverick and Fernando. After a brief greeting, both men had eaten and slurped their coffee in silence, thankfully.

  A cup of coffee had helped with her analysis of the inclusion of Quint in her nightmare. Sleeping on his pillow, surrounded by his scent, must have caused the change. Not to mention her anxiety about his leaving again soon. One thing was for sure, she wasn’t going to test that theory again. There’d be no sharing his cot anytime soon, at least not until she found that stela and could return to a less frustration-filled night’s sleep.

  Slowly, the rest of the crew had filtered into the mess tent, along with her father and Quint, both freshly shaven. She’d debated on skipping the trip to the cave, putting some space between her and Quint, but avoidance was not the solution. Besides, it wasn’t his fault that her growing feelings for him were awakening an irrational fear of desertion.

  She’d tried to hide from Quint the mess of emotions rippling through her at the mine. Unfortunately, she’d almost messed things up royally between them in the process. Shie
lding herself with her “boss” role had only increased the tension between them. In the end, total honesty had been her only solution short of hitting her head repeatedly against that wall blocking off the rest of the mine.

  Why was there a wall blocking off the mine, anyway? Something wasn’t right. Maybe it was just a gut feeling, but there should have been at least a sign of a rat or two, or some other furry vermin inside. Its lack of …

  “Angélica?” her father’s voice brought her back to the sweltering present. “Did you hear me?”

  “Sorry, I was thinking about the past.”

  Juan chuckled. “You really should try living in the present more often.”

  “The present is too complicated.” From the corner of her eye she saw Quint look her way, but she kept her focus on the wall.

  Something down near the ground caught her attention.

  She moved closer, squatting in front of the wall, and angled her light for a deeper shadow effect. She ran her fingers over the glyph. Her mother’s words echoed in her head: You always were more tactile. For Angélica, reading glyphs often required the feel of the stone under her fingers, like reading braille.

  “What do you see, gatita?” Her father stood over her.

  She pointed at the image that someone had so carefully carved into the wall centuries ago.

  Juan leaned down, grunting. “What is it? I can’t bend that low yet, thanks to my bad leg.”

  “I believe it’s the jester god.”

  Quint went down on one knee next to her. “Jester god? Like a jester in a king’s court?”

  “Exactly,” Juan said. “The Olmec also had a jester god.”

  “He’s called the jester god because of the circles hanging in front of his head when depicted in glyphs and on artwork. You can see them relatively clearly right here.” She pointed at the three small circles in the wall.

  Quint leaned closer, and then sat back again, shaking his head. “It all runs together as a bunch of swirling lines for me.”

  “I’ll do a rubbing later and show it to you. These details sometimes appear more clearly on paper.”

  She stood, glancing around the chamber again, taking in what she hadn’t noticed earlier due to her excitement at seeing why her father was limping along so quickly all of the way here. The walls leading into the chamber were still partially coated with red ochre paste, which was used by the Maya in many frescos and hand-painted vessels throughout the Yucatán. After centuries, the floor was littered with stones and dirt along with the usual evidence of animal habitation. The chamber smelled musty, though, as if it had been a long time since even creatures had ventured inside. That was probably due in part to the way the entrance had caved in, temporarily blocking off the outside world.