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

by Ann Charles

  Quint detoured with, “What’s the story about this crack in the wall in the Chakmo’ol Temple?”

  “You’re not telling me something, Parker.”

  “You caught me.” He walked over and tipped up her chin. “I’m embarrassed to say just how much I missed you this afternoon.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “Hey, everyone, look who’s back. It’s Prince Charming.”

  Chuckling, he leaned down and kissed her. “Poke fun,” he said when she’d stepped back to hook her machete onto her belt. “But sleeping so close to a beautiful woman all night long and not getting to do more than sneak a kiss now and then is hard on a guy.” He took her hand and tugged her along behind him outside under the stars.

  They walked in silence for several moments. The jungle’s wild beat throbbed around them. Quint could smell the wood smoke from María’s cook stove fire in the still air.

  “What all did you learn this afternoon in the Chakmo’ol Temple?” he asked. “Fernando told us at lunch that there was a carving surrounded by snakes.”

  “Did he mention the snakeskin left behind on the chamber’s floor, too?”

  “He left out that particular detail.”

  “Was Dad there at the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s probably why. Fernando knows how much my dad loathes snakes.”

  “So you think they named that temple wrong?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Instead of the Jaguar Temple, it should have been named the Snake Lair?”

  “Maybe. We’ll see the deeper we dig.” She was silent for several steps. As they neared the showers, she pulled him to a stop. “Quint?”

  “Yeah?” He looked around at the growing shadows. The waning moonlight was no match for the forest’s dark fingers tonight, especially here at the showers where the tall canopy surrounded them. The barks and roars of what sounded like a whole troupe of howler monkeys made him wince. He’d feel a lot less tense if they were packing heat instead of just melting in it.

  “I’ve been thinking about something this afternoon,” Angélica continued. “A lot.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sex.”

  He did a double take. “You were thinking about sex?”

  “Yes.”

  “While you were inside of a tomb-like room amongst snakeskin and death god carvings? That’s sort of twisted.”

  “Sex and you.”

  “I meant twisted in a good way, of course. Were you part of that equation?”

  The flirty sound of her laughter eased the anxiety that had been a burr in his gut since Pedro had joined him in the mess tent with his troubling tale. “We both were.”

  “Were you on the top part of the equation or the bottom during this thought-filled afternoon?”

  She trailed her fingernails down his arm. “Both. It was a long afternoon.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “I’ll have to whisper it in your ear.” She pulled the shower curtain back. “You know, I do believe everyone else has taken their shower tonight. I could give you a hands-on demonstration of my day’s thoughts in here.”

  He peeled off his T-shirt. “You’re willing to risk someone catching us?”

  Unclipping her machete, she hung it next to her towel from one of the nails pounded into the boards outside the stall. “It’s been a month. I doubt this is going to take too long for either of us.”

  He watched as she slowly unbuttoned her shirt. In the feeble silver moonlight, her bra stood out in stark contrast against her skin. A flood of lust made his knees go weak.

  She backed into the stall, disappearing in the shadows. “Come here, Parker,” she said from the darkness, her voice husky.

  Unbuttoning his pants, he took a step closer. “Are you inviting me to the dark side, boss lady?”

  “No, I’m ordering you to get your ass in here.” She snagged his arm, drawing him deeper in the shadows. She closed the curtain behind him and then wrapped her arms around his neck. “Take off my bra.”

  He obeyed, hanging it over the side of the stall. After reacquainting himself with her finer points, he asked, “What’s next?”

  “My pants.”

  The curve of her hips distracted him from his task, so she finished the job for him and helped remove his pants while she was at it, hanging them from another hook outside.

  “If I agree to this shower idea of yours,” he said between her rushed kisses, “will you drop the soap for me like you did that night back in Cancun?”

  She nibbled along his jawline, tugging on his earlobe with her teeth. “You liked that, did you?”

  “I’ve fantasized about repeating that scene too many times to count, sweetheart.” He reached up and turned the handle for the camp shower, letting warm water sluice over them in turn for several seconds each, washing away the dirt and sweat.

  As soon as he shut the water off, she was back in his arms, her skin wet, her curves soft. She pressed against him, moaning when he grabbed her by the hips and pulled her even closer, sliding against her. Shit-criminy, he wasn’t going to be able to last very long at this rate, at least not the first time. He’d been too long without her.

  Angélica took his hand, placing a bar of soap in his palm. “Don’t drop it yet,” she whispered and turned around.

  In the darkness, he felt his way along. The jungle pulsed around them, nearly drowning out the sound of his ragged breath and her sexy gasps as his hand traced her curves with the soap bar. As his touch grew bolder, she pressed back into him, making his head spin. Somewhere along the lines, the soap slipped from his grip and his hand continued without it, slipping and sliding over her slick, supple skin. His other hand joined in, making her moan, the rocking of her hips driving him to the brink.

  His hand trailed south, down past her navel, his fingers exploring.

  “Quint.” She took his hand and guided it lower. “Now.”

  Her breath caught as he—

  Something crashed in the bushes next to the shower stalls, followed by a rumbling, low growl.

  Both of them froze. Quint’s pulse rocketed, adrenaline mixing with lust.

  A snuffling, snorting sound came from the trees, followed by loud huffing and more crashing.

  “Don’t move,” she whispered, pulling away from him.

  “Where are you going?” He reached for her in the darkness, catching only air.

  He heard the curtain rustle and then she was back, pushing his clothes against his chest.

  As they both scrambled to get dressed in the tight space, elbows and knees bumping, the commotion in the trees grew louder, closer.

  “Give me the machete,” he said quietly. Those were four words he never once imagined he’d be saying while taking a shower with a woman.

  “You stay here. I’ve got this.” She left him, disappearing through the curtain.

  The hell she did! He followed her out into the moonlight and took the long knife from her. “Get behind me, woman.”

  “I don’t need a hero, Parker.”

  “Would you just let me lead this dance for once?” The bushes shook at the forest’s edge. Before she could argue further, something dark shot out of the underbrush, running with an odd gait straight for them. It was about the size of a dog, but the dappled shadows made it hard to see clearly.

  Quint raised the machete, planting his feet.

  It reached a clearing between the shadows, running in the moonlight.

  “Quint, no!” Angélica cried, grabbing his forearm to stop him from swinging.

  She shoved him aside and the beast was upon her, snorting and wiggling with excitement as it rubbed its snout all over Angélica’s knees.

  “Rover!” She dropped to the ground, hugging the javelina she’d raised from a wounded baby. “Where did you come from, boy?”

  A familiar voice spoke in rapid Spanish from the shadows under the trees. Even as Teodoro came closer, Quint didn’t understand what was being said thanks to his ske
tchy grasp of Spanish and the cacophony going on in the canopy. Rover’s rampage through the forest hadn’t gone unnoticed by the local wildlife.

  “What did he say?” Quint asked Angélica.

  “He said he had to remove Rover from María’s sister’s house in Coba.” She stood, still petting the javelina’s head. “Apparently, Rover has been getting into trouble. There was talk amongst the villagers of shooting him if Teodoro didn’t take him out of there.”

  Teodoro shook his head. “Jabali keeps getting free,” he told Quint.

  Jabali was another name the Mexicans had given to the javelina, but Juan preferred to call Rover a “pig,” shaking his head at the dog name his daughter had given her pet.

  Dog name … “What does el perro regresa mean?” he asked Angélica.

  Rover came closer to Quint, smelling his knee. The javelina grunted after a few sniffs and rubbed against his jeans, his bristly back making scratchy sounds. Quint scratched the javelina on the neck as Rover had always liked, making sure to reach under the leather dog collar he now wore.

  “ ‘The dog returns,’ “ she answered. “Why?”

  This was what Pedro had meant in his note. Rover was back with Angélica and her crew. But what was with the zipping of the lips?

  Teodoro connected a leash to Rover’s collar, saying something in Spanish to Angélica about her “padre” that Quint didn’t quite catch.

  “What was that about your dad?” he asked.

  She chuckled, taking her machete from him. “He said Dad’s going to be mad when he finds out Rover is back, so we should probably try to keep quiet about it for as long as possible.”

  That explained Pedro’s zipped lips.

  With a grunt good-bye, Teodoro pulled something wrapped in a napkin from his pocket and tugged on Rover’s leash, starting back along the path leading toward the tents. The javelina sniffed the air, and then trotted along after him.

  Quint watched them disappear into the canopy shadows. While he was glad to see Rover again, he would have preferred their reunion to have occurred some other time. He had a feeling that hot-as-hell shower moment while Angélica was all wet, slippery, and ready for him was going to haunt him for the rest of the night.

  A deep, hair-raising roar came from the direction Rover had burst through the underbrush. Chills ran up his spine at the sound alone. An unspoken threat hung in the suddenly quiet forest.

  “That was a cat, wasn’t it?” he whispered.

  “A big one by the sound of it.” Angélica handed him his towel and shower supplies. “Shower time is over. Let’s go.” She raised the machete, backing away from the growling sound now coming from that part of the brush. “And that’s one of the reasons Dad is going to be ticked off. Javelinas make great bait for big cats.”

  Keeping his light on the trees as they made their way back to the tents, he asked, “What’s the other reason?”

  “Rover always figures out a way to escape from wherever he’s tied and ends up in my tent.”

  “You mean our tent.”

  “Exactly.”

  Hot diggity dog. Quint was going to have to start sleeping with a machete under his pillow.

  Chapter Ten

  Night: A dreaded time of darkness when form-changers, demons, and spooks from the Underworld wreak havoc upon humans.

  “I must be out of my mind,” Quint told Angélica’s dad the next morning. They stood outside of the mine entrance in the heavy heat while donning hard hats and masks, checking meters and Juan’s camera battery, gearing up to squeeze into the old limestone mine. A rainstorm had blown through last night, soaking the jungle, adding even more swelter to the morning’s humidity after the sun had risen.

  “Women will do that to you,” Juan said, sliding his mask down over his nose and mouth. “I warned you about getting involved with my daughter,” he added, his voice muffled.

  “Right, next you’ll be trying to sell me snake oil to keep those rattlers away.” Quint adjusted his mask. “If memory serves me right, old man, you encouraged me to keep trying when I was thinking about giving up and heading home.”

  “All of that traveling you’ve done in the last month must have fogged your memory. I distinctly remember telling you that my daughter is hard-headed and extremely bossy, but you were a goner right out of the gate. There were little hearts floating around your head at first sight.” He shook his head, feigning disgust, while above his mask laugh lines fanned from the corners of his eyes.

  “Please, we both know that if there had been little hearts, Angélica would have pulled out her machete and shredded them into ribbons.” The boss lady had wasted no time putting him in his place right from the get-go and intriguing the hell out of him in the process.

  “Don’t beat yourself up too much, son. Her mother had the same effect on me.”

  As Quint grabbed the bag full of tools Juan had insisted they bring, Juan slowly angled through the fig roots along with his cane, taking care with his walking cast, and disappeared into the mine.

  Keeping in mind Angélica’s plea regarding monitoring her father’s health before she left for the Chakmo’ol Temple with Fernando and Bernard, he shook off the tension that came with entering holes in the earth. “Hold up,” he said, easing between the strangler fig roots and following Juan into the mine.

  He waited for Quint to catch up.

  “How did you meet Marianne?” Quint’s question served two purposes—to satisfy his curiosity on that subject and to quell his fears about where they were and what could happen if the earth decided to swallow them whole. “Did you go to college together? Or did you meet on a dig site?”

  “She saved my life.”

  “What do you mean? Were you headed down a bad road?”

  “No, I drove off the edge of one.” Juan limped deeper into the mine, tapping on the walls and ceiling with his cane as he went.

  Quint ducked as he followed, grimacing at the older man’s obsession with testing stress fractures. “Is that a metaphor for something?”

  “More like a lesson. Don’t drive too fast on a twisty gravel road on bald tires.”

  “I don’t get it.” When Juan tugged on a low-hanging root that had poked its way down through the rocks, Quint groaned. “Would you quit messing with the ceiling, dammit?”

  Juan chuckled and creaked along on his cane. “I had a blowout going around a curve on a gravel mountain road between Mexico City and the Gulf coast. I was in my twenties at the time, single and full of testosterone, driving a little too fast for the road conditions. I hit a patch of loose gravel and my pickup went off the road, tumbling into the valley about thirty feet below. Marianne was coming from the other direction and saw the whole accident. She pulled over and raced down the hill. After extracting me from the mangled mess of my truck, she patched me up enough to haul me up to her Jeep with the help of another passerby who’d stopped. I went in and out of consciousness while she drove me to the hospital. When I woke up two days later, she was still there sleeping in the chair next to my bed.”

  Juan paused, poking his cane into a hole midway up the wall. Several pebbles clattered onto the floor.

  Frowning down at those pebbles, Quint tried not to think about how many pokes it would take for this sucker to crash down on them. “So it was love at first sight then?”

  “Not quite. Marianne had waited for me to wake up because she wanted me to pay her back for saving my life.”

  “You’re kidding? Pay her back with money?”

  “No.” Juan pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead and neck. “While I was unconscious, she’d learned that I was one of the archaeologists working at a dig site a couple of hours from the city. She was visiting the area, immersing herself in the culture and language, freshly graduated with a degree in archaeology. Being female in a male-dominated field at that time made finding a respected job with dig teams tough. She made me hire her for my crew that very day in the hospital room.”

  “You let her blackm
ail you?”

  Juan’s eyes gleamed when he looked back at Quint. “Angélica is almost a mirror image of her mother. All I offered genetically was a stronger jawline, more pronounced cheekbones, and some dark streaks in my gatita’s version of her mother’s red hair.” He tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket. “While staring up at the flame-haired angel who’d pulled me from that tangled mess of metal, how long do you think it took me to agree to give her a job on my crew?”

  “Ah, I see.” Quint fanned his shirt to no avail. Between the heat and his tight surroundings, sweating was his body’s way of trying not to spontaneously combust. “I’m sure Marianne was well qualified for the position, though. You probably could tell just by talking to her.”

  Juan snorted. “She was wearing yellow shorts and this little white tank top that day in the hospital room. At that moment, I can honestly say that her professional qualifications were not at the forefront of my thoughts.”

  Poor Juan. Quint chuckled. He’d gone off the cliff that day and never fully recovered.

  “A year later,” Juan continued, “we were married and working at a dig down here in the Yucatán.” He extracted his meter that checked for air quality and harmful gases, punching several buttons. “Marianne found out she was pregnant with Angélica a month into the dig.” Juan took off his mask, letting it hang around his neck. “I suggested she return to the States to be safe, but she refused to leave me or her work.” He shook his head, his gaze far off. His forehead wrinkled. “I was a stressed-out mess for the rest of that dig, constantly fretting about her and the baby being injured. But Marianne had promised me she’d be careful and not take risks, and she stuck to her word. She carried Angélica to full term, delivering a beautiful, red-haired baby girl a month after we made it back to the States.”