by Ann Charles
After the dust settled and she found out if she got to keep her job, she’d figure out if there would be a need to come back to this site before recommending another archaeological crew to continue the work. There was much to find and catalog, but that underground rattlesnake den would be a problem. The snakes would either need to be relocated, or the work restricted at that end of the site. The jungle was a fierce foe as well for an inexperienced team.
They approached their tent. It was dark inside.
“Where’s Quint?” she asked.
“He went down to shower. He worked up quite a sweat over at the Baatz’ Temple with Fernando and me this afternoon. We finished clearing that sub chamber of debris and made a few structural repairs that should keep the entrance from collapsing again. You wouldn’t know by looking at Quint, but that boy has the strength and stamina of a Clydesdale, I swear.”
Angélica smiled. “He works like a demon when put to task.”
“Well, this old stallion is going to crash.” Juan unzipped the tent and stepped inside. “After last night’s fun and games and today’s hard work, I’ll sleep like a baby. What time is the search team arriving?”
She followed him inside and grabbed her towel and shower supplies. “Probably around the time Pedro and you return from Chetumal with more supplies.”
“Good. I’d like to be here to help search. That poor girl has to be out there somewhere.”
Or not.
Angélica hooked her machete onto her belt. “Don’t forget to make sure Bernard and Jane get their tickets home. Don’t worry about the costs. I have it covered. I have some leftover money in the budget that I was saving for an end-of-dig party back in Cancun.”
“I won’t.”
“Oh, and I have envelopes for Esteban and Lorenzo. It’s their payment for the job in full. Make sure they get their duffel bags and some bus tickets back to their villages.” She stepped outside, zipping the mesh flap closed behind her.
“You don’t want them to help with the search?”
She shook her head. “We’ll have enough mouths to feed with the search team here. Besides, considering Esteban’s clumsiness, we’d probably end up having to rescue him mid-search.”
He frowned at her through the mesh. “Where are you going? I thought you showered after supper.”
“Nope. I took Rover some tortillas and hung out with him while the sun set.”
“You have an unnatural attachment to that pig.”
“He’s not a pig, Dad.” She pointed toward his cot. “Go to bed. Pedro wants to fly out at dawn.”
“How about I get you a real dog?” he called to her back as she walked away. “Would you get rid of the pig then?”
She laughed. “Rover stays. I’ll buy you new boots back in Cancun.”
The sound of him muttering followed her for several steps until the jungle’s nighttime serenade blocked him out. She moved quickly in the moonlight down to the showers, scanning the tree line for glittery eyes. The were-jaguar might have been history, but there were still plenty of other predators hanging out in the trees.
Quint was in the midst of soaping up when she opened his stall door and walked inside.
He jerked back a step, his eyes wide. “Dammit, woman! You scared the hell out of me.”
There was a joke in there regarding Teodoro’s thoughts on Quint’s lineage, but she wasn’t in the mood to play jester.
He looked down at her … all the way to her toes. “Are you naked?” he whispered.
She took the soap from him. “I don’t know. You’ll have to take a turn with the soap and find out. But first, it’s my turn.”
When she was done soaping him up and down, he certainly sounded like Teodoro’s demon with all of his huffing and moaning.
“You’re killing me, sweetheart.” He stole the soap from her. “My turn.”
“I have a better idea.” She wrapped her arms around him and slid her chest over his. “We can share your soap.”
He slid his hands over her ribs. “What if someone comes down here?”
“Nobody is going to come down here. We’re the last to shower tonight.” She went up on her toes and kissed him, running her tongue over his lower lip the way he liked.
He cupped her hips, feeling his way around her curves. “They might need to use the latrine.”
“We’ll be quiet.” She pulled him toward her until her back was against the stall wall.
He pressed against her, getting her hot and soapy. “You’re so slippery.”
Lifting her leg, she took his hand and hooked it under her knee. “Hold this, Parker.” She pulled his mouth back to hers.
“You’re always bossing me around,” he said in between her kisses, teasing her with his body until she tipped her head back and cursed his name.
“Tell me what you want,” he ordered.
She looked up at him. Slivers of moonlight lit his mouth and neck, his eyes hidden in the dark. She didn’t give a shit what he was—traveler, summoner, demon, whatever. He was Quint. Her heart ached at the thought of him leaving again.
She licked her lips. “I want you to stay with me.”
The needy words were out before she could filter them.
He stared down at her. “Stay? Do you mean in Cancun?”
She nodded, not trusting her mouth. It might start begging if he resisted.
“Stay for a few weeks or stay for good in between jobs?”
Closing her eyes, she whispered, “For good.”
“Angélica, look at me.”
She opened one eye.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded, opening the other eye.
“Even after last night?”
“Even after last night, Quint.” She gulped and took another risky step. “Without you, my life is black and white. I need your color. When you’re done with a job, I want you to come home to me and my bed.”
His teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “I got under your skin, didn’t I?”
His grin was infectious. “Like a chigger,” she replied.
He chuckled, deep and sexy. “You’re such an old romantic.”
“Shut up, Parker, and finish what I started.”
“Yes, boss lady.”
And he did, kissing her senseless while he was at it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Siren (from Greek mythology): Dangerous female creatures who use their spellbinding voices and songs to lure gullible sailors to their rocky coast.
One week or so later …
The moon was late to the beach party.
Quint tipped back his bottle of Corona. The beer was already lukewarm, thanks to the evening’s sweltering humidity, but it was still refreshing.
Angélica was late, too. However, since she was packing for their trip, he’d give her a pass.
The breeze blowing in from the ocean outside of Angélica’s bungalow did little to cool the warm night, but Quint wasn’t complaining. The gentle crashing of the waves soothed away the tension from the last few sweat-filled days of working his ass off in the jungle amidst the bellowing monkeys and biting bugs.
They’d wrapped up what Angélica needed to accomplish at the site while the search team had scoured the jungle to no avail. Angélica and several of the skinnier team members had dropped smoke bombs into the feeding tank under the Chakmo’ol Temple, going down into the chamber as soon as the smoke had cleared out enough snakes to keep from getting bit. They’d tossed another smoke bomb into the snake hole and then sealed it off, trying to drive the rattlesnakes to the surface where Teodoro, Maverick, and a handful of volunteers hooked and bagged as many as they could catch.
Angélica had led the least superstitious of the crew into the catacomb, through the tunnel that connected it to the mine, and deeper into the earth as they searched for Gertrude. There were no signs of her, of course, except for her dried-up remains, which nobody but Angélica noticed thanks to all of the other bones and skulls distracting them.
They’d returned to the surface empty handed. Later, alone in their tent, Angélica had told Quint that the black ashes from the were-jaguar were spread out all over the floor thanks to the snakes, blending in with the dirt and snake droppings.
When the search was called off, a handful of federales came. They didn’t ask many questions. As the federal agent at the biosphere reserve explained, there are many ways to die in the jungle, and even more for a body to disappear and never be seen again. After a few brief interviews, Gertrude was officially listed as missing.
To make matters more interesting, the names on her INAH paperwork were dead-ends. Calls to the phone numbers in her file were either wrong numbers or belonged to what the federales figured were burner cell phones no longer in service. Even more suspicious was the response from the university in Germany she’d supposedly been attending. According to their records, no such graduate student existed.
Before Angélica and her crew had taken down the tents at the site, the federales stopped by one last time to talk to her. They told her they suspected Gertrude had been acting as a “mule,” sent to the site to steal artifacts for a seller on the archaeology black market. They believed she disappeared during the night with a few artifacts she might have found and hidden away in a cache in the jungle while working at the site.
Quint rested his elbows on his knees, staring up at the stars. Gertrude’s tragic end still weighed on him. He should have tried harder to keep her from becoming a casualty, but he’d been so sure it was all a dream that he’d been caught off guard.
He’d thought about her words often over the last week, wondering how much was true. It was all so inexplicable that he had trouble accepting his title, yet the were-jaguar scars remained. If Angélica hadn’t been there with him, he might have checked himself into an asylum upon returning to civilization.
“Is this seat taken?” Angélica asked, standing over him.
The porch light backlit her curves, the fringe of the white crocheted swimsuit coverup contrasting sharply with her bare thighs. His blood heated at the thought of peeling that crocheted top off her later.
“It is now.” He scooted over on his towel, making room for her. “The towel is damp.”
“You went swimming without me?”
“Just a dip to cool off.”
She settled onto the towel next to him, holding out a fresh beer. “Look, the moon is coming up.” She pointed her Corona bottle at it.
“It was waiting for you. Did you finish packing?”
“Yep. Where are we going?”
He chuckled. “No questions asked,” he reminded her, draining his warm beer and sticking the bottle in the sand next to the cold one.
She leaned her head on his bare shoulder. “Dad told me to tell you he’s finished going through the article you two have been working on all week. He thinks it’s ready to send.”
Juan had been very generous with his time and knowledge about the Olmec civilization. Their article theorizing that the ancient civilization had migrated much farther south than previously accepted based on proof found at the dig site should inspire some interesting discussions in the Mesoamerican archaeology world.
“Great. I’ll fire it off to the editor before we leave.”
“He also thought you should let him know where we’re going in case he needs to contact us.” She switched her bottle of beer to her other hand and laced her cool fingers through his. “Where should I tell him he can reach us?”
“Good try, sweetheart, but he already knows.” Quint had given Juan and Pedro both the details needed to get hold of them in case of an emergency.
“I could try to torture you sexually until you tell me.”
“That sounds like a good idea. Let’s get started right now. I hope you brought your whip?”
Her laughter was low and husky. It was nice to hear it again after a week of watching her shoulders bend under the stress at the dig site.
“Two weeks,” she said, lifting his hand and dropping a kiss on the backside. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve taken that much time off of work.”
“We need to make it a habit, then. So, the head honchos at INAH aren’t upset about how things ended at the dig site?”
“No. They’re thrilled with the status report I turned in yesterday. Go figure.” She took a drink of beer.
He pulled his hand free so he could run his knuckles up her thigh. “Good.”
“When I get back to work, I’ll choose the next site on their cleanup list and begin the prep work for a scouting trip via Pedro and his helicopter.”
That reminded him. “Pedro asked me about your mom.”
She pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them as she looked out toward the water. “What about her?”
With Angélica’s approval, Quint had let Pedro know about Marianne’s role in his vision that night.
“He wanted to know if she told me who killed her.”
While the search through the pilot’s logbook records had ended without success, Pedro’s friend had managed to track down a couple of pictures of some of the previous crew, which Pedro had shown to Quint. The white-blond, pale-skinned crew member with the beefy arms reminded him of Gertrude. He would have been Quint’s prime suspect.
“What did you say?”
“I told him she didn’t know who her killer was.” Quint had figured that might be true, since it was likely that Gertrude’s predecessor had worked in secret. Marianne hadn’t mentioned anything about who killed her during her history lesson on the site.
“Was he satisfied with that?”
“For now. But I expect he’ll keep digging. He loved your mom a lot. I think he wants to make sure her killer pays for murdering her.”
“According to Gertrude, he already is.” She stretched her neck from side to side. “I hope he doesn’t bring all of this up with Dad. It took him a long time to get over losing my mom. It’s only been since Daisy’s come along that he’s started to show signs of interest in a companion again. I don’t want to blow that with Pedro planting a seed about Mom’s ghost channeling through Daisy.”
Quint grimaced. “That’s messy business.” Especially since Daisy seemed to enjoy Juan’s company.
“Exactly. It’s better left alone for now.”
“Did Maverick and Daisy make it to the airport okay?”
“Yep. Dad said he waited until they boarded the plane before coming back home.”
“Are you going to invite them back?”
“I think so. I’m limited on crew numbers, though. It will depend on INAH and the budget they give me for the next site. I may need to accept extra paying guests in order to hire more crew.”
They sat in silence for several beats, drinking, staring out at the ocean.
“Did Maverick ever mention anything else about what he experienced in his vision?” Quint asked her.
“No. Teodoro thinks it’s haunting him, though. He said Maverick’s shadow has changed.”
“His shadow?”
“Yeah. I don’t question the shaman on these things. If he says Maverick’s shadow is now blue, I nod and ask if we need to have a ceremony about it.”
“Smart of you.” Quint grinned. “Teodoro is a wise man. Although I’m not volunteering to be his guinea pig for any more rituals.”
“That’s probably a good idea. He told me on the phone earlier today that Rover misses you.”
“Please. Rover misses the tortillas I kept sneaking him when nobody was looking this last week.”
After Teodoro had shared with Quint his belief that Rover’s arrival at the ceremony that night had been part of the reason Quint’s spirit had made it back from his tour through the nine levels of the Maya Underworld in one piece, Quint had decided daily rewards were in order for the javelina.
She giggled. “Dad offered to get me a puppy.”
“Really?”
“I told him one dog is enough for me.”
Chuckling, he ran his hand do
wn her curved back. The crocheted coverup got in the way of feeling her smooth skin under his palm.
“I have something for you.” He pulled out a heart-shaped, wooden box he’d hidden beneath the corner of his towel, holding it out to her.
She lifted her chin from her knees. “What’s this?”
He shrugged. “Open it and see.”
Taking the gift, she held it up in the light. “Mexico,” she read aloud the word written on the top.
“There wasn’t time to have one custom made with your name on it.” He leaned back on the heels of his palms, watching as she figured out how to open the box.
“Tricky,” she said, pushing on the heart-shaped locking piece on the side.
“The lid slides off,” he told her when she tried to pull it off without luck.
She slid the top off and lifted another wooden lid inside that covered a felt-lined compartment. She took out the silver necklace chain, letting it hang from her finger. “You bought me a necklace?” she asked, holding it up in the glow from the porch light. “What’s this?” She cupped the charm made of glass and silver that he’d strung on the chain.
“It’s a protection charm.”
“Protection?” She looked at him, her forehead drawn. “Protection from what?”
Honestly, he didn’t know. His aunt had given him the charm strung on a strip of leather when he stopped back home before returning to Mexico. Aunt Zoe had been giving him “special” wristwatch bands and leather necklaces with charms on them since he was a kid. When she’d given him this latest piece, she’d made him promise he’d wear it for protection while on his travels. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten about it in his duffel bag until he arrived in Cancun and unpacked. After what had happened at the dig site with that were-jaguar’s bite, he figured Angélica needed it more than he did.
“Protection from troublemakers,” he said. “My aunt Zoe made it. She’s a glass artist who dabbles with metals, too.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “She has a workshop with a kiln behind her house.” Maybe he’d take Angélica to Deadwood sometime to meet Aunt Zoe, but he didn’t want to rush her. Wanting him to move in had been a big trusting step for Angélica.