by Rachel Lee
Luis always made Emilio think of a praying mantis, though the man wasn’t particularly tall or long-limbed. He was slender, indeed, compared to Emilio’s more comfortable bulk, but Luis wasn’t that thin. It was something about the way the man moved that always made Emilio think of a mantis. Something about the way he moved and the way his jaw was always working.
“You see this rose, Luis?”
Luis, who was already sweating, obediently leaned over and gazed at the rosebud that Emilio touched with a gentle fingertip. “Unusual,” he said, because he knew that was expected, not because he really cared.
“This rosebud will make me famous when everything else I’ve done in my life is long forgotten. It will make my granddaughter’s name immortal.”
Luis made a noise that indicated he was suitably impressed.
“Amazing isn’t it?” Emilio said, caressing a velvety petal. “This simple act of nature will be as immortal as all the gold and art you and I worry so much about.”
“It’s . . . uh . . . pretty,” Luis said, sensing that something was needed from him.
Emilio stifled a sigh and looked at his employee. “I take it you have something important to tell me?”
“Yes. Yes!” Luis looked as if he’d just remembered. But Emilio knew better than that. Dense as he might be about roses and plants, Luis was not stupid.
“Well?”
“Key West,” Luis said. “I have news. The archaeologist hired a plane today and was flying low over the water to the northwest. I couldn’t find out the exact coordinates, though, or what she learned.”
Emilio didn’t stifle his sigh this time. “Why not?”
“Because only three people know. And none of them are talking about it.”
“We must remedy that, Luis. I need better information.”
“Well, I hear she had hired a diver as well as the boat I told you about.”
“Good. And maybe this time you had better take care of it in person. Whoever you’re talking to in Key West doesn’t seem to be very good at getting information.”
“Me?” Luis wasn’t fond of traveling outside the country, especially since there was a warrant out for him in the United States.
“Relax,” Emilio said. “We’ll get you papers. No one will know who you are.”
Luis didn’t argue. He knew better. “What makes you think they’ll talk to me?”
“I think you have enough talent to persuade one of the divers to talk to you. For a reasonable compensation of course.”
Luis’s eyes brightened. He was good at buying information.
“So . . .” said Emilio, turning back to the roses. “You go, you find out if you can get that diver on our payroll somehow.”
“Somehow?”
“Anyhow,” Emilio said firmly. “Whatever it takes. But I want a daily update on what that woman is learning. Daily.”
Whatever it takes. Emilio didn’t say those words often. But when he did, he meant them. Fully. Completely.
And Luis knew it. “And if I can’t?”
“Then arrange for an accident, Luis. So we can put our own diver in place. What do I care? The details I leave to you. But I want that information, and I want it every day.”
Luis understood, and after a few minutes he left, grateful to escape the hothouse. But he had learned something, whether Emilio knew it or not, and Luis’s stock-in-trade was information. Getting some on his boss was a bonanza.
Emilio Zaragosa was more than ordinarily interested in whatever the woman archaeologist was searching for. This wasn’t simply about artifacts and gold. This was about something more.
And Luis very much wanted to know what that was because information like that could be very useful. Very.
Espeically when it was about his boss.
Chapter 6
When Veronica returned to the cottage, Orin was sitting on the sofa reading a book. He had a blanket over his legs, even though it was warm in the room. He greeted her with a smile when she stepped in, and put his book aside.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“We found a couple of possibilities.”
His blue eyes were shrewd. “But not what you hoped for.”
“We knew the ship broke up. There can’t be much showing after three hundred years.”
“Probably not,” he agreed.
She passed him and went down the small hallway that led to her bedroom. It was even warmer in there, away from the window air conditioner, and stuffy, too. She changed swiftly into a cool pair of white shorts and a royal blue polo shirt.
She needed to think about what she would make for dinner, but her mind wasn’t ready to get off the plane yet, or to let go of the day’s search. Yes, it had failed to show as much as she had hoped to see. She was only human, and tales of wrecks that were spotted from the air had whetted her hopes.
But she was also a realist, and she had grown up watching archaeologists dig in places where there was nothing but old tales to guide them. She knew how painstaking and slow the process could be. She knew that it might be years before she found the Alcantara.
But she was still disappointed.
And she didn’t want to share that disappointment with her father. It was obvious to her that he disapproved of this quest, that he had disapproved of it when it had been her mother’s quest. Why else would he have failed to mention it even in passing all these years?
She paused in the bathroom to freshen her face with cool water, then went out front to explore the contents of the refrigerator for something easy to cook. To her surprise, her father was just closing the front door, and in his hands he had a pizza box.
“This sounded good to me tonight,” he said. “And I figured you wouldn’t want to cook.”
“Thanks.” Disappointed or not, she couldn’t help smiling in appreciation.
She helped him put out plates, napkins, and beverages, and they sat at the island on stools. He didn’t say much and she found herself thinking how little they talked anymore.
There had been a period after he had first told her about the mask that they had talked constantly, she mastering her lipreading skills by picking his brain and discussing everything with him. But at some point in the last month or so, their conversations had grown briefer. And it wasn’t just because he was so exhausted from his treatments.
It was as if he were withdrawing from her. And why wouldn’t he, when she was withdrawing from him?
She felt a pang of regret and looked at him, wondering why she was doing this to them both. Why couldn’t she forgive him? Why did she feel so angry at him all the time?
She watched him eating, his movements slow and almost heavy. The change in him during the last year was frightening, when she was willing to see it. He had grown so thin and frail-looking, and his beautiful gray hair was gone except for a pale fuzz. He had aged decades.
Something compelled her to speak to him, to share the truth for a change, instead of just guarded half-truths. “I am disappointed that we didn’t find more.”
If she had expected him to gloat, she was wrong. He looked up from his meal and nodded. “I imagine so,” he said. “I know I would be.”
“But I expected this.”
“Of course you did. But we’re only human, Veronica. We keep hoping things will leap out at us.”
He was being so understanding, and she had to remind herself that he’d always been this way. Patient. Understanding. The problem between them was of her making, because she seemed incapable of understanding him.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Dad?”
He paused, and finally put down the pizza he was picking at. She was convinced he’d ordered it simply so she wouldn’t have to cook, not because he really wanted to eat it.
“Because,” he said. Then he looked down, and she could no longer tell what he was saying.
“Dad, you have to look at me when you talk.” She tried to keep the impatience from her voice, but wasn’t sure she succeeded. How many times
had she had to say that to him? How many times in every conversation she had did she get lost simply because people wouldn’t look at her while they talked? With her father it was simply irritating to have to remind him. With other people it was embarrassing, and she resented the hell out of it.
He lifted his head, gave her a faint smile. “Sorry. I get lost inside myself when I think of your mother. She was so beautiful and . . . so obsessed. You remind me of her.”
“What’s wrong with being obsessed? That’s how things get done.”
His mouth twisted. “Perhaps. But it can also go too far.”
“Too far?” she repeated, not certain she had understood him. The day had been incredibly fatiguing with all the noise, and the difficulty of trying to understand speech over headphones when she couldn’t see the person who was talking, and the disappointment of not finding as much as she had hoped to. Her resources were rapidly diminishing, and she was torn between just withdrawing into silence and finding out what was behind her father’s secrecy.
“Too far,” he repeated. “It can go too far.”
“In what way?”
“Your mother . . . she . . . well . . .” He hesitated and looked off into space. She had to watch his cheeks to be sure he was only thinking, and not speaking softly. After a minute, he redirected his gaze toward her.
“Your mother went too far,” he said. “In some ways she was lost to me before she died.”
Veronica heard the sorrow in his tone and felt sympathy for him. She knew what it was like to have someone you loved emotionally out of reach. Larry had taught her that bitter lesson.
“Anyway,” Orin continued, his voice cracking, “it was all she could think about. It consumed her past the point of reason. I began to think of her as a wraith, a ghost flitting around the house, but not really there. When we first married, she was as interested in my work as I was in hers, but with time . . . with time there was nothing in her life except the search for the mask.”
“It would be an amazing find.”
“Of course it would. But her interest went well beyond that.”
“But why?”
He shook his head, and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. She held her breath, certain she was about to hear the real reason he had kept silent for so many years.
“Because,” he said finally, “she was the descendant of Juan Bernal Vasquez y Maria.”
The conquistador! Veronica’s heart slammed. “I didn’t know that.”
“I haven’t exactly been advertising it,” Orin said wryly. “But yes, you’re descended from Vasquez. Descended from the baby he carried on foot across Florida three hundred years ago.”
Which meant she was also descended from the holy woman of the extinct, nameless tribe. Veronica suddenly understood her mother’s passion and obsession for this search. Her heart was galloping, and dimly she was aware that she was breathing fast.
“Directly descended?”
“Oh, yes. The letter was passed down in the family. That’s how your mother came by it. But there’s more, Veronica. And this is where your mother became . . . misguided.”
“Misguided? What’s misguided about seeking such an invaluable artifact?”
“She wasn’t just seeking an artifact. I would have had no problem with that. But she became obsessed with the fact that she was descended in the direct female line from this priestess. She came to believe that the mask was her birthright.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No!” He was emphatic. “Not after all these centuries. Not when the people who made it are gone from the face of the earth. And not when—” He broke off sharply.
“Not when what? Dad, you can’t stop there.”
But his face had grown sad and closed, and the pizza sat between them, growing cold and congealing. The only sound in the cottage was the hum of the air conditioner as the minutes ticked by.
“Dad?” She saw him sigh, though she couldn’t hear it, and she wanted to groan in frustration. “Dad?”
“She became convinced that as the female descendant of this priestess, as the last surviving member of this culture, that she was on a holy quest.”
A holy quest. In that instant Veronica understood why her father had kept the secret for so long. He believed that his wife was more than obsessed; he believed she was delusional. And he feared his daughter would become prey to the same delusion if she learned the whole story.
She got up from the island and went to her room, where she removed her hearing aids. The story had unleashed a storm of emotions inside her, and she wasn’t exactly sure what they all were. She was still angry that her father hadn’t told her this years ago, but she was also saddened by the gulf that had existed between him and her mother. She felt sorry for him. But she also felt sorry for her mother, who must have felt so misunderstood.
And she was angry at her father for his attitude toward the whole thing. Her mother had been right: the mask was her birthright. It might not matter much in this day and age when such things were best kept in museums and not in private hands, but it remained that it was still a vestige of Renata’s heritage, the same as the letter was. She was entitled to her need to find it.
Entitled to be obsessed.
But how obsessed? Veronica struggled with that question for hours in the silence imposed on her by an accident. All she knew was that her father thought her mother had been delusional.
He’d probably had good reason to think so. Veronica herself had known a few people who were so absorbed in some idea or pursuit that they virtually shut out the rest of the world. To onlookers, they seemed crazy.
But it hurt to think her father had felt that way about her mother. She’d always assumed they’d had a great marriage, two archaeologists united not only by love for one another, but by love for their careers. But it seemed that might not have been the case.
But then, she reminded herself, her mother’s death might have colored all of that for her father. Especially if he blamed Renata’s search for her death. Of course he would twist the whole thing around in his grief.
Then she remembered how he had suggested Renata might have been killed. The thought chilled her, even though she didn’t believe it. There would have been no reason for anyone to kill her. As far as she could tell, Renata hadn’t even been close to finding the mask. Certainly not as close as she herself was. Assuming, of course, her interpretation of the available information wasn’t totally off track.
It might be, of course. That was always a possibility, but just then it was a possibility she didn’t want to consider. She couldn’t afford to consider it. It had been difficult enough to conclude that her mother had been searching in the wrong area, difficult enough to believe in her own reading of the information when it flew in the face of everything her mother had believed. Having come so far, she wasn’t about to backtrack and reconsider yet again.
Besides, time was short. She needed to prove that her mother hadn’t been crazy. She had to find the mask. She had to vindicate Renata.
And she had to do it before her father died.
Dugan decided to go out for a drink. He didn’t hit the bars the way he used to, but after a day cooped up with Veronica Coleridge, he discovered he’d developed a mighty thirst. Well, okay, maybe a medium one. What he really needed was to be out among people who were having a good time just being alive. He craved it after spending all day with a woman who apparently wouldn’t know a good time if it stood up and introduced itself.
Okay, so maybe he was being unfair, he thought as he slid onto a stool at one of the numerous bars along Duval Street and ordered a beer. She was deaf. Worse, she’d been deaf for only a year. That kind of thing would tend to put a damper on your zest for life. He didn’t imagine he’d be the easiest person to get along with if that had happened to him. In fact, he might even be downright ornery for a while.
And she had more than that going on in her life. Her father was sick. Very sick. So there was that pres
sure. As far as he could tell, she didn’t have a whole lot to smile about right now.
If that had been all that was going on, he might have been more sympathetic. This three-month search thing . . . well, she was being unrealistic. And he kept getting the urge to grab her, tell her to relax, and ask her if she didn’t have enough problems in her life without throwing this one in on the top of the heap.
Because the woman was a Type A personality looking for a coronary if ever he’d seen one. She reminded him of the people he used to work with on Wall Street, the driven, ninety-hour-a-week types who ate, drank, and slept their work, who would check on the international money markets in the middle of a social gathering, who never left their phones or pagers more than six inches away, and whose entire conversation seemed to be limited to options, currency fluctuations, buyouts, and takeovers.
Sometimes it appalled him to remember that, for a few years, he’d been one of them. And that was the primary reason that Veronica Coleridge was irritating him.
When he’d decided to bail out to Key West ten years ago, he might not have been thinking too clearly on some matters. Jana had really hurt him. The day he told her he’d been fired from the firm for refusing to invest his customers’ money in a doubtful stock—a stock that a senior partner had a vested interest in—she’d told him he was a loser, that he’d always been a loser, and by the way, his best friend was a hell of a lot better in the sack than he was.
It was as if somebody had thrown a switch inside him, a switch that shut him down. Without a word, he’d packed and left, and he hadn’t stopped driving until his Mercedes had nosed into Old Town. Then he’d sold the Mercedes, rented a shitty apartment, and settled down to drinking himself into a stupor.
Six days later he’d emerged from the bender a changed man. He’d never gotten drunk again, but he’d sworn off anything remotely connected to his old life. He didn’t care if he never “accomplished” anything again. Instead, he was hell-bent on wringing whatever pleasure he could out of life.