by Unknown
“If he used it in 1918 that means the Golden Flame could be close to blooming again,” Zoey mused. “Right?”
“It does. His recorded formula is dated 1914, four years before the Spanish flu bludgeoned the country. He was already a well-known apothecary in the area, and the plant probably doesn’t bloom every hundred years on the dot. It could be ninety-six years or a hundred and two. Botany is changeable and adaptive.”
“You’ve really thought this through,” Jericho said.
“I’ve been doing research on this for seven years. In fact, this article is part of my doctorate thesis and I’ve found soil and climate analysis to support my theory. Turn the page.” Lace motioned with her index finger, toggling it like she was flipping a page.
“What?” Jericho looked up.
“I drew an illustration of what I believe the Golden Flame looks like when in full bloom,” Lace said. “It’s on the next page.”
Jericho flipped the page and there it was. A drawing of a plant that looked eerily similar to the beaded design on the medallions, both the one in his pocket and the one sewn into the medicine bundle hide. He felt as if an invisible hand grabbed him by the throat, held him in the grip of a magnetic force.
“The Golden Flame is a very rare plant, on the verge of extinction. From my calculations about the plant’s characteristics, the soil, altitude, and climate, I believe the Davis Mountains are the only place that it grows. Not only that, but I’ve narrowed this agave’s natural habitat specifically to the mountainous terrain of the August McCleary Foundation nature preserve. I say as much in the article.” Lace nodded at the magazine in his hand.
“So the plant has either got to be here on Triangle Mount or on Widow’s Peak? Those are the only two mountains on foundation land.” Zoey mused.
“Yes, and because Widow’s Peak is at a higher altitude, I tend to think it most likely grows there.”
“Even though we found botanicals of the Golden Flame here on Triangle Mount?” Jericho interjected.
Lace shrugged. “It’s an evolving theory.”
Zoey shook her head. “Brainiac. I have no idea how you figured all that out.”
“I factored in the cellular structure of a comparative agave species to—”
“Zoom!” Zoey said before her cousin could start spouting Latin names.
“Sorry. Occupational hazard,” Lace apologized. “Back to the story. The most compelling legend I stumbled across in my research was about the Keepers of the Flame.”
Zoey swiveled her head to look at him. Their gazes met and her eyes widened. Slowly, she inched her foot over and rested it against his. No one else would have noticed, but she was letting him know she was right there with him.
A strong yearning came over him, so stark and pure it burned his chest. He wanted her. Not just in his bed. Not just for a few nights. Not just as a friend. He wanted her as his woman. Forever. The intensity of his yearning tasted bright and sharp, bittersweet and brilliant.
“Who are the Keepers of the Flame?” Zoey asked. Her voice cut clear and certain through the tension thick inside the tent.
“The Keepers of the Flame were born of Comanche blood,” Lace said. “But they were different. Special. Mystics, you might say. Unlike the rest of the Comanche tribes who were nomadic warriors, this small group was stationary in the Davis Mountains and peaceful. They were great healers and kept ‘medicine’ for their brethren who came to them when they were sick, wounded, or needed spiritual guidance.”
“Is this factual history?” Jericho asked. “Or legend?”
“Until now, until this …” She swept her hand at the medicine bundle. “It was nothing except a fanciful story. There had never been any definitive evidence that this small sect was real. But your find changes everything. This is proof that the Keepers of the Flame existed and so did the Golden Flame agave. This is monumental, Jericho. A find of a lifetime.”
“And on your first real job as a professor!” Zoey marveled.
A murmur went through the students as it fully sank in what they were all a part of.
The importance of the find was not lost on Jericho. This discovery would shape his entire career and the rest of his life and the lives and careers of the students under his tutelage. If he had any lingering thoughts of sacrificing everything for a night in Zoey’s arms, it all flew out the window. He simply could not make love to her. He could not cross that line. Not now. Not yet. He had to hold himself at bay. Too much was at stake for both of them.
Zoey went up on tiptoes and whispered in his ear. “Just think,” she said. “You’re descended from these people.”
And for the first time since Granny Helen told her strange story, he believed it was a real possibility.
“Now comes the important question for you guys,” Lace said.
“What’s that?” Jericho and Zoey asked in unison.
“What happened to the Keepers of the Flame? Obviously, they must have died out. How, until now, did they disappear without a trace?”
Chapter 14
Context: The physical setting, location, and cultural association of artifacts and features within an archaeological site.
A SCREAM woke Zoey in the middle of the night.
After Lace departed, the group had converted the tent back to sleeping quarters, eaten dinner, and sat around the campfire until midnight discussing the ramifications of their find and Lace’s hypothesis about the Golden Flame agave.
Zoey had sat across the fire from Jericho, watching his shadowy face in the flickering firelight. He revealed none of his emotions to the group. No one else knew about the medallion Granny Helen had given him, and apparently, he was determined to keep it that way. It was all she could do not to pull him aside and ask him how he was feeling. She didn’t have that right. Not here. Not yet. So she’d wistfully gone to bed and fallen into a fitful sleep peppered with dreams of bloodshed and murder.
The second scream told her that the sound did not come from her nightmare.
Instantly, she bolted up, flung back the covers and stumbled to her feet. “Catrina,” she whispered. “Did you hear that?”
No answer.
She glanced over at her roommate’s cot. Empty. Was Catrina the one doing the screaming?
Heart pumping, she jammed her feet into her slippers and raced out into the darkness. Other team members had gathered, holding flashlights and staring at one another, tousle-haired and wide-eyed, but Catrina was not among them.
“What’s happening?” Jericho demanded, emerging from his tent ahead of Avery. He had pulled on jeans and thrown on a shirt, but he’d neither yet snapped his Levi’s nor buttoned up his Western shirt.
Damn her, she couldn’t help staring and drooling. Completely inappropriate given the circumstances, but there you had it. When had she ever been appropriate?
A third scream ripped down the mountain, echoed out into the thick darkness, raising the hairs on her neck.
“The dig site.” Jericho took the lead, charging up the mountain, the group—in various states of dress—trailing after him.
They were halfway to the dig site when Catrina came stumbling toward them in the darkness, jabbering frantically in Portuguese and trembling all over, her eyes rolling wildly in her head.
Jericho grabbed her by the shoulders. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Fa … fa … fantasma,” she stammered. “Ghost.”
Everyone huddled around her. Jericho gathered her in his arms and she buried her sobbing face against his chest.
Uneasiness rippled through Zoey. Not because she believed in ghosts, but something about this did not feel right.
“Where did you see this apparition?” Jericho quizzed her.
From the shelter of his arms, Catrina shook her head, extended a slender index finger, and pointed toward the dig site.
“Try to calm down,” Jericho soothed. “You’re all right. You’re safe.”
A knuckle of jealousy doubled up inside Zoey and pu
nched against her chest wall. It bothered her that Jericho was comforting Catrina. It was nice of him and all that, but she couldn’t help feeling that Catrina was making this up for attention.
Avery rubbed Catrina’s shoulder. “Shh, shh. It’s okay.”
Finally, Jericho eased her away from him and Zoey breathed a little easier. Still, Catrina was a sly one. Zoey didn’t trust her any farther than she could throw her. “Can you tell me exactly what you saw?” he asked.
“A dark man dressed in a black hat and long black duster,” she said. “Standing in the middle of the dig right where Zoey found the medicine bundle. He had no face.” She shuddered again.
A few people audibly sucked in their breaths. The breeze ruffled hair, sent students crossing their arms and drawing clothing more tightly around them. It was summer, yes, but nights in the desert mountain could turn surprisingly cool, and Zoey suspected that some of the shivering had as much to do with Catrina’s unnerving story as it did the night air.
“El hombre vestido de negro,” Piper murmured. “Did you see an unusual light as well?”
El hombre vestido de negro was a Pecos legend about a faceless spirit who roamed graveyards and cemeteries in a foredoomed quest for salvation. It was rumored that anyone he touched was forever marked by the terrifying experience. Mysteriously moving lights followed in his wake, and some believed el hombre vestido de negro was the cause of the infamous Marfa Lights.
“Sim,” Catrina replied in Portuguese. “Yes. Green glowing lights around him.”
“Sure it wasn’t fireflies?” Zoey asked.
“El hombre vestido de negro is a bulto, a walking shadow. A bulto must pay for the evil deeds he committed in life. In death, he must right wrongs, fulfill the unfulfilled purpose, pay that unpaid debt, seek out that special something or someone.” Piper went on. The girl was a regular Grolier’s.
“Where’d you get that from?” Braden asked.
“Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier by Patrick Dearen,” Piper said. “Wanna borrow it when I get done?”
Zoey eyed Catrina, who had linked her arms through Jericho’s, and wondered if she’d gotten a peek at Piper’s book. “Looks like you’re pretty special to the man in black, Catrina. What wrong did you do?”
“That’s silliness,” Catrina said sharply. “There is no reason a ghost would want me.”
“Well,” Avery said. “You are pretty hot. Do ghosts get boners?”
The women groaned at that.
“What were you doing at the dig site in the middle of the night?” Jericho asked sharply.
Catrina shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Jericho frowned. “So you took a walk in the dark alone knowing there are coyotes, javelinas, rattlesnakes, and mountain lions out there?”
“I did not think about that.” Catrina lifted a haughty chin.
“Well, think about it from now on. Everyone, back to bed. We have to be up at dawn.” Jericho herded everyone toward the camp.
Zoey fell into step beside him. They allowed the others to get several feet ahead of them. “I don’t believe Catrina, do you?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why she’d lie.”
THE NEXT MORNING everyone was sluggish and bleary-eyed from interrupted sleep.
There wasn’t much talking during breakfast or when Jericho laid out the dig plans for the day. They’d found a tomahawk and a medicine bundle; he was fully confident that they were going to find evidence of an entire civilization. He debated when to tell Dr. Sinton about the find and decided to wait and see if they unearthed anything new today before sharing the news with the director.
Zoey was subdued this morning, not her usual chipper self. It was all he could do to keep himself from cornering and asking her what was wrong. He couldn’t help thinking she was right that Catrina was up to something, but he had no idea what that was. Simply a bid for attention perhaps? Or was she trying to sabotage the dig in some way? To what end?
He wished he could talk to Zoey about it, ask her opinion, but whenever he got around her, his hands seemed to have a mind of their own. And whenever he so much as looked at her, his dick hardened. She drove him crazy at every turn and that was without even trying.
She was ahead of him on the path up to Triangle Mount, carrying supplies and walking beside Piper. He let his gaze slide over her shapely body, felt a sharp ache stab him low and permanent. When he finally had a chance to make love to her he was going to spend hours at it. Doing his best to drive her completely out of her mind with lust for him. He was determined to do whatever it took to prove to her that he could keep her satisfied for a lifetime.
If she had been alone, he would have hurried to catch up with her. It was good she wasn’t alone or he might have done something or said something that he should not. His mind was not on his work. He was daydreaming, caught up in the fantasy of what she tasted like in her most feminine spot and precisely how he was going to show her what she meant to him. And because of that, it came as a shock when just as they neared the dig site, Braden came running toward him.
“Dr. Chance! Dr. Chance! Come quick. The ladder rungs collapsed on Avery and he fell into the pit floor where someone had left out a bunch of tools and an ice pick impaled him through the foot!”
IT WAS IRONIC that the dig safety officer was the one to get hurt. Avery was in charge of making sure the equipment was put away each night, and as they carried him back down the mountain on a litter, he swore he’d made sure everything had been stowed the previous evening. If that were true, how had chisels and picks, trowels and shovels come to be strewn across the floor of the pit?
“I made sure everything was put up, Dr. Chance.” Avery winced against the pain. “No doubt.”
At his adamant declaration, Zoey shot Catrina a look. The other woman had been out and about in the middle of the night, and Zoey hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that she had been up to something underhanded.
Someone said, half jokingly, but half serious, “Maybe it was el hombre vestido de negro.”
When they reached camp, they got another surprise in the form of a Cupid patrol officer who had driven up to deliver a message to Braden that his father had had a heart attack and been rushed to a hospital in El Paso.
“What’s going on?” someone mumbled.
“It’s a curse,” someone else said.
“Freaky-deaky,” supplied a third student.
Jericho asked the officer to drive a distraught Braden into Cupid where he could arrange transportation home to be with his family. Afterward, Jericho turned to the remaining students. “In light of the latest turn of events, I think we better call it a day. You’re all excused. Come back tomorrow with a clear head and remember, keep quiet about what’s going on up here. We don’t want to compromise our dig.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
“Zoey,” he asked. “Can you go with me to take Avery to the hospital?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
Jericho used his shoulder to get underneath Avery’s arm and lever him up on his good leg. Avery grunted and bit down hard on his bottom lip. He was pale and sweaty. The ice pick was sticking all the way through the middle of his injured foot. Zoey went over and braced her shoulder underneath Avery’s other arm.
“Catrina?” Avery asked. “Will you come too?”
Catrina backed up, pressed a hand to her stomach. “I hate hospitals. I’ll see you when you get out.” She turned and scurried after the other students, who were taking the university van back to Alpine.
Avery looked like he was about to cry. “Ah, hell, why am I disappointed? I knew she wasn’t the kind of woman you could count on in a pinch.”
“It’s okay,” Zoey said, and reached up to squeeze the hand that was draped over her shoulder. “We’re here. You’re going to be all right.”
“Catrina is an impulsive free spirit up for anything, which makes her great in the sack, but you can’t coun
t on her for anything,” Avery bemoaned as they carefully guided him into the extended cab portion of Jericho’s pickup.
Zoey glanced over at Jericho, who was on the other side of the truck, helping Avery angle himself across the seat while keeping his injured leg as still as possible.
He raised his gaze and she could see it as clearly spelled out on his face as if it had been carved there. Zoey is an impulsive free spirit who is up for anything. Is she the kind of woman I can count on when the going gets tough?
She glowered at him. “You’ve known me for twenty years. Do you really have to ask that?”
“What?” Jericho blinked. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to,” she muttered as she climbed into the passenger seat. “I can read your mind, so watch yourself.”
He laughed low and soft.
Two hours later, they’d gotten Avery admitted into Cupid General Hospital, where he was taken to surgery to have the ice pick removed from his foot and then sent to the recovery unit, where he was currently sleeping off the anesthesia. Jericho had called Avery’s parents and told them what was going on, and they’d shown up a few minutes ago to see after their son. He’d also called Dr. Sinton to catch him up on the events of the past two days. Throughout the whole thing, he was calm, cool, and collected, just as Jericho always was, so it surprised her when after he’d hung up from his conversation, his shoulders slumped and he leaned his head back against the wall in the corridor outside the recovery waiting room and looked completely exhausted.
She moved to put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“The whole dig is falling apart,” he mumbled.
“It’s not.”
“Um, are you not paying attention? Catrina saw a ghost.” He held up one finger. “Avery got an ice pick through his foot.” He held up a second finger. “And Braden’s father had a heart attack.” Up went finger number three. “All in the course of twenty-four hours.”
“Yes, Avery got hurt and Braden’s father had a heart attack, but those things have nothing to do with you. You’re doing a wonderful job. We made a significant discovery.”