Look What the Wind Blew In

by Ann Charles

  Eyeing her up and down, he considered her words. He couldn’t see her dragging him out of anywhere, although she was no lightweight.

  She packed away her water bottle. “When you’re ready, I’ll show you the main hall I told you about earlier. Esteban can catch up with us when he’s finished outside with his cigarette.”

  Quint pushed away from the wall, careful not to split open his skull on the low ceiling. He trailed behind her, admiring the view of her backside. He might be hotter than hell, but he wasn’t dead. Not yet anyway.

  She’d tucked the sleeves of her T-shirt under her bra straps, leaving the curves of her shoulders bare. Sweat glistened on her skin, dotting the back of her top. Not once today had she complained about the heat or even slowed down. He was starting to doubt she was human.

  “Here we are,” she whispered a minute later and led him by the arm. She tiptoed into a large open chamber, pulling him along behind her, shushing him with her index finger to her lips. He nodded, pretending to zip his lips. When they stilled, she released her hold on him.

  A rustling sound echoed through the room, mixed with an assortment of hoarse, grating-like rattles, clicks, and coos. So this was why it was named the Temple of the Crow.

  He stepped gingerly through the bird droppings, peering up at the high ceiling. Thick shadows swallowed the light where steep vaults came together. The birds must have built their nests on the flat, square capitals that connected each of the limestone columns running the length of the room to the vaulted ceiling. Across the vast chamber, a platform rose two feet above the rest of the floor.

  Slivers of light pierced through thin apertures in the walls, adding a sacred air to the room. He peered across the room in the half-light, trying to make sense of the decorative carvings covering the low wall of the platform.

  A brief fluttering overhead brought his attention back to the tall columns. At the base of each, faded and chipped paintings wrapped around the limestone. He’d need his other camera to really capture the hallowed feel of the chamber, maybe enhancing the colors with a tobacco filter, sharpening with a polarizer.

  In the empty spaces between each column, a three-foot statue stood guard. Some of the statues had crumbled, but the majority remained intact, complete with impressive detail work emphasized by the room’s deep shadows.

  For now, he’d take some quick shots.

  As he pulled his camera from his pocket, Angélica caught his hand. She pointed at the ceiling.

  “I know,” he mouthed back. He already had his shutter set to silent mode on his camera.

  She pulled him down so she could whisper close to his ear. “It’s a corbel-vaulted ceiling.”

  Her words tickled over his skin, the heat of her breath making him sweat for an entirely different reason. He tried to focus on the task at hand, to rein in his growing attraction for Steel’s ex-wife. He did not need to think about her trailing her tongue along his outer ear.

  “What’s that?” he whispered back in her ear, inhaling the sweet lemony-orange fragrance of her shampoo. The smell blended with her coconut-scented sunblock. Pour some wine and a little brandy on her skin and she’d probably taste like sangria. The thought alone made his pulse jackhammer.

  “A characteristic of the Classic Maya Period,” she whispered, but he didn’t give a flying fuck about ceilings, crows, or Jared Steel at that moment.

  He stared down at her face, wondering what it would feel like to kiss those lips, but then he doused the fantasy. She’d probably kill him if she knew he was even pondering touching her, and then she’d hang him from the corbel-vaulted ceiling as an example for any other males who forgot she was The Boss.

  She went up on her toes again. “Ask Dad about it later,” she breathed. She must have mistaken his silent look for incomprehension. He was lucky she couldn’t read minds as well as she could Maya glyphs.

  Holding up his camera, he showed her the flash button, making a point of turning it off.

  She nodded.

  He wanted to try a shot with the afternoon sunlight streaming in. Squatting to get a better angle, he leaned against a column to steady his shot. As he pushed the shutter release, something slammed into him from behind, knocking him into one of the crumbling statues. His camera flew out of his hands.

  The ceiling exploded. Squawking and screeching, the crows whirled and darted out through the window slits.

  As the last of the birds flew away, Quint sat up. His left forearm tingled, a nasty gash dotted with blood.

  Angélica squatted next to him, taking his arm in hand, grimacing down at his injury. “You need to see Teodoro.”

  “What happened?”

  “Esteban and his clumsy feet.”

  Quint glanced around the chamber. “Where is he?”

  “He fled with the crows.” She smirked. “I’ve never seen anyone move so fast in my life.”

  She stood, holding out her hand to help him to his feet. The strength in her tug surprised him. Maybe she could drag him out of trouble.

  “You okay? Any other injuries?”

  His knee stung where it had connected with the floor, but his pants weren’t ripped, so he kept quiet about it. “Just my arm.”

  He picked up his camera, brushed off a few feathers, and looked it over. It still worked. Good. He turned it off and shoved it into the leg pocket in his khakis.

  “Teodoro’s place is next to the mess tent, remember?” She glanced at his arm again, her forehead wrinkled. “It’s the pole-and-thatch building. You think you can find it on your own?”

  Quint waved off her concern. “I can just wrap a T-shirt around it.”

  “No, you can’t. Look around you, Parker. This isn’t the cleanest place. The closest hospital is over sixty miles away, and that’s after you make it to pavement. Believe me, you don’t want to get a bad infection out here in the jungle.”

  He could see this was a losing battle. She’d made up her mind. “All right, I’ll go and be back in a bit.”

  “Don’t come back. It’ll be suppertime soon. Get some rest. You need to be ready to go again tomorrow.”

  Relieved as he was to escape the heat of the temple, Quint groused as he marched across the plaza toward Teodoro’s quarters. Steel being here would probably keep Angélica on edge, meaning more tight-lipped than ever about anything related to Dr. Hughes. Maybe Juan would be more willing to share, but with Steel around, getting time alone with him might be a problem.

  Teodoro had the only pole-and-thatch building in the camp, so it didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes effort to find it. Quint hesitated at the weathered wooden door, closed fist in the air, not sure if the custom here was to knock or just enter. Before he could make up his mind, the door flew open and Teodoro stood there.

  “Quint! Come in.” Juan’s voice boomed from the shadowy interior. “Teodoro was about to slip me one of his notorious voodoo potions.”

  Teodoro shook his head. “I do not know voodoo.” He moved aside for Quint to duck through the doorway.

  “The last time he made me drink a cup of that stuff,” Juan said from where he sat on a cot in the corner, rubbing his jaw, “I howled like a monkey for hours.”

  Glancing around, Quint took in the dirt floor, rustic looking table and benches, and multitude of various shaped gourds hanging on the back wall. To his left was a wall-length shelf packed with dark brown, antique bottles of all shapes and sizes.

  Quint turned back to Juan, noticing his face looked a bit pale. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s this darned tooth of mine. Ever since we found that curse, it’s been giving me trouble.”

  There was that curse again. Quint thought about asking more about it, but he figured if Angélica caught wind of his snooping, she’d be even less likely to share information. Hell, she’d probably take today’s lesson on the Mexican government one step further and cover the history of the damned country, starting with the Aztecs.

  Teodoro came up beside Quint and grabbed his arm, turning it tow
ard the light shining through the window.

  “How’d that happen?” Juan pushed off the cot, joining Teodoro’s examination of Quint’s arm.

  “Esteban ran into me when I wasn’t looking.”

  Juan snorted. “That boy’s ankles are made of rubber.”

  Teodoro let go of his arm and shuffled over to the shelf full of bottled concoctions.

  Throwing caution to the wind, Quint asked Juan, “How do you know it’s a curse?”

  “Because I’ve been working among Maya ruins for a long time, and I’ve come across other curses.” Juan returned to the cot. “Marianne found one at a site where she was acting as a visiting archaeologist, lending her expertise on reading Maya glyphs.” He frowned at Quint. “It was that dig site she was leaving when her helicopter crashed.”

  Quint had read in one of the articles on Juan that his wife had died as a result of injuries from a helicopter crash in the jungle. If he remembered right, she’d lived through the crash, but had passed shortly afterwards in the hospital. “I’m sorry about your wife.”

  “Me, too.” Juan sniffed and then cleared his throat. “Anyway, when it comes to the curse Angélica and I found, all I know is it reads like a curse. Whether or not anything more comes of it, only time will tell. However, since we found it, odd things have been happening around here.”

  “Like your motorcycle not working?”

  “For one, yes. Having a tree fall and destroy our only means of reaching the outside world via phone and computer is another.” Juan rubbed his jaw on his sore tooth side. “Do you believe in the supernatural, Quint?”

  Was he serious? One look at Juan’s expression left little doubt. Quint weighed telling Juan the truth. He’d experienced some crazy shit off and on over the last three decades, but he preferred to keep his theories to himself.

  “Not usually,” he lied, thinking of the protection charm that his Aunt Zoe had made, the one he carried with him wherever he traveled.

  “I didn’t use to when I was young.” Juan eased onto his back, staring up at the thatched roof. “But too much has happened in my life now not to suspect there are things going on beyond our natural world.”

  “What about Angélica?” Quint wondered how she felt about her mother’s demise in relation to the curse at that other dig site.

  “My daughter is way too logical to buy into anything supernatural. She is a mirror of her mother on that thought. Marianne didn’t for a moment believe she was in any danger after finding that curse. She always said I was too superstitious for my own good.” He chuckled. “Angélica has recently echoed those very words when it comes to this Lord of Death curse. But I can’t help it. I can’t shake the feeling that we’re in for more trouble.”

  Juan’s words left Quint feeling antsy. What in the hell had he stumbled into down here? Had Dr. Hughes found the curse, too?

  “Curse is bad,” Teodoro agreed. The healer returned to Quint’s side, lifted his arm, and without warning dumped what looked like iodine on the gash.

  “Ouch!” Quint winced. “You could’ve warned me.”

  His complaint was met with a smirk from Teodoro. “No crying from you.” He cocked his head toward Juan. “He cry two times today. That’s too much. No more.”

  “I did not cry.” Juan grinned. “He’s exaggerating.”

  Teodoro looked at Quint and shook his head, refuting Juan’s accusation. Then he splashed iodine on the gash again, soaking up the overflow with a rag.

  Quint cringed until the sting eased. “Did this curse list specifics?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  “No. It just talked about the Lord of Death and this village. I’d show you the glyphs, but Angélica is the only one around here who can read them.”

  That was okay. Quint doubted the bullheaded woman would appreciate her father sharing without her approval.

  Teodoro slapped some green, petroleum jelly-like goop on Quint’s wound, wrapped a wide strip of gauze around his forearm, and then sealed it all with duct tape.

  It was crude, Quint thought, but it would definitely hold. He walked over to a piece of a tree trunk making do as a stool and took a seat. “Your daughter seems a bit stubborn.”

  “More than a bit. She takes after her mother.”

  “I asked about her mom today.”

  Juan looked over at him, both eyebrows raised.

  “She refused to tell me anything about her.”

  “You’re lucky she didn’t bite your head off for asking.”

  Juan sat up as Teodoro approached him with a bowl made from the lower half of a gourd.

  “I must have caught her in a good mood.”

  “Angélica doesn’t like to talk about her personal life with strangers. The divorce only made her more closed-mouthed.”

  He wondered what she had to hide. Was it anything involving her ex-husband? “Did you get along with Dr. Steel when they were married?”

  “For the most part. Jared can be quite charming when he wants to be.”

  Yeah, Quint remembered. He also remembered how much he lied and manipulated.

  Teodoro motioned for Juan to open his mouth.

  Juan frowned at the bowl in Teodoro’s hand “What’s that?”

  Teodoro dipped his finger in the bowl and scooped out a pasty, beige substance. “It numbs tooth.”

  “Will it sting?”

  “No. Open.”

  Juan reared back. “Let me put it on.”

  Teodoro wiped his finger on the edge of the bowl and dropped it on Juan’s lap, mumbling something Quint couldn’t decipher. He grabbed a full-size gourd from the back wall and left the hut, leaving him alone with Juan.

  “He needs to work on his bedside manner,” Juan said with a wink. He dipped his finger in the goop and rubbed it on his tooth and gum. The gagging face he made left no doubt as to the taste of the stuff.

  Quint hid his amusement behind a closed fist.

  When Juan finished, he wiped his finger on his pants. “Teodoro wants to perform a Lolcatali ceremony to calm everyone down and get things back to normal, but Angélica won’t allow it.”

  “A ‘local’ what?”

  “It’s a ritual that’s supposed to protect us from evil spirits.”

  A curse and evil spirits? This was beginning to feel like one of his Aunt Zoe’s bedtime stories.

  “Does Steel know about the curse?” Quint asked.

  “Not from me.”

  Quint stared down at his duct tape. This curse business was bad news. With everyone feeling skittish, his chances of digging for the truth about Dr. Hughes’ disappearance were slimmer than he’d figured. He decided to get down to business now that he had a few minutes alone with Juan. “Did you know Dr. Hughes?”

  “Not as well as you did, apparently.”

  He met Juan’s keen stare. “Touché.”

  “I never met Dr. Hughes,” Juan told him. “But I’ve known of him since Marianne and I took over the site. We learned a lot about his work from the copies of his notes that his wife sent to us back when we first started here.”

  Mrs. Hughes had been in contact with him back then? Did Jeff know about that?

  “I have several binders of Dr. Hughes’ work thanks to her generosity. Plus, she sent one of his journals that talked about the work he was doing down here.”

  Had she made a copy of the journal’s pages first? Quint needed to see this journal. Tapping the tips of his fingers together, he wondered how he could get Juan to let him read Dr. Hughes’ journal without arousing suspicion.

  “You know, I’ve been doing some thinking since breakfast,” Juan said.

  Something in his tone made Quint’s shoulders tighten. “Oh, yeah?” He tried to act like they were just two guys shooting the shit.

  “How did you know Dr. Hughes?”

  “I went to school with his son.” That truth came easy.

  “I see. And how is Mrs. Hughes doing these days?”

  “She passed away last year.”

  J
uan frowned, his surprise at this news appearing legitimate. “I’m sorry to hear that.” His voice was sincere as he rubbed his jaw.

  “Thanks. She was a kind-hearted woman.” Dogged, too. She never gave up on finding her husband.

  “She wrote to me several times over the past eight years,” Juan continued, “asking repeatedly if I’d found any clues that would help explain her husband’s disappearance.”

  Quint remained silent, his body coiled with tension. He had a feeling Juan was heading somewhere with this conversation, and he wasn’t sure if it would end with him tied to the railroad tracks.

  “But now she’s gone.” Juan crossed his arms over his chest. “And oddly enough, here you sit—someone who not only knew Dr. Hughes, but who also worked with him twenty years ago at this very site.” His gaze bore into Quint. “Someone who worked here the last year Dr. Hughes was ever seen or heard from.”

  Quint held Juan’s shrewd gaze. “That’s correct.”

  “Don’t you think that’s an interesting coincidence, Quint?”

  Chapter Five

  Ek Chuah: The Maya god of merchants and warriors.

  Busted.

  Damn it.

  Quint kept his face schooled, hiding behind a frozen smile while he scrambled to figure out how to keep his true agenda hidden from Juan’s unblinking scrutiny.

  It hadn’t taken Juan long to pin the tail on Quint. Hell, a bottle of whiskey in a five-handed poker game lasted longer.

  “Well,” Quint said, licking his lips. “It might seem …”

  The door banged open. Several of the bottles on Teodoro’s shelf rattled and clinked against each other. Steel and Fernando squeezed through the doorway with Alonso in their arms.

  Quint flew to his feet at the sight of Alonso’s bloody pant leg. He raced over to help. Angélica’s warning about the danger of injuries out here in the jungle replayed in his thoughts as he noticed the blood smeared on Fernando’s hands and shirt from carrying Alonso. Before he had a chance to ask what had happened, Teodoro rushed inside and ordered Juan off the cot.