by Ann Charles
Then again, if Mrs. Hughes was on to something with Steel, maybe Quint’s uneasiness was due to an underlying threat.
He finished the last bite of his panucho and then asked Pedro, “How well did you know Mrs. Hughes?”
Pedro shrugged. “We talked on the phone several times, but I never met her. ¿Por qué?”
“I keep thinking about Dr. Hughes going down in that plane. I can’t believe that after all of this time, that’s all there is to the mystery of his whereabouts.”
Pedro rubbed his temples. “Dr. Hughes was a good man. Pretty funny, too, when he wasn’t working too hard.” He stretched his neck from one side to the other. “You know one thing that I do not understand?”
“What’s that?”
He focused on Quint, his gaze hawk-like. “You know how detail oriented Dr. Hughes was, right? Why didn’t he call his wife and tell her he was taking a different flight home?”
* * *
Angélica was hiding from the world in the Temple of the Water Witch. The sub chamber was steamy, dark, and musty, but she was alone. No crew. No Jared. No Quint. Only ghosts and their stories carved into the walls.
She was being a big, fat chicken shit and she knew it. But between finding Esteban sacrificed and coming way too close to spending eternity in a watery tomb, burying her head in the past seemed like the thing to do. At least until she could breathe without feeling tightness in her chest and get a handle on what was happening at her dig site.
She leaned over the paper copy of the glyph she had just charcoaled, blowing off the excess dust. Her vision blurred as her thoughts strayed.
If only she hadn’t morphed into Medusa in front of Quint this morning. Her father knew the stress she was under. He’d forgive her and understand the reasoning behind her harsh words about accepting the risks to her crew.
Quint, on the other hand, probably saw her for the snake-haired bitch she was. If he were as smart as he seemed, he’d be on his way to the nearest airport to catch a flight back to the States by now. This dig was sinking faster than the Titanic.
The sound of footfalls clapping on the dirt floor behind her made her neck prickle. She twisted around. Quint’s shoulders filled the narrow entryway into the sub chamber as he angled into the small room.
Apparently, he wasn’t that smart after all.
Or maybe he was the bearer of more bad news.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, going up on her knees. “Did something else happen?”
“No.” He couldn’t stand fully with the low ceiling, so he squatted.
“Then why are you here?” As soon as the words escaped her lips, she winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound so bitchy.”
He waved off her apology. “Your dad sent me here.” He held out a piece of paper. “He even made me a map so I wouldn’t get lost.”
She took the paper without looking at it. “Why?”
“He doesn’t want anyone working alone anymore, so he assigned me to you.”
“Oh.” Having a shadow wasn’t going to work for her, and her father knew exactly why. Maybe he was referring to daytime work.
“He also said you need to talk to me.”
Damn her all-too-knowing father. She did need to talk to Quint but not here, not yet. She still wasn’t sure what to make of her growing attraction to him, and she needed to get a handle on her feelings before she fumbled through another intimate conversation with him. “I’m not sure what he’s referring to,” she said, buying time.
Turning back to the task at hand, she tried to remember what she’d been doing before Quint had filled the sub chamber with his presence and scrambled her brainwaves. Oh, right—the shell.
“Since you’re here, you may as well grab that rice paper over there and help me copy glyphs.”
Scraping sounds were followed by paper rustling. Then he was kneeling beside her, paper in one hand and flashlight in the other.
“What do you want me to do?” He shined the light on her notepad lying open on the floor next to her.
Fighting the urge to close it, she motioned to a diagram on the floor in front of him. “That’s a chart of this wall, split into proportions that equal eight by ten inches when blown up to actual size.”
He picked up the diagram and studied it under the light.
Leaning closer to him, she pointed at the numbers in the corner of each section. “These match the numbers on the relief copies. Upon completion, we’ll be able to pin these copies on a wall in the lab and continue analyzing the meaning of all these glyphs in the comfort of air conditioning.”
She was so close she caught a subtle whiff of his cologne or soap. It had a cedar scent with some sandalwood notes. A glance up made her realize she was close enough to count his eyelashes. They were thick and long. Not fair. Also not fair that he didn’t seem at all flutter-pated about being so close to her while she was on the verge of a stroke from a sudden tidal wave of high blood pressure.
She moved away, putting some good ol’ musty air between them, and began busily organizing the copies in front of her.
This chamber was too small for the both of them, damn it, and her father knew that. Playing matchmaker, was he? Two could play at the cupid game. There was a certain widow just down the road back home in Arizona who had taken a shine to her dad lately. Maybe Angélica could invite her over along with her collection of molted snakeskins.
“What are these marks on this diagram?” Quint asked.
“Those are the glyphs I’ve copied. I’m only about halfway done, as you can see.” She grabbed a piece of charcoal from her tool pouch and placed it on the floor in front of him. “If you could make relief copies of as many of the remaining sections as you have time for today, and then label each with the appropriate number and place it on the stack to your right, it would be a big help. There’s an extra lantern over there in the corner if you need it.”
“Couldn’t you take a bunch of pictures with a digital camera and use them instead?”
“We have pictures already, but they don’t show details hidden in relief like charcoal does.”
“Okay. I’m on it.” He placed a sheet against the limestone and began rubbing the charcoal over it.
She wrote the number of the current copy on the paper in front of her, glad to have work to do. If Lady Luck was on her side, they could avoid any personal subjects and work in silence.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said this morning.”
She blew out a big sigh. What had she done to piss off Lady Luck these days? Was this about that broken mirror in the showers? If so, that was Jared’s fault for pissing her off with his blackmail bullshit.
“Listen, Quint.” If he was going to take this road, she might as well head him off at the pass. “I was out of place earlier.” She looked over to find him watching her, his piece of charcoal hovering in midair. “You raised some valid points about the welfare of my crew. I’m sorry for blowing up at you.” Apology offered, now for the begging part. “And while you are more than welcome to leave, I need you here with us. Will you please consider staying on for a bit longer? I can pay you—”
“Stop right there.” He lowered the paper and charcoal. “First of all, I won’t take a dime from you for anything I do here. Second, you say you need me, right?”
She nodded.
“What do you mean by that?”
She knew exactly what he was fishing for, but there was no way in hell she’d bite on that hook. “I need your help. With so many from my crew gone, I don’t know if I’ll be able to meet my objectives.” She tapped her pencil on her notepad, sending a prayer to the Maya gods that he’d let it go at that.
After staring at her so long she began to wonder if she had something on her face, he placed the paper against the wall again and brushed the charcoal against it. “That’s not good enough for me, Angélica.”
Come on! “What would be?”
“You kissed me last night.” He kept his focus on the paper.
/>
Her blush made the chamber feel even warmer. “I did.”
“Why?”
“It seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
He rubbed charcoal in silence for a lengthy, unnerving moment. She picked up her notebook, crossing her fingers that they could now return to chronicling Maya life.
“Your father told me you haven’t been interested in a man since you divorced Steel.”
Her mouth fell open, her jaw weighed down by both embarrassment and exasperation. She fanned herself with her notebook. “My father needs to stop talking about me behind my back.”
Quint glanced over, his eyes raking down her in a way that made her fan her notebook even faster.
“When all this is over, boss lady, you and I are going to go away somewhere for a while—alone.” He handed his finished rub to her. “Then I’m going to show you why you really need me.”
A bead of sweat rolled down the front of her shirt, soaking into her bra. “Is that part of the deal to keep you here until the dig season ends?”
“Nope.” He grabbed another piece of paper and held it up to the next glyph. “It’s a promise to you from me.” He rubbed the charcoal over the sheet. “I’ll stay on and help as long as you need me, if you’ll come clean about something.”
She braced herself. “What?”
“What are you looking for in this temple that’s worth risking everything meaningful in your life?”
She hesitated, lowering the notepad to her lap. “What guarantee do I have that you won’t publish what I say?”
“My word. That’s all I can give.”
She watched him work for several beats. “If you breathe one word of what I’m about to tell you to another soul, Quint Parker, I’ll …” she paused, not sure how to finish.
“Angélica.” He looked at her, no smile or grin or even a twinkle in his eyes. “Trust me.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
“I promise your secret is safe with me. Now spill it.”
She stared down at the pencil in her dirty fingers, figuring out where to start. “My mother had a theory—not just a hypothesis. She published it a couple of years before her death. In it, she spelled out the reason for the mysterious disappearance of the Maya from large urban centers in this part of the Yucatán toward the end of the Classic period.”
Angélica drew a heart in the dirt with her pencil eraser, remembering how excited and nervous her mother had been on the eve of her article coming out in one of the top archaeological magazines of the time. They’d all gone out to dinner to celebrate, toasting to a whole new future for her mother’s career.
“But that theory made her the laughing stock of her peers in the archaeological community. They didn’t believe her, but she didn’t let that slow her down. ‘Think of how many great scientists have been mocked early in their career,’ she explained to me when I wanted to do something to shut them up. I even tried to convince her to sue for libel at one point.” Angélica scratched out the heart in the dirt. “Instead, Mom continued searching to add to the proof she already had—namely, shells.”
“Wait,” Quint interrupted. “According to Fernando, you guys find shells in a lot of the tombs around here.”
“That’s true.” She started drawing a cone-shaped shell next to the scratched out heart. “But the shells Mom was looking for specifically are called Astraea Tecta. They come from a very localized area in South America.” She added the points on the bottom of the shell, then sat back to scrutinize her finished piece. “Mom’s theory was that a South American tribesman got lost at sea and somehow ended up on Maya shores. Unfortunately for the Maya people, along with shells for trading, he also brought a nasty disease that none had been exposed to before.”
“Mom found glyphs at Tulum, which is just southeast of here, that tell of the arrival on the coast of a strange merchant and the shells he carried with him. She searched Chichen Itza for signs of the shell but came up empty. She did, however, find a stela for a king who had died at a very young age. His death was around the same time as the demise of several other communities. Around this king’s neck was a necklace with a shell that looked like an Astraea Tecta.”
“Then wouldn’t the shell be there somewhere?”
She shook her head, crossing out the drawing of it. “Some of the graves there had been looted in the early forties. We suspect the shell was one of the items stolen.” She threw her pencil at her destroyed dirt masterpieces. “After that, Mom began to focus her energy on this site, but she died before getting very far on her research here. Since then, Dad and I have continued the search for the shell.”
Leaning back, she rested on her hands. “Several weeks ago, I found a glyph in this temple that told of death arriving with a merchant—what you know as the ‘curse’ glyph. Since then, I’ve found several other artifacts with images of a king with a shell on his necklace. This shell fits Mom’s description.”
“Is this one of your objectives?”
“Not officially for the Mexican government, no.”
“Is this the chamber you disappear to until late at night? Where you sneak off to early in the morning?”
“You’ve been listening to my comings and goings.”
“There’s not much to do around here after the sun goes down, and the TV in my tent doesn’t seem to pick up any channels other than crawling ants and snow.”
“How’d you score a TV?” she joked back.
He winked. “I do special favors for the boss.”
“They’re not special enough to score a TV.” She waited for him to finish laughing and then returned to her story. “A couple of nights ago, Dad found a stela with a carving of the same king as before and the necklace with the shell. The carving was made after the king’s death. But the stela was in the wrong temple, most likely moved by those amateur archaeologists I told you about. The corner was broken off, so I wasn’t sure of its original location. But then Pedro and I found the corner a couple of nights ago, and then last night I was able to decipher that it belonged in the Temple of the Water Witch.”
“Now we have plenty of signs pointing to this temple, but no actual shell as of yet.” Sitting forward, she pulled her knees into her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “Somewhere within these limestone walls is the proof I need not only to clear my mom’s name but also to put her life’s work in history books for the world to read.”
Lines formed on Quint’s brow. “That’s a noble cause, but is it worth risking your life?”
She scoffed. “I’ve spent the last three years looking for this damned shell. I’m not about to let whoever is trying to sabotage the dig stop me when I’m this close.”
He nodded but said nothing.
“So, Parker, I’ve now held up my end of the deal.” She rested her chin on her knees, wondering if she’d made the biggest mistake of her life by telling him her secret. “Are you going to stick around a little longer to watch the fireworks finale at the end?”
A smile crept up his face. “I’m not going anywhere without you, Angélica, especially if fireworks are involved.”
Chapter Seventeen
Kinich Ahau & Kan ek’
(the Sun god and the morning star, Venus):
Sometimes shown together as they rise from the horizon at dawn.
“Gatita, wake up.”
Angélica opened her eyes.
The world had fallen over onto its side.
Wait. False alarm. She lifted her head, grimacing in the morning light. She pushed her hair out of her face and brushed off a paperclip that had stuck to her cheek. “What is it, Dad? Is something wrong?”
“Yes.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “You’ve missed breakfast again.”
“That’s it?” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. “Nobody has been stung, bitten, cut, or sacrificed to the Maya gods?”
“Not yet but the day is young.”
“Real funny. What day is it anyway?”
She wiped the sleep from her eyes. “Why are you really here, besides to harass me?”
He pulled a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and papaya out from behind his back. “To provide nourishment.”
“Ah, mi amor,” she said, taking the plate.
“Are you calling me your love or the food?”
“Both, but especially the bacon.”
“Speaking of pig.” He pulled out two thick tortillas. “I brought something for Stinky Poo, too. Where is he?”
“How many times do I have to tell you that Rover is not a pig, nor does he stink … not yet anyway.” She stabbed her fork into her eggs and shrugged. “I’m not sure where he is this morning. He’s been spending a lot of time in Quint’s tent lately.”
“Joint custody it is. That’s nice.”
“Knock it off. Quint feeds him more than I do. Rover’s stomach rules his actions.”
“What? It’s nice you’ve found a new friend.” He pushed aside a stack of books on her cot and sat down. “You know, I’m not getting any younger and neither are you.”
“Where’s this going?” She crunched on the bacon.
“It would be nice to hear the pitter patter of little feet around this place.”
She should have known. “I’ll buy you some baby ducks. They can waddle behind you wherever you go.”
“I’m serious. Quint is a nice young man, and—”
She held up her hand. “Stop right there.”
“What do you have against him?”
“Dad, I don’t even know him.”
“He’s been here for almost two weeks. How much more time do you need to work your magic?”
“Jared and I were together almost a year before we got married.”
“And look how that worked out for you. It’s plain to see that giving you too much time to get to know a man isn’t the solution. You need to speed things up.”
“Well, then, why don’t you court Quint for a couple of weeks and let me know when the time is right for me to jump in and get hitched.”