Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Hunter shut up.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SOMEWHERE BEHIND HUNTER, A MAN WHISTLED DOWN THE hallway outside Lina’s office. Someone else called out a greeting. The air conditioner made mechanical sounds.

  Hunter counted the books in one of Lina’s bookcases. Twice.

  After a very long silence, Lina asked, “May I take notes?”

  “As long as you don’t show them to anybody but Jase or me,” Hunter said.

  Without another word, she pulled over an electronic notebook, turned it on, tapped the screen to create a new document and a keyboard, and began typing.

  “You said you could multitask,” Hunter said, “so talk while you type.”

  “The knife is most likely obsidian, which is volcanic glass. Unusually refined, delicate flaking pattern. The goal was beauty, not durability. Ceremonial. Probably to be used only once, or at most in a brief series of highly important ceremonies. There is a sigil etched into the blade.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Unknown. The photographer used too much flash for me to read beneath the glare.”

  Hunter came and stood behind the desk, close to her. Too close. He knew it and he didn’t care. He really liked the scent and feel of her near him.

  “Show me,” he said.

  “Here,” she said, pointing to the photo.

  The flash had made an explosion of light against the highly reflective obsidian. The result obscured part of the knife while throwing the rest into relief.

  “Go on,” he said.

  Her full lips tightened, but all she said was “These are first, very quick reactions to the artifacts. A gut response. If you want academic detail, I need more time.”

  “Give me what you can right now. I’ll wait for the rest.”

  There was no double meaning in that, Lina told herself. And he’s not breathing in the scent of my skin.

  She forced herself to think, to multitask despite the looming presence of Hunter Johnston, but every breath she took was flavored with warmth and something clean, healthy, male.

  “Give me room,” she said tightly.

  He shifted an inch away. When she met his eyes, she knew that he was as aware of her as she was of him. She set her teeth and forced herself to concentrate on the second photo.

  “A mask,” she said. “Those are feathers or wings flaring away from the sides of the face.” Inhuman lips parted, a god’s words pouring out. “Gaping mouth, eyes large and not filled in with shell or obsidian. This was designed to be worn, to give some visual freedom to the wearer. Again, likely for ceremonial use.”

  Her fingers paused.

  “What?” Hunter said instantly.

  She shook her head as though throwing off cobwebs. “It…echoes something, but I’ve never seen a piece like it before.”

  “What’s the echo of?”

  “I don’t know. It was just a feeling. Nothing academic.”

  “I do feelings.”

  Lina felt a wild laugh bubbling in her throat. She swallowed it. Twice. The idea of someone as hard-looking as Hunter “doing feelings” was far too intriguing. She forced herself to look at the third photo.

  Her breath caught.

  “Talk to me,” Hunter said, his voice flat.

  “The bundle is vaguely heart-shaped, wrapped in clear plastic.” Her fingers moved silently over the electronic keyboard. “Color beneath could be white or beige. Again, the flash interferes.”

  “What are the stains?”

  “Mud, blood, coffee, cinnamon, chocolate. Impossible to say without chemical analysis.”

  Hunter grunted. He wasn’t getting much that was useful. He watched her fingers—clean, short nails, no rings—touch the edge of the first photo.

  “The glyph in this,” she said, tapping the photo of the ritual knife, “looks like it has some jagged lines. Or it could be glare.”

  She shifted the photo of the knife, changing the light, trying to peer through the glare.

  It was impossible.

  “Is it a common glyph?” he asked.

  “As I can’t really see it, I can’t make a judgment.”

  “This isn’t academia. Give me your best guess.”

  “If the artifacts came from the same area as the stolen truck—a big ‘if’—then the glyph might possibly be related to Kawa’il, a Maya deity worshipped after the destruction of the Maya rule by the Spanish.”

  Lina’s father probably knew more about Kawa’il than she did, but she had no intention of mixing Hunter with her obsessive, erratic father.

  “Do you have an electronic image of the knife?” she asked. “You might be able to run a digital photo through a computer program and clean up the glare from the flash.”

  “I’ll check into it, but I doubt it. Looks like it was taken right after the raid. ICE uses a lot of digital cameras. The photos on the card were probably printed out with the report and then wiped from the card’s memory to make digital room for the next bust. How much does it matter?”

  “Kawa’il wasn’t a common deity. His worship was confined to small areas of the Quintana Roo and, perhaps, Belize. Many Maya scholars don’t even believe Kawa’il existed.”

  “But you do.”

  “Yes. Some glyphs related to Kawa’il have been found on…” Her voice died.

  “Reyes Balam land.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “If you already know so much, why mousetrap me into helping you?” she asked sharply.

  “The presence or absence of Kawa’il was central to the scandal that got your father thrown out of academia.”

  “He is still a Harvard professor.”

  “Technically,” Hunter agreed. “He’s on indefinite leave to ‘pursue scholarly interests.’ You have to look real hard to find Dr. Philip Taylor’s name attached to a university of any repute, including in Mexico.”

  Lina didn’t say anything. It was the harsh truth, one that had driven Philip to ever greater lengths of obsession and secrecy. He was determined to regain his reputation no matter what it took.

  “If my father knows of these artifacts,” she said quietly, “I’m useless to you. Philip doesn’t confide in anyone, including me.”

  Hunter nodded. “It was a long chance, but one I had to eliminate.”

  “You believe me?”

  “Until I find a reason to do otherwise.” He smiled thinly. “That’s more slack than the academic community will cut you.”

  Again, a harsh truth.

  “Well, at least you don’t fancy things up,” she said.

  “I’m a simple man.”

  “I don’t believe it. The bunch of fabric,” she said, tapping her finger on the photo of the cloth, “could be rubbish or it could be a god bundle. Again, without tests, I can’t be more precise.”

  “If it’s a god bundle?”

  “It would be highly, highly rare. Pretty much unique, as far as I know. Such bundles are represented in glyphs and verbal legends, but none have survived to modern times.”

  “So it’s worth a lot of money on the market,” he said.

  “Without proper provenance, no reputable dealer or establishment would touch it.”

  As Hunter had arrived at the same conclusion himself, he wasn’t surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised.

  “That covers some of the market,” he said. “What about the rest of it?”

  Lina frowned. “Frankly, I doubt anyone would pay or trade anything significant for it. So unique an object is automatically suspect. Fraud is a fact of life when you’re dealing without provenance. And a god bundle…”

  He watched her face, the change in her eyes, like she was looking at something far more distant than the photos.

  “A god bundle was the most sacred of artifacts,” Lina said. “It was believed to contain talismans created by the god himself. The talismans were said to literally hold the strength of that god given in promise to the village or city-state that worshipped and was guarded by the god. The bund
le was carried in a carved box at the forefront of soldiers going into battle. Capturing a god bundle meant the end of a deity and the people who followed it. We have no analogue to it in modern times.”

  “National flags?”

  Her short nails drummed on the desk. “Not really. It’s like comparing a tennis game to World War Two. You must realize the depth of the Maya belief system. That god bundle was the god itself. It was real, like birth or death. A fact.”

  She looked at him, saw that he understood what she was saying, and shifted her focus back to the photo.

  “Losers in a war lost their real god,” Lina said after a moment. “The belief that the clash of armies was in fact a clash of deities is one of the things that made the Maya relatively easy to conquer. If an enemy’s god was more potent, you abandoned your losing god. You accepted the victorious god, worshipped it, and shared in its power. Because the Spanish were more powerful than the Maya, it followed that their god was more powerful. Christ rather than Kukulcán, as it were. Of course, not everyone gave up their god. Some only gave lip service.”

  “Good,” Hunter said. “That’s the kind of thing I need to know. I looked at those photos and I saw a bunch of probably Late Terminal Classic artifacts. The mask was totally unfamiliar, and the fabric was a mystery blob.”

  “We don’t know it’s a god bundle.”

  “But we do know that unloading it for significant cash on the black market isn’t likely.”

  “Yes. Too many wealthy collectors have been stung in the past. If an artifact is too good to believe, they don’t believe it without the kind of provenance that would boggle even an ancient Chinese bureaucracy.”

  “What kind of provenance?”

  “If the artifact came into the U.S. before the passage of various international antiquities laws, you would have to be able to prove at least three legitimate previous owners. If the artifact was in the hands of the original owner’s family, you would need proof that the object had been collected and cataloged before the antiquities laws were in place, and hadn’t passed out of the first owner’s hands without proper paperwork. That’s the minimum.”

  “What if the object entered the marketplace more recently?” Hunter asked.

  “Proof of proper export and import papers, signed by any involved governments and stamped with various and explicit official approvals. Again, that’s the minimum. Legitimate collectors and institutions are often more demanding.”

  Hunter braced a hand on the desk, half enclosing Lina.

  “Tell me about the less demanding ones,” he said.

  She tried and failed not to breathe him in, realized at a primal level why many cultures felt breath was the essence of the soul. Breathing in.

  Breathing him.

  “Buyers and sellers alike get stung in the gray or black market,” she said in a low voice. “It’s the price of doing business on the wrong side of antiquities laws.”

  Hunter rubbed the back of his neck. The motion reminded him that his hair was too long. Downright shaggy. “But some people risk it.”

  “I’m not one of them. My reputation can’t take another hit, no matter that I never did anything wrong,” Lina said flatly. “I can’t even be seen with the loose type of dealer or collector, much less be associated with any. If a branch of my family didn’t own this museum, I probably wouldn’t have been let in the door, much less hired.”

  “What about your mother?” Hunter asked.

  Lina stiffened. “What are you implying?”

  “Nothing. Just asking.”

  Grimly Lina got a grip on herself. “As far as I know, Celia learned her lesson years ago. The charges of dealing with looted Maya antiquities nearly destroyed the Reyes Balam family. But you already know all of this, don’t you? It’s why you’re here.”

  Hunter barely managed not to wince. Her voice had gone from the husky warmth that made him think of foot rubs and creamy desserts to the kind of ice that could cut skin. Whatever her family might or might not be into, Lina had embraced the purity of Caesar’s wife.

  Professionally it was a disappointment to Hunter. Personally, it made her all the more appealing.

  You’re trusting her, he warned himself.

  Only until I find a reason not to, he defended himself.

  Problem was, he wasn’t certain he wanted to see that kind of reason.

  “I’m here because you’re an expert in Maya artifacts,” Hunter said evenly.

  Lina measured his stark, angular features, his brilliant, patient eyes, and knew she was outmatched. All he had to do was whisper a few words and she wouldn’t be trusted in academic circles with a handful of twentieth-century potsherds. And her family…

  She stuffed down her anger at being trapped and went back to studying photos. Yet her hands wanted to tremble. Everything she was seeing pointed to Kawa’il, to the family estates in Quintana Roo, to the illicit artifact trade.

  These must have been looted, she told herself. It’s the only rational explanation. My parents might be foolish, sometimes even childish, but they aren’t stupid.

  Feeling more sure of herself, Lina pointed toward the fourth picture. “This is a stone scepter. The cup on the end could have been for corn pollen or blood or some other ritual material. There’s no way of knowing without examining the object itself.”

  “Blood again.”

  “Blood was central to Maya sacred rituals. Everything depended upon and sprang from blood.” She shifted the photo. “Again, this is ceremonial, finely made. Note that the protruding, carefully worked obsidian flakes run the entire length of the scepter. Whoever gripped this would be cut deeply enough to bleed freely. It’s a sign of a priest’s or king’s willingness to sacrifice his own blood for the god or gods.”

  “Beats the foreskin-piercing routine,” he said.

  “I’ll have to take your word on that.” A hint of huskiness was back in Lina’s voice, ice melting, white teeth sinking into her full lower lip as she bit back a smile.

  Hunter’s body came alert. He leaned over, getting closer to the photo. And Lina. There was a hint of cinnamon in her scent, either from the spilled coffee or just a natural part of her.

  He wanted to taste.

  “So this scepter goes with the ceremonial theme of the other artifacts,” he said.

  The extra depth in his voice was like a stroke over her senses. “Yes.”

  The word was breathless. She yanked her mind back from Hunter’s male body so close to her.

  He blackmailed me into helping him.

  For a friend, she reminded herself. Hunter wasn’t after personal gain.

  Part of her wondered if he would really ruin her reputation. Then she remembered the look on his face when he said that Jase had two kids and his wife was expecting a third. To protect the children, Hunter would do what he had to.

  She couldn’t really blame him, but she didn’t have to like it.

  Just once, I’d like to be the most important thing in someone’s life.

  Lina squashed the thought as soon as it came to her. Her childhood was what it was. Her adulthood was her own responsibility.

  She cleared her throat and said crisply, “Yes, ceremonial.”

  “Late Terminal Classic?”

  “From all appearances.”

  “What about the Chacmool?” he asked.

  He was so close to Lina now that he could see his breath stirring the tendrils of hair that had escaped the severe bun at the nape of her neck. Goose bumps rippled over her skin, telling him just how sensitive she was, how aware of him.

  “Ceremonial.” It was more a husky whisper than a word. Then, “Stop it.”

  “What?” he asked, his breath against her ear.

  She opened her mouth to tell him precisely what he was doing, then realized how easily he could deny everything, making her feel a fool for noticing him so intensely, allowing him to affect her so much.

  It could be an accident, she told herself. I’ve often leaned over someone�
��s shoulder to look at something.

  But it hadn’t made her skin feel too tight, her breath too short.

  “I have an American’s sense of personal space,” she said. “You must have spent a lot of time in Mexico.”

  “Busted.” He moved away just enough that she could no longer feel his breath. “Better?”

  She let out a long, almost silent rush of air. “Chacmool figure, including a bowl to catch blood. Ceremonial. New World jade. Jaguar glyphs engraved around the edge of the figure. The glyphs around the lip of the bowl appear to be Late Terminal Classic.”

  Hunter barely kept himself from leaning closer. He’d liked the scent of Lina’s skin, the creamy texture, the pulse beating rapidly at the base of her neck.

  “So, this represents the god’s mouth?” he asked, pointing to the shallow bowl that was the reason for the Chacmool’s existence.

  “Are you sure you need me?”

  “Very sure.”

  Lina told herself there was no double meaning in his words. She couldn’t quite believe it. But then, she’d never been flirted with in such a bold yet indirect way.

  “If you already know the purpose of the Chacmool…” she began.

  “Your course work covered it—a reclining man-god figure with knees bent and head raised, providing a rest for a shallow bowl.”

  “You missed half the classes.”

  “The syllabus was excellent.”

  Lina gave up and concentrated on the photo. “The glyphs I can see are what I would expect on a ceremonial object. The date. The royal hierarchy. Man’s reverence. The gods’ awful power.”

  “Is Kawa’il a part of the Chacmool and its ritual?”

  “Without seeing the entire rim, I can’t answer that.”

  “Is it possible?”

  “I’m told anything is possible, including the Maya millennium,” she said dryly. “Ask Melodee.”

  “Pass. I prefer women who haven’t been cut-and-pasted.”

  Lina shook her head, smiling. Hunter Johnston was very much to her taste. Too bad he was little better than a blackmailer.

  “You still mad that I twisted your arm to help me?” he asked.

  “Are you a mind reader?”

  “No. You were smiling, then you looked like someone had asked you to eat a bug. Since I’m the only insect-eating SOB here, it was a logical connection.”