by Ann Charles
Quint raised his camera. “Let’s go see.”
As they traversed onward and inward, Quint’s thoughts slid back to this morning. He’d woken to an empty tent. The low din of conversation from the mess tent filtered through the canvas walls. His stomach growled at his laziness, rushing him to see what María was cooking for breakfast.
While getting dressed for another day of sweating, he’d made a couple of decisions. First, he was going to do what Pedro had done and switch his cot out for one of María’s handmade hammocks. Pedro swore by how much more comfortable they were because they allowed the air to cool him from below and above.
Nights in this hellhole were only marginally cooler than days. Having to be shut up in a tent to keep from being eaten alive by mosquitoes didn’t help with the air conditioning. Neither did sharing the space with two other bodies, especially since one of those bodies made him positively steam when she walked around braless in her tank top and faded boxer shorts with her curves peeking out at him. Kissing her good night and then having to lay there only a few feet away night after night was a form of torture.
He followed Juan through the larger chamber into the tunnel that led to the stone wall, suppressing the urge to check the cracks in the ceiling.
The other decision he’d made had to do with Angélica. If they were going to have any kind of future together, they needed to find a compromise on the career front. But before he approached her with his idea, he needed to make sure she made it off of this dig site alive. As melodramatic as that sounded, he was beginning to wonder if Angélica was some kind of magnet for trouble. It was almost as if she sniffed out danger and then charged it with her machete held at the ready.
“That’s odd,” Juan said. Something in his voice snapped Quint out of his thoughts and back to the moment.
“What’s odd?” He drew up next to Juan, following the beam of his flashlight. “How did that happen?”
The stone Quint had pulled out the other day and then put back was gone along with two others, leaving a dark gaping hole.
Juan approached the wall slowly, shining his flashlight around the stone floor. “They must have fallen through to the other side.” He moved his beam to Quint’s legs. “Hey, you have two perfectly good long legs. How about you peek through that hole and see if I’m right?”
“How long are you going to play that busted-leg card?” Quint approached the wall slowly.
“As long as it keeps coming in handy.”
Quint smirked and checked the wall for new cracks. “You sure this wall is stable? What about the ceiling?” He pressed lightly on the wall, wincing as he tested it.
“ ‘Stable’ is a word I like to use—”
“Loosely,” Quint finished for him. “I know.” He lifted his flashlight and peered through the hole.
“What do you see?”
Pointing the beam at the floor, Quint told Juan, “I see the missing stones.”
“Do you see anything that would explain why they fell out of the wall?”
Quint’s stomach tightened as he noticed something else in the dust from the crumbled wall grout. “Yes.”
“What? Loose limestone granules?”
“No.” He stepped back, frowning down at Juan. “A boot print. Somebody went through the hole.”
Chapter Sixteen
Conquistador: A person whose goal is to conquer new territory. (Often used to refer to the soldiers from Spain and Portugal who “conquered” Central and Southern America between the 15th and 17th centuries.)
Murdered.
Angélica stared blankly at the floor. The sound of Jane rubbing charcoal over the rice paper from the other side of the sub chamber in the Baatz’ Temple faded as her thoughts returned yet again this morning to her mother’s death.
Why would someone want to kill her mom? What was on those missing notebook pages? What could be worth taking the life from someone so kind and altruistic? Someone so knowledgeable about the Maya people who wanted nothing more than to help the world understand what had happened to the great civilization? To learn from the mistakes of the past?
Was the killer some local who wanted this dig site’s secrets to stay buried? Was it a member of the last archaeologist’s crew? A budding grad student whose career could have been destroyed by whatever was in her mother’s notes?
Maybe her mom had stumbled upon some black market antiquities theft going on here and had written details in her notes—details that required murder in order to keep it all under wraps.
Who? Why?
Where were those missing notes now? Destroyed?
So many questions with no answers, damn it!
“Dr. García?” Jane’s voice pulled Angélica back to the present.
“Yes?”
“Could you come over here and take a look at this? I think I’m doing it wrong.”
Angélica crossed the stone floor, squatting next to Jane. She smelled something sweet. “Do I smell raspberries?”
Jane nodded. “It’s my lotion. Do you like it?”
“It’ll attract bugs.” She returned her focus to the rice paper in Jane’s hand. “Doing what wrong?”
“These rubbings.” Her hand trembled slightly as she held up the paper. “You can barely see the relief patterns on this last one.”
Angélica inspected the rubbing and then picked up the previous two. “You’re circling for one thing. I’d hazard a guess that you’re pressing too hard as well.” She picked up a piece of paper and held it against the wall. “My mother taught me long ago that if you brush over it in the same direction with a firm, consistent motion, you can catch the relief with more clarity.”
She held out her hand for the charcoal. With practiced strokes, she brushed it over the paper a few times to demonstrate. “See what I mean?”
Jane scooted closer to her and held out her right hand. “Show me, please. I’m not sure how hard to press.”
Angélica took her hand, wondering what in the hell the girl had been thinking wearing that lotion. Was she trying to get bit again?
“Like this,” she said, moving Jane’s hand and the charcoal over the wall. “With long strokes.” When she looked back at Jane, the girl’s dark brown eyes were focused on her instead of the wall. Angélica stilled, sensing an odd tension between them. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Jane said, blinking and pulling her hand away. She tittered under her breath, sounding as uncomfortable as she looked. “Thank you for helping me. My ex always said I was too intense. I guess that passion rises to the surface when I’m doing rubbings.”
Angélica gave her a pat on the shoulder. “You’re not alone. According to my father, I’m in the dictionary next to the word obsession. I’ve learned to redirect my passion and vent that energy into my work and studies.” She thought of Quint and the craziness he inspired both in and out of the bedroom. “Mostly.”
She brushed her hands off on her khakis and returned to the other side of the chamber. What had she been doing before she’d gotten distracted yet again by her thoughts about her mom’s death? Oh yeah, she’d been trying to decipher a group of glyphs next to a carving of what looked like Chac, the Maya rain god, only this version was different than many she’d seen in the past.
With a sigh, she settled back onto the floor and picked up her notepad. Nothing in the Baatz’ Temple was simple to decipher, leading her to theorize with even more conviction that this temple pre-dated the Post-Classic and Classic Maya civilization groups. Her father’s suspicions about the Olmecs having a heavy influence on the site rang more true the deeper she dug.
“Dr. García?” Jane’s voice cut through her thoughts a few minutes later. “I was wondering something.”
Angélica glanced over her shoulder. The girl was seated, leaning back on her hands, looking her way. “What’s that?”
“How do you balance a private life with an archaeology career? I mean, with so much time dedicated to working on remote dig sites and building your career
, when do you find time to even have a private life?”
That was an odd question, one Angélica hadn’t been asked by any crew member previously. Then again, she’d mainly worked with males up until taking on this site. Local males at that, whose families lived close by and whose lifelong dreams didn’t involve archaeology careers. “Are you talking about archaeologists in general?”
Jane shrugged. “Or you, since you seem to have it all going for you—the dream job and a steady boyfriend.”
Stifling a smirk at Jane’s misconception of reality, Angélica returned her attention to her notes. Up until a few years ago, her dream job had involved a prestigious position at a university, not hopping from one dig site to another playing clean-up crew.
As for that boyfriend, Quint was not exactly steady thanks to his traveling. Hell, she’d been afraid he wasn’t coming back after his silence for weeks on end. Part of her was still afraid that this was just a brief respite from her years of loneliness and that their time here was a last hurrah for them.
She cleared the dust from her throat. “I’m not going to lie to you, Jane. This is not an ideal career if having a spouse and family is what you want in your future.”
“But your dad and mom did it. They were revered as one of the best teams in the Mesoamerican archaeological field years ago.”
Angélica squinted at the girl, feeling bristly at the mention of her parents. “How do you know about my parents?”
“I read several articles written by your mother and a bunch written about your father after I was accepted as part of this crew. I wanted to have a solid background about who I was going to be working with down here.”
That meant she’d read up on Angélica, too. How far back had she gone?
Jane arched her back, stretching. “Blame it on my intense nature and need to do well. I always overstudy for tests, too. It’s partly why I now have an ex in my life.”
Her wariness easing, Angélica returned her attention to the Chac carving. “My parents worked in the same field of study. It was a little easier for them to pair up and make their marriage work.”
The same could have been said for Angélica and her ex-husband since they were both archaeologists working for the same university, but their romance had gone cold before she’d even said her vows. The child in her womb at that time had been her only reason for going through with the wedding.
After losing the baby, there’d been nothing left to keep her in the relationship, so she’d ended it in spite of her ex’s objections to how it would affect his career. Shortly after that, she’d left the university and moved south after landing a job with the Mexican government. The rest was history, or rather ancient history, since her main focus ever since had been on the great Maya civilization and its mysterious downfall.
“Quint’s a photojournalist, right?” Jane asked.
“Yes.” Angélica’s wariness returned full fledged. As with her parents, she preferred to keep the topic of her relationships off the table.
“And he travels around for the job?”
“Correct.” Where was this going?
“That must make it tough sometimes.”
So far, it made it tough a lot, not just sometimes, but that wasn’t any of Jane’s business. “It’s a challenge, but we are managing.”
Sort of. At least for now.
Angélica returned to her notes, putting an end to Jane’s game of Twenty Questions.
A few minutes later, Jane spoke again. “I really admire you.” The girl’s voice sounded husky, shy maybe. “You’re a great role model, you know.”
Angélica shifted, uncomfortable with the admiration.
“Have you ever—”
“Dr. García?” Gertrude’s voice came from the chamber entrance, interrupting whatever Jane had been about to say. “Fernando needs your help outside.”
Thank the Maya gods! Scooping up her notes, Angélica stood. “Are you going to be okay working in here alone for a bit?” she asked Jane.
The girl nodded, her eyes averted. “There are no snakes on this end of the site.”
That wasn’t necessarily true. There just weren’t as many visible near this temple. “I’ll send Lorenzo in here to join you shortly. He’s very good at doing rubbings.”
“Thank you, Dr. García.”
She felt Jane’s gaze on her as she followed Gertrude out of the chamber. Something in that whole conversation didn’t set well. By the time she’d stepped out into the hot sunlight, Angélica had summed it up to being too personal for her comfort level. Letting anyone inside of her guarded bubble usually involved a lot of tension and snarls. Except where Daisy was concerned. There was something about that woman that allowed her to walk right through Angélica’s defenses without causing a single bristle.
Fernando, Pedro, and Lorenzo waited for her to join them over near one of the mounds at the edge of the forest clearing. All three held shovels and dripped with sweat.
“What is it?” she asked as she approached.
Fernando pointed at the area he’d been excavating next to the remains of a small single-story structure mostly covered with tree roots and centuries of forest detritus. “You have your trowel and brush?”
She nodded, patted her tool pouch, and knelt next to the shallow hole they’d excavated. “What did you find?” She could see a small mound at the bottom of it.
“Something hard.”
Pedro mopped his face with his shirt. “It sounded like metal when my blade hit it. Fernando thought you might want to be here before we go any further.”
“Thank you,” she told her foreman and leaned into the hole. The scent of fresh dirt greeted her. “Hand me the horsehair brush, please.”
Lorenzo held out the bricklayer’s brush, handle first.
After several swipes over the dirt-covered lumps, she sat back on her heels.
“Son of a bitch,” she said, wiping away a trickle of sweat with the back of her wrist. “Nothing at this damned dig site is making sense anymore.”
* * *
Quint lay flat on his back, blinking up at the thick shadows hovering near the mine’s ceiling. He coughed in the dust, his elbow throbbing along with his left butt cheek. The two had taken the brunt of his fall after he’d squeezed partway through the hole in the wall, dangled for a few seconds, and then succumbed to gravity with a curse-filled crash.
A beam of light shone through the hole, dancing wildly along the upper walls. “You okay, flyboy?” Juan called through the opening. “It sounded like you flubbed your superhero landing.”
Quint coughed again, slowly sitting up. He rolled his shoulder. There’d be kinks to work loose later. He was getting too old for this sort of tough-guy shit. “You’re not paying me enough for this job.”
“What? I’m letting you sleep with my daughter, aren’t I?”
“Not with her, next to her. And by your definition, you’re sleeping with me, too.”
“Aren’t you lucky, getting two Garcías for the price of one?”
With a groan, Quint pushed to his feet. He grabbed his hard hat from the floor and dropped it onto his head. He snagged the flashlight Juan held out for him. “For the record,” he said through the hole, “I’m not a fan of your wheeling and dealing.”
“I don’t remember twisting your arm to get you to agree to climb through there.” Juan held out Quint’s camera.
“Pedro is right. You’re the devil in disguise.” He looped the camera strap around his neck, keeping it from tangling with the dust mask that Juan had insisted he wear once he was through the wall.
“El diablo, eh? I like that.” Juan laughed in a deep, diabolical tone, acting the part as he handed his poisonous gas-reading gadget through the hole. “Don’t you forget about me and my pitchfork when it comes to my daughter.”
Quint scoffed, dusting off his pants and shirt. “The two of you and these damned dig sites are going to be the death of me yet.”
“When you’re done fussing, let me know w
hat you see in there.”
No mercy, not even a hint of it. Quint chuckled.
“For starters, Dr. Diablo, I see dirt and rocks.” He shone the flashlight on the mine’s floor. “And a few more boot prints.”
He squatted for a closer look and raised his camera, grimacing at the pain still throbbing in his elbow. After taking a few pictures of the prints, including a few next to his own boot for a size comparison, he stood again.
Next he moved over to the altar. He took several pictures of the petroglyphs carved into the walls from different angles, remembering Angélica’s words about how important it could be to view glyphs and carvings from various perspectives.
Finally, he focused on the little dust-covered figurines on the roughly hewn stone altar. He counted nine. Four appeared to be sitting, two standing, and the remaining three crouching.
“Okay,” he told Juan. “I have your closeups.”
“What do you see farther back?”
“The deal we made was for pictures of the boot prints, petroglyphs, and figurines.”
“True, but now that you’re in there, you might as well explore a little further.”
Quint aimed the flashlight upward. The ceiling was less fractured here, but small chunks of rock littered the floor. “I can see my gravestone now. ‘Here lies Quint Parker. He explored a little too far.’ “
“You’re assuming we’ll be able to dig your body out after the mine collapses.”
A chill ran down his spine at the thought of being buried alive in here. “Keep it up, old man, and I’ll hide your scorpion socks.”
“Okay, okay.” Juan’s voice brimmed with laughter. “I’ll be good.”
