Hunting for Love (UnBearable Romance Series Book 2)

by Amelia Wilson

  “Nothing wrong with being young and alive,” Joely quipped.

  Asa Brunner, one of her graduate students, ambled into the chamber, ducking to avoid the laser. He was a former rodeo cowboy who had turned to archaeology after a career-ending injury. The damage to his leg gave him a strange, looping stride. In his thick Texas accent, he said, “Dr. Cooper, there’s a man from the Mexican government here to talk to you.”

  Sera and Joely exchanged a knowing look, and she sighed. “Okay. Thanks, Asa.”

  The young Texan tipped his hat to them and left, and Joely said, “That didn’t take long.”

  “Predictable. Government agents at important digs are like flies to shit.”

  She left the chamber and clambered out into the open air. The pyramid they were excavating was a tiny one, and it had been utterly swallowed by the jungle before Sera and her team had started their work. Now they had cleared one entire face of the structure and a good part of the paved courtyard in front of it, revealing the precise joinery of the stones and the excellent masonry for which the Maya were rightly known. Tents had been pitched in the square, and the artifacts were examined and conserved there before being shipped back to the University of Austin, which was where Sera had tenure. Predictably, now that they had found something more interesting and potentially more valuable than a bunch of inscriptions and broken pots, the Mexican government was trying to get in on the action.

  It was hard to blame them, really. The Maya were their ancestors, and Mexico City had already paid for the armed guards that stood over their work, protecting them from drug cartels and thieves. She should have been more grateful, but this was her dig. She had fought for six years to convince the authorities and the university that the pyramid was valuable enough to be the focus of their efforts. It stood in the direct center of a complex of larger pyramids, three of which had already been excavated. She thought that its positioning in the center of the other construction indicated that this one was special. She’d worked on this for years. It was the subject of her doctoral dissertation and would be the basis of her entire career. She would be damned if she let some elected official take the glory away from her.

  She followed Asa, who led her to man in a white linen suit and a flat Panama hat. He had a handkerchief that he was continually using to wipe away his sweat. She walked up to him and offered a handshake.

  “I’m Dr. Sera Cooper, the lead archaeologist on this dig.” They shook hands, and she could tell that the man was startled by her appearance. She had been told before that she looked like a Barbie doll, and it had caused many people to dismiss her as flimsy or unintelligent. She made sure that was a mistake nobody made twice.

  “Dr. Cooper,” the man said, breaking into a broad smile. His teeth were dazzlingly white, as if he spent all of his spare time gargling bleach. “I am Domingo Rodriguez from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. My superiors have sent me to offer our assistance with your excavation.”

  His English was perfectly unaccented. If anything, he sounded like he was from the Midwest. She replied stiffly. “I think we have everything we need.”

  Rodriguez smiled again, but this time is was less full-on barracuda and more teasing. “Now, Dr. Cooper, I think you know what I really meant.”

  “I do. You want to come and see what we’re finding.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  She gestured at the pyramid. “Well… come on in.”

  They climbed down through the narrow tunnel that led to the burial chamber. As they went, Rodriguez said, “I was told that you found a tomb.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you opened the coffin yet?”

  She glanced at him, slightly affronted. “No. The sarcophagus is tightly sealed, and we don’t want to risk the contents until we can have conditions a little more controlled in the tomb chamber itself.”

  He smiled again. “I’m happy to hear that. I’d hate for this to be a King Tut situation.”

  She knew her history. In 1925, when King Tut’s body was found, archaeologist Howard Carter had seen fit to unwrap him in his tomb. The boy king’s body had been butchered by the Englishman’s haste and poor methodology. The case stood as a cautionary tale to all new archaeologists.

  “No, it will not be that,” she said. “Not at all.”

  They reached a point in the tunnel where they had to crawl, and she was painfully aware that her backside was only inches away from Rodriguez’s face. Archaeology is so glamorous, she thought wryly.

  Finally, they were able to stand, and she led him into the burial chamber. The laser was scanning the south wall now, so they could stand in the doorway without interfering with the process. Rodriguez looked around the room, his eyes raking over the glyphs, and Sera could tell that he was reading them. Whoever he was, he wasn’t the standard government toady that they usually sent to these things.

  Rodriguez’s mouth dropped open. “That’s quite a story,” he finally said, shaking his head. “I’ve never read anything like it.”

  Sera nodded. “I know. It’s obviously just a variation on the Hero Twin story from the Popul Vuh, but I don’t think I need to say how modern so-called scholars will interpret this.”

  He took off his hat, which had somehow remained on his head all the way through the tunnel, and scratched his thick black hair. “Well, once you get everything secured and the place is open for visitors, I think we might actually have to play up the ancient alien mythology. People love that stuff.”

  She gestured like the computer meme. “Aliens!”

  He laughed. “If we charge admission, we might be able to make a lot of money for the country. Mexico can use all of the money it can get.”

  She leaned back against the wall that had already been scanned. “So… where are you from? Chicago?”

  He chuckled. “Indianapolis, actually. My parents were from Mexico, but I was born in Indiana. I got my undergraduate degree from Purdue and my graduate degree from UCLA.” He winked. “We share an alma mater.”

  Sera thought back to her own UCLA days and smiled, even though his knowledge of her CV was a little creepy. “So it seems.”

  He put his hat back on his head. “Well, can you share some of your insights with a fellow Bruin?”

  “I don’t have any yet,” she said. “It’s far too early to start syncretizing any of the evidence here. We’re still excavating.”

  He pointed to the low platform beside the sarcophagus. “This is where the sacrificial maiden was found?”

  “Yes. She was lying here, on her side, facing the sarcophagus.”

  He rubbed his chin with his hand. “I’ll want to see the photographs.”

  “Of course. You can see the maiden herself - we have her in a refrigerated truck right now.”

  “Doesn’t that get warm quickly?”

  “It’s attached to one of our generators.”

  He nodded. “Of course. So tell me about this moving door.”

  Sera took him to the panel and showed him the glyph she had accidentally pressed, the one that activated the hydraulic system. They opened and closed the door several times.

  Finally, Rodriguez said, “That’s astonishing.”

  “Isn’t it? This kind of hydraulic system has never been found in any Mayan structure until now. It’s totally unique.”

  They returned to the burial chamber, where Joely was shifting the laser to scan the third wall. Sera said, “I noticed that same glyph here on the sarcophagus. The inscription here doesn’t make any more sense than the one on the door, so maybe there’s a similar mechanism here.”

  “Tempting to try to push the button, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Very.”

  “Dr. Cooper, could you give me a hand?” Joely asked.

  Sera went to her, leaving Rodriguez to his own devices for a moment. Joely made a show of needing help leveling the scanning unit, but when they were standing close together, she whispered, “What the fuck is he doing here?”

  “H
ell if I know. Just being nosy.”

  “They’re going to take this dig away from you,” she warned. “They’re going to take it and you’re not going to have any right to publish or anything.”

  She straightened and hissed, “Thanks for the ray of sunshine.”

  “That’s why you keep me around.”

  She turned back and saw Rodriguez examining the glyphs on the foot of the sarcophagus, running his hand along the carefully carved figures. He looked up as she came closer.

  “Remarkable workmen, the Maya,” he said.

  He leaned on the stone to steady himself, and as he rose, and the glyph beneath his palm retreated into the sarcophagus. He pulled away, surprised and dismayed, and he and Sera both took a step back. Joely held tightly to the laser scanner as the floor rumbled beneath them and a loud grinding sound filled the chamber. Slowly, in fits and starts, the top half of the lid of the sarcophagus rose from its base and began to slide down.

  They watched in open-mouthed amazement as the sliding stone revealed a soft blue light that cast the chamber in an eerie glow. The soft hum of modern machinery followed the grinding of the stone, and then there was a very mechanical-sounding click. One of the glyphs on the side of the stone coffin popped free, and a jet of thick fluid that smelled nothing like water gushed out the side. Sera grabbed a plastic bottle that Joely had set aside, dumped the water out, and caught several ounces of the liquid. She was aware that it was hardly a sterile sample, but it was something. She had to find out what this stuff was.

  Rodriguez slowly approached the coffin and looked inside. He let out a cry and stumbled backward, landing on his seat, his eyes round as saucers in his shock. Sera hurried over to see what had distressed him so much.

  There was a man lying in the coffin, surrounded by softly shining blue lights with an extraordinarily advanced computer readout screen over his head. He was soaking wet, and there were still traces of the liquid that had rushed out through the side opening. It apparently had filled the coffin. Data points mapped their way across the read out, slowly crossing from right to left. She thought the data displayed looked a lot like vital signs, and she stared in amazement as the man took a long, slow breath.

  “Oh my God,” she breathed. “He’s alive.”

  Chapter Two

  Trucks from Mexico City filled with soldiers and Mexican special forces came to the site, and a group of heavily-armed men in black tactical jumpsuits kept the archaeological team back while they blasted through one of the uncleared sides of the pyramid and carried the sarcophagus away. Sera watched in disbelief as the army truck rumbled away, packed with everything from inside the pyramid, including large sections of the burial chamber wall. She wiped tears of anger away and swore under her breath in fury, her cell phone pressed to her ear.

  She called everyone she could think of. She called the university, the American consulate, Rodriguez’s superiors at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the United Nations, National Geographic, the Smithsonian, the BBC, and even the White House. Nobody took her calls. The closest she got was her boss’s bored secretary, who took a message to call her back. She nearly threw her cell across the courtyard in disgust.

  “Dr. Cooper,” a voice called.

  She turned, surprised to see Rodriguez standing there. “Come with me. I can’t keep this find a secret, and I can’t turn it over to you, but I can get you accepted as a subject matter expert consultant.”

  It was better than nothing. Joely nodded to her. “Asa and I will check out the damage to the site. You go with them.”

  She nodded to Rodriguez. “Okay. I’m coming.”

  The Mexican official led her to his car, which was already pumping A/C. She sat in the front passenger seat, wringing her baseball cap in her hands. He climbed in behind the wheel and started to drive.

  “What the fuck is going on, Rodriguez?” she demanded. “Nobody will tell me anything.”

  “The Government of Mexico has appropriated this very valuable artifact,” he said. “It and its contents are being taken to the Hospital México Americano. He’ll get a full physical exam and our doctors will determine next steps.”

  She slapped her thigh with her cap. “Your people blasted a hole in my pyramid.”

  “I’m sorry. The military considered this a matter of national security.”

  “He’s been buried there since the end of the Classic Period,” she snapped. “I think if he was planning on attacking your government, he would have done it by now.”

  “We don’t know if that’s true. For all we know, he is a plant by some foreign entity. Nobody could survive for seventeen hundred years out here with no electricity and no food. It’s impossible.”

  Her own rational mind was telling her the same thing, but she had seen him. He was alive. He had obviously survived long enough, floating in a metal tube encased in a Mayan sarcophagus. “Do you have any idea what we’ve really found here?” she asked.

  “I have no idea at all.” He wrestled the car as it bumped and swerved around potholes and topes in the road. He was going fast, trying to catch up with the military convoy.

  “He was in suspended animation,” she said. “That sarcophagus was sealed when it was buried. There was no indication of anyone else digging into that pyramid. It’s been untouched since it was abandoned by the Maya in the 900s.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Did you see the tech in that burial chamber? Did you? We were joking about ancient aliens, but Rodriguez, that’s got to be the only answer. Nothing else makes sense on the basis of the evidence.”

  He looked at her in astonishment, and he almost lost control of the car. His sunglasses bounced off of his face as he grappled with the wheel. “That’s preposterous!”

  “Nothing else even begins to explain it. The simplest answer is the right answer, and the simple truth is that he was buried in that pyramid before 900 CE.”

  “But…”

  “The tech,” she reiterated. “We don’t have anything like it. It’s too advanced.”

  “Maybe. Maybe that’s what the government wants to find out.”

  She looked out the window, fuming. She was furious about the destruction of her site, the demolition of her work, and the absolute torpedoing of her entire career. She was also worried about the man in the coffin. She had been the one to disturb his resting place, and that made her responsible for what happened to him. Now he was in the clutches of shadowy government operatives, headed for who knew what fate. If they turned him into some sort of lab animal, she would scream. The injustice would be just too much to bear.

  ***

  They reached the hospital fifteen minutes after the convoy. The man had been trundled immediately into the depths of the hospital, and Sera and Rodriguez were stopped at the front desk, prevented from following any further.

  Rodriguez presented all of his credentials and pulled every string at his disposal, even making a private call to the Mexican president’s cell phone. Sera wondered how someone like Rodriguez had that kind of access, but she let it go.

  No matter what he said, and no matter whom he called, Rodriguez was unable to get them access to the man. They admitted defeat after five fruitless hours, retiring to the hospital cafeteria for some much-needed food and coffee.

  Rodriguez sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t expect this to happen.”

  She sipped her coffee and leaned forward. “What do you think they’re doing to him?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  His cell phone rang, and he grabbed it immediately. She tried to eavesdrop without looking too interested, but he was speaking too quietly for her to hear what he was saying. Finally, he nodded and ended the call.

  “We are forbidden from accessing our ancient friend,” he said grimly. “He is now the property of the Mexican government.”

  She fumed. “Property? He’s a human being… or some kind of person, anyway.”

  “There’s nothing I can do.”r />
  Sera drummed her fingers on the table. “Not officially, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She smiled wickedly. “Can you get me an army uniform?”

  ***

  Rodriguez provided the uniform and forged military ID cards two days later, although he pointedly avoiding saying how he obtained them. She suited up and Sera did her best to hide her blonde curls under the army cap. Rodriguez shook his head.

  “I don’t think anyone will buy this,” he said anxiously.

  “It’s not in how it looks, it’s how it’s sold,” she reassured him. “If we walk in like we own the place, then we’ll be fine. I just need you to distract the guards while I walk past.”

  He chewed on his bottom lip, then said, “All right, but if you get caught, I’m going to deny any knowledge of this foolishness.”

  She laughed. “My hero.”

  Rodriguez scowled, but he had no riposte. Instead, he led the way through the hospital to the ward where they were holding their guest.

  The entire ward had been transformed into a secure area, with armed guards on both sides of the hallway. Rodriguez approached first, flashing his credentials and demanding to be allowed to see the subject, as they were calling him. Sera gave him a minute to completely antagonize the guards, then walked up at a clip, her jaw set in an all-business attitude. The two guards at the checkpoint had their hands full with Rodriguez, who was being particularly dramatic and loud, and when she flashed her forged ID, they barely spared it a look before nodding her through.

  The ward they had taken over had been an isolation unit, and the airlock style doors were all closed. There were more guards, but they were distracted by the fuss at the entryway that Rodriguez was causing. They, too, let her pass, although one of them took a moment to rake her body with his gaze as she walked by.

  She went further into the ward and finally made it to the room in the back where they were holding the man from the tomb. He was still unconscious, but she couldn’t tell if that was because they were drugging him or if he was ill. A nurse was typing notes into a laptop when she came in, and she barely acknowledged Sera at all.