Quietly Hunter focused on the seated men. Only one of them tripped his radar. The man was darker than the others, calmer, and had tats like multicolored serpent scales winding up his brawny arms. No reptilian head in sight.
While agents hauled out the rock cocaine and precursors from the kitchen, others pulled enough weapons from the house to start—and finish—a war. The guns came out in green nylon rucksacks that looked like they had been dragged up and down the Dirty Coast a few hundred times. And then there were the knives. From what Hunter could see, Gerbers and Ontarios were the local favorites. One Bowie-style knife as long as his forearm had DULCE BESO engraved on the blade.
“‘Sweet Kiss,’” Hunter muttered to himself. “Those are some whacked-out dudes.”
All of the agents who came out of the house looked a little paler than when they had gone in—even Jase, who had emerged to chat up the agent who was questioning the gangbangers in the weeds.
Finally Jase came back to the van. “With me,” he said to Hunter. “Be seen but not heard.”
“Got it. The dude with the snake tats looks like a cousin to LeRoy’s visitors.”
“The agent questioning him thinks he has a Yucatec accent,” Jase said. “Can’t be sure. The agent’s mother was born in Guatemala, near the border, but they still visit family.”
Hunter followed Jase across the weeds that were being trampled by all the traffic. Once they were inside, the house was dark with more than a lack of light. Beneath the smell of flash-bangs was something grim. Not simply dirty, but foul.
The living room was jammed with leather furniture that had once been expensive. Then had come years of being used for everything from ashtrays to whetstones. The coffee table was supported by cinder blocks stamped with a colorful flower pattern. The table itself was made of mismatched boards that probably had been stolen from a construction site. Spanish-language telenovela magazines were scattered about, as well handled as the centerfolds tacked to the grimy walls. The tits-and-ass needed no translation.
Wonder if they hoped Juan Carlos would choose Tilde or Mariana for eternal bliss, Hunter thought.
“Guess these gangbangers and my mom have something in common,” Jase said. “The magazines, not the skin pics.”
“Scary idea,” Hunter muttered.
The kitchen was dominated by a gigantic, soot-caked gas range. Butcher-block tables had been pushed together to make a large work surface. On it was a cardboard box filled with tiny Ziploc bags.
“Your mom’s kitchen smells better,” Hunter said.
“Drugs stink like the crap they are.”
The counter was covered by red plastic cylinders filled with white powder and chunks, or pale salmon-colored flakes.
“Could be the candles that stink,” Hunter said.
The stalks of wax were black, as thick around as a strong man’s arm. Near them was an eerie snake-man statue. Maya in style, it looked like smoke made solid as it escaped a snake’s mouth. Glyphs marched down the length of the piece.
“Not antique,” Hunter said before Jase could ask. “Mass-produced, on sale in any tourist trap in the Yucatan, Belize, or Guatemala.”
“Huh. The dudes out in the weeds aren’t Latin Kings or any of the other gangbangers around here. I didn’t recognize their tats. Neither did the agents I talked to. Which just makes the strange even stranger. The tip on this house came from the cellmate of the gangbanger that shanked the artifact driver.”
“Nice to know somebody still wants reduced time,” Hunter said.
“I just overheard an agent say the dude that ordered the hit on the driver of the load was at this address.”
“Señor Snake has my money.”
“Yeah. He’s the lion in this bunch of jackals.”
An agent stormed up the basement steps and shoved by Jase, hand over mouth, throat working, face pale and sweating. He made it out the back door before he threw up everything but his toenails.
“Oh, this will be fun,” Jase said, turning toward the basement.
Hunter followed.
On the way down the stairs, they passed a female agent headed up. She was pale but otherwise fine.
“How is Chuy?” she asked.
“He made it outside,” Jase said.
“If you can give the basement a pass, you’ll sleep better,” she said through pale lips.
“Wish we could,” Jase said, “but thanks.”
She nodded and went to check on her partner.
Halfway down the stairs, Hunter knew why someone was out in the back puking. The smell of death was thick enough to cut and serve at a demon brunch. Hunter started to breathe through his mouth. So did Jase. It didn’t help much, but it was all they had to fight the smell.
While Jase went to talk to the lone agent protecting the scene, Hunter made himself invisible in the shadows near the stairs.
A fluorescent lantern held by the agent revealed the basement in slightly swaying arcs that matched the man’s careful breaths. There were racks of unlit candles and stands for larger torches. The floor was concrete, worn smooth in places, cracked in others, gleaming dully. There were patches of what looked like oil, so dark that they sucked up and swallowed any light. The splotches were mute testimony to something so revolting that the only thing left to do was bolt for fresh air and throw up.
Hunter’s hackles rose. He’d seen death sites before, but not like this. This basement told him why people believed in evil.
The radio feeding information into the agent’s ear crackled and the lantern jerked. Then it steadied at a different angle, revealing something in the far corner of the room. A pale stone table glistened in the light. The legs were carved to look like a large cat’s paws, ending in sharp claws that dug into the concrete floor itself. Given the context, Hunter assumed that the paws were meant to represent a jaguar, the sacred animal of Maya royalty. Blood had dripped down, wrapping around the legs like snakes. It had happened so often that the legs looked black. But for all the evidence of past bloodletting, only a small amount had ended up on the basement floor near the altar.
Jase mentioned another bloody crime scene, but the table was missing, Hunter though grimly, remembering the killing house his friend had described. Don’t really want to know how many people died on that stone altar, here or there.
The smeared darkness on the floor made sense, now. Bleeding bodies had been dragged off the table, across the cement, and ignored until it was time to dispose of them.
Jase swore, his ugly words fitting the basement like the smell. Then his voice dropped again as he and the agent holding the lantern continued their conversation in the low tones of people who don’t want the devil to overhear.
As the lantern swayed, Hunter memorized every bit of the room that he could see. The stone face mounted on the wall over the altar was as carefully made as the jaguar table itself. Savage and grim, the face was that of a god who would never be appeased, no matter the quantity or quality of blood sacrifices that came to its hungry table. The face proudly displayed the features of Maya nobility, topped off by a crown of lightning or claws or knives that scored deep into forehead and temples. The gently swaying light made the wounds appear to bleed.
Whatever that artifact’s age, the stone face was genuine in a way that had nothing to do with provenance and everything to do with the darkest side of human nature.
Ignoring the slow crawl of his flesh, Hunter stared at the face. I’ve seen something like this before. Was it in Tulum? Cancun? A roadside shrine?
The god’s features were broad and strong. Like the table, the craftsmanship was surprisingly fine. The eyes were empty yet stared through him, through the basement, through the world to a different reality Hunter really didn’t want to share.
The lantern swung as the agent turned toward the stairs. A pool of darkness became a tarp someone had pulled aside to reveal what was beneath. A single look told Hunter more than he wanted to know.
No head. No hands. No feet. A black gash w
here the heart should be. Blue glyphs, the paint blurred by sweat before death. A wad of clothes the body didn’t need anymore.
The gold DeWatt logo gleamed as light passed over it.
After a few more minutes of low conversation, Jase left the agent and walked quickly through the gloom to where Hunter waited.
“Need to see anything more?” Jase asked very softly.
“No.”
“The chicken will hit the fan real soon. Let’s get out of range.”
With the attitude of men on a mission, they climbed the stairs and strode to the van.
The eyes of the prisoner they had dubbed Snake followed them across the weedy yard.
“Hope somebody shanks that reptilian son of a bitch,” Jase said as they got into the minivan.
“I’d like to talk to him first.”
“In your dreams.” Jase cranked the engine hard. “He’s already lawyered up.”
“Anybody we know?” Hunter asked.
“The biggest narco defense lawyer in Texas.”
“Adios, information.”
“That’s the way the game is played. Mopes die, lawyers get paid, nobody cries.”
Jase drove away from the rotting house, handling the controls with an edgy speed that didn’t suit the minivan.
“The stone face and the table,” Hunter said. “Could they have been taken from that other killing house you told me about while I looked at your photos yesterday morning?”
“Good catch. I’ll tip the sheriff. Always good to play nice with local law. You see anything else?”
“A DeWatt logo on the clothes in the corner.”
“Damn, I knew there was a reason I brought you,” Jase said, smiling.
“Did your schmoozing pay off?”
Hunter had never known anyone who could suck out information like Jase. He could walk through a half-empty parking lot and come up with three new friends and enough street information to fill a telephone book.
“There’s an ICE Special Detachment agent back there,” Jase said. “He’s out of Brownsville. They’ve been on both houses for a while. They think the mopes we bagged are LDX.”
“Los de Equis?”
“He called them Los de Xibalba.”
“Xibalba. That’s the Mayan word for the underworld. For hell.”
“Figures.”
“Are these guys involved in the artifact trade?” Hunter asked.
“No such luck. They’ve taken a lot of ancient Maya imagery for their tats and jewelry, but all ICE knows for sure is that they’re narco terrorists of the worst kind. LDX is used as an elite enforcement arm by the Q Roo cartel. Killers every one.”
“So they’re like the Zetas? Only they haven’t branched out into their own business yet?” Hunter asked.
“Yes and no.” Jase found an opening in city traffic and shouldered into the flow. “The Zetas started out as a Mexican military unit that was meant to take apart the cartels. Then some Zetas cut loose and went to work for the narcos.”
“So they started as hired guns and finished as head of their own cartel,” Hunter said. “Can’t trust an assassin long enough to blink.”
“But LDX doesn’t seem to have profits as their driving force,” Jase said. “ICE is going nuts trying to get inside their organization. No go.”
“Is Snake LDX?” Hunter asked.
“The special agent didn’t think so. It seems that genuine LDX don’t mark themselves up for the world to see.”
“Gang culture’s all about bragging, flashing the signs, wearing the colors.”
“LDX isn’t a gang like we know it,” Jase said. “The special agent didn’t want to come right out and say it, but LDX is more a cult than anything else.”
Hunter was silent while Jase pushed the minivan like it was a sports car, darting in and out of traffic lanes.
“It fits,” Hunter finally said.
“What?”
“One of my best sources in the Yucatan told me that LDX works with the Q Roo drug cartel, but it’s only to get paid for what LDX would do for free. The Q Roo boasts of having the baddest badasses of them all. LDX makes good on the boast.”
“Beautiful,” Jase said sarcastically. “ICE special investigations first got wind of these guys through some makeshift shrines and the like showing up in prisons. Weird stuff. Crucifixes with snakes wrapped around them and stone faces with rosaries. Monsters made out of scrap stolen from the shops or trash or whatever. Doesn’t matter that Corrections took them down as fast as they found them. It spread. Maybe it started in jail, maybe it got imported.”
“Better and better. A death cult. Serial killers serving a ravenous god.”
“That’s what the special agent thinks,” Jase said unhappily.
A horn blared at someone who had double-parked in front of a coffeehouse. Jase swerved around the vehicle without lifting his foot from the accelerator.
“I’ve seen those cult trappings in the Yucatan,” Hunter said, ignoring the near miss. “Places where real blood is believed to have real power, not just the Santa Muerte drug shrine garbage. This is old, old belief coming back in a new form. The Spanish couldn’t kill it, and they had the Church and the guns on their side. Hard to shut down an idea. Especially if it’s an idea that makes you feel stronger, better.”
“Stronger or crazier?” Jase asked.
“Whichever gets the job done.” Hunter’s hand fisted on the dash. “Damn, I don’t want Lina anywhere near this, yet those artifacts…Damn!”
“I don’t blame you. The body count at the place we just left was four, and they haven’t even begun to dig.”
“But the altar hadn’t been there long enough for the blood running down those table legs to reach the floor.”
“Maybe they wore the old one out.” Jase shrugged. “Kill in the name of cartel profits. Kill in the name of an unknown god. Same result. Dead.”
Hunter clenched his teeth and wished that Lina’s job was curating Teddy Bears Through the Ages. But it wasn’t. No matter how much he hated it, Lina was on the trail of death.
“I don’t like any of this,” Hunter said. “You want to just bag it and come to work for my uncle?”
“What?”
“Just what I said. There’s always a job waiting for you. You know that.”
“Not until ICE throws me out,” Jase said stubbornly.
Silently Hunter hoped that wouldn’t be too late.
CHAPTER NINE
LINA SAT IN HER OFFICE, LOOKING OUT AT THE HAZY AFTERNOON. She felt like she was sixteen again, waiting for the phone, willing it to ring.
Unlike when she had been sixteen, it actually rang. She grabbed it.
“Hello,” she said.
“It’s Philip,” her father’s voice said. “What do you want?”
“Are you still in Belize?” she asked, ignoring his curt greeting. Nothing personal, just the way he was.
“No. I’m at the estate, getting ready to work a new site. What’s this nonsense about another scandal?”
Briskly Lina put herself in the proper frame of mind to deal with her father. He was a man of extremely limited interests and less ability to deal with people, especially his family. He simply didn’t know how to express affection.
“There are rumors of a group of artifacts reaching the marketplace,” Lina said carefully. It was hard to keep Hunter’s secret and still get information. “Has Celia mentioned them to you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. She hides artifacts from me.”
“The descriptions I received point to artifacts that could relate to the cult of Kawa’il. Have you heard anything?”
“Damn de la Poole!”
Lina added the missing parts of the conversation and winced. “The artifacts weren’t connected with Mercurio.”
“Then they don’t concern me.”
“What about looters on Reyes Balam lands?” she asked, as blunt as her father.
“They wouldn’t dare. Carlos and I feed all the villages on our
land and they protect my sites.”
“Then you haven’t heard any rumors of sensational artifacts appearing on the market?”
“No. Is that all?”
“Yes.”
The connection ended.
Lina wasn’t surprised. Philip was infamous for his curt conversations. Once she had dreamed of being important to her father, if only through her own ability to interpret texts he simply lacked the gut-sensitivity to understand. Then she’d grown up and accepted her parents for what they were—brilliant in their work, indifferent as parents.
A knock on her locked office door and Hunter’s voice saying “You in there, Lina?” made her heart kick. The man who had blackmailed her had shown her more respect than her parents ever had.
More approval, too.
“Yes,” she said. “Let me get the lock.”
“Jase Beaumont is with me.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Beaumont,” Lina said as she unlocked the door.
“Same goes, Dr. Taylor.” Jase shook her hand and gave her an easy smile.
Hunter locked the door behind him. His glance went over Lina like a man who had been cold and finally was standing close to a fire.
She felt stroked.
Feeling a blush darken her cheeks, she looked away from Hunter to Jase. He was shorter than Hunter, with dark chocolate eyes and bittersweet-chocolate hair. His skin was the kind of brown than went deeper than a tan. A gold wedding band gleamed on his left hand. Both men were freshly showered, their clothes clean, and their eyes weary. She took a folding chair from behind the door and placed it next to the visitor’s chair across from her desk.
“Sit down,” she said. “I’ve got half a pot of coffee if you’re interested.”
“Thanks,” Jase said.
“Black,” Hunter said. “I’ll get it.”
Lina waved him off and started pouring coffee into mugs that held the museum logo. “If you want something to eat, the cafeteria is still open.”
Jase and Hunter exchanged a look. After what they had seen, they didn’t feel particularly hungry. Or clean, despite showers hot enough to burn.
“We’re good,” Hunter said to Lina. All he really wanted from her was a kiss to drive out the basement’s deadly cold. He wished he had the right to simply go to her, hold her, feel her living warmth. “Do you have a sketch pad and a pencil?”
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