Philip just shook his head.
Hunter abandoned the direct approach. He’d circle back to it in a few minutes, then go in and around and back again and again and again, until Philip forgot where he had been, where he had drawn lines, what he had said, and what he didn’t want to say.
“Was the vault open when you came in today?” Hunter asked.
“No.”
“Who else knows the combination?”
Philip’s eyes widened. “No one. Do you think I’m crazy?”
Hunter doubted the other man truly wanted the answer to that question.
“If no one knew the combination,” Hunter said, “how did the codex go missing?”
The older man blinked, confused. “Lina must have—”
“Try again,” Hunter cut in. “That dog don’t hunt.”
Philip floundered, then said, “Celia.”
“How?” Lina straightened. “You said no one else knew the combination.”
“I don’t know.” Philip said sullenly. “I don’t trust females and I never have. You’re taking her side. You always have.”
Hunter wondered if that pout had got Philip far with his parents, peers, or estranged wife. It sure looked ridiculous on a grown man.
From the expression on Lina’s face, it wasn’t working on her either.
“Where do you write down combinations, passwords, that sort of thing?” Hunter asked.
“Why would I tell you?” Philip asked, but his eyes flicked toward his desk.
Lina headed for it.
“What are you doing?” Philip demanded.
She didn’t bother to answer.
“When was the last time you saw the codex?” Hunter asked.
A blink, a frown, a confused shake of Philip’s head.
“Yesterday?” Hunter asked.
Silence.
“Look at me,” Hunter snarled.
Philip stiffened and started to argue. A glance at Hunter’s eyes changed the older man’s mind. Whatever Philip saw made him even more wan.
“When was the last time you saw the codex?” Hunter repeated, his voice much softer than his eyes.
“I…what day is today?”
“The twenty-first of December, 2012,” Lina said without looking up from her search through the desk’s belly drawer. “Abuelita’s birthday.”
“I know the year,” Philip said, contempt dripping.
“Good for you,” Hunter said. “The codex. When did you last see it?”
The older man frowned, trying to remember. “Three weeks ago. Maybe four.”
“Wow,” Lina said as she ran her fingers over the underside of the drawer. “You sure were working day and night on that translation.”
“You will show respect to—” Philip began.
“Why?” Hunter asked. “You sure as hell don’t respect her.”
“I’m her father!”
“Yeah. I have a hard time believing it. Makes me understand the whole idea of changelings and babies mixed at birth.”
“Fuck you!”
“Not even if you had tits,” Hunter said.
“Found it,” Lina said before the conversation could degenerate any further.
“Okay, so anyone with a brain and twenty-twenty vision could have found the combination,” Hunter said.
“My study is always locked.”
“Not a problem,” Hunter said. “I could get in without leaving a mark. Big locks don’t make a big difference.”
“You’re in this with her!”
Hunter told himself to be patient, he was dealing with a man under a lot of stress, a man who apparently hadn’t been too stable to begin with. He wondered if giving Philip another smack would settle his thoughts into more rational lines.
Doubt it.
But, damn, it’s tempting.
Reluctantly, Hunter let go of the idea. “Lina, when was the last time you were here?”
“End of July. Then I had to go back to Houston and prepare for my classes.”
“It was you,” Philip said almost desperately. “No one else could have understood the glyphs. You always thought you were better than—”
“If you accuse Lina again,” Hunter said, “I’ll turn you over my knee and spank your bony butt until you cry like your not-so-inner child. You hearing me?”
Philip’s mouth flattened, but he nodded, which proved what Hunter had begun to suspect. Philip wasn’t truly crazy. He just needed someone to remind him of his manners frequently—someone stronger than he was.
Hunter didn’t like the older man any better for the realization that Lina’s father was a bully with a side order of irrationality.
“When was the last time Celia was here?” Hunter asked.
Philip shrugged.
Lina walked over to stand at Hunter’s side. “She came in October. Abuelita was ill.”
Philip made a rude sound. “That crazy old bitch will live forever.”
Lina shook her head and wondered if her father had always been this self-absorbed or if being unable to translate the glyphs from the codex had rubbed him raw. Or maybe he was just imagining the codex all along, a way to get back the academic respect he’d lost.
She didn’t know she had spoken the last thought aloud until Hunter caught Philip’s hand just before it landed on her face.
“You’re trying my patience,” Hunter said to Philip. “Now either fight me or put your hands in your pockets and grow up.”
Philip glared at the younger man. When it came to strength, whether of will or body, there was simply no contest. He didn’t like it, but he took it. He lowered his hands and shoved them in his pockets.
“It is good that you did not strike her,” said a voice from the doorway. “That would have displeased me.”
“Carlos?” Lina said.
He tilted his head in a gesture of respect. “It is time, mi prima.”
“What—”
“You have many questions,” Carlos said over her voice. “I will give you the answers.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WHAT’S GOING ON?” LINA DEMANDED THE INSTANT the casita door shut behind them.
“Abuelita and Celia are waiting in my study,” Carlos said. “We will talk there.”
“But—” Lina began.
Carlos made a sharp motion with his head. “Patience, mi prima.”
It wasn’t a request.
Irritated, silent, Lina followed Carlos along the path of crushed limestone that led to the main house. The feel of Hunter’s hand resting at the small of her back was an anchor in the storm of questions and emotions seething inside her. She didn’t even notice the estate guards standing discreetly aside for them.
Hunter did. Back at the casita, the six full-blooded Maya who had arrived with Carlos had neatly separated Philip from Lina and Hunter. Then the guards had shut the door in front of Philip’s face. Two of the men had stayed behind to make sure it stayed shut.
Maybe they didn’t like the way Philip acted, Hunter thought. Or maybe Carlos ordered them to beat the hell out of him once Lina was gone.
The men looked more than tough enough to do the job. In fact, several were bruised and scraped like they had been in a fight recently.
Even though none of the men with Carlos had made a move against him or Lina, Hunter’s instincts were up and prowling the dark edges of his mind, howling that something was very wrong. Maybe it was the fact that two of the men had slowed until they were walking behind him.
Hunter really didn’t like having strange men at his back.
And maybe it’s just that creepy guayabera Carlos is wearing, Hunter told himself.
The loose white shirt was heavily embroidered with what had at first looked like blue flowers, as many shades of blue as on his study walls. Only they weren’t flowers. They were skulls set among ragged petals.
Or is that lightning around the skulls?
There was no answer to Hunter’s silent question. Like smoke, the designs changed with every movement Carlos mad
e, frustrating any attempt to decipher them.
“Cool shirt,” Hunter said.
Carlos ignored him.
Lina looked more closely. She was accustomed to seeing the pattern within Maya embroidery. Her full mouth flattened.
Must be skulls, Hunter decided.
Skulls or flowers, he was glad to feel the weight of a gun at the small of his back. His neck was itching like it was hosting a chigger reunion.
Wind flexed, bending the jungle beneath it. The thinly overcast sky hadn’t changed as the afternoon slid toward evening. The air smelled of lightning, a dry storm. Carlos’s shirt rippled and shifted, reminding Hunter of the drawings in the temple, where blue lightning glowed.
One of the stocky, long-haired men who had come with Carlos opened the front door of the main estate for him. Carlos swept in, trailed by Lina and Hunter, whose silver-blue eyes never rested, checking possible exits and keeping track of the full-blooded Maya around them who wore guayaberas and jeans instead of uniforms but acted more like guards than the men outside clomping around the perimeter of the family compound.
Another thick-boned, dark-skinned man waited beside the open study door. He was wearing the jeans, boots, and loose pale shirt that Carlos’s other men did. Hunter told himself not to get paranoid about it. A lot of the men in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America wore loose shirts and jeans.
He glanced at Lina, but if she noticed all the men, it didn’t bother her. He wished it didn’t bother him. But it did. He’d rather have had an AK-47 stashed under his shirt than a pistol.
Abuelita and Celia were waiting inside the study, sitting side by side on one of the couches, silent. A pitcher of water, ice, and lime slices waited within reach on the coffee table. Near the pitcher, fresh fruit and sparkling glasses were lined up like offerings at the feet of a life-size limestone face.
Celia was turned out like a city woman going to a fancy dinner, except for the temper that narrowed her eyes and added years to her looks. She looked even less happy to be there than Hunter was.
Abuelita’s skin gleamed like polished wood, tight across her skull, hands interlaced like tree roots on her lap. Her face was a ghost of Lina’s, plucked out of time past. The bones were the same, but the years had been pulled across them differently, skin weathered yet still alive, as enduring as the ceiba tree itself. She wore a long ivory dress with pale embroidery that shimmered mysteriously. A shawl lay loosely around her shoulders. The saffron fabric was as radiant as the sun would be tomorrow.
Two men stood in front of Carlos’s desk. Their cinnamon-brown faces were impassive, their hair long, their hands broad and strong, their bodies thick and patient. The blood of the Maya ran rich in their veins.
Outside the open window, trees swayed in a wind that was too hot for the season. Despite the wind, the room’s air smelled of copal smoke and something else, something Hunter couldn’t identify.
Abuelita’s eyes tracked from Celia to Lina. The old woman’s irises were like obsidian caught in the folds of her eyelids. With a gesture, Abuelita told Lina to come closer.
Lina smiled and took her great-grandmother’s hands in her own. The old woman’s skin was as warm as a lizard in the sun.
“You are looking well,” Lina said, swallowing her irritation at Carlos. Despite her complaints about Lina’s unmarried state, the older woman had always treated her like a princess, someone to be hugged and petted and fed special tidbits. “Your dress is very beautiful.”
Abuelita squeezed Lina’s hands and released them. “It is good you are here.”
Flanked by two men, Carlos went to stand in front of his desk. At his signal one of the men began serving iced water with slices of lime. As the man moved, Hunter noticed that he was dressed like the others, walked like he had a sore gut, and in addition to a bruise or two, he wore what looked like a bulky bandage around his ribs under the loose shirt. All of the men had hair as thick and black as night, worn pushed back over their shoulders like a mane.
Hunter assumed they were armed because it would be stupid to think otherwise.
The man offered Carlos the first glass of water, Abuelita the second. When he held a glass out to Lina, she shook her head. Much to Hunter’s disappointment, no one else was offered a drink. Broken crystal had intensely sharp edges.
“Who are these men?” Lina asked Carlos, her voice caught between impatience and unease.
“They are my people. The one with the bandaged hand is called Blood Lily,” he said in the local Mayan dialect. “No Tomorrows is in the hallway. Two Shark and Water Bat brought you here.”
If the others had names, Carlos didn’t mention them.
Hunter didn’t understand the words, for they were as Yucatec as the men. Lina translated for him, and added that she would continue to do so unless people spoke Spanish or English.
Carlos shrugged.
Celia moved restlessly, like someone who was about to stand. A sharp gesture from Carlos kept her seated. The lines on her face tightened, telling anyone who cared that she was barely tolerating her cousin’s demands.
Hunter looked behind Carlos, where the server had previously blocked the view. The dense mahogany desk was clean but for a handful of artifacts. A scepter with obsidian teeth. A censer with openmouthed skulls decorating it and faint tendrils of copal smoke oozing out like sly tongues. A Chacmool of green stone, probably jade.
A mask of seamless obsidian.
Understanding crawled over Hunter like insects, but it was too late. He was way outnumbered. All he could do was wait for a chance. Or make a chance, if it came to it.
And pray that Lina didn’t notice the artifacts behind Carlos’s body.
“Speak to Carlos only when you are spoken to,” Abuelita said to Lina. “Listen before you judge.”
“What—” Lina began.
“No. Listen.”
Lina stared at Abuelita, for the first time wondering if her mother had been right, if her great-grandmother was senile. Abuelita ignored Lina, watching Carlos, her old eyes filled with the love of a woman looking at her god.
Uneasiness condensed into ice, making Lina shiver.
Wind blew through the open window, but there was no moisture with it, no living scent of jungle and flowers. There was only a hint of ozone, distant lightning giving a burned edge to the air.
Carlos breathed deeply, smiled. “Kawa’il is sharpening his blades.”
Without looking, he reached behind him and picked up a leather-wrapped bundle. Holding it like a fragile gift, he walked to Lina. As he placed the leather in her hands, his expression was both possessive and loving.
The fact that Lina backed up until she was almost on top of Hunter told him that she was no happier with the situation than he was. He wished he could do something about it, but he hadn’t seen an opening.
Yet.
“Finally you are here with me,” Carlos said to Lina, coming closer despite her retreat. “After so many ignored invitations and other, firmer overtures.”
Drawn by the unexpected gleam of obsidian on the desk, Lina looked past Carlos. Then she went pale, shaking her head as though refusing to accept what she didn’t want to know.
But she did know it, and nothing would ever be the same.
“The parking garage,” she said to Carlos, her voice too tight. Like her hands, her body, her throat. “Those were your men.” She looked at the silent Maya men around the room. “These men.”
Hunter knew that she had figured out how deeply they were in trouble. Don’t lose it, sweetheart. You need every nerve you have.
We both do.
Yet the desire to clamp his hands around Carlos’s throat and squeeze almost overwhelmed Hunter’s control. Motionless, he fought himself. Lina needed him more than he needed to punish Carlos for Jase’s near death.
“Yes, they were in the parking garage,” Carlos said calmly. “If they had hurt you, they wouldn’t be here. They would be in Xibalba, waiting for the wheel to turn.”
&nbs
p; “Why?” she demanded. “Why hurt Jase? He bled so—” Her voice broke. The package Carlos had placed in her hands started to slip away. Automatically her fingers clenched, holding on to the supple leather.
“You can blame your own stubbornness for that,” her cousin said. “You refused to honor the obligations of your own blood.”
“What are you talking about? You could have just called me. You didn’t have to shoot someone!”
Hunter’s hand touched Lina’s back soothingly, telling her that she wasn’t alone, he was with her, watching for the instant he could grab her and run beyond the reach of her cousin.
“I tried.” Carlos sighed. “I used honey upon honey, artifact upon artifact, lure upon lure, but still you did not come to me. My men would have driven you to a waiting plane. You would have been home within hours. You would have learned from me, prepared for this as I have for years. But no, you ignored me. Now there is no more time.”
Lina stared at Carlos. His eyes were as dark as Abuelita’s, deeper than night. And like the night, without limits.
He touched the loosely wrapped package in her hands. “Open it. Learn. Understand.”
Grateful to have an excuse to look away from her cousin’s eyes, she lifted a flap of leather and carefully unrolled it. On the inside was suede, black as the space between the stars. When she unwrapped the soft, resilient leather, she was holding a long, wedge-shaped piece of mahogany. Two of its edges were lighter in color, a pale cinnamon red instead of the dark garnet gleam of the finished wood.
On the side she couldn’t see, her fingertips traced zigzag lines carved deeply into the wood. As she turned it over, she knew she held the piece of wood that had been missing from the fascinating artifact sent to her by Mexico City’s Museum of Anthropology.
Lina was holding the fragment of wood that had been floating between the gods and men. The markings that had been removed from the whole were a representation of a codex, accordion folded in the Maya style, partially open to hint at the revelations inside.
“This is the crucial part of the instruction glyphs on the box holding Kawa’il’s god bundle,” Carlos said, his voice vibrant with memory and awe. “Before I could prevent it, Philip discovered the box in the temple. He needed money, I needed something to appease the federal government.”
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