TWICE A HERO

by Susan Krinard

  "And what about O'Shea?"

  "Liam O'Shea vanished in the jungle on a second trip they made to the ruins four years later," he said. "Perry came back alone after a falling out with O'Shea. Liam's death was assumed to be some kind of accident, but—"

  Mac felt her stomach knot, almost as if she were learning of the death of someone she'd cared about and not a total stranger whose picture she'd first seen a few minutes ago. "But?"

  Homer let the silence hang. She picked up the photo and examined the man who'd lost his life adventuring. The face of Liam O'Shea was utterly unmoved by any knowledge of his fate. He looked as though he'd spit in the eye of Death itself.

  "How did it happen?" she prompted.

  "That is the question, MacKenzie. The question that has to be laid to rest."

  "You mean how he died?"

  "Whether it really was an accident, or something else. Something like betrayal."

  "Wait a minute." Mac set down the photo. "What is this all about? Curses and bad karma and how Perry's partner died in the jungle—"

  He lifted a hand. "I'm getting to that. Maybe you'll understand when you read this letter. Perry's letter." Homer rattled the yellowed, handwritten page he held in his hand. "We don't know to whom he wrote it. Only this page remains, but it's the killer." He gave a dark laugh. "Read it."

  She did, scanning the elegant script so unlike her own hasty scrawl. " 'Our quarrel was a terrible one, and I was too angry to consider the consequences of my actions. I left him in the jungle—and I will, until the day of my death, know that I was responsible for his. It remains a burden on my soul, a devil's bargain I cannot be rid of. Is Liam cursing me from the unmarked grave he found in that jungle?' "

  "Now do you understand?" Homer said wearily.

  "You mean—" Mac dropped the letter as if it had burst into flame. "You mean my great-great-grandfather killed his partner?"

  "You read the letter. What do you think?"

  A thousand times she and Homer had discussed esoteric matters of philosophy and tossed opinions at each other like balls in a tennis match. But this was no mild debate. "Curse," Homer had said. And so had Peregrine Sinclair.

  "At a loss, Brat?" Homer said. "I'm not surprised. Didn't know about this skeleton in our family closet, did you? Not a pretty legacy. I don't think those bones were ever buried completely." He sank back on the bed. "One evil deed can echo through the generations."

  All at once his meaning was crystal clear. She looked at the photograph again, trying to imagine that peaceful camaraderie rent by violence. "You think that my great-great-grandfather murdered his partner in the jungle and made it look like an accident."

  He sighed. "I do, to the shame of all Sinclairs."

  "And you think… but you couldn't, Homer. You've never been superstitious—"

  At least not until you became ill. Mac bit her lip. "You think that somehow what he did so many years ago caused our family bad luck ever since?"

  "What causes anything, Brat? Why did your father die in Vietnam and your mother lose her life to mental illness? Why is your brother finding it so hard to get funding for his promising research? Why am I in this blasted bed?"

  Odd how Homer's matter-of-fact delivery could make it all sound so reasonable. Homer, who'd always seemed so proud of the Sinclair name and the spirit of adventure it stood for.

  Adventure tainted by murder.

  Mac shivered. "What was Perry's motive to murder his partner? Didn't you say they were close friends?"

  "I don't know. His reasons were lost—"

  "Then what other proof do you have that Perry did something so terrible? Did O'Shea leave any descendants to accuse—"

  "No."

  "But if all you have is that letter—"

  "He all but admits he did it."

  "Then why haven't I heard about this before? How did he cover such a thing up?"

  Homer shrugged. "Who knows? Money can buy secrecy, Brat. Except in one's own heart."

  The guilt in the letter. That was what Homer meant. But the way he spoke, the regret in his eyes—it was as if Homer had become Perry and taken that guilt upon himself.

  Mac stood up. "All right. It's a terrible thing and I'm very sorry. But you had no part in whatever Peregrine did. None of us were there."

  "We didn't have to be. The blood Perry spilled is still on Sinclair hands."

  God. Mac looked away. The illness had finally begun to affect Homer's once razor-sharp mind. This morbid delusion wasn't going to help him, not so close to the end. She had to pull him out of it.

  "How long have you believed this, Homer?"

  "Believed? Not so long." He let out a shuddering sigh. "Certain things have just become clearer to me lately. Clearer and more important."

  Mac felt a profound desire to take the blasted photo and tear it into little pieces. She picked it up and held it taut between her hands.

  How did you leave this world, Liam O'Shea? Did someone you trust betray you? Did you curse the Sinclairs as you died?

  Good grief, she was getting as bad as Homer, "Why are you telling me this now?" she asked. "If you're worried that I'll suffer from this 'curse'—"

  "You already have, Brat. I don't want you to come to a bad end like the rest of us."

  "Damn it, Homer." She leaned fiercely over the bed. "You're not making any sense."

  He pushed up with a burst of strength. "I know why you withdrew from the challenges of life, MacKenzie. Maybe you didn't realize it. You lost too much too early. Couldn't risk losing more, saw what happened to anyone who did. I can't blame you. But now I have to ask you to take a risk. Not only for me and for our family, but for yourself."

  A chill ran through Mac, a premonition of sudden and terrifying change. "Homer, I—"

  "I have a mission for you, MacKenzie. An old man's last request. And your first quest. Fitting."

  "Quest?"

  He looked at her squarely, all the old stubborn authority behind a stare that could quell the most rebellious student. "It all happened in that jungle, Mac. And this"—he gathered up the stone Maya pendant in one clawed hand—"this is the symbol of an act that's haunted our family. Haunted me. A Sinclair betrayed O'Shea and left him without anyone to avenge him, to expose the truth. A Sinclair deliberately covered it up. I want to be able to leave this world knowing one Sinclair tried to make amends."

  The heavy feeling of anticipation coiled more tightly in Mac's stomach. "Make amends how?"

  "By returning this chunk of stone to the place Perry found it. By standing in that jungle, among those ruins, and asking Liam O'Shea's forgiveness."

  It was as bad as she thought. "You want me to go to Guatemala?"

  He sighed and passed a hand over his eyes. "I wouldn't ask this of you, Brat, if I didn't—"

  "Look at me, Homer." She concealed her desperation, all the fear for Homer's sanity and of her own limitations. "I wasn't built for great things or wild adventures or breaking family curses, even if I did once beat up the neighborhood bully." She attempted a smile. "Isn't there something I could do a little closer to home?"

  "No." He slapped the bedspread. "No way out of this, Brat. For your own sake. I know in my heart this has to be done. It's not logical. I don't pretend it is. But I ask it of you." His breath grew short and his face flushed with emotion. "I'll even beg if I have to, but you have to go back there and set things right. At the place where it happened."

  Mac noted his rapid breathing and high color with alarm. "Homer, lie back. Calm down. You're going to—"

  "Die. That's the truth, Brat, no escaping it. But I'm not leaving until I have your promise. That you'll go down there when I'm gone and do what I ask, no matter how crazy you think it is."

  "Homer—"

  "Promise me," he wheezed, hands clutched on the bedspread in a stranglehold. "Promise me, Brat."

  There was no choice. She would give anything in the world to keep him alive for one more hour.

  "I promise," she whispered.


  All at once the tension drained from his body, and he slumped boneless against the sheets. "Good. Then I can sleep."

  "Homer—"

  "Not the big sleep. Not yet. Got to make sure you make all the necessary arrangements," he muttered. But his voice was already fading, his lids heavy. He knocked his glasses from his nose and closed his eyes. "Do it soon, Brat. Don't wait too long. For your own sake."

  There was no answer to his obsession. Not now. Perhaps later, when he'd rested…

  "What about dinner?" she asked.

  "Not hungry, Brat. Shriveled old men don't need much." He opened one eye. "Wouldn't hurt you to eat more yourself. You're skin and bones."

  You just noticed? she thought as she pulled the comforter up around him and adjusted the pillows. He was already asleep and snoring unevenly when she retrieved the envelope, abandoned letter and his glasses from the bed.

  She almost left the envelope and pendant with Homer's glasses on the bedside table. But he'd be upset if he woke to find them there, and she'd promised. Shaking her head, Mac absently looped the pendant's thong over her head and tucked the envelope under her arm as she walked to the kitchen.

  No point now in preparing the gourmet microwave dinner she'd planned for herself and Homer. She fixed herself a sandwich instead, straddled a chair at the tilted kitchen table and idly fingered the pendant as she ate.

  Guatemala. It seemed worlds away from the cool, musty rooms of the museum, the safe, almost windowless walls and aisles of antiquities, the silence and solitude and certainty of who she was. The reality of a hot, steamy, primitive jungle was something she could only imagine. Off on a quest to end a curse that surely didn't exist.

  Legendary curses had supposedly haunted the robbers of Egyptian tombs. Maybe that extended to Maya tombs as well. Liam and Perry had taken something from a burial chamber, and then Perry had turned inexplicably on his friend and thus sealed his own family's fate. Payback by the angry spirit-owners of those ancient ruins…

  Mac groaned and dropped her head in her hands. She definitely didn't believe in curses or bad karma. But Homer did. In the end that was all that mattered. She had given her word. If it meant Homer could go in peace, if she could give him one last gift, it would be worth it.

  Resignation was already beginning to set in.

  If you did this, Peregrine Sinclair, I think I'm going to add to the curse. I've never had to go searching for a ghost and ask its forgiveness.

  If a man like Liam O'Shea would ever forgive. Pretty funny: two deceased men suddenly had her future in their long-decomposed hands.

  Talk about morbid, Mac.

  But she knew what she was good at, and it wasn't going on a quest or doing anything flamboyant or daring that would mark her out from a thousand other average women.

  Hell, she wasn't even much good at being an average woman. Not the way men apparently expected, anyway. She'd just never caught the hang of it, and probably never would.

  Without thinking she pulled the old photograph out of the envelope and spread it flat on the table top. I can guess the kind of woman you'd go for, Liam O'Shea. And wondered why such a thought even entered her mind.

  Because he's on the other side of a century, not to mention dead.

  If you're not even a match for a dead guy, you're hopeless, Mac.

  She smiled at her own fancy and started on the dishes. No. Except for Homer's troubling and unexpected obsession, it wasn't too likely that some supposed past evil would ever be much of a burden on MacKenzie Sinclair. No more than the slight weight of the pendant hanging around her neck.

  Chapter Two

  O! Call back yesterday,

  bid time return.

  —William Shakespeare

  Guatemala, 1997

  THE PAST WAS alive. It panted in great hot exhalations of humid air, rumbled from the very heart of the jungle like the growl of some vast prehistorical beast. More alive than any sculpture or stele or chunk of pottery could ever make it.

  It was real, and it was dangerously compelling. In this place you could lose your soul.

  Mac stood in the clearing and turned in a slow circle, absorbing the ancient, potent power of the temples that rose on every side. Beyond the ruins of Tikal lay the jungle, a dense wall of brilliant green that hid a thousand other wonders. And, for the first time in her life, she wasn't only seeing it in a book.

  You were right, Homer. She crouched on the plaza's neatly trimmed grass and looked up and up until she felt almost dizzy. I think I'm beginning to understand what it means to be a Sinclair.

  Enough of a Sinclair to be inspired by the magnificence of the monuments an ancient civilization had abandoned so long ago; enough of the adventurer to be grateful she'd come, however crazy the motive.

  Absently she reached for the leather thong around her neck, as she'd done so often since she'd boarded the plane in San Francisco. The pendant was her tangible link with Homer; here it almost made her feel as if she'd come to a familiar place rather than one she'd seen only in photographs.

  Homer had been gone for over six months, and toward the end he'd been too weak to remind her of her promise to him. Toward the end he'd been content just to have her beside the hospital bed, to have her hold his hand and ease his passage.

  But she knew he hadn't forgotten.

  Mac swallowed back the lump in her throat. All her links to Homer had dissolved, one by one. The Victorian on Grove Street, far too big for one woman and in need of major repair, had long since been sold. The artifacts that had filled every dusty room had been donated to museums or universities—all but a few minor keepsakes.

  And the pendant. The symbol of a curse Mac simply couldn't buy.

  She let the stone chip fall back against her shirt and brushed off her khakis. It hadn't been so difficult to come here in the end. Not too much left to tie her to the life she was used to. No one to take care of in the mornings and evenings after work. No vast hulk of a house to try to keep in reasonable order, only a studio apartment in Berkeley. No responsibilities other than her job at the museum. Nothing to stand in the way of a promise.

  So here she was, surrounded by a past that refused to die. She glanced skyward. "I hope you're watching, Homer. I'm beginning to wonder if you sent me on a wild-goose chase just to make me spread my wings."

  A hint of warm breeze stirred the ends of her bangs under Homer's battered San Francisco Giants baseball cap. She could almost feel Homer with her now; she'd have given a lot to see his expression. Would he be laughing at the grand, final joke he'd played on her?

  But he'd been right about her. She'd known it as soon as she'd stepped off the plane in Belize. She'd known it on the short flight to Flores and on the bus to the ruins. She knew it now, surrounded by the magnificent bones of history.

  The past was alive. And so was she—more alive than she'd felt since childhood…

  Hold it, Mac, she chided herself. Keep your feet on the ground. She stood and stamped her boot for emphasis. Thinking like that came dangerously close to self-pity. She didn't regret a single moment with Homer. She'd have him back in a second if she could, uncharacteristic superstition and all.

  But she couldn't have him back, and no one could ever replace him. Her social life hadn't exactly blossomed since she'd found herself with evenings and weekends free. Freedom wasn't all it was cracked up to be. And when the first pain of grief was past, it had been so easy to slip into the old routine. Spend as much time as possible at the museum, come back to the small Berkeley apartment, pop something in the microwave, read dusty old history books until bedtime.

  Until she couldn't ignore the nagging sense that Homer was waiting for her to fulfill her promise and break the "curse."

  Mac swore mildly as the toe of her boot connected with old but very solid limestone. She'd wandered to the base of one of the pyramid temples, towering a hundred feet over her head. The narrow steps leading up to the sacrificial platform at the top didn't make very good seats, but she braced he
rself against the steep incline, knees drawn up to her chest, and shrugged off her backpack. She needed another reminder of her purpose in coming here.

  The photograph was carefully sandwiched between two pieces of museum board. She opened the makeshift case and laid the photo across her knees, glancing from faded image to present reality.

  This was very close to the right part of Tikal, though the angle was different; you almost wouldn't know it was the same place, so changed was the site from the early 1880s. The temples behind Great-great-grandfather Perry and Liam O'Shea were overgrown and buried under centuries of vines, trees, and undergrowth, as they'd been until the first serious exploration had begun over a decade after their visit.

  Now Tikal was a national park. Not much of a risk to visit it these days. But she was here, where they had been. She traced Perry's dapper figure with her fingertip and then the shape of the man beside him.

  Liam O'Shea. She could still find herself fascinated by that cocky half-smile, that militant macho stance even after she'd looked at the damned photograph well over a thousand times.

  Asking herself the same crazy questions. Did you do it, Peregrine Sinclair? Did you rob this magnificent man of his strength and hope and future? Did you taint the honorable name of Sinclair forever?

  And then she would see Liam O'Shea, and imagine his life, and how he had struggled so far to meet such an end. Alone, with no one to care that he'd died.

  Admit it, Mac. You came here as much for him as for Homer.

  Pretty crazy, mooning over a guy in a photo. A guy who'd been dead for a century and probably would have been a jerk, judging by that smile. He probably was just the kind to curse someone and make it stick.

  But I'm here to make amends. If you'll listen, Liam O'Shea, wherever you are.

  She tilted her cap to a defiantly rakish angle. Hardly likely that she'd find Liam's remains. He couldn't have died in Tikal, or they would have found him already, and the old newspaper clippings reporting his death hadn't given any details.

  Mac stood and tucked the photo away. No—her symbolic apology to Liam O'Shea would have to be whispered to the jungle itself. Maybe a ritual burial of the pendant near one of the ruins. She wished she'd paid more attention to New Age traditions. Candles and incense and magic circles and chants. Which would probably make Liam O'Shea's ghost laugh his head off.