Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel Read online

  Hunter was the other.

  “If you have any questions, please come forward and we’ll talk informally,” Lina said.

  Hunter unfolded his long frame and started walking toward the lectern. As he approached, he was again struck by the difference between Lina’s starkly simple clothes and the lush mystery of her golden-brown skin. Up close her eyes were very dark. When the light caught them a certain way, there were surprising shards of gold radiating out from the pupils.

  “I’m sorry about running out on coffee a few weeks ago,” Hunter began.

  The hurried clacking of high heels on the tile floor accompanied by an equally sharp voice drowned out anything else he might have said.

  “Dr. Taylor, I’m simply breaking out with questions.”

  Lina’s lips tightened as she turned to the student rushing toward her. She wore carefully distressed black jeans, very tight, and a black sequined shirt, equally tight. The designs on the shirt were meant to be edgy, like jailhouse tattoos. She was as thin as a famine victim, her face all sharp angles and points, with the telltale deer-in-headlights look of too much plastic surgery.

  And they call the Maya barbaric, Lina thought.

  “But first,” the woman said, “I just wanted to thank you for your really interesting take on the whole subject.”

  Perfume hit in a wave.

  Hunter tried not to breathe.

  “You’re more than welcome,” Lina said.

  “Call me Melodee.”

  Lina vaguely remembered having been told that before. “Of course, Melodee. How can I—”

  “So I wanted to ask about the whole 2012 thing, you know, the Turning of the Great Wheel for the last time,” her new best friend cut in without pause. “I mean, if the world is going to end, I really want to know about it and go out having a good time.”

  She aimed the last words squarely at Hunter, who’d been doing his best to be invisible. He’d run across some of the millennial types while on various trips to the Yucatan and had been forced to make polite conversation by way of keeping his cover intact. But that wasn’t required right now, so he didn’t bother.

  He ignored the woman.

  Melodee turned back to Lina. “So Kali Yuga meets the Age of Aquarius or just a cosmic burp?”

  Lina managed not to roll her eyes like her mother. “The ancient Maya were, as some people are today, obsessed with numerology. It was deeply integrated into the Maya culture. It’s a very human thing to create significance where realistically there is none.”

  Deliberately Lina began packing up her lecture materials, signaling an end to the woman’s questions.

  Melodee plowed right ahead. “But the end of the age? And then there’s the whole passing-through-the-galactic-center thingy. We can’t just ignore alignments that are so rare.”

  I can, Hunter mouthed from behind Melodee.

  Lina managed not to smile. “You are, of course, entitled to your beliefs.”

  “But—”

  “It’s very exciting to believe that you’re living at a pivot point in human history,” Lina continued, talking over the relentless Melodee. “People make a lot of money polishing that lure and it gets buckets of page views on the Internet, even though the movie didn’t sell as many tickets as its backers hoped. That, I believe, will be the only millennial Maya cataclysm.”

  “The Maya will begin the Fourteenth Baktun,” Hunter added, “and the rest of us will continue counting down the shopping days until Christmas.”

  “That’s so…so ordinary,” Melodee said.

  “The beginning of a new baktun,” Lina said smoothly, “especially this one, which will end the Long Count and begin another, is a cause for celebration all across the Maya world.”

  “But the sunspots,” Melodee said. “And the reversal of the magnetic poles and Nostradamus and—”

  “None of those things concerned the Maya,” Lina said, “and they were incredible astronomers and mathematicians. They tracked the seasons, followed the path of Venus—their sacred star—and invented a very abstruse language to describe how their universe worked.”

  “But the sun will cross the galactic equator and the plane of the ecliptic or something like that and the galactic alignment and everything in the Chilam Balam and…” Melodee ran out of breath and buzzwords at the same time.

  “The Maya don’t need a fourth catastrophe to be complete,” Hunter said, not bothering to conceal his impatience. “The Spanish took care of it for them.”

  “Very good, Mr. Johnston,” Lina answered, biting her lower lip to hide a smile. “In Maya mythology, they have already gone through three separate cataclysms, leading to the age that the fifteenth-century Maya knew, which was their present day. But much of how we perceive the Maya today is filtered through the lens of the Spanish, who weren’t interested in the Maya as a culture, but as a resource.”

  “The Maya died three times before the Spanish came?” Melodee asked faintly.

  “It’s a metaphor,” Hunter said, readjusting the envelope under his left arm. “A story. It took the gods four tries to get the world right. First with people made of mud, then made of wood, then monkeys. Then us.”

  “Precisely,” Lina said. “And between each of the worlds, the gods erased their works and started over, finally culminating with the world the Maya lived in, with the covenant between the gods and humans. Things were as they needed to be and life was good and bad in cycles. But there was never going to be one total apocalypse at the end of the Long Count.”

  “But the Chilam Balam says there will be.”

  “The Maya writings you refer to were composed after the Spanish conquest. They’re a mixture of Maya and Christian beliefs, with a good dose of wishful mysticism.”

  “Then why aren’t the Maya still here?” Melodee asked. “Living in their palaces and all?”

  Melodee’s bizarre take on reality left Lina speechless.

  Hasn’t this idiot learned anything from my classes? she asked herself silently.

  “I am part Maya,” Lina finally said. “Through my mother, my lineage can be traced back at least to Tah Itzá in modern Quintana Roo. The Maya are a people, not ancient architecture and a religion based on sacrifice to appease the gods.”

  Melodee looked to Hunter. No support there. Then to Lina. “So there’s no grand revelation coming?”

  “The only revelation is that there won’t be one,” Hunter said. “That help?”

  “No,” Melodee said, turning on her high heels like a pole dancer. “It’s as boring as you are.”

  With that, she strode up the aisle. The curious group of students who had overheard the exchange began to drift away to their mundane lives.

  “My God, when will this craziness end?” Lina muttered. “I can’t wait for December twenty-second. I’m tired of breaking the news to wide-eyed adrenaline freaks that the earth will turn and life will go on as always.”

  “People like Melodee make my head ache,” Hunter agreed. “Shall we try that coffee again?”

  Lina hesitated, then smiled up into his eyes, eyes that were almost as light as her father’s but silvery blue rather than gray. Beautiful in a way her father’s would never be, because Hunter was vividly there, his attention focused only on her.

  “Is your cell phone with you?” she asked wryly.

  “I set it to vibrate.” A slow smile. “Cheap thrill is better than no thrill at all.”

  She told herself not to laugh. It didn’t work. The idea that a man like Hunter had to get his adrenaline rush from a phone shaking against his butt was ridiculous.

  “Coffee,” she agreed.

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Giving me another chance.”

  She gave him a sidelong look. “I’m addicted to coffee.”

  As they walked to a local coffee shop, Hunter waited for her to ask where he had been, why he’d run out on her with a rushed apology. He was still waiting when they took their coffee to a back bo
oth. Lina had been too busy glancing over her shoulder and looking at people who passed by to pay much attention to him.

  Maybe she hadn’t noticed that he had been gone for the last two weeks.

  Lina slid into the booth, then bent over and inhaled the rich scent of coffee, cinnamon, and chocolate rising from her reinforced paper cup. She closed her eyes and sighed with pleasure.

  Hunter’s jeans started not to fit.

  Damn, he thought. It’s been way too long if a bit of simple, sensual female appreciation makes me hard.

  But there was something about her thick, dark eyelashes and full lips, the slick pink of her tongue as she caught a drop of coffee on the rim of the cup. It was sexier than watching most women undress.

  “You’re very quiet,” he said.

  “I told you,” she said, taking another sip, “I love coffee.”

  “Can you look and lick—er, sip—at the same time?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “What I’m looking at.” She glanced up and saw him watching her mouth. Suddenly the booth felt very small, intimate. When she spoke, her voice was husky. “I can multitask.”

  Hunter didn’t know Lina well enough to be thinking what he was thinking, much less to say it. He let out a silent breath and shifted on the seat.

  “I have some photos,” he said.

  “Please, no etchings.”

  He laughed. “Nothing that clichéd.”

  “Bring it,” Lina said. “For this coffee I’ll look at almost anything.”

  Silently Hunter took a handful of photos from the manila envelope and fanned them across the table, facing her.

  Lina looked down.

  The world shifted.

  She squeezed her coffee cup so hard the heavy paper gave and coffee slopped over, scalding her.

  Hunter whipped the photos out of the way, grabbed napkins, and began cleaning up. “You okay? Burn yourself?”

  Silently she shook her head, refusing to meet his eyes.

  No wonder he looks dangerous. He’s a damned grave robber.

  She told herself that the disappointment breaking coldly over her was way out of line. Hunter was nothing to her. Less than nothing.

  Thief of the dead.

  “I’ve had enough coffee,” Lina said abruptly.

  Before she could stand, his hand snaked across the table and grabbed her wrist, pinning her in place. The grip was gentle. And unbreakable unless she wanted to make a scene.

  “Let’s see that hand,” Hunter said.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Okay. Then tell me about the photos.”

  “I didn’t really look at them.” She hadn’t had to. An instant was all she needed to know she shouldn’t be here, with him.

  “What’s wrong?” Hunter asked.

  His voice was gentle, but his eyes were as implacable as the hand around her wrist.

  “I don’t talk about artifacts without provenance,” she said flatly. “Or are certificates of export and import in that envelope, too?”

  Hunter glanced around the coffee shop with eyes gone as flat as her voice. Too many people. Too close.

  “How about we talk in your office?” he asked.

  “Until I see papers for those artifacts in the photos, I have nothing to talk about with you.”

  “The artifacts were taken in a drug bust at the Texas-Mexico border.”

  “Who are you?” Lina asked.

  “A man who bought you coffee. That’s all. No badges, no official inquiries, no headlines in academic magazines and reputations muddied. At least, there don’t have to be.”

  He knows, she thought, hoping her face didn’t show her fear. Somehow he knows about the scandal that nearly brought the Reyes Balam family down. And he’s threatening another.

  Isn’t he?

  “Your office?” he asked again.

  “I don’t bring grave robbers into the museum.”

  “Good. I’m not one.”

  “Or slimy middlemen or collectors who troll the black markets.”

  “Still good,” he said.

  She stared back at him with eyes gone dark.

  “Look,” he said. “We need privacy or you’ll be facing another scandal. My apartment isn’t far way. Neither is yours.”

  “How do you know?” she asked, torn between anger and a fear that made her even more angry.

  “Same way I know a lot of things. I checked you out. It’s what I do. Find things, especially if they’re lost in Mexico. I’m private. Very private. But if a public badge would make you feel better, I can call my friend. He’s with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I’m working with him on these.” Hunter tapped the photos on the edge of the table.

  “My office,” Lina said tightly. “I know men there with badges.”

  Rent-a-cops, Hunter thought sardonically. But if they make fear go away from those beautiful eyes, rent-a-cops are my new best friends forever.

  “Your office,” he agreed.

  A few minutes later, Lina locked her office door behind her and watched Hunter fan the damning photos over her mostly clear desk. The locked door was a signal to students and professionals alike that she didn’t want to be disturbed.

  But she was more than disturbed. She was scared.

  If Hunter was lying to her about keeping his silence, her career was over. And if he wasn’t lying to her, her career probably still was over. From the little she had seen in the photos, they could easily have been the pieces her mother had been sniffing after this morning.

  Celia, what have you done now?

  With an expertise that came from years of experience caught between her warring parents, Lina smoothed all expression from her face.

  “These pieces were seized at the border by ICE,” Hunter said again, figuring she didn’t need to know about DEA and the beagle brigade.

  “You can prove that?”

  “If it will reassure you, I can bring in an ICE badge. Depending on where Jase is, it will take about half an hour.”

  “Jase?”

  “Jason Beaumont,” Hunter said. “My closest friend.”

  Lina walked over to her desk, trying not to stare at the photos.

  Failing.

  The fear that had rooted in her kept growing. Fumbling slightly, she slid into her office chair without looking away from the photos.

  Hunter studied Lina’s face as she studied the photos. Unlike the flash of panic or disgust he’d seen in the coffee shop, she appeared entirely composed now. Since she came from a high-test family, he wasn’t surprised at her calm. The Reyes Balam bloodlines were as blue as they came, New World and Old combined.

  “What do you want from me?” Lina asked.

  He wanted more than information, but that was his personal problem. It wouldn’t get in the way of his professional needs. Or Jase’s.

  “First and foremost,” Hunter said, “a promise that this goes no further than the two of us.”

  “Why?”

  “A man’s job hangs on finding those artifacts. Fast. He has two kids and another on the way. To help him, I need the kind of knowledge you have.”

  It wasn’t what Lina had expected to hear. She blew out her breath. “Just the two of us. And that goes both ways, Hunter.”

  “Three. Jase already knows I was going to contact you.”

  “Is it his butt on the line?” Lina asked bluntly.

  “Yes.”

  “All right. The three of us. If this gets out, I’m ruined.”

  “Just for talking to me?” Hunter asked.

  “There is no shade of gray in the academic view of unprovenanced items. You’re pure white or you’re garbage waiting for the disposal to be turned on.”

  “The Caesar’s wife syndrome?”

  “Exactly. My family’s reputation wouldn’t survive another scandal. Neither would mine. As you well know,” she added coolly.

  “The sooner you help me find these artifacts, the quicker you’ll be left w
ith the purists.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes dark and measuring. Then she looked at the photos. “Do you know where the artifacts came from?”

  “All I know is that the plates on the truck caught at the border were from Quintana Roo.”

  “The driver?”

  “The same.”

  “Has he mentioned any specific area or ruins?” Lina asked without looking up. Holding her breath. “Q Roo is a big state.”

  “He’s dead,” Hunter said. “He didn’t talk about anything but getting shuck of the artifacts. He was afraid of them, or of whoever would take delivery.”

  “You’re not making this any easier,” she said under her breath.

  “Easy or hard, it’ll get done. Somebody knows where those artifacts came from. Somebody looted them, sold them, maybe they were resold a few times before they were packed in bags of cement mix and taken north. When I find the looters or the middlemen, I’ll find the name of the end buyer. Somewhere along that line, someone will talk. Someone will know about these artifacts.”

  Lina was still caught on the bags of cement. “Was it a commercial load in a commercially licensed truck?”

  “No. I had a source check it out. The truck was stolen from a building site on the Riviera Maya.”

  Thank God, Lina thought. “You know that part of my family’s business in Mexico and the U.S. is cement?”

  Hunter nodded. “The bags weren’t from Chel Balam International.”

  Not that the wrapping proved anything. Buying bags of cement mix was about as complex as buying tortillas.

  “Yet you still came to me,” she said.

  Silently he watched her, waiting for her to realize there was no way out.

  “This is extortion,” she said.

  “You want me to walk away, I’ll walk,” he said, reaching for the photos.

  “And talk, no doubt,” she said bitterly, smacking his hand away from the photos.

  “Does that mean you want me to stay?”

  “It means that I have no choice. And we both know it.”

  “I’ll pay for your time and expertise,” Hunter said, letting out a hidden breath of relief.

  “I’m not a whore with a Ph.D. Now shut up and let me concentrate on these photos.”