She had learned about her father’s limitations and his brilliance the hard way. Now she simply kept as much distance as she could, though she intensely missed being on his digs.
It was the same for her mother. Celia was brilliant in her chosen field of marketing artifacts. She had human manipulation down to a fine art—except for Philip. Lina hated the poison that flowed between the two fonts of knowledge in her chosen field. She could go thirsty or poison herself.
She went back to her work, immersing herself in researching what she could about the artifacts in the photos.
A knock came on her office door. The loud, impatient sound told her it wasn’t the first time the person had knocked.
“Lina?” called Hunter’s voice. “You still in there?”
“Yes.” The sound was hoarse. She swallowed. “I’m here.”
“You eaten lunch?”
She realized that she had forgotten the time, not unusual when she was working. “Ah, no.”
“Neither have I,” Hunter said, opening the door. “Missed breakfast, too. Grab what you need and let’s go. There’s a place called Omar’s. You been there?”
“I’ve heard it’s great,” she said, shutting down her computer.
“Never tried it?”
“Not the kind of place or area that I wanted to go in alone,” she said.
“Smart lady.”
Lina looked up. Hunter seemed to fill the doorway. Whatever he’d been doing in the past hours hadn’t left him in a good mood. There was an edge to his mouth and his eyes that made her glad she hadn’t made him mad.
At least she hoped she hadn’t.
“Long day already?” she asked.
“It’ll do.”
“Know the feeling.”
“Wait,” he said as she stood up. “Better to do this here than over sloppy enchiladas.”
She watched as he carefully removed something from the pocket of his shirt. It looked like a small wad of white paper towels.
“I should probably be flogged in front of a lectern for carrying it like this,” he said, gently unwrapping the paper towel. “Didn’t have much choice at the time. There you are, you little devil.”
Lina walked over and stood close to him. She saw a potsherd nestled in the white paper. The sherd had a fragment of what looked like a blue glyph painted on it.
“Well?” he asked.
“Nice sherd,” she said neutrally. “A lot of them don’t have any paint at all.”
“Jase and I found it in the apartment of a man who has gone missing, probably after stealing the artifacts from the ICE warehouse. There were wads more towels inside a duffel, but nothing else.”
Her breath came in sharply. “I see.”
“Some of the paper towels had been cut. I think they were wrapped around something sharp. Like worked obsidian blades.”
“May I?” she asked, reaching for his palm.
“Anytime.”
Lina gave him a sideways look, but otherwise ignored him. Carefully she lifted the towel and sherd to her nose. “Smell is…odd.”
“It was packed with cocaine inside a bag of cement mix. Could be some turpentine or jet fuel filtered through. That stuff stinks.”
“I can’t be certain of anything about this sherd unless I do specialized tests.”
“Expensive and time-consuming?”
“Oh yeah. Even with money in hand, our lab connection has a waiting list and it’s the happy holiday season.”
He breathed out a curse. “Figured. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter whether this is from a genuine artifact or a recent manufacture. What I need is your best guess if this piece could be related to the stuff that was stolen.”
“Assuming that the missing man is the one who lifted the missing artifacts,” she said, then shook her head.
“Go on.”
“In order for that potsherd to have any significance, it would have to have come from the censer in your photographs. To assume that, you have to assume that this missing man didn’t have a regular sideline in stealing artifacts, that this robbery was a one-off.”
“I love a logical mind,” Hunter said.
“My logical mind isn’t loving this,” she said. “You’ve got about five big ‘ifs’ between you and even a circumstantially useful connection to the potsherd.”
“There are some plus marks in the column.”
“Really?”
“Two dudes came to LeRoy’s apartment. They spoke a Mexican Indian dialect and looked the part. Maya faces and bodies. Shorter than you. Darker. Expensively turned out. They wrecked the place and took the blue duffel where we found the paper towels. Then the dudes went invisible. The car they were driving was stolen.”
“Charming,” she muttered. “They could be disappointed middlemen who have nothing to do with your case.”
“I hate a logical mind.”
“Then don’t look in the mirror when you shave,” she said.
A slow smile changed Hunter’s face. “Let’s get some food. You can tell me what you’ve learned about the artifacts while we eat.”
“It won’t take that long.”
“Was afraid you’d say that. Let’s go anyway. We still have to eat. Or at least I do.”
Hunter followed Lina out of the building. The instant he was outdoors, the feeling of being watched made his neck and shoulder blades tingle. Without making a fuss about it, he checked out the surroundings. No one seemed to be staring at him.
Lina was looking around, too. She wasn’t as subtle about it as he was, but she got the job done.
Hunter led her to the parking lot where his well-used Jeep waited. She swung into the vehicle like a pro. And she was smiling like it was a tricked-out Italian sports car.
“Most women don’t think much of this rig,” Hunter said, starting it.
“Most women have never driven on unpaved tracks in the Yucatan. This is great transport. The tires have deep tread, the oil pan won’t bleed out on a sharp rock, and the engine sounds like a jaguar.”
“Don’t say another word. I’m halfway in love.”
Lina gave Hunter a startled look, smiled rather uncertainly, and shut her mouth. The feeling of being watched prickled over her, but no matter how long or how often she looked behind her, she couldn’t see anyone who seemed to be paying special attention to them.
As Hunter gained speed on the metro roads, the hot, unusually dry wind coming through the open windows began to take apart Lina’s sleek bun. By the time they arrived on the wrong side of town and parked, her hair was flying around like a witch on Halloween. She tried to smooth the black mess back into a bun.
“Let it go,” Hunter said, catching her hand in one of his. “It’s beautiful loose.”
Her pulse kicked at his touch, the look in his eyes.
