She nodded slowly, unhappily. “There would be academic carping, but it would be written off as professional jealousy.”
Three men walked in. They were of the same ethnic type as the men Hunter had seen at LeRoy’s apartment. Long hair, black, straight, clean. They weren’t as richly dressed as the apartment wreckers had been, but silence followed them through the small restaurant like a spreading shadow. Several patrons crossed themselves as the men passed.
“Interesting world you live in,” Hunter said.
He threw some money on the table for the cleanup crew, pulled Lina to her feet, and headed out.
The Jeep was waiting for them, as hot and dirty as the streets. Houston’s usual humidity was making a comeback from the earlier dry air. The sky had turned to steel, but it didn’t feel like rain was coming. Traffic was its usual relentless self. Lina was relieved to get inside the museum building again.
Inside her office, she stared at the photographs until they seemed to shimmer, breathe smoke, drip blood. Sitting next to her, close enough to rub thighs beneath her office worktable, Hunter was using her computer to search databases she really hoped didn’t leave any cookies on the hard drive. Auction houses weren’t on the academically approved list, much less some of the sleazy “archaeological specialties” sites he’d visited.
Apparently, some people really got into Maya bloodletting rituals. Or what they thought of as Maya rituals.
While Hunter worked he exchanged texts with his friend Jase. From the set of Hunter’s mouth, none of the news was good.
Lina knew how he felt. Even in the Reyes Balam private databases, none of the artifacts she’d seen were like those in the photos. Artifacts similar in form and function? Yes. Identical in substance and detail? No.
Hunter stretched and yawned. Not boredom. Fatigue. The darkness beneath his eyes told of missed sleep and too much adrenaline.
“Why don’t you go home and nap?” Lina asked. “Yawning is catching.”
“You saying I’m boring you?”
“I’m saying you’re tired. How much sleep did you get last night?”
“A few hours.” It was the time of year he acutely remembered Suzanne’s death. Sleep was hard.
“Git,” Lina said in her best way-east Texas drawl.
Hunter hesitated.
She knew he was thinking about Omar’s and the men who had spread silence like darkness behind them.
“I’m in a museum that is guarded all day, every day,” she pointed out. “Go home and sleep. I’ve got a lot more work to do on these photos before I’m ready to talk about them. When I leave, I’ll have the guard walk me out to my car. My apartment is very secure.”
“I can’t leave the photos here.”
“I have an excellent memory and lots of notes.” She didn’t mention the quick sketches she’d made. She just scooped up Hunter’s photos, stacked them neatly, and handed them over. “Go.”
Reluctantly, Hunter went. Lina was right. He couldn’t do all-nighters the way he once had.
“Call me if anything breaks loose,” he said.
She waved her hand in a shooing motion. She was already at work, making cryptic notes. A thick book of glyphs stood open at her elbow.
Silently Hunter let himself out of the office.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HUNTER GROANED, TWISTING IN THE COILS OF A NIGHTMARE.
The phone trilled at Hunter, dragging him from the nightmare. For long moments he didn’t know where he was, who he was, how he was alive. A last ripple of thunder came through the apartment walls. A storm, not ice breaking, not him screaming, his body slicked with sweat.
He hadn’t had a dream that bad since Suzanne had died in a single-car rollover accident with her mother and drunken father. No ice, no water, except in his nightmares.
The phone stopped ringing, then started up again. Hunter grabbed it.
“Yeah?” he asked hoarsely, looking at his alarm clock.
He’d slept well into the next day. No wonder he felt like roadkill.
“Hunter?” Jase asked. “You sound like something the cat dragged in and rammed down the garbage disposal.”
“What’s up?” Hunter asked. The last thing he wanted to talk about was why he sounded the way he sounded.
“I got a tip from someone who owes me. A bust is going down that sounds like it might be interesting. I’m out front.”
“My car or yours?”
“Mine. Some of the agents are used to seeing it.”
Hunter swigged the dregs of yesterday morning’s coffee straight out of the carafe, jammed his feet into his jungle boots, and went out to meet Jase. It was hot, stinking hot. The thunder that echoed in the distance hadn’t brought any rain.
Hunter got into Jase’s white minivan, slammed the door, and fastened his belt.
“I’m not going to say anything,” Jase said. “Don’t want to prejudice you.”
Hunter grunted. Silence was just fine with him
Jase drove through Houston to Willerton Lane. Going through this part of Houston was like peeling back time, skinning away years and watching things get meaner and meaner until the low stucco buildings went feral. Sunbaked and blasted, mangy lawns reverted to swatches of prairie yellow, dead for lack of water. Weeds grew waist-high and finally starved out, leaving behind a prickly thicket that you could lose bodies in.
ICE and Houston PD had cordoned off the area. Patrol cars were sitting with rollers blinking urgent colors, moving aside only for official vehicles. Neighborhood people watched from porches, nursing the second or third cerveza of the day while the children played with faded plastic toys in a heat that was more summer than winter. The sky reflected the neighborhood. Sullen.
Jase flashed his badge and got waved through with a nod and a glare of sun from the cop’s mirrored aviator sunglasses. Nobody seemed to care that Hunter was in the passenger seat, probably because he looked rough enough to be an undercover agent. Jase pulled over to the decaying curb behind a newly minted Houston blue-
