Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

“Why?”

“My contact isn’t a nice man,” Hunter said. “That’s why he’s useful.”

“Is meet-and-greet with unsavory people another aspect of your job, like being an occasional bodyguard?”

“Information is our most important resource,” Hunter said. “Nothing quite like knowing the weather on the ground to help an operation go smoothly.”

“In other words, yes,” she said.

“Savory people aren’t much help when your business comes down to stopping crooks.”

Hunter rented a Bronco with Quintana Roo plates. Back-road dust had been ground into the floor mats. They drove off the rental lot and followed the Cancun-Chetumal highway south to the meeting place. The countryside was wild with greenery spilling across the limestone plateau and punctuated with even more shrines than Hunter recalled. But then, he hadn’t spent a lot of time in the nicer areas of the Yucatan.

“You remember this many shrines?” he asked.

“Not really,” Lina said, frowning. “Even at this time of year, it seems like an excess of religious fever, more than I’ve ever seen. A lot of Maya crosses.”

“Maya?”

“The cross was a significant symbol to the Maya before the Spanish ever came. Some texts are interpreted as meaning that the native cross represents the plane of the ecliptic, the time when the Long Count calendar ends.”

“Twenty-twelve again.”

She shrugged. “The division of time was a Maya preoccupation. Rather like modern civilization, with our obsession for minutes and hours and nanoseconds. The Maya measured bigger chunks of time, but the intent was the same. What can be measured can be controlled.”

“Culture rules,” Hunter said. “Like us.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve been speaking Spanish since we landed.”

She looked startled, then amused. “You’re right. I didn’t even notice the transition. Maybe Abuelita will forgive you for being a gringo after all. You’re very fluent.”

“Your great-grandmother sounds like a pistol.”

“Oh, she is. I swear she’ll outlive us all.”

Hunter smiled at the affection in Lina’s voice.

The vegetation thinned and low buildings sprawled to either side of the divided road. Most of them were made of stucco over cinder blocks and other masonry, fenced off with wrought iron, and walled in by a succession of low billboards and electrical lines like blood vessels nourishing every building.

The mirrors were clear. Nobody had followed them from the airport. Nobody on the highway seemed interested in them.

“You feel watched?” Hunter asked Lina.

“No.”

“Let me know if that changes.”

“I’m impressed,” she said.

He checked the mirrors automatically. “By what?”

“You not only don’t laugh at feelings, you actually listen to them.”

He smiled thinly. “Anyone who doesn’t won’t last long in the jungle—or on the wrong side of city streets.”

Hunter parked as close as he could to the address Rodrigo had given him. Not that Rodrigo had been willing, especially when Hunter had awakened him in the middle of the night. But it was smart not to give Rodrigo too much warning.

The population around them was almost one hundred percent native, which meant that Hunter stood out. Too tall. Eyes too light. Skin not dark enough. Lina’s coloring mixed better with the locals, but she was taller than the men.

Rodrigo would have to choose a native backdrop, Hunter thought unhappily. Probably to punish me for insisting on the meet.

The smell of the ocean and cooking grills filled the tropical air. A little early for lunch, but not too early for a cerveza. Outdoor seating was casual—scattered plastic chairs, a bench, or just squatting on your heels. The morning open-air market had already closed. Other places were doing a slow, steady business. Bikinis and backpacks had been replaced by straw hats and loose guayaberas—shirts—in pale shades of tan and cream and blue. If Hunter had had one, he would be wearing it.

Nobody paid particular attention to him—gringos weren’t that rare—but Lina drew some quiet regard. It wasn’t her sweet figure people noticed, but her face. Men who swaggered elsewhere stepped out of her way. Children stared, only to be softly scolded by their mothers.

“They’re treating you like royalty,” Hunter said very quietly in English.

“I have Reyes Balam bone structure,” Lina said, shrugging. “They see it in the ruins every day.”

“Huh. Thought it was your height and beauty.”

“Height, yes. The rest is in the eye of the beholder and all that.”

“So your family is well known,” he said.

“Think of the American Kennedy family, but with five hundred years or more of royalty.”

“You don’t act royal.”

“When I look in the mirror, I see Dr. Lina Taylor, American. That’s who I am. The rest is, quite literally, history. Something for Abuelita and Celia to care about.”

“But not you,” Hunter murmured.

“Like I said, I’m American by choice.”

Hunter kept watching, but other than the subtle deference Lina took for granted, he saw nothing out of place. Nothing to make his neck tingle.

Maybe we left that behind in the U.S., he thought.

But he wasn’t going to bet Lina’s life on it.

“See the cafe two buildings down and across the street?” Hunter asked.

“Yes. They have good pibil. At least they did the last time I was here.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed it was your kind of place.”

Lina tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear. She had twisted the heavy mass on top of her head and held it with a worn silver clip from her purse. “I was feeling adventurous, but not enough to actually eat inside. I got my pibil to go.”

“Get a table toward the center. That way I’ll be able to keep an eye on you.”

“Where will you be?”

“Wherever Rodrigo is, usually near the back exit.”

Lina chewed on that while she crossed the street and went into the cafe. Small, sturdy tables and people to match. She took a scrap of a table toward the center.

Ten steps after her, Hunter walked in. He saw Lina and Rodrigo in the same sweeping glance. As expected, Rodrigo was in a dark corner. Not that darkness was difficult to find—after the tropical sunlight outside, the cafe looked like a cave.

A shrine overflowing with offerings of liquor and flowers filled one corner of the bar. The shrine looked a lot fresher than anything else in the cafe.

The interior lights hadn’t been turned on, probably to help the patrons ignore the dirt and flies. A weak glimmer of light marked the video jukebox screen. The music was a mix of urban Mexican pop and songs glorifying narco traffickers.

Rodrigo was slumped over a row of empty shot glasses and a small pile of lime rinds, squeezed and scavenged for every drop of juice. A stubby unlit candle waited on his table amid salt scattered from tequila glasses. An empty bottle of Herradura lay on its side next to the candle.

Without a word, Hunter dragged a vacant chair over and sat next to Rodrigo at the scarred table, where the view of both exits was clear.