“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.”
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.”
Hunter shut up.
CHAPTER FIVE
SOMEWHERE BEHIND HUNTER, A MAN WHISTLED DOWN THE hallway outside Lina’s office. Someone else called out a greeting. The air conditioner made mechanical sounds.
Hunter counted the books in one of Lina’s bookcases. Twice.
After a very long silence, Lina asked, “May I take notes?”
“As long as you don’t show them to anybody but Jase or me,” Hunter said.
Without another word, she pulled over an electronic notebook, turned it on, tapped the screen to create a new document and a keyboard, and began typing.
“You said you could multitask,” Hunter said, “so talk while you type.”
“The knife is most likely obsidian, which is volcanic glass. Unusually refined, delicate flaking pattern. The goal was beauty, not durability. Ceremonial. Probably to be used only once, or at most in a brief series of highly important ceremonies. There is a sigil etched into the blade.”
“What does it mean?”
“Unknown. The photographer used too much flash for me to read beneath the glare.”
Hunter came and stood behind the desk, close to her. Too close. He knew it and he didn’t care. He really liked the scent and feel of her near him.
“Show me,” he said.
“Here,” she said, pointing to the photo.
The flash had made an explosion of light against the highly reflective obsidian. The result obscured part of the knife while throwing the rest into relief.
“Go on,” he said.
Her full lips tightened, but all she said was “These are first, very quick reactions to the artifacts. A gut response. If you want academic detail, I need more time.”
“Give me what you can right now. I’ll wait for the rest.”
She forced herself to think, to multitask despite the looming presence of Hunter Johnston, but every breath she took was flavored with warmth and something clean, healthy, male.
“Give me room,” she said tightly.
He shifted an inch away. When she met his eyes, she knew that he was as aware of her as she was of him. She set her teeth and forced herself to concentrate on the second photo.
“A mask,” she said. “Those are feathers or wings flaring away from the sides of the face.”
Her fingers paused.
“What?” Hunter said instantly.
She shook her head as though throwing off cobwebs. “It…echoes something, but I’ve never seen a piece like it before.”
“What’s the echo of?”
“I don’t know. It was just a feeling. Nothing academic.”
“I do feelings.”
Lina felt a wild laugh bubbling in her throat. She swallowed it. Twice. The idea of someone as hard-looking as Hunter “doing feelings” was far too intriguing. She forced herself to look at the third photo.
Her breath caught.
“Talk to me,” Hunter said, his voice flat.
“The bundle is vaguely heart-shaped, wrapped in clear plastic.” Her fingers moved silently over the electronic keyboard. “Color beneath could be white or beige. Again, the flash interferes.”
“What are the stains?”
“Mud, blood, coffee, cinnamon, chocolate. Impossible to say without chemical analysis.”
Hunter grunted. He wasn’t getting much that was useful. He watched her fingers—clean, short nails, no rings—touch the edge of the first photo.
“The glyph in this,” she said, tapping the photo of the ritual knife, “looks like it has some jagged lines. Or it could be glare.”
She shifted the photo of the knife, changing the light, trying to peer through the glare.
It was impossible.
“Is it a common glyph?” he asked.
“As I can’t really see it, I can’t make a judgment.”
“This isn’t academia. Give me your best guess.”
“If the artifacts came from the same area as the stolen truck—a big ‘if’—then the glyph might possibly be related to Kawa’il, a Maya deity worshipped after the destruction of the Maya rule by the Spanish.”
Lina’s father probably knew more about Kawa’il than she did, but she had no intention of mixing Hunter with her obsessive, erratic father.
“Do you have an electronic image of the knife?” she asked. “You might be able to run a digital photo through a computer program and clean up the glare from the flash.”
“I’ll check into it, but I doubt it. Looks like it was taken right after the raid. ICE uses a lot of digital cameras. The photos on the card were probably printed out with the report and then wiped from the card’s memory to make digital room for the next bust. How much does it matter?”
“Kawa’il wasn’t a common deity. His worship was confined to small areas of the Quintana Roo and, perhaps, Belize. Many Maya scholars don’t even believe Kawa’il existed.”
“But you do.”
“Yes. Some glyphs related to Kawa’il have been found on…” Her voice died.
“Reyes Balam land.”
It wasn’t a question.
