I was hesitant to break out my flashlight. The batteries were good for at least twenty-four hours, but the beam was so bright that even on its lowest setting Mercury would see me coming long before I found her. But the tricky ground and the real threat of pitfalls, along with the low overheads, and plenty of other hazards changed my mind.
I pressed the button on the back of the squat little light and gasped at what I saw. Art covered nearly every surface. This wasn't like the graffiti on the tunnel under the villa. This was real art. Historic art. Untouched for ages.
Figures of all kinds looked down on me from the walls, and for a moment I thought about Doctor Blatt. A sense of sadness passed through me. He would have loved to see this. Most of the paintings were simple line drawings made with either white or black paint. The patterns were geometric, and most of the subjects were little more than stick figures. Despite the simplicity, it was obvious this was a sacred place. The foreboding sense of danger I had felt outside also permeated the inside of the cave.
I let the beam of my light play over the wall I had followed, seeing a nearly unbroken line of figures and patterns all the way to the entrance. Thankfully, my fumbling around in the dark did not seem to damage any of the paintings. However, from what little I knew about archeology, I feared touching them may cause them to deteriorate quicker.
The wall also contained streaks of yellow interspersed throughout the entire cave. As my flashlight danced from one surface to another, I kept catching glimpses of the yellow ore. This entire mountain appeared to be an untapped gold source, but the only tool marks I saw were those of the carvings left by the indigenous Taino people.
Strangely, even with all the paintings and carvings, I saw nothing that could be confused for written language. The figures and faces seemed to tell a story, but there was nothing else. It wasn't like the hieroglyphs I had seen in magazines and textbooks as a child either. The figures and symbols repeated often, but never in any standard or organized way. There were no orderly rows or columns. It was more like one big mural speaking to me from the past.
The line paintings continued on deeper into the cave. Images seemed to dance and flit by me as I moved past them. The cave wound its way deeper and deeper into the mountain cliff. I realized the surrounding darkness was gradually growing lighter, taking a dusky blue color instead of unimaginable black. The quality of the paintings made a noticeable decline as the light grew lighter too, and soon I was staring at a huge opening fully exposed to the world above.
A massive sinkhole had opened at some point, leaving a giant skylight into this underground world. Trees and plants crowded the rim of the sinkhole, spilling over the edge and climbing down the vertical walls. The sinkhole just touched the cave I was in, barely taking out a wall when it collapsed. It left a jagged and gaping hole flanked on either side by crumbling paintings, but no other visible damage. There must have been a lower cave that collapsed, creating this gigantic hole to the surface.
Securing my light in my pocket, I moved to the edge of the sinkhole. Clear water sat undisturbed seventy feet below the now exposed path. The size of the sinkhole was staggering, easily three hundred feet in diameter. It left me feeling tiny and dangerously exposed after the almost intimate confines of the cave and the jungle before that. Involuntarily, I backed away from the edge.
"Watch that first step, it's a doozy," a female voice said, echoing off the stone walls.
"Ladies first, I insist," I replied as I turned on my heel, searching for my rival.
"I thought us Americans were past that chauvinistic type of talk," Jaye said.
"Oh c'mon now, we're in Latin America. It's called machismo here." I responded, correcting her.
"You're persistent, Chase Hawkins, I will give you that. But you're also foolish," she said as she stepped out of the shadows where the cave dove back into the darkness. The light played off her olive skin, causing her to glow. The yellow streaks in her curly hair shone and reminded me of the gold veins running through the surrounding walls. She could have passed as a warrior goddess tasked with guarding this forgotten hole.
"You forgot resourceful and sexy. Especially sexy," I heard myself say with mock hurt. I had a nasty habit of devolving into a terrible smartass when in dangerous situations. It was a trait that had occasionally helped me in the past. It had also occasionally backfired with spectacular results.
She let out a single mocking laugh and moved farther into the light. "You really are a fool."
"So, what now?" I asked, trying to feel her out. Her face remained unemotional and unreadable. She seemed just as likely to kill me as to send me on my way.
Jaye Mercury pulled her machete from the leather scabbard slung across her hips and played with it in the light, causing it to flash several times before finally speaking. "I gave you a chance to leave all of this back in the village. But here you are, and I can't afford to have you following me."
"Does that mean you won't go out with me?" I asked.
She answered by taking a few confident steps forward and brandishing the two-foot long steel blade as if she was testing its balance. Her icy
