Beautiful Sacrifice

CHAPTER ONE

DR. LINA TAYLOR DROVE INTO THE STAFF PARKING AREA of Houston’s Museum of the Maya.

Good, she thought in relief. Nearly empty. I can park close to the back entrance. Thank God for winter break.

In a gesture that had become automatic over the past few months, Lina checked around the area before she turned off her little Civic. Nobody was paying any attention to her. There was no reason for the back of her neck to tingle in primal warning.

Yet it did.

Just before she opened the locked doors, her cell phone rang. The tone told her that it was her mother, Cecilia Reyes Balam—Celia to her friends, business associates, and family.

Is she calling for family or business? Lina wondered, hesitating. Some of both, probably. No doubt my great-grandmother is talking about a bad heart and a great-granddaughter who doesn’t visit often enough and should be long married, hip-deep in children.

It would be Celia, her mother, who carried the complaint. Celia orbited between family and business like a planet with two suns. Lina wished she could handle the balancing act with half of her mother’s grace. Lina was more like her father, an academic with a deep love of working in the field, discovering ancient cities and temples a single brushstroke at a time. Yet it was being one of the public faces of the Museum of the Maya that paid Lina’s salary, not working on the isolated Yucatan digs she loved.

For the third time, Lina’s cell phone burbled out its merry little jingle, a hot salsa beat. She thought about letting the call go to voice mail, but decided against it. If Celia wanted to talk to her daughter, she’d track her down in person. With a glance at her watch—plenty of time before she had to teach class—she opened the cell phone.

Morning, Celia. Are you in town? Lina asked.

Not unless I have to be.

Is everything all right with the family?

Abuelita complains of her heart, Celia said. "She calls me daily, asking when you will visit. So does mi primo."

Your cousin Carlos has always done whatever Abuelita wants.

Do not disrespect him, Celia said. Without Carlos, you would not be surrounded by the artifacts you love more than anything else.

Oh, I don’t know, Lina thought. Hunter Johnston might give the artifacts some real competition…if he ever stayed put.

Guiltily she yanked her attention back to her mother. No disrespect intended. I don’t know Carlos as well as you do.

You do not see him enough.

Lina couldn’t argue that. Growing up, she had never felt close to her mother’s cousin Carlos. She felt no need to pretend closeness now, despite his recent, repeated invitations to confer with him about Reyes Balam artifacts, and how they might be used to celebrate the coming baktun in a worthy way. The Turning of the Wheel of time was a great celebration among the Maya in general and her great-grandmother in particular.

If Carlos wants help decorating for the baktun, let him go to Philip. Neither one of them has asked me for so much as a nod in the past.

No matter how hard she had tried to please her father, she’d never managed that feat.

What’s up? Lina asked, ignoring the past and its disappointments.

Was there anything good in the Belize shipment Philip sent? The market is humming with rumors.

Define ‘good.’

Worth a great deal of money at auction, what else?

Lina winced. Please, Celia. Someone could overhear and misunderstand you. After the scandal—

You and Philip, Celia interrupted, always harping on what turned out to be nothing.

After many thousands spent to grease bureaucratic wheels, Lina thought, and academic reputations ruined. Philip’s and mine. It didn’t do the family export-import business any favors either.

Sorry, Lina said, trying to get the conversation back on track.

Yes, yes, Celia cut in. You have a reputation to maintain. I understand. So long as Philip keeps discovering artifacts on our land and the Reyes Balam family keeps ‘donating’ some of the artifacts to the Museum of the Maya—and a lot more to Mexican museums—you have nothing to worry about.

Philip also supplies you with artifacts for your export-import business. Lina’s voice was mild, though she knew trying to bridge the gap between her parents was useless.

Her parents might still be married, but they lived separately because they fought constantly.

Each artifact I receive is thoroughly documented, with proper export papers, and all fees and taxes duly paid, Celia said as though reciting from memory. What other shipments have you received in the last few weeks?

It would be faster if you tell me what you’re looking for. Then I can tell you if I have it.

There are rumors. Many rumors.

Lina waited.

The rumors whisper of an obsidian mask carved from a single piece of stone, a god bundle never opened, a sacred scepter with obsidian teeth, a foot-long jade Chacmool, an exquisitely made obsidian knife created solely to let the blood of kings. Even an unknown codex. All and more, of the very highest quality, appearing and then disappearing again, like ghost smoke.

Mind ablaze with possibilities, Lina could hardly speak.

Separate artifacts? she managed finally.

Yes.

That’s…impossible.

Celia laughed. Not impossible. But very, very expensive. You’ve heard nothing?

No. Even one of those artifacts would create a sensation in the archaeological world. All of them together? A dream. Just a dream.

If you hear of anything, you will call, yes?

Call? I’d scream it from the rooftops.

No! You would keep it very, very quiet and call me.

For a moment Lina didn’t say anything. She was remembering the feeling of being watched. Followed. Perhaps her mother wasn’t the only one who thought Lina had an entrée to some incredible black-market Maya finds.

I’ll show you everything in the museum, Lina said. You’ll see that there’s nothing like what you’ve described. Please tell everyone you know.

Nothing at all?

Not one thing, Lina said distinctly.

Then I won’t waste any more time. I have other sources to check, but you were my best hope. Promise you won’t miss Abuelita’s birthday. Only a few days.

Four.

Promise.

Yes, I’ll be there, Lina said. I can’t stay long because I have a lot of work to—

So do I, Celia interrupted. Good-bye, see you soon.

The line went dead.

Lina laughed in the empty car. Celia in pursuit of exceptional artifacts was a force of nature.

After a glance around the parking lot—still alone—Lina popped the locks and got out of the car. Beginning a class at seven in the morning wasn’t Lina’s first choice, but many of her students worked for a living. The museum scheduled its classes accordingly.

Lina locked the car and headed quickly for the staff entrance. As she walked, she looked over her shoulder.

Twice.

There was nothing to see in the shadows and early sunlight, no visible reason for the haunted, hunted feeling that made the skin on the back of her neck prickle. There was no one behind her, no one on either side, nothing but a hot, lazy wind stirred on the grounds.

Maybe I’m getting paranoid, like my father.

But Lina didn’t feel crazy. She felt watched.

Hurriedly she entered the code on the electronic pad beside the staff door. It clicked open, a loud sound in the hushed acreage surrounding the museum’s ziggurat building. Such land was very expensive in metropolitan Houston, but the Reyes Balam family was nothing if not smart about where to put its money for maximum business impact.

She walked quickly through the open door and closed it firmly behind her. The second security door ahead of her was heavy glass, reflecting a young woman of medium height, dark hair, large dark eyes, full lips, and a black silk business suit that struggled to hide her curves.

Lina barely noticed her reflection. She had accepted long ago that she would never be tall, skinny, and blond. She punched in a different sequence on the number pad beside the glass door. It opened softly, closed with a solid sound behind her.

Slowly she let out a long breath. She didn’t feel as watched now. Or maybe it was just the two security doors between her and the city outside.

The inside air was cool, dry, comfortable for humans, and excellent for the artifacts that were the heart and soul of the museum. She glanced at her watch. She would be barely on time. She hurried toward the small wing that held meeting rooms and a cramped lecture hall.

She told herself that her bubbling impatience had nothing to do with the chance of seeing Hunter Johnston again, then admitted that it had everything to do with hurrying. The man was both fascinating and exasperating. In the past few months they had talked after her classes—when he managed to show up—occasionally shared coffee, and circled each other with equal parts desire and wariness.

Then two weeks ago Hunter had disappeared. He’d missed classes before, but not for so long a stretch. Maybe he’d tired of the subject matter. Or her.

She shook her head and told herself that Hunter didn’t matter. She had a class to teach. She was down to the homestretch, racing toward the coffee and time off waiting at the finish line.

CHAPTER TWO

YOU THERE, MAN? I NEED YOU."

Frowning, ignoring the fatigue that kept dragging at the edges of his vision, Hunter Johnston listened to the message. He had known Jase for a lifetime, yet he’d never heard quite that sound from his friend. He prayed it didn’t have anything to do with Jase’s wife or kids. Especially his children. Kids were so innocent, so fragile.

The thought made Hunter open the apartment window with a vicious snap. It was the eighteenth of December, and Houston had to be seventy-five degrees already in the simmering morning. Summer simply hadn’t given up.

Better than the Yucatan, he told himself. No one shooting at me.

Hot air bathed him, bringing with it the smell of the city—gas, diesel, asphalt, concrete, dust, a whiff of stuffed Dumpster, and dueling Mexican and Chinese take-out joints. Hunter preferred the mixture of odors to his stale apartment and food that had been forgotten in his rush to get to Mexico in time to keep a young woman from being bought and sold like tamales on a dirty street corner.

A world away from Dr. Lina Taylor’s safe, well-lighted classroom.

Dream on, fool, Hunter told himself. I had to run out on our last sort-of coffee date. I’ll be lucky if she speaks to me.

Business and apartment lights glimmered against the hazy sky. Across the city avenue, Jase’s apartment already had the windows open and the blinds lifted to catch every breeze. A woman’s silhouette paced past one window, holding an arm-waving toddler. Ali, Jason’s high-school sweetheart and his wife, mother of his children.

Hunter both envied and feared what Jason had. The pain of losing what had once been part of his soul would always haunt him.

In the faint breeze, the gauzy privacy curtains by Hunter’s face did a shy and languid dance, like the last girl watching the last boy from across the gymnasium, that tantalizing moment of will I or won’t I?

He’d met Suzanne’s mother on a day like this. Seven years after that day, both mother and daughter were dead.

Get past it. The world sure has.

It had ended almost eight years ago, and it still cut like broken glass.

The breeze danced over Hunter like laughter, like memories, burning. He slammed the window down. The curtains hung, lifeless. No more dance, no more shyness.

No more.

He picked up his cell phone and punched in a text message to Jase. Border Patrol types stuck together, even when it was officially called Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even though Hunter had quit years ago. He hadn’t liked having his hands tied by orders from on high while the bad guys ran free. ICE’s ropes were covered in velvet benefits, but they still cut his wrists after a while.

Are your wrists bleeding, Jase?

Somebody knocked on the apartment door. Hard. Jase’s voice came in, low and urgent.

Hunter, you in there? I saw lights.

Three long strides took Hunter to the door. When he opened it, Jase stood there, a thick manila envelope under his left arm. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his feet in worn leather sandals, his thick, short hair standing on end. His broad face looked tired. From the amount of dark stubble on his jaw, it had been at least a week since his last shave.

Hey, bro, Hunter said, grabbing him. I was just texting you. I’ve been in the Yucatan for two weeks.

Grinning, Jase stepped into the one-armed hug and mutual back whacking. Figured that. Haven’t seen the blinds open until a few minutes ago.

Ali and the kids okay?

Colds, spit-ups, Christmas gotta-haves—the usual.

Hunter let out a silent sigh of relief. The kids were okay. Anything else that was wrong could be dealt with. He motioned Jase in and shut the door behind him.

You home for a while? Jase asked.

Until the phone rings. The family business is exploding like popcorn. All the narco violence has people on both sides of the border checking under the beds.

I don’t blame them. Jase threw his manila envelope on the kitchen counter. The crap going down now has to be seen to be believed.

That why you need me?

Jase’s smile faded and his face looked years older than thirty-four. They’re going to fire me on the twenty-second. Merry Christmas, mope.

Hunter went still. What the hell?

Some stuff went missing from ICE’s warehouse. You know what that place is like—lockers crammed to the ceiling with guns and goodies, drugs and money.

Brubaker thinks you’re selling drugs out of evidence lockers? Hunter asked, not hiding his shock.

No. Jase sighed, poured himself some coffee, and took it to the small café table. He slumped into one of the two mismatched chairs. I’ve never flipped an investigation or taken a drop of all that black money pouring through our hands and he knows it. But if I don’t find this missing stuff before the twenty-first, I’ll be cleaning bathrooms at Mamacita’s. With my tongue.

Three days? Hunter demanded, unbelieving.

Jase nodded. He was counting down the minutes. Hell, the seconds.

What went missing? Hunter asked. Guns?

Maya stuff. Or Aztec. Or what’s that early one?

Moche? Olmec? Mixtec?

Whatever. I don’t know diddly or squat about that stuff. That’s why I need you. Suddenly Jase put his face in his hands. Ali told me she’s pregnant. I was grinning at the moon. Then this. I don’t know what to tell her. It’s not like the missing stuff is gold or coke or anything, but Brubaker’s dick is in a knot and it all has to do with politics. How do you explain politics to a pregnant mother with children to feed and a husband who’s about to get sacked?

And I’m your Hail Mary option, Hunter thought unhappily. Damn, Jase, no wonder you’re halfway to panic.

Hunter took the remaining chair at the tiny kitchen table. Their knees knocked. The men automatically shifted to make room. They had been raised around small tables in small kitchens.

Walk me through it, Hunter said. How did ICE come across the artifacts?

About two, three weeks ago, Jase said, rubbing his eyes like a man who hadn’t had enough sleep. Around the first of December. I’m out there supervising a training session at the Matamoros crossing. Everything is dry like burned toast. Everyone out there is swearing and edgy. Beagles start howling just because they’re so miserable.

Beagles? What, you’re gonna lick the bad guys to death?

Those beagles are unstoppable. Noses that won’t quit. Stubborn and cute as puppies. They’re a lot more tourist-friendly for airports and cruise-ship terminals than your average German shepherd. Jase glanced up from his coffee. Politics, you know. Nobody’s afraid of beagles. Ali swears she’s gonna steal one and take it home to the kids.

Hunter almost smiled. Okay. You’re out on a beagle training session. Then what?

It’s a joint training session. ICE and DEA, getting along just like stepbrothers. But when the president tells you to play nice, then you damn well don’t get caught playing dirty.

What happened?

We get a stake-bed truck with plates out of Quintana Roo. The dogs freak. Howling and pawing the air and stretching leashes all over the place. All we see are commercial bags of concrete and some boxes of tools.

Coke? Hunter asked.

Yeah, the dogs hit on coke stashed with the concrete bags. But not a lot of it. A few kilos, nothing like a full shipment.

Hunter’s mouth quirked at one corner. And the dumb driver swears he didn’t know coke from concrete mix, right?

How’d you guess? Jase asked dryly. The coke was packed amateur, and it looked like at least one of the packages had gotten messed up before it was wrapped. Dogs locked onto the smell of the coke even though it had been doctored with kerosene or jet fuel.

Bad night for the driver, Hunter said.

I suppose, but he seemed almost relieved to get caught. Was real eager to talk. Acted like we would protect him from the witch doctors. He gave us the address he was supposed to be taking this load to.

He talked before he had a lawyer?

Jase shrugged. He didn’t care about lawyers. All he wanted was to get away from the shipment quick as he could. We processed him the snitch route, even ran a transfer to Cameron County custody on an empty charge just so he wouldn’t be kept with us or labeled as a DEA collar. He got shanked anyway within a few days.

Hunter whistled softly. Someone is connected like muscle to bone.

Welcome to the border, where money is black, coke is white, and you never know who’s got a rocket in his pocket. Jase’s voice was weary rather than bitter. The border was what it was—a war zone.

Who did the hit?

Some gangbanger from the Latin Kings out of Harlingen.

Did he give a reason for the killing?

Said the dude looked at him funny. He’s already in for life on killing four people, including two kids asleep in their beds, but he’s not giving up whoever told him to do the driver from Quintana Roo.

Not even to get some time shaved off a life sentence?

Jase looked like he wanted to spit. Cameron County’s D.A. is ambitious. He wants to run for governor and makes no secret of it. You don’t score a lot of points by making deals with kiddy whackers.

You can get a lot of points for nailing whoever ordered the whack.

Bird in the hand, man. Can’t guarantee what’s in the bush. Jase drank some cooling coffee. The ADA went ahead and tried to make a deal. The gangbanger acted like he was alone in the room.

Which tells me that whoever gave the order for the hit on the Q Roo driver pulls some serious weight. Is it a Latin King?

Jase shook his head. Ain’t none of the LKs ever had a lick of interest in the artifact trade. The amount of coke we found might get someone killed, but… He shrugged, the liquid movement of a man whose ancestors came from both sides of the border.

So would a handful of dirt, Hunter said.

Yeah. The driver didn’t have a drug background. Pretty much a Q Roo dirt farmer, not someone the Kings would be dealing with directly.

What about the artifacts? Do you think they were the real cargo?

DEA must have. They sneered at the five kilos of coke. That’s a lot of personal use, but not really a blip on DEA’s radar. But they were real eager to hand the artifacts over to Mexico for a big gold star in their good-neighbor file. So was our very own AIC Brubaker.

Hunter shook his head and spit out a single word. Politics.

Oh yeah. There was the usual pushing and shouldering. Then we cut a deal. DEA got the drugs and ICE got the artifacts. Since they weren’t evidence of anything prosecutable—the driver was dead—Brubaker fast-tracked the artifacts for the repatriation photo op. Jase breathed out from the soles of his feet, deflating. Man, I wish I’d given them to the feds. They’re politically radioactive.

Hunter sorted through what he’d been told. So the coke was the driver’s payday for taking everything over the border?

That and the lives of his family. You know how it works.

Hunter grimaced. He knew. He just didn’t like it.

The artifacts, Jase continued, weren’t carelessly wrapped like the coke. They were all tight and in sacks of concrete mix just like the kerosene-laced dope was. At first we thought the packages were opium tar or something else thrown in for the trip up. The shapes were really odd.

What about the address the driver gave you before he was shanked?

We checked it out. Jase swallowed hard, remembering what he really wanted to forget. I saw things in that place I’m not ever going to un-see.

For a few moments Jase stared at his coffee cup, trying not to remember the unspeakable. He did anyway. It wasn’t a single psycho rocking out. No bodies. Just blood everywhere, places you can’t believe blood would get. Blood from more than one person, more than ten. Fresh. Old. Blood and candle wax and rotting flowers. He shook his head, hard, trying to throw off memories. That place was…evil.

What’s the theory? Gang bloodbath? Death cult? Killing ground for rent?

ICE will take bets on any of those. We’re assuming the bad guys got word that the shipment had been popped, figured that the house was next on the list, so they ran like the cockroaches they are.

And resumed business in another place, Hunter said grimly.

Don’t they always? Hell, for all I know, they have lots of places like that house. The drug business lives on blood as much as money.

For the space of several long breaths, Hunter tried to plug Jase’s new information into the framework of his own lifetime knowledge of the Texas borderlands. It didn’t fit. Anything connect to cold cases?

Jase drank some coffee, rinsed it around, and swallowed. I don’t know. We handed the death house off to the sheriff’s department with the understanding that ICE wanted info on anything covered in our mission statement. All they told us was that something was taken off the wall, and there were signs that a table had been moved.

Or an altar?

I don’t like to think about that, but yeah, I wondered.

Okay. You busted artifacts and small-time coke. Followed an address to a bloody dead end. Cataloged the artifacts into the ICE warehouse.

With that Maya apocalypse 2012 all over the media, Brubaker was practically lap-dancing about the chance to add the artifacts to the pool of stuff that’s being repatriated to Mexico on the twenty-first. It’s a big-ass deal. Vice president, governor, senators, everybody under the Homeland Security umbrella will be there, shaking hands across the border and giving Mexico back pieces of its history as we walk shoulder to shoulder into the future, blah blah blah.

But the artifacts go poof from ICE storage, Hunter said. Then what?

I don’t have to tell you the theft has ‘inside job’ written all over it.

I remember the warehouse. Cameras, locks, finger pads, guards, everything but the ever-popular alien butt probes.

Jase smiled faintly. Brubaker was thirty-two flavors of pissed off. He looked around for an ass to pin the tail on. Must have been my lucky day, huh? He put me on paid leave, told me I had until the twenty-first to find those artifacts, then said if I even breathed the word ‘ICE’ in my investigation, much less showed my badge, I was roadkill. No word of the theft was to get out.

Hunter stared at him. That’s a joke, right?

Jase looked back with hard, dark eyes.

When did this happen? Hunter asked.

About two weeks ago. I tried to call you, but…

Cell phones don’t work where and when you want them to, Hunter finished. I was up to my pits in jungle and limestone scrub.

I hear those beaches on Riviera Maya are primo.

Didn’t get that far. You have pictures, file numbers, descriptions?

Of the artifacts?

What else?

Jase reached for the manila folder on the counter. You never saw these.

Saw what?

Hunter opened the envelope and started looking at photos he never should have seen.

CHAPTER THREE

THERE ARE STILL MANY AREAS OF MAYA MYTHOLOGY THAT are wide open to interpretation, Lina Taylor said clearly to her more-or-less attentive students. This is to be expected, given that people are still fighting over the meaning of texts that have been widely available, translated from culture to culture, and practiced for more than two thousand years."

Nobody coughed or stirred. The truly uninterested students were still asleep in various beds. Part of Lina envied them, especially if they were with lovers, but nothing of her simmering emotions showed in her face or voice.

The fact that so much of Maya myth and lore was lost in one night, at the hands of Bishop Landa, means that we may never know the actual names of deities such as ‘God K’—suggested as Kawa’il by some—much less the subtle distinctions in their hierarchy and powers, religious and civil lives.

An unlikely blonde who was dressing like her teenage daughter dutifully took notes from the front-center seat.

Does she ever look in the mirror? Lina thought. Does she need glasses?

The nuances of the ancient Maya may be lost to us, Lina continued, but the broad strokes are reasonably clear. And in many ways, unchanged since the first glyph was chiseled into limestone.

She clicked a remote and the room lights dimmed. Another button on the remote brought the overhead projector to life, displaying an image of jungle broken only by the reclaimed ruins of a Maya ziggurat in the distance. The ancient building was pale and jagged under a cloudy sky. In the foreground, several people were gathered at a bonfire, dressed in bright shawls worn over a variety of very colorful garments. Each person carried an offering of flowers, handmade crosses, or small glass bottles of liquor. When the people withdrew, the offerings remained behind at the feet of traditional Maya deities overlaid by a veneer of Christian names.

Notice the syncretic nature of the celebration, Lina said, using her laser pointer, the mixing of elements of Christianity and indigenous deities. This picture was taken last year during the Días Perdidos celebration, not far from Chichén Itzá. The celebration roughly translates as their version of Mardi Gras—a syncretic festival which also mixes Christian and other religious elements—for a holiday directly before the season of Lent.

The jungle image was replaced by that of a wooden cross, taller than the man standing next to it. The heavy beams were covered in cornstalks and leaves, as if the cross were living, growing.

The question that this image begs is, Which is more important to the villagers living here? The cross or the maize? You could separate the corn from the cross, but without the corn to sustain them, there would be no worshippers for the cross. The two can’t be separated, but neither side is truly ascendant here.

Immediately the reporter who had been allowed into the final class for a feature about December 21, the End of the World spoke up.

The images of the cross and the corn you showed—aren’t you concerned about backwash from people who take their religion seriously? the reporter asked.

The Maya were, and are, very serious about their religion. They just don’t approach it in the typical Western Christian way. Understanding that is fundamental to understanding the Maya of any time or place.

Still, it’s not reassuring to mainstream religion, he said. Altars have been found everywhere along the border. It’s rumored that bloody sacrifices are made, just like in the old days.

Doubtful, Lina said cheerfully. Among the most important sacrifices a Maya king could make was his own blood, produced by piercing his foreskin with a stingray spine and slowly drawing knotted twine through the slits. Do you think men today have the belief to carry through with such a painful sacrifice?

The reporter winced and shifted as though to protect himself. I was thinking more of human sacrifice.

What could be more human than genital self-mutilation in the name of a god you hope to please? Lina asked, just to see the reporter squirm.

What about tearing out a victim’s heart? the man asked hurriedly.

"Sometimes noble war prisoners were sacrificed—literally made holy—by having their heart removed while it was still beating. But those weren’t the most valued sacrifices."

What was?

When the life of ruling royalty itself was given. To the Maya, blood continuity was fundamental to their reality. The people’s safety, sanity, and soul depended on being led by a priest-king who could claim unbroken descent from his guiding deity, who was also his blood ancestor. To sacrifice someone of royal blood was a tremendous gift, a desperate gift, done only in times of extreme need.

What kind of need could drive people to tear out living hearts? the reporter asked.

Lina told herself to be patient. The man was only doing what he thought was his job. Chasing headlines. Sensation.

There are glyphs describing such sacrifices, she said, usually after the people of a kingdom lost a war or suffered intense famine or drought. Such a calamity was proof that your priest-king had lost his connection to his guiding deity. The priest-king himself was sacrificed, often with his blood kin, and the people moved on to follow another, more powerful leader. One who had the blessing of the gods.

Rather barbaric, don’t you think?

To paraphrase Shakespeare, Lina said dryly, uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Any crown. The Maya are human, no more or less barbaric than Europeans or Chinese of the same time.

From the corner of her eye, Lina saw a tall, muscular figure slide into the classroom. His skin was like his body, sun-weathered and tight. Hair that was neither brown nor black, simply dark, gleamed under the fluorescent lights. The shirt he wore was a guayabera. It would have been at home in any Maya marketplace—faded, boxy, designed to be worn outside the pants to allow the body to breathe in the hot, humid jungle. His jeans were equally faded, equally clean. The boots he wore were so old they were the color of asphalt. Even with clean-shaven cheeks, the man had a roughness about him that wasn’t a fashion statement. It was simply real.

Hunter Johnston was back.

CHAPTER FOUR

LINA’S HEARTBEAT PICKED UP EVEN AS SHE TOLD HERSELF that she was a fool. A few months of on-again, off-again shared coffee and conversation didn’t equal anything that should lift her pulse.

The reporter was talking again, his tone impatient.

I’m sorry, she said to the reporter, what was the question?

The Santa Muerte shrines and the offerings of food and bullets and—some say—blood? How do they tie into the Maya and the end of time in three days?

You’re assuming that they do.

Are you saying they don’t? the reporter shot back.

"You’ll have to ask the people who