Look What the Wind Blew In (19 page)

“Didn’t you just tell me to meet you out here?”

“Yes, but you didn’t need to sneak up on me like that.” Her fingers bumped the flashlight casing.

“I didn’t sneak. I’m an old man.” He flicked on his flashlight, shining it around on the ground near her hand. “My sneaking days are long over. There it is, near that bush.”

“You’re not that old.” She reached for the light.

A rustle in the bushes near her outstretched hand made her jerk back. A rat zipped past her hand, darting out of sight under the bush next to her. She cursed at it for making her adrenaline spike again.

“What’s with you?” Juan snickered. “Got ants in your pants?”

Oh, man, that was lame. She scooped up the light and pushed to her feet. “I don’t know, I guess I’m feeling a bit antsy tonight.”

Juan laughed aloud.

She reached up and covered his mouth with her hand, shushing him. “We’re terrible.”

He pulled her hand away from his mouth, using it to draw her into a hug. “Maybe so,
gatita
, but only at four in the morning.” He rested his chin on the top of her head. “The rest of the time we’re just incorrigible.”

With her forehead pressed against his chest, she soaked up the strength he was offering. His love warmed away the chill that had followed her out of Teodoro’s hut into the darkness. He always knew when she needed a hug and when to give her space. Long, long ago, her mom had told Angélica one of the reasons she’d married Juan was because his hugs were filled with magic elixirs, able to light up her heart in even the blackest of temples.

But not even Juan’s arms could save her mom from the shadows that had swallowed her up at the end, damn it.

Sniffing away the memories of her mom, she focused on the task at hand and stepped out of her dad’s hold. “Come on.” She led him toward the mess tent.

Inside the tent, she turned on one of the lanterns from the kitchen counter. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Juan sat at the closest table, watching her pour a cup of cold coffee, waving off her motion to fill one for him. “This is no accident.”

She set the light and the coffee on the table, dropping down across from him. “Someone’s messing with us.”

“One of our own or someone else?”

“You tell me.” She sipped the cold drink, grimacing at the bitterness. She should have added some sugar. “You know what’s scary?”

“Jared coming to Thanksgiving dinner this year.”

She flicked his arm. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

She ran the tip of her index finger around the rim of the coffee cup. “I have no idea how to begin to protect us.”

His gaze measured her for several blinks. “You think it’s that serious?”

“Remember the
chechem
resin incident that I told you about the other morning?” At his nod, she continued. “I was having trouble buying that it was caused by Jorge wearing the same underwear for four days in a row.” That had been the front-running rumor, other than that damned curse, of course.

“Maybe some prankster from the village heard about our curse and decided to have some fun with us. Was there anyone you didn’t hire this season who wanted to be part of the crew?”

“I hired everyone on the sign-up sheet after our decision to take on extra crew this year.”

“Right. Extra crew. Well, fiddlesticks.” He rubbed his eyes. When he blinked them open again, he hit her with a stern look. “You’re not going out to look around until it’s light out.” It wasn’t a question. He’d used his
fatherly
voice, the same one he’d been using since she’d started brushing her hair on her own.

Fine. With dawn just another cup of coffee away, she wouldn’t have long to wait.

She stirred sugar into her coffee, thinking about a certain hazel-eyed man. “I’d like you to work with Quint today. But I do
not
want him finding out about this.” She tapped her finger on the table for emphasis. He already knew too much for his own good … or theirs.

Juan’s brow crinkled. “You still don’t trust him, huh?”

“Not entirely.”

Quint had a ways to go to earn that. Not that he had much time left to work on it if she bowed to Jared’s ultimatum. Somehow, she needed to give Quint the boot without ruffling his feathers. She should probably let him know soon that he had to go, giving him time to finish acquiring all of the information necessary. If she played things right, she would have both his article and Jared’s recommendation helping to ensure her father’s future for another year or two, maybe more.

“I’m still not thrilled about you scouting about on your own, even in the daylight. Why don’t you take Teodoro with you?”

“It’s probably going to be a waste of time.” She doubted she’d come across whoever put the branch in Jared’s cot just sitting outside the camp boundary waiting to be caught. “Besides, it’s Tuesday, Teodoro’s regular day to get supplies at the village. I don’t want to cause any suspicion by switching his schedule.”

Juan leaned closer and took her chin in his hand. “If you aren’t back by lunch, I’m going to recruit some men and come looking for you, your stubbornness about keeping this all one big secret be damned.”

“I know this jungle like the back of my hand, Dad. I’ll be fine.” When he kept frowning at her, she added, “I’ll take a machete with me.”

“What happened to my docile, innocent little girl?” He let go of her chin. “You used to wear the cutest, frilly dresses.”

“For the record, I only wore a frilly dress once.” And she’d promptly stained and ripped it while chasing the jackrabbit Juan had told her was the Easter bunny. She gulped the rest of her coffee and then stood. “I’ll check on Jared when I get back.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to my tent to change.” She pointed at her shirt. “I’m still wearing yesterday’s clothes.”

“You should try to get some sleep.”

“I’ll sleep when the dig season is over.”

He snorted his disapproval. “Oh, one more thing. Guess what Jared asked for earlier when I helped him to Teodoro’s hut?”

“A new cot?”

He shook his head. “My permission to marry you.”

* * *

The Dawn Temple was like all of the other structures at the site—miserably hot and muggy, dusty and musty, and claustrophobic as a coffin. Quint would rather skinny dip with jellyfish than spend another afternoon helping Juan take measurements of every wall, doorway, ceiling, and whatever else he could find. Hell, working outside with the swarms of bugs would have been less aging on his heart than tooling around in this death trap.

He looked over at Juan, who was measuring the width of the short, narrow doorway they had entered to get into this sub chamber, as Juan called it. The silence felt cottony in there, interrupted only by the sound of their breathing and Juan penciling numbers on his notepad.

After a morning of Juan evading most of his questions, Quint strongly suspected that Angélica had ordered her father to keep quiet about Dr. Hughes and stick to high level details only about the site.

She was doing a bang-up job of keeping Quint at arm’s length and he didn’t like dangling out there one bit. Damn her need to control every little thing that happened on
her
dig site. He wondered how she’d react if he barged into her tent later tonight and gave her a thorough tongue lashing for playing these games with him.

And when he’d finished with her mouth, he’d peel off her clothes and study her skin inch by inch, using one of those little paintbrushes from her tool pouch. A fresh coat of sweat slicked his skin as his mind took him places he shouldn’t go with the boss lady, starting with her …

“Earth to Quint, Earth to Quint,” Juan’s voice interrupted his sweaty thoughts about the older man’s daughter. “Can you write a few numbers down for me?”

“Sure,” Quint said, swiping the sweat and all thoughts of Angélica’s curves from his mind. He took the notebook and started listing numbers as Juan read them.

In between the measurements, he stared up at the web-like cracks spreading across the limestone ceiling. When Juan finally finished, he reached up and touched one of the larger cracks. “This chamber looks like the roof is about to cave in.”

“Don’t do that!”

Quint yanked his arm back. “Why?”

Juan tucked his pencil back behind his ear, a smile rounding his cheeks. “No reason. I just wanted to see you jump.”

“Wise ass.” Quint leaned against the opposite wall of the narrow chamber. He tried to come up with a subtle way of asking where Angélica had been this morning. Ever since they’d left the mess tent after breakfast, he’d been waiting for their conversation to turn in her direction, but Juan had other plans and kept spewing facts about Maya history.

Juan measured the height of the walls on each side of the chamber’s entrance. He glanced at Quint before picking up his notepad again. “Have you noticed how stale the air is in here?”

Quint had noticed that and many more nerve-wracking tidbits. The room they were in was no more than ten feet long by five feet wide—small enough to make a tall guy a little fidgety. He had to stay hunched over or risk scraping his head on the uneven ceiling.

“We’re actually in a section of the structure that is too deep in the ground and far from any openings to get much fresh air. The only air movement comes from you and me stirring it up.” Juan pulled a hand-held instrument from his tool kit. “I use this to keep track of the oxygen levels when we get this far into the temples just to be safe.”

Quint looked at the chipped fragments of frescos lining the walls. “It must’ve been hell to excavate this room.”

“According to Dr. Hughes’ journal, he had to work in here alone. None of his crew was willing to venture this far into the temple.”

He wanted that journal, dang it. “Because of the lack of airflow?”

“No, because of the instability of the surrounding passageways. Fernando and I shored up these walls about four years ago. Before that, I didn’t allow any workers to come in here. The cracks you see in the ceiling are evidence of the temple’s weakening structure.”

Quint eyed those cracks again, his mouth drying. Several seemed wider than they had a moment ago. Were those new? How much more weight could the ceiling take before giving in to gravity? Would it crack before the sky fell? Or would it come crashing down, crushing …

Closing his eyes, he talked himself down off the ledge. Juan wouldn’t have led him in here if it weren’t relatively safe. He reached down, picked up his hard hat, and dropped it on his head. Then again, no need to take chances.

“It must have been a hell of a job,” Juan mumbled, holding his pencil in his mouth as he measured the width of ceiling at one end of the room and then the other.

“What’s with all of the measuring?”

Juan took the pencil from his mouth. “Every year, I measure the same chambers, watching for any change that would indicate a structural shift.” He jotted something on the paper, scratched his head, and then added another couple of numbers.

Quint thought about Dr. Hughes, working alone in here with only a flashlight or lantern while his wife and son went about their daily lives back in Rapid City.

What in the hell had happened to Dr. Hughes? Quint had gone over the notes Jeff had given him again last night wondering how someone could disappear without a trace. He’d almost crossed over to Angélica’s tent more than once, thinking up one excuse after another to prod her for answers, but his need to see her had more to do with
her
than talking about the past. So he’d stayed put, listening to the sounds of her moving around not twenty feet away.

At some point, he needed to talk to her alone. To explain why he’d come clean about the kiss he’d stolen that day in front of Jared. To make it clear he would be honest with her from here on out. No more lies. No more secrets.

But his promise to his old friend made him pause. If he opened himself up to Angélica and she asked too many critical questions, he might find himself on the road to the village without any answers for Jeff. He didn’t want to risk that now, not after all of the sweat and bugs he’d put up with down here. He wasn’t going to show up on his friend’s doorstep empty-handed.

Where was Dr. Hughes’ body?

Hell, Jeff had found out his mother’s suspicions about his father’s murder only when she was taking her last breaths. Before that revealing moment, Jeff had made peace with never knowing what had happened to his father. But then Mrs. Hughes had whispered words of murder in the jungle, telling Jeff about her investigation into his father’s death, making him promise to find out the truth after she was gone.

When Quint found out Jeff was thinking of flying down to the dig site where his father had last been seen, leaving his newborn son behind, Quint had volunteered to take Jeff’s place. It was easy enough for him to solicit a job working on a Maya dig site. Plus he owed the Hughes family for their kindness. But mostly he couldn’t risk something happening to Jeff with a baby who needed a father there to raise him. History was not going to repeat itself on Quint’s watch. Losing one Hughes to this place was bad enough.

Quint looked at Juan, whose features were scrunched as he scribbled numbers and notes. There had to be some way to coerce information from the older man, an honorable way of getting that journal. He screwed up the courage and blurted, “What’s the chance of my borrowing Dr. Hughes’ journal for a night or two?”

Juan peered at him over the rims of his reading glasses for what felt like a Maya calendar year. Quint did his best not to squirm. “Would this be for your professional or personal reading pleasure?”

“Personal.”

Juan closed his notepad and shoved it in his back pocket. “At least you’re honest.”

Most of the time. “I don’t like to lie.” Especially not to people he respected.

He nodded slowly, as if weighing Quint’s words. “I have two conditions for you to meet before allowing you to borrow the journal.” He took off his glasses, cleaning them with the hem of his camp shirt. “First, you must swear you will not take any excerpts from the journal to use in your article about this site.”

“You have my word.”

Juan folded his glasses, tucked them into a small black case, and shoved them into his shirt pocket. “Second, I’d like an explanation.”