Lover in the Rough (33 page)

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.

T
HERE ARE STILL MANY AREAS OF
M
AYA 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 Chris tian names.

“Notice the syncretic nature of the celebration,” Lina said, using her laser pointer, “the mixing of elements of Chris tianity 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 Chris tian 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 Chris tian 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.

L
INA’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 visit the shrines.”

Hunter quietly took a seat at one side of the room, close to the front. He put a heavy manila envelope on the seat next to him.

“But the shrines began appearing along with talk of the Maya millennium,” the reporter said.

“There have been shrines as long as there have been indigenous people,” Lina said. “It’s simply their way of communicating with their gods. As for the Maya in particular, when they move away from their homelands, their need for shrines goes with them.”

“What of three days from now— December twenty-first, 2012?” he insisted.

“It will be followed by December twenty-second, 2012.”

The reporter gave up trying to get a headline from her. “Ah, yeah. But a lot of people don’t believe that.”

“A surprising number of people believe that the earth is flat,” Lina said neutrally. “To my knowledge, that belief hasn’t affected the shape of the planet.”

Hunter snickered.

“So you think this Maya millennial belief is garbage?” the reporter persisted.

“Hale-Bopp was a real comet,” Lina said. “It came and went. People who believed it was the Mother Ship come to take them home were disappointed. Another group of people believed in the Y2K frenzy. Our European millennium calendar turned to January first, year 2000. Computers kept on working and the world kept on turning.” She smiled. “Think about that on the twenty-second of December.”

Lina turned to the rest of class. “I’ll see everyone in a few weeks for the exam. I won’t be in my office until after New Year’s Day. If you have any questions, the line forms after Mr. Sotomayor of the
Houston News
.”

The reporter laughed and shook his head. “I’m done.”

As the students rustled and murmured on their way out of the room, Lina turned to the two people who hadn’t left. One was the woman whose clothes didn’t match her age.

Hunter was the other.

“If you have any questions, please come forward and we’ll talk informally,” Lina said.

Hunter unfolded his long frame and started walking toward the lectern. As he approached, he was again struck by the difference between Lina’s starkly simple clothes and the lush mystery of her golden-brown skin. Up close her eyes were very dark. When the light caught them a certain way, there were surprising shards of gold radiating out from the pupils.

“I’m sorry about running out on coffee a few weeks ago,” Hunter began.

The hurried clacking of high heels on the tile floor accompanied by an equally sharp voice drowned out anything else he might have said.

“Dr. Taylor, I’m simply breaking out with questions.”

Lina’s lips tightened as she turned to the student rushing toward her. She wore carefully distressed black jeans, very tight, and a black sequined shirt, equally tight. The designs on the shirt were meant to be edgy, like jailhouse tattoos. She was as thin as a famine victim, her face all sharp angles and points, with the telltale deer-in-headlights look of too much plastic surgery.

And they call the Maya barbaric,
Lina thought.

“But first,” the woman said, “I just wanted to thank you for your really interesting take on the whole subject.”

Perfume hit in a wave.

Hunter tried not to breathe.

“You’re more than welcome,” Lina said.

“Call me Melodee.”

Lina vaguely remembered having been told that before. “Of course, Melodee. How can I— ”

“So I wanted to ask about the whole 2012 thing, you know, the Turning of the Great Wheel for the last time,” her new best friend cut in without pause. “I mean, if the world is going to end, I really want to know about it and go out having a good time.”

She aimed the last words squarely at Hunter, who’d been doing his best to be invisible. He’d run across some of the millennial types while on various trips to the Yucatan and had been forced to make polite conversation by way of keeping his cover intact. But that wasn’t required right now, so he didn’t bother.

He ignored the woman.

Melodee turned back to Lina. “So Kali Yuga meets the Age of Aquarius or just a cosmic burp?”

Lina managed not to roll her eyes like her mother. “The ancient Maya were, as some people are today, obsessed with numerology. It was deeply integrated into the Maya culture. It’s a very human thing to create significance where realistically there is none.”

Deliberately Lina began packing up her lecture materials, signaling an end to the woman’s questions.

Melodee plowed right ahead. “But the end of the age? And then there’s the whole passing-through-the-galactic-center thingy. We can’t just ignore alignments that are so rare.”

I can,
Hunter mouthed from behind Melodee.

Lina managed not to smile. “You are, of course, entitled to your beliefs.”

“But— ”

“It’s very exciting to believe that you’re living at a pivot point in human history,” Lina continued, talking over the relentless Melodee. “People make a lot of money polishing that lure and it gets buckets of page views on the Internet, even though the movie didn’t sell as many tickets as its backers hoped. That, I believe, will be the only millennial Maya cataclysm.”

“The Maya will begin the Fourteenth Baktun,” Hunter added, “and the rest of us will continue counting down the shopping days until Christmas.”

“That’s so . . . so ordinary,” Melodee said. “The beginning of a new baktun,” Lina said smoothly, “especially this one, which will end the Long Count and begin another, is a cause for celebration all across the Maya world.”

“But the sunspots,” Melodee said. “And the reversal of the magnetic poles and Nostradamus and— ”

“None of those things concerned the Maya,” Lina said, “and they were incredible astronomers and mathematicians. They tracked the seasons, followed the path of Venus— their sacred star— and invented a very abstruse language to describe how their universe worked.”

“But the sun will cross the galactic equator and the plane of the ecliptic or something like that and the galactic alignment and everything in the
Chilam Balam
and . . .” Melodee ran out of breath and buzzwords at the same time.

“The Maya don’t need a fourth catastrophe to be complete,” Hunter said, not bothering to conceal his impatience. “The Spanish took care of it for them.”

“Very good, Mr. Johnston,” Lina answered, biting her lower lip to hide a smile. “In Maya mythology, they have already gone through three separate cataclysms, leading to the age that the fifteenth-century Maya knew, which was their present day. But much of how we perceive the Maya today is filtered through the lens of the Spanish, who weren’t interested in the Maya as a culture, but as a resource.”

“The Maya died three times before the Spanish came?” Melodee asked faintly.

“It’s a metaphor,” Hunter said, readjusting the envelope under his left arm. “A story. It took the gods four tries to get the world right. First with people made of mud, then made of wood, then monkeys. Then us.”

“Precisely,” Lina said. “And between each of the worlds, the gods erased their works and started over, finally culminating with the world the Maya lived in, with the covenant between the gods and humans. Things were as they needed to be and life was good and bad in cycles. But there was never going to be one total apocalypse at the end of the Long Count.”

“But the
Chilam Balam
says there will be.”

“The Maya writings you refer to were composed after the Spanish conquest. They’re a mixture of Maya and Chris tian beliefs, with a good dose of wishful mysticism.”

“Then why aren’t the Maya still here?” Melodee asked. “Living in their palaces and all?”

Melodee’s bizarre take on reality left Lina speechless.

Hasn’t this idiot learned anything from my classes?
she asked herself silently.

“I am part Maya,” Lina finally said. “Through my mother, my lineage can be traced back at least to Tah Itzá in modern Quintana Roo. The Maya are a people, not ancient architecture and a religion based on sacrifice to appease the gods.”

Melodee looked to Hunter. No support there. Then to Lina. “So there’s no grand revelation coming?”

“The only revelation is that there won’t be one,” Hunter said. “That help?”

“No,” Melodee said, turning on her high heels like a pole dancer. “It’s as boring as you are.”

With that, she strode up the aisle. The curious group of students who had overheard the exchange began to drift away to their mundane lives.

“My God, when will this craziness end?” Lina muttered. “I can’t wait for December twenty-second. I’m tired of breaking the news to wide-eyed adrenaline freaks that the earth will turn and life will go on as always.”

“People like Melodee make my head ache,” Hunter agreed. “Shall we try that coffee again?”

Lina hesitated, then smiled up into his eyes, eyes that were almost as light as her father’s but silvery blue rather than gray. Beautiful in a way her father’s would never be, because Hunter was vividly
there,
his attention focused only on her.

“Is your cell phone with you?” she asked wryly. “I set it to vibrate.” A slow smile. “Cheap thrill is better than no thrill at all.”

She told herself not to laugh. It didn’t work. The idea that a man like Hunter had to get his adrenaline rush from a phone shaking against his butt was ridiculous.

“Coffee,” she agreed.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Giving me another chance.”

She gave him a sidelong look. “I’m addicted to coffee.”

As they walked to a local coffee shop, Hunter waited for her to ask where he had been, why he’d run out on her with a rushed apology. He was still waiting when they took their coffee to a back booth. Lina had been too busy glancing over her shoulder and looking at people who passed by to pay much attention to him.

Maybe she hadn’t noticed that he had been gone for the last two weeks.

Lina slid into the booth, then bent over and inhaled the rich scent of coffee, cinnamon, and chocolate rising from her reinforced paper cup. She closed her eyes and sighed with pleasure.

Hunter’s jeans started not to fit.

Damn,
he thought
. It’s been way too long if a bit of simple, sensual female appreciation makes me hard.

But there was something about her thick, dark eyelashes and full lips, the slick pink of her tongue as she caught a drop of coffee on the rim of the cup. It was sexier than watching most women undress.

“You’re very quiet,” he said.

“I told you,” she said, taking another sip, “I love coffee.”

“Can you look and lick— er, sip— at the same time?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“What I’m looking at.” She glanced up and saw him watching her mouth. Suddenly the booth felt very small, intimate. When she spoke, her voice was husky. “I can multitask.”

Hunter didn’t know Lina well enough to be thinking what he was thinking, much less to say it. He let out a silent breath and shifted on the seat.

“I have some photos,” he said. “Please, no etchings.”

He laughed. “Nothing that clichéd.”

“Bring it,” Lina said. “For this coffee I’ll look at almost anything.”

Silently Hunter took a handful of photos from the manila envelope and fanned them across the table, facing her.

Lina looked down.

The world shifted.

She squeezed her coffee cup so hard the heavy paper gave and coffee slopped over, scalding her.

Hunter whipped the photos out of the way, grabbed napkins, and began cleaning up. “You okay? Burn yourself?”

Silently she shook her head, refusing to meet his eyes.

No wonder he looks dangerous. He’s a damned grave robber.

She told herself that the disappointment breaking coldly over her was way out of line. Hunter was nothing to her. Less than nothing.

Thief of the dead.

“I’ve had enough coffee,” Lina said abruptly.

Before she could stand, his hand snaked across the table and grabbed her wrist, pinning her in place. The grip was gentle. And unbreakable unless she wanted to make a scene.

“Let’s see that hand,” Hunter said.

“It’s fine.”

“Okay. Then tell me about the photos.”

“I didn’t really look at them.” She hadn’t had to. An instant was all she needed to know she shouldn’t be here, with him.

“What’s wrong?” Hunter asked.

His voice was gentle, but his eyes were as implacable as the hand around her wrist.

“I don’t talk about artifacts without provenance,” she said flatly. “Or are certificates of export and import in that envelope, too?”

Hunter glanced around the coffee shop with eyes gone as flat as her voice. Too many people. Too close.

“How about we talk in your office?” he asked.

“Until I see papers for those artifacts in the photos, I have nothing to talk about with you.”

“The artifacts were taken in a drug bust at the Texas-Mexico border.”

“Who are you?” Lina asked.

“A man who bought you coffee. That’s all. No badges, no official inquiries, no headlines in academic magazines and reputations muddied. At least, there don’t have to be.”

He knows,
she thought, hoping her face didn’t show her fear
. Somehow he knows about the scandal that nearly brought the Reyes Balam family down. And he’s threatening another.

Isn’t he?

“Your office?” he asked again. “I don’t bring grave robbers into the museum.”

“Good. I’m not one.”

“Or slimy middlemen or collectors who troll the black markets.”