Beautiful Sacrifice (36 page)

“You came back here, checked, and it was gone,” Hunter said.

Philip nodded.

“Show us where you kept it,” Hunter said. His voice was like his eyes, patient. Relentless.

Her father tried to get up, wobbled, and started to go down. Hunter put him back on his feet with an easy strength Lina found as startling as the slap had been. The contrast between Hunter and her father rocked her. Even after she had begun to understand her father’s emotional limitations, she still had thought of him as physically strong, indomitable, ageless.

He wasn’t.

With Hunter’s encouragement, Philip pulled himself together enough to lead the way back to his study. Hunter noticed the heavy lock on the study door and knew without asking that no one went in without Philip being present. Certainly not the maids. The place was dusty, messy, piled with papers and artifacts in haphazard heaps.

Lina’s breath came in hard and stayed. The artifacts so carelessly stacked everywhere were extraordinary. The jade jaguar pendant she had found and he had kept was on a bookshelf, on top of a tilting pile of scholarly archaeology bulletins. Automatically she looked at every artifact in sight, searching.

Hunter watched her.

After a moment she shook her head. “Not at first glance. Excellent, wonderful, fascinating—but not what we’re looking for.”

Hunter nodded and centered his attention on Philip, who was still fumbling with the dial of an old-fashioned safe. Vault, really. It was at least seven feet high and five wide. Unlike the rest of the room, the lock looked well cared for, oiled, clean. Bookcases flanked the vault door on either side from floor to ceiling.

Just when Hunter thought he’d have to try his hand at drilling out the safe’s locking mechanism, Philip managed to get the combination right. When the door swung open, Hunter was glad that he hadn’t had to wear out steel drill bits and himself on the safe. It was at least four inches thick, way beyond what would be necessary to protect against burglary or fire.

Cool, dry air wafted out of the safe, reminding Hunter of the temple.

“No burning candles,” Lina said, telling him that she was thinking the same thing he was.

Not surprisingly, Philip ignored his daughter. Whatever emotion had driven his outburst had been spent. Now he was a leaky balloon, deflating a breath at a time.

She gave him a worried glance but made no move to intervene as he pointed a shaky finger at a small, climate-controlled glass museum box at the back of the vault.

“There. It was there. Now it’s gone,” Philip said.

Hunter walked forward to look at the box. He could have checked for fingerprints, but he didn’t have the right equipment—or temperament—right now.

A glance had told Lina that more than an empty climate-controlled box filled the vault. The walls were a mosaic of shelves and niches and cases. Boxes had been stacked waist-high, leaving very little floor space to move around. She realized that, unbelievably, the reason the jade pendant and other superb artifacts had been left in the study was that Philip had run out of room in the vault.

She turned and went to her father, who was leaning against the vault door. His hand hung limply on the handle. His expression was glazed.

“What was in the box?” Lina asked bluntly.

He shook his head as if her words were cold water instead of breath. “I…” His voice died. He swallowed. “A codex. Kawa’il’s, I believe.”

“How long have you had it?”

He looked confused, irritated. “Years, but what does it matter now? It’s gone!”

“Years,” she said, her expression a fluid mix of disbelief, anger, and disappointment. “You hid it for years.”

“I had to study it,” Philip said. “Without me, it’s just drawings on paper. I found it! Once I’ve finished translating it, I’ll publish and take my place with the foremost names in archaeology. But it’s hard, so hard…”

“What is?” Hunter asked.

“Translation, of course,” Philip snapped. “The glyphs are very intricate, very idiosyncratic, hard to understand. Almost cryptic.”

“You never were very good at translation,” Lina said, her voice neutral. “Yet you never asked me to help. Even Mercurio noticed it.”

“You were on
her
side,” Philip said. “She’s the one who ruined me with her greed for artifacts and money. Trust you? You must think I’m as stupid as Mercurio did.”

“What are you talking about?” Lina asked.

“You. Your mother.”

“Philip, I was eight years old when you and Celia separated. What on earth makes you believe I was on anyone’s side?”

“You’re a woman. Selfish. Like her. Just when you were finally old enough to become useful to me, you were mooning after Mercurio. Nobody cares what I want. But I outsmarted all of you.” Philip grinned without humor, more of a grimace. “I found the codex.”

“A work whose meaning you could barely decipher, much less truly appreciate,” Lina said. “So you hid it for years and picked away at something that was as far beyond your reach as the back side of the moon.”

“I made progress,” Philip said defensively. “Glyphs aren’t as impossible as people like you make them out to be. They just require more intelligence than most people have. Especially these glyphs. History as allegory, just like the
Popol Vuh,
worse than the
Chilam Balam
. All but useless to a real archaeologist.”

Hunter looked at Lina.

“I understand,” she said to Philip. “This codex wasn’t a linear compilation of names and events. The glyphs required nuanced interpretation rather than measurement in situ. Shades of possibility and meaning, like poetry.”

“Rubbish, not science,” Philip agreed. “But there were solid facts. The Spaniards had already arrived. They were called ghost men, greedy and grasping, forever hungry. And the creator or creators of the codex scorned the phonetic alphabet the Spaniards introduced. This codex is true to the Maya.”

“So you have a translation?” she asked.

“It’s in my book,” Philip said.

Lina glanced around the study. “Which one?”

“The one I’m writing.”

“I remember when you started it almost ten years ago,” she said, her mouth tightening. “The first thing you took for your ‘scholarly study’ was the jade pendant that is presently gathering dust in your study. Where is your manuscript?”

“In my head. You think I’d trust it on paper or in a computer where anyone could steal it?”

“In your head,” she repeated. “What about your notes?”

“You must think I’m as stupid as you are.” He tapped his head. “It’s in here, all of it.”

She slumped back against Hunter’s chest and asked, “Is it ever going to come out?”

“Not until I have enough proof that no one can question it, or me,” Philip snapped. “I’ll never be made to look the fool again.”

“Really?” Lina gestured to the empty box in the open vault. “Looks like someone fooled you but good.”

The reminder bled the heat of indignation out of Philip, leaving him hollow and pale again.

“Who else knew about the codex?” Hunter asked.

“No one.”

“Pull your head out of your butt,” Hunter said impatiently. “Someone else had to know. The jungle only
looks
empty. Who helped you get into the temple? Who watched you leave with a codex? Who knew you brought the codex here? Where did you get the climate-controlled box? Who helped you learn about the glyphs that baffled you? Somebody else knew. Somebody talked. Somebody always does.”

“They wouldn’t have betrayed me,” Philip said, shaking his head. “I have too much information.”

“Who?” Hunter asked.

Philip just shook his head.

Hunter abandoned the direct approach. He’d circle back to it in a few minutes, then go in and around and back again and again and again, until Philip forgot where he had been, where he had drawn lines, what he had said, and what he didn’t want to say.

“Was the vault open when you came in today?” Hunter asked.

“No.”

“Who else knows the combination?”

Philip’s eyes widened. “No one. Do you think I’m crazy?”

Hunter doubted the other man truly wanted the answer to that question.

“If no one knew the combination,” Hunter said, “how did the codex go missing?”

The older man blinked, confused. “Lina must have—”

“Try again,” Hunter cut in. “That dog don’t hunt.”

Philip floundered, then said, “Celia.”

“How?” Lina straightened. “You said no one else knew the combination.”

“I don’t know.” Philip said sullenly. “I don’t trust females and I never have. You’re taking her side. You always have.”

Hunter wondered if that pout had got Philip far with his parents, peers, or estranged wife. It sure looked ridiculous on a grown man.

From the expression on Lina’s face, it wasn’t working on her either.

“Where do you write down combinations, passwords, that sort of thing?” Hunter asked.

“Why would I tell you?” Philip asked, but his eyes flicked toward his desk.

Lina headed for it.

“What are you doing?” Philip demanded.

She didn’t bother to answer.

“When was the last time you saw the codex?” Hunter asked.

A blink, a frown, a confused shake of Philip’s head.

“Yesterday?” Hunter asked.

Silence.

“Look at me,” Hunter snarled.

Philip stiffened and started to argue. A glance at Hunter’s eyes changed the older man’s mind. Whatever Philip saw made him even more wan.

“When was the last time you saw the codex?” Hunter repeated, his voice much softer than his eyes.

“I…what day is today?”

“The twenty-first of December, 2012,” Lina said without looking up from her search through the desk’s belly drawer. “Abuelita’s birthday.”

“I know the year,” Philip said, contempt dripping.

“Good for you,” Hunter said. “The codex. When did you last see it?”

The older man frowned, trying to remember. “Three weeks ago. Maybe four.”

“Wow,” Lina said as she ran her fingers over the underside of the drawer. “You sure were working day and night on that translation.”

“You will show respect to—” Philip began.

“Why?” Hunter asked. “You sure as hell don’t respect her.”

“I’m her father!”

“Yeah. I have a hard time believing it. Makes me understand the whole idea of changelings and babies mixed at birth.”

“Fuck you!”

“Not even if you had tits,” Hunter said.

“Found it,” Lina said before the conversation could degenerate any further.

“Okay, so anyone with a brain and twenty-twenty vision could have found the combination,” Hunter said.

“My study is always locked.”

“Not a problem,” Hunter said. “I could get in without leaving a mark. Big locks don’t make a big difference.”

“You’re in this with her!”

Hunter told himself to be patient, he was dealing with a man under a lot of stress, a man who apparently hadn’t been too stable to begin with. He wondered if giving Philip another smack would settle his thoughts into more rational lines.

Doubt it.

But, damn, it’s tempting.

Reluctantly, Hunter let go of the idea. “Lina, when was the last time you were here?”

“End of July. Then I had to go back to Houston and prepare for my classes.”

“It was you,” Philip said almost desperately. “No one else could have understood the glyphs. You always thought you were better than—”

“If you accuse Lina again,” Hunter said, “I’ll turn you over my knee and spank your bony butt until you cry like your not-so-inner child. You hearing me?”

Philip’s mouth flattened, but he nodded, which proved what Hunter had begun to suspect. Philip wasn’t truly crazy. He just needed someone to remind him of his manners frequently—someone stronger than he was.

Hunter didn’t like the older man any better for the realization that Lina’s father was a bully with a side order of irrationality.

“When was the last time Celia was here?” Hunter asked.

Philip shrugged.

Lina walked over to stand at Hunter’s side. “She came in October. Abuelita was ill.”

Philip made a rude sound. “That crazy old bitch will live forever.”

Lina shook her head and wondered if her father had always been this self-absorbed or if being unable to translate the glyphs from the codex had rubbed him raw.
Or maybe he was just imagining the codex all along, a way to get back the academic respect he’d lost.

She didn’t know she had spoken the last thought aloud until Hunter caught Philip’s hand just before it landed on her face.

“You’re trying my patience,” Hunter said to Philip. “Now either fight me or put your hands in your pockets and grow up.”

Philip glared at the younger man. When it came to strength, whether of will or body, there was simply no contest. He didn’t like it, but he took it. He lowered his hands and shoved them in his pockets.

“It is good that you did not strike her,” said a voice from the doorway. “That would have displeased me.”

“Carlos?” Lina said.

He tilted his head in a gesture of respect. “It is time,
mi prima.
”

“What—”

“You have many questions,” Carlos said over her voice. “I will give you the answers.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

W
HAT’S GOING ON
?” L
INA DEMANDED THE INSTANT
the casita door shut behind them.

“Abuelita and Celia are waiting in my study,” Carlos said. “We will talk there.”

“But—” Lina began.

Carlos made a sharp motion with his head. “Patience,
mi prima
.”

It wasn’t a request.

Irritated, silent, Lina followed Carlos along the path of crushed limestone that led to the main house. The feel of Hunter’s hand resting at the small of her back was an anchor in the storm of questions and emotions seething inside her. She didn’t even notice the estate guards standing discreetly aside for them.