Burial Ground (4 page)

Leo had heard more than enough. He turned
and stormed out of the room.

Someone had stabbed his son in the back and
disposed of his body in the river.

Now it was time to do something about
it.

Glenwood Cemetery

Houston, Texas

October 21
^st

10:25 a.m. CDT

Marcus Colton passed like a ghost through
the somber gathering, a faceless mourner amid the tearful women and
stoic men. The day was gray, the branches on the weeping cypress
trees brown. Only the manicured lawn and shrubs provided a
background of color for the marble and slate headstones and crypts,
most of which were draped with moss. A procession of limousines
idled at the bottom of the gentle slope, beyond which he could see
the hint of Buffalo Bayou. Somewhere nearby was the final resting
place of Howard Hughes.

The funeral director stood at the head of
the grave on an elevated platform, hands clasped behind his back,
bible on the lectern before him. He was in the middle of reciting
the standard speech about eternal souls and lives prematurely
extinguished. The polished oak casket hovered over the hidden hole
beneath it, enclosed by a cage of red velvet ropes.

A woman sobbed to his right and drew several
consolatory pats on the shoulder. In the race for sympathy, she
trailed only the man sitting in the front row, a man that he knew
needed none.

Colton skirted the periphery of the
gathering and vanished behind the branches of a cypress. Gearhardt
didn't acknowledge his arrival. He just stared straight ahead
through his Serengeti sunglasses, his face stripped of all emotion.
Only the clenched muscles in his jaws suggested that he was
suffering, and not as a symptom of sorrow.

Colton studied the scene as he waited,
memorizing faces and attaching names to those he recognized. His
dark hair was cropped military short, his acute gray eyes hidden
behind black lenses. His suit matched every other. He looked like
anyone else, everyone else. Forgettable.

When the funeral director finally finished
speaking, Gearhardt rose and cast what appeared to be a snarl of
dead weeds onto the casket, ran his fingers along the smooth grain,
and walked away from the gathering. He wound a circuitous route
through the maze of ornate headstones and joined Colton beneath the
sagging branches.

Colton didn't offer his condolences. Empty
platitudes changed nothing. Instead, he waited patiently for his
sometimes employer to speak. He had done enough jobs for Gearhardt
in the past to know how the man worked. Gearhardt was in charge,
but he allowed Colton autonomy over the operation itself. It was a
rare combination, and Colton respected him all the more for it.
Over the course of the past two decades, they had combined for more
than a dozen successful reclamation projects, all of which had gone
off without a hitch. There were always complications, but Colton
was in the business of providing solutions, none of which came
cheap. The mere fact that Gearhardt had called him first spoke
volumes about the situation.

"I trust you found my offer satisfactory,"
Gearhardt said.

"As always." Colton allowed the silence to
linger between them, interrupted only by the distant din of voices
and the whistle of dove wings.

"You have reservations."

"I'm not exactly sure what you expect from
me on this one. On the surface, it's a straight locate-and-excavate
job, with maybe a few more bureaucratic hoops to jump through to
secure the land lease, but when you factor in your boy's death, I
have to wonder if the assignment isn't of a more personal
nature."

"Have you ever known me to be sentimental in
business matters?"

"No."

"Then give me your assessment."

"The Medical Examiner's report clearly
states that Hunter's death was by drowning, and while there were
two large puncture wounds in his back, they weren't necessarily
dealt with the intent to kill. With easy access to guns and
machetes, an assault with a hook seems highly unlikely and reflects
none of the traits of a crime of passion. If the men you sent with
him had wanted him dead, his body would never have been found. Not
in that jungle. And his associates were well screened. In my
opinion, none of them are capable of the kind of treachery you
suspect."

"That kind of wealth can alter anyone's
behavior patterns."

"True. However, in this case I find it hard
to believe. I've thoroughly reviewed their dossiers and see nothing
that would imply the potential for subterfuge, let alone
violence."

"Then we're in agreement. They're all
dead."

Colton nodded slowly. Gearhardt surprised
him with his cool reasoning, especially under the
circumstances.

"I've been giving this a lot of thought,"
Gearhardt said. "Initially, given the sheer amount of money we're
dealing with here, I suspected some sort of conspiracy. But the
more I step back and rationalize the situation, the more I believe
that external forces contributed to my son's death, and the
probable deaths of the rest of his expedition party."

"What do you propose?"

"I'm not quite sure, which is why I
contacted you."

"The location is inherently rife with
variables. There are countless species of venomous snakes and
insects. That high in the cloud forest, the weather is notoriously
unpredictable. They found his body in a seasonal river only after
it had receded far enough to strand his body. And then there's the
human factor. There are still indigenous tribes hidden in the
Andes, isolated groups that might not take too kindly to any
unheralded intrusion. And you can't discount the potential
involvement of the Peruvian government. If word of your party's
destination and what might be hidden there somehow leaked, there
could be soldiers crawling all over the site. Then there are
diseases we don't even know about yet, and for most we do, there
are no inoculations. Any of hundreds of factors could have
ultimately contributed to their deaths."

"I understand the overall scenario. I want
to know what your gut tells you."

Colton pondered his answer carefully. With
so many variables, anything could have happened. The idea of
soldiers and natives didn't feel plausible. The Ejército del Perú,
the Peruvian Army, would most certainly have mowed them down with
automatic weapons and made sure their bodies were never recovered,
and with their intimate knowledge of the Amazonas region, the
natives would never have allowed the party to reach its goal in the
first place if they'd felt threatened. So what
was
he
thinking? Disease? Hunter's body had been cleared of viral and
bacterial pathogens by the CDC itself. What did that leave? He
hated to vocalize the words that came out of his mouth next, but he
could see no other response.

"I don't know."

"And that's what troubles me, too."

Colton paused and watched the mourners
disperse from the gravesite and pile into the waiting limousines.
The sun peeked through the cloud cover, but vanished as quickly as
it had appeared.

"I want to show you something," Gearhardt
said. He reached into his jacket pocket, removed a folded
handkerchief, and held it in his open palm. "These were with my
son's possessions. They found them in his backpack."

Colton accepted the proffered handkerchief
and felt the weight of its contents, or rather the lack thereof. He
unfolded the fabric and studied the objects for a long moment
before he looked up to find Gearhardt staring intently at him.

"I don't get it. Are these supposed to mean
something to me?"

"I was hoping they would. They definitely
meant something to Hunter, and for whatever reason he thought they
were important enough to make sure he packed them in his hurry to
flee the camp. We're dealing with a vast wilderness consisting of
thousands of square miles of the harshest unmapped and unexplored
terrain in the world. They're obviously a clue of some kind, but to
what? The location? Or something else?"

Colton inspected the objects a while longer,
then refolded the handkerchief over them.

"I have to admit, you've piqued my
curiosity. However, it remains to be seen if you truly require the
kind of dynamic solutions I provide."

Gearhardt nodded, but Colton sensed his
hesitation.

"What are you holding back?" Colton asked.
He returned the handkerchief, which disappeared into Gearhardt's
pocket again.

"I have two stipulations."

"You know that's not how I work."

"Humor me, Marcus."

Colton licked his lips and tilted his face
to the slight breeze. The smell of flowers and turned earth washed
over him. There was something in the air, something intangible,
something that constricted his intestines and fluttered in his
stomach. It was a sensation to which he was entirely unaccustomed.
He lowered his eyes to meet Gearhardt's and raised an eyebrow.

"I want this entire expedition documented,"
Gearhardt said. "Camera crews, various experts, the whole nine
yards."

"You do remember that your son was stabbed
twice in the back, right?"

"How could I forget?"

"If you want me to babysit a bunch of
civilians under potentially dangerous conditions, you're going to
have to double your offer. I expect four million and a
twenty-percent stake."

"Done."

"And your second condition?"

"I'm going with you."

Turlington Hall

University of Florida

Gainesville, Florida

October 22
^nd

3:03 p.m. EDT

Dr. Samantha Carson leaned back in her desk
chair and sighed. Twin stacks of essay tests dominated the blotter
in front of her computer monitor. She should have made the exam
multiple choice and keyed the Scantron. That way she would have
already been done and sitting comfortably on her couch at home with
a glass of wine and the new Danielle Steel novel, her guilty
pleasure. Instead, she could only stare at the heaps of paper with
their scribbled chicken scratch and dread the daunting task
ahead.

Normally, she would have already been
cruising through them, but the news of Hunter's death had hit her
like a truck. Granted, she'd only seen him a handful of times over
the past five years, but they'd practically grown up together.
While other children had been firmly rooted in their nuclear
families and living normal lives, she and Hunter had been toted
around the world by their parents like baggage, which wasn't to say
their childhoods had been terrible, only...different. They had lived
for months at a time in tents and haphazardly assembled Quonset
huts in some of the least hospitable locales, playing in jungles
rather than on jungle gyms, in the most remote regions of the world
rather than in safe little cul-de-sacs. For a long time it had felt
normal. It wasn't until she began to develop her own identity and
discovered the need for friends and an actual sense of belonging
that she realized what she was missing. Hunter had been a brother
to her in every way but genetically. It just hadn't been enough for
her, and she had jumped at the opportunity to matriculate at one of
the most prestigious private prep schools in the country. Hunter
had stayed with his parents, but they had always spent holidays and
breaks together, and she had looked forward to every minute of
it.

And now he was gone.

Sam had promised herself she would make more
of an effort to stay in contact, but since her parents passed---her
father from esophageal cancer and her mother from the resultant
loneliness of a broken heart---she had buried herself in her work and
held life at arm's reach. Her professorship was demanding. As
co-chair of the paleoanthropology department, she was charged with
securing funding and negotiating site leases in addition to the
everyday tasks of teaching undergraduate anthropology and
graduate-level studies in Indigenous South American Cultures. Throw
in the responsibility of being one of the world's foremost experts
on the Chachapoya culture, and it was a rigorous schedule that
dominated nearly every free second of her time, which forced out
all of the things she had originally abandoned the life her parents
had given her to pursue. In the end, as the adage goes, she had
become just like them, an isolated relic in the modern world doing
everything in her power to live in the past.

Sam turned away from her desk and looked out
over the commons. Young men and women with their entire lives ahead
of them bustled between classes, milled around bike racks, tossed
Frisbees and kicked hacky sacks. Here she was, barely thirty-three
years-old with a tenured academic post, a leader in her field, and
it saddened her that she couldn't identify with any of them.

There was a knock on her office door,
followed by the slight squeak of hinges. It was about time her
teaching assistant showed up. There were still the next morning's
lesson plans to formalize, and she wanted to discuss a couple of
changes in the---

"You look just like your mother." She
recognized the voice immediately and whirled to face her visitor.
"She had those same little freckles under her eyes."

Leo offered an almost paternal smile. He
hovered in the doorway for a few seconds before entering the room
and closing the door behind him. He gestured to one of the chairs
on the opposite side of the desk. "May I?"

Sam could only nod. She hadn't seen this
face from her childhood in years, and other than a few more
wrinkles around his eyes, he didn't appear to have aged at all.
After a moment, she noticed her mouth was hanging open and felt the
need to say something.

"I'm so sorry to hear about Hunter. You know
how much I loved him."

Leo's smile grew weary. "I had always hoped
that you two would end up together. You had so much in common, and
you made a good team, you know?"