Look What the Wind Blew In (24 page)

“So.” She lifted a second rock, flipping it over, examining it for a moment. “When are you going to tell me why you’re really here?”

Whoa. She didn’t pull that punch. “We’ve been over this, Angélica. I’m here to write an article.”

“That’s partly true, I’m sure.” She lowered the stone to the ground. “But you’re hiding something from me.”

His poker face nearly cracked under her gunslinger glare. Jesus, she was something to behold. After their hot-blooded bout in the mess tent after lunch, this steely side of hers only made him itch to climb back in the ring for Round Two.

“I want the truth, Parker. All of—” She stopped, her attention shifting behind him. “Shit, here comes Lorenzo. Don’t move. I’m not done with you yet.”

The feeling was mutual, only Quint suspected she wasn’t thinking about getting naked while they finished.

He waited as she met Lorenzo halfway and pulled out a notepad from her back pocket. “I’m looking for the top part of this,” he heard her say, and then she showed Lorenzo something on the pad. The boy nodded, made his way carefully to the other side of the pile, and began going through it stone by stone.

Angélica returned to his side. “Where were we?”

“You were about to show me what I’m looking for here.” Maybe whatever she had in that little notebook would help him with those drawings he’d found in the back of Dr. Hughes’ journal. Quint pointed at the notebook she still held. “Let’s see it.”

Her expression guarded, she flipped open the notepad. “We have the bottom half of a glyph that put together should look something like this.” She showed him a rough sketch of two faces and a funky looking frog-like animal. “We need to find the top, and I think I remember seeing it in this pile last year.”

“Where do you want me to start?”

She picked up a rock the size of a ten-pound bag of flour and shoved it at him. “Right here.”

A half an hour later he peeled off his shirt and wrung it out. After a gulp of water, he surveyed their progress. They were a third of the way through the pile with nothing to show for their efforts yet. As he screwed the lid on the bottle, he heard Lorenzo cry out. He looked over to find Lorenzo cupping his hand.

“What happened?” Angélica was beside him in a flash. Quint joined them.

Lorenzo held up his hand. Quint winced when he got a good look at the boy’s fingers. Two of the four were bleeding under the nails, and a third had only the lower part of the nail left.

“
Ay, dios mio
.” Angélica pulled a Swiss army knife from her pocket, sliced the hem of her shirt, and ripped off a small strip of it. She gently took Lorenzo’s hand and wrapped his fingers with the cloth, then lifted his hand above his heart. “Keep that up high and go see Teodoro,” she told him in Spanish. At least that’s what Quint thought she’d said. His Spanish was still rusty.

His face etched with pain, Lorenzo nodded and headed off toward Teodoro’s hut.

Angélica watched him go. “Listen, Quint, if you want to pack it in for the day and go back to your tent—” She stopped mid-sentence when she turned to look at him, her eyes darkening as they drifted downward.

In the commotion with Lorenzo, he’d forgotten to put his shirt back on. “And miss out on doing more back-breaking work in this wonderful heat and humidity? I don’t think so.” There was no way he’d pass up this opportunity to spend time alone with her.

“You seem to have lost your shirt somewhere.”

“I have it right here.” He held up the sweat-soaked cotton.

“Ah, mystery solved. Good job, Magnum P.I. You should probably put it back on before you get burned.”

“You’re worried about me. I’m touched.”

“You are …” She appeared to be having trouble focusing north of his chin. “I am … uh …”

Trouble getting words out, too.

“You okay, Dr. García?”

“Yeah, sure.” She blinked several times, glancing away. “I think the heat is starting to get to me.”

“Maybe you should take off your shirt, too.”

Her gaze jerked back to his. “You are one cheeky man, Parker. Put your shirt on before you get eaten up by bugs.”

“Yes, boss lady.” He slid the wet shirt over his head with a grimace. Christ, he hated this fucking jungle.

“You could go get a dry one from your tent.”

“Nah. I don’t want to wake up Rover.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s sleeping in my tent.”

“He is?”

“I caught him sneaking in this afternoon.” Rover had been his uninvited guest earlier. “He’s pretty good with zippers.”

Her mouth gaped. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. I think that explains the chew marks on the broken zipper from my last tent.”

“And how he keeps escaping and ending up in María’s garden.”

“I fed him the snack pretzels they gave me on the plane ride down here. He inhaled them and then rolled under my cot and crashed.”

“I’m sorry about that. I’ll grab him after we’re finished.”

“Don’t worry about it. I like your javelina.” He liked her even more. Maybe she could come eat pretzels with him later and roll around on top of his cot.

No.

Slow down there, pilgrim.

He needed to tread carefully here. Before things could progress to more than kissing, he needed to tell her some of his secrets or risk her skinning him alive. But if he opted for full disclosure, she’d probably really kick him off the site—Jared’s prompting or not. Maybe if he helped her out with Jared’s blackmail, she’d be more open to the whole search for Dr. Hughes.

The silence between them grew heavy, awkward almost.

Quint searched for something lighthearted to say. “Shall we continue here with our game of Clue? My guess is the frog-faced glyph with the sword of Ra in the Owl Temple.”

“Ra is Egyptian and you know it,” she said with a huskiness in her voice. She picked up another stone and handed it to him. “So, what has my father told you?”

“What do you mean?” he purposely played dumb, frowning down at the carvings in the limestone.

“About Dr. Hughes?”

“Nothing much.”

“Baloney.”

He put the stone down, grabbed another one, and handed it to her. “Who do you think is behind the trouble you’ve been having?”

She took one look at it and shook her head, dropping the stone onto the grass. “I can’t think of anyone who’d have a grudge against any of us.”

“No ex-boyfriends or wanna-be stalkers of yours?”

She grinned, lifting another stone without replying.

“Nobody who’d be insanely jealous if some random photojournalist was to sweep you off your feet?”

“See, I knew you were here for some reason other than that article.” There was a jesting lilt in her tone.

“Guilty as charged.” Quint took the stone from her, enjoying the way her eyes twinkled when she teased. He flipped over a lichen-covered rock. “Hey,” he angled his head, taking a closer look. “I think we have a winner.”

“Let me see.” She stepped closer, her breast bumping against his arm repeatedly as she ran her hand across the stone’s surface, tracing carved lines.

“Angélica.”

“Yes?”

“If you don’t stop rubbing against me like that, I’m going to drop this stone and do something that will probably make you slap me.”

She stilled but didn’t step away. “Are you saying you’re up for a bit of slap and tickle this afternoon, Parker?”

Temptress!
“You’re making this hard.”

One of her eyebrows cocked upward. “Isn’t that how it works?”

“Now who’s being cheeky?”

“You’re right.” She put some space between them. “I’m also being very unprofessional.”

“I think we pretty much blew any last remnants of a professional relationship out of the water back in the mess tent.”

“True, but we should put a stop to what’s happening here before it becomes a problem.” She snorted. “Well, a bigger problem.”

“Yeah, but here’s the glitch in your plan—I can’t.” He put the rock down between them. “And neither can you.”

“We should at least try.”

“Why?” He knew why he shouldn’t let it go any further, but that wasn’t enough of a deterrent apparently.

“Because I don’t trust you yet, Quint.”

“So start.” What would it be like to have her trusting him? To have her look at him without suspicion?

“I have this dig to run.”

“I’m not stopping you.”

“We can’t be seen carousing in front of my crew.”

He grinned. “My ideas for you don’t include carousing.”

“My ex-husband is here.”

That made him pause. “Is that a problem for you?”

She rubbed her hand down the right side of her face, leaving a smudge of dirt on her cheek. “Kind of.”

“Why?”

“Because if I don’t make you leave, he’s going to stop my father’s funding for next year.”

An idea hit him out of the hot humid blue—a solution for her problem. “Angélica, would you be willing to make a deal with me if I take this problem with Jared off your hands?”

Her brow wrinkled. “Define the deal.”

“If I can get Steel to drop the blackmail, you help me with something that I don’t have the time or resources to figure out on my own.”

“What makes you think you can get Jared off my back?”

“I have an idea.” He held out his hand. “Deal?”

She hesitated before shaking on it. “Okay, it’s a deal.”

He resisted the urge to hang on to her hand longer than appropriate. “Good.”

“So, what is it you need to figure out?”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the folded drawing he’d traced from the back of Dr. Hughes’ journal. “Look at this.”

Flashing him a wary glance, she unfolded it. After staring at it for a couple of seconds, she let out a laugh. “This is it? This is all I have to do and you’ll save the day?”

He nodded, not sure what to make of her frivolity.

She handed the paper back to him. “They’re head variants—glyphs with animal or human faces. These were often used more commonly than the actual signs.”

Head variants? Why did Dr. Hughes sketch them in his journal? “So what are these two in particular?”

She pointed to the one on the left and then the other on the right. “The Sun god and Venus as they rise from the horizon at dawn.”

Quint frowned down at the paper. “That’s it?”

“Yes. Why? What were you expecting?”

He wadded up the drawing and stuffed it in his front pocket. “A bit more than that.”

“Where did you get them?”

“I saw them in the Temp …” He stopped, the lie catching on his tongue. He wanted Angélica’s trust. The only way to earn it would be with honesty. “They’re sketched in Dr. Hughes’ journal.”

Blotches of red stained her cheeks. “God damn it!” She shoved past Quint, stomping toward the tents.

“Hey,” he called after her. “What about this stone I found?”

“Take it to Fernando.” She didn’t break stride.

“Where are you going?”

“To torture my father.” She walked backwards, pointing at him. “You better hold up your end of the deal, Quint Parker, or I’m calling the
federales
and telling them to drag your ass back to the border!”

* * *

Someone screamed.

What was that?

Angélica sat up from where she’d fallen asleep at her desk, her eyes wide, every cell listening.

Shadows quivered in the soft lamplight, the tent canvas rustling in a breeze.

Her pencil lay motionless in her fingers, a line drifting off the paper from the last word she’d written before falling asleep.

Had it been a dream?

No, she’d heard something.

At least she thought she had.

What time was it? What day was it? Wednesday? Yeah, it had to be Wednesday. Where was Rover? Was he squealing in his sleep again?

She reached for her open water bottle.

A shout echoed through the camp, making her jerk in surprise. She bumped the bottle. It teetered like a bowling pin, and then fell off her desk. Water chugged out onto her tent floor, running toward the stack of research books she was using as a makeshift night stand.

“Dammit!” She grabbed the bottle and set it upright.

“Angélica, wake up!” Quint’s voice outside her tent made her jump anew, bumping the bottle, sending it tumbling again. This time she watered her notes instead of her books.

“Stupid bottle.” She scooped up the bottle and threw it across her tent.

“Angélica?”

“I’m coming!” She plucked a clean T-shirt from a pile María had left on her cot and threw it on her notes to sop up the mess. Then she unzipped the flap.

Quint hit her with a flashlight.

She winced in the brightness. “Let me guess, we have another problem.” She shoved him aside, stepping out into the early morning darkness. “At least I have my shoes on this time.”

“True.” His flashlight traveled south. “But you’re missing your shorts, Dr. García.”

She looked down. Sure enough. She’d gotten halfway undressed last night before getting distracted by something she’d remembered needing to jot down.

A squawk escaped from her mouth. Covering the front of her underwear with her hand, she made a mad dash into her tent.

Quint’s laughter followed her.

“It’s not funny,” she hissed, her whole body burning in mortification as she yanked on a pair of shorts.

“Were those tiny pink hearts?”

She joined him outside once again, avoiding his eyes.

“I’d ask you to be my Valentine,” he joked, “but all of my chocolate has melted in this damned heat and we’re fresh out of cupids last time I checked.”

Her stomach did a silly little flip-flop at his flirting. “Shut up, Parker.”

Another shout rang out.

Angélica recognized Teodoro’s voice. “Come on.” She caught Quint’s arm. “Let’s go see what’s going on.”

“I’m right behind you.”

They hustled toward the crew’s tents. The murmur of voices grew louder with every step. Outside of Diego’s tent, she saw a group of men huddled together, wild-eyed in the shadows. She stopped in front of the tent. “What is it?”

“
Chakan
,” Esteban said in Mayan. “It bit Diego,” he added, his voice reaching a high shrill.

“What did he say?” Quint asked, drawing up beside her.