Path of the Jaguar (17 page)

Frank's shoulders shook. Sounds of sobbing broke into the silence.

"Goldie's going to be fine," she comforted, her voice strange and unconvincing.

Heavy shoulders heaved. Abruptly as it had begun, the sobbing ceased. Lennea knew that tears were streaming down Frank's face, even though he had turned away from the light, and shadows prevented her from seeing them. "I just can't go in!" he cried.

•

Lennea opened the hospital door and came face to face with Joseph. She detested her reaction at seeing him—relief and joy, not any trace of fear or doubt.

A kindly warmth glowed in his dark eyes. His voice was gentle. "Sid told me everything." As he spoke, he reached out for her as if to transfer to her some of his strength. "You're all right, aren't you?"

As she looked up she glimpsed her image in the mirrors behind them, her blouse that hung sizes to big, her blonde hair, a damp tangle. She nodded in answer and started to tell him about Frank, but before any words tumbled out, Frank appeared.

Frank looked much worse in the bright light, worse, even, than Goldie. His clothes were soiled and wrinkled, his wiry hair matted down, stubbornly holding the shape of a hat no longer on his head. The round face was blotched with the same pale pink that rimmed his eyes, and he stared back at them as if unable to speak.

"I talked with both Sid and the doctor," Joseph said in the same quiet tone. "Goldie is definitely beyond any danger. She's in room 112."

"Wesley's very hard to find," Lennea defended him. "Even if Hern does decide to come, the drive will take hours. And," he paused to study her, "You're exhausted."

His close appraisal made her aware of fatigue, aware of a faint shaking in her legs. And now that he was here, he didn't frighten her at all; he was someone to lean on. She would not have to struggle with the rough road and the hard-to-manage jeep during the long miles to the LaTilla's. She would because of Joseph not have to face that empty seat stained with Goldie's blood. "I'm going to LaTilla's. I've got Frank's jeep."

"Let's take the car I've rented instead."

As they walked out into the darkness, Lennea said, "They almost killed her." The word they seemed to echo. Once again logic told her that Joseph was deeply involved in whatever was going on. And here she was trusting him, sharing her anguish.

She was aware of his great height, his reassuring arm around her. She allowed herself to be guided, to be consoled. "You can't imagine how I worry about you," he said.

The road Lennea had taken from the highway had been straight and direct; the route Joseph was taking was neither. One narrow street turned into another. "Are you lost?"

Joseph stepped down harder on the gas and skillfully maneuvered the car past a carriage and around another corner. Slightly confused, Lennea watched for some building she would recognize. After another sharp turn, he pulled up in front of the Hotel Guerrero.

"You were supposed to take me to LaTilla's!"

"I can't let you go back there. Not tonight." He paused, then his sharp voice rose demanding her attention. "You really don't understand, do you, Lennea? It wasn't Goldie they were after. It was you! I don't know why I ever allowed you to get mixed up in this! When I first met you, if I would have known that I'd put your life in danger..." He stopped quickly.

I? What was he saying? Joseph's face, protected by shadows, concealed his black eyes, still she could visualize their blazing. She could feel their intensity. "Lennea, you must stay here tonight for me! It's the only way I'll be certain that you are safe."

* * * * *

Chapter Thirteen

The day promised great excitement. At ten o'clock divers would begin their exploratory plunges into the deep, green depths of Wesley's well, or, as everyone had begun to refer to it, "Hern's Pool."

"Let's get someone to stay with Goldie today," Lennea urged. They had brought her home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. Though still pale and very tired, Frank's wife had spent the morning sitting up in bed, fretting about her choppy haircut. This, Lennea recognized as a definite improvement. She had no doubt that in a couple of days Goldie would be fluttering about the house again as cheerfully as ever. If only she could convince Frank.

"I can't leave her." Frank, still seated by the phone, told Lennea the same thing he had told Wesley a short time ago. "I can't trust her to anyone else's' care. Not for a while."

"But Dr. Lopez said—"

"I know what he said, but Goldie's not herself yet."

Lennea knew how much it would mean to Frank to be present today at the diving. She understood how hard it had been for him to turn down a special invitation from Wesley Hern. One final time she tried to persuade him, "Goldie would really enjoy a firsthand account from you."

"I'm going to stay right here with her," he repeated stubbornly. "I think I'll do a carving for her. She'd like that."

The house seemed empty and quiet without Goldie's constant chatter. Lennea felt a sense of loneliness as Frank and she gazed at each other.

Her thoughts of Goldie were interrupted by Frank's question, "Do you really think Delores left here to get married?" Lennea tried to avoid lying to him by framing a question of her own, "Why, don't you think she did?"

"Something bothers me about it. I think she's still in Merida."

Lennea could not hide her nervousness. "Why do you think that?"

"I know Sid so well, that's why. I think Sid knows where Delores is. He wasn't really buying that story about her flying home to get married, and Sid isn't all that worried about her." Frank paused. "That's not like him, is it? If you want my opinion, Sid has Delores hidden somewhere."

Frank put the call through, and Lennea listened dismally as Val, using almost the same words she had used during their last talk, told her Delores still had not contacted them.

"You see, I'm right." Frank reached for the receiver Lennea had just replaced. "Let's call the airport."

Lennea waited trying to read into Frank's heavy features the answer the ticket agent was giving him.

"No one by that name has purchased a ticket or has reserved any flight out." The receiver clicked dully into place. "You know, after what happened to Goldie, I'm really worried about Delores. Something just may have happened to her, too."

Lennea left the house, much too early, she knew. If she went directly to well, she would have nothing to do except wait for Wesley and the diving crew to appear. She would take this extra time to be alone, to sort out her thoughts.

She stopped at Chichen Itza. No tourists were around this early in the morning. The great pyramid, stones golden in rays of sunlight, dominated the scene ahead. She remembered the way the huge temple had looked during the Sound and Light Show, with the serpent appearing in a rush of blinding color. Such a glorious structure.

As she neared the pyramid, she recalled a lecture Wesley had given back in the States. "The carbon-dated wooden beams tell us the year was 1204. One pyramid was built upon another whose date was near 400 AD." Ninety-one steps on each of the four sides, ninety-one to represent the days of each season.

The gate beneath the front steps of the pyramid was open, but no attendant stood guarding the inside entrance. Because Lennea needed something to occupy her thoughts and because she had always wanted to go inside the pyramid, she entered the narrow tunnel, where endless steps would reach upward toward the center. She knew from Wesley's lectures what she would see at the end of all the steps—two priceless, Mayan relics—one, a chac-mool, very similar in size and weight to the one that rested on the top of the Temple of the Warriors, upon which human sacrifices had for many centuries been made. The other relic would be a jaguar of similar size, painted a bright red and green.

Lennea began laboriously ascending one steep step after another. It was one experience to climb to the top of a pyramid; another to be deep inside of one. Bulbs spaced along the ceiling lighted the way and caused the rocks to glisten. How airless, how stuffy it must be when the crowds crammed inside—rows of people ahead, rows behind, with barely room to pass in the straight up-and-down passageway. The slippery steps were dangerous, and there was no handrail. Moisture seemed to emanate from the rocks. Lennea's skin, too, seemed wet and clammy.

The solidity of the inside caused a feeling of total aloneness, a complete separation from the rest of the world. Although closed-in spaces seldom bothered her, she felt her throat tighten up. The walls ahead grew narrow, and she knew the tunnel led to no exit on the other side.

Lennea hurried. She wanted most of all to see the jaguar, that ruler of darkness and death, entombed for centuries beneath tons of rock.

The sound of a footstep, far behind, yet loud in the awful stillness, caused her to stop and look back. As far as she could see, the passageway was empty, filled only with shadows cast from the bulbs overhead. Fearfully Lennea wondered why she had ever entered here alone.

She waited. Again she heard the scrape of foot against rock. It might be only some early visitor, or the attendant, worried that someone had entered in his absence.

Lennea didn't relish the thought of encountering anyone in this narrow passageway. She began racing toward the top, not sure of what she would find there, but certain she would soon be faced with a dead-end, rock wall.

She was convinced that someone—that Mayan man—had followed her purposefully. She would be trapped at the top. Defenseless. An image of his dark, broad face appeared to her. She pictured him as he had looked peering thought the tiny window of the hospital door, his face distorted by the thick glass.

At the top she might find some loose rock to use as a weapon. Here the stones were so tightly set that the tunnel looked as if it had been hewn through solid rock.

Ahead, just ahead, was a level—perhaps ten feet by four. And for her, the end of the line. Iron bars protected the two, great statues. In her haste, her footsteps slipped. She fell, catching herself by gripping cold stone, groaning a little from the sharp pain where the rock hit her knee.

Lennea raised her eyes to the buff-colored chac-mool and past it to the crude jaguar. A great, heavy head with four huge teeth protruding from the gaping jaws. Green eyes, ugly, frightening, stared at her through the dimness.

Lennea scampered to her feet, whirling back, knowing she could do nothing else but meet whoever was behind her face to face.

The man, when he appeared, looked more terrible to her than the jaguar. His large head set directly on husky shoulders. As many times as she had caught him spying on her, following her, she had not seen him look quite so formidable. The huge, Mayan nose, the jaw, set and humorless, the black eyes, as cold as the blank eyes of the stone jaguar.

His clothes were dark, as they had been when she had seen him at Hotel Guerrero. Hotel Guerrero, the name kept echoing in her mind.

"Why are you following me?" Lennea's voice, choked and distant, demanded. "Who are you?

Slowly, he moved upward until he stood with her on the flat space in front of the relics. No taller than she, but he was stout, immensely strong.

"What do you want from me?"

"You don't need to be afraid." His voice was deep, clipped, heavy with accent. "I'm the one most likely to protect you."

Lennea stepped backward. She could feel the coldness of the iron bars through her thin blouse. "Protect me from what?"

When he didn't answer, she asked, "Who are you working for?"

Upon close range his face looked rugged, marred. Deep lines cut across the broad forehead, deep lines slanted downward from the wide, expressionless eyes. A sharp frown caused the lines to tighten. "You are involved in a very dangerous situation."

"I'm involved in nothing. I'm Wesley Hern's assistant professor. I came here to study." She stopped, gasping a little for breath. "Now, who are you?"

"Don't lie to me. I'm certain you've been communicating with her. And you can be just as certain that I'm going to find her!"

Lennea reacted to the threat apparent in his sudden movement toward her. She evaded with deft swiftness his grasp, bolted ahead of him toward the only means of escape, the treacherous, downward steps.