Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

CHAPTER NINE

LINA SAT IN HER OFFICE, LOOKING OUT AT THE HAZY AFTERNOON. She felt like she was sixteen again, waiting for the phone, willing it to ring.

Unlike when she had been sixteen, it actually rang. She grabbed it.

“Hello,” she said.

“It’s Philip,” her father’s voice said. “What do you want?”

“Are you still in Belize?” she asked, ignoring his curt greeting. Nothing personal, just the way he was.

“No. I’m at the estate, getting ready to work a new site. What’s this nonsense about another scandal?”

Briskly Lina put herself in the proper frame of mind to deal with her father. He was a man of extremely limited interests and less ability to deal with people, especially his family. He simply didn’t know how to express affection.

“There are rumors of a group of artifacts reaching the marketplace,” Lina said carefully. It was hard to keep Hunter’s secret and still get information. “Has Celia mentioned them to you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. She hides artifacts from me.”

“The descriptions I received point to artifacts that could relate to the cult of Kawa’il. Have you heard anything?”

“Damn de la Poole!”

Lina added the missing parts of the conversation and winced. “The artifacts weren’t connected with Mercurio.”

“Then they don’t concern me.”

“What about looters on Reyes Balam lands?” she asked, as blunt as her father.

“They wouldn’t dare. Carlos and I feed all the villages on our land and they protect my sites.”

“Then you haven’t heard any rumors of sensational artifacts appearing on the market?”

“No. Is that all?”

“Yes.”

The connection ended.

Lina wasn’t surprised. Philip was infamous for his curt conversations. Once she had dreamed of being important to her father, if only through her own ability to interpret texts he simply lacked the gut-sensitivity to understand. Then she’d grown up and accepted her parents for what they were—brilliant in their work, indifferent as parents.

A knock on her locked office door and Hunter’s voice saying “You in there, Lina?” made her heart kick. The man who had blackmailed her had shown her more respect than her parents ever had.

More approval, too.

“Yes,” she said. “Let me get the lock.”

“Jase Beaumont is with me.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Beaumont,” Lina said as she unlocked the door.

“Same goes, Dr. Taylor.” Jase shook her hand and gave her an easy smile.

Hunter locked the door behind him. His glance went over Lina like a man who had been cold and finally was standing close to a fire.

She felt stroked.

Feeling a blush darken her cheeks, she looked away from Hunter to Jase. He was shorter than Hunter, with dark chocolate eyes and bittersweet-chocolate hair. His skin was the kind of brown than went deeper than a tan. A gold wedding band gleamed on his left hand. Both men were freshly showered, their clothes clean, and their eyes weary. She took a folding chair from behind the door and placed it next to the visitor’s chair across from her desk.

“Sit down,” she said. “I’ve got half a pot of coffee if you’re interested.”

“Thanks,” Jase said.

“Black,” Hunter said. “I’ll get it.”

Lina waved him off and started pouring coffee into mugs that held the museum logo. “If you want something to eat, the cafeteria is still open.”

Jase and Hunter exchanged a look. After what they had seen, they didn’t feel particularly hungry. Or clean, despite showers hot enough to burn.

“We’re good,” Hunter said to Lina. All he really wanted from her was a kiss to drive out the basement’s deadly cold. He wished he had the right to simply go to her, hold her, feel her living warmth. “Do you have a sketch pad and a pencil?”

She smiled. “That’s like asking if I’ve worked on digs.”

She opened a desk drawer and pulled out a sketchbook, plus three grades of pencils, and handed them to Hunter.

He caught her hand and the pencils, holding her, breathing her in, eyes half closed. Her swiftly inhaled breath told him she liked it. Slowly he took the pad and pencils, drinking her warmth through his fingertips.

Jase gave Hunter a sideways look that told him he could feel the heat.

“Thanks,” Hunter said to her, his voice deep. Forcing himself to focus on something other than his blunt hunger for Lina, he opened the pad and flipped past sketches of glyphs and artifacts—some of which he recognized—until he found an empty page. As he began to sketch, he asked, “Have you made any progress on your end of the artifact chase?”

“No.” She leaned against her desk for the simple reason that her knees wanted to shake. The hunger she’d felt radiating from him was more complex than plain old sex. “When I mention new artifacts, everyone wants to buy them but nobody has them. My father, who has been on a dig in Belize, hasn’t heard anything. Mercurio de la Poole, who is the only other recognized expert on the cult of Kawa’il, was coy. He wouldn’t say anything unless I was there in person.”

“Do you think he has them?” Jase asked instantly.

“I don’t know,” Lina said. “Mercurio has no particular motivation. His museum is run by the state of Quintana Roo with money from the Mexican federal government and artifacts from Reyes Balam land channeled through state and federal governments. He has his own digs in Belize, where he has found some indications of the cult of Kawa’il. Since the government funds him, if he had your missing artifacts he would study them, publish, and take his bows.”

“How well do you know him?” Jase asked.

“Quite well. He and my father worked together for years. I spent summers, vacations, and every moment I could beg from Celia on the digs where Philip and Mercurio were.”

“How did de la Poole and your father get along?” Jase asked.

“Nobody ‘gets along’ with Philip,” Lina said. “You just go along and understand that he won’t ever change. All you can do is control your own response to him.”

Hunter heard what she didn’t say, the child hoping and trying and always failing to find approval. My uncles would love her to death, he thought. So would his mother, if she hadn’t been killed by a hit-and-run driver in a crosswalk ten years ago. His father had been with her. He had lived a day in ICU. Then he died of his injuries.

“So you don’t think de la Poole stole the artifacts from your father,” Jase said, “for revenge, professional jealousy, plain old spite?”

“If Mercurio had done that, Philip would have tracked him down, cornered him, and taken the artifacts back.”

“But you don’t think that’s likely,” Jase said.

“Nope.”

“Describe Philip in three words,” Hunter said without looking up from the sketch pad. He didn’t trust himself to. He wanted to hold Lina so much he ached.

“Curt, obsessive, brilliant,” Lina said.

“Mercurio?” Hunter asked, needing to know, yet his voice was neutral.

“Charming, ambitious, very smart.”

Hunter relaxed. There was nothing particularly affectionate in her voice.

“That’s why I don’t think he has the artifacts,” Lina added. “He can’t publish them, can’t display them, can’t sell them. They’re of no use to his ambitions and he’s smart enough to know it.”

“Your mother?” Hunter asked, still not looking up.

“Gorgeous, shrewd, formidable businesswoman.”

Hunter sketched, listening to what was said and what wasn’t. Her words told him that her childhood hadn’t exactly overflowed with love and approval. He heard respect, understanding, and little else. He wanted to ask whether she enjoyed or avoided her mother and father, but Lina’s emotions had no bearing on finding the artifacts, so he kept quiet and let Jase work.

“How about your mother’s competition in the artifact sales game?” Jase asked.

“They’re all variations on Celia’s theme. Few have her connections when it comes to accessing legitimate Yucatec artifacts from the end of the Maya rule and the continuation of Maya life under the Spanish rule, so Celia’s pretty much at the top of her heap.”

“Where does she get her artifacts?”

“Reyes Balam lands. Family lands.”

“So your father’s digs are on private land.”

“With the full blessing of the Mexican state and federal governments,” Lina said.

“Did your family buy the land because of the ancient ruins?” Jase asked.

“No. The family lands are from the time before the Spanish came.”

“How’d you keep them?” Jase asked curiously. “Damn few natives did.”

“The Balam family was among the first Maya nobility to accept the Spanish rule and sign formal treaties with the Spanish king,” Lina said. “In return, the Balams were granted a good chunk of the Yucatan and a Spanish noble title. Thus the Reyes Balam line began.”

“Your ancestors were Maya royalty,” Jase said. “Wow. Should I bow?”

“Only if my mother was here. And she would tell you about the minor Spanish royalty who married into the Balam family to exploit New World wealth.” Lina’s voice was wry. “As for me, I really don’t care. I’m American.”

“Huh. I’m a mix of Spanish, indio, Irish, and Japanese,” Jase said. “But I sure ain’t no royal.”

“Neither am I,” Lina said.

“Japanese?” Hunter said. “I never knew that.”

“My grandfather was half Japanese. By the time it got to me, it didn’t show.”

“It does in your sister,” Hunter said, remembering. “Beautiful almond-shaped eyes.”

“But they’re blue,” said Jase.

“It’s the shape that matters,” Hunter retorted.

Lina felt some of the tightness flow out of her, and only then realized that both men had been humming like high-tension wires when they walked in. She wondered what had happened. Maybe Hunter would tell her later…if she could get him alone.

Or maybe they’d do more interesting things.

He’s almost a blackmailer, she told herself.

So what? herself snapped back.

“Do you think your mother’s competition has the artifacts?” Jase asked.

“If they did,” Lina said, “Celia wouldn’t have come to me asking about them.”

“Not even to throw you off the scent?”

Lina paused, considering. “Celia can be manipulative as the devil, but she doesn’t treat her family that way. Whatever she’s feeling about family, she’s in-your-face about it. Certainly with Philip and me. Carlos, too.”

“Who’s Carlos?” Jase asked.

“Mi primo,” Lina said. “Americans would say second cousin.”

“Also royalty, huh?” Jase asked with a smile.

“Carlos Porfirio Chel Balam,” she said. “And proud of it. He’s an international businessman of Mexican citizenship, but he never forgets his royal Maya heritage.”

“Powerful family you come from,” Jase said, meaning it.

Lina shrugged. “On paper. These days, ‘nobility’ puts tortillas and beans on the table by working just like real people.”

Jase grinned, liking her. “I’ve met some who don’t look at it that way.”

“So have I. That’s why I’m in America and they aren’t.”

“Can you tell us about this Kawa’il cult?” Jase asked, thinking of the basement he and Hunter had seen that morning. But it seemed a little more distant now. Bearable.

“As you would expect of a transitional religion—” Lina began.

“Transitional?” Jase interrupted.

“End of Maya rule, beginning of Spanish,” Hunter said without looking up from whatever he was sketching.

“Gotcha,” Jase said. He smiled at Lina. “Sorry for the interruption. I’m a cop, not a scholar.”

Lina smiled back. “Ask whatever and whenever you want. It’s how we both learn.”

“That’s why you’re a good teacher,” Hunter said. “You know that learning flows both ways.”

She enjoyed the warmth going through her at Hunter’s offhand compliment entirely too much. She shifted against the desk, trying to fit into skin that felt a little too tight.

“The end of any culture through war is a violent time,” Lina said, her voice husky, her eyes on Hunter, not Jase. “The cult of Kawa’il reflected that. He was a god of blood sacrifice and death. If my interpretations of the glyphs associated with him are correct, Kawa’il communicated exclusively through blood and sacred smoke.”

“Didn’t all the Maya?” Jase asked.

“It’s a matter of degree,” Lina said, looking at him. “Some gods are appeased with corn pollen, flowers, liquor, jade objects, food, that sort of thing. Kawa’il demanded more blood and sacrifice than other gods. Apparently a great deal more. I suspect that nobles who survived the ongoing war with the Spanish and the anger of their own people were in high demand as, er, conduits to Kawa’il.”

Hunter’s pencil paused.

Lina saw his bleak expression, and Jase’s, and hurried to explain. “Keep in mind that it was a horrible time for the Maya. War, subjugation, disease, their already declining civilization in pieces around them. They must have been desperate to know the minds of their gods, to understand why such calamities had come.”

Jase nodded. “So this Kawa’il ruled?”

“Only after the Spanish conquest, that we know of, and only in a very small part of Maya territory. On Reyes Balam land in Quintana Roo and government land in Belize. The presence of a god Kawa’il isn’t accepted by most of the academic community. My father has spent his life trying to prove it.”

“What do you think of the artifacts you saw in the photos?” Jase said.

“My gut says Kawa’il. My mind needs proof.”

“How about this?” Hunter asked, handing her the sketch pad.

Lina looked at the surprisingly good rendition of a jaguar altar, but it was the second sketch that drew a quick breath from her.

Hunter waited, savoring the scent of her and the warmth of her breasts swaying so close to him that if he moved his hand just a few inches…

“How big was the first artifact you sketched?” Lina asked.

Hunter forced himself to focus on the drawing rather than her tempting breasts. “The table was big enough to hold a man. From where and in what condition we found it, the table was associated with…rituals.”

“An altar, then. Was there a channel to allow blood to run off into a Chacmool?”

“The light wasn’t good enough to tell,” Hunter said.

“Where did you see this?” Lina asked.

“The other side of town,” Jase said. “One of the barrios.”

His voice caressed the Spanish word in a way that told her he was fluent in the language, perhaps had been raised speaking it. Not unusual along the Mexican-American border.

“Is it Kawa’il?” Jase asked, touching the edge of the drawing.

“It could be. It certainly is patterned after sacrificial altars of the time just before the Spanish came.” She frowned. “You said a basement. Is the altar in private hands?”

“Not anymore,” Jase said. “We arrested the gangbangers on murder and drug charges. The table will be entered as evidence and stored in someone’s evidence warehouse.”

“Could I see it?”

“If necessary,” Jase said.

“You don’t want to,” Hunter said at the same time.

“Why?” Lina asked, looking at Hunter.

“Let’s just say it seemed to be a bloody active altar.”

Lina’s eyes narrowed. “Sacrifice?”

“Oh yeah,” Jase said.

“Lots,” Hunter said.

“Human,” Lina said. It wasn’t a question.

“We’ll know for sure when the tests come back,” Jase said. “But judging from the shape of the body I saw and what I’ve heard since…yeah, human. Past tense.”

“You believe the altar was used at least once,” she said to Jase.

“Every time I get a text message, the count goes up.”

Hunter said something bleak under his breath and changed the subject, wanting to spare Lina the nightmare of that basement.

“One of the men arrested had tats like a brightly scaled snake winding up his arms. No head in sight,” Hunter added.

“Is that usual?” Lina asked.

“Never seen it before,” Hunter said.

“Me neither,” Jase said. “Snake seemed to be the chief badass in charge. The rest of them had the usual jailhouse-gangbanger tats.”

“The Maya had a scaled serpent associated with the gods, but not specifically with Kawa’il,” Lina said slowly. “Except, once again, in a very small territory.”

“Reyes Balam lands?” Hunter asked.

She nodded, hugging herself as though chilled. With an effort she forced her mind toward academic knowledge rather than the kind that shadowed Jase’s and Hunter’s eyes. It was one thing to study texts on ancient blood sacrifice. It was horrifying to hear about it happening in her own time and place.

Hunter gave Jase the sketchbook and pencils. Gently Hunter’s big hands closed over Lina’s arms, rubbing up and down, sharing warmth as though he understood the chill of violence sliding over her skin.

“Sorry.” She gave him an unsettled smile. “I don’t think of myself as being in an ivory tower, but to sacrifice people without the context of societal and religious approval is just…sick. Seriously sick. No meaning except depravity.”

“Don’t apologize for your reaction,” Jase said. “Cops exist to keep the criminally sick from the average healthy citizen. So ignore the whack jobs and tell me about Maya and snakes.”

Lina drew a deep breath. “Normally my sensitivity to cultural nuance is very useful in my studies. This time, not so much.” She took another deep breath. “So, snakes and Maya. Usually the serpent was a generalized sacred symbol connecting the underworld with the overworld. The snake was often drawn as smoke or having wings, perhaps both. Why a modern gangbanger would choose the sacred snake over a more recognized Western symbol—such as skull and bones—is a question for a psychiatrist to answer. I can’t.”

Carefully Hunter eased his hands away from Lina. The temptation to pull her onto his lap for some serious cuddling was simply too great.

“I can tell you that the jaguar was the exclusive province of Maya royalty,” she added. “Your altar was modeled after ancient Maya royal practices.”

Jase’s thick eyebrows rose. “Huh. Snake dude didn’t seem real royal to me.”

“You’re assuming he was the one using the table,” Hunter said. “I’d bet he was more palace guard than king.”

“If we get lucky, his snaky fingerprints are all over that altar,” Jase said.

“Oh, I think Snakeman is more than capable of murdering people just because he can,” Hunter said. “But he didn’t strike me as the religious type, old or new.” He took back the sketchbook and pointed to the second drawing. “What about this?”

Lina hadn’t been looking forward to that question. The jaguar altar could have come from a relatively large number of sites. But the mask…

“It depends on your interpretation of the symbols around the mask,” she said.

“It’s stone,” Hunter said. “Couldn’t tell what kind. Too dark. It could even have been cement. Bigger than life by about twice.”

“If the artifact is only a tenth as well done as the sketch, I doubt that it’s made of cement,” Lina said.

“Was that a compliment?” Jase asked, looking at Hunter with a sly smile.

“Truth,” Lina said to Hunter. “You should be an artist.”

He looked bemused. “Pay sucks.”

“If you could take the Yucatan jungle, you’d be real useful on a dig,” she said.

Jase laughed. “Ma’am, Hunter spends half his time in Mexico, on back roads or worse.”

She looked at Hunter as though seeing him for the first time. “Really.”

He tapped the second drawing. “Let’s stay on topic.”

Visibly, Lina thought over whether to accept the change of subject. When she did, Hunter suspected he’d be hearing more about art later. That was okay. He’d be glad to get naked and talk about whatever she wanted.

At length.

Depth, too.

“This looks like an elaborate stone mask,” she said. “The crown or whatever is unusual, more like stylized sun rays or something shining from or through the mask. It reminds me of…”

“What?” Hunter asked.

“Come with me. I have a piece of wood I want you to look at.”

Jase made a choking sound and looked sideways at Hunter’s lap.

Hunter flipped him off.

But he was grateful for the walk through the museum’s maze, because his pants fit better at the end of the stroll than at the beginning.

Gotta get my mind off sex, Hunter told himself, watching Lina’s prim and proper body striding ahead of him. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. The lady has an outstanding ass. Perfect for my hands, perfect for my—

Stop thinking about it.

Quickly Lina walked toward a room that held special, temporary cases—locked, controlled for temperature and humidity. Every step of the way she told herself that she was imagining the waves of sexual heat coming off Hunter. Her outfit was a simple dark pantsuit, nothing clingy, nothing feminine, no peekaboo tease, nothing to make her feel like Hunter’s glance was caressing her hips.

What is it about that man? He makes me feel…odd. Fizzy.

Sexy.

Try stupid, she advised herself. He’s the one who’s sexy, not me. And he’s the next thing to a blackmailer, remember?

She remembered, she just didn’t care. Maybe her previously unsuspected bad-girl self was coming out to play.

Automatically Lina punched in her code, held the door for the men to enter the room, and made sure the door locked again.

The door opened into a room flooded with cool, blue-white light. The illumination was indirect, bounced from hidden lights, with no obvious source. Inside a transparent, humidity-controlled case, a sheet of very dark red wood rested on a stark white sheet. The wood was perhaps twenty inches long, two-thirds as wide, and appeared to be the top of a sacred box that had once held a god bundle.

Each time Lina saw the artifact, it took her breath and set her mind on fire. There was something richly organic and alive about the wood, as if it might flow right out of the case into a Maya priest’s smoke dreams. A crack ran across the lower third of the artifact, a new break that told of a missing wedge of wood.

Hunter looked from the dark wood to Lina’s face. The distance between this room and the bloody evil of the basement was so great he had a hard time holding it in his mind. Belatedly he realized Lina was talking.

“Then we’ll verify the age by several kinds of analysis,” Lina said. She looked at him. “Hunter?”

“Sorry. The contrast between this museum room and that barrio basement…” He shook his head

She put her hand on his arm. “The job you and Jase do must be nearly impossible.”

“One of the reasons I’m no longer with ICE,” Hunter agreed, putting his hand over hers.

Jase looked from one to the other and felt invisible. He had always accepted Hunter’s differences—especially his intense awareness of things most other people didn’t notice—but every so often Jase was reminded all over again. Like now. He had a sense of what Lina and Hunter were talking about, yet he didn’t quite understand it.

But they certainly did. Even Jase could feel the sexual energy between them. It made him think about going home and nibbling on his wife. All over.

Lina cleared her throat and turned to the artifact case and the oddly radiant wood, taking refuge in professionalism. It was either that or start undressing Hunter with more than her mind.

“After I saw your photos,” she said, “I reviewed every bit of private and published research on the Kawa’il cult. When I found nothing to explain most of your artifacts, I looked for reasons why someone might create counterfeits. Only a few people in the world care enough to go to those lengths. My father does, but he couldn’t. It’s not a matter of professional standards so much as creating those artifacts would take an act of imagination that he simply isn’t capable of.”

She looked at Hunter, trying to see if he understood.

He nodded. “What about Mercurio?”

“Possible, of course. But impossible to keep secret. Take the mask in your photo,” she said. “Even today, creating that from a piece of obsidian would take artisans of enormous sophistication a very long time to complete. No matter where you find those people, they will have friends, associates, competitors, whatever. Over time, that number of people can’t keep a secret. If the piece is machined, rather than handmade, the ‘secret’ is out as soon as someone who knows what they’re doing examines it under a microscope.”

“In other words, why bother?” Hunter said.

“Exactly. To me, that mask looks even more sophisticated than Aztec mask work, which is considered by many to be the zenith of the art.”

“Anything else?” Hunter asked.

“Your mask glowed and reflected like a smoking mirror, which is one interpretation of glyphs associated with priests of Kawa’il.”

Hunter whistled tunelessly. “And Kawa’il is a god of death. Then and now.”

“It makes a whacked sort of sense,” Jase said. “Cartels are always looking for an edge in the fear department. Living human sacrifices made to a god of death are scarier than the narco’s Santa Muerte cult with its ghosts and groans.”

“That’s a travesty of the original intention of sacrifice, literally to be made holy,” she said. “In the past, the ritual was an act of awe and reverence, a way to communicate with the gods, with the very structure of the Maya universe. Look at this piece of wood. Look with your mind and emotions as well as your eyes and experience.”

Jase and Hunter leaned closer, but it was Hunter’s warmth she felt.

“This”—Lina traced the glyphs in the wood, not quite touching the case itself—“is the radiance of the gods and their wisdom shared, brought to the Maya by a priest-king-god who climbed up from the earth wearing a mask like a smoking mirror, his very breath the exhalation of gods.”

Hunter’s eyes narrowed. He followed her words, her finger, her voice describing a sacrament rather than the barbarism of the basement in a crumbling stucco house.

“The carving is of dream serpents,” Lina said. “See the delicate tracery of individual feathers on the mouths of the beasts? The carver didn’t see these creatures as monsters in the modern sense of the word. They were guardians, keepers of knowledge that was sometimes bestowed upon the wise, the brave, the worthy.”

Jase grunted. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Hunter didn’t look up from the case. Lina’s voice curled around him, sank into him like smoke, like dreams.

“The central image,” Lina said softly, almost reverently, “shows a human figure emerging from the fanged mouth of a huge serpent. The man is astride its jaws, forcing it open from within. Instead of being consumed by the knowledge, he is escaping with it, returning to his people to share the teachings of the gods.”

Hunter unfocused his eyes just slightly, imagined light from fire rather than electricity…and felt his skin ripple in primal response.

“Now look below the escaping man,” she said, her voice low. “Look where his face is watching. His mouth is open and he’s speaking.”

With a frown, Jase tried to see Lina’s words in the artifact. He looked sideways at Hunter. His friend was rapt, intent, a predator scenting game.

“See the masked figure?” she asked, tapping lightly on the case over the glyph. “He is himself emerging from the ground like a flower, legs as roots in the soil below. He seems to be looking up. His face is covered in an elaborate and—to modern eyes—terrifying mask, with something like wings flaring out from the sides, displaying fantastic feathers. There is even a marking that seems to indicate light coming from this mask, subtle rays, almost like a reflection.”

“Is it the mask shining?” Hunter asked. “Or is something shining on him?”

“Professionally, I can’t be certain.”

“What about your instincts?”

She hesitated, then said, “I think the mask is made of something reflective.”

“Gold?” Jase asked instantly.

“Not even silver,” she said. “Wrong time, wrong place, wrong material. In fact, the more I look at it, the more I believe it represents something translucent enough to be shining from within.” She laughed. “Never mind. That’s my fancy, not my training. The point is, I think the wood might have originally been carved in Tulum, near our estates. There’s something about the style of the glyphs.”

“Where did you get it?” Jase asked.

“On loan from Mexico’s Museum of Anthropology. We’re dating it.”

Silently Hunter studied the piece, then tapped lightly on the case. “What is this? The man the snake is swallowing?”

“I think that figure emerging from the snake is handing his bestowed wisdom to the figure below,” she said. “My guess is it’s a priest of Kawa’il passing something to man.”

“The man with the mask and his feet in the underworld?” he asked, shifting his position, watching the wood.

“Yes. Look between the figures, where the wood is cracked.” She indicated a place where there was a wedge of wood missing, but pointed at a spot on the high side of it. “If you study this area, you can see the hint of something. Like a section of zigzag line.”

“So?” Jase asked.

“It’s not a glyph I recognize—too many straight lines. But it seems to represent something being passed from one side to another. Those kinds of transactions only go one way,” she said. “Gods to man.”

“The break looks very recent,” Hunter said. “The wood along the edges hasn’t had time to age. Did you use it for dating?”

“You have a good eye,” she said. “No, we didn’t—wouldn’t—break the wood. It came to us in that condition.”

Slowly Hunter nodded. “Wonder what’s on the missing piece.”

“Whatever was passing from the priest-king to his people,” she said. “Probably instructions on how to perform certain rituals.”

“Verbal?” he asked.

“Not according to the narrative I see. No smoke coming from his mouth or any common sign of speech.”

“Moses and the stone tablets,” Hunter murmured. “Could he be passing on written commands? Like a codex?”

“It would have to be one that postdates Bishop Landa, after the Spanish conquest.”

“Surviving that would be worth commemorating,” Hunter said.

Silently he and Lina stared at the wooden piece, awed by something Jase didn’t see.

“Okay. Shining mask and all the rest,” Jase said. “How does this get us closer to finding the artifacts?”

Lina frowned. “I guess it doesn’t. Not directly. I’m just trying to give you an idea of how profoundly rare something like the mask is. If the other artifacts you’re looking for were associated with the mask, then it’s the equivalent of someone sacking a great church and stealing the most sacred of religious objects.”

“Makes sense, if you’re trying to get a new religion off the ground,” Hunter said.

“Are you talking about another Maya revolt, like in the twentieth century?” she asked. “That didn’t end well for the natives.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time blood, politics, and religion mixed it up.” He turned to Jase. “I haven’t heard about anything beyond the usual millennial garbage. Have you?”

“I have a friend or two in Special Investigations. If this is real, it’d be special. I’ll make some calls.”

Lina looked at her watch. “I think Mr. Beaumont—”

“Jase,” he cut in.

“—Jase, needs to understand what’s available on the high end of the Maya artifact market in Houston today,” she said. “Without that understanding, it’s easy to miss something important.”

Jase grunted. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Sometimes knowledge is emotional,” Lina said. “I’m not always with you. And frankly, you have no particular feel for the artifacts you’re chasing. They transcend the word special.”

“She’s got you there,” Hunter said.

Jase sighed but didn’t argue. He looked at Lina. “I don’t have time to get a Ph.D. You got a quick fix in mind?”

“Sort of. Pre-Columbian Dreams is open. It’s a gallery just across from Shandy’s.”

“Legitimate?” Jase asked. “The gallery, not the restaurant.”

Lina shrugged. “The owner says she can provide papers for anything in the front or back of the gallery.”

“Is the ink dry?” Hunter asked.

“So far, so good.”

Jase smiled. “Sounds like an interesting place.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Lina said quickly. “I have an academic prejudice against places that sell artifacts, but there has never been a verified incident of anything illegal in Pre-Columbian Dreams.”

“Gotcha,” Jase said. “I’ll leave the cuffs in the car.”

“Drop Lina and me off at the apartment so I can pick up my Jeep,” Hunter said. “I’ll take her out to Shandy’s after we see the gallery.”

“The lack of an invitation to dinner with you is making me bleed,” Jase said.

“You have a hot meal waiting for you at home.”

Jase’s smile widened. “And I’m a man with a real big hunger. Let’s do this gallery so I can get on home and…eat.”