“I don’t know.” She turned the map ninety degrees and cocked her head in the other direction. “There’s something…” She shook her head. “I’m missing something, I just don’t know what it is.”
He squatted next to her and picked up a sheaf of papers. A photograph of Mayan hieroglyphs carved into stone was on top. Each page underneath appeared to be different sections of the same carving until he reached the last page, which showed the whole stone.
Shane picked up the LIDAR imagery and compared it to the picture of the carvings. “Huh. They’re the same.”
“What?” Kinley asked.
“The ruins and this carving are laid out in the same pattern.” He held the pages side-by-side. “See?”
“Oh my god.” She dropped her notebook. “Oh my god!” Taking both of the pages, she plopped down on her ass and crossed her legs. “How did I not see that before?”
“Too close to it,” he said. “Sometimes you need to back away or get a fresh pair of eyes on it.”
She looked at him with a huge smile, her eyes bright and happy. He might actually give up his car if it meant seeing that look again. Kinley dropped the pages and lunged at him, taking him down with her exuberance.
Clasping the sides of his head, she pressed her mouth to his. She probably only meant it to be a quick thank you kiss, but as soon as he felt her lips, Shane got carried away again.
His arms wrapped around her waist and back and he plunged his tongue into her mouth. A moment’s hesitation, then she groaned while circling her tongue around his. Shane’s hand slid down her ass, his fingers dipping between her cheeks.
Her legs fell to the sides of his hips and she rocked against him. Only the loud growl of a howler monkey brought him back to reality.
“Fuck.” He let his arms flop away and dropped his head into the dirt.
Her head pressed against his breastbone. “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she said.
“I know. It was my fault—I got carried away.” He stared up at the thick canopy. The only thing that would make this moment worse was if that monkey shit on his face.
She pushed off him, back to her seated position. “I didn’t exactly protest or tell you the middle of the jungle floor wasn’t the place for a quickie.”
Shane heaved up and smirked. “Probably didn’t think trouser snake was something you had to look out for, huh?”
Kinley blinked at him and rolled her eyes, but he saw her fighting a smile.
“All right, show me what got you so hot and bothered,” he said.
“Right.” She pulled the sides of her ponytail. “You’re right—the Lago Azul text and the city are laid out in the exact same pattern. Which might be one of the reasons so many scholars had a hard time deciphering the text since it couldn’t be read in the normal way.” She tilted her head side to side. “But that also means my translation is likely incorrect.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“Well, I based my translation on the accepted method of reading classic Mayan text, making allowances for it not being in the standard columns, but if the layout of the text matches the layout of the city, I probably missed something.”
“Like what?”
“Like…I don’t know. Take this symbol for instance. This part of the symbol means sun.” She circled the lower right corner of the square glyph with her finger. “This is what I was talking about before. With these two symbols added to it, I think it changes the meaning to enlightenment not sun, but it could really just mean sun.”
Shane pulled his knees up and rested his arms on them, clasping his hands together. He had no idea what she was talking about and yet he was fascinated—and not just with watching her lips move.
“Okay. Why is that important?”
Kinley shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. It probably isn’t. It’s probably another calendar foretelling the apocalypse.” She lifted her head. “We should go back. This was silly. I have no idea what I’m doing or what I’m talking about.”
He hated seeing the doubt in her eyes. She tried to hide it, but he saw the shimmer of tears as well. Taking her hand in his, he threaded his fingers through hers. “If that’s what you want to do, that’s what we’ll do. It’s still early—we can make it back to Flores before dinner.”
She gave him a small smile and looked back at her notebook. A small furrow appeared between her brows while her gaze darted between the imagery and the picture of the text. She looked up at the sky, then back down at the map. Slipping her hand from his, she pointed to her left.
“East, right?”
“Yes,” he said.
