Paulo shrugged and handed it back. “You can find these all over Mexico.” He turned and went back to where he’d been standing in the shade with Tomás.
Mateo quickly set something else in his palm. A tiny golden frog with emerald eyes glinted in the sunlight. It was magnificent.
Abby sucked in a breath.
“Nice. Put it away, and we’ll take a closer look tonight.”
Mateo stuffed the golden frog back in the pocket of his jeans, and they returned to work.
Another hour passed before Gage’s shovel hit something solid. Abby came over to see what it was, and they cleared away the vegetation to expose what looked like an old cellar door.
Anticipation coursed through him. He and Mateo lifted the heavy wooden door, which was still intact, possibly added at a later date. They gathered their backpacks and put on their headlamps. The light shined down a set of rock stairs leading underground to storage rooms beneath the kitchen.
The floor above the chamber was still in good enough condition to keep out the rain. Except for a puddle here and there, the room was dry and empty, though a couple of rotting wooden crates and a stack of broken tiles stood in one corner.
“What’s that?” Abby started toward what looked like something carved into the wall.
“Get back!” Gage gripped her arm and hauled her back against him.
“Oh, my God!”
His arm tightened around her. “Boa constrictors, a whole nest of them.”
“They’re . . . they’re huge.” Six to nine feet long, with thick, muscular bodies, at least five of them wound around each other in a massive ball of patterned skin and flicking tongues.
Mateo shined his light past the snakes to the panel behind them.
“It’s a stone relief,” Gage said. “Let’s get rid of the snakes and take a look.”
“Get rid of them,” Abby repeated. “How?”
Just then Paulo appeared at the top of the stairs, shining his flashlight into the darkness.
“Over to your right,” Gage said to him.
The flashlight moved in that direction. “Dios mio!”
“Want to give us a hand?”
“I do not like snakes.” He made the sign of the cross. “I think I leave this problem to you.” He ducked out of the chamber.
Gage grinned at Mateo. “I don’t see anyone but you and me. They aren’t venomous, but they can be deadly if they manage to wrap themselves around you.” He looked at Mateo. “You game?”
Mateo shrugged. “I guess we must do this.”
Gage eased Abby out of the way. It took a while, but working together, one of them holding the heads, trying to avoid a vicious bite, the other holding the thick, thrashing tails, they managed to clear the chamber.
Moving the snakes, which were pure muscle, some of them weighing over thirty pounds, was not an easy task. They carried them, writhing and squirming, into the forest and released them, scattering cartel men, who gave them a very wide berth.
Gage and Mateo returned to the chamber, where Abby was already at work on the stone relief.
She pointed to the center of the panel. “I recognize this figure from a picture Clay Reynolds once showed me. It’s the Snake King. Kaanul Dynasty. Their power extended all the way down to Honduras.”
He thought of the nest of constrictors. “Definitely fitting.”
“That’s about all I know. We were just making conversation.”
The thought of Abby with Reynolds sent a jolt of heat to the back of his neck. He remembered the day Reynolds had come to see her, remembered his own jealousy, how he’d taken Abby bent over his desk. He wished they were somewhere he could claim her again.
