“Giddy up, Romeo.” She pointed at her dad. “You, too. This batch is better than Teodoro’s last. A little hotter on the skin, especially around the mouth if you’re not careful.” She grimaced, pausing to wipe her lips with her shirt collar. “But the repellent part is working like magic.” She gave two thumbs-up, although her grimace was still in place.
“I don’t know,gatita.” Juan yawned. “Last time, whatever was in that stuff made my earlobes swell up as big as cow bells.”
She snorted. “Like I told you then, Dad, your earlobes were normal size. You were just hallucinating.”
“I was having visions because of that goop.”
“Yeah, but your so-called visions only lasted for an hour. Besides, Teodoro swore to me that he changed the formula to reduce the chance of hallucinatory side effects.”
The squint Juan shot her said plenty about his trust in Teodoro’s newest concoction.
Quint tugged on her pant leg. “What’s the plan for tomorrow, boss lady?”
“We wake at dawn and start ground truthing using the map made with the old LIDAR data.” She rubbed her hands together. “I added info from Mom’s notes to the site map, but there wasn’t much there drawing wise. Most of what she’d heard about this place was gleaned from eavesdropping at functions and reading research papers about nearby sites. There aren’t many details on this site because nobody has dug here before.”
“Nobodyever?” Juan asked, sounding skeptical. “How can you be sure?”
“At least not on record,” she amended. “Two different archaeologists came looking for it decades ago, according to INAH’s files. They usedchiclerosas their guides, but either they weren’t impressed enough to come back for a closer look, or they didn’t find anything that was interesting enough to get them funding for a more thorough search.”
“Dr. Angélica,” KuTu called out from over by the communications tent.
When she looked his way, the guard waved for her to come over. “I’ll be right back,” she said to them.
“Actually,” Juan said, rising from the chair, “I’m going to go to my hammock. We have a long day tomorrow and I have a feeling there won’t be much time for a midday siesta.” He started limping toward his meager quarters, but then paused and turned back. “Where’s that spicy goop you want me to put on?”
“I already put it on your hammock, Dad. Remember not to touch your mouth or eyes after you use it.” As her father walked away, she looked down at Quint. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you going to keep sitting here by the fire writing a laundry list of all of the reasons you hate the jungle in your notebook?”
Quint froze.Shit!Busted.
“Or are you going to your hammock?”
He glanced up at her, but she was frowning toward the trees, clearly focused on something else. Whew! She must have been teasing him. Still, her spot-on guesswork was a reminder that he needed to keep working on smiling more and cursing less while she was around.
“It’s too dark to write.” He swatted away another mosquito. “I think I’ll follow in your dad’s footsteps.”
She held out her hand to help him up. “If you want, I’ll stop by your hammock as soon as Dad finishes with the spicy goop and give you a quick rubdown.”
Quint chuckled as she tugged him upright. “You know just how to sweet talk me up onto the rocks, siren.”
“Come on, smartass.” She led the way toward the two neighboring zip-up hammocks where they’d be spending the night, squeezing his arm lightly before she veered off to where Raul alongwith KuTu now stood waiting for her under the makeshift tarp shelter.
Quint quickly shed his shirt and pants, tossing them over the rope clothesline slung between his and Angélica’s hammock. He hurried inside his hammock, using his backpack as a pillow.
He’d just killed the last of the mosquitoes that had snuck in with him when he heard the sound of crackling leaves and snapping twigs. He shined his light out through the mesh lining.
Angélica shielded her eyes. “I have the goop,” she said loud enough to be heard over the high-pitched songs of the millions of cockroaches, crickets, and whatever other insects were out there partying hard in the night air.
What he wouldn’t do to have a cloud of bats stop by the campsite for a nightcap.
“The goop?” He lowered the flashlight. “That sounds like some kind of new funky jungle disease. Will it turn me into a long-lost amphibious missing link with green gills and big red fish lips?”
“All the better for kissing you, Parker, but theCreature from the Black Lagoonwas about an Amazon swamp monster. You have the wrong jungle.”
“Maybe, but like that lonely green boy, I am very enamored with the beautiful head scientist.”
