“There’s no semi-sweet here.” He touched his chest over his heart. “I’m 100 percent nectariferous.”
“What’s that word mean?” Raul asked.
She chuckled. “That he’s full of crapola.”
“It means I’m extra sweet inside and out,” Quint told the ranger. “Andcrapolais not a Spanish word, boss lady.”
“That’s twenty points for using another big word, Junior Mint,” Juan hollered above the repetitive “rrrk” croaks of a pair of keel-billed toucans calling back and forth to each other nearby. “And ten points for correctinggatitaon her misuse of her second language.”
“You’re full of crapola, too, Dad.” She smiled at Quint. “You also have that adorable dimple on your one side, heartbreaker, just like the candy.”
Quint’s eyelids lowered, flirting. “And which side would that be?”
“Don’t answer that,gatita,” her father said. “Neither Bronko nor I want to hear your reply.”
Raul stared at Quint, looking him up and down. “I see no dimple.”
“He keeps it hidden,” Angélica explained, stuffing her handkerchief back in her pocket.
“It’s a shy dimple,” Quint told Raul. “I show it to the boss, but only when she asks nicely.”
“¡Ay, chihuahua!”Her father’s loud groan had an extra dollop of drama mixed in. “I had to share a tent with these two lovebirds at the last dig site,” he explained to Bronko, who Angélica heard grunt in reply.
“Like you could hear anything over the sounds of your own snoring, Dad.” She returned to Quint and the business at hand, pointing at his notebook. “Be sure to add that without proving the LIDAR data’s trustworthiness via ground proofing, other professionals will question the reliability of it.”
He followed in line, returning to the page. “Got it.”
“Believe me,” she continued, “you don’t want to put anything out in the archaeology world without solid, ground-proofed data.”
Her mother had learned that the hard way, although Marianne had offered proof to other scholars. What she’d provided, though, wasn’t good enough for the archaeology world at that time.
“There are plenty of pretentious assholes with over-inflated egos and career-hungry agendas who will rip you to shreds.” Even after her mother’s death, sadly enough, which had just made Angélica even more determined to make them eat crow.
“Gatita, you’ve been chewing on that bitter root for too long. Spit it out already.”
“Not until I show those bastards the error of their ways.”
“Next, you’ll be comparing your mother’s hecklers to those king vultures that have been circling over our heads all morning.”
Quint closed his notebook, staring at her for a couple of beats with what looked like concern lining his eyes before turning his attention skyward. “Why are those vultures circling? Do they know something we don’t about our future? Or is that some kind of sign from the Maya gods?”
She followed his lead, peering up through the holes in the forest canopy at the blue sky overhead. Where there’d been four king vultures earlier, now there were five. One more had joined the wake while she’d been telling Quint about ground truthing.
“Sí, it is a sign,” Raul said.
“Of course it is.” Quint stuffed his field notebook in the side pocket of his canvas pants. “You can’t throw a stick around Mayaruins without hitting some kind of mythological sign of life, death, or something in between that involves rain or corn.”
“I meant a sign that something is dead.” Raul returned to chopping through the large tangle of thick vines dangling from a strangler fig that was trying to take root. “Laaguadais not far from here, remember. Life and death battles often happen around watering holes.”
Nodding, Quint uncapped his canteen. “Reminds me of some of the bars back home.”
“Those vultures are a warning sign, you know,” Juan called to them, sounding closer than before.
Angélica flexed her hand a couple of times before gripping her machete again. “Not a warning, Dad. Just scavengers looking for their next meal.”
“You say that, but you know as well as I do what the vulture represents in the Maya tradition,gatita.”
“What’s a vulture mean?” Quint asked before taking a drink of water.
