Three stacked-block columns were spaced throughout the room, holding up large slabs of stone overhead. Upon closer inspection, Quint saw cracks on several of the column blocks. He scanned the ceiling. They probably shouldn’t be up there. God, he wished Juan with his architectural expertise was at hand, doling out assurances that this ancient structure was stable enough to hold more weight.
Quint searched the room for any other signs of potential structural failure. Two corners contained piles of twigs and leaves and other jungle flotsam. The rodents must not have a problem with hanging out at this site, unlike the monkeys and other larger fauna.
When was the last time a human had stood in this room before today? There were no signs of looting that Quint could see, so had it been one of the last actual site inhabitants centuries ago? If this had been a prison, did they move the prisoners to another location before abandoning this place? Or sacrificed them all for rain and a good harvest?
“Parker,” Pedro called out from above. “You want me to come down there and give you some geese?”
Some geese?Oh, he meant “a goose.”
Quint grinned in spite of his pounding pulse. “Maybe, smartass.”
He eased over to the opposite wall where toe holds had been carved into the stone, acting as a ladder, and started upward. The second floor mirrored the first, although the rodents hadn’t bothered with the corners up here, settling for building their mounds in the middle of the room next to the columns.
He headed up the wall ladder to the third floor where Daisy and Pedro waited, but his steel-toed boots were too wide to fit into the carved-out holes near the top.
“Shit,” he muttered, unable to find enough of a ledge to hold his weight.
Pedro reached down through the hole. “Need a hand, Big Blue Bunyan?”
He didn’t bother correcting his rescuer. “Yep.”
A few seconds later he was topside, brushing off his pants. The sea of treetops made it impossible to see much detail below, shielding the wall in both directions beyond thirty feetor so from the ruins. Somewhere out there, Angélica was possibly slashing her way toward them, but he couldn’t see any signs of movement in the canopies.
“Are we sure this structure is stable?” he asked, even though he knew they had no idea.
“Not without Juan here to make that call,” Daisy said, joining him. “But the fall from here wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Unless a rock lands on my leg.” Or twenty of them.
Daisy waved him off. “You sound like Pedro when I dragged him up here. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I left it back home in my sock drawer.”
Pedro blew out a breath. “I could sure use an ice-coldcervezato appreciate this view better.”
“Make that two.” Quint peered down at the rubble remains below. They shouldn’t be up here. Something felt wrong about this place. The structure seemed secure, but he still didn’t make any quick moves as he extracted the camera from his pack and turned to Daisy. “Now, where are these trumpets you want photos of?”
She led him over to one of the partially collapsed walls. Stepping carefully through a scattering of white shell fragments in front of precariously stacked rocks, she pointed at the triangular cavity created by two larger chunks leaning against each other.
Following her lead, Quint squatted in front of the cavity. “Can you light it up inside there with your flashlight?” he asked as he made some adjustments to his camera settings to deal with the low light inside the shelter.
A clicking sound followed, and then the cavity was filled with light.
“Damn,” he whispered, staring at the two intact conch-shell trumpets sitting on top of a litter of white shell fragments and what looked like the thin, torn remains of some kind of animal hide. Daisy had blown off some of the layers of dust on the shells to expose a bunch of small glyphs etched into the side with a red pigment, which was probably made from hematite or ground cochineal insects. At least that was what he’d recently read about where red dye came from in Maya times. It was most likely hematite, based on the dark orange-red shade that was typical of iron ore rust.
He raised his camera. “Angélica is going to be happy as hell to see those glyphs.”
“Right? Finally, we have something besides caches full of weapons to show her.” Daisy’s excitement was evident in her higher tone. “I probably should’ve waited to come up here, but I just knew there was something waiting for us. Something special.”
Quint looked up from his camera, staring at her for a few beats. Had Marianne’s ghost had anything to do with showing Daisy the way to these two pieces? Or was this part of Daisy’s natural sleuthing abilities?
She smiled back. “When I saw these shells with all of the glyphs decorating them, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I haven’t come across anything so beautifully delicate that was still in one piece before. Those two pieces look like they’re straight out of a museum.”
He returned to his camera, easing sideways to get shots from another angle while doing his best not to bother the shell fragments in and out of the small alcove. He could have used his macro lens here, but he’d left it back in the tent, figuring his day would be full of machetes and sweat, not close-up photos.
“I wanted to make sure you got pictures in case some weird storm comes up and blows this structure down,” she explained when he sat back on his heels.
Quint paused in the midst of lowering his camera. That seemed like an odd reason. “You really think that could happen?”
