At the sound of Quint’s voice, Angélica looked up from her notes. Notes that were sketchy at best. More like scribbles smudged by multiple eraser marks with several crossed-out sections on paper dotted by damp spots from drops of sweat.
“I’m in here, Romeo,” she called out, trying to be heard over the nightly rumbles and screeches from the jungle surrounding the field camp.
Ziiiiippp.
The canvas door flapped open. Quint stepped inside the communications tent with a towel draped over his shoulder. His hair was wet and spiky. Beneath his unbuttoned shirt, his chest glistened in the lamplight. Her gaze dipped southward.
“You forgot your pants,” she said, admiring his long muscled legs below his black boxer briefs. The hiking boots added a grin-coaxing final touch to his post-shower ensemble.
“It’s too hot for pants.” He turned and zipped the flap closed behind him.
He was right. The humidity tonight weighed extra heavy thanks to a light downpour before suppertime. Instead of cooling off the land, the rain had the same effect as dumping water on steaming sauna rocks. Great for the pores, but tough on paper and patience, both of which she was short at this site.
Hell, just sitting still had Angélica overheating. The small battery-operated fan Pedro had offered to try to keep her from dripping onto her pages while she worked felt more like a steady blast of hot breath on her face.
Working inside a somewhat sealed-up tent filled with portablesolar-powered batteries, a couple of laptops, two satellite phones, and other electronics wasn’t helping matters. The machines added even more heat to the sweltering night, fueling wishful daydreams about her climate-controlled lab back at INAH’s office in Cancun. She was supposed to be coming up with educated observations and brilliant theories concerning today’s finds, dammit. If only she could find a freezer and stick her head inside of it for a few minutes to stop her brain from liquefying any further.
“Jesus, it’s hotter than Hell’s armpit in here,” Quint said, hanging his towel on one of the tent pole hooks. “You should probably take off your pants, too.”
“I need them to soak up the sweat running down my back so I don’t create a puddle and short out the camp batteries.”
“Ohh, how swexy,” he said with a grin. “Get it? Sweaty and sexy? I need to tell your dad that word. Maybe he’ll give me another ten points in the game you say you’re not playing, yet I think under that tough boss lady exterior you are still in the game because you hate to lose.”
“I loathe losing.” Which was why she wanted to step outside at the moment and howl along with the damned monkeys. Instead, she tossed her pencil onto the table and pushed her notebook away in disgust.
“What’s wrong, Juliet?” Quint took the stool next to her, leaning back against the worktable, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “You want me to take your mind off the temperature with a sonnet about how pretty you’d look while making snow angels?”
“God, what I wouldn’t do for a dip in a cold pool.”
“I’d suggest we go skinny dipping in theaguada, but I prefer to keep my fishing rod and tackle nibble-free.”
She smirked. “Do you now?”
He winked at her. “Well, I make exceptions for beautiful mermaids and one particular sexy archaeologist.”
She sighed. “Now I’ll have to kill any mermaids I come across. I wonder if their tails taste like mahi-mahi. Hey, doesn’t drinking mermaid blood bring good luck?”
“Or was it a longer life?”
“I’d rather have the luck. Maybe then I could petition Lady Luck for a bigger brain so I could makesense of all this shit.”
His forehead pinched. “By ‘shit,’ do you mean the artifacts found at the site today, or that charcoal version of a Jackson Pollock abstract painting sitting in front of you?”
She pointed toward the curled-edged paper in front of her. It was a stone rubbing of one of the blocks lining the stairwell next to Structure II. Unfortunately, due to limited time because of the incoming storm, Esteban hadn’t been able to give the attention to detail he usually did when it came to charcoal rubbings.
Still, she’d hoped the papers, along with the photos Quint had taken of the conch-shell trumpets, would give her some ideas as to the purpose of this place. Maybe even a hint of an answer to whether it was indeed a religious site or rather a prison, a notion that several of her crew were leaning toward—including the guy sitting next to her.
Quint picked up the charcoal rubbing, staring down at it for several seconds. “Maybe if you cross your eyes and turn it sideways …” He did just that, making her smile. “Nope, that doesn’t work. Am I looking at it upside down?” He turned the paper again, closing one eye. “Oh, I see it now. It’s an alligator with an iguana on its back floating in anaguada.”
She chuckled, taking the paper from him to look at it again. Same as him, she closed one eye. “Yep, now I see it, too. I should have consulted the camp’s mermaid-loving photojournalist sooner.”
“Damned right, boss lady. You can pay me for my expertise with kisses. Lots of them. I’m easy.”
“Yes, you are, and I really like that about you.” She dropped the paper back on the table. “Now, if you could just read what the glyphs say on those conch-shell trumpets, we can call it a night and maybe sneak some of those kisses in while my dad’s snoring away.”
“I would if I could, hot stuff.” He fanned himself. “What glyphs have you been able to decipher so far?”
“Only one.”
