“Sure. I was just hoping to keep things to myself a little longer and figure out the purpose behind this site before showing my ineptitude.”
He lightly bumped her knee with his. “You can’t know everything, boss lady.”
“If I want to hold onto my job, I need to know enough, though.”
She stared at the glyphs on the screen for several seconds, trying to think in spite of the heat. Why would she not recognize the glyphs? What if … Oh!
“I have another theory,” she said, fanning her T-shirt. “But I’mhesitant to say it out loud.”
“Lay it on me, woman. This is a safe space.”
“Please, Parker. You’re as dangerous as they come,” she teased, but he really was, especially to her heart.
“And you’re stalling. What’s your theory?”
“There is the possibility that this isn’t Mayan writing.”
His brow lined. “Who else’s writing could it be?”
“A civilization that pre-dated the Maya.”
“Like the Olmecs?”
“Or earlier. We’ve touched on this before. Things like weapons and language are often adopted by later cultures, blurring the edges between civilizations.”
“Not Mayan, huh? That’s an exciting possibility.” When she frowned at him, his smile faded. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes, overall, I guess. It’s just not what I expected at this site.” She grabbed her canteen. “So far nothing is as I’d expected. Not the layout, not the artifacts found in the caches, and certainly not that damned wall. If this place was a religious site, it’s not like anything I’ve heard of or read about before. At least not for the Maya civilization.”
Quint sat forward and tapped a button to enlarge the image on the screen. “Here’s a thought—could the glyphs be some secret Mayan code language?”
She paused with her canteen midway to her lips. “A secret code language?”
“Yeah, let me explain before you laugh me out of the tent.”
“No laughing or judging here from the heroine inyourstory. I’m all ears.” She took a drink of water while she waited.
“We know Site 5 had either some sort of military function or defensive purpose due to the weapons caches we keep finding and the guard tower where the conch-shell trumpets had been stored.”
She still tended toward religion being part of the site’s purpose, but kept quiet out of curiosity. Quint often thought outside of the box, something her mother had been good at doing even in the face of her dad’s eye-rolling.
“During warfare,” he continued, “it’s not uncommon for a code language to be used so the enemy can’t listen in on plans. You’ve heard about the Navajo code talkers in World War II and how theirsecret code was used to share vital information and relay wartime communication, right?”
“Of course.”
“What if the glyphs written on that shell are code words created specifically for those who were stationed, if you will, at this site?”
She shifted the laptop her way, scrolling up and down along the groupings of glyphs. “That could explain why these look familiar, but I can’t make heads or tails of them.”
Quint scooted his stool closer to her, his thigh brushing hers as he stared at the screen. “There is another possibility that comes to mind,” he said.
“That these conch-shell trumpets were a gift from a foreign nation?” she asked.
“Make thattwoother possibilities.”
“What’s the one you’re thinking?”
“You know how you say that a lot of thestelaeare basically billboards, touting the purpose for a temple or the history of the king that had it built?”
