Chapter One
“The jungle is angry.
One century after another, the humans have trespassed.
They slash and burn the trees, scarring the ground.
They burrow under the canopy like chiggers and leech the nutrients from the soil, parasitically sucking the life from the jungle until—”
“Hold up, Parker,” Angélica interrupted Quint mid-sentence, lowering the machete she’d been using to cut a path through the tangled web of palm fronds, vines, and thorn-covered branches.
She turned, watching him swat at a swarm of mosquitoes buzzing around his wide-brimmed hat.
“In this future Pulitzer Prize–winning piece that you’re practicing on us poor souls, are the humans supposed to be chiggers or leeches or parasites? ”
The jungle vibrated around them, loud with chirps and chatters and whistles, along with periodic screeches and howls. The lush tree canopy overhead trembled, the leaves hiding whatever was passing through from one tree to the next.
“Hmm. Maybe a bit of all three.” Quint slapped his neck, then scowled down at his palm. “Christ, that insect repellent you plastered me with isn’t keeping these bloodsuckers at bay. Remind me to add ‘They battled swarms of voracious insects’ to my monologue.”
“Ay yi yi.” She wiped her damp, grit-covered face with her sleeve. “Whose bright idea was it to bring a writer along on this trek?”
“Yours, gatita,” Juan García said, stepping up beside Quint.
His silver sideburns glistened as sweat trickled down his cheeks.
He pointed his walking stick at her. “I told you that bringing your boyfriend along would be a distraction, but you insisted that after a few days of living amongst the scorpions, biting ants, and snakes, we’d need a pretty face to look at besides each other’s. ”
“I didn’t say look at, Dad.” Although her boyfriend was tall, dark, and definitely man-pretty with those long, thick eyelashes, damn him.
She rested her machete on her shoulder, aiming a teasing grin in Quint’s direction.
“I said someone to laugh at besides each other. You know as well as I do that Parker works at being an amateur comedian when he’s not playing journalist.”
“Make that photojournalist, boss lady.” Quint raised the camera hanging around his neck, focusing at the buttons on the top of it. “And a damned fine one, if I do say so myself.”
“So you claimed this morning at breakfast.” Her dad used his stick to carefully poke at one of the vines Angélica had hacked down, as if it might rear up, hiss, and strike.
Angélica stepped forward and chopped the vine in half with her machete, putting her father’s snake worries to rest.
“And again like a half hour ago,” she said, turning back to Mr. Damned-fine Photojournalist, “while making us wait so you could take pictures of that army of leaf-cutter ants.”
“That was more like a small platoon.” Quint aimed his camera at her and snapped a picture.
“That’ll make a good one, Dr. García. All of the sweat and dirt ringing your neck clearly shows how much work it is to cut through this snarled mess you call a rainforest.” He focused his camera slightly lower.
“Looks like you might have a tick just below your extra-large, manly Adam’s apple. ”
She brushed the bug off her neck. “I don’t have a manly Adam’s apple, Parker, and you know it.” He’d kissed her neck on his way south to her navel too many times to count.
One of his dark eyebrows inched upward. “You sure about that? After watching you swing that machete like a Viking trying to earn a spot in Valhalla for the last twenty minutes, I should probably inspect your chest for new hair growth.”
When she scowled and pretended to threaten him with her machete, he took another photo. “That shot is even better, hot stuff. But next time, maybe you could smile a little so it doesn’t look like you’re half-crazed with jungle fever.”
She scowled extra hard, adding a sneer for the camera. “I’m going to tie you up later, Parker, and poke your manly parts with a stingray spine. We can always use a blood sacrifice to appease the Maya gods before we start digging.”
He lowered the camera. Laugh lines fanned out from his hazel eyes and rounded his dark, stubble-covered cheeks.
“You know I love it when you talk dirty to me, sweetheart.” His tone was playful, but the heat in his gaze spurred a fresh layer of sweat from her head to her toes.
“Especially when we’re alone and you’re whispering in Spanish. ”
?Dios mio! She fanned herself with her hat. Even after sharing her bed off and on for months with Quint, the heartbreaker could still make her knees rubbery.
“Parker,” she chastised, glancing pointedly at her father, whose wide grin made it clear he was enjoying her blushes.
“You started it, gorgeous.”
A pair of spider monkeys barked down at them from where they dangled overhead, the tree limbs bobbing under their weight.
“See, the swingers agree with me.” Quint pointed the camera upward at the nosy duo, snapping off more pictures. “Now quit monkeying around, woman. We have ancient temples to find.”
“And that’s another point for your loverboy,” Juan said, pretending to lick his finger and then draw an invisible line in the air.
She sighed in her father’s direction. “I told you, Dad, I’m not playing this silly game of yours, so you can quit giving out random points to Quint for doing nothing more than using big, fancy words and funny quips about the jungle.”
Juan reached into his backpack and pulled out the rolled-up geomorphic map she’d photocopied and laminated back at her office before they’d flown to their basecamp in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve.
He tugged his reading glasses from his vest pocket.
“Gatita, you’re just upset because Junior Mint here is winning, and you don’t like to lose. ”
“That’s bullshit, Dad.”
“Such language, child.” He looked at Quint over his reading glasses. “She’s just like her mother.”
“You mean when it comes to your daughter’s beautiful, long auburn hair and big brain? Or the way she swears like a fishwife?”
“I was actually referring to how Marianne was plagued by the competitive bug day and night.” Her father’s grin returned. “Although I might’ve encouraged the ‘night’ bits with a wager or two.”
Angélica grimaced. “That’s too much information, Dad.”
Chuckling, Quint lowered his camera. He took up his machete and clanged it against hers, eliciting squeals from the eavesdropping monkeys overhead. “What do you say, Joan of Arc? Are you ready to take a break from leading the way through this hot and sticky version of hell on earth?”
“Don’t forget to add ‘thorny and pokey’ to that list.” Her father bent over and plucked free a thorn-covered twig from a bullhorn acacia tree that had snagged his pant leg somewhere along the path, brushing away several red ants that had been busy protecting the tree and ended up coming along for the ride.
Quint swatted at another mosquito. “Itchy, too.”
“So much whining,” Angélica teased the two of them, closing the gap between her and Quint.
Above the jungle’s musty odor of damp dirt and decaying leaves, she could smell the insect repellent she’d sprayed all over him, along with a whiff of his usual sunshine and citrus scent.
She patted him playfully on the chest. “You’re up, Prince Charming. It’s time to show off those studly muscles of yours.”
He caught her hand and held it against his damp shirt.
“Try to keep those sexy green peepers off my manly parts while I work my machete magic, Dr. García. It would be inappropriate for a leading archaeologist from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History to get caught ogling the hired hand in broad daylight.
” He stepped back, nodding toward the map-holding musketeer.
“Not to mention that your father is watching.”
“And keeping score,” Juan said without looking up from the map.
“Inappropriate?” She quirked one eyebrow. “And what do you call all of this flirting by a big-shot photojournalist—”
“I believe the adjective you’re looking for is renowned, boss lady.” Quint nudged her aside so he could step around her.
She turned to her father and beat him to the punch. “Parker doesn’t get a point for that word.”
Juan shrugged. “I thought you weren’t playing, gatita.”
She returned to Quint, who was now slashing a path through a thicket of spindly branches, yucca, and palm fronds.
“What do you call all of this flirting by a self-proclaimed renowned photojournalist who’s tagging along to write a piece on what he told my boss at INAH,” using the well-used Mexican acronym for her employer’s name, “could be one of the most important Maya sites unearthed since Tikal?”
Her father snorted. “Did Junior Mint really use Tikal for comparison?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Quint called over his shoulder. “I’ve been reading a lot about the battles between the Classic Maya people from Tikal and Calakmul lately, so it was the first place that came to mind.”
“This place? Like Tikal?” Juan shook his head. “Good heavens, we can barely see ten feet in front of us.”
Quint glanced back at Angélica. “If memory serves me, Dr. García, I emphasized the word could to your employer in that comparison, adding that it might also be nothing more than a small settlement of stones mostly hidden under the roots of several strangler fig trees.”
She crossed her arms. “How come I don’t remember that part?”
“Because you’d left the room to go find a satellite map of this area by that point.”
“Oh, yeah.” Her boss had wanted to see the route she planned to use to reach the site.
“I think we’ve lost the path,” Juan said, still frowning at the map. “We should have turned right instead of left at that fork in the deer trail.”
“We did not lose the path.” Angélica took the map from her father, double-checking it to be sure.