Chapter Sixteen
Something is wrong with Angélica.
She’s withdrawn and not talking.
Well, she’s talking, but only to boss people around.
And last night at supper, she was silent unless prompted.
Plus, she barely ate any of María’s pollo pibil.
Hell, even if I were two days’ deep into a stomach flu, I’d still eat a plateful of that achiote chicken. It’s sooo good.
I just drooled on the page.
No, wait, that’s sweat.
After we’d finished eating supper, I pulled her aside and asked if she needed to talk about what was on her mind. She said she was just mulling about things at the site. Nothing else.
Then she turned down my offer for a romantic stroll around the camp under the almost full moon, which I wasn’t too upset about because it was fucking hot, and the monkeys were more agitated than usual. I’d swear they were having a competition for who could howl the loudest.
She did let me walk her to the communications tent—ten steps away. Then she kissed me good night and zipped herself away from the world to study the maps and the artifacts we’d discovered so far.
This morning, her cot was empty when I sweated awake.
She didn’t show up for breakfast, either—huevos encamisados, which is eggs tucked into homemade corn tortillas and fried, then covered in a red salsa with leftover chicken from last night. All sprinkled with cheese. Oh, and fresh sweet papaya on the side.
Damn. That time I did drool on the page.
I’d marry María if she wasn’t already taken. I don’t care that she’s my mom’s age, that woman can cook!
Anyway, Angélica left a message with Teodoro that she’d meet us outside the site’s wall.
I asked Juan if he thought she was okay. He shrugged off my concern and between forkfuls of heaven said that Angélica disappears into her work during every dig, skipping sleep and getting bossier by the day.
I remember how she was at the dig when we first met, but this feels different. And sudden.
She’d been smiling on our way back to camp last night and then snap! She’d flipped from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.
Maybe she is more upset about us opening that door slab without her than she let on.
Is she hiding something troubling that she saw on the stone rubbings Esteban and she had worked on earlier? Or just doubly frustrated that she can’t decipher them?
Is she growing more obsessed with trying to figure out the history of this site?
Worrying again about losing her job?
Or is Juan right and she’s just pushing herself too hard?
Did she get bit by a bug?
What are the signs of Lyme disease?
Maybe I need to check her closer for ticks this evening when we return to …
“Hey, Parker, can you come over here?” Angélica called to him, waving him over to where she stood next to what Juan was now calling the “butterfly mound.”
Closing his field notebook, Quint stuffed it in his pack and stood up from the rock where he’d been enjoying a hot and sweaty break in the shade while Angélica, her father, and Fernel were inspecting the surrounding area.
Pedro had tagged along with the other three to hear what the experts had to say and to see if his theory about the mound was spot-on—that it was a bunker with more spear tips, daggers, and other ancient weapons buried under the collapsed ceiling.
Quint joined Angélica at the entrance. “You want to take more pictures of something?”
She’d already borrowed his camera and crawled inside the mound, snapping shots to show her dad and to use for further analysis.
There wasn’t much to be seen beyond the altar, and Quint had taken pictures of that yesterday. The weight of the overlying earth and vegetation had caved in most of the interior. Only the stone-lined entrance remained structurally intact, which extended about five feet under the ground.
After checking out the pictures Angélica had taken from inside, it was clear to all of them that they’d need to spend a lot of time excavating in order to find out if it were a bunker like Pedro believed or the mouth of a cave or mine.
“No more pictures.” She pointed at the door slab. “I’d like your help lifting that. We need to close this up.”
“You’re not going to dig any deeper?”
“We don’t have the time or manpower for that on this trip.” She moved over next to the slab, squatting and grabbing the top right corner. “Ready on three?”
Together, they hefted the stone into place. Angélica packed the loose dirt from yesterday’s digging in front of the slab to help anchor it.
“There,” she said, brushing her hands off on her khaki pants. “You wrote down the interior dimensions I called out earlier, right?”
Quint nodded. She’d already checked on that, taking a look at his notes herself, so why was she asking again?
“Good. Then let’s move on.” She stepped to the side and called out, “Dad, are you guys ready to roll? We have a trail to clear.”
“Hold your horses, gatita. We have a couple more measurements I want to take.”
She scowled and pulled out her water. “Hurry it up. Daylight’s wasting.”
Quint crossed his arms and frowned down at her.
What in the hell was up with her? She’d been busting their balls to move faster all morning. Where was the fire?
“What?” she asked, her tone defensive. “It’s true. We’re limited on time and Dad is moving slower today thanks to that damned ankle.”
“That’s not why I’m giving you this frown right now.” He pointed at his mouth.
She capped her water. “If it’s because of the machete work ahead of you, don’t worry, I figure you, me, and Pedro can work in shifts to give each other breaks.”
“I’m not worried about that.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for snakes.”
“It’s not about the potential for snake wrangling.”
She huffed. “Listen, Quint. If you want to head back to where the others are excavating the area around Structure II, you can switch places with Fernando and send him—”
“Stop.” He set down his pack. Grabbing her wrist, he tugged her away from the mound, back toward the cleared path, out of earshot of the others. “Tell me what’s going on, Angélica.”
She shrugged, avoiding his gaze. “We’re ground truthing a dig site.”
“Bullshit.” He stepped closer, and tapped her on the shoulder. “What’s really going on with you?”
She lifted her chin. “I told you before, Parker, there is nothing going on with me. I’m just trying to do my job and make enough progress so that INAH will be satisfied with my field report.”
“I call bullshit again. Ever since we returned to camp last evening, you’ve been acting strange.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Quiet, then.” He thought again how she’d played with her food at supper. “Maybe even anxious.”
“I have a lot of work to do here,” she snapped, her right shoulder moving slightly.
“I know your tells, woman. You’re bluffing about the workload. There’s something else going on.”
Her gaze narrowed. “You do not know my tells.”
“Oh, I do. Whether you like it or not, I’ve been studying you for a while now.” For months, actually, ever since he’d first laid eyes on her. It couldn’t be helped. He was a smitten man.
She jammed her hands on her hips. “Oh, yeah? Give me an example of one of my tells.”
“Okay.” He checked behind her to make sure they still had no audience. “When you lie, even by omission, your right shoulder twitches.”
“It does not twitch.”
“It does.” He pointed at the guilty shoulder. “It’s very subtle, but it hitches slightly.”
“You’re full of shit, Parker.”
Sure he was about many things, but not this. Not her. Not now. It was too hot to play games. In fact, it was too hot to keep pretending about her game.
“You want to test it, boss lady?”
Her jaw tightened, her green eyes practically sparking. “Yes, I do.”
“Okay. I have a question for you.” He hesitated. Did he really want to do this, right here, right now? Ah, screw it. Now was as good a time as any. “Did INAH really force you to drop everything in order to come here and work?”
She blinked twice, her expression frozen. “What?”
“Or did you cancel our vacation plans at the last minute because you wanted to come to this dig site to find proof for another one of your mother’s theories?”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking exactly.”
Had her shoulder just twitched?
“Don’t play dumb. We’re beyond that, Angélica. I’m asking if you lied to me about why we’re here?”
“Uh …” She licked her lips, glancing toward where her father and the others might be showing up at any moment.
Quint leaned closer. “I know the truth.”
“What truth?”
Christ, she was so stubborn.
“I know that you asked to be sent to this site immediately. That Fernel had requested to come and check it out, and he’d offered a lot of money for the privilege.”
Her eyes widened.
“And I think that you were afraid if he came and made an important discovery, he might steal some potential posthumous glory from your mom.”
Her cheeks darkened.
“So, you lied to my face, saying you had no control over the timing of this dig and had to cancel our plans.”
“Quint, I didn’t—”
“And during that moment,” he continued, “while you were lying your ass off, your right shoulder twitched.”
She reached up and touched her shoulder. “Listen, Quint,” she started again.
But he wasn’t finished. Being lied to by her had cut deeper than he’d realized, and laying everything out on the table soothed his frustration with her and this damned jungle.
“It clearly twitched, Angélica. Not once, not twice, but three times. And when I talked to your boss about writing an article to promote this scouting trip, he inadvertently confirmed that you had pushed to get assigned to the site and cancelled our vacation without any prompting from him.”
At least she had the decency to look sheepish when called out on her lying.
“There is your example, Angélica.”
She opened her mouth, but then apparently changed her mind and bit her lower lip, staring down at her feet.