Beautiful Sacrifice

in with shell or obsidian. This was designed to be worn, to give some visual freedom to the wearer. Again, likely for ceremonial use.”
    Her fingers paused.
    “What?” Hunter said instantly.
    She shook her head as though throwing off cobwebs. “It…echoes something, but I’ve never seen a piece like it before.”
    “What’s the echo of?”
    “I don’t know. It was just a feeling. Nothing academic.”
    “I do feelings.”
    Lina felt a wild laugh bubbling in her throat. She swallowed it. Twice. The idea of someone as hard-looking as Hunter “doing feelings” was far too intriguing. She forced herself to look at the third photo.
    Her breath caught.
    “Talk to me,” Hunter said, his voice flat.
    “The bundle is vaguely heart-shaped, wrapped in clear plastic.” Her fingers moved silently over the electronic keyboard. “Color beneath could be white or beige. Again, the flash interferes.”
    “What are the stains?”
    “Mud, blood, coffee, cinnamon, chocolate. Impossible to say without chemical analysis.”
    Hunter grunted. He wasn’t getting much that was useful. He watched her fingers—clean, short nails, no rings—touch the edge of the first photo.
    “The glyph in this,” she said, tapping the photo of the ritual knife, “looks like it has some jagged lines. Or it could be glare.”
    She shifted the photo of the knife, changing the light, trying to peer through the glare.
    It was impossible.
    “Is it a common glyph?” he asked.
    “As I can’t really see it, I can’t make a judgment.”
    “This isn’t academia. Give me your best guess.”
    “If the artifacts came from the same area as the stolen truck—a big ‘if’—then the glyph might possibly be related to Kawa’il, a Maya deity worshipped after the destruction of the Maya rule by the Spanish.”
    Lina’s father probably knew more about Kawa’il than she did, but she had no intention of mixing Hunter with her obsessive, erratic father.
    “Do you have an electronic image of the knife?” she asked. “You might be able to run a digital photo through a computer program and clean up the glare from the flash.”
    “I’ll check into it, but I doubt it. Looks like it was taken right after the raid. ICE uses a lot of digital cameras. The photos on the card were probably printed out with the report and then wiped from the card’s memory to make digital room for the next bust. How much does it matter?”
    “Kawa’il wasn’t a common deity. His worship was confined to small areas of the Quintana Roo and, perhaps, Belize. Many Maya scholars don’t even believe Kawa’il existed.”
    “But you do.”
    “Yes. Some glyphs related to Kawa’il have been found on…” Her voice died.
    “Reyes Balam land.”
    It wasn’t a question.
    “If you already know so much, why mousetrap me into helping you?” she asked sharply.
    “The presence or absence of Kawa’il was central to the scandal that got your father thrown out of academia.”
    “He is still a Harvard professor.”
    “Technically,” Hunter agreed. “He’s on indefinite leave to ‘pursue scholarly interests.’ You have to look real hard to find Dr. Philip Taylor’s name attached to a university of any repute, including in Mexico.”
    Lina didn’t say anything. It was the harsh truth, one that had driven Philip to ever greater lengths of obsession and secrecy. He was determined to regain his reputation no matter what it took.
    “If my father knows of these artifacts,” she said quietly, “I’m useless to you. Philip doesn’t confide in anyone, including me.”
    Hunter nodded. “It was a long chance, but one I had to eliminate.”
    “You believe me?”
    “Until I find a reason to do otherwise.” He smiled thinly. “That’s more slack than the academic community will cut you.”
    Again, a harsh truth.
    “Well, at least you don’t fancy things up,” she said.
    “I’m a simple man.”
    “I don’t believe it. The bunch of fabric,” she said, tapping her finger on the photo of the cloth, “could be rubbish or it could be a god bundle. Again, without tests, I can’t be more precise.”
    “If it’s a god bundle?”
    “It would be highly, highly rare. Pretty much unique, as far as I know. Such bundles are represented in glyphs and verbal legends, but none have survived to modern times.”
    “So it’s worth a lot of money on the market,” he said.
    “Without proper provenance, no reputable dealer or establishment would touch it.”
    As Hunter had