Beautiful Sacrifice

shirt. It looked like a small wad of white paper towels.
    “I should probably be flogged in front of a lectern for carrying it like this,” he said, gently unwrapping the paper towel. “Didn’t have much choice at the time. There you are, you little devil.”
    Lina walked over and stood close to him. She saw a potsherd nestled in the white paper. The sherd had a fragment of what looked like a blue glyph painted on it.
    “Well?” he asked.
    “Nice sherd,” she said neutrally. “A lot of them don’t have any paint at all.”
    “Jase and I found it in the apartment of a man who has gone missing, probably after stealing the artifacts from the ICE warehouse. There were wads more towels inside a duffel, but nothing else.”
    Her breath came in sharply. “I see.”
    “Some of the paper towels had been cut. I think they were wrapped around something sharp. Like worked obsidian blades.”
    “May I?” she asked, reaching for his palm.
    “Anytime.”
    Lina gave him a sideways look, but otherwise ignored him. Carefully she lifted the towel and sherd to her nose. “Smell is…odd.”
    “It was packed with cocaine inside a bag of cement mix. Could be some turpentine or jet fuel filtered through. That stuff stinks.”
    “I can’t be certain of anything about this sherd unless I do specialized tests.”
    “Expensive and time-consuming?”
    “Oh yeah. Even with money in hand, our lab connection has a waiting list and it’s the happy holiday season.”
    He breathed out a curse. “Figured. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter whether this is from a genuine artifact or a recent manufacture. What I need is your best guess if this piece could be related to the stuff that was stolen.”
    “Assuming that the missing man is the one who lifted the missing artifacts,” she said, then shook her head.
    “Go on.”
    “In order for that potsherd to have any significance, it would have to have come from the censer in your photographs. To assume that, you have to assume that this missing man didn’t have a regular sideline in stealing artifacts, that this robbery was a one-off.”
    “I love a logical mind,” Hunter said.
    “My logical mind isn’t loving this,” she said. “You’ve got about five big ‘ifs’ between you and even a circumstantially useful connection to the potsherd.”
    “There are some plus marks in the column.”
    “Really?”
    “Two dudes came to LeRoy’s apartment. They spoke a Mexican Indian dialect and looked the part. Maya faces and bodies. Shorter than you. Darker. Expensively turned out. They wrecked the place and took the blue duffel where we found the paper towels. Then the dudes went invisible. The car they were driving was stolen.”
    “Charming,” she muttered. “They could be disappointed middlemen who have nothing to do with your case.”
    “I hate a logical mind.”
    “Then don’t look in the mirror when you shave,” she said.
    A slow smile changed Hunter’s face. “Let’s get some food. You can tell me what you’ve learned about the artifacts while we eat.”
    “It won’t take that long.”
    “Was afraid you’d say that. Let’s go anyway. We still have to eat. Or at least I do.”
    Hunter followed Lina out of the building. The instant he was outdoors, the feeling of being watched made his neck and shoulder blades tingle. Without making a fuss about it, he checked out the surroundings. No one seemed to be staring at him.
    Lina was looking around, too. She wasn’t as subtle about it as he was, but she got the job done.
    Wonder if she’ll talk about who is following her. If anyone is. I sure can’t make the bastard.
    Hunter led her to the parking lot where his well-used Jeep waited. She swung into the vehicle like a pro. And she was smiling like it was a tricked-out Italian sports car.
    “Most women don’t think much of this rig,” Hunter said, starting it.
    “Most women have never driven on unpaved tracks in the Yucatan. This is great transport. The tires have deep tread, the oil pan won’t bleed out on a sharp rock, and the engine sounds like a jaguar.”
    “Don’t say another word. I’m halfway in love.”
    Lina gave Hunter a startled look, smiled rather uncertainly, and shut her mouth. The feeling of being watched prickled over her, but no matter how long or how often she lookedbehind her, she couldn’t see anyone who seemed to be paying special attention to them.
    Philip would be proud of me, Lina thought unhappily. He senses spies everywhere,