Beautiful Sacrifice

beckoned in cheerful, chipped colors next to a worn linoleum-surfaced table holding coffee, water, sugar, cream, and plastic utensils wrapped in napkins. By the time she and Hunter found an empty table—about two feet square—and two metal chairs, their order arrived.
    For a few minutes the only sounds the two of them madewere “Mmm,” “Wow,” and scraping utensils. Hunter ate with the same efficiency he did everything else. He never moved fast, but everything disappeared at an astonishing pace.
    After destroying two skimpy napkins—his and hers—Lina gave up and simply licked her fingers.
    Hunter watched and wished he could offer to help. Insist, actually. Her agile tongue was hotter than his salsa, which was hot enough to melt plastic.
    “I missed breakfast as well as lunch,” Lina said as she mopped her plate with a last bit of corn tortilla. “These tortillas…fantastic. Like the corn was ground by hand with a limestone metate.”
    “Could have been. Omar’s wife is Mexican, from Tamaulipas. So is Omar. The narco violence drove them across the border to Texas about five years ago. He has some pull with the feds, so he and his family have refugee status here.”
    “I hear it’s bad,” Lina said. “Even the Yucatan.” She shook her head. “Zetas, Gulf Cartel, and others are making life hell for the common people.”
    Hunter almost told her about the blue-painted, headless, heartless bodies being found by ICE, but didn’t. No use spoiling her meal. He liked watching a woman who didn’t push lettuce around on her plate and call it eating.
    “I’ve been thinking about the…items,” she said in English, glancing around.
    The tables around them had filled up. People came and went through the tiny eatery like waves on a beach. Tex-Mex was the predominant dialect, but she heard accents that went farther south than Mexico City.
    It would be stupid to assume that they were the only English speakers present.
    Hunter moved his chair right next to hers, so close the metal legs scraped. “Go on. I’ll keep an eye out for eavesdroppers.”
    “If they are fakes,” she said in a low voice, “why would anyone go to the trouble of painstakingly counterfeiting objects that less than a handful of people would recognize as relating to an obscure, forgotten god?”
    He thought about her words as he checked out the occupants of the café with his unusually wide peripheral vision. “You’re saying that fake or real, the market is limited?”
    “Very.”
    “Outside your family, who would care?”
    She flinched. “There are several museums in the Yucatan that specialize in local ar—ah, items.” Her voice dropped. “My father has made enemies. These could be a trap for him. Or them.”
    “What’s the profit in that for anyone?”
    “Revenge.”
    Hunter hesitated, considered, nodded. “Anything else?”
    He watched Lina’s pulse work furiously beneath her skin as she looked around yet again.
    “Whatever cat you’re trying to keep bagged up is already out,” she said in a low voice.
    He leaned closer, so close she felt his words as much as heard them. “How do you know?”
    “Rumors of unusual ar—items are making the museum and collector rounds.” She looked at her fingers, clenched in a stained napkin. “You must understand. What you’re looking for, if real, could make a collection, and a museum, famous.”
    “Even without provenance?” he breathed into her ear.
    “That can be manufactured if you have the right connections,” she said reluctantly. It was one of the realities of the artifact world that really made her angry, so she tried not to think about it. “It would cost a great deal, but it could be worth it to some people.”
    “And the provenance would be accepted, if the right people were on board?”
    She nodded slowly, unhappily. “There would be academic carping, but it would be written off as professional jealousy.”
    Three men walked in. They were of the same ethnic type as the men Hunter had seen at LeRoy’s apartment. Long hair, black, straight, clean. They weren’t as richly dressed as the apartment wreckers had been, but silence followed them through the small restaurant like a spreading shadow. Several patrons crossed themselves as the men passed.
    “Interesting world you live in,” Hunter said.
    He threw some money on the table for the cleanup crew, pulled Lina to her feet, and headed out.
    The Jeep was waiting for them, as hot and dirty as the streets.