Beautiful Sacrifice

minivan like it was a sports car, darting in and out of traffic lanes.
    “It fits,” Hunter finally said.
    “What?”
    “One of my best sources in the Yucatan told me that LDX works with the Q Roo drug cartel, but it’s only to get paid for what LDX would do for free. The Q Roo boasts of having the baddest badasses of them all. LDX makes good on the boast.”
    “Beautiful,” Jase said sarcastically. “ICE special investigations first got wind of these guys through some makeshift shrines and the like showing up in prisons. Weird stuff. Crucifixes with snakes wrapped around them and stone faces with rosaries. Monsters made out of scrap stolen from the shops or trash or whatever. Doesn’t matter that Corrections took them down as fast as they found them. It spread. Maybe it started in jail, maybe it got imported.”
    “Better and better. A death cult. Serial killers serving a ravenous god.”
    “That’s what the special agent thinks,” Jase said unhappily.
    A horn blared at someone who had double-parked in front of a coffeehouse. Jase swerved around the vehicle without lifting his foot from the accelerator.
    “I’ve seen those cult trappings in the Yucatan,” Hunter said, ignoring the near miss. “Places where real blood is believed to have real power, not just the Santa Muerte drug shrine garbage. This is old, old belief coming back in a new form. The Spanish couldn’t kill it, and they had the Church and the guns on their side. Hard to shut down an idea. Especially if it’s an idea that makes you feel stronger, better.”
    “Stronger or crazier?” Jase asked.
    “Whichever gets the job done.” Hunter’s hand fisted on the dash. “Damn, I don’t want Lina anywhere near this, yet those artifacts…Damn!”
    “I don’t blame you. The body count at the place we just left was four, and they haven’t even begun to dig.”
    “But the altar hadn’t been there long enough for the blood running down those table legs to reach the floor.”
    “Maybe they wore the old one out.” Jase shrugged. “Kill in the name of cartel profits. Kill in the name of an unknown god. Same result. Dead.”
    Hunter clenched his teeth and wished that Lina’s job was curating Teddy Bears Through the Ages. But it wasn’t. No matter how much he hated it, Lina was on the trail of death.
    “I don’t like any of this,” Hunter said. “You want to just bag it and come to work for my uncle?”
    “What?”
    “Just what I said. There’s always a job waiting for you. You know that.”
    “Not until ICE throws me out,” Jase said stubbornly.
    Silently Hunter hoped that wouldn’t be too late.

C HAPTER N INE
     
    L INA SAT IN HER OFFICE, LOOKING OUT AT THE HAZY AFTERNOON . She felt like she was sixteen again, waiting for the phone, willing it to ring.
    Unlike when she had been sixteen, it actually rang. She grabbed it.
    “Hello,” she said.
    “It’s Philip,” her father’s voice said. “What do you want?”
    “Are you still in Belize?” she asked, ignoring his curt greeting. Nothing personal, just the way he was.
    “No. I’m at the estate, getting ready to work a new site. What’s this nonsense about another scandal?”
    Briskly Lina put herself in the proper frame of mind to deal with her father. He was a man of extremely limited interests and less ability to deal with people, especially his family. He simply didn’t know how to express affection.
    “There are rumors of a group of artifacts reaching the marketplace,” Lina said carefully. It was hard to keep Hunter’s secret and still get information. “Has Celia mentioned them to you?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. She hides artifacts from me.”
    “The descriptions I received point to artifacts that could relate to the cult of Kawa’il. Have you heard anything?”
    “Damn de la Poole!”
    Lina added the missing parts of the conversation and winced. “The artifacts weren’t connected with Mercurio.”
    “Then they don’t concern me.”
    “What about looters on Reyes Balam lands?” she asked, as blunt as her father.
    “They wouldn’t dare. Carlos and I feed all the villages on our land and they protect my sites.”
    “Then you haven’t heard any rumors of sensational artifacts appearing on the market?”
    “No. Is that all?”
    “Yes.”
    The connection ended.
    Lina wasn’t surprised. Philip was infamous for his curt conversations. Once she had dreamed of being important to her father, if only through her own ability to interpret texts he