Beautiful Sacrifice

wheel. “If I thought it would do any good, I’d turn around and hold Crutchfeldt’s face in the toilet until he talked.”
    Lina’s eyes widened in shock. “Did he recognize the photos?”
    “As in knowing where they were now? No. But he knew they came from Reyes Balam land.”
    “How?” she demanded.
    “Same way you did, even when you didn’t want to. A good eye.”
    “What did he say?”
    “That there are grave robbers on Reyes Balam land.”
    She made a low sound. “I was afraid of that.”
    “Apparently their leader is a real piece of work. Crutchfeldt was afraid to even say his real name. When I asked if it was El Maya, he invited me to leave.”
    Lina’s long lashes lowered and she went back to nibbling on her lip. “Celia would have to know about him, wouldn’t she?”
    “You own a lot of land. Rough land. Remote. Tough to get around in. I doubt if anyone could keep track of every acre.”
    “But if she’s buying from grave robbers, she’d know.”
    Hunter’s hands flexed on the wheel again. He didn’t like any of this, and everything he found out made it worse.
    “Crutchfeldt said the grave robbers weren’t selling to anyone he knew.” Hunter’s voice was like his eyes, edgy.
    Relief and frustration went through Lina. She was glad to hear that her mother wasn’t trading in black-market artifacts, yet the information didn’t get them any closer to the person who was.
    The sounds of the tires and the road and the occasional cry of a seabird filled the Jeep.
    “You’re thinking again,” Lina said finally.
    Hunter didn’t answer.
    “I can’t help if you close me out,” she said.
    “I’m trying to decide between taking you to my uncles for protection—”
    “No,” Lina cut in. “I don’t want to drag anyone else into this.”
    Hunter glanced at her and knew that she was hearing bullets chewing through concrete, seeing Jase’s blood.
    “They know how to protect themselves,” Hunter said.
    “So did Jase.”
    Hunter let out a low curse. “I don’t want you hurt.”
    “Neither do I.” She looked out the window. “I’ll go to Quintana Roo. My abuelita will be happy and I’ll be safe. My family members might live in the jungle outside Tulum, but they’re fashionable enough to have motion sensors, guards, and a panic room. All the latest in rich, paranoid chic.”
    “What about the grave robbers? And El Maya?”
    Lina shrugged. “They’ve obviously been in place for some time and nobody in the family has been harmed. Houston was where I was attacked, not the Yucatan. As for El Maya, it could be an American nickname, not Mexican. Besides…” Her voice died.
    “What?”
    “I’ve never felt watched in Quintana Roo.”
    Hunter looked at his watch. “We have just enough time to make the next flight out of Brownsville.”

C HAPTER F OURTEEN
     
    T HE SEA TURNED TURQUOISE IN THE AFTERNOON LIGHT, slapping lazily against the shore. Tourists were thick on Cozumel’s ground. Expensive hotels gleamed like high-rise wedding cakes, absorbing light and spreading a shimmering kind of brilliance. Backpackers and students swarmed over the other end of the tourist rainbow, sprawling on peripheral beaches or gearing up for jungle hikes. High or low, liquor flowed, oiling the machinery of commerce and culture.
    Lina breathed in deep and bloomed like an orchid. Part of her was very much at home with the heat and humidity. A whole childhood of memories poured through her—prowling the jungle, diving and swimming in the cool cenotes that pocked the land, and eating exquisitely spiced food.
    “Do we have time to eat?” she asked Hunter as they walked to a cheap rental-car place. “I’d kill for a good pibil .” She laughed. “Even a bad one.”
    “I’m supposed to meet Rodrigo at a place called La Ali Azúl on Avenue Escobar. I’m sure they serve a mean pibil . But you’ll be eating alone.”
    “Why?”
    “My contact isn’t a nice man,” Hunter said. “That’s why he’s useful.”
    “Is meet-and-greet with unsavory people another aspect of your job, like being an occasional bodyguard?”
    “Information is our most important resource,” Hunter said. “Nothing quite like knowing the weather on the ground to help an operation go smoothly.”
    “In other words, yes,” she said.
    “Savory people aren’t much help when your business comes down to stopping crooks.”
    Hunter rented a Bronco with Quintana Roo plates. Back-road dust had been ground into the floor