Beautiful Sacrifice

mats. They drove off the rental lot and followed the Cancun-Chetumal highway south to the meeting place. The countryside was wild with greenery spilling across the limestone plateau and punctuated with even more shrines than Hunter recalled. But then, he hadn’t spent a lot of time in the nicer areas of the Yucatan.
    “You remember this many shrines?” he asked.
    “Not really,” Lina said, frowning. “Even at this time of year, it seems like an excess of religious fever, more than I’ve ever seen. A lot of Maya crosses.”
    “Maya?”
    “The cross was a significant symbol to the Maya before the Spanish ever came. Some texts are interpreted as meaningthat the native cross represents the plane of the ecliptic, the time when the Long Count calendar ends.”
    “Twenty-twelve again.”
    She shrugged. “The division of time was a Maya preoccupation. Rather like modern civilization, with our obsession for minutes and hours and nanoseconds. The Maya measured bigger chunks of time, but the intent was the same. What can be measured can be controlled.”
    “Culture rules,” Hunter said. “Like us.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “We’ve been speaking Spanish since we landed.”
    She looked startled, then amused. “You’re right. I didn’t even notice the transition. Maybe Abuelita will forgive you for being a gringo after all. You’re very fluent.”
    “Your great-grandmother sounds like a pistol.”
    “Oh, she is. I swear she’ll outlive us all.”
    Hunter smiled at the affection in Lina’s voice.
    The vegetation thinned and low buildings sprawled to either side of the divided road. Most of them were made of stucco over cinder blocks and other masonry, fenced off with wrought iron, and walled in by a succession of low billboards and electrical lines like blood vessels nourishing every building.
    The mirrors were clear. Nobody had followed them from the airport. Nobody on the highway seemed interested in them.
    “You feel watched?” Hunter asked Lina.
    “No.”
    “Let me know if that changes.”
    “I’m impressed,” she said.
    He checked the mirrors automatically. “By what?”
    “You not only don’t laugh at feelings, you actually listen to them.”
    He smiled thinly. “Anyone who doesn’t won’t last long in the jungle—or on the wrong side of city streets.”
    Hunter parked as close as he could to the address Rodrigo had given him. Not that Rodrigo had been willing, especially when Hunter had awakened him in the middle of the night. But it was smart not to give Rodrigo too much warning.
    The population around them was almost one hundred percent native, which meant that Hunter stood out. Too tall. Eyes too light. Skin not dark enough. Lina’s coloring mixed better with the locals, but she was taller than the men.
    Rodrigo would have to choose a native backdrop, Hunter thought unhappily. Probably to punish me for insisting on the meet.
    The smell of the ocean and cooking grills filled the tropical air. A little early for lunch, but not too early for a cerveza. Outdoor seating was casual—scattered plastic chairs, a bench, or just squatting on your heels. The morning open-air market had already closed. Other places were doing a slow, steady business. Bikinis and backpacks had been replaced by straw hats and loose guayaberas—shirts—in pale shades of tan and cream and blue. If Hunter had had one, he would be wearing it.
    Nobody paid particular attention to him—gringos weren’t that rare—but Lina drew some quiet regard. It wasn’t her sweet figure people noticed, but her face. Men who swaggered elsewhere stepped out of her way. Children stared, only to be softly scolded by their mothers.
    “They’re treating you like royalty,” Hunter said very quietly in English.
    “I have Reyes Balam bone structure,” Lina said, shrugging. “They see it in the ruins every day.”
    “Huh. Thought it was your height and beauty.”
    “Height, yes. The rest is in the eye of the beholder and all that.”
    “So your family is well known,” he said.
    “Think of the American Kennedy family, but with five hundred years or more of royalty.”
    “You don’t act royal.”
    “When I look in the mirror, I see Dr. Lina Taylor, American. That’s who I am. The rest is, quite literally, history. Something for Abuelita and Celia to care about.”
    “But not you,” Hunter murmured.
    “Like I said, I’m American by choice.”
    Hunter kept watching, but other than the subtle deference Lina took for