He looked at the digital clock on the small bedside table. It was early, but tourist towns worked long hours. Crutchfeldt and his staff should be awake. From what Hunter had found out about the man, he was up at dawn and lying in the sun like a lizard until the sun went down. All work was conducted at poolside.
The clock told Hunter it was time to get going, to find out who El Maya was and make sure he would never threaten Lina again.
But all Hunter wanted to do right now was sink into Lina so deep they would never be separate.
Caught between what he should do and what he wanted to do, he forced himself to slide slowly from the bed. The room was warm, not only with the day but with a whole summer’s worth of heat still captured in the cinder-block walls. He retrieved his cell phone from his jeans and went to the living room with long, silent strides.
The first call he made was to the nurses’ station on Jase’s hospital floor. Ali had told them that he was Jase’s brother, so getting information wasn’t a problem. A nurse reassured Hunter that Jase was doing well, a lot better than expected. His condition had been upgraded to good.
Relief went like wine through Hunter’s system. He savored it for a moment before he went to the living room, where his computer had been plugged in for a charge. The workstation in the corner of the living room was mildly messy and quite dusty. He booted up his computer and read quickly—e-mails from contacts answering his queries, and from his uncles concerning background checks.
Snakeman had been deported in record time.
The body count at the second death house was up to eleven, but only a few of them had had their hearts removed.
Why them? Why not the others, too?
No one had any answers, or even hints of answers. None of the gangbangers who had been arrested had talked. They didn’t know nothing from nothing. Each one of them had claimed he was just couch-surfing at a friend’s place and he’d been arrested for no reason but racism.
And rats have wings covered in booty dust.
The dead janitor had a mother and two teenage sons living across the border. When questioned, they admitted that the sun rose in the east and set in the west. Other than that, they only knew that the dead man had sent money south and now he didn’t. The grandmother was terrified. The grandsons were sullen.
The crime-scene photos an ICE contact had sent were as ugly as Hunter’s memories.
Nothing new.
Certainly nothing useful.
The quick, but not careless, background checks his uncles had done yielded little more than Hunter had already guessed or known. Lina’s parents lived separately. Other than a single scandal about artifacts that were sold from Reyes Balam land without government approval and a public drunkenness charge when Philip was a freshman, there were no flags in any official files that had been searched.
Carlos had indeed been a bad boy in his early teens, but had grown into a citizen in good standing with two governments. There were bare hints that he might be unofficially working for and/or being investigated by DEA. Not surprising for the Mexican-born CEO of a cross-border enterprise in these days of open narco warfare. Two ex-wives, serial mistresses, no children.
De la Poole was single, upper class, educated, connected, and clean.
Crutchfeldt not so much, but he didn’t have any official black marks on his record on either side of the border. Reading between the lines, there was a good probability that he snitched on illegal artifact middlemen from time to time, which kept the cops off his own back.
Probably taking down competitors, just like the narco “informants” do, Hunter thought.
He kept reading swiftly. Everything he saw made him believe that if he was going to find the shooters and whoever they worked for, it wasn’t going to happen north of the border. The people in the United States who might have answers were dead or lawyered up. As much as he’d like to beat the truth out of the gangbangers, he had a gut feeling that any real knowledge had been lost when Snakeman went south.
Hunter punched up a travel Web site and checked availability. From the look of it, they’d just added more flights to Cozumel to accommodate the holiday-season demand. He booked several different flights on the family business account, paying extra for fully refundable tickets.
Wonder how good the Reyes Balam bodyguards are?
Good or bad, Hunter would find out. He wasn’t letting Lina out of his sight until he was sure she was protected. Then he’d go hunting in Mexico, where rules were different and life was lived a lot closer to the bone.
But first, Crutchfeldt.
“Hunter? Where are you?”
Lina’s voice floated through the silence like music. The huskiness told him that she had just awakened.
“I’m just checking on Jase.”
“How is he?” Her voice was as anxious as Hunter had been before he talked to the hospital.
“Good,” Hunter said. He left the computer and headed toward the bedroom. “Out of danger, stable, recovering faster than anyone expected.”
“That’s wonderful!”
When he got to the bedroom, she was propped on one arm, the sheet loose around her breasts. She was more beautiful to him than ever, goddess and woman, as deep inside him as his heartbeat. Deeper.
She watched him with equal intensity.
“Don’t look like that, sweetheart,” he said huskily.
“Like what?”
“Like I have another party hat in my jeans.”
“You’re not wearing any jeans,” she said, her glance traveling over him with open approval. “Not wearing anything, in fact.”
“Neither are you.” He bent over and kissed her slowly, thoroughly. “We’ll take care of that when we get some new clothes, Padre style. Do you think Crutchfeldt would like to show us through his collection?”
Lina slowly surfaced from sleep and the desire that curled lazily through her. “Crutchfeldt? Why would he?”
“You’re Celia’s daughter. You’ve heard so much about his collection from your mother, and you happened to be in the area, yada yada.”
More awake with each second, Lina thought about it. “He just might. He’s arrogant, proud, and likes to be admired for his scholarly and discriminating taste.”
“Perfect. Bat those fantastic eyelashes at him, make suitable cooing sounds, and generally take his mind off of business.”
She grimaced. “Ugh. That’s what Celia does. The batting and cooing.”
“Works, right? Men can be very simple creatures.”
“Simon Crutchfeldt is odious,” Lina said. “He’d wade through blood to get to an artifact he wants.”
Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “Literally?”
“There are rumors…” Lina’s long fingers moved restlessly over the bedspread. “But rumors aren’t truth. I don’t want to spread lies, even about him.”
“Are those rumors about a network of grave robbers and bloody middlemen who funnel artifacts through Mexican government contacts to Crutchfeldt?”
She gave him a startled look. “Yes. How did you know?”
“Part of any security operation is gathering information. My uncles are good, and two of my cousins are even better. Born hackers.”
“Crutchfeldt.” She said it like a curse. “I can’t decide whether to shower before or after we see him.”
Hunter laughed. “I’ll shower down the hall while you decide. Because if I shower near you, we’ll be in severe danger of making a baby.”
Lina got up. She’d much rather have lured Hunter into bed or into the shower, and knew he felt the same way. But she didn’t object aloud. They had used up all available condoms. Not that she didn’t want to have a baby. She did. Just not nine months from today.