Hunter didn’t enjoy watching Mercurio hug her breathless one damn bit, but he knew better than to show any emotion. Mercurio was making a statement. Now it was up to Lina to make one of her own. Impassive, Hunter watched her struggle politely to get some distance from Mercurio without being insulting about it.
“Sorry about the lack of notice,” she said, finally managing to step back from the embrace.
“No, no.” Mercurio held on to her hand and kissed it too long for politeness. “Such a sweet surprise you are.”
Color appeared high on Lina’s cheekbones, anger or embarrassment. She wasn’t nearly as comfortable with Mercurio’s affectionate display as he was. Nor did she like the way he was ignoring Hunter. Mercurio was usually polite to a fault.
She felt like a bone being mauled by a dog.
“Dr. Mercurio ak Chan de la Poole,” Lina said crisply, “I would like to introduce Mr. Hunter Johnston. We’re both very interested in the artifacts I mentioned when I called you.”
Reluctantly Mercurio turned to Hunter with a meaningless smile. “Good to meet you.”
Hunter murmured something polite and shook hands in the gentle Mexican way.
Mercurio had been north of the border. He ground down on Hunter’s hand with enough force to establish machismo.
Hunter’s smile didn’t change. He waited patiently to be released. When he was, he slid his hand over Lina’s and laced their fingers deeply together.
“You’ve come a long way from Texas,” Mercurio said to Hunter.
“Lina knows I’ll go anywhere with her.”
She shot Hunter a look from under long, dark eyelashes, but kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to insult Mercurio before she saw his new acquisitions.
“I would do the same,” Mercurio replied coolly, “go anywhere for her.” His dark eyes shifted to Lina, caressing her and ignoring Hunter like a buzzing fly. “What may I do for you, beautiful one? What has brought you all the way to my humble place of work?”
“Humble?” Lina’s hand gestured to the timbered vault of the ceiling, and the Maya-inspired designs carved into the hardwood that must have taken hundreds of hours of exacting work.
“One tries,” Mercurio said.
She smiled brightly. “You succeed. I know how valuable your time is, so I’ll try not to take much of it.”
“For you—”
She kept talking. Ruthlessly. “We’d really love permission to see your recent acquisitions. Perhaps you have some items that would be suitable for trade with my museum.”
“But of course, querida.” He took her arm and led her to the acquisitions room.
Lina kept hold of Hunter’s hand like a lifeline. He decided that if Mercurio called Lina querida—darling—one more time in that deep, possessive tone, there might just be an unhappy moment or three while Hunter shoved Mercurio’s grasping fingers where the sun doesn’t shine.
But only after Hunter got what he came for. He was liking better and better the idea that Mercurio was good for illegal artifact trading, attempted murder, and attempted kidnapping. At least Hunter’s emotions liked the idea. His mind wasn’t cheering quite as happily.
“Did you come down for Abuelita’s birthday?” Mercurio asked, plainly not caring if Hunter could hear.
“I’m surprised you remembered,” Lina said.
“This year, it would be difficult to forget. To have a Reyes Balam birthday on the day the wheel will turn is a magnificent thing, a source of much celebration. Some of the village people have prepared shrines.”
Lina almost missed a step. Hunter steadied her with a hand at the small of her back. Then he nearly sent her to her knees with a slow, loving caress over her backside.
“Shrines?” she asked. Then she cleared her throat and tried again. “Shrines with Abuelita’s picture?”
Mercurio shrugged with a male grace that was unconscious.
Hunter considered tripping him.
“I look only at the flowers,” Mercurio said. “From a distance, they are beautiful, yes?”
“You never got close to one of the shrines?” Hunter asked.
“The peasant beliefs are not mine,” Mercurio said without looking away from Lina. “I am a civilized man educated in the civilized world.”
“Have you heard that the people are getting fanatic about their gods?” Hunter asked. “You know, baktun and all.”
“There are rumors.” The distaste in Mercurio’s voice was clear. “The villagers are very unsophisticated.”
“What kind of rumors?” Lina asked before Hunter could. “Anything that might threaten my family?”
Mercurio’s laugh was as richly masculine as his voice. “Their jungles might be short a few monkeys, but the villagers hold the Reyes Balam line in reverence. Not quite gods, but close. Priest-kings, as it were.”
“Priest-kings often came to a bloody end,” Hunter pointed out.
“That was long ago,” Mercurio said. “Like the artifacts in this museum. Beautiful reminders of a past that is no more.”
Hunter thought of the blood-drenched basement, the stone altar with the face of a god brooding over it, shots echoing in a parking garage, and Jase’s shirt with a terrifying stain of blood.
“Some people still take it seriously,” Hunter said. “Like death.”
“There are crazies in every society,” Mercurio said.
“Have you ever heard of El Maya?” Hunter asked casually.
“Superstitions, but I’ve heard something. The peasants think he is a god.”
“Yeah? Is he local?”
“He’s a god,” Mercurio said. “He’s everywhere. And nowhere.”
“I haven’t heard of him,” Lina said.
Mercurio made a dismissing motion with his hand. “El Maya is a combination of Robin Hood and the Grim Reaper. He’s a hope and a fear. Hot air, I believe you Americans say.”
“So you don’t think he’s real,” Hunter said, remembering Rodrigo’s silence.
“No,” Mercurio said, focusing on Lina as he opened the door to the acquisitions room. “You have strange friends, querida.”
Hunter wanted to show Mercurio just how strange he was—but not until Hunter was sure that he’d wrung all possible information out of the man.
Lina’s breath came in swiftly as she saw the room beyond Mercurio. Shelves and tables filled every space. Most surfaces were covered by artifacts waiting to be cataloged.
“As I said, I need more help.” Mercurio’s tone was wry, but not apologetic.
Lina didn’t take the bait.
“Good help is hard to find,” Hunter said blandly.
Mercurio kept on acting as if he were alone with Lina.
She headed for the artifacts. There was a tug at her arm before Mercurio slowly, reluctantly let go. If she hadn’t needed to look at his artifacts, she would have given him the kind of cold female shoulder that left ice burns.
Silently Hunter’s glance raked over artifact after artifact, looking for something that matched the photos in his cargo pants.
Lina was looking just as intently. “Nice incense burner.”
“Nice?” Mercurio laughed. “The censer is beautiful and you know it.”
“Of course,” she said, studying it.
The pottery’s central motif was an intricate cutout of an idealized Maya skull, mouth open. Snakes wrapped around the cranial dome, heads pointed up to the heavens. The figure was repeated three more times around the pottery. The inside was black with smoke, probably from sacred copal, the hardened but not fossilized remains of tree sap. The outside showed traces of blue that could have been painted glyphs, faded now.
There was no piece missing in the censer that would match what Hunter and Jase had found in the murdered janitor’s room. None of the glyphs had the squared, jagged lines, a sigil sacred exclusively to Kawa’il.