A Serpent In Turquoise

“Anson McCord, the archaeologist? Yes, I’ve run into him down in the canyons once or twice. We share an interest in caves.”

“Ah.” So the professor wasn’t a scholar of history, though she’d not been too far off the mark—ancient man instead of modern. “Do you know where I could—” But she paused at the clatter of several sets of feet on an unseen stairway, then the sound of a body slipping and crashing the rest of the way down.

A burst of drunken hilarity was followed by a man’s bitter cursing in Spanish. Two men staggered through the beaded curtain. The skinny one held a bleeding elbow as he swore, while his hulking companion laughed uproariously. Behind them stalked a dark-haired woman with the seething impatience of a caged panther. With her bed-tossed hair and her kiss-swollen lips, she was surely the giggler from upstairs, but she was amused no longer.

The kid ran to her, stood on tiptoe to hiss in her ear. The woman’s eyes swerved like black lasers to focus on Raine.

“Ah, Magdalena,” said Grunwald under his breath. “Cuidado! She’s in one of her moods.”

“I thought—” Raine glanced at the mynah bird, who’d discovered the rejected beer down the counter, and was dipping its beak.

“That’s Magdalenita, but this one is—How do you say it? The real thing.” Grunwald stood to make a gallant introduction, but Magdalena glared at Raine, ignoring the hand she’d offered across the bar.

“Mucho gusto,” Raine said pleasantly, though it wasn’t. “I was asking Señor Grunwald if he could direct me to el profesor McCord. Or I understand that he collects his mail here. Perhaps you might tell me where to find him?”

“We know of no such man around here!” snapped Magdalena.

“Er, ah, well—” objected Grunwald.

The barkeeper raised her black brows at him. “None of us know such a man, do we?”

The German shut his mouth and sat down.

Wimp. Raine shouldered her bag, then handed Magdalena the note she’d prepared along with the fiver. “Todo el mismo—all the same—should you encounter this man McCord, I’d be grateful if you give him this. I would pay another twenty dollars gladly if by any chance he receives it.” In all likelihood, Magdalena would toss her message, but what else could she do?

She turned to bid Grunwald an ironic farewell, but the German muttered something about using the facilities. He ducked around the bar, then through a door.

Raine dropped bills on the counter, headed for the exit. But threading between the tables, she stopped as a pair of long legs stretched out to block her path. The hulking thug from upstairs smirked up at her, then shaped her a wet kiss.

His skinny pal scooted his chair back to extend the blockade. At the next table, the young man she’d crossed gazes with at the counter was dreamily contemplating the rear wall. No help would be coming from him.

“Perdóname,” Raine said, deadpan. Dogs generally didn’t bite till you showed fear.

“Hoy es mi cumpleaños,” confided Señor Double-wide, his smirk broadening to show teeth he ought to have hid.

“Happy birthday. You don’t look a day over twelve.”

His single ear-to-ear eyebrow bunched in confusion, then his smile turned mean. “So where’s my present, puta? How ’bout you gimme that pretty mug?”

Ah, a crafts lover of impeccable taste. “I don’t think so.” If she tried a detour, he’d just block her new path. Raine stepped over his legs—then spun back fiercely as he grabbed her wrist. “Don’t touch!” Her boot toe caught him square in his sweaty armpit.

As he squealed and doubled over, she chopped his elbow and jerked her wrist free. Kicked his chair out from under him. He crashed to the floor in a welter of clanging iron tables and smashing beer steins, and Raine walked out the door.

Chapter 3

A s Raine turned the corner of the building, cutting past the overloaded lumber truck toward her Jeep, a man stuck his head out a window. Grunwald.

“Pssst! Miss Ashaway! Raine! Over here!”

In spite of herself, she swerved to stand below him. “Gotta run, Johann. Thanks for the drink.”

“I must apologize for my manners. But this is the only place to find a cold beer or a home-cooked meal in fifty miles. If I offend Magdalena…”

“I understand. But about the professor. Can you tell me where to find him?”

“I can only say where I last encountered the man, about a month ago. He was conducting one of his digs along the Rio San Ignácio, east of its junction with the Batopilas. You cannot miss his camp.” He glanced nervously over his shoulder. “I think that perhaps I’d better—”

“Me, too,” she agreed as he withdrew like a gopher down its hole.

Raine started her Jeep, glanced toward the front of the cantina. No sign of pursuit yet. She spread her map out on the seat beside her. Back to Creel or onward?

“I said I’d give you twenty dólares Americano for the mug—not to make a fool of yourself,” Antonio said, squatting on his boot heels beside the fallen mestizo. The young man pulled the bill out of his pocket, waved it before the other’s flushed face. “Do you still want it? Then go after la rubia.” The blonde.

“I go stomp that bitch for free, but first, for my troubles—!”

The big man ripped the bill from the other’s fingers. Laughter clogged in his throat as the switchblade flicked into view.

“Ah, no,” Antonio said gently, touching the point to the fool’s lower eyelid. “You haven’t earned it yet.” He plucked his bill from slack fingers, tucked it away.

“I’ll—I’ll kill you for that,” blustered the big man, blinking frantically as a bead of blood oozed along the bright steel.

“You may try at your pleasure, but meanwhile, la rubia drives away, laughing. She’ll tell all her rich fancy lovers back in the city how she met a fool in Mipopo. ‘So easy,’ she’ll say. ‘One kick and I brought him to his knees. And he was a cobarde—a whimpering coward. He took my abuse and tucked his tail like a puppy!”’

“Oh, yeah?” bellowed the big man, as the knife snapped back into its handle and moved away. “If that’s what she thinks!” He staggered to a swaying stand. “Once I’ve done her I’ll be back with the mug—to break it over your lice-ridden head, you dirty indio!” He slammed out the screen door.

His skinny friend giggled and trotted after to watch the fun.

“Ah, Antonio, you were always a troublemaker,” Magdalena said fondly from behind her bar. “Now pick up my damn tables.”

Raine steered the Jeep across the bumpy lot toward the road. She stole a glance toward the cantina. Still no sign of trouble. Maybe Señor Double-wide had passed out from mortification? “Fine by me,” she muttered, easing her foot off the clutch.

With a blast of its horn, a pickup loomed up on her blind side. Storming out of the north, it cleared the winch on her front bumper by a foot.

Raine stomped on the brake, staring after the dwindling truck, and the herd of black-and-white goats that filled its rusty bed.

Having stalled the Jeep, she coaxed it back to life, then sat in Neutral. Might as well give the cloud of dust that the pickup had raised a minute to settle—along with her heart. She glanced toward the cantina’s screen door just as it banged open. The barroom brawler plus his skinny pal lurched out onto the boardwalk. “Uh-oh.”

As he spotted her, the hulking man pointed her way, and the two broke into a purposeful trot.

Raine turned out onto the road and ran smoothly up through the gears. The Jeep reached the veil of dust that swirled in the pickup’s wake. The last rays of the sinking sun struck it and Mipopo vanished beyond a wall of shimmering copper. Raine stomped the pedal to the metal.

Within minutes she caught up to the pickup with its four-legged cargo. “Pull over and let me by!” she fumed, beeping her horn.

But here in the land that invented machismo, the driver had his honor to defend. The pickup swung out to the crown of the road and trundled on at its top speed. The goats gazed back at her with demonic yellow eyes, their wispy white beards blowing in the breeze.

And behind her, she heard the first rumbles of pursuit. The dust cloud swirled as they rounded a bend, and Raine caught a glimpse behind. Here came the lumber truck, its pile of raw pine logs towering above the battered cab, the whole top-heavy load swaying monstrously on the curve.

Trey had trained her and all her siblings in hand-to-hand combat, but the foremost lesson the ex-SEAL had drilled into their heads was: “Run when you can. Fight only when you must.”