Look What the Wind Blew In Read Free Page A

Then he crossed himself as Catholics tended to do, muttered something undecipherable under his breath, and spit over his left shoulder.
    Quint cocked his head to the side. That was a new ending to the centuries old ritual.
    The bike rider grasped his outstretched hand and gave it two hard shakes. “Teodoro Cruz,” he said, squinting up at Quint. Then in a blink, he smiled coat-hanger wide.
    Quint smiled back, glad to see a friendly face after staring down a bug-splattered bus grill.
    “We go now?” Teodoro asked.
    “I’m ready when you are.” The sooner he made it to the dig site, the sooner he could get started on his reason for returning to this overgrown, godforsaken sweat lodge. “Let me grab my backpack.” He walked over to the store’s stucco wall and collected his things.
    Teodoro took Quint’s pack from him and secured the bulky bag to the metal shelf over the back tire.
    Meanwhile, Quint tried to swipe the dust from his clothes, smearing it across the sweat-soaked cotton. He gave up on his clothes and shook the dust from his hair. Every nook and cranny of his skin felt gritty, damn it. When he looked up, Teodoro waited on the bike’s front seat. He motioned for Quint to take the seat behind him.
    With a chuckle, Quint climbed on. He hadn’t figured his first trip to the dig site would be by two-seater bike. Hell, nothing had gone as planned since he’d agreed to take this trip to the Yucatán to solve a twenty-year-old mystery.
    As Teodoro steered past the bus, Quint squirmed on the rock-hard seat while he pedaled. He’d had rougher rides in his line of work, but sitting too long on this bike was going to impair his ability to have kids someday.
    “Do you usually take a bike to and from the dig site?” he asked.
    Teodoro glanced back. “Curse got our motorcycle.”
    He stopped squirming. “Did you say curse ?”
    “ Sí .”
    No shit? This must be his lucky day. Not for the first time since he’d stepped off the plane, he wondered if he should turn around and fly back to the States.
    Teodoro steered them onto the raised white sacbe .
    Quint remembered the limestone-coated, ancient Maya roadway from the last time he had been at the dig site. As he peddled along behind Teodoro into the shadow-filled jungle, several other memories surfaced, including Dr. Hughes’ love of solving puzzles from the past.
    And who could forget that son of a bitch, Jared Steel?
    * * *
    Angélica waited for the last of her crew to leave the mess tent after lunch before facing off with her father. “Dad, I swear,” she shook her spoon at him, “if I hear one more word about this stupid, damned nonexistent curse, I’m throwing you in the nearest cenote .”
    “It’s not my fault. You’re the one who read that glyph.”
    She tossed her spoon onto the table. “Well, the least you could do is support me on dispelling all of this superstitious bullshit, especially in front of my men.”
    “You need to stop swearing so much, gatita . You’re beginning to sound like your mother.”
    “Quit trying to change the subject.”
    “Fine. You don’t believe in the curse.” Juan picked up her spoon and used it to scrape the remains of her lunch onto his plate. “But your crew does. If you want to quell all of the whispers and fears, you need to come up with a believable explanation for what happened to Francisco, Lorenzo, and Rafael.”
    “What? They got sick.”
    “You know it’s more than that. It’s not normal for three young men to come down with severe stomachaches at the same time. And don’t blame María’s cooking either, because we all shared the same meal.”
    “It was a twenty-four-hour flu. Period. End of story.”
    He lifted his coffee, glancing over her head at the entrance to the mess tent. “You don’t find it odd that all three were working in the Ik Temple?”
    That was the third time in the last few minutes that she’d noticed him looking at the entrance. Angélica checked behind her and found