Free Tears of the Jaguar by A.J. Hartley

hands tapped out his password on the keyboard:
Nieves
. His dog’s name, if Bowerdale remembered rightly.
    Isn’t that sweet
.
    Bowerdale turned the camera feed off and deleted it, then hit the “switch user” button. He typed in Aguilar’s login name and the password and pulled up the folders he had created from the Ek Balam artifacts. He opened his own e-mail, addressed a message, and attached everything he could find on the red crystal in Aguilar’s files before sending it. He got an acknowledgement ninety seconds later. While he waited for his cell phone to ring, he shut the computer down.
    Bowerdale set the phone on the desk and watched it for half an hour. Then another. He checked his watch. When ten more minutes had passed with no call, he got up and began to walk around. He listened at the door, and the hallway outside was quiet, but he had begun to sweat.
    What was taking so long?
    Ten more minutes and he’d call preemptively, protocol or no protocol. He stared at the phone where it sat, mute, beside the computer.
    Finally, it buzzed, wobbling like a big black roach on the desk. He snatched it up and answered it in a thick whisper.
    “What the hell took you so long?” he demanded.
    “You need to not call me again, OK, Bowerdale?” said the Texan. “We’re done.”
    “What are you talking about?” asked the archaeologist, baffled. “Clements, you called me, remember?”
    “I mean, I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” said Clements. “You got me? No calls, no e-mails, no schemes.”
    “What about the stone?” Bowerdale demanded.
    “You aren’t listening. I said, I want out. I don’t want to see anything about those stones again. Ever. You understand me?”
    “Excuse me?” said Bowerdale. He was trying to sound cheery, upbeat, as if this was just bargaining, but he had never heard the dealer sound so scared.
    “Goodbye, Martin. Have a nice life.”
    “Wait,” he spluttered. “What’s the problem? I’ll give you good terms, just tell me what you think it’s worth.”
    “To me? Nothing,” said Clements.
    “But you said I was right,” Bowerdale hissed. “You said it was valuable.”
    “Not to me, Martin. And believe me when I say that the people who will want it are not guys you want to deal with.”
    “This is nuts,” said Bowerdale.
    “People are coming for this find, Martin. Bad people. For all I know, they may already be there. If I were you, I’d forget you ever saw that tomb and I’d get out of Mexico. Now.”
    And before Bowerdale could think of a response, the line went dead.

Chapter Sixteen

     
    The experts Deborah had hired to investigate the new find drove in from Cancun and Merida airports first thing in the morning. She waited for them at the lab in Valladolid feeling nervous, not just because there would suddenly be several new faces on site looking to Deborah for direction, but because their arrival reminded her of just how big the find under the pyramid was. It went without saying that any one of them was better qualified to lead the dig than she was. While she waited for their van to arrive, she called Steve Powel in Chicago and told him as much, but he didn’t want to hear it.
    “This is a Cornerstone project,” he said, “and you are our man on site.”
    She wasn’t certain if that “man” was a joke or some weird term of authority that she was to take as gender neutral. Maybe it was supposed to be a compliment, she thought, her heart sinking.
    “You know who is coming?” she said, refusing to be diverted. “Krista Rayburn, the environmental archaeologist from Florida U. Marissa Stroud, the epigrapher from Minnesota who wrote the closest thing to a dictionary of Mayan glyphs we have, as well as that history of world royal regalia. Not to mention Chad Rylands, from Texas A&M, who wrote the world’s most important study of Mayan bones
before
he was tenured.”
    “I know,” said Powel. “I suggested two of them, remember?”
    Deborah hadn’t