Jorge sobbed. “Her nails will grow back, man!”
Rick had a sudden flash of flames and the screams of the burning—adults and children—and of a figure moving among the dying, a dark man, untouched and unlit by those flames …
… and he almost lost it.
“Really? Yeah, maybe her hands will look fine, or almost fine. But what about the inside of her head? What about her nightmares? You hurt … you torture a little kid like that, the hurt doesn’t stop when the pain stops. The hurt inside goes on and on. Kids are helpless in this world. They need grown-ups to protect them. So when a grown-up hurts rather than protects them it’s … well, it’s unforgivable, don’t you think?”
“God forgives everything, man!”
“Even hurting a little kid? I don’t think there’s any redemption from that.”
“Sure there is!”
“Well, not from me. Because when I hear about someone hurting a kid, it gives me a pain that won’t go away until I do something about it, until I make sure that sick fuck won’t ever do something like that again.”
Jorge’s scream was brief as he was lifted and hung from the branch stump.
“Give my regards to Mulac.”
Rick was aware of the choking sounds, the twisting and writhing and useless kicking at the air as he gathered his Glock, his knife, his flashlight, and his remaining zip ties, but he didn’t watch. He turned off the headlights and started back toward the village.
No … no redemption … for anyone.
6
The shattering of the Jeep’s rear window jolted Laura from her semi-doze. She bolted upright and saw a woman raising a macana for another swing at the glass.
“Go!” she screamed in Maya. “Go away! Leave us alone!”
She came around the driver’s side of the Jeep, slamming the ornate wooden club against the roof, and then bashing the side-view mirror. Laura reached up and fumbled for the overhead courtesy light switch. As she turned it on, the woman pressed her face against the side window.
Ix’chel.
“Go!” she screamed again. “You brought them to kill my brother! Go! Leave here!”
Then her shoulders slumped and she broke into sobs.
Laura sat quaking with shock and fright for a few racing heartbeats, then opened the door on the passenger side and got out, keeping the car between them.
You brought them to kill my brother … was that what she believed? Nothing could be further from the truth. Although, if that photo hadn’t been published, maybe—
“Ix’chel,” she said softly in Yucatec Maya, “I didn’t bring them. They were here before me.”
She had the straight, inky hair of a Mayan and wore a wrinkled white blouse and knee-length cutoffs.
She looked surprised. “You speak our language?”
Laura started to move toward the front of the Jeep. “My mother grew up not far from here, in a village very much like yours.”
“Tlalli says you are a friend, that you knew Chet.”
“If Tlalli said I was a friend, then why…?” She gestured at the banged-up Jeep.
Ix’chel dropped the macana and hung her head. “I do not know, I do not know.”
“I think I understand,” Laura said. The strangers who had killed her brother were gone, but other strangers had stayed. “His real name was Chaim.”
“Yes, I know. And I am glad you know.” She looked up. “Is it true Chet is dead?”
Laura nodded. “I am sorry, but yes … he’s gone.”
“Killed like my brother?”
“Not exactly, but by the same people.”
“Five thirty-six,” she said through another sob.
“You know of them?”
She nodded. “How did they know to come here?”
“Chaim had a photograph of you and him.”
She sobbed again and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, no!”
“That may not have been it,” Laura said quickly. “Mulac had a reputation for performing wonderful cures. That is most likely what led them here. The men from 536 tried to make him tell his secrets but he refused.”
She lowered her hands. Her expression was utter misery.
“That is because he had no secrets!” she screamed. “The cures are mine! I am the bruja, not Mulac!”
She turned and ran into the darkness.
“What the hell?”
She jumped at the sound of Rick’s voice. He arrived on the run, pistol in hand. She couldn’t bring herself to say so, but she was damn glad to see him.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Taking care of business.” He was rotating in a slow circle. “You see who it was?”
“Ix’chel.”
He stopped turning. “The sister?”
“Yes. She wants us gone. She blames us for Mulac’s death.”
“Really? That’s not going to make her exactly forthcoming when you try to talk to her.”
“Tell me about it.”
She translated the gist of what Ix’chel had said and Rick was as shocked as Laura that she was the real panacean here, not Mulac.
“Then maybe this hasn’t been a wasted trip,” he said. “Let’s go find her and—”
“Let’s give her till morning.”
Laura had scads of questions she wanted to ask, but Ix’chel was in no state to be questioned.
“Your call.”
Rick tucked the pistol away and turned on the headlights, then made a slow circuit of the Jeep.
“Damn! What did she use? A baseball bat?”
“It’s over there,” Laura said, pointing to the macana where Ix’chel had dropped it. “A traditional Mayan warrior’s club.”
He wiggled the dangling side-view mirror, then whipped out one of those zip ties he liked so much and began fastening it back into place.
Laura had to smile. “A thousand and one uses, right?”
He gave her a grim smile. “Thousand and two, actually.”
IX’CHEL
1
Monday morning broke clear and warm in the jungle. Rick went off to find some water so he could clean up, leaving Laura alone with instructions to blast the horn if she needed him.
Sleep had been out of the question last night so they’d talked about how to approach Ix’chel and decided Laura should try it alone. She might have a better chance of getting the woman to open up to her on a one-to-one basis without Rick looming over them.
But first she needed to phone home.
Marissa said she’d had a great Sunday with her dad and seemed a little disappointed that she’d been handed over to the tutor this morning.
Natasha already? And then Laura remembered the two-hour difference.
When she finally ended the call, she looked around for Rick. No sign of him. Where did he go when he wandered off? Like last night. Where had he been when Ix’chel had attacked?
She took the opportunity to call her cell’s voice mail. Sure enough, another message:
“Hey, Doc. Phil again. I’ve been digging a little more on your ex–Navy SEAL—not. Ran into a few little wrinkles and one big one. Or maybe it’s not so big, but it’s weird.”
Oh, no. I don’t need more weird than I’ve already got, she thought.
“I’ll give you the little ones first. After he retired from the Sausalito PD he signed on immediately as a ranger in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I mean, he took almost no time off, which strikes me as odd, because if you’re gonna retire, you want to enjoy a little R and R, at least for a while, know what I mean? But he didn’t. Goes right into it, like he’s had the job waiting for him.”
Laura didn’t think that was a wrinkle at all. After spending over twenty-four hours straight with the man, she knew he had a lot of restless energy.
“But then what does he do? He’s not on the job six months when he calls in and says he’s quitting and they never see him again. Doesn’t even empty his locker. He heads east, lands in Westchester, and sets himself
up as Hayden Investigations and Security.”
That didn’t seem like Rick. Something must have happened. A woman thing gone wrong? Or maybe a guy thing? He came from the Bay Area, after all. He could be straight or gay—she had no sense of his sexuality.
But either way, this message held nothing disturbing … at least so far. “Little wrinkles” indeed.
“Now here’s the big wrinkle: I was trying to background his childhood—his high school and all that, see if he had any arrests as a teen—and kept coming up blank. It was like he didn’t exist before joining the Sausalito PD. And then I found out he’d gone and changed his name.”
Changed his name? Okay, now that was a wrinkle.
“I haven’t been able to dig out what he changed it from, but have no fear—I’ll get it. Kinda weird, huh? And don’t think you’re wasting my time—I’m sure you’re worrying about that—because let me tell you, this is kind of fun. This guy Hayden, or whoever he turns out to be, is an interesting duck. He’s got me curious. I’d probably follow this to the end even if you told me to stop. Because there’s something in his past he doesn’t want people to know. I can smell it. It may not be anything serious—you know, like maybe he’s related to Charles Manson or Ed Gein or something like that—but he’s hiding something. Be careful, Doc. Watch your back. And I’ll be in touch again ASAP.”
Uneasy now, she ended the call.
“Watch my back?” she muttered. “That’s supposed to be his job.”
2
First thing after waking, Nelson checked in with his New York office and found three messages from Dr. Forman to call him. Forman was number two on his call list this morning anyway. But three calls already? That couldn’t be good.
“Been trying to reach you, Fife.”
“I’m in Mexico.”
“Don’t tell me a vacation—”
“I wish. You have news for me, I assume.”
“Your report was waiting in my fax tray this morning.”
“I’m pretty sure I can tell you the result myself in general terms.” Six hundred milligrams of ibuprofen hadn’t scratched this morning’s headache. “Tell me how far gone I am.”
“I guess that means I don’t have to start off with, ‘I regret to inform you…’”
“You guess right. How bad?”
“Three metastatic tumors in your brain.”
His stomach clenched. Three … dear God!
“I’d imagined one big one…”
“Mets are often multiple. Do you want to know the locations?”
“They wouldn’t mean a thing to me.”
“If I remember correctly, you said you were having headaches, right?”
“Killers.”
“A term not to be used lightly in your case. But if you get over to Sloan-Kettering they can start a course of radiation to shrink those mets. Once the pressure on the dura and meninges is relieved, the headaches will abate. You’ve got a lot to do and no time to waste. You need complete removal of that primary on your neck and chemotherapy for the rest.”
“Sloan can do all that?”
“Those guys live for it.”
“Will it be very time consuming?”
“You’re not seriously thinking of putting it off, are you?”
“No, of course not. I’ve just got to arrange my schedule…”
“Count on spending a lot of time in imaging—more CTs, MRIs, PET scans, and on and on—and the radiation is done on a daily basis, so that takes time. I don’t know what specific chemo protocol they’ll use—not my field—but you probably won’t feel like doing much while that’s running.”
“Sounds like this is going to take over my life.”
“For a while it’s going to define your life, Fife. But at least you’ll have one. Look, I’ve got to run. Call Sloan now, today, and get rolling on this. No time to waste. Good luck.”
Define my life? Nelson thought as he hung up. I’ve too much else to do.
He sat there, trembling, nauseated, overcome with dread. Radiation, chemo … sick unto death with no guarantee of a good outcome … and doctors, doctors, doctors.
He shook it off. He had no time for treatment now, and the only doctor he was interested in had nothing to do with cancer.
Laura Fanning … Uncle Jim had said the Serpent had been behind her involvement in the quest for the panaceans’ home—to distract him. Nelson was beginning to wonder about that. Could it be the Lord’s doing? Had He brought her into it for purposes of His own?
If so, he prayed Laura Fanning was doing His bidding and digging deep into the panaceans’ secrets.
3
Laura left Rick—or whatever his original name had been—with the Jeep and wandered the village, looking for Ix’chel. She saw no sign of her but did spot Tlalli who said she’d last seen her in Mulac’s hut. She led Laura to a small thatch-roofed house with stucco walls. The door was open. Laura peeked and found Ix’chel puttering within.
Small bottles lined the walls, interspersed with tied bunches of dried flowers and herbs: Mulac’s pharmacopoeia.
“Can we talk?” she said in Mayan.
Ix’chel looked up. In daylight Laura could now see how hollow-eyed and haggard she looked.
She shook her head. “I will not talk to anyone who is not of this village.”
“I’m almost of this village. My mother brought me to Maya country many times to visit my grandmother before she died.”
“Tlalli said you also came here looking for cures to steal.”
That stung. “She said that?”
“No. But I know how it works.” She gestured around at her murdered brother’s quarters. “You find something that heals and you take it back home where you call it your own and make millions but give none of it back.”
“That’s true for others. But that’s not me. And when I found out that was happening I quit.”
“You came and talked to Mulac.”
“Years ago, yes. But I never hurt him. I’m not one of them.”
“Oh, I know that. The bad ones, the ones called 536, they are always men. But that doesn’t matter. You too are here to use us.”
She sensed how tightly Ix’chel had shut down. No surprise. She was hurt and grieving and probably frightened half to death—with good reason. Laura had to find a way past the wall she’d erected, get her to open up. But how?
Well, when nothing else works, try the truth.
“I’m a doctor too, you know.” Ix’chel looked up. Was that a spark of interest in her eyes? “But I work only with dead people.”
“You can’t cure the dead.”
“I try to understand why they died.”
“Ah, médico forense,” she said in Spanish, nodding.
“Right. I examined Chaim … Chet, but I couldn’t find out how he died.”
She frowned. “He wasn’t burned?”
“Someone tried to burn him but the firemen arrived too soon and pulled his body free.”
“And you couldn’t find a cause of death?”
Laura shook her head. “He was one of the healthiest corpses I’ve ever examined. It was as if his heart simply stopped beating.”
Ix’chel stared at her for a few seconds, then said, “This is exactly what happened.”
That took Laura aback. “What? How can you know?”
“Because we are taught how to do it.”
“By whom? Who teaches you?”
Ix’chel waved the questions away. She wasn’t going to answer. “We are taught. That is all. When the Brotherhood finds us, we know we are going to die. They—”
“The Brotherhood? What Brotherhood?”
“The 536 Brotherhood. They call us witches and warlocks and their holy book says they must kill us.”
“What holy book is that?”
“The Bible. It says, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’”
Laura gasped. In the old days they hung or burned witches, didn’t they? Hanrahan had been burned, and very near
ly Brody. And Mulac … poor Mulac had suffered both.
“We know they will torture and burn us,” Ix’chel said, “so we spare ourselves the pain and deny them that satisfaction by stopping our hearts.”
Laura didn’t see how it was possible to stop your own heart, but everything Ix’chel was saying jibed perfectly with Hanrahan’s and Brody’s autopsy results, and with what Stahlman had told her.
He’d said he thought 536 might have their roots in Christianity. Seemed like he was right.
Ix’chel’s expression was suspicious. “You are telling me that you knew nothing of this?”
“Almost nothing.”
“You came here to steal a secret—the secret of the greatest cure the world has ever known—to make yourself rich and powerful. You are worse than the Brotherhood. They are sick and twisted murderers, but at least their motives are pure and beyond greed!”
Ix’chel began to turn away so Laura blurted, “I don’t want your secrets! I was sent here to find one dose—one dose of your medicine for a very sick man. That is all.” Her voice rose of its own accord. “I don’t care about your damn secrets, because I don’t believe in your ‘greatest cure.’ I think you’re all crazy. I think the man who sent me is crazy, and I think the men who killed Mulac are the craziest of all.”
Ix’chel was slowly turning back to her, so Laura lowered her voice and continued.
“I had two mysteriously connected deaths. Two men—Chaim was one of them.”
Ix’chel was staring at her. “You cut Chaim open?”
“Yes. I examined all his organs. As I said, I could find no cause of death.”
“You held his heart in your hands?”
Laura nodded. “Yes.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “He had a good heart.”
“He had a perfect heart. He and the other man were growing some sort of plant indoors, and both had similar tattoos—wait. Mulac also had the tattoo, but you said he wasn’t—”
“Mulac’s was fake.” She turned and lifted her blouse. She was braless so no strap obscured any part of the tattoo.
“This is real.”
Laura slumped against the doorframe. “I don’t understand any of this.”