Words of Love by Hazel Hunter Page B

throat. He looked down at the man’s front pants pocket. The serious buyers always brought cash. And this was a serious buyer. There was probably at least five thousand dollars in his pocket.  
    Frederico stared at the pocket as the buyer circled around the vase, still careful not to touch it or drip water on it. But here was the problem, always the same problem. If he killed the buyer, he couldn’t buy anything in the future. He could have the truck and five thousand dollars now, but that’d be it. And if too many buyers disappeared, they’d all stop coming.
    Frederico folded his arms over his chest.
    “Take it,” he said. “Or leave it. Five-thousand.”
    “Wait a minute,” the man said, finally looking at him. “You just said it was four-thousand.”
    “That was before. Now you’re wasting my time.”
    Frederico put his hand back on the machete. The man stared at it, then glanced at the vase, and then back at the machete.
    “All right,” he hissed. “All right.”
    He dug into his pants pocket and removed a roll of large bills.
    Frederico smirked.
    “When will you have more?” the man asked.
    Frederico glanced through the screen and looked at the muddy river in the distance.
    “When the rain stops.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

    The glyphs were changing.  
    Jesse sensed it more than saw it. The deeper they went into the Mayan ruins of the cavern, the darker the glyphs became–their look, their feelings, and their meanings.
    She had finally convinced Brett that she was feeling fine–and she was. They had agreed that the fainting and dizziness were the side effects of the antimalarial drug she’d chosen.  
    Brett had been so understanding. It was her first time in the field so it was hard to know how the drugs would affect her. Going back to Guatemala City had to grate on him more than her but he seemed to be taking it in stride. For her part, she felt the need to get as much translation done as possible in whatever time was left.
    “I’m convinced the Red King is in the seventh cave,” Brett said. “And not just because the other caves don’t seem to have a burial. You’ll see what I mean.”
    They’d used lanterns to navigate through the long main corridor that led from the first cavern, the location of the main plaza and their camp. As they’d passed the other caverns, he’d pointed them out and talked about each.  
    Cavern two had a cenote , a deep well into which sacrificial offerings were thrown–offerings that sometimes included people. Cavern three had a ball court where the hard rubber ball passing through a stone ring decided the fate of the players. Cavern four had contained a forest of pillars and number five was the temple of the high priest. They had just passed the sixth.
    “An enormous platform with an equally huge tzompantli ,” Brett said. “I promise I’m going to show all this to you but I want you to see the seventh cave.”
    A tzompantli , Jesse thought grimly, the wall of skulls where the heads of sacrificial victims were placed on long wooden posts, stacked twenty high. Each cave had something more grisly than the previous. She was glad they weren’t stopping. As they neared the entrance, their feet moved quicker but Jesse felt a growing dread.
    “Blood Gatherer,” she said.
    “Yes,” said Brett, as he led her by the hand. “The Red King.”
    He hadn’t stopped talking about him since they’d left camp. And despite the strange glyphs they’d passed, she couldn’t help but be infected by his excitement. But something nagged at the back of her mind.
    “There’s a reason for his name,” she said.
    His pace slowed a little as he looked at her face.
    “You said that in the first cavern,” he said. “At the stelae.”
    “Something’s coming,” she said, looking ahead to the dark mouth of the last cave. “The glyphs say so. I think we’re heading to Xibalba.”
    As they’d passed the other caves, each entrance had been marked by a stela. Although they