Tears of the Jaguar Read Online Free PDF Page B

with barbed wire, two fat drops of blood dripping from the thorns. They’d have been done if Bowerdale had let them use laser measures instead of all the antiquated craphe insisted was “field tested.” You could pick one up at Home Depot for like a hundred bucks but no, she had to use the leveling rod, as archaeologists have since time immemorial. As used by Morley, Thompson, John Lloyd Stephens, and all those other nineteenth-century geezers. She rolled her eyes and thought,
As used by the fucking ancient Maya themselves
.
    Deborah Miller wasn’t much better than Bowerdale. True, she hadn’t shown up at Alice’s bedroom door with a bottle of tequila and an I’m-not-as-old-as-you-think speech, but she had his knack for ignoring her. The woman was clearly out of her depth. Even James said so, and he barely said anything negative about anybody. She was nice enough, Alice supposed, and she had a toughness that deserved some respect, but Miller didn’t like being questioned and that was what Alice did best. In other circumstances, Alice conceded, she might think Deborah Miller was OK, maybe even interesting if some of the stories were true. Like the one about working as an informant for the FBI during a case involving neo-Nazis and ancient Greek gold. But as her
boss
? Forget it.
    She frowned and rubbed her arms, which were prickling as the morning’s relative coolness gave way to the ruthless heat of the sun. With her pale skin that never tanned, she had to wear long sleeves in spite of the soaring temperatures. Just as well, she thought. If she bared any more skin, poor James might lose his mind and Bowerdale might try his advances again. Alice snorted. She wasn’t a classic beauty queen, but with her slim figure, light blue eyes, and dark hair, most of the red-blooded men in her orbit seemed to think she was their best option. Lucky her.
    “Goddamn Bowerdale,” she said, even though nobody was around to hear. “I wouldn’t mind taking him and throwing him right off the top of that—”
    She heard something in the underbrush off to her left and stopped, peering, startled. She could see nothing but vine-strangled trees and an uncanny speckling of crimson flowers, but she was suddenly sure there was someone there.
    “James?” she called. “That better not be you, asshole.”
    There was no sound in response. She stood there, feeling the heat reflecting onto her from all sides and—behind it somehow—eyes.
    She was on the west side of Structure 2, completely cut off from the central court and the others. She was alone. Doubling back would take longer than going forward, so she began to walk quickly, trying to deny her own fear. She glanced involuntarily off into the jungle to her left, stumbling as she did so.
    It could have been an animal, she thought, a little desperately, a wild boar maybe. Maybe even a jaguar, which would be scary but kind of cool, so long as it didn’t fucking
eat
her.
    For the first time she felt completely alone in the site, as if James and the others were hundreds of miles away, not yards. It was as if she had wandered into this ancient place by herself, a place in which she did not belong, a place that did not want her. She quickened her pace till she was jogging. Somehow, over the noise of her footfalls and increasingly labored breathing, she sensed movement back there in the trees. She began to run flat-out.
    Alice was not athletic. Exercise bored her, and though she had cut down, she still smoked half a pack a day. But now she sprinted ahead under the shadow of the great ruined structure as if she were a marathoner. Fear made her legs churn. She felt as if she was trespassing, as if she was the first person to step on this path in a thousand years. All around her in the changeless forest,she felt eyes in the leaves. Then, breathless, she rounded a corner and saw someone. A woman, tall and lanky...
    Deborah Miller.
    Alice called out, a joyous and unguarded shout of relief.

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