Until she couldn’t ignore the nagging sense that Homer was waiting for her to fulfill her promise and break the “curse.”
Mac swore mildly as the toe of her boot connected with old but very solid limestone. She’d wandered to the base of one of the pyramid temples, towering a hundred feet over her head. The narrow steps leading up to the sacrificial platform at the top didn’t make very good seats, but she braced herself against the steep incline, knees drawn up to her chest, and shrugged off her backpack. She needed another reminder of her purpose in coming here.
The photograph was carefully sandwiched between two pieces of museum board. She opened the makeshift case and laid the photo across her knees, glancing from faded image to present reality.
This was very close to the right part of Tikal, though the angle was different; you almost wouldn’t know it was the same place, so changed was the site from the early 1880s. The temples behind Great-great-grandfather Perry and Liam O’Shea were overgrown and buried under centuries of vines, trees, and undergrowth, as they’d been until the first serious exploration had begun over a decade after their visit.
Now Tikal was a national park. Not much of a risk to visit it these days. But she was here, where they had been. She traced Perry’s dapper figure with her fingertip and then the shape of the man beside him.
Liam O’Shea. She could still find herself fascinated by that cocky half-smile, that militant macho stance even after she’d looked at the damned photograph well over a thousand times.
Asking herself the same crazy questions. Did you do it, Peregrine Sinclair? Did you rob this magnificent man of his strength and hope and future? Did you taint the honorable name of Sinclair forever?
And then she would see Liam O’Shea, and imagine his life, and how he had struggled so far to meet such an end. Alone, with no one to care that he’d died.
Admit it, Mac. You came here as much for him as for Homer.
Pretty crazy, mooning over a guy in a photo. A guy who’d been dead for a century and probably would have been a jerk, judging by that smile. He probably was just the kind to curse someone and make it stick.
But I’m here to make amends. If you’ll listen, Liam O’Shea, wherever you are.
She tilted her cap to a defiantly rakish angle. Hardly likely that she’d find Liam’s remains. He couldn’t have died in Tikal, or they would have found him already, and the old newspaper clippings reporting his death hadn’t given any details.
Mac stood and tucked the photo away. No—her symbolic apology to Liam O’Shea would have to be whispered to the jungle itself. Maybe a ritual burial of the pendant near one of the ruins. She wished she’d paid more attention to New Age traditions. Candles and incense and magic circles and chants. Which would probably make Liam O’Shea’s ghost laugh his head off.
She snorted. Ghost indeed. No such animal.
She tested her stamina by climbing the precipitous temple stairway to the platform at the top. From this height the other tourists at the site were little more than toy figures, too distant and indifferent to share her minor victory.
She sighed a little wistfully and started back down. The morning mist was lifting. There was still a great deal to see at the site, and even with two days in one of the local hotels she had a lot of ground to cover. During that time she had to decide exactly what to do with the pendant. She hoped that some lightning flash of inspiration would strike.
By early afternoon, following a quick snack of beans, tortillas, and a fortifying Dr Pepper at a comedor, she hadn’t had a single bright idea. She’d seen two of the main temples and one acropolis, not to mention a number of steles and related exhibits. All of it was fascinating enough. But none of it had given her a clue. She felt as if she were in the wrong place entirely.
As if she’d missed something vitally important.
She wandered close to the dense border of trees surrounding central Tikal, as she’d done time and time again throughout the morning. Out there, perhaps, was what she was searching for—ruins that had yet to be excavated; ancient, overgrown paths untrodden for centuries; the deep green silence of eternal nature.