The Maya Bust by E. Chris Ambrose

Author:E. Chris Ambrose
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rocinante

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

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Raxha leaned on the horn to clear the traffic, startling knots of people out of the way. The town looked all wrong, like a tangled loom, clusters of citizens instead of people shopping and strolling, old men smoking on doorsteps. Her advance in the truck began to feel more like the days when her father had entered a room, sweeping the crowd with his gaze, like an eagle from a height, until everyone fell silent to hear what he would say. She hungered for that level of respect, but they gave it now for her vehicle — and from their fear. She jammed the accelerator, bumping over the curb when a tuk-tuk didn’t get out of the way fast enough. “What do you hear, Dante? What do they say?”

Hunched over his phone, thumbs tapping and scrolling, Dante said, “Somebody says shots fired, somebody else says they didn’t hear anything, but did you hear about the cemetery. The cops have picked up our man from the gate, his body.”

She slapped the wheel. She’d suspected the father had taken out their watchman. Damn it. Damn Lexi for lying to her. Damn the father for his itchy trigger finger. “More shots fired, though, not the same thing? Not the cemetery?”

Dante scrolled fast, but his head was already shaking. “Must be different, it’s like a half-hour later they’re saying shots again. But that was all a few hours ago now. Should’ve brought Chica to the monastery, let her take care of it.”

“She’s not like a guided missile, Dante. She takes anyone who gets shot.” Barely slowing, she squealed the truck around the corner toward the jungle track. The buildings ended abruptly here, and she scanned the jungle to the right, the encroaching trees growing rapidly from a few ferns to a towering — She slammed on the brakes. Dante caught himself before hitting the dashboard, and she pointed out the window across his chest.

Dante followed her arm, the both of them looking down, to the ditch at the side of the road. Branches, both broken and whole, stretched over the gutter. Dead leaves cluttered the verge, obscuring the distinctions between stone and dirt, between the ways of man and the power of nature. More green down below, but this was the green of camouflage pants and a matching shirt. At least it used to match, but now a dark stain spread from the center, from a darker hole. The man, her man, lay face down, his gun underneath him. Taken from behind, in the coward’s way.

She pushed the accelerator and they rattled down the road further, reaching the tumbledown corner of the ruined monastery. A man’s body protruded from the gate, his arms extended and his gun close to his hand. Bits of glass and a lot of blood spattered that time, like the guy bled out from the wound in his gut. Whoever shot him didn’t even bother to claim his weapon, or to take it away in case he wasn’t dead.

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