“We can account for that,” she said, knowing they had strong antibiotics on hand.
“Okay, fine,” he said, “but I’m not a surgeon and I’ve been drinking for three hours.”
She fixed her gaze on him. “I’m not asking you to take my gall bladder out. It’s nothing more than a big splinter. You just have to cut the skin and pull it out.”
Hawker did not look pleased by the thought but he seemed to realize there was no other choice. “Fine,” he said. “Lie down.”
She took off the borrowed dress and laid a towel on the bed, wrapping another one around her waist. A second later Hawker was back with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and Danielle’s first-aid kit.
He pulled out the Zithromax she’d been giving McCarter and handed her two pills, which she gulped down with a large glass of water.
“This is going to hurt,” he said.
She almost laughed. “Not as bad as I’m going to hurt you, if you don’t hurry up and get it over with.”
She watched as he pulled the scalpel from the kit. Using the rubbing alcohol, he sterilized it repeatedly and then put it down without letting the tip of the blade touch anything.
She folded her arms up around the pillow and closed her eyes, trying to focus on anything but the cut that was about to come. She could feel Hawker’s hands against her bare skin. They were warm and strong, and they felt heavy against her back. His leg pressed tight against her thigh and the feeling of his body over the top of her was distracting in an intimate way.
A sudden touch of cold brushed her back; an ice cube to numb the skin. She drew in a sharp breath and held it. Several droplets of water ran across her shoulder blade. One trickled to the side, curving over her body and down toward her hips, clinging to her skin until it trailed across her stomach.
The chill brought on goose bumps and she found herself holding her breath. She wanted to tell him to wait. To turn over and pull him close to her and to make love to him before all this would be done. But they’d run out of time to enjoy life.
“I’m ready,” she said.
She felt his hand pressing heavy on her shoulder, holding it still, and then the edge of the scalpel cutting a shallow line in her skin. She tensed, fighting the instinct to cry out in pain.
CHAPTER 59
Back in her own clothes, with her shoulder bandaged but still bleeding, Danielle hiked to the church with Hawker by her side. She carried the pack with the stone in it. Hawker carried the first-aid kit, with McCarter’s antibiotics.
As they walked, she tried to bottle up the waves of emotion running through her, pushing aside the feeling of having Hawker hold her and kiss her. She needed her wits about her now; she needed to be a professional again.
The tiny object buried under her skin turned out to be a radioactive pellet, an isotope that with the right equipment could be sensed from a distance. The fact that it wasn’t a transmitter made sense. If Kang knew about the stones, he knew that a small microtransmitter would not operate long in their presence. But the pellet was a simple solution. Danielle guessed and hoped it was a low-grade isotope, with a short half-life and capable of little damage, but she didn’t know.
She wrapped the pellet in a cloth and slid it into the lead-lined case that contained the stone. Then she and Hawker hustled to find McCarter. The plan was to go now, to lure Kang’s forces away from the town and ditch the pellet along the way, hopefully distracting him further.
They entered the church and immediately made their way to the wine cellar.
As they descended the stairs, she called out to McCarter. “Professor?”
She heard a crash and raced down the remaining stairs. She spotted McCarter in the far corner, the table overturned next to him. They ran to him.
“Professor,” she said, helping him up.
He was drenched with sweat.
“He’s burning up,” she told Hawker.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
“I couldn’t …,” he mumbled. “I can’t …”
She pressed her hand against his forehead. His temperature had to be over a hundred. McCarter reached into his pocket and produced five days’ worth of antibiotics, which he had been pretending to take.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to see her again. I thought that the stone could bring her to me. Make it real.”
“I’ve got to get you upstairs,” Danielle said, as she and Hawker helped him up.
With Hawker under one arm and Danielle under the other, they began to move. “I tried to figure it out, but I don’t know,” McCarter said. “I can’t think.”
“What did you find out?” Hawker asked.
“The stones, they heal the earth,” he said.
“The earth?”
“The ground,” he said meekly. “The land.”
“What about the Black Sun?” she asked. “What does the sun do?”
“Not the sun,” he said. “The land.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The land blackens the sun,” he said.
She looked over at Hawker. He shrugged.
“It comes …,” McCarter sagged, almost unconscious. “From down here,” he said.
They were holding him up now, a two-hundred-pound rag doll. He seemed on the verge of delirium.
They’d made it to the top stair and out into the church.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to see her again.”
“You will.”
The words came from Hawker, surprising to her as so many things about him were. She didn’t know if he was just trying to put McCarter at ease or if he believed them, but the way they’d been spoken, filled with conviction, seemed to indicate that he did.
“Outside,” she said. “The cool air might help his temperature a bit.”
They dragged and carried him outside, laying him down on the church step. He looked horrible.
“Can you do anything for him?” Hawker asked.
“I can force-feed him some antibiotics, I can jury-rig an IV with fluids, and I can clean out that damn wound again,” she said, then looked up at Hawker. “What I can’t do is leave him here alone.”
“What about the stone, the destiny?”
“I came back for a friend,” she said. “I realized that last night. Whatever other reasons there were, whatever the stone programmed me to do, I came back for McCarter. I’m not leaving him now.”
Both of them knew what that meant. Hawker would go for the Temple of the Jaguar alone.
CHAPTER 60
As Danielle worked on McCarter, Hawker went to find Father Domingo. Sneaking into his room, he switched on a flashlight.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” he said.
Father Domingo blinked in the bright light. He blocked the beam of light with his hand. “What have you done, my son?”
“I woke a priest up in the middle of the night after he threw a heck of party.”
Hawker lowered the light.
“Is that all?” Father Domingo asked.
“No,” Hawker said. “But that’s all we have time for.”
Father Domingo sat up. It was a heavy, ponderous movement, like a bear coming out of hibernation. “You’re leaving,” he said, looking at Hawker’s manner of dress.
Hawker nodded. “Tell me where I have to go.”
“What makes you think I know?”
“You asked us if we planned to do anything with the stone, not what we might do or where,” Hawker said. “I figure that’s because you already know.”
“Are you sure you want to go there?”
Hawker nodded.
“You want to, or you believe you must?” Father Domingo asked.
“Other people believe,” Hawker said. “Right now, that’s good enough for me.”
“Then you must hike back to the lake where we found you,” Father Domingo said.
“Go past it and past the long, narrow lake beyond. There you will come to a series of hills. Between the third and fourth ridge you will find a sinkhole, much like the cenotes of the lowlands. At this time of year it is filled with water, with a small island in the center no larger than this room.”