Mystery Man. Diana Palmer
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closed up. He gave her a glare that could have stopped traffic and motioned to Karie to follow him. He stuck his hands into his pockets and walked out the door. He never looked back. It seemed to be a deep-seated characteristic.
Karie grinned and waved, following obediently.
When they were out of sight along the beach, Kurt joined her on the patio deck.
“What if that man wasn’t watching Karie at all?” she wondered aloud, having had time to formulate a different theory. “What if he’s a lookout for the pothunters?”
Kurt scowled. “You mean those people who steal artifacts from archaeological sites and sell them on the black market?”
“The very same.” She folded her arms over her T-shirt. “This is a brand-new site, unexplored and uncharted until now. Mom and Dad even noted that it seemed to be totally undisturbed. The Maya did some exquisite work with gold and precious jewels. What if there’s a king’s ransom located at the dig and someone knows about it?”
Kurt leaned against the railing. “They know it can happen. It did last time they found a site deep in the jungle, over near Chichñaen Itzñaa. But they had militia guarding them and the pothunters were caught.”
“Yes, but Mexico is hurting for money, and it’s hard to keep militia on a site all the time to guard a few archaeologists.”
“Dad has a gun.”
“And he can shoot it. Sure he can. But they can’t stay awake twenty-four hours a day, and even militia can be bribed.”
“You’re a whale of a comfort,” Kurt groaned.
“I’m sorry. I just think we should be on our guard. It could have been someone trying to kidnap Karie, but they’ve just as much incentive to kidnap us or at least keep a careful eye on us.”
“In other words, we’d better watch our backs.”
Janine smiled. “Exactly.”
“Suits me.” He sighed. “What a shame your alien hero can’t beam down here and help us out. I’ll bet he’d have the bad guys for breakfast.”
“Oh, they don’t eat humans,” she assured him.
“They might make an exception for pothunters.”
“You do have a point there. Come on. You can help me do the dishes.”
“Tell you what,” he said irrepressibly. “You do the dishes, and I’ll write your next chapter for you!”
“Be my guest.”
He gave her a wary look. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Wrong. Go for it.”
He was excited, elated. He took her at her word and went straight to the computer. He loaded her word processing program, pulled up the file where she’d left off, scanned the plot.
He sat and he sat and he sat. By the time she finished cleaning up the kitchen, he was still sitting.
“Nothing yet?” she asked.
He gave her a plaintive stare. “How do you do this?” he groaned. “I can’t even think of a single word to put on paper!”
“Thinking is the one thing I don’t do,” she told him. “Move.”
He got up and she sat down. She stared at the screen for just a minute, checked her place in the plot, put her fingers on the keyboard and just started typing. She was two pages into the new scene when Kurt let out a long sigh and walked away.
“Writers,” he said, “are strange.”
She chuckled to herself. “You don’t know the half of it,” she assured him, and kept right on typing.
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