The place was called the Rock Bottom Brewery, part of a regional Rocky Mountain chain of trendy brew pubs serving great food and made-on-the-premises beer. This one was loud, packed with after-work clientele, and jammed with people waiting for a table. Reid Farmer thought the choice of locations was perfect.
In the restaurant booth at his side, Kilgore—her Edwin-modified phone held to one ear, a finger in the other—attempted to carry on a conversation with her publicist in New York.
Reid rubbed the bridge of his nose and stared down into a glass of Buffalo Gold beer while the raucous collection of upwardly mobile young professionals tried to shout over the top of each other. He’d chosen the location just off the Boulder Turnpike, about halfway between Denver and Boulder. Compliments of Edwin’s magic, he and Kilgore had already been checked into the nearby Westin Hotel under assumed names. The enigmatic Edwin had booked them into one of the top-floor suites with a great view of the Front Range.
Yep, but for the moments of absolute terror, his participation in the Alpha enigma definitely had perks. He turned and grinned at Kilgore, savoring the moment and giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.
She winked back at him and told her publicist, “Cancel them. Cancel them all.” A pause. “I don’t care. You have your instructions.” She made a face as she pushed the End button.
Reid cocked an eyebrow. “Ah, the joys of celebrity.”
“My producer will get over it. Skientia has been calling several times a day, respectfully asking to speak with me. Imagine that.”
“Price of fame and fortune.” He glanced around at the crowd.
“You’re sure he’ll be here?”
“Miss a free meal and beer?” Reid shook his head. “Skylar Haines would still be living at home letting his mother take care of him. She was bright enough to die of a cerebral hemorrhage before Skylar turned twenty-four, thereby saving herself another thirty or forty years of buying and cooking his food, cleaning his room, and doing his laundry.”
“And this man is a friend of yours?”
“Friend is a bit of a strong word. Skylar has only two passions in life: One is mooching, the other is Mayan epigraphy. He’s so good at the latter that the University of Colorado anthropology department somehow tolerates the former to keep him on staff.”
“Maybe he should be in Grantham with the rest of us.”
“Skylar almost makes Falcon look normal.”
Her dark eyes narrowed in thought. “Falcon, now there’s an interesting character.”
“He’s jittery,” Reid said. “Have you noticed? The way his hands twitch, and when his hands are occupied, his feet are tapping or his knee is bobbing. It’s like he’s wired all the time.”
Kilgore squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “Tell me who’s crazier? Falcon, or us?”
“What really scares me is that so far Falcon’s analyses fit the facts better than ours do.” He pointed. “There’s Skylar.”
She followed his gaze. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Skylar Haines pressed his way through the crowd at the door; heavy black-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. His reddish-blond hair hung in long dreadlocks. He’d dressed in a wrinkled white shirt splotched yellow with mustard stains. Somehow, he’d missed one of the loops as he’d threaded his belt. Having two buttons on his cuff, the man had mismatched his right.
Skylar peered anxiously around—saw Reid when he stood and waved. The man grinned, starting forward.
“Good to see you, Reid.” Skylar called in a way-too-loud voice. Then he stopped short, blinking in surprise at Kilgore. “Wow! You got good-looking company, too, huh?”
“Skylar, this is Dr. Kilgore France. Kilgore, Skylar.” Reid watched Kilgore struggle to hide a wince as she shook Skylar’s hand, and said, “Pleased to meet you.”
Skylar slid onto the opposite bench, grinning so garishly he exposed crooked and very yellow teeth. “So, you got some strange glyphs, huh? I’ll have the big glass of red ale, and since you’re buying, I want the surf and turf, and one of those onion blossom things for an appetizer. So . . . how you been? Where you been digging? So Kilgore, are you Reid’s new bed bunny? Bet you guys started teepee creeping on a dig somewhere, am I right?” His green eyes were gleaming behind his thick glasses. “Old Reid here, he’s just got that way with women, doesn’t he? We all wished we were as slick at getting chicks into the sack. ’Course, none of the gals ol’ Reid here has bedded were as hot or classy as you.”
“Thanks, Skylar,” Kilgore told him in tones dripping with ice. “Glad to know he’s moving up in the world.”
Reid avoided Kilgore’s acid gaze as he pushed the photocopy of Fluvium’s book across the table. “Skylar, I’ll order your steak and shrimp, but only if you shut the fuck up and tell me what this says.”
“Yeah, I hear that a lot.” He took the photocopies, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and frowned. “Never seen anything quite like this before. Really different style of glyph, but it’s modeled on Ch’olan.” He touched his finger to his tongue and flipped to the next page. “This is the record of . . . Floov . . .” he sounded out the glyphs.
“Fluvium?” Kilgore prompted.
“Fluvium.” Skylar nodded. “It’s used as a name, but phonetically, it’s just not Mayan, you know?”
“Actually”—Reid leaned forward—“we don’t. That’s why we came to you.”
Skylar was working his way down the page, finger to the paper. “Gotta tell you, this is almost incomprehensible. I mean, the basics are here. I can pull out the root glyphs, but it’s, like, got constructions, phonetic signs I’ve never seen.” He paused, frown deepening. “Advanced, man. Mayan on steroids! This is heavy, heavy.” He glanced up, green eyes intense. “Holy shit, where’d you find this thing?”
“A shop in Mexico City,” Reid lied. “A friend of mine found it. Thought it was bogus. He said if it could be translated it would be worth a thousand bucks to him.”
Skylar’s lips pursed. “A grand? To translate this?” He fingered through. “It’s like . . . twenty-six pages.”
“Okay,” Reid reached for the pages. “He suggested Marty Breuch at Pennsylvania, but I just thought, seeing as how you were close and all—”
“No! No! No!” Skylar yanked the papers back. “I mean, I can do a paper on this, right? Publish the new affixes and positionals?”
“We’ll see.”
“How soon does he need this?”
“How long it will take?”
“Twenty-six pages, unknown glyphs? I can rough it out in no time. That new stuff? Gotta study on that. Work out which are words against what’s phonetic. It’s, like, groundbreaking! So . . . how long? Think, Skylar, what’s it going to take? And what if I can’t crack those new glyphs? But, then, you did that Palenque tablet. But I had comparative—”
“Okay,” Reid threw his hands up. “Get it done in a week, and there’s an extra two hundred for you.”
“An extra thousand.”
“Five hundred.” Reid started to reach for the pages.
“Done! Best I can do.” Skylar’s eyes continued to devour the hieroglyphics.
“Good. Now, who’s the best person when it comes to working out Mayan mathematics?”
“Dan Murphy at Harvard.”
“You sure?”
Skylar looked up from the document. “Duh! The guy figures faster in Mayan than he can in Arabic.”
Kilgore was giving Skylar the same kind of look she’d give a cockroach.
“Oh, and Skylar?”
“Uh-hum?”
“As peculiar as you are, I know you can understand what I’m about to tell you. The translation belongs to my client. It’s not yours to splash on the Internet or email around to all of your colleagues so you can impress them.”
Reid leaned forward, jabbing a finger under Skylar’s long and thin nose. “’Cause if you do, I’m sending a very nasty woman to cut your balls off and stuff them down your throat. Her name is Chief Raven, and believe me, you really don’t want to piss her off.”