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“Of course. You said you don’t know what it is you saw.”
She looked perplexed. “Right.”
“What do you mean you saw? Where could you have seen something that would lead you to a different conclusion? What did you see that’s convinced you they got it wrong?”
Remi thought in silence and, as they approached the gate, shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just a figure of speech.”
“I’ve known you for a long time. You’re very precise with your use of language, whether you realize it or not. You said you saw something. Now my question is what?”
“Sam, I’m really trying to think, but I honestly don’t know. It’s baffling.”
He nodded. “Let your brain work on it. Don’t keep concentrating. Let it come up with the answer on its own. It’ll come to you when your brain figures it out. Brains are good that way.”
“Since when do you know so much about brains?” she asked, eyeing him skeptically.
“That’s how mine works. I figured yours might operate the same way.”
“If that were true . . .”
Lazlo was silent, lost in thought during the exchange. When the taxi rolled to a stop, he looked around, as though startled, before climbing out of the cab.
Sam paid the driver, and they began the walk to the temple from the entry gates. The morning air was cool, a light overcast providing some relief from the sun’s blaze. When they arrived at the site, Antonio was standing under the tarp, studying an image on a large monitor.
“What’s that?” Sam asked as they approached him.
“Ah, good morning. This is a feed from a robot that I wrangled from my colleague for a few hours. They’re using it at the other tunnel, but I figured it would speed up our work to have the interior of the chambers filmed before we go crashing around in there.”
“Excellent idea. Where’s your sister?”
“She’s down in the trench, operating the remote. It’s on a cable, so she was limited by length.”
They watched the images flickering on the screen, and Lazlo shook his head when the lens slowly roamed over the carvings. “What do you make of those?”
“Pretty average for Teotihuacan.”
“Do they look Toltec?” Remi asked.
Antonio took a closer look. “Not particularly, but it’s so hard to tell until we have a chance to really—”
“But your first impression is that they look more like the others here?”
Antonio slowly turned to face Remi. “What are you getting at?”
“Something tells me that this find, while interesting, isn’t what we were looking for.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
She explained her reservations to him, taking him through her thinking process. When she was done, Antonio didn’t look quite as confident as he had when they’d arrived.
“But you don’t know what it was you saw that made you question the location?”
She frowned. “Not yet. But it’s a strong feeling.”
Sam moved toward the excavation. “Good morning,” he called down to Maribela, who was staring at a smaller monitor set up on a card table near the crypt entry, maneuvering a joystick to direct the robot beneath her feet. She pressed a button and looked up at him with a smile.
“Buenos días to you as well.”
“You didn’t happen to find an incredible treasure while we were running late, did you?”