Stephen Woodworth - In Golden Blood

In Golden Blood

Series: Violet Eyes Series [3]

SUMMARY: Natalie Lindstrom has a gift: the power to speak to the dead, to solve crimes by interviewing murder victims. But now Natalie wants to escape. Escape from the voices that fil her head. Escape from the organization that has used her as a crime-solving tool; and now wants to recruit her daughter. So Natalie takes a job as far from crime and punishment as she can get: with an archaeologist in the mountains of Peru. Her job: to find a trove of priceless artifacts by channeling those who lived and died at an ancient Incan site. But in the towering Andes, Natalie enters a 500 year old storm of betrayal, murder, greed, and rage; and she cannot silence the voices of the dead. The slaughtered reach out to her. The slaughterers boast of their crimes. Alone, cut off from her family, Natalie faces a chil ing realization: every truth she uncovers is leading her one step closer to a terror beyond imagining.

In Golden Blood

Stephen Woodworth

I dedicate this book to my entire family and most especial y to my beloved wife and partner, Kel y Dunn, and the wonderful family we've started together. Here lay Duncan,

His silver skin laced with his golden blood;And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in natureFor ruin's wasteful entrance.

--Macbeth, Act I , Scene iii, 117-120

A Death in the Andes

AS HE DID EVERY MORNING, NATHAN AZURE

ROSE AT dawn, dressed, and shaved in the musty

canvas confines of his private tent, scrutinizing the aristocratic severity of his Mayfair face in a travel mirror to make certain that not a whisker remained and that every strand of blond hair was in its proper place. He then opened the carved wooden box next to his cot and selected a pair of leather driving gloves from the dozens of pairs inside. Although he wore gloves as a matter of habit, he donned these with especial care, like a surgeon wary of infection.

He had not touched another human being's skin, nor al owed his to be touched, in more than a decade. Seated on the edge of his cot, Azure idled away half an hour skimming Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru, lingering over passages that he had long ago committed to memory--those that described the

abundance of gold sixteenth-century Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadors had extorted from the Inca people, who tried in vain to purchase the release of their leader Atahualpa. A king's ransom, indeed.

Azure's gloves made it awkward for him to turn the pages, however, and he soon tossed the book aside. After snatching the .45 automatic from beneath his pil ow, he chambered a round and shoved the gun

barrel-down into the hol ow of his back between the waist of his slacks and his oxford shirt. He put on a cream-colored linen jacket to cover the butt of the pistol and stalked out of the tent.

Outside, the Andean air, thin and crisp, pricked the inside of Azure's windpipe, as if he'd inhaled a handful of asbestos. The sun had yet to ascend above an

adjacent peak to the east, leaving the mountains in a pal of predawn gray. Nevertheless, the camp already bristled with activity, Peruvian laborers bustling to and fro with spades and sifters, men delicately brushing dust off bits of broken metal and stone at makeshift tables. Azure had staged this dig with painstaking detail, accurate enough to fool an expert. Or one expert, to be precise.

It was al a sham. Azure had bought the artifacts at auction and then planted them on this Andean slope. The Peruvians he'd assembled to pose as his assistants were actual y mercenaries--some of them former

Shining Path terrorists, others drug runners from the Hual aga Val ey cocaine trade. Men whose loyalty Azure could purchase and whose silence he could

ensure. Men to whom al work, whether menial labor or murder, was the same, as long as it paid wel . Not unlike the conquistadors themselves.

The performance was proceeding as scheduled, but the audience--the expert for whom Azure had created this mock expedition--was missing. It seemed that Dr. Wilcox, the only true archaeologist on the site, had chosen to sleep in.

The closer Azure drew to his prize, the more impatient he became with delay. Intent on hastening today's drama to its climax, he made his way down the path his crew had cleared in the spiky brush that carpeted the mountain slope. Erected wherever the ground leveled off for a few feet, the haphazard tent encampment formed a terraced vil age of canvas and plastic, with Azure's large shelter at the hil 's summit. At its base, a medium-size tent rested near the edge of a precipice, where the mountainside abruptly plunged into the val ey below. Clouds blanketed the del , a comfortable il usion that hid the screaming descent.

A bearded thirty-something man in a creased white dress shirt and chinos sat in a director's chair outside this last tent, head bent over a book, legs crossed as if he were lounging at a Parisian cafe. He must have sensed Azure's approach, though, for he slapped the book shut and hopped to his feet before the Englishman arrived at the tent's entrance. A gringo like his boss, he differed from Azure in nearly every other respect: his hair and complexion dark instead of fair, his face broad rather than narrow, his manner expansive, not

calculated.

"Looks like I got up before you did today." He displayed the book's cover, smiling. He smiled a lot--a monkey appeasing an alpha male. "Researching my role. See?"

Conqueror and Conquered: Pizarro and Peru read the title copy above an artist's rendering of a composite face--half Pizarro, the other half Atahualpa, the Inca leader he overthrew and executed. Below the dual portrait was the author's name: Dr. Abel Wilcox. Nathan Azure did not smile. He never smiled. "There'l be plenty of time for that on the plane, Trent," he commented in a clipped Cambridge accent. "Do you have the cuirass?"

With exaggerated flair, Trent snapped his fingers at one of the nearby laborers, who hurried up with a mudencrusted, rust-stained breastplate in his hands. The men had done an admirable job of simulating centuries of exposure to the elements. The armor had been

polished to a museum-ready sheen when Azure had

obtained it from an underground "antiquities dealer" in Lima--a glorified fence for grave robbers and artifact thieves.

Azure noted that the center of the breastplate had been rubbed clear of dirt, revealing the ornate engraving of a family crest. He registered his satisfaction by

withholding criticism. "What about Wilcox?" Trent glanced at the tent behind him, shrugged. "Stil asleep."

"Wake him."

Trent smiled again and pul ed his own pair of leather gloves out of the back pocket of his pants. He put them on and ducked under the black plastic flap that served as the tent's door. A drowsy grumble came from inside, fol owed by the shuffle and clatter of hasty activity. A few minutes later, Trent emerged with a man who could easily have been his brother. The latter stood an inch or two tal er and lacked Trent's muscular

development, but they shared the same almond-shaped eyes, high forehead, and dark widow's peak. Trent had grown the ful black beard to downplay the

resemblance, but it was not a coincidence; Azure had chosen Trent for his appearance as much as for his acting skil s and had even insisted on certain... alterations in the confidence man's physiognomy. Trent had demonstrated exceptional dedication to his craft, doggedly researching his role during the months it took his face to heal from the surgery. Even now, he eyed the professor with avid attention, taking advantage of his last opportunity to observe his subject.