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“That damn photograph.” She opened them again.
His gaze held hers. “I can’t give up until I’ve checked every site on that list.”
Gina needed to convince him otherwise. That area was bad luck
. Cursed. Haunted. Dangerous. Unfortunately, he seemed as obsessed with it as she’d once been. Still, she had to try.
“That isn’t the place,” Gina said, though her lips felt stiff and the words were very hard to get out.
“How do you know?”
“If the Aztecs had come to Colorado and the Ute had beaten them, or close enough, old men would be telling that story around the campfire until the end of time. I’ve never heard it. Not once.”
And she hadn’t. Then again, telling such a story would make people want to go there more, not less. The Ute weren’t stupid.
“I can’t just quit,” Teo insisted. “My mother gave her life trying to find that tomb. She became…” He took a breath, let it out on a rush. “Kind of a joke in scholarly circles.”
“Why?”
His eyes met Gina’s. “She believed that sorcerer was real. And she wouldn’t let it go.”
“And now you won’t let it go.”
“I can’t.” His shoulders drooped along with his head. “I told her to grow up. That she was embarrassing me. She was living in a fantasy world.”
“You were a kid.”
“We’d looked for that tomb my whole life. The search was exciting, fascinating.” He took another breath. “But I was going off to college. I knew people would laugh at me the instant they heard my name. I wanted her to stop looking. Or at least stop talking about magic.”
“She wouldn’t?”
“Of course not. She knew what she believed, and once I’d believed it, too. I refused to go with her on that last dig. And then she died.”
“You think she wouldn’t have hit her head if you’d been there?”
“Maybe she wouldn’t have been so distracted by my not being there or so anxious to prove to me that I was wrong that she would have looked where she was going instead of charging into the gloom.”
“You don’t know that.”
“In here?” He tapped his head. “Maybe. But here?” He tapped his heart. “It hurts.”
For an instant she felt sorry for him, until she remembered that to assuage his guilt he planned to dig up a place that needed to be left the hell alone.
“I’ve become kind of a joke, too,” he continued, his scratchy voice even scratchier after having spoken for so long.
“I thought you didn’t believe in magic or the sorcerer.”
“I don’t. But I believe there’s a tomb and it’s located north of the border. That would be a find in and of itself and would go a long way to vindicating my mother’s research. She deserves to have her name spoken with respect. Because the Aztecs were here. As soon as I saw that photograph, I knew.”
Damn her infatuation with cameras. Gina had no one but herself to blame for this fiasco.
“Proving this theory was her dream.” Teo’s earnest gaze captured Gina’s. “You understand why I can’t give up?”
“For the same reason I ignored your letters. I couldn’t let you run around putting holes in my parents’ dream. But I guess I have nothing to say about it now.” Which made her feel kind of sick.
“I don’t want the ranch,” Teo said.
Gina’s head jerked up. “What?”
