“They are here.” Paulo Escobar stood in the doorway of the study.

“Here? In Sacniete?” The town’s name was a Mayan word that meant White Flower. Hardly fitting, Arturo thought, considering the criminal element that did business in the small, inconsequential village.

“They arrived in Mérida two days ago,” Paulo explained. He was dark-haired and thin-faced, nothing but lean, sinewy muscle. He had been working for Arturo since the glory days when Arturo had money to burn, an inheritance from his wealthy father. Those days were past, but Paulo and some of Arturo’s most trusted men had stayed with him, certain the good times would come again.

Maybe they finally had.

“The girl and the others are staying at the Hacienda San José.” It was a well-known hotel in the Yucatán.

“So the old man was right.” Arturo rose from the chair behind the ornate desk in his study, one of the last few pieces of original furniture he hadn’t been forced to sell. “It wasn’t just more of his lunatic ranting and raving.”

“It is true he was feverish, nearly out of his mind, but Zuma believed him from the start. The old man talked about the gold. He said the girl would come. Now she is here.”

“She has come to retrieve the gold,” Arturo said. Just as the old man had believed she would.

“Perhaps all we need to do is follow where she leads,” Paulo suggested.

“And if she and Logan are smart enough to elude our watchdogs and manage to find the gold?”

Paulo was wise enough not to reply.

“Send a man to watch the hotel. Have him report their movements back to me.”

Paulo left the study, and Arturo leaned back in his chair. Through the arched windows, he could see what used to be a magnificent garden with a rectangular pool off to one side. Now the garden was overgrown, long stringy weeds poking up through the ancient carved stones taken from the ruins of a Mayan temple, stones that were used to build the floors and terraces of the house.

The pool was now empty, its interior walls crumbling, just like the rest of the Velásquez family’s once-beautiful estate.

As the oldest son, he had inherited Hacienda Cieba through his father, who expected him to be its guardian, to pass it down to future generations. Instead, he had invested his inheritance unwisely in one scheme after another, until his father’s fortune had dwindled to almost nothing.

The hacienda and the property around it were all he had left. He had sold off the furnishings in the once-magnificent bedrooms, library, and gallery, even several hectares of land. He had kept the main salon and his study as they were, a façade for the few visitors that still came to the house.