Book 1: Revelation at Tikal – Ch 18: The Road to Chichicastango

The safe route to Chichicastenango meant the long loop through Guatemala City. Cutty doesn't have time for safe. His sister Floey was last seen weeks ago, painting the monastery walls of Santo Tomás, and a job like that has an end. If she finishes before he reaches her, she's gone down another road he can't guess. So Cutty and Paula point the BMW down a thin dotted line on the map and ride four hundred and fifty miles of rutted dirt, killer cobblestone, and cartographer's optimism. What follows is a hard, dusty push toward the highlands: a dead-end dock where the '76 quake dropped the bridges, a jury-rigged oil-drum ferry across Lago de Izabal, a jaguar that comes off the cliff in the dark, and a bus that owns the middle of the road. Every hour lost to bad pavement is an hour the trail goes cold — and somewhere ahead, a telegram may or may not have reached the priest whose walls Floey was painting.   Then the story cuts to Floey herself, riding south in a smoke-windowed van with four calm strangers who call themselves the Foundation. They have photographs of her work. They have a pitch. And they have a door she can't open from the inside. What they want from her is bigger and colder than anything Ayer ever asked — and they insist, over and over, that it has to be her choice. A propulsive travel chapter that tightens into a quiet, chilling interrogation. The chase and the trap, moving toward each other. New in this chapter: Castillo San Felipe, El Estor, the Izabal ferry crossing, and the Luminous Path Foundation's first direct move on Floey.