Death Mask of the Jaguar

Book excerpt: A Rick Sage Mystery: Harley-riding PI, Rick Sage, follows his heart into darkness once again when he meets up with ten-year-old Pedro, a Mexican-American kid lost on the streets of Tijuana. Pedro hires Rick, with the two dollars and thirty-five cents he has left in his pocket, to find the gang of antiquities thieves who murdered his parents. Shadowed by a jaguar spirit Rick begins to believe is real, his promise to help the boy takes them on a trail leading from Tijuana to the Copper Canyon, then on to Mexico's Mayan ruins at Palenque, and down a jungle border river into Guatemala. Along the way, Rick and Pedro join up with a beautiful but mysterious redheaded nun, and a magical, fleet-footed Tarahumara shaman. Haunted by his own tragic childhood, Rick is determined to fulfill his promise to Pedro to find the murderers and recover the Jade Death Mask of the Jaguar Cult, as they are drawn deeper and deeper into a dark plot lit only by the beacons of a jaguar's eyes.