I find Rory in the kitchen, with Storm standing right behind her, watching. The dog gives me a baleful look. I murmur an apology, pat her head, and scoop up Rory, grabbing her favorite toy—a squirrel-shaped teething rattle—as I head back to the living room.
“Storm was on duty,” I say. “And giving me stink eye because I wasn’t.”
“Good dog,” Petra says. “Hello, Rory! I didn’t know you were there because your mom didn’t tell me.”
Rory gurgles and shakes her rattle.
“Okay,” I say as I settle in with the baby on my lap. “So the mining company would be the target. That makes sense. Haven’s Rock might be spyworthy to the council, but we don’t have secrets valuable enough to kill for.”
“Unless it’s about a resident.”
“Right. Do we have a resident whose secret is so valuable that someone would send spies to find them… and then kill their colleagues? Émilie says no.”
“Also, that’d be an overly complicated operation,” Petra says. “Why send three people unless you plan to kidnap the resident? But then you sure as hell wouldn’t murder your colleagues first.”
“Unless kidnapping was the plan,” Yolanda says, “but Gretchen changed her mind. Or the plan was tokilla resident, and she had an attack of conscience.”
“No one is sending three operatives to kill one person. That’s not how assassinations work.” She pauses. “Or so I’ve heard.”
Yolanda snorts.
“Makes sense, though,” I say. “While we could have a resident someone wants dead, three people aren’t coming to do it. We need to look closer at the mining operation.”
“That would be my advice. Now, if it’s a case of corporate espionage, where the stakes are so high you’d only want one operative returning? That’s not some little gold-panning operation.”
“But is that any of our concern?” Yolanda says. “If it’s about the miners, do we stick our head over the parapet?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Petra says. “Do you want this operative going back and saying she met others in the forest? A couple with a dog and a baby? Doesn’t sound like she’d mistake you for miners.”
“Shit,” Yolanda says.
“Yep. No matter what, though, I think it’s time to get a closer look at your neighbors. Find out what they’re really doing up there.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Last year, after the guard insinuated something was up in the mining camp, we’d asked Émilie to dig deeper, and we’d gone on spy-lite missions of our own. We confirmed that operations were underway, with several small teams working the sites.
The Yukon was the site of one of history’s biggest gold rushes. People braved unimaginable conditions in the hope of making their fortune, lured up here by everyone who had a stake in selling them that dream. A hundred thousand would-be miners came north to get their share of the gold that they’d been told was just lying around, waiting to be scooped up. All they had to do was get from Alaska to Dawson City… on foot, often in the dead of winter.
The RCMP demanded that everyone crossing the border carry six months’ worth of supplies. They thought that would discourage the miners. It did not. About a third made it to Dawson City. Some went home with the adventure of a lifetime stuffed in their back pocket, to bring out and polish when life grew dull. Most, though, left brokenhearted and disillusioned.Did anyone get rich? Sure—those who made their fortunes from the miners themselves.
It’s a story as old as time. People seduced by the promise that they, too, can be fabulously wealthy, if only they have the nerve and the willpower. Join armies and pillage your neighbors. Venture into the wilds in search of gold. Spend every penny you have on virtual investments that are sure—sure—to pay off. Someone always gets rich. It’s never the Joe Average who did the work—fought the war, mined the gold, invested their meager capital and sold the dream to others.
How much of our local gold-mining operation is about the actual value of the gold and how much is about the value of a dream? Dalton and I discuss that over dinner, after I tell him what Petra said.
Earlier, I’d asked her to run an online search for what else is mined up here. Copper, lead, zinc, and silver are the most common for actual mining industries. Gold is the sexy one, but it’s mostly for amateurs and semipros, like the prospector who sold them the claim. There’s also uranium. But those, as far as we know, require actual mining, not some guys with handheld equipment.
Is there something buried here that we don’t know about? Something revealed in the samples that the original prospector had provided? Something valuable that can be accessed without major machinery?
Or is someone selling a dream?
The original miner—Mark—had arrived after we started construction, and he’d struck gold, which meant he wasn’t going anywhere. That had been hellishly inconvenient, especially when his wife turned up dead. In the end, Mark himself died in a fall, which had seemed to be the end of it… until thecurrent mining company showed up, having apparently bought the claim before his death—or bought the information about the claim, since he never formally registered it.
“Imagine it,” I say, after we put Rory to bed upstairs. “We know Mark found a rich vein. It was valuable. What if you take that data and show it to people with more money than sense? Tech bros looking for the cool new thing to make money on.”
“Do I want to know what a tech bro is?”
“Probably not.”
