“You mentioned a personal laptop,” Paul said.
Trujillo got up, left the room, and came back carrying a silver Dell that had seen better days—scratched case, a sticker from a Durango coffee shop on the lid.She set it on the table between them.
“He kept it in his truck.Under the back seat, in a case with his field equipment.The FBI took his work laptop from the Ridgeline office but they never asked about a personal one.I don’t think they knew it existed.”She pushed it toward Paul.“I don’t know the password.I tried his usual ones and nothing worked.”
“Do you mind if we take this?”
“Take it.Whatever’s on there could explain his death.”
James handled the laptop carefully, wrapping it in a cloth bag he’d brought for the purpose.They’d need to get past the password—Paul had contacts who could do that without compromising the drive—but the fact that it existed and that Devco apparently hadn’t found it was more important than anything on the screen right now.
“Tell us about Nathan,” Paul said.“Not the last few weeks.Before that.When things were normal.”
Trujillo looked at him, surprised by the question.The FBI agents hadn’t asked this.“He was happy.He loved his work—I mean loved it, the way some people love music or cooking.He’d come home with his boots caked in mud and start telling me about sediment layers and mineral formations, and he’d get this look on his face, like a kid explaining how a magic trick works.”She picked up her tea and actually drank from it for the first time.“He grew up in Durango.His dad was a mining engineer.Nathan used to say he learned to read rocks before he learned to read books.”
“When did things change?”
“Gradually.Maybe seven months ago.He started bringing work home, which he’d never done before—not field samples or reports, but this...preoccupation.He’d sit at the kitchen table after dinner with his laptop and not talk.I’d ask him what he was working on and he’d say ‘just catching up on documentation.’But the way he said it was wrong.Too casual.Too rehearsed.”
Paul nodded.He’d heard that tone a thousand times in interviews—the specific flatness of someone who’d prepared an answer and was delivering it.
“Then the secrecy started,” Trujillo continued.“He changed the password on his phone.He started taking different routes to work—I noticed because he’d leave earlier some mornings, and when I asked why, he said he was avoiding construction.There was no construction.”She set the mug down.“He started checking the rearview mirror constantly.Every time we drove somewhere together, his eyes went to the mirror every thirty seconds.Like clockwork.”
“Did you confront him about it?”
“Once.About a month before he died.We were eating dinner and I told him I knew something was wrong and I needed him to tell me what it was.He put down his fork and looked at me and said, ‘Amy, I found something at work that I wasn’t supposed to find.I’m trying to figure out what to do about it.The less you know, the safer you are.’”
“Those were his words?”
“Exact words.I remember because it scared me.Nathan didn’t talk like that.He was a geologist, not a spy.People who study rocks don’t use phrases like ‘the safer you are.’”Her voice tightened.“I asked him if he was in danger.He said no.He was lying.I could tell because he wouldn’t look at me when he said it—and Nathan always looked at me.That was one of the things I loved about him.He never looked away.”
The kitchen was quiet.A clock on the wall ticked steadily.Through the window above the sink, Paul could see the street—ordinary houses, ordinary cars, the ordinary life that Nathan Whitmore had been living until he’d looked at the wrong geological data and understood what it meant.
“Three weeks before it happened,” Trujillo said, “he came home and told me he’d contacted a journalist.He didn’t say who or where.He said he’d given her enough to start, and that if anything happened to him, everything else was on the laptop in his truck.”She looked at the cloth bag where James had placed the Dell.“I asked him what he meant by ‘if anything happened.’He said it was just a precaution.He was lying again.”
“He was protecting you,” James said quietly.
“I know that now.”Her eyes went to the photographs on the refrigerator—Trujillo and Whitmore at a trailhead, squinting into the sun, their arms around each other.“He thought if I didn’t know the details, they’d have no reason to come after me.He was probably right.The FBI agents who interviewed me weren’t interested in what I knew about his work.They were only interested in Ben Tsosie.”
“He was a good man,” she said as they stood to leave.“He did the right thing, and they killed him for it.”
Paul couldn’t argue with that.
They drove south toward the reservation in silence, the laptop in its bag on the back seat.James was behind the wheel, which he preferred when he was thinking.Paul watched the landscape change as they dropped out of Farmington's suburban sprawl into the open country: red mesas, dry washes where water ran only after rain, the occasional hogan—a low, rounded dwelling of logs and earth—set back from the road.
His phone rang.Nadine Begaye.
“I just came from the detention facility,” she said.Her voice had an edge to it that, as Paul was learning, meant she’d found something.“Ben asked me to relay some observations.His words, not mine.”
“Go ahead.”
“During his interrogation—which he declined to participate in, on my advice—Agent Garza spent approximately ninety minutes in the room with him.Ben says Garza asked about the murder for maybe the first twenty minutes.After that, every question was about the Devco investigation.What Ben saw at the airfield.Who else knew about it.Whether he’d spoken to journalists.Whether Detective Blackhorse had shared evidence with anyone outside the immediate group.”
Paul’s hand tightened on the phone.“He was fishing.”
“That’s Ben’s assessment.He said Garza wasn’t even trying to hide it.The murder charge is leverage—hold Ben on a capital offense and use the interrogation to find out how much the team knows about the larger conspiracy.Ben also said Garza mentioned Kari by name four separate times without prompting.”
“They’re building a case to go after her next.”
