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“A photographer…” I say slowly.
“Yep. Dresses like she tans her own hides. Has a pet husky, too.”
Lilith. I try to hide my disappointment. “We’ve met her, and she’s a local. The woman we’re looking for went missing three nights ago.”
He looks startled. “A tourist? Damn. No, I definitely haven’t seen her.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think I’d remember, but that’s not what you’re asking. You mean did I see her and fire warning shots, one of which actually hit her and I’m covering it up.”
“Something like that.”
He shoves his hands into his pockets. As he considers his next words, we wait. Finally, he says, “Yes, it’s my camp. My claim. I did not see your missing woman. However, someone was in my tent a few days back. I have triggers to show me whether anyone has been on the site. One was tripped.”
“Two days ago?” Dalton says. “That was us. We stumbled over your camp looking for our missing woman. I reset the triggers, but I must have missed one.”
The man shakes his head. “This was the day before that. The night, that is. I was out hunting at twilight. Got tired of canned stew. I screwed up—misjudged the light and went farther away than I should have, so I had to come back in the dark. When I arrived, I found the trigger tripped.”
We take a moment to confirm dates. That can be tricky out here, where it’s easy to confuse Wednesday for Thursday or three days ago for two. The man is adamant about the timing, and the trigger he found tripped had definitely been reset by Dalton.
The night he found it was also the night Bruno and Penny disappeared.
“We need to talk to you about your claim.” I lift my hands. “Nothing about whether you have or haven’t found any silver or whatever.”I’m not even mentioning the possibility of gold.“Nothing about whether it’s legal or not. We don’t care. But we have reason to believe someone else knew about it. There was…” I search for an easy way to say this. There isn’t one. “We found a dead body with the coordinates to your camp in their pocket.”
He stares and then gives his head a shake. “Come again?”
“Someone had the coordinates to your camp in their pocket. They were found dead nearby.”
“I…” He keeps shaking his head. “You’re serious, right?”Before I can answer, he says, “Obviously you are, and maybe I shouldn’t be so shocked. I’ve heard… Well, you hear stories. I’ve been mining in the summers since college. Seen some weird stuff, but never had anyone try to steal a claim site.”
A sharper headshake. “Now I’m babbling. You’re telling me that someone knew about my claim and came here to check it out and suffered some kind of accident.”
“Did anyone know where you were? A partner who might have come to join you?”
“No. It’s a one-man operation. I learned from the old-timers. Don’t tell anyone until you have something, and thendefinitelydon’t tell anyone. At least not until you’ve locked up the claim.” He pauses. “Not that I’ve found anything yet.”
Dalton says, “So our dead woman is definitely not your partner, right?”
“W-woman?” He stares at us. “You found a deadwomanwith my camp coordinates in her pocket?”
“Yes,” I say.
Something passes over his face. Something that looks a lot like panic. “Take me to her.”
“She’s in her early forties—”
He cuts me off with a frantic wave. “Don’t. Please. Just take me to her. Now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
We don’t get any more out of Mark—that’s his name, or the one he gives us. He’s in an absolute panic, and I think I know why, but I don’t even suggest it.
We can’t take him back to town, obviously. But we do have two sat phones, now that Anders and April brought a replacement for the one I lost. So we place a call and set a spot to meet.
Mark knows about Haven’s Rock, at least in the sense that he realizes there is something being built five kilometers from his claim. He doesn’t know what it’s for and doesn’t care. Whatever he’s doing to legalize his claim, he obviously plans to have it finalized before he’d need to worry about people from Haven’s Rock.
We don’t tell him about Bruno. Unless we think he had something to do with it, there’s no point. And I don’t see how he can have anything to do with it. Is it possible Bruno found the site and Mark murdered him to keep it a secret? Yes, but the altercation would have happened at the camp, not a half kilometer away. Also, Bruno would have happily told us who pushed him, to exact revenge by uncovering Mark’s claim. No,Bruno was pushed by his business partner, with whom he was conspiring to steal Mark’s claim.
