Chapter Twenty-Five
So we finally have our link. It still doesn’t tell us what the hell is going on here, but it points us in a very viable direction.
Blake was a professor of geological sciences, specializing in an area associated with mining. And the gold claim that our neighbors are currently mining? It was discovered by Mark … who was a professor mining on his summer terms.
Is it possible that’s a coincidence? Sure, but it’s also possible that Blake was killed by a Sasquatch. Or aliens. Or that ever-present crazed mountain man.
No, this link is too obvious to ignore. There are hundreds of people with small placer mines in the Yukon. Most are here in the summer, like Mark.
But as paranoid and secretive as miners can be, I imagine that the more tech-savvy of them would be in online communities.
Of course, they won’t share where they’re looking, but they have a very unusual hobby, and they’ll want to talk to others, both for fellowship and tricks of the trade.
Those most likely to be communicating online would be people like Mark and like Blake, well-educated and relatively young for prospectors.
Now, this doesn’t mean Blake was a prospector.
But if Mark was mining up here and went looking for resources, he might reach out to the university or the instructors there—especially when he was a professor himself.
Even without that, prospectors might find themselves in the same online—or in-person—groups of those with an interest in the minerals that lie beneath our feet.
I can’t speculate too much on the exact nature of that connection.
émilie will do more digging. She has never identified Mark.
After he and his wife died, our biggest concern then had been someone realizing they’d disappeared and where they’d disappeared.
émilie had monitored for stories of a miner and his wife not returning from the Yukon, but no stories appeared.
Miners are notoriously cagey, and we had to presume that no one knew where he’d been mining, maybe not even realizing it was in the Yukon.
I’d never liked that story, but émilie had promised she’d keep monitoring while trying to identify him.
Identifying him has proven tricky. All we have is that first name, which is probably fake.
But we have some details of his past, and we know that both he and his wife vanished up here, which someone must have noticed, though nothing ever turned up.
While this hasn’t been critical, her investigator has found some more leads and now they’ll go all-in on identifying Mark … and his connection to Blake.
That means our attention turns to the mining camp.
One thing we could do is question Gretchen about her husband’s interest in mining. I’m going to hold off until I have more. You only get one chance to tackle a hostile witness from a fresh angle.
If I have smaller questions, I can ask through Anders, using the sat phone. Otherwise, I want to wait until I can see her reactions firsthand.
The other source of answers is the mining camp, and I’m sure Rogers will happily tell us everything we need to know. Yeah, he’s not telling us jack shit. Anything we get from the camp needs to be learned on our own. The guards are heavily armed and, as we’ve seen, not afraid to use those weapons.
We need more before we even think of talking to them. And by “more” I mean leverage … and it can’t be the sort they can fix with a few shallow graves.
Thinking of shallow graves takes me back to the body we found. There’s no clear indication he’s a miner, but could he be? While we didn’t find a tracker, are there other identifying details we missed?
First thing tomorrow, I need to check the body again and talk to April.
A call in the night wakes us. It’s the sat phone, and I pause for one bleary moment before remembering that Anders has one phone at Lilith’s cottage and April has one at the clinic, and if either is calling in the middle of the night, that’s bad.
I lunge for the phone at the same time Dalton does.
Fortunately for me, it’s on my side of the bed, which means I get it first. Unfortunately for me, it’s on my side of the bed, which means Dalton accidentally bashes into me when he leaps for it.
I blink to recover before quickly answering and putting the phone on speaker. When Yolanda says hello, my stomach flutters with relief. If it’d been April, that would mean something was wrong with Storm.
“Everything okay?” I say, which is a ridiculous thing to say during a 2 A.M. phone call, but I’m still fuzzy from sleep.
“Lilith’s stalker is back,” Yolanda whispers.
I sit upright and give my head a shake. “Someone’s outside the cottage?”
“Yes. Will and Gretchen are sleeping, but I definitely heard someone out there.” She pauses. “Could be an animal, I guess, but I’m sure as hell not peeking out to check.”
“Good call.”
“It sounds like a person. Twigs cracking underfoot. A scuff in the dirt. Also, I’m pretty sure I heard him take a leak.”
“Uh…”
“Hey, it’s really quiet. I could hear the proverbial pin drop. Right now, I have a blanket over my head to muffle any sound I’m making, and he still might be able to hear me. My question is whether I should wake Will.”
“Yes.”
“And then…?”
I look to Dalton.
“Hold,” he says. “Stay inside. Both of you. It’s dark, and whoever’s there will see you before you see him.” Dalton pauses. “How long has he been there?”
“I heard the first noise maybe fifty minutes ago. I wasn’t absolutely certain it was a person until I heard someone taking a whizz against a tree. That was five minutes ago.”
“Okay. I’m going to come out there. He’s intent on the cabin. It might be our best chance to ambush him. It’ll take me about thirty minutes.”
At a noise from me, he glances over. I shake my head. When he scowls, I say, “You’re not going alone. You’ll take me or someone else.”
“She’s right, Eric,” Yolanda says. “Yes, that’ll add a few minutes to your ETA, but you need backup. You guys work that out, and I’ll expect you here in forty-five. In the meantime, I’ll wake Will.”
“Make some noise, too,” I say. “Or turn on a flashlight. Something to be clear that the cabin is occupied. That should keep your intruder curious enough to hang around until we get there.”
“We?” Dalton says.
“If you want someone else, say so, but Dana said we can drop Rory off at any time.”
He grumbles, but I’m right. If this was a patrol mission, he’d have a list of people he could take. But it’s an ambush, and that’s police work, and the only people he’d trust with that are Anders and me.
I get up and wave for him to finish the conversation while I dress. “I’ll take Rory and meet you out front.”