And now, this.

“Why do you say she’s dead?” she asked as casually as possible.

Parkin answered without turning away from the wall. “All that blood in there—didn’t you see it? Her car in the garage. Her purse, her cell phone, still here. And she wouldn’t just go away without telling me. Not even with that asshole.”

“You mean Damon? The one who came in, found the bloodstain?”

Parkin may have nodded; in the dark, it was hard to tell.

“Ernest, I have just one more question. Why weren’t you the one who discovered she was missing? Why did it take until six PM the next day for someone to come looking for her?”

“I came home late,” he muttered, “like usual. I was quiet—she hated me waking her up. Her door was closed, as always. She doesn’t want me touching her stuff. So I went to bed. And I slept in. She goes to work long before I get up. I didn’t hear anything.”

Suddenly, he shifted on the bed and began pounding the wall violently with his fist. “Fuck!” he yelled. “Fuck, fuck!”

She jumped out of her chair just as the cop outside opened the door. She gestured for him to leave and he withdrew.

“Ernest,” she said in a low voice. “Hey. Don’t hurt yourself. You don’t know for a fact she’s dead. You need to hope for the best.”

He started to weep.

* * *

She found Lieutenant Porter still in the kitchen.

“Get anything out of him?” he asked.

“He says he came home late, slept late. Didn’t hear anything. It’s not surprising he didn’t notice she was gone or see the blood. If you ask around, you can probably find out where he was and secure him an alibi.”

“If you say so.” Porter made another notation on his tablet.

She turned to face him. “Lieutenant, I sincerely want to thank you for your time and courtesy. I wouldn’t presume to tell you your business. But if this woman turns up dead, I’d bet you my car that kid had nothing to do with it.”

“Yeah? What kind of car?”

“Um, a 2002 Camry LE.”

The lieutenant merely shook his head and laughed.

* * *

On her way back, she got stuck behind a jackknifed tractor-trailer on I-40 and didn’t get home until long after midnight.

13

May 4

THE MORNING HAD dawned in crystalline perfection, an ideal send-off for their expedition, Nora thought as she loosely held the reins of her horse. They were following a mountain stream that burbled among smooth rocks, the banks lined with alders and willows. Birds chirped in the thickets and a golden eagle soared overhead, making a whistling noise. Burleson had been right: they were less than a mile from the ranch, but it already felt like they’d entered another world. Ahead, above the trees, she could see mountains upon mountains rising in the distance, their peaks patched with snow.

Burleson led the group, riding a seventeen-hand gelding named Blackie. Nora followed, riding a brown-and-white paint called Stormy, although his docile demeanor didn’t seem to live up to his name. Clive rode behind her, and Nora couldn’t help but notice the easy way he handled his horse, his back straight as a preacher’s. She would have to ask him where he’d gotten his riding experience.

Maggie brought up the rear of the train with Jason Salazar and Bruce Adelsky. Salazar seemed comfortable enough with horses, but Adelsky was another matter. He had actually put the wrong foot in the stirrup and started to get on the horse backward, to the great hilarity of Maggie. Behind the train, Wiggett and Jack Peel led the five pack horses carrying their supplies and equipment in plastic panniers and buckled-on top packs. Among the supplies was a padlocked strongbox carried on a mule, to hold any jewelry or other valuables that would be discovered during the dig, but also to store the legendary gold—if it existed…and if they found it.

Nora could hear Maggie telling Salazar and Adelsky a story, punctuated by gusts of laughter, about a disastrous expedition she’d been on the year before. Nora could only catch parts, but it seemed to involve drunken idiots falling off horses, a man shooting himself in the foot, a helicopter rescue, and a bill for twenty thousand dollars.

The trail started out well used, but about five miles in it began to peter out. At a certain point Burleson stopped. He and Clive consulted a map.

“This is where they got off the trail,” said Clive. “They should have gone left, but for some reason—probably confusion caused by the snow—they went right.”

The fateful right turn started up a broad canyon between gray cliffs. The going was easy at first, but then the canyon walls began to narrow and loom higher above them until they were riding in shadow. The air was increasingly chilly. In a few places—passing through deep woods, or in shady spots at the bottom of rocky cliffs—Nora could still see patches of snow. Amazing how quickly they’d left civilization behind and entered a primeval landscape.

They stopped for lunch near a pile of fallen rocks. The pack train had fallen behind, but Burleson was in contact with Peel over walkie-talkie. Nora checked her cell phone and found that, as expected, they had gone out of cell range. For the next month they’d be relying on the sat phone Nora carried in her saddlebag—with Skip hopefully manning the other end.

Nora munched on a roast beef sandwich while Burleson finished his conversation with Peel over the walkie-talkie. He pulled out his own sandwich and took a deep breath, looking around. “I love these mountains,” he said. “Every time I come up here, I feel renewed.”

“So you just gave up a lucrative career as a lawyer, quit the rat race to come out here?”

“A divorce lawyer. Not a fun line of work, representing some bloodsucking young woman intent on breaking a prenup and prying money out of some rich old bastard of a husband. Or vice versa. You rarely meet good people in a business like that, either as clients or opponents. The decision to get out wasn’t entirely mine; I became crosswise with the California Bar Association and was given a nice, unfriendly push out. Every time I’m up in these mountains, I send them my silent thanks.”

“Crosswise?”

Burleson laughed. “I’m not a good rule follower. Perhaps I represented my clients a little too well, you might say.”

Nora was pleasantly surprised by his candor. She had done some basic searching on Burleson before hiring him, but none of this had turned up. It was probably one of those things that didn’t reach the level of news, she thought.

They mounted up after lunch and rode past yet another scree slope of gray rocks, spilling down a steep ravine and into a dark forest of towering fir trees, with more snow in the shadows. As evening came on, the trees gave way to a meadow surrounded by cliffs.

“Those Donners were really lost,” said Maggie, looking around.

“Here we are, at our first campsite,” Burleson said, dismounting.

Nora halted her horse. It wasn’t a particularly welcoming place—a bedraggled field cut by the stream—but she reminded herself they would be here only a couple of days. When they found the Lost Camp, they would move closer to that location.

The others dismounted. Burleson and Drew Wiggett went around, helping here and there, unsaddling horses and hobbling them in the meadow. As they returned, Peel arrived with the pack train. He parked it at the far end of the field, and he and Wiggett began unpacking, lining up the boxes in rows.