As Maggie stirred a simmering pot of stew, all eyes turned to Corrie. She swallowed and tried to tamp down her nervousness.

“Thank you,” she began. “Tomorrow, I’d like the opportunity to question the three of you from Red Mountain Ranch. I’ve already spoken to the archaeological team.”

Wiggett, the assistant wrangler, raised a finger. “The sheriff already spoke to us. He says it was an accident. What’s there to talk about?”

Corrie shifted. She could feel the resistance from the group. “I’m not sure I agree with the sheriff.”

At this, a collective murmur rose. “Come on,” said Wiggett. “You don’t actually think Peel was murdered, do you?”

“I’m still gathering information.” She hesitated, then decided to go ahead and share her suspicions. “But in my opinion, at least one of the injuries to Peel’s head looked as if it predated the fall.”

This caused considerable consternation.

“You think one of us did it?” Maggie asked.

“I haven’t drawn any conclusions.” Corrie began to feel annoyed by this questioning.

“But you think it,” Maggie said. “I can see it in your face!”

Nora broke in. “Hold on. I’m as unhappy about this as anyone, but Agent Swanson is only doing her job.”

Thank you, Corrie thought. She was surprised—especially given Nora’s own feeling about drawing conclusions, given the state of the corpse.

“Why the hell would anyone kill Peel?” Maggie repeated. “Where’s the motive?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Corrie said. “The twenty million dollars in gold hidden around here might well be motive enough for a homicide. I noticed nobody was in camp when I returned this afternoon. I wonder what all of you were up to.”

“Now just a minute,” Burleson said. “If you’re suggesting we were out treasure hunting, I’ve already forbidden that.”

“All I’m asking,” Corrie said, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice, “is everyone’s cooperation.”

There was a restless movement among the group.

“If you really think it’s murder,” Maggie said, “then you’ve got to suspect one of us. Right? It’s like an old mystery novel, where everyone’s trapped on an island or something. Ain’t nobody else up here.”

“There’s no need to speculate,” Corrie said. But she could see that what Maggie said was already beginning to take root.

“The honest truth is, we don’t know who might be in this neck of the woods,” Burleson said. “This is big country—anyone could be wandering around up here. Camping. Eavesdropping. And who knows how far the rumors of gold might have leaked?”

“Are you suggesting one of us has a hidden partner, out there in the mountains?” Salazar asked.

“I’m only saying my team didn’t know about the gold until we were already here—and our only connection to the outside world is your satellite phone.”

“So by elimination, one of us from the Institute set this up?”

“I’m not saying anybody set anything up,” Burleson told Salazar. “Besides, even if Agent Swanson is right, it’s not necessarily us, or you—there are people at the Institute who know about the gold.”

“Only the president and chairman of the board,” said Nora. “And there’s no way either one of them would divulge it.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand why we’re even talking about this,” Wiggett said. “The idea that one of us was involved in Peel’s death is bullshit. The idea that Peel was murdered is bullshit.”

“Maybe so,” said Corrie. “But if we are dealing with a homicide, regardless of whether it’s someone in the group or outside, it might be a good idea for you all to stay in pairs when leaving camp from now on—especially after dark.”

That, she noted, shut them up.

* * *

Dinner was a silent affair. Corrie ate fast and then retreated to her tent to work on her notes. Being an FBI agent was hard in ways she hadn’t expected. She wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but it seemed that, in trying to do her job, she had managed to piss off just about everyone: the archaeologists and the ranch staff, the sheriff and Forest Service guys. What was she doing wrong? Or was this how it always was?

As she lay on top of her sleeping bag long after everyone had gone to bed, wondering if there was a way she could be handling things better, she heard a blood-curdling scream. Leaping up, she grabbed her holster and pulled out the Glock. She raced out of the tent. Headlamps and flashlights were going on all over as everyone piled out to see what had happened.

The cook, Maggie Buck, stood before her tent in her pajamas, hugging herself, sobbing and shaking.

“I saw her! She came into my tent!”

“Who?” Burleson asked.

“Who do you think? It was so awful. She was hobbling, and she smelled like rotten meat and her eyes were all white and she said she was looking for her leg…and then she started to reach out…!”

Burleson gave her a gentle shake. “It’s okay, Maggie. You’ve had a nightmare.”

Maggie turned her wide eyes toward him. “It was no nightmare! She was right in front of me. And her touch was as cold as clay!”

36

May 16

THE NOONDAY SUN cast a welcome heat over the dig site as Nora examined the hearth and shelter area. It had now been fully cleared by Salazar and Adelsky, and the two field assistants stood to one side, proud of their work.

And it was good work. Very good work. The hearth had been meticulously uncovered, a stain of charcoal surrounded by nubbins of bone. It lay inside the shelter built by the stranded travelers, with many of the rotting boards still surviving. She could see its basic shape. The boards had been pried from the wagon and reassembled using nails and spikes to form a sort of lean-to, supplemented by a few slender tree trunks. It gave Nora’s heart a twist, looking at these remains of a pathetic shelter where human beings had struggled and died. Incredible to think of so many crammed into this tiny hovel, covered in twenty-five feet of snow.

To one side of the shelter Adelsky and Salazar had uncovered another area of bones, consisting of two almost complete skeletons, apparently among the last to die, in twisted, grotesque positions, as if they had expired in convulsions. It wasn’t normally how a starving person died, Nora thought. Rather, it seemed to corroborate the accounts that some members of the Lost Camp had kept on raving to the last.

She did a mental count. Samantha Carville; the two Wolfinger murderers; the three skeletons in the midden heap; the pathetic remains they’d found in the shelter pot; Boardman, who’d managed to escape the camp after his crazed wife tried to attack him; and Chears, the lone person to be rescued. Those, along with these two sets of remains her assistants had just uncovered here, totaled eleven—precisely the number of people believed to have been stranded at the Lost Camp. Nora couldn’t resist a feeling of professional satisfaction at this summing up. And they’d managed to achieve it despite Peel’s theft. Of course, a portion of the Parkin skeleton remained missing. But they had combed both Peel’s route and the location where he died, and Nora was certain they’d recovered every last bone and fragment. The fact was, despite the missing skull, the success of this archaeological project had proven remarkable. There was only one thing still undiscovered.