Corrie glanced at Nora. “You know anything about this treasure?”

Nora smiled. “Everyone in New Mexico’s heard the story, Corrie.”

“Oh,” said Corrie, disappointed. “Well, that’s too bad, because it might have explained the gold cross rather neatly.”

“Let’s keep the investigation in the real world, shall we?” Morwood said rather sharply, and Corrie felt herself coloring.

They headed back outside, into the afternoon sun.

“Lieutenant Woodbridge and I are going to close up,” said McGurk. “You all go on ahead.”

Corrie, Morwood, Nora, and Watts walked back toward the waiting jeeps.

“Agent Swanson’s looking dissatisfied,” Morwood said as they left the cabin behind. “I’m beginning to recognize the expression.”

“It’s just an old ranch house,” Watts said. “I’m glad I saw it, but I didn’t expect to find any surprises after three-quarters of a century.”

“I’m glad I saw it, too,” Nora said. “It’s a piece of history. And the general went out of his way to be both tour guide and historian. Considering he has better things to do, I found him very hospitable.”

“Maybe too hospitable,” Corrie said.

“Aha, that explains the dissatisfied look,” Morwood said. “I’ve never met a junior agent more skeptical than Corrie. It’s a good attribute—up to a point.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Corrie, trying, despite her irritation, to maintain the jocular tone of the conversation.

And with that they climbed into one of the jeeps and the driver took off, leaving the piece of heaven behind.

*

General McGurk walked back into the house, Lieutenant Woodbridge following. He halted at the window, arms folded, staring through the ragged curtains to the blue mountains beyond. A minute passed as he took in the picturesque vista. And then he turned and said, in a low voice: “We’ve got to take care of this problem. And I mean take care of it right now.”

26

THIS TIME, CORRIE jogged, rather than walked, down the crowded third-floor corridor of Presbyterian Hospital, ignoring all obstacles in her way. She slowed as she neared the end, where Rivers’s room was. Somehow, Morwood had managed to beat her there, and she could see him standing in the hallway among a knot of people comprising a doctor, a nurse, and two BLM rangers—including the one she’d seen on her first visit, packing a newspaper and cup of coffee. The door to Rivers’s room was ajar.

“What happened?” she asked as she came up to them, gasping for breath—realizing a split second later she’d interrupted an intense conversation.

One by one, they looked her way.

“Our prisoner’s dead,” Morwood told her.

It was as she feared. Word that Rivers—the creep who’d shot Watts—had gone into cardiac arrest had been what had sent her racing to the hospital.

She turned to the doctor. “Any idea why? Obviously it wasn’t his leg wound.”

The doctor, face gaunt and tired beneath a day’s stubble, blinked slowly. “There were complications, which is why he was still in the hospital. But it appears to be sudden cardiac death.”

Corrie looked from one face to the next, hoping someone would be able to provide a more satisfactory answer. “Sudden cardiac death? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Well,” said the doctor in a tired voice, “SCD is the single largest cause of natural death in America.”

“But what were these complications? Did they cause it?”

“Infection. And it’s possible. But SCD can also come out of nowhere,” the doctor replied. “He wasn’t on an EKG monitor, so we can’t be sure if death was caused by ventricular fibrillation or some other latent arrhythmia. His cholesterol was unusually high, perhaps due to an inheritable condition, so cardiomyopathy is also a possibility. What we can say for sure is that death was caused by loss of heart function.”

“Corrie,” Morwood said, breaking in, “we’ve ordered an autopsy, so all these questions will be answered.”

Corrie turned to the rangers in their BLM uniforms. “Were you on duty when this happened?”

“I was,” said one of the rangers—the one she hadn’t met before. He didn’t look pleased to make the admission. The name Akime was embroidered onto his name tag.

“When was this?”

“About five in the morning. The nurse went into the room to check on some unusual readings from the monitoring station—a minute later, she came running out.” He swiveled his eyes toward the nurse standing beside the doctor.

“Cardiac arrest,” the nurse said. “The patient was unresponsive.”

“Naturally, measures were taken,” the doctor added. “Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, electrical stimulation. But I’d guess the cardiac arrest triggered an MI, as well—which sealed the deal.”

“MI?” asked Corrie.

“Heart attack. And once blood flow to the brain ceases, well … ” The doctor shook his head.

There was a brief silence. “He was in a hospital,” Corrie repeated. She turned back to the ranger. “You were supposed to watch him.”