An Eye for Gold Read online

  STRANGE ATTRACTION

  Amanda came awake to an awful throbbing in her head. She felt terrible.

  What had hap—

  She tensed as she remembered the unseen man.

  His words.

  Terrified, she pushed herself up, and quickly learned she was on a cold concrete floor, in a very small, dust-covered room . . .

  And handcuffed to an unknown blond man.

  A scream wedged itself in her throat, but she held it back.

  Amanda took in her surroundings. There was no furniture or anything else. The only light came from a small bulb in the center of the ceiling.

  Okay, so she wasn’t in immediate danger.

  Still far from comforted, she looked at the body beside her. He lay with his back to her, and he was either dead or unconscious.

  Hesitantly, she reached out and placed her hand against his tawny neck to check his pulse. A strong, heavy heartbeat thumped against her fingertips. Relieved he was alive, she tried to shake him.

  He moaned low in his throat, then slowly blinked his eyes open.

  With a curse, he grabbed her by the shoulders.

  Before she could move, he rolled over with her, pinning her against the floor beneath his body as he held her wrists above her head.

  Those dark, captivating eyes searched hers suspiciously.

  Every inch of him was pressed intimately against her and she became instantly aware of the fact that his arms weren’t the only part of his body that was rock-hard and solid.

  His hips rested dead center between her legs while his hard, taut stomach leaned against her in a way that brought a flush to her cheeks. Made her feel hot and tingly. Breathless.

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  (LISTED IN THE CORRECT READING ORDER)

  Fantasy Lover

  Night Pleasures

  Night Embrace

  Dance with the Devil

  Kiss of the Night

  Night Play

  Seize the Night

  Sins of the Night

  Unleash the Night

  Dark Side of the Moon

  The Dream-Hunter

  Upon the Midnight Clear

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Midnight Pleasures

  Stroke of Midnight

  My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding

  Love at First Bite

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  REVIEWERS RAVE OVER THE NOVELS OF

  SARAH ANDREWS

  BONE HUNTER

  “Andrews makes the most of her paleontological background. She clearly knows her subject and, unlike many crime writers, she does not use the surroundings merely as window dressing. The novel is, in addition to a fine mystery, a lively exploration of the high-stakes world of dinosaur research, and perceptive rumination on the debate between science and creationism.”

  —Booklist

  “Geologist Em Hansen’s adventures become more and more intriguing with each new book . . . A most fascinating tale.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Appealing characters and fluent prose.”

  —Library Journal

  “The fifth Em Hansen novel is a fabulous blending of science and sleuthing that readers will fully relish . . . Sarah Andrews may be writing the best scientific mysteries this side of the medical thriller.”

  —Harriet Klausner, Painted Rock Reviews

  “Memorable . . . BONE HUNTER knows its stuff when it comes to weaving the geology of [this] state into a crime as plausible as today’s headlines.”

  —Salt Lake Tribune

  MORE . . .

  ONLY FLESH AND BONES

  “Her tale contains a canny, entertaining mixture of elements . . . The intersections of new money and old ways of living in the West find a convincing chronicler in Andrews.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Andrews handles [the] possibilities with a sure hand as she introduces an endless supply of secondary characters whose company is a delight. Thoughtful and uncertain, Em is especially appealing as she makes the quiet point that murder involves more than flesh and bones . . . After a few more cases, geologist Em Hansen may be as tough as the best of her sleuthing peers, but her vulnerability offers singular pleasures to currrent readers.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[A] fine mystery with an edgy and vulnerable heroine . . . There’s action and passion, introspection and suspense. Em is smart company, and we learn her mind and heart along with her.”

  —Booklist

  “In the fourth book in the series, Andrews moves away from the rig to issues of mothers, daughters, and ranch life . . . She continues to tell a good story.”

  —New Orleans Times-Picayune

  A slick, endearing heroine . . . We tore through this novel.”

  —Seventeen

  “Em Hansen is one of the most interesting characters in recent mystery fiction—a strong woman with believable weaknesses and none of the smugness or coyness which bog down other, better-selling series heroines.”

  —Amazon.com’s Mystery Editor

  “One of the finest elements of an Em Hansen mystery is female characters who are strong, independent and intelligent . . . [a] marvelous mystery.”—Douglas (Wyoming) Budget

  MOTHER NATURE

  “Complex and engaging . . . Snappy dialogue and fully realized characters, especially the immensely appealing Em, turn the field of geology into a fascinating background for a mystery.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “MOTHER NATURE is an intriguing who-done-it However, what turns this into an interesting tale is the deeply developed characters (especially Em) and the brilliant insight into geology. Surprisingly, the geological aspects of the story are . . . extremely fascinating.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  LOOK FOR THESE BOOKS IN

  THE EM HANSEN MYSTERY SERIES

  Earth Colors

  Killer Dust

  Fault Line

  An Eye for Gold

  Bone Hunter

  Only Flesh and Bones

  Mother Nature

  AVAILABLE FROM

  ST. MARTIN’S / MINOTAUR PAPERBACKS

  AN EYE

  for

  GOLD

  SARAH

  ANDREWS

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  AN EYE FOR GOLD

  Copyright © 2000 by Sarah Andrews Brown.

  Excerpt from Fault Line copyright © 2001 by Sarah Andrews Brown.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-031735

  ISBN: 0-312-97792-1

  EAN: 80312-97792-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition / September 2000

  St Mart
in’s Paperbacks edition / December 2001

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  To my readers, especially

  Clint S. Smith

  and

  Carlos Eduardo Gomes de Souza Santos,

  without whom mysteries would just be so much ink on paper

  Acknowledgments

  I WOULD LIKE FIRST TO THANK THE KIND PERSONS who arranged for me to tour a working gold mine and mill during the fall of 1999. I found their disciplines fascinating, and observed that they carry them out thoughtfully and with utmost respect for the forces of nature with which they work. I wish dearly to name them here in gratitude for the care they took to educate me and keep me safe; however, I have been asked not to do so for reasons of proprietary interests, and shall instead honor them by respecting that wish.

  I thank Thomas J. Casadevall for taking me through the underground workings and mill at the Sunnyside Mine, an event that taught me more mineralogy than a full semester in college. That tour occurred in 1977, and I report it here for two reasons: first, the contrasts evident in care taken for personal and environmental safety. While that mine was operated with a high standard of care for that era, mining safety standards have since come a long way. Second, because I borrowed mining procedures used at that location. In creating a work of fiction, I routinely composite myriad observations of people, places, and things in order to create an interesting story with all of its attendant tensions. Mines and mining procedures vary as infinitely as the rocks they seek to address. The Gloriana Mine does not exist, nor does the specific mining and milling scenario that I have depicted.

  My thanks to Jon Price, Nevada State Geologist, and the members of the Geological Society of Nevada for their raucous assistance in helping to familiarize me with the geology of Nevada; in particular, Earl Abbott, Alan Coyner, and Deana Banovich. They are not to be blamed for any places where I got things wrong.

  I thank Robert B. Kayser, scion of the Spur Ranch, Douglas, Wyoming, and gatherer of great stories, for putting me in touch with Marcia Murdock, wildlife biologist. Sorry to bump off the wildlife biologist, Marcia.

  My thanks to Sarah George, mammologist and Director of the Utah Museum of Natural History, for her boundless enthusiasm and assistance with mouse detail and lore, including an unforgettable Thelma-and-Louise-esque tour of Antelope Island. Likewise thanks to Marjorie Chan, professor, Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah; John Middleton, geographer; and Vicki A. Pedone, professor, Department of Geological Sciences, California State University Northridge, for their details of the natural history of the Great Basin.

  I am indebted to David M. Abbott, Jr., consulting economic geologist, formerly with the Securities and Exchange Commission, for his careful critique of this manuscript. Thanks for other essential technical details and ideas go to Erich P. Junger, forensic geologist, Fauquier County, Virginia Sheriff’s Office; Steven R. Murray, geologist; Robert E. Moran, consulting geochemist; Richard Louden, geologist; Donald Rasmussen, paleontologist; Carlos Eduardo Gomes de Souza Santos, small-arms expert; Priscilla Lane, agricultural inspector; Pat Bagley, editorial cartoonist, the Salt Lake Tribune; Mark Lea, machinist; Doug Rustad, professor, Department of Chemistry, Sonoma State University; and last but heavens not least, Artemas Yaffe, who defies description.

  My thanks for literary reviews go to Mary Hallock, Thea Castleman, Ken Dalton, Jon Gunnar Howe, and Susan Ball.

  In preparing this work, I found the following published works to be essential resources (in the order they lie on my nightstand and other dusty places): Life Among the Piutes, by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins; The Silver State, by James W. Hulse; Seven Arrows, by Hyemoyohsts Storm; The Art of Happiness, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D.; Mammals of the Intermontane West, by Samuel Zaeveloff; The Chemistry of Gold, by R. J. Puddephatt; Karnee, a Pauite Narrative, by Lalla Scott; Geology of the Great Basin, by Bill Fiero; The Nevada Desert, by Sessions S. Wheeler, Mines of Humbolt and Pershing Counties, by William O. Vanderburg; Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps, by Stanley W. Paher; The Gold Companion, by Timothy Green; The Gold Book, by Pierre Lassonde; The U.S. Gold Industry 1998, by John L. Dobra; and Misuse of Water Quality Predictions in Mining Impact Studies and Cyanide in Mining: Some Observations on the Chemistry, Toxicity and Analysis of Mining-Related Waters, by Robert E. Moran.

  I wish to acknowledge the wit and wisdom of “Ol’ Three Toe” and “Club Tail” (not your ordinary fossils), whose column “The Great Basin Experience” in the GSN Newsletter, February and March 1999, is quoted herein.

  I am indebted to my editor, Kelley Ragland, and my agent, Deborah Schneider, for their superior efforts on behalf of this work, and as always to my husband, Damon, and my son, Duncan, for supporting me in the writing process.

  1

  WHEN HE HAD FINISHED ASKING HIS QUESTION, HE put one elbow on the table, rested his chin in his hand, and waited for me to speak. He was old enough that such a gesture pushed the skin up on one side of his face, cocking one of his superbly graying eyebrows into an inquisitive angle.

  I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I distracted myself by trying to calculate his age. Fifty? Fifty-five? Certainly the progress of at least that many years lay about him, imbuing his pleasant looks and rangy build with a comforting gravity.

  He added cream—without stirring—to the coffee the waiter had just brought him and raised it to his lips, pretending to find great interest in this short view of the universe. Swirling steam. Black and white churning slowly into brown. He took a careful sip, and, content with its temperature, followed with a long, satisfied draw of the acrid brew.

  The rich scent of coffee rose from my own cup, too. I stared at him gape-mouthed. He worked as an undercover agent for the FBI. I didn’t know his name. And if I understood him correctly, he had just offered me a job. Sort of.

  I glanced away, hoping to see Ray returning from the men’s room. Seconds passed, half a minute. Feeling the agent’s eyes on me again, I squirmed, realizing that he was too confident in his work, and too calmly intelligent to be deterred by silence. “What’s your real name?” I asked, trying next to avert the subject of the job by getting off the hot seat and offering it to him. “On the phone you said Tom Latimer, but that’s not your name, right? I mean, that was just the name you were using on the dinosaur job, right?”

  “You help me with this job and I’ll tell you my real, honest-to-gosh, no kidding name,” he said, beginning to smile.

  I wondered if trout see smiles like that on the faces of fishermen who feel their hooks sink home. I tried not to thrash, but hooked fish have no dignity. Shifting uncomfortably in my chair, I wondered why he had waited until Ray left the table to ask his question.

  With proper flourishes, the maitre d’ seated a couple at the table to my left, arranging their heavy cloth napkins on their laps as if American culture had a place for such groveling displays of class consciousness. I watched, playing for time. The man searched around for a place to hang his cream-colored Stetson, and wound up resting it on the tablecloth. He kept a hand on it, fiddling nervously with the grosgrain ribbon at the edge of the brim.

  Ignoring the waiter and the menus he artfully placed before them, the couple fell into a tense minuet of banal conversation and missed eye contact. The young blond woman said to the remarkably fit gray-haired man, “Well, like, I’ve known him like two months, but it’s like, so real when we’re together.” She shifted her slender torso constantly as she spoke, and twisted a ring set with a huge stone, trying in vain to make it a casual motion. “I mean, we can, like, talk about anything. It’s really a great relationship. I’m really, really thinking this is something special this time, you know?”

  The man drew his elbows up onto the table, folding his hands over his mouth so that his face was less readable. He bobbed his head a little, distractedly indicating that he had heard her.
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  Discomforted by his minimal response, she said, “I like, love to sit up late with him. It’s okay with him if all we do is talk. You know? But of course, I suppose you wouldn’t have anything to talk about with him, because you’re all, like, into the environment.”

  The man’s hand tightened on the brim of his hat.

  The FBI agent took a noisy sip of his coffee, retrieving my attention from the other table. “So Em, was this a bad time to ask?” he inquired.

  I switched my gaze from the couple to him, and caught an impish glint in his eyes. I hadn’t seen this side of him before, and I didn’t like it. Where was Ray? Just how long could it take a man to pee? “Well, um, I’d have to think about it,” I answered lamely. There, it was out: the preliminary put-off. The stall. The What-in-hell-am-I-doing-with-myself-anyway? pit gaping open at my feet.

  The man who was not named Tom Latimer set down his cup and leaned toward me, bringing his salt-and-pepper crew cut within twelve inches of my own first threads of gray. “So, Em,” he said, keeping his voice down to a murmur so that no one would hear over the clatter and clash of restaurant noise, “you’ve been in Salt Lake a week now. I was thinking you might be getting bored. You don’t have anything pressing back in Denver. You’ve been laid off yet another job with this latest ‘consolidation’ in the oil business, and considering how many thousands of petroleum geologists are out of jobs this time, you have little hope of finding another. You keep telling yourself you’re a geologist, not a detective, but when you get down to it, the only real difference is in the time scale, right? I break a sweat over fresh evidence of crimes that happened yesterday and you think fragmental evidence for events four and a half billion years past are a walk in the park.”