Read Online Quicksilver (The Forensic Geology Series, Prequel) by Toni Dwiggins - Free Book Online Page A

heart.
    His eyebrows lifted.
    I turned to Shelburne. “Did Henry put this here?”
    Shelburne looked taken aback. “Why would he do that?”
    “Why would he leave the dimes? His games.”
    “No no, he didn’t know I’d hired you—at least not until he saw you on the trail with me. And if he did, how would he have time to set this up? And if he did, how could he possibly know you would look down there?”
    I acknowledged the unlikelihood of the scenario but my heart rate had not yet gotten the message.
    “Look,” Shelburne said, “you get enough droplets caught in a hotspot, they coalesce. You can thank Mother Nature for that. I’ve heard of guys finding puddles big as pillows. When my dad brought us here panning, we sucked up mercury with a turkey baster. It’s all the hell over the place.”
    Big as pillows? Holy hell. A heart was big enough for me. I said, “You know a lot about it.”
    “Yes I do. As I’ve explained, Dad marched me and Henry up and down his trail.”
    “Here too?” I asked.
    “Sure. Here.” Shelburne got to his feet. “As you geologists point out, it’s a natural catch-basin. Good place for panning.”
    “Been here recently?”
    “Last time I panned for gold I was twelve years old.” Shelburne started to retreat across the gravel bar.
    “Hang on,” I said. He’d been on edge from the moment the trail brought us here, even before I’d said heart and freaked him out. “Anything else going on here?”
    Shelburne paused. “Like what?”
    “Like whatever’s been making you so edgy.”
    He turned. “Aside from the fact that my brother is missing?”
    “If there’s something else, yeah. Aside from that.”
    A shadow passed over his face. “It’s not relevant.”
    “I would like to be the judge of that,” Walter said. “Before we proceed.”
    Shelburne took a long moment and then he said, “My father died here.”
    Walter and I got to our feet. Scrambling to catch up.
    “This is news,” Walter said.
    “No kidding,” I said, “I thought your father died of a heart attack.”
    “Yes. Here. In fact, it wasn’t the heart attack that killed him. It was falling into the water and drowning.” He grimaced. “Animals got to him before the rangers found him.”
    I flinched. “That’s awful.”
    “Now you understand why this place gives me the creeps.”
    I nodded. That made two of us, now.
    “What was he doing here?” Walter asked. “Panning?”
    “No.”
    “Then?”
    “It’s not relevant.”
    “Indulge me,” Walter said.
    Shelburne shrugged. “He was sampling the water.”
    “Why?”
    “ All right .” Shelburne looked at us squarely. “It’s irrelevant but let’s get it out of the way. My father, the auto mechanic, was a handy guy. He developed a piece of technology and brought it to me, looking for funding for a startup. Venture capital, it’s what I do. Dad had a plan to build a super-dredge to suck up mercury, clean up the gold country riverbeds.” He shot me a look. “You saw for yourself what’s down there.”
    I nodded. Seen, and felt.
    “ Environmental remediation is the big-bucks term. There’s your new gold rush. Turns out my firm was already working with a deep-pockets company looking to get into the business. So I hooked Dad up with the company, which I’m going to call Deep Pockets. I helped bring the plan to product. I helped Dad come up with a catchy name for his subsidiary—AquaHeal. And yes, I came out here with Dad and a Deep Pockets guy a couple of times. Site survey, checking out hotspots, up and down the river. We packed in, stayed awhile.” He held up a hand. “By the way, I did mention my site scouting, earlier.”
    Walter said, evenly, “You didn’t elaborate.”
    “It wasn’t relevant. Don’t know how else I can put that.”
    “It involved your father,” I said. “He died and you found the ore sample and that kicked off what’s going on now.”
    “He wasn’t out here hunting gold when he died. He was here, on