Read Online The Nightmare Thief by Meg Gardiner - Free Book Online

had gotten rich out of this hole.
    Or if Wylie had thought he might.
    Fifty yards in, she found the drop-off. It was a vertical side shaft, about three feet in diameter, which plunged thirty feet to rocks and crags and mining debris.
    Yes, Wylie could have been swept this far into the mine by a torrent and then over the lip of the drop-off. But what if he hadn’t been?
    She forced away the sensation that the walls were bulging, creaking, bearing down on her. Taking a breath, she continued along the tunnel. Soft dirt mounded beneath her boots, muffling her footsteps. Support beams were hammered into the tunnel’s walls and across its ceiling. She rounded a bend, swept the flashlight ahead, and stopped. A pit was dug across the floor. It dropped at least fifteen feet. It was an emergency drain, in case of flood.
    Directly above the pit, the old miners had inserted a crossbeam—a railroad tie. And above the crossbeam, dirt and rock had crumbled away. The wood was completely exposed. The sight didn’t reassure her. She jumped across the pit and kept going. The tunnel continued to bend. The daylight behind her grew dim and dusty. The walls narrowed and the ceiling lowered. Then, when she thought it couldn’t feel any more constricting, the tunnel branched. Tentatively she explored each offshot until she reached a final, dingy dead end. In the beam of the flashlight she saw only the occasional piece of trash. She turned and walked out.
    “You all right?” Gabe said.
    She nodded. She took off her harness, tilted her head back, and gulped fresh air. At the sight of the sky through the trees, her tension bled away.
    “Somebody killed Wylie,” she said. “I have nothing to back that up, except gut feeling. But I’d put real money on it. I’ll drive up to Reno and lay odds.”
    She got out her camera. “The question is who, and why.”
    Gabe scanned the sky. Cumulus clouds were boiling in the west. “We’re going to lose the light. And we’re going to get rain.”
    “I’ll hurry.”
    She spent ten minutes shooting photos of the mine and hillside. Then she stopped, gazing up the slope. The Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office had searched the mine and flood channel for evidence. But she now believed the flood channel to be irrelevant.
    She looked at the trail.
    Consciously slowing herself down, she walked up it. Creeping along, she scanned the ground, examining it foot by foot.
    It took her twenty minutes, but high above the mine, she stopped. The sunlight kicked again—like a flash from a signaling mirror. Cautiously, keeping her eyes focused, she walked toward the source of the light.
    Ten feet from the path, stuck between two rocks, she saw it.
    “Gabe.”
    He climbed the trail to her side. “Is that what I think it is?”
    Dusty and dinged, half covered with pine needles, it was a cell phone.
    “Yeah. I need gloves.”
    She dashed down to her backpack, grabbed latex gloves and a Ziploc baggie, and ran back uphill.
    “It didn’t move,” Gabe said. His tone was wry.
    She took a clutch of photos showing the phone in situ. “The sheriffs were out here in summertime. The sun was higher in the sky. The phone’s display wouldn’t have reflected the light the way it does now.”
    “You coming up with a reason why they would have missed it?”
    “Same when Evan came up last month—and besides, she wasn’t looking for a cell phone, because a cell phone had already been found on Wylie’s body and the cops didn’t know he had a second one. Nobody did, until she and I compared notes.”
    She pried the phone from its cranny and held it, gingerly, by her fingertips.
    Gabe said, “If it’s Wylie’s, it’s been here five months, exposed to the elements. I wouldn’t worry about fingerprints or DNA.”
    “You never know.”
    “And you don’t want to march it triumphantly into the sheriff’s station unless it actually belongs to the victim.”
    “Let’s check.”
    She pressed the Power key. Nothing