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her a while ago.”
    Georgia had made it sound as if she’d left on her own. “Why was she fired?”
    Sam picked at his plaid shirt, his finger twisting a piece of loose thread on one of the buttons. “She didn’t agree with the Service’s decision to put the desert tortoise on the endangered list. She made it enough of an issue that they asked her to leave.”
    Something didn’t strike me as quite right about Sam’s explanation, but I decided to let it slide.
    “I also met a man by the name of Noah Gorfine.”
    Sam’s eyes instantly locked onto mine. “Stay away from him, Rachel. The man’s nothing but trouble.”
    I was surprised. “Why? What has he done?”
    Sam’s attention traveled down to his boots, where he brushed away bits of cigarette ash. “I just know he’s considered a pariah by all the government hotshots. He used to work for the Department of Energy until he threw a monkey wrench into something big they were doing. Since then, anyone interested in a government career has been told to steer clear of him.”
    Sam walked out to the Mr. Coffee machine in the hall. Bringing back two cups, he handed me one. “If you want to keep your nose out of trouble, forget you ever met the man. If you want to get ahead in this job, keep with the program.”
    Keeping with the program was like asking me not to eat, sleep, or breathe. I learned early on that part of my problem as a Fish and Wildlife special agent is that I don’t fit into the mold. Higher-ups within the agency consider me one of those rare mutations that somehow manage to slip by without getting caught, bobbing and weaving, sliding in from the rear to kick down the door while no one’s looking. At first I had taken it as a compliment, proud that I had proven myself to be so exceptionally wily. But all I’d accomplished by kicking the door in so hard was to land myself ass-smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Assignment-wise, it was the equivalent of being sent to Hard Rock, Alaska.
    I had just begun to sip my coffee when my phone rang. Leaving Sam’s office, I sprinted to my desk, knocking over a pile of unfinished paperwork as I reached for the receiver. I found myself faced with silence and then the sound of breathing. Along with no love life, I hadn’t had many dirty phone calls of late. I somehow doubted that my luck had changed.
    “Anybody there?” I asked.
    I was just about to hang up when a woman’s voice stopped me. “It would be worth your while to pay a visit to the Golden Shaft mine.”
    “Who is this, please?” I questioned.
    “All you need to know is that birds and tortoises are dying there every day and nothing is being reported,” the woman informed me.
    It was my turn to be silent for a moment as I processed this information. “How are they dying?”
    The voice on the other end snapped, “How the hell do you think? Birds drink from the cyanide pits. Haul pak drivers don’t stop to pick up desert tortoises that wander into their way. They’re being run over. Or even worse, they’re buried alive.”
    “If you tell me your name, I promise that it will be kept totally confidential,” I offered.
    The woman snorted. “Right. And good whisky is still a buck a shot. I need to keep my job, lady. You want to do something with the information I’ve given you? Be my guest. You want to sit on your ass like the State wildlife boys? Well, I can’t do nothing about that. Let it be on your head.”
    Before I had a chance to respond, the phone clicked dead in my ear.
    The Golden Shaft was the same mine Noah had complained about, and my mystery woman obviously worked at the mine.
    Mines in Nevada ran on a self-reporting system that Sam likened to a fox declaring how many chickens he’s nabbed in a henhouse. All wildlife deaths connected to mining activities were supposed to be reported directly to the Nevada Division of Wildlife. It seemed that few were. And when they were, nothing was done. It was only when endangered