Chapter One
MILLIE
February cold hits differently out here in the Nevada desert. The second the sun disappears, the warmth goes with it, leaving behind a dry chill that slips beneath layers and settles deep enough to ache. The kind of cold that makes everything feel quieter than it should.
By nine at night, the mine seems like an entirely different place. The equipment turns into dark, skeletal silhouettes against the desert, shadows stretching long across the dirt, while the distant hum of the highway drifts faintly through the night, about a mile up the road.
Everything else feels still.
Too still.
Like the whole property is listening for something.
I know this place better than I know most people. Like the way the floodlights cast long yellow rectangles across the gravel, or the way the office door sticks on its hinges in winter, and the way the entire site settles and creaks as though it’s breathing in its sleep. I’ve been coming here since I was seven years old, trailing after my father with a hard hat three sizes too big and a thermos of hot chocolate. McClane Mining Co. is as much mine as it is his.
Tonight it was supposed to be easy.
Five minutes, maybe ten.
Dad needs some documents from his office before he meets with the lawyer tomorrow morning, and I am the only person he trusts to collect them without asking questions about their contents. I’ve told myself it doesn’t matter. I’ve told myself a lot of things lately that I’m not entirely sure I believe.
The office is locked up and dark behind me when I step out onto the gravel, the folder pressed under my arm, my keys already in my hand. I pull the door shut and reach for the deadbolt.
That’s when the perimeter floodlights snap on.
The east fence line floods white so suddenly that it turns the dark, sharp, and hostile.
I go completely still.
The motion sensors on the east perimeter are the sensitive ones. They’ve been known to trip for foxes, for a tumbleweed moving through on a wind gust. Dad has been meaning to adjust the sensitivity for two years now and never has. So I stand here for one full breath, my keys pressed hard enough into my palm to leave an impression, and I watch the fence line.
At first, my brain tries to do what it always does out here at night and come up with a normal explanation. Wind, wildlife, perhaps one of the loose fence panels is rattling around again.
The desert makes noise after dark. Things shift when the temperature drops and the ground starts bleeding off the heat it’s been holding onto all day.
But then something moves.
And my stomach knots instantly, a cold dread sinking hard and fast into my bones. Everything out here changes in a split second. The steady hum of the desert drops away, leaving behind the kind of stillness that makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
I lean forward before I even realize I’m doing it, my eyes narrowing toward the fence line while the shadows start pulling themselves into something more solid.
And that’s when I see them.
Two figures.
Not shadows.
Two figuresmove along the inside of the eastern fence, slow enough to make something ugly twist low in my stomach.
Not workers.
Mine workers stomp around with purpose. They carry tools, yell to each other across the property, and move fast because there’s always something that needs fixing, hauling, or checking.
These two don’t move that way. They drift along the fence line slowly, taking their time, their attention sweeping over the property piece by piece in a way that sends the fine hairs on the back of my neck straight up.
Watching.
Checking.
