Connell looked hard both to the left and to the right. He saw nothing through the almost solid swirl of snow. He pushed gently on the accelerator and eased the Lincoln out onto the road, tires crunching along the snow-covered driveway.
There was no squeal of brakes, no blaring horn, only the sudden smashing impact and the impossibly loud cries of screeching metal. The car lurched to the left, the back end swinging around on the wet, slushy pavement. The impact threw Connell against his seat belt so hard it cut off his breath. The Lincoln spun like a child's top, whipping almost a full 360 degrees as the back end flew into the ditch. Connell's head snapped back when the car crunched to a halt. As suddenly as it started, it ended, leaving complete silence except for the rapid clicking of ruined motors cooling in the night's grip.
Connell blinked, hands still clutching the steering wheel, trying to form a thought. A dull throb pulsed in his neck. A warm wetness and a sharp, stabbing pain rose up from his right knee. His mind finally centered on a single word: accident.
He turned to look at Cori. Faint light strayed from the lamps surrounding the driveway. The impact had devastated the passenger-side door, glass gone but for a few jagged shards, the once stately Lincoln now a mass of twisted metal, torn leather, and ripped fabric. The other car had smashed the door in so far that Cori was pushed almost to the middle of the seat. Snow blew in through the broken window, melting where it hit blood.
Her eyes were wide with shock and pain. Beautiful blond hair clung to her face, matted down with glistening red. Flecks of glass hung in her hair like glitter. Blood sheeted her scalp, her cheeks, her chin, falling to stain her white coat.
She looked at him, questioning terror written across her face. “Connell?” Something liquid and gurgling masked her smooth voice. She sounded weak, fractured.
Connell felt a stab of panic, a burst of blind rage. It didn't take a genius to see she would die if he didn't get help.
"Take it easy, Pea,” Connell said, his voice loud and ragged with fear and adrenaline. He fumbled with his seat belt. His hands were slick with blood.
"Connell?” she asked again in her fragile voice. Her eyes looked glassy, unfocused. She weakly lifted a bloody hand toward him.
He took her hand, feeling the movement of tiny broken bones under her skin.
It was already too late, and he knew it. He felt tears welling up; he fought them back. He held her ravaged hand against his cheek.
"I'm here, Pea. I'm here."
Her head lolled forward. Connell heard voices shouting over the whipping wind. Faces appeared around the car; coworkers and concerned friends peered in, asking if he was okay. His eyes remained fixed on his dead wife. Snow swept in around them, soft and silent.
He held her hand against his cheek — her warmth faded away; her hand slowly grew as cold as a fresh fish dropped on ice.
Connell lurched up, a scream locked in his throat. He was freezing — not from the dream-snow, but from sweat-soaked sheets turned icy by air conditioning running full blast.
He tried to control his ragged breathing. He never knew when the dream would come. Sometimes he'd have it for weeks on end, every night a reenactment of the terror and the loss. Sometimes he'd go months between the dreams, and then he'd feel a strange guilt at the possibility of getting over his wife's death.
But he knew better. He'd never get over it.
He sat on the edge of the filthy bed, on sheets that hadn't been changed in months. As he stared out into the black mess of the room, he knew that the car crash had taken his life as well.
His pulse slowly returned to normal, and he steadied his breathing, fighting down the stabbing pain of losing her yet again. He looked at the clock—4:17 a.m. He'd overslept. He dragged himself out of bed. He had work to do.
Chapter Three
Sonny stared at the tiny spring bubbling forth from the mountainside. It spilled cold water onto cracked rocks heated by the blistering Utah sun. Sonny's huge smile split his deep-black skin, revealing too-white false teeth.
Sometimes you just get lucky, Sonny thought. You spend your life hunting for gold and silver and a dozen other things, following up on leads, rumors, hunches, and myths and usually you get squat. For every valuable find discovered from such dream chasing, there were twenty or thirty hunts that turned up nothing but dirt. After a fruitless summer with nothing to show but blisters and a few new aches and pains; a summer spent researching dead and lost mines; a summer spent buried in libraries, city halls, university museums; a summer spent digging worthless dirt under the same sun in four different states; he stood there looking at the results of good old-fashioned dumb luck.
Dennis's map had proved amazingly accurate considering it was based on a ten-year-old memory. Those Hopis sure knew their land. The water spilled out of the rock, trickling slowly into an ages-old streambed.
Water was scarce in these parts, always had been, which should have made even a tiny spring like this a known landmark. But no one came here. He reached down to his belt and rubbed the Hopi Indian charm he'd bought specifically for this trip.
On his belt, opposite the Indian charm, hung his lucky pie tin. Tied to a short rope, it swayed from his belt like a six-shooter dangling from an outlaw's hip. He scooped up some silt, then swished it around in the tin, the motion carrying the fine silt over the edge to splash against the mountainside. After two minutes of panning, all that remained was a fine, white, metallic dust.
A whoop escaped his lips, a yell of joy that bounced off the mountain and into the dry summer air. He'd found it. Sonny pulled a small vial from his pocket, poured in the watery dust and sealed it tight. He carefully placed the vial in his chest pocket and buttoned it shut, giving it a proud little pat before covering up his tracks and any evidence of his visit. It had taken him six grueling hours of climbing and hiking to reach the spot, and the same return trip stood between him and his Humvee. After that, it was three miles worth of rough travel to reach anything resembling a road.
Sonny had found silver a couple of times in his career. The spring didn't contain enough dust to cover a summer's worth of prospecting, but that wasn't the way things worked anymore. Nowadays you made much more money finding the stuff and then selling the location to big companies. Let some mining corporation suck the minerals from the ground. Sonny, meanwhile, would spend the winter in Rio with some bronzed little piece of fluff a third his age bringing him drinks and keeping him warm at night.
Sonny was exultant. The chance encounter in an out-of-the-way bar and a small gesture of friendliness had combined to produce this find. Dennis's amazing story was grade-A, one-hundred-percent true.
While the find elated him, Sonny couldn't shake memories of Dennis's fearful, scanning eyes. That fear made Sonny nervous — because he felt something on that mountain, just as Dennis said he would. Sonny found himself hurrying down the slope faster than normal.
The Indians were so scared of the place they wouldn't even walk on this mountain, let alone approach the spring. He'd asked around, visiting all the Indians he knew in the area. Even the kids and the half-breeds, the ones who put little or no stock in the old faith, didn't come here. There was nothing but rocks, sand, and tough, scraggly trees — and the nearest town, Milford, was an hour away — but it still gave him the creepy-crawlies. As far as Sonny could divine, Dennis the Deadhead was the only Indian to visit this spot in at least a decade.