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A Night Too Dark

Dana Stabenow
Contents ( 26)
  1. A NIGHT Too DARK
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Prologue
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three

A NIGHT Too DARK

DANA STABENOW

MINOTAUR BOOKS NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author‘s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A NIGHT TOO DARK. Copyright © 2010 by Dana Stabenow. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin‘s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

[http://www.minotaurbooks.com] www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stabenow, Dana.

A night too dark : a Kate Shugak novel / Dana Stabenow.—1st ed. p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-55909-0

1. Shugak, Kate (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women private investigators— Alaska—Fiction. 3. Alaska—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3569.T1249N54 2010

813'.54—dc22

2009039815

First Edition: February 2010

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Pati Crofut

a bouttime,

considering howmanyof her experiences I‘ve stolen for my books

Acknowledgments

Grateful thanks to Quinsey Jorgenson, who knows far better than I do what Vanessa‘s wearing these days.

Even more grateful thanks to her brother, Cale Jorgenson,

who went to college so

I could have his room on overnights.

Thanks again to Gary and Jeanne Porter, who I swear keep doing stuff just so I can use it for my books.

And thanks to Mayhem in the Midlands for making me Zoe Sharp‘s crash test dummy so Kate could knock that little weasel on his butt.

Prologue

Gold.

Number 79 on the periodic table. Au, from the Latin aurum

The most precious and prized of metals, used for currency beginning with the Egyptian pharaohs in 2700 B.C. and down through the ages by all nations as the metal of choice in the manufacture of those coins of highest value, the aureus, the solidus, the ducat, the guilder, the sovereign, the double eagle, the Krugerrand. A malleable and forgiving metal, an ounce of pure gold can be beaten into a sheet large enough to gild the roof of a small home, although it is more dense than lead. It doesn‘t corrode, which makes it perfect for jewelry, although in its pure state it is too soft to stand up to repeated use and so is alloyed with other metals—copper, silver, nickel, or palladium—so that a wedding ring will last through a golden anniversary.

Gold is tasteless, although in the 1500s a Dutchman invented a liqueur called Goldwasser in which he sprinkled gold flakes. Medieval chefs used gold to garnish sweets before sending them up to the high tables.

Gold is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, and resistant to oxidation and corrosion, making it useful in electronics and dentistry. It was used to plate the copper disk of recorded greetings on board Voyager 1, a hundred astronomical units out and counting. It is included in speculative designs for solar sails for spaceships and solar collectors for space habitats. Scientists have built gold nanospheres to work with lasers on a cure for cancer.

Gold is rare. Of all the noble metals, only mercury is more infrequently found in the earth‘s crust.