He nodded. Why, indeed. And who? He reflected. So, logically . . . His voice trailed off. Logic, thus far, was in this case notable only by its absence. It would help to know when the files were switched.

You mean—

She nodded. Before they went into the woods? Or after?

Crap. I hadn‘t thought of that. He stared at the ceiling. The one person who might have been able to figure that out is dead.

Yes, she is, Kate said.

And is looking less like a suicide by the moment. He unlinked his hands and turned the monitor. Come look at this.

Kate leaned over his shoulder to look at the screen. It displayed two columns of numbers. First column was a date. Second column was a very long string of numbers separated by dashes. The first date was in April, the latest the first of July. There were four entries.

It‘s in her personal file, in a folder marked Mine‘ that was password protected. You figured out her password?

It was her birthday.

Kate closed her eyes and shook her head.

Yeah, I know. She was keeping track of something, Kate. The question is, what? The dates aren‘t at regular intervals. One in April, two in June, one in July. The numbers on the right . . . they‘re in sequence.

Core samples, maybe? Those middle numbers could be depths. The last numbers are so similar I‘m thinking they‘re coordinates. You know, maybe latitude and longitude?

He looked at her, her face so close to his that his breath disturbed a strand of short dark hair that lay across her cheekbone. He was seized by a sudden impulse to bite her earlobe. Why core samples?

Their eyes met, a faint smile in hers. She knew. Oh yeah, she always knew. There‘s a lot of proprietary information being accumulated at the Suulutaq Mine, Jim. She tapped the screen, drawing his attention back to the monitor. Scroll down. Huh?

Look at the doohickey on the vertical scroll bar. With the cursor on the bottom row of numbers, it‘s nowhere near the bottom of the document. Scroll down. He scrolled down. The columns disappeared off the top of the screen, and three lines of type rolled up on the bottom.

As far back as I‘m able to go with the records available here.

Theremay beothers.

The cursor blinked steadily at them from the end of the page.

Jim stirred. Okay, he said. Looking less like an accident, and a lot less like suicide.

Kate‘s grin was fierce. She checked the clock on the wall. George has a crewchange flight going into Anchorage in fifteen minutes.

What? Why do you need to go into Anchorage?

For one thing, I can take Gammons‘s and Allen‘s files to the ME, see which matches who. If Gammons‘s file matches the DB, and we know Gammons is alive, then I‘ll take Allen‘s file to the hospital and make them check it against him. Once we have confirmation that someone switched the files, we can work on why. What do Allen and Gammons have to do with Lyda Blue‘s death?