A sign at the end of the clearing read No Trespassing—

Dawson Mining Company, but I ignored it. Trespassing was going to be the least of my crimes this evening. We walked in silence through the wet woods for a few minutes before we reached the lip of the ridge. I crouched behind a tall pine on the edge, and Donovan squatted beside me. Despite the rain, the detective’s clean, soapy scent washed over me. Mmm. The smell made me want to turn to him, press my lips to his, and lower us both to the forest floor. Sure, the leaves and earth would be a little damp, but I had no doubt Donovan and I could warm each other up—in a hurry.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t here for a quickie with the detective, no matter how pleasurable it might be. So I raised the binoculars I’d brought along up to my eyes. Below me, the ridge sloped downward and then bottomed out, forming a fat U shape. The ridge we stood on was the base of the U, while the rest of the mountain had been removed to form the open area. Ramps of dirt twisted down either leg of the U, providing access to the topmost portions of the slope.

A variety of machines sat on the basin floor. Backhoes, bulldozers, and other machines designed to move earth—and a lot of it. Others were just big, hulking, complicated brutes of metal with more arms, cranes, and buckets than I’d ever seen. Some of them were bigger than small houses, but I had no idea what their names were or even what they did. There were dump trucks too, with beds and wheels even bigger than the ones on the vehicle Finn had used to run over Trace Dawson.

Across the basin floor was the other end of the operation—the underground mine. A square black hole in the wall of the mountain, held open by concrete support beams. Metal tracks ran into and out of the wide mouth.

I supposed at one time the tracks had been used to help move men and equipment down into the earth. Now they looked dull and rusty from lack of use. I could see places where the metal had been torn up and not replaced. I remembered what Violet Fox had said about the coal in the underground mine running out and how it had been idle for some time now. It was easy to tell that the focus had shifted to stripping off the mountain one layer at a time. That’s what all the equipment was here for—to cart coal and dirt away, not bring it up out of the ground. Not anymore.