Page 112 of Dead Mountain

Homer Watts was lying stretched out on a divan at the far side of their yurt, legs crossed, grinning. Sunlight was streaming in a window that looked out over Abiquiu Lake and the red buttes of Ghost Ranch.

Corrie looked back at the paper, then seized it and read, astonished. The headline screamed in an almost tabloid fashion:

ACCIDENTAL NUKE DROP REVEALED

Dead Mountain Mystery Solved

Pharma wiz gravely wounded in

shootout with FBI, arrested for murder

“Holy shit,” said Corrie.

It was all there—everything—attributed to a “confidential and highly placed source, backed up by documentation independently confirmed by the Journal to be legitimate.”

Somebody had spilled the beans. There was a comprehensive description of the entire story, with all its twists and turns: the emergency jettisoning of a bomb to avoid a crash; the clandestine drug experiment on the hikers; their hallucinatory, panicked flight after encountering a searcher in a hazmat suit; how they died; the discovery of the journal—along with a sidebar about an earlier cover-up that destroyed the career of the previous chief investigator, Robertson Gold.

The commander of Kirtland AFB had been asked for comment and—while issuing a statement in obvious consternation about violation of classified information—had not exactly denied anything. SAC Garcia of the Albuquerque FO had refused all comment, as had Supervisory Special Agent Sharp, in charge of the Dead Mountain case. Nora Kelly of the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute, who had played a key role, was away with her brother in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and could not be reached by press time. Socorro County sheriff Homer Watts and Special Agent Corinne Swanson, also deeply involved in the case, were unable to be reached for comment.

Corrie grabbed her phone and looked at it. Nothing. Of course—they were off grid. She turned and stared at Watts. “Did you know about this?”

Watts was laughing. “I swear I didn’t. I got up early and went to Bode’s to get us some breakfast burritos, and saw the headline. I just about fell over.”

Corrie continued to read, amazed. There were related stories as well, one involving the murder of Cheape, another covering a statement from Melody Ann O’Connell of the Manzano Families Memorial Association, insisting the whole thing was just another cover-up and that the Boston Project was clearly to blame.

“My God,” Corrie said, continuing to read the various stories that dominated the entire front section of the paper. “It’s all here—documents, pictures, everything! Who did this?”

“The very question I asked myself.” Watts laughed again, hands behind his head, apparently as amused as hell.

Corrie looked at him. This was the guy who had the skill and nerve to take out DeGregorio a split second before he would have put a bullet in her head. The man who’d saved her life. Movie-star handsome, his amber eyes crinkling with amusement—and all hers. How lucky was she? Life was strange indeed. After all this time she’d spent—worrying about what Watts thought of her, what she should do, how she should act, what their professional relationship should be—he’d invited her to spend four days with him in a yurt in the middle of nowhere. Without thinking—without needing to think—she’d said yes.

“Who did this indeed?” Watts was saying. “You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to use the process of elimination. Could it have been . . . Garcia?”

“No way,” said Corrie. “He’s too by-the-book.”

“You?”

“Don’t be funny.”

“Nora?”

“Impossible.”

“O’Hara or Bellamy?”

“No. One’s too straight and the other too dumb. They didn’t have access to all this information anyway.”

“Director Raeburn?”

“No way. He ordered the quashing to begin with.”

“Sheriff Hawley?”

This of course was a joke. The sheriff had been indicted for perjury, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering. He’d been forced to resign, with worse apparently to come. “Ha ha, good old One-Bally? Can’t be him—what a dumbass.”

At this, Watts said, “Who’s left?”

Suddenly, Corrie caught her breath. “Not Sharp.”

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