Cold Case Affair

“Muirinn—”

“Please, Jett, everything. Step by step. I need to know.”

He moistened his lips and nodded.

“When we first got the report that Gus was missing, we really had nothing to go on. Then on the thirteenth day, we got a break. A hunter called the police tip line to say he’d been on his way out into the bush almost two weeks earlier, when he’d seen Gus walking inside the perimeter fence of Tolkin Mine. He hadn’t thought anything of it until he’d returned and heard the news. We brought dogs in immediately, set them to work on the Tollkin property. They led us straight to the shaft—”

“Sodwana shaft?”

He frowned. “Yes, why?”

She hesitated. “Just wondering.”

“The grate covering the man-way inside the headframe building had been pulled off. So we went down with ropes, flashlights.” He paused, watching her, compassion filling his heart. “We found him down there. On the 300 level.”

Muirinn’s neck tensed. She swallowed. “What’s on the 300 level?”

“More tunnels. Another man-way that leads further down, possibly as far as the 800 level.”

“Who was the hunter who called in that tip, Jett?”

“The cops don’t know. It’s an anonymous tip line.”

Her cheeks flushed with frustration, or maybe anger—he’d always found that so sexy, the way her complexion betrayed her emotions so easily.

“So, basically, my grandfather might’ve been saved if he’d just taken the trouble to tell someone where he was going that day. Why didn’t he?”

“Who knows, Muirinn. You knew he was stubborn.”

“But didn’t you guys think it was odd that he was down there, down that shaft?”

“I had questions, sure,” said Jett. “But the ME and the police went through everything. So did Dr. Callaghan. Pat had been treating Gus’s heart condition for some time already. There was no evidence of foul play of any sort, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

She bit her lip to stop it from wobbling, looked away.

“Hey—” he cupped her jaw, turned her face back to his, and immediately regretted the impulse. “Gus was a really eccentric old guy, Muirinn, even more so these past few years. This was in keeping with his character.”

Tears pooled in her eyes again, and Jett couldn’t stop himself from asking. “You’d have known all this about Gus if you’d come to see him,” he said quietly. “Why, Muirinn? Why didn’t you ever come home to see your grandfather?”

She held his eyes, silent for several beats, something unreadable darkening her features. Then she sighed heavily. “I sent Gus plane tickets, Jett, so he could come to see me in New York.”

“Yeah, he wasn’t that impressed with the city. He told us about it.”

Her lips flattened. “And for his birthday, I sent him a ticket to Spain. I met him in Madrid. Gus had a thing for Hemingway—he wanted to see a bullfight.” Tears spilled down her cheeks again. “Damn, I’m so sorry,” she said brushing them away.

“Sorry for what? Caring?”

Her eyes shot up to his.

“Look, I guess I just don’t understand why you didn’t even come back for his memorial service, Muirinn. Or when you first heard he was missing.”

“I didn’t know he was missing!”

“Someone must have told you.”

“I was unreachable, Jett, on assignment in the remote jungles of West Papua—”

“With no cell phone? No satellite connection, nothing?”

“Nothing.” She rubbed her face. “That was the whole point of the assignment, to be inaccessible. For myself, an anthropologist and a photographer to spend some time with one of the world’s last truly isolated tribes. Part of my story was to be about that sense of isolation. Our goal was to feel it.”

“But you were—are—pregnant.”

“And in good health. Women in those tribes have been bearing children in that jungle for centuries. The photographer was also a paramedic. I was not at risk.”

“What if there had been an emergency?”

“That’s the point, Jett. Our society can’t conceive of living without phones, Internet, radios. We don’t know how to cope on our own anymore. We go into a total panic at the mere notion