Among them was Mary ODonnell, clutching the hand of her nine-year-old daughter, Muirinn.
Muirinn watched
the rescuers tumble out of a bright yellow bus in their Draegers, led by their neighbor, Adam Rutledgeher friend Jetts father.
But a police officer flanked by burly mine security men stopped Adam and his crew at the gate. One had a gun. Angry voices carried on snatches of wind as Adam clashed with the police. A German shepherd strained against his leash, barking and baring teeth at Adam. The cop then drew his gun. Adam raised both hands, backing off. Swearing.
Muirinn grew very scared.
She knew the whole town was at war over the big mine strike, neighbors pitted against neighbors, family members against each other. Thats why all the police and security men were here. Still, she didnt understand why they wouldnt let Mr. Rutledge and the mine rescue team inher dad was down there.
Desperation squeezed the nine-year-olds heart.
Snow swirled thicker. Temperatures dropped.
Slowly, miners began to emerge from the earth, blackened with soot, choking from emergency stench gas released by management into the tunnels to warn them out of the mine. Muirinn and her mother stood alone as other families were reunited all around them. A few women started to sob. Their men hadnt come up yet, either.
Then Safe Harbor Police Chief Bill Moran came striding through the snow toward Muirinn and her mother, flakes settling thick on the wide brim of his hat.
When she saw the look in his eyes, Muirinn knew her daddy was never coming back.
By late afternoon, Chief Moran had examined the scene and learned of the two bags of explosives missing from the powder magazine. Positive he was now dealing with a mass homicide investigation, hed contacted the FBI field office in Anchorage, and Tolkin Mine was locked down as they waited for the postblast team. But the spring snowstorm had other ideas. It barreled in and powered down with a vengeance, unleashing blizzardforce winds on Safe Harbor, cutting off access to the remote Alaskan coastal community. The FBI team was unable to land in Safe Harbor for a full forty-eight hours. The television crews came shortly after, filling the few hotels and restaurants in the tiny mining town. As the story of mass murder in the North broke, it rippled across television screens south of the 49th.
Three months later, Muirinn stood beside a hospital bed, tears streaming down her face. Sheer grief had stolen her mothers life.
Muirinn was taken home to be raised by her grandfather, Gus ODonnell, her last living relative.
Someone had planted a bomb that had killed Muirinns father, taken her mother, and changed her life forever.
And the police never found him.
The heinous secret remained buried deep in the abandoned black tunnels of Tolkin Mine. And a mass murderer still walked among the villagers of Safe Harbor.
Chapter 1 Twenty years later
When Muirinn ODonnell fled this place eleven years ago, those granite mountains had been a barrier to the rest of the world, a rock and ice prison shed sought desperately to escape. Now they were simply beautiful.
Pontoons slapped water, and the tiny yellow plane squatted down into a churning white froth as the engines slowed to a growl. The pilot taxied toward a bobbing float plane dock.
She was back, the prodigal daughter returnedalmost seven months pregnant, and feeling so incredibly alone.
Muirinn clasped the tiny whalebone compass on a small chain around her neck, drawing comfort from the way it warmed against her palm. Her grandfather, Gus ODonnell, had left her the small compass, along with everything else he owned, including the house at Mermaids Cove and Safe Harbor Publishing, his newspaper business.
His death had come as a terrible shock.
Muirinn had been on assignment in the remote jungles of West Papua for the magazine Wild Spaces when Guss body had been found down a shaft at the abandoned Tolkin Mine, a full thirteen days after hed first been reported missing. And no one had been able to reach her until two weeks ago.
Shed missed his cremation and the memorial service,
and she was having trouble wrapping her head around the circumstances of his death.
Muirinn had called the medical examiner herself. Hed told her Gus had been treated for years for a heart condition, and that hed suffered cardiac arrest while down the mine shaft, which had apparently caused him to tumble a short way from the ladder to the ground. Muirinn could not imagine why her eccentric old grandfather would have been alone in the shaft of an abandoned mine. Especially if he had heart trouble.
And she was unable to accept that the dank maw of Tolkin had swallowed the life of someone else she loved.
Gus had raised her solo from the age of nine, after the death of her parents, and while Muirinn had never come home to visit him, shed loved her grandfather beyond words.
Just the knowledge that Gus was in this world had made her feel part of something larger, a family. In losing Gus, shed somehow lost her roots.