Quicksilver (The Forensic Geology Series, Prequel) Read Online Free PDF

you start reading your books in pixels?”
    “Since I looked in the mirror and saw an old man.”
    “You’re not old,” I’d said firmly. “You’re just an ink-and-paper man.”
    “Old dog can’t learn new tricks?”
    And now, as I rode shotgun in Shelburne’s Rover, I could not help glancing into the side-view mirror, spying on Walter in the back seat. Hair grayer than when I’d last paid attention?
    Funny thing: Walter had looked old to me when I first met him. I was eleven and he was in his forties. To a kid, that was old. Over the following years as I worked in the lab—part-time after school and full-time in the summers—the only aging I paid attention to was my own, particularly when I crashed into my teens. Then, during my college years, I would come home for the summers and grace the lab with my learning, spouting textbook tidbits like they were tweets. During that stretch I didn’t notice either of us aging. I was too busy proving myself. By the time I’d completed grad school and took my book-learning back into the field what I finally noticed was the authenticity of Walter’s skills.
    Old ? He’d perhaps grown a bit vain, fretting over his thinning hair and creasing face.
    I turned from the mirror and firmly directed my attention to the scenery.
    Right now, the road we traveled was unknown to me. In fact, the Mother Lode was mostly unknown to me. Not my country. It was pretty enough, and I never met mountains I didn’t love, but I was a stranger here.
    The road worsened. Ungraded, now.
    In the back seat, Walter was stone silent, still deep in Lindgren.
    I turned to look at him.
    Head bowed over his tablet. Finger swiping the touch screen, onto the next page.
    Swipe.
    Swipe.
    On the hunt. Nothing old about that old dog.
    I returned my attention to my own tablet. I’d downloaded Lindgren as well, taking my cue from my mentor.
    ~ ~ ~
    S helburne parked the Land Rover on a nearly hidden fire road, jarring Walter out of Lindgren.
    Walter shut his tablet and looked around. “Where are we?”
    “At the start of our hike,” Shelburne said.
    Walter said, “Pass me the road map,” and after receiving and perusing it he said, “Two miles up the road we’ll find a proper trailhead.”
    “This is the way we always came. My dad blazed this trail with his ego.”
    I said, “That’s some whacked-out reason to take it.”
    “And,” he said, “it’s faster.”
    Walter folded the map and returned it to Shelburne. “Your call.”
    We geared up and Robert Shelburne took the lead.
    And so we embarked upon Shelburne’s father’s rogue route, unmarked on the map, sign-less at the head, steep at the get-go, infested by brush, scented by that odd vegetative smell. Fifteen minutes into our climb we came upon the silver bandana littering the ground. Flagging our trail. Thirty minutes into our climb we got hit by falling talus.
    What the hell, Henry?
    In hurried consultation—Shelburne up above on the bedrock ladder, me three switchbacks below, Walter still down on the traverse—Shelburne urged us to hurry, swore that if it was Henry up on the ledge then we had the chance to catch up to him, assured us that the rocks had been an accident.
    We might have debated the issue but Shelburne quickly pushed onward, upward, and it was a shorter pitch to the top than to turn around and traverse back across the rock field.
    I picked up my pace.
    Walter picked up his.
    Shelburne shouted his brother’s name twice and when there was no reply he saved his breath.
    Nothing more fell from the ledge above and in the course of my climb I began again to entertain the theory of the squirrel or the bear.
    I soon caught up with Shelburne, hiking so close I had the leisure to examine his red backpack. I distracted myself with the question of his pack. It was an Arcteryx Altra, latest model, one I admired and would not afford. Made sense, I supposed, that Shelburne had a state-of-the-art pack because the backpack he would have