Tell Me No Lies by Branton Rachel

Author:Branton, Rachel [Branton, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: romance, christian, karen kindgsbury, romantic suspense, ariana, lds, suspense, a bid for love, clean romance, dee henderson
Publisher: White Star Press
Published: 2011-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Hours later, I was glad we’d taken Gage’s bike as we bumped along a makeshift road outside Flagstaff. I had no idea where we were, though I’d lived in Flagstaff most of my life. All around us was desert, calm and far more green than many people would guess. Some people preferred mountains or oceans, but I loved the desert, the mild winters, even the heat of summer. This September morning was beautiful, and the red plateau we were heading for looked like something on a postcard. The beauty caught at something in my chest and made me glad to be alive.

Gage stopped the bike, and my ears felt briefly odd without the roar. Everything was still. The day was hot and going to be hotter, but there was enough of a breeze that it felt good and not too stifling, though people from cooler climates might think differently. I jumped off the bike and stretched. The blue sky went on forever, and the marshmallow clouds were doing their best to form figures I recognized. One resembled a teddy bear with a missing ear.

“What are you doing?” I asked Gage, who was rifling through his backpack. I caught sight of a chisel, hammer, a bunch of plastic zip bags, and a marker.

“This is just a preliminary run. If these samples show what I think they will, we’ll do more extended samples next week, in whatever area these indicate. Then my employers will finalize their rights to the land, and we’ll start mining.”

“For what, copper?”

He seemed surprised that I knew. “That’s what we’re here for. The land has been in private hands for a long time, but the owner is ready to sell, or at least the mineral rights. The government has to stamp its okay as well, but that’s not my department. I just have to make sure the old tests done years ago still show what we expect. But I’m almost positive. Come on.”

Handing me the bag with our lunch, he hefted his backpack. Soon we were heading up the incline toward a higher location on the plateau. “There’s a bit of a canyon through here,” he said. “That’s where I need to go first.”

I was already glad I’d worn tennis shoes because this was not what I’d expected.

We began a long hike through tall red rocks. Every so often, Gage would take out his chisel and hammer to chip away at the rocks, carefully documenting where he’d taken the sample with the marker directly onto the bag, using a GPS to pinpoint our exact position. Sometimes he collected some of the dirt as well. Several times, he had to do a little climbing or digging to get samples that satisfied him. Eventually, we entered a small valley and began to circle around, and I saw a pattern to his work.

The valley wasn’t green, and there weren’t many trees, with the exception of a few hardy pines, but the place had an austere beauty and gave me the sense that no one had ever been here before except us.

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