Claim Jump

Petra Woods has never needed proof. Her hands know a genuine stone from a fake the instant she touches it, and that certainty has never once let her down. But some puzzles can't be solved by touch alone.

Months after her uncle Harold's death, Petra rediscovers a reproduction Lost Dutchman's Mine map tucked away in her RV, bought on a whim during the worst week of her life. A strange smudge on the map catches her eye, something that looks less like damage and more like a secret someone tried to erase. What she uncovers isn't a location at all. It's a clock, ticking down to a narrow, twice-a-year window when the shadow of Weaver's Needle points to the entrance of a mine that has swallowed searchers for over a century.

Chasing the answer pulls Petra into a small, obsessive online community built around the legend, where a warm local named Frank welcomes her with open arms and open research, while a quiet figure known only as The Watcher reads every word she posts and says almost nothing at all. When Frank vanishes and the desert gives up another body, Petra tells herself it's simply what the Superstitions do to careless men.

She's wrong. And by the time she reaches Fremont Saddle with her dog Rocky at her side, chasing the one narrow window that will finally prove what she's known for weeks, she's about to learn exactly how far someone will go to make sure a hundred-and-fifty-year-old secret stays buried.