Em and the agent head into the deserts of Nevada: gambling and gold mining country, where fortunes-and lives-are won and lost. Their task is to investigate the high stakes behind conflicting reports about an endangered species on federal land, land the government has leased to a proposed billion-dollar gold-mining operation. But when they arrive, they discover the case has taken an alarming and lethal turn. The biologist they have flown five hundred miles to interrogate lies dead in her pickup truck at the edge of a lonesome road, and a key mining geologist has gone missing. What started as a simple fraud investigation quickly develops into an intricate murder case in which Em must unravel the secrets of gold, the desert, and an Indian tribe struggling to maintain its secrets. The wide-open spaces harbor a deadly enigma that is all too human-and what's at stake is not just Em's life.