Down Among the Dead Men — Claire Baxter

Caitlyn needs to find her estranged father or her mother will be thrown out of the home she
loves, so Caitlyn ventures into the rough, tough world of the Australian opal fields. After
rescuing a teenager from an attempted assault she learns that the girl, Max, is her half-sister.
Their father is missing and suspected of stealing opals â€" an activity that could place both Max
and Caitlyn in danger. Attempting to locate their father without alerting the police, Caitlyn
enlists the help of Dale, a city lawyer turned lapidary, hiding out in the town to protect his
daughter from death threats. Together they investigate, but progress is slow until Caitlyn
stumbles upon a link between her father and organised crime, and into an investigation by the
Federal Police.

After offering herself as the go-between in a ‘sting', Caitlyn realises that she's put Dale's life
at risk and in order to save him, she does the one thing she's sworn never to do. She battles
crippling claustrophobia to descend into the darkness of an underground opal mine where her
father's dead body is lying. With the criminals either arrested or dead, Caitlyn accepts that
she's found more than she went looking for. She's fallen in love with Dale, but there's no
way he'd consider moving back to the city, not when a move would expose his daughter to
danger. He doesn't ask her to stay so she makes a new life for herself and her sister in
Adelaide...until the death of the man threatening his family allows Dale to confess his
feelings for her.