Animal Whisperer: Take Back My Life and Love Chapter 393: The Treasure Of The Sand Rats

An officer on the scene sent their coordinates via satellite and called for backup. Before long, sirens filled the air as the local force arrived. Following the team's lead, everyone helped lift the three emaciated camels into a specialized rescue trailer. One of the camels looked back at Nancy before the doors shut, blinking slowly as if it didn't want to leave.

With the camels pointing the way, the police locked down Rino’s mining site. An officer shoved a hand toward the handcuffed man. "Where is the gold you dug up? Start talking."

Rino kept his eyes shut, acting like a man who had nothing left to say. He clearly thought that if he stayed silent, the police wouldn't have enough to make the charges stick.

Fighter stepped up and nudged Nancy’s shoulder. "My friends told me everything. I know where he hid the loot. Follow me."

With the camel leading the way, the police found bags of gold dust wrapped in oilcloth tucked inside a narrow rock crack.

As the officers started bagging the gold, the sand fox came trotting back like he owned the desert. He was dragging a beat up backpack and dropped it at Nancy's feet. "Chief! Found more. This bag smells just like him, and it reeks of blood. It is the same smell from the night I saw him."

"Good job," Nancy said, giving the fox a quick pat. "You are sharper than you look."

Simon pulled on gloves and opened the bag. Inside was a dagger with dark stains and a few coils of rope. He sealed the items in evidence bags. "We found the weapons," he said.

Faced with the evidence, Rino finally broke. He admitted he was acting as a guide for three backpackers when they found signs of a gold deposit. Since he knew the area and did all the heavy lifting, he figured he earned the biggest cut.

"Those rich bastards looked down on me from day one!" Rino yelled. "Then one of them tried to ditch the team and go solo. I lost it on the road so I could keep the mine for myself."

Once he killed the first one, he decided to finish the job and took out the other two. It was a messy, sudden move, so he buried them at the first spot he found. He had stolen some bleached linens from the hotel laundry to filter drinking water, but he ended up using them to wrap the bodies instead.

Rino never expected a movie crew to pick his burial site for a shoot only two weeks later. After he finished talking, he just muttered, "My luck ran out."

The officer interrogating him looked disgusted. "You still think this is about luck? You don't think you did anything wrong?"

"What did I do wrong!" Rino snapped, his eyes bloodshot. "I found the gold first. It was mine. I was tired of being a nobody. I finally had a chance, and I wasn't letting anyone take it."

Rino kept screaming as they loaded him into the van. Even at the end, he didn't feel any guilt, only anger that he got caught before he could sell the gold.

The truth was that both Rino and the director chose that spot for the same reason: the sand was soft and easy to dig. His luck didn't run out; his greed just caught up to him.

A young officer knelt by a pit, gathering the shimmering dust into a bag. "Is there really a mine here?"

Following the fox's lead, Nancy pushed aside a bush and found a sand rat burrow. A group of rats were working hard, kicking waste out of the hole.

"Heave ho!" A fat sand rat kicked a pile of gold grains out of the tunnel. "I hate this shiny dirt. The moonlight hits it at night and keeps me awake."

Another rat spat out a mouthful of gold dust. "Tell me about it. It is useless and takes up too much room. We should be storing seeds instead."

Nancy watched the piles of gold dust the rats were treatng like garbage, completely speechless as the trash sparkled in the sun.