title: Down Among the Dead Men
author: Baxter, Claire
description: 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 – 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.