Alien Seeds — Darrell Bain

When one of the Strake brothers is out prospecting with a metal detector he finds what he thinks are peculiar little gold nuggets midway up the Mogollon Rim, a drop off from the Colorado plateau. When Gary Strake's girlfriend Mona calls John Strake for help because his brother is acting peculiar, she is dead when he arrives, her throat torn out. Gary swears there's something else, something big, buried where he found the little gold colored objects. He also thinks some one or some thing has been stalking him. When the brothers and the sheriff begin investigating Mona's murder they are attacked by a creature that looks like a horribly mutated cougar. Then when they find that the nuggets have an almost fatal attraction, they know they need help--and soon! Teaming up with two attractive female scientists from the University of New Mexico, an investigation begins, both there and at the site on the Mogollon rim where a suspected spaceship lies buried. But nothing is as it seems and solving one problem only leads to numerous others, until the brothers and the scientists wonder if they'll even live long enough to solve a mystery that threatens to take them all the way off earth. 2008 EPPIE award finalist.