by Cindi Myers
Buoyed by these plans, she jogged down the trail, head bent, watching for roots and other obstacles that might trip her up. She didn’t see the big man in the dark coat who stepped out in front of her—didn’t register his presence at all until she crashed into him and his arms wrapped around her, holding her tight.
Chapter Two
As a DEA agent for the past fifteen years, Rob Allerton had faced down his share of men and women who wanted to kill him, but none had outright tried to run him over. The sound of gunfire had sent him charging up the trail, only to be almost mowed down by a female hiker who fought like a tornado when he grabbed hold of her to steady them both. He managed to pin her on the ground, then satisfied himself that she wasn’t armed—and therefore probably not the source of the shots he had heard.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, speaking slowly and distinctly in her ear, ignoring the alluring floral fragrance that rose from the soft skin of her neck. “I’m a law enforcement officer. I only want to help.” Carefully, he eased back and released his hold on her.
She sat up and swept a fall of straight honey-blond hair out of her eyes, and he felt the angry look she lasered at him in the pit of his stomach—and farther south, to tell the truth. He hadn’t seen Paige Riddell in almost two years, but she wasn’t the kind of woman a man forgot easily.
“Agent Allerton.” She pronounced his name as if it was a particularly distasteful disease. He had figured out the first day they met that she seldom bothered masking her feelings or suppressing her passions. Feeling the heat of her hatred only made him wonder what it would be like to be on the receiving end of her love.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, standing and dusting dirt from the knees of her jeans.
He rose also. “I heard gunshots. Was someone shooting at you?”
“I certainly wasn’t shooting at them.” She adjusted her pack, which clanked as she shifted her weight.
He frowned at the dark blue backpack. “Is that a saw you’re carrying?” He walked around her to get a better look. “And a pair of bolt cutters?” He moved back in front of her. “What have you been up to?”
“None of your business.” She tried to walk past him, but he blocked her way. She glared up at him, with those clear gray eyes that still had the power to mesmerize.
“It’s my business if someone was shooting at you.” He touched her upper arm, wary of startling her. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” He should have asked the questions earlier, but he was so surprised to find her here he had forgotten himself.
“I’m fine.” She shrugged off his hand, but he recognized the pallor beneath her tan.
“Who fired those shots?” he asked. “It sounded like a semiautomatic.”
She glanced over her shoulder, in the direction she had run from. “I’m not going to stand here, waiting for them to come back,” she said. “If you want to talk, you can come with me.”
He let her move past him this time, and fell into step just behind her on the narrow trail. “Did you get a look at the shooters?” he asked. “Was it anyone you know?”
“I don’t know who they were—two men up at the old Eagle Mountain Resort.” She gestured toward the property to their left. The trail had turned away from the fence line and descended away from the property. “I spotted them carrying a big wooden crate through the woods. They lowered it into an underground chamber of some kind. At least, they both disappeared through some kind of trapdoor in the ground, and came out without the crate. I guess they saw me watching and fired. I took off running. They were on the other side of that big fence, so they couldn’t chase me.”
“Maybe they thought you were trying to break in,” he said. “Were you using those bolt cutters on their fence?” He wished he could see her face, but she didn’t look at him, and walked fast enough so that he had to work to keep up with her.
“No, I was not trying to break through their fence,” she said.
“What were you doing? Bolt cutters and a saw aren’t typical hiking gear.”
“I was going to cut the illegal lock off their illegal gate over a legal public hiking trail,” she said. “I have a copy of a court order instructing them to remove the lock and open the gate, which they haven’t done.”
“So you decided to take matters into your own hands,” he said.
“The lock was too tough,” she said. “I’ll have to get someone up here with power tools or a torch or something.” She might have been discussing her plans to build a community playground or something equally as virtuous. Then again, Paige Riddell probably saw opening up a public trail as just as worthy an enterprise. This was the Paige he remembered, absolutely certain in her definitions of right and wrong, and that she, of course, was in the right.
“You’re not worried someone is going to shoot at you again?” he asked. “Next time they might not miss.”
She glanced back at him. “I’m going to report this to the sheriff. I was on a public trail. They had no right to fire on me. Even if I’d been trespassing—which I was not—they had no right to try to shoot me.”
“You aren’t the first person who’s been fired on up here,” Rob said. “Someone tried to shoot the sheriff and his deputies when they visited the property months ago.”
“So there’s a pattern of unlawful behavior,” she said. “It’s time to put a stop to it.”
“Except no one can ever identify the shooters,” Rob said.
“I could identify these men.” She bent to duck under a low-hanging branch, then glanced back once more. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I doubt you just decided it was a nice day for a hike.”
“I’m staying in town for a few days—a little vacation time.” Long practice made him reluctant to share his plans with anyone, especially a woman he didn’t know that well, who had made no secret of her dislike of him. “I heard a new company had taken over this property and I wanted to check out what they were doing here.”
“You didn’t find anything illegal when you were there last month, did you?” she asked.
“No.” He had overseen an investigation into an underground laboratory that had been discovered on the property, but his team had found no signs of illegal activity.
“The new owners say they’re going to use the property to build a high-altitude research facility,” she said. “Did you know that?”
“I heard something to that effect,” he said. “What do you think of that idea?” Paige headed up the local environmental group that had gotten the injunction that stopped development at the resort years ago.
“It’s better than a resort that only gets used half the year,” she said. “Depending on what they research, that kind of facility might actually do some good, and I wouldn’t expect a lot of traffic or other stressors on the environment. We’ll wait and see what they plan to do, and we’ll definitely have some of our members at their permit hearings.”
“Do you ever worry you’ll get on the wrong side of the wrong person?” he asked.
She stopped so suddenly he almost collided with her. She turned to face him. “No, I’m not afraid,” she said. “The kinds of people we do battle with—people or companies who want to do harmful things for their own gain, without thought for others—they want us to be afraid. They count on it, even. I’m not going to give them that satisfaction.” She turned and started walking again.
“You don’t think that’s foolhardy sometimes?” he asked, picking up his pace and squeezing in beside her. “Not everyone plays by the rules. Some of them can be downright nasty.” He had met his share of the second type in his years in drug enforcement.
“I try to be smart and careful, but I’m not going to back down when I’m in the right.”
There was that passion again, practically sparking from her eyes. He couldn’t help but admire that about her, even when they had been sparring on o
pposite sides of a battle. “Tell the sheriff what you saw,” he said. “Then let him and his deputies handle this. Don’t go up there by yourself again.”
“I told you I try to be smart,” she said. “Next time I’ll go up there with other people. I might even have a reporter with me.” She smiled. “Yes, I think that would be a great idea. Companies like CNG hate bad publicity.”
They reached the trailhead, where his black pickup truck was parked beside her red Prius. She studied the truck. “Is that yours?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s my personal vehicle. I told you, I’m on vacation.”
She turned to him again. “I just realized I’ve never seen you when you weren’t wearing a suit.” Her gaze swept over his hiking boots and jeans, over the blue plaid flannel shirt, up to his hair, which he hadn’t found time to get cut lately. He felt self-conscious under that piercing gaze, wondering if he measured up. Did Paige like what she saw? Was he vain, hoping the answer was yes?
But her expression was impossible to decipher. He half expected her to say something derogatory, or at least mocking. Instead, she said, “I guess the truck suits you.”
What was that supposed to mean? But before he could ask her, she stashed the pack in the back seat of the Prius, climbed into the driver’s seat and sped away, leaving him standing beside his truck, feeling that, once again, Paige had gotten the upper hand.
* * *
OF THE PEOPLE she might have expected to encounter on the trail that morning, Paige had to admit that DEA agent Rob Allerton was probably five hundredth on the list of possibilities. Sure, he had ended up in Eagle Mountain a month ago, leading an investigation into that underground lab, but she had managed to avoid crossing paths with him. Once he had wrapped that up and gone back to live and work in Denver, she had comforted herself that she would never have to see the man again.
Now that she was alone, and the full impact of what had happened up on Dakota Ridge was making her break out in a cold sweat, she could admit that she had been relieved to see him, once she realized he wasn’t a friend of the shooters. Rob Allerton might be a coldhearted pain in the behind, but he had probably been armed, and he knew how to handle criminals. For all her talk of not letting fear make her back down, she had been relieved not to have to face those two men and their guns by herself.
She gripped the steering wheel more tightly and glanced in the rearview mirror, to see Rob’s Ford pickup behind her. She might have known he would drive a truck. He had always had a bit of a cowboy swagger—something she might have admired if they hadn’t been adversaries.
And they were adversaries, she reminded herself. Rob Allerton was the reason her brother, Parker, had ended up in jail, instead of in a rehab program where he belonged. She had fought like a mama bear—and spent most of her savings—to get her little brother into a program that would help him, and to get the sentence deferred if he completed all the requirements of his parole. Allerton hadn’t lifted a finger to help her, and had in fact spoken out against any leniency for Parker. She was never going to forgive him for that.
Remembering how she had won that battle, and that Parker was all right now and well on his way to putting his life back together, calmed her. She rubbed her shoulder, where it ached from carrying the pack and tools, and slid her hand around to massage the back of her neck, then froze. Her fingers groped around her collar, then back to the front of her throat, under her T-shirt. Her necklace was gone—the thin gold chain from which hung the gold charm of a bird in flight. She had purchased the necklace shortly after her divorce, as a symbol that she was free as a bird. She never took it off—but it was gone now. She swore to herself. The chain must have caught in the bushes when she pushed through them to get a better look at those two men. Or maybe when she had retreated.
She would have to go back up there later and look for it. But she wouldn’t go alone. She would take plenty of friends with her, and she would make sure they were armed with more than bolt cutters and saws.
By the time she parked the Prius in front of the Rayford County Sheriff’s Department, she felt ready to relate her story calmly. She headed up the walkway, only to meet Rob Allerton at the front door.
He held the door open for her. “After you.”
“Are you following me?” she asked.
“I needed to check in with the sheriff anyway,” he said.
“Why? I thought you said you were here on vacation.”
“Just professional courtesy, to let him know I’m in town.” He followed her into the reception area. “Besides, I can add my account of the shooting to yours.”
“Agent Allerton! What a nice surprise!” Adelaide Kinkaid, the sixtysomething administrator for the sheriff’s department, greeted Rob with a wide smile. She didn’t exactly flutter her eyelashes at him, but the implication was there.
“Ms. Kinkaid. Nice to see you again.” Rob clasped her hand and flashed a smile of his own, and Adelaide looked as if she might swoon. Paige crossed her arms over her chest and looked away. Honestly! It wasn’t as if Rob Allerton was the only good-looking man on the planet. Yes, he had that young Jake Gyllenhaal charm going on that probably appealed to Adelaide’s generation, but Paige had always liked men who were a little rougher around the edges. Less glib. Less deceptive.
“I just stopped by to say hello to the sheriff,” Rob said. “Ms. Riddell needs to make a report of an incident up on Dakota Ridge, though.”
“Oh, hello, Paige,” Adelaide said. “I didn’t see you standing there.”
“No, I don’t imagine you did,” Paige muttered.
“Did you say an incident? On Dakota Ridge?” Sheriff Travis Walker, Gage’s brother, joined them in the reception area. Clean-shaven and spit polished, Travis could have been a law enforcement poster boy. The fact that he was smarter than most and full of grit had made him a local hero, and at twenty-nine, the youngest sheriff in Rayford County history.
“It’s Paige’s story to tell,” Rob said. “I only happened upon the tail end of things.”
“Come into my office.” Travis led them down the hall to his office and shut the door behind them. Paige sat in the chair in front of the battered wooden desk, while Travis took the black leather chair behind it. Rob stationed himself by the door. “Tell me what happened,” Travis said.
“I hiked up the Dakota Ridge Trail this morning,” Paige said. “I wanted to see if CNG Development had complied with the court order to remove the gate over the trail. They hadn’t.”
She glanced at Rob, daring him to reveal her plans to remove the lock, but he said nothing. “While I was up there, I saw two men on the other side of the gate, on the old Eagle Mountain Resort property. They didn’t see me. They were carrying a large wooden crate between them—about the size of a coffin, though I don’t think it was a coffin. It looked heavy. I thought it was really odd that they would be carrying something like that through the woods, instead of driving up to wherever they needed to be. The second thing that was odd was that both of the men had semiautomatic rifles slung over their backs. I’m no expert, but I think they were AR-15s.”
Travis’s brow wrinkled, and he pulled a pad of paper toward him and began making notes. “Can you describe these men?”
“Muscular—big shoulders. They were wearing forest camo parkas and black knit watch caps. I didn’t get a really good look at their faces through the trees, but I didn’t recognize them.”
“What happened next?” Travis asked.
“They continued through the woods, on the other side of the fence. I went back down the trail, but I was curious to know what they were up to, so I followed them. They stopped and one of them bent down and I heard the scrape of metal on metal. I think they opened a trapdoor or something. Then one of them climbed down into the ground. The other one pushed the box in and climbed down after it.”
“So they went underground?” Travis asked. “Out of sig
ht?”
She nodded. “I wondered if they were going into that same chamber where Gage and Maya were trapped this summer. But then I wondered again why they hadn’t just driven up to it. Isn’t it connected to that underground lab you found?” She looked to Rob for confirmation. “That’s what Maya told me.”
“It is,” Rob said. “But we didn’t find any sign that that chamber had been used for anything in a long time.”
“That chamber is farther from the fence line,” Travis said. “I don’t think you could see the opening at the top from the fence.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Rob said.
“Maybe it’s just underground storage of some kind,” Travis said.
“Fine, but why sneak through the woods, especially carrying something heavy?” she asked. “And why were those guys armed? And why did they shoot at me when they saw me watching them?”
“Did they say anything?” Travis asked.
“No. They just yelled ‘Hey!’ or something like that, and started firing. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”
“Did they try to follow you?” Travis asked.
“I don’t know. I just ran.” Her heart raced, remembering. “I knew they were on the other side of the fence and they’d have a hard time catching up to me. I figured I could make it to my car before they did. Then I ran into Agent Allerton.” No sense elaborating on how he had pinned her to the ground. Though she had to admit that was after she did her best to knee him in the crotch.
“I heard the gunshots and came running up the trail,” Rob said. “I met Paige coming down.”
“What were you doing up there?” Travis asked.