by Cindi Myers
Paige watched his face, not hiding her curiosity. Would he give the sheriff his story about a vacation? He shifted his weight. “I took some personal time to do a favor for my aunt.”
“What kind of favor?” Travis asked.
Rob glanced at Paige. Was he going to ask her to leave the room, or suggest that he and Travis talk later? “I didn’t ask you to leave while I told my story,” she said. “I think I can hear yours.”
“It’s not exactly a secret,” he said. “My aunt by marriage is Henry Hake’s older sister. She asked me to look into his death a little more, see what I could find out.”
“We’re still investigating Henry Hake’s death,” Travis said. The man behind the Eagle Mountain Resort development had disappeared earlier in the summer. His body had been discovered on the property last month, but so far no one had been able to determine either how he had died or why.
“I’m not trying to step on any toes,” Rob said. “But she’s been worried sick since Hake disappeared early this summer. When he was found dead in that bunker on what had been his own property, it left her with more questions than answers. I told her I didn’t expect to find anything you hadn’t already learned, but she begged me to try.” He shrugged. “I had some time off coming, and it’s not exactly a hardship to spend a few days hanging around Eagle Mountain.”
“Does your aunt have any ideas about what might have happened to her brother?” Travis asked.
“He had heart trouble, but she doesn’t think he died of a heart attack,” Rob said. “She’s sure he was murdered. He was definitely afraid of someone in the weeks before he died. I’d like to find out who.”
Chapter Three
Rob gave Travis credit—the sheriff didn’t even blink when he learned Rob’s reason for a return to Eagle Mountain. Paige, however, was gaping at him as if he had revealed a secret identity as a circus clown. “You’re related to Henry Hake?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” he said. “My uncle’s second wife is Hake’s sister. I never met the man.” He turned to Travis. “And it’s not my intention to interfere with your investigation. I just promised my aunt I would see what I could find out. I hiked up that trail this morning thinking I would start by getting another look at the place where his body was found—or as close as I could get, since the gates to the compound were locked up.”
Travis nodded and turned back to Paige. “I’ll go up to the resort property and take a look around. Do you think you could identify either of the men who shot at you if you saw them again?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good. I’ll be in touch.” He stood, and Paige rose also.
“While you’re up there, would you look for my necklace?” she asked. “It’s a gold chain, with a charm of a bird in flight. I was wearing it this morning and I don’t have it now. I think it must have snagged on the bushes near where I was watching those two men.”
“Sure, we can look for it,” Travis said.
“Thank you, Sheriff,” she said, and turned toward the door.
“Paige?”
“Yes, Sheriff?”
“Don’t go up there by yourself anymore,” Travis said. “At least until we get this settled. And tell the other hikers you know the same.”
“All right.” She turned toward Rob and acted as if she wanted to say something, then closed her mouth and left the room.
“Stay a minute,” Travis said to Rob.
He nodded, and waited until they heard the front door close behind Paige before he took the seat she had vacated.
“Did you see either of the men she described?” Travis asked.
“No. I wasn’t that far up the trail before she came barreling down.” He chuckled. “I didn’t recognize her at first, and I’m sure she didn’t recognize me. When I took hold of her to try to calm her down, she fought like a tiger.” He rubbed the side of his face, where she had scratched him.
“You knew each other before?” Travis asked.
Rob nodded. “Yes. And it’s safe to say I am not one of her favorite people.”
Travis waited, silent. He was probably a good interrogator, using silence to his benefit. “I’m the one who arrested her brother,” Rob said.
“For possession of meth?” Travis asked.
“Yes. And for trying to sell stolen property. He was part of a group of addicts who were robbing apartment complexes in Denver. I was part of a joint drug task force working that case. We had already determined the thefts were linked to drugs.”
“There was no doubt of his guilt?”
“None.” He sighed, all the frustration of those days coming back to him. “Paige wanted an adjudicated sentence, with her brother, Parker, allowed to go to rehab instead of prison. I didn’t agree.”
“From what I’ve seen, she can be a little protective of Parker,” Travis said.
“I get it. As far as I know, he’s the only family she has. But the fact that part of my job was to help see that he was punished for his crimes made me the enemy. Her opinions about right and wrong tend to be very black-and-white.”
“She went up there today to cut off that lock, didn’t she?” Travis asked.
Rob grinned. “I didn’t see a thing. Though she was carrying a hacksaw and a pair of bolt cutters with her.”
Travis shook his head. “When Paige believes she’s in the right, there’s no changing her mind.”
“I certainly learned that.” Though he would have preferred she didn’t see him as the bad guy. Still, she wasn’t his chief concern at the moment. “As long as I’m here, maybe I could help you out with Henry Hake’s case,” he said. “Is there anything you’d like me to look into? Unofficially, of course.”
“Did your aunt say who her brother was afraid of?”
“No. Except she thinks it had something to do with his business.”
“So not necessarily Eagle Mountain Resort. He had other real-estate holdings, didn’t he?”
“A few apartment complexes and some office buildings,” Rob said. “Eagle Mountain Resort was definitely his most ambitious project. When the court ordered him to stop development, I gather it put him in a financial bind.”
Travis nodded. “That’s what I’ve learned, also.”
“What can you tell me about the property’s new owners—CNG Development?” Rob asked.
“They’re another real-estate development company, out of Utah. They’re much larger than Hake Development, with projects all over the United States. I wondered why they even bothered with Hake—he was pretty small potatoes, compared to them.”
“Maybe they’re one of these companies that specializes in finding small firms in financial straits and buying them for bargain prices,” Rob said.
“Maybe so.”
“Paige says they want to build a research facility up there.”
“So they’ve said. They haven’t presented anything concrete to the town for approval. The couple of times I’ve been up there since Hake’s body was found, the place has been deserted.”
“It wasn’t deserted today,” Rob said. “I’d sure like to know why those two were going around armed—and what was in that box. And why they reacted the way they did when they caught Paige watching them.”
“Want to go up there with me to check it out?” Travis asked.
“You know I’m not officially on duty,” Rob said. “My boss doesn’t even know where I am.”
“You wouldn’t be participating in any official capacity,” Travis said. “I just want someone to watch my back.”
“I can do that.” And maybe he would get lucky and discover something he could tell his aunt. He couldn’t bring her brother back to her, but finding out what had really happened to him might ease her suffering a little bit.
* * *
THOUGH PAIGE VOWED to put Rob Allerton firmly out of her mind and focus on work at
the bed-and-breakfast where she both lived and worked, she couldn’t stop thinking about the man. He was always so aggravatingly calm and sure of himself. Having him here in town annoyed her, like walking around with a pebble in her shoe. Those days following Parker’s arrest had been among the worst in recent memory. Her brother had needed help and men like Rob were preventing her from helping him. Yes, Parker had broken the law, but he wasn’t a bad person. His addiction had led him to do things he never would have done otherwise. Instead of punishing him, why not treat his addiction and give him another chance?
Rob Allerton had made it clear he didn’t believe in second chances. No thanks to him, Parker had at least gotten a chance to get clean, though he had had to serve time, too. But he was clean now, going to school and staying out of trouble. Another year and the charges would be wiped from his record.
But he was in that position only because Paige had fought for him. Other people weren’t so lucky. They had to deal with the Rob Allertons of the world without anyone on their side.
She sat down at her desk off the kitchen and tried to put Rob out of her mind. His vacation wouldn’t last forever, and she had more than enough to keep her occupied in the meantime. She was working there a little later when the back door opened and Parker entered. He dropped his backpack on the bench by the door and pushed his sunglasses on top of his head. To some of the more conservative people here in Eagle Mountain, he probably looked like trouble, with his full-sleeve tattoos and often sullen expression. But Paige saw past all that to the little boy she had read stories to and made macaroni and cheese for more times than she could remember. “How was class?” she asked.
“Okay.” He opened the refrigerator. “What did you do today?”
Attempted vandalism and ended up getting shot at by two thugs, she thought. “I was up on the Dakota Ridge Trail and you’ll never guess who I ran into.”
He took out a block of cheese and a plate of leftover ham. “I don’t have to guess,” he said. “You always tell me anyway.”
“Rob Allerton is in town.”
“Who?” He took a loaf of bread from the box on the counter and began making a sandwich.
“Rob Allerton. Agent Allerton? The DEA guy who arrested you?”
“What’s he doing here?”
“He says he’s on vacation.” He hadn’t told the sheriff about her attempt to cut the lock from the gate up on the trail, so she figured she could keep quiet about Rob’s aunt and Henry Hake. Parker wouldn’t care about any of that anyway.
“Maybe he wanted to see you,” Parker said.
“Me?” She blew out a breath. “I’m sure I’m the last person he would ever want to see. Don’t you remember how we clashed at your trial?”
“I remember sparks.” He shot her a sideways look. “He thought you were hot.”
“He did not!”
“You thought he was hot, too.”
“You’re delusional.”
He turned back to his sandwich. “I’m not the one blushing.”
“I’m not blushing. This room is too warm.” She opened the refrigerator and began putting away the items he had removed. “Are you volunteering at the museum this afternoon?” she asked. She had talked Parker into volunteering at the local history museum. Her friend Brenda Stenson, who ran the museum, needed the help, and it was a good way for Parker to keep busy. Everything she had read had said that having too much free time could be a problem for a recovering addict.
“No.” He took a bite of the sandwich.
Paige tore off a paper towel and handed it to him. “What time does your shift at Peggy’s start?” She had found him the job as a delivery driver at Peggy’s Pizza as another way to keep him out of trouble.
“I’m off tonight,” he said, then took another bite of sandwich.
“Oh. Well, I guess you can use the time to study.” He was enrolled in classes at a nearby community college. Another condition of his parole.
“I’m going out,” he said.
“With who?”
“A friend.”
“Do I know this friend?”
“I doubt it.”
“Parker, we are not going to do this.”
“Do what?” He didn’t bother trying to look innocent. If anything, he was annoyed.
“Don’t make me give you the third degree,” she said. “Just tell me who you’re going out with. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
“And it’s not too much for me to ask that you give me a little privacy.”
A flood of words came to mind, beginning with the notion that he had violated his right to privacy when he had gotten hooked on drugs, broken the law and gone to prison. But she had vowed when she took him in that she wasn’t going to throw his mistakes back in his face. Her husband had done that and she knew how miserable and degraded it made her feel. So she swallowed back most of what she wanted to say.
“Be careful, and be quiet when you come in,” she said.
“I will.” Carrying the rest of his sandwich, he retreated to his room off the kitchen. Paige sagged against the counter. She was exhausted and it wasn’t even one o’clock yet. Big guys with guns, Rob Allerton and her troublesome baby brother—maybe what she really needed was a vacation from men.
* * *
WHEN ROB AND Travis arrived at the entrance to the former Eagle Mountain Resort, Rob wasn’t surprised to find the gates shut tight. “This is how they were this morning when I stopped here,” he said. He peered through the iron bars at what had once been the resort’s main street. Weeds sprouted in holes in the asphalt, and in places the paving had disappeared altogether, the road little more than a gravel wash. A weathered sign still proclaimed that this was the future site of Eagle Mountain Resort, a Luxury Property from Hake Development. No sign of luxury remained in the crumbling foundations and sun-bleached wood of the few structures scattered about the property. Rocks ranging from those the size of a man’s head to boulders as big as small cars spilled down from the ridge above at the site of a major rock slide where two men had been killed earlier in the year.
“It doesn’t look any different than it did when I was here a month ago,” Rob said.
“I’m guessing if CNG does plan to develop the place—for a research facility or anything else—they’ll wait until spring,” Travis said. “In another few months there will be eight to ten feet of snow up here. The county doesn’t plow the road up this far and there’s always a danger of avalanches on the ridge. It’s one reason the judge agreed with Paige’s group that a housing development up here was a bad idea.”
Rob looked again at the deserted street. “What do we do now?” he asked.
“Let’s hike up the trail a ways,” Travis said. “You can show me where you were when you heard the shots, and where you ran into Paige.”
They drove back down the road to the public trailhead, then started hiking uphill. After about half a mile, the trail began to parallel the fence line for CNG’s property. The black iron fence, eight feet tall and topped with curls of razor wire, was almost hidden in places by a thick growth of wild roses and scrub oak, but in other spots the undergrowth thinned enough to provide a glimpse through the bars of the fence.
“About this point is where I heard the shots,” Rob said. “I thought they came from the other side of the fence. I picked up speed and I hadn’t gone far when I saw Paige running down the trail toward me. I thought at first someone was pursuing her, but then I realized she was alone. She said two men had shot at her. Then my focus became getting her safely away.”
“Did you stop by the entrance to the property before you went to the trailhead, the way we did just now?” Travis asked.
“Yes. The gates were locked and I didn’t see anyone. No cars or anything.”
“Let’s see if we can figure out where Paige could have seen the shooters,” Travis said.
They moved up the trail, which soon curved sharply, still following the fence line. Another hundred feet and they came to an opening in the wall of bushes and vines next to the trail. Broken branches and scuffs in the leaf litter told the tale of someone plunging into this opening—and exiting in a hurry.
Travis went first, with Rob close behind. Bending over, they had a clear view onto the resort property, but what they saw was unremarkable—a few stunted evergreens, oak brush with the last brown leaves of summer clinging to it, and some dried grasses. Travis took binoculars from his belt and scanned the area. “I don’t see anything,” he said.
They waited a moment, listening, but heard only the sound of their own breathing. The silence and the deserted—abandoned, really—property made Rob feel uneasy. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything here today,” he said, keeping his voice low.
“No.” They returned to the trail and started back toward the parking area. “I could try for a warrant to search the place,” Travis said. “But I doubt a judge would grant the request.”
“They were shooting at an unarmed woman,” Rob said. “A woman who wasn’t even on their property.”
“That’s what Paige said happened, but she wasn’t hit and there weren’t any witnesses.”
Rob started to object, but Travis cut him off. “I know—it’s not like her to make things up. I’m just telling you what CNG’s lawyers are going to say.”
“I heard the shots,” Rob said.
“Right. People shoot guns all the time out here—at targets, at animals. It’s elk season right now. Maybe they were hunting. It’s not illegal to shoot off a gun.”
Rob blew out a sigh of frustration. “So what do we do now?”
“We keep an eye on the place and look for a reason—any reason—to come back up here and take a closer look.”
They fell silent, trudging down the trail. The sun was already disappearing behind the ridge, a chill descending in the fading light. Rob shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and reviewed the events of the morning in his head. Had he missed something—some clue that would help them figure out what was really going on? Had Paige’s presence distracted him from noticing everything he should have noticed?