Danger on Dakota Ridge

by Cindi Myers

  Rob switched on his flashlight again to illuminate a narrow tunnel lined with rock and timbers. He took Paige’s cold hand in his. “Now we run.”

  * * *

  THE PROFESSOR NAVIGATED the fallen tree with more agility than Parker would have expected. The old man seemed energized by this adventure, striding through the woods ahead of Parker, looking around with interest. “Do you have the map?” he asked, when they were several hundred yards into the property.

  “Right here.” Parker took the map the professor had drawn and unfolded it.

  Gibson studied the drawing, one hand rubbing his chin. “I think we’re about here,” he said, pointing to a spot on the map. “So we want to walk this direction.” He indicated a large circle on the map. “I think the lab we’re looking for is somewhere within this perimeter.”

  “That’s a pretty big area,” Parker said. Judging by the scale of the map, the circle took in half a dozen acres or more.

  “Then we’d better get busy.” The professor pocketed the map. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”

  They started walking again, but hadn’t gone far when a volley of gunfire froze them in their tracks. “We’d better get out of here,” Parker said, and turned to leave.

  The professor grabbed his arm. “We need to see what—or who—they’re shooting at.”

  Parker gaped at him. “Why do we need to see that? And what makes you think they won’t decide to start shooting at us?”

  “Come on.” The old man pulled on his arm, a lot harder than Parker would have thought possible. “We won’t let them see us. But we need to find out what’s going on so we can report it to the sheriff.”

  Reluctantly, Parker let the professor lead him in the direction of the shots. After all, he couldn’t run off and abandon the old guy. And despite his heart beating so hard his chest hurt, he had to admit he was curious.

  They crept through the trees, keeping to the deepest shadows and moving as soundlessly as possible. They both froze when a man in forest camo ran past, cradling a rifle to his chest. He was only about five feet from them, but he never saw them, so intent was he on his destination somewhere ahead.

  They stood frozen for several minutes, Parker scarcely daring to breathe. The professor’s fingers dug into his arm, but Parker didn’t flinch. “We need to leave,” he whispered, trying again.

  “Not yet,” Gibson said, and started forward, in the direction the man with the gun had run.

  Parker wanted to tell the old fool that while he might have lived a full life and not care if he lost it now, Parker had a lot of good years left, and he wanted to enjoy them all. But then he remembered the professor’s tales of growing up in the Great Depression and fighting in Korea, and knew the man wasn’t foolhardy; he was just a lot tougher than Parker would ever be. And Parker couldn’t let him walk into whatever trouble was up ahead alone. So he tried to straighten his shoulders and not think about getting killed, and walked on.

  The gunshots grew louder and more frequent. The two of them reached the edge of a clearing and Parker had to bite his lip to keep from crying out. Ahead of them, Paige and Rob crouched on the ground as half a dozen men with guns ran toward them. Parker closed his eyes, not wanting to see his sister cut to pieces by bullets. Then he opened them again, unable to abandon her to her fate.

  “We have to do something!” he whispered to the professor.

  Gibson remained silent, though his grip on Parker tightened, as if he feared the younger man might charge into the clearing.

  As they stared, Paige and Rob disappeared. Or rather, they dropped out of sight, apparently into a hole in the ground. Rob pulled some kind of trapdoor after them.

  Parker’s eyes met the professor’s, who had pulled out his cell phone and was taking photographs—though his hand shook so badly, Parker wondered how in-focus those pictures would be. He took the phone and snapped a few more shots of the scene, amazed that his own hand was so steady. Then he passed the phone back to the professor, who pushed it into his pocket and motioned that they should head back the way they had come.

  Parker glanced over his shoulder at the men with guns standing around the now-closed trapdoor. He hoped he and the professor could get help in time. Or that hole in the ground might as well be Paige’s grave.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Paige followed Rob down the long, dark corridor. Or rather, she followed the glow of his cell phone, which reflected dirt walls braced with rocks and timbers slick with moisture. The floor they ran on was wet, too, so they occasionally slipped and caught themselves by grabbing hold of the wall. “Where are we going?” she said to Rob’s back.

  He stopped, one hand braced on a timber, and looked back at her. “I don’t know,” he said. “But the farther away we get from that trapdoor, the better.”

  “They know where we are,” she said. “They don’t have to hurry.” Whoever “they” were.

  He raised his hand. “Listen.”

  She held her breath and focused on detecting any sound. Was that the scrape of metal on metal as they opened the trapdoor—or merely her own ragged breathing?

  Rob frowned. “They’re not coming in after us,” he said.

  “Like I said, they don’t have to hurry. Maybe they’re waiting for more men to show up, with more guns.” She shuddered, picturing the figures in military fatigues who had run out of the woods, guns blazing. The shock had been like stumbling onto a battlefield in the middle of an otherwise peaceful setting.

  “Why wouldn’t they come after us?” Rob asked. “They saw us climb down here.”

  Times like this, she wished her imagination wasn’t quite so vivid. Maybe their pursuers hadn’t followed them down here because they were going to flood the tunnel with gas and asphyxiate them. Maybe they’d throw explosives in after them. Maybe they intended to just seal them off and let them starve to death down here. She didn’t say any of this—saying the words out loud would make them too real.

  She swallowed hard, forcing back panic. “Why do you think they didn’t come after us?” she asked.

  He looked up and down the corridor. “I think there’s another entrance,” he said. “Maybe one that’s easier to access.” His eyes met hers, difficult to read in the dim light. “But they’ll have someone—probably a couple of people—watching the trapdoor, to make sure we don’t get out that way.”

  Paige felt light-headed and weak in the knees. She steadied herself with one hand on the clammy stone wall. “You mean we’re trapped down here?”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe there’s another way out.”

  “A way they don’t know about?” That didn’t seem likely.

  He touched her arm. “Let’s keep moving.”

  She looked around at the narrow, dark passage and tried not to think about the tons of rock over their heads, or the creepy crawlies that might lurk in the darkness. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “Come on. Let’s go.”

  They started forward again, walking instead of running this time. “Do you think Bryce Reed is behind all this?” Paige asked. Maybe she shouldn’t talk, and instead try to move as silently as possible, but what was the point? Their pursuers knew they were down here, and so far this narrow tunnel was the only place they could be. And talking—thinking out loud about what had happened and giving her mind something to focus on besides their dire circumstances—helped her stay calm. “Was the press conference just a ploy to get me up here?”

  “He has to know at least some of what’s going on,” Rob said. “I’ve never believed CNG wasn’t involved somehow. But why try to lure you up here? Most likely you would have seen no one was here, turned around and gone home. I was the one who suggested staying to look around.”

  “And I went along with you—willingly. I’m not going to play the guilt game.”

  He looked at her so long wi
thout saying anything that she began to feel uneasy. “What?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You’re incredible, did you know that?”

  You’re incredible, too. But she bit back the words. They sounded so sappy, and not nearly adequate to convey all she was feeling right now. She had started out hating this man, because of what she thought he had done to her brother, and for what she thought he represented. He knew how she felt, and yet he had come through for her at every turn. “Incredible” didn’t begin to express what she was feeling, and part of her—she could admit this, if only to herself—part of her was waiting for him to fail her. For him to show another, uglier side, the way her ex-husband had. The way most people had.

  “Come on,” she said. “I want to hurry and get out of here.”

  They had traveled perhaps another hundred yards when the tunnel began to widen slightly, until they were able to walk side by side. Light glowed up ahead. “Is that an exit?” she asked, and began to walk faster.

  He took her arm, forcing her to slow down. “Careful,” he said, and drew his gun from its holster.

  She moved in behind him and let him go first. They hadn’t gone much farther before she realized the light they were seeing wasn’t from outside the tunnel, but the glow of electric lights. They came to an intersection. The main tunnel continued straight into darkness, while a shorter side turning led to the source of the illumination—a room whose door stood open.

  “Wait here,” Rob whispered, motioning for her to stand in the main tunnel, just out of sight.

  She wanted to protest, to insist that she go with him. But what could she do if they ran into trouble? She didn’t have a weapon. At least if she stayed here she could try to go for help if he ran into trouble. She pressed her back against the rough stone of the tunnel wall and waited, counting the seconds. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi...”

  She was at fifty Mississippi when Rob called to her. “It’s all right. Come look at this.”

  Still uneasy, she walked down the short hallway and stood in the open doorway, and gasped when she saw the concrete-floored, brightly lit chamber. Rob stood in the middle of the high-ceilinged room, next to a stainless-steel counter lined with lab equipment. Paige recognized a microscope, Bunsen burner, racks of test tubes, beakers and various glass flasks. Several crates were stacked against the wall, like the one she had seen being carried down here. There were many more items she couldn’t identify, all of which looked technical and complicated. “It’s a laboratory,” she said.

  “Yes,” Rob said. He picked up a flask half filled with a dark liquid and squinted at it. “And unlike the last one we found, this one is clearly in operation.” He set the flask down.

  She joined him in front of the workbench. “This doesn’t look like World War II–era equipment,” she said. “What are they doing down here? And who is doing it? Reed didn’t strike me as the scientific type.”

  “I don’t know who.” Rob looked around them. “As for what, I think it might be related to that World War II operation. Maybe this is the location of that original lab and whoever is behind this decided to update it for their own purposes.”

  “What purposes?” she asked.

  “Henry Hake died of tularemia,” he said. “That’s one of the diseases the government was supposedly experimenting with back then. What if someone decided to continue that research? Maybe Henry stumbled on it and contracted the disease accidentally—or maybe he was deliberately given it.”

  She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. “Maybe we shouldn’t be here,” she said. “What if we’ve already been exposed to something horrible?”

  “I don’t think there’s too much chance of that,” he said. “They have to keep the contaminants contained, or no one could work down here.” He gestured toward a locked refrigeration unit that hummed in the corner. “Anything dangerous is probably in there.”

  He pulled out his phone and began taking pictures of the room. Too bad there was no cell service here. He could call for help.

  Paige shook her head. No sense dwelling on what they couldn’t do. She needed to focus on what they could do. “If you’re right about the purpose of this lab, then it would explain a lot,” she said. “The secrecy, and the armed guards.”

  “The willingness to kill people to keep the operation secret,” he said.

  “Do you think CNG’s plans to build a high-altitude research facility is a cover for this underground operation?” she asked.

  “It would be a good one,” he said. “It would explain any orders for lab equipment, and any traffic in and out of the property.”

  “Where are the people who work here now?” Paige asked.

  “My guess is Reed sent them away until after the press conference. After that, anyone seeing something like a person in a lab coat would think they were part of the new facility. Reed could even explain away the armed guards as necessary because of the sensitive nature of scientific research.”

  “The mayor is certainly going to be surprised when he learns his pet project is a big lie,” she said. “That won’t go well for his career. Is it wrong of me to be a little happy about that, at least?”

  Rob reached out and pulled her close. “Remind me to never get on your bad side,” he said.

  “You’ve already been on my bad side,” she said. She rested one hand on his chest, over the reassuring, strong beat of his heart. “Or have you forgotten already?”

  He moved her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “I loved that you were so fierce. And you were attracted to me even back then, though you wouldn’t admit it.”

  She pulled her hand away and tried to muster a look of outrage, though she was afraid the most she could manage was amusement. “Just like a man—imagining that every woman he meets is falling all over herself for him.”

  “But you’re not just any woman.” He kissed her cheek.

  She wanted to turn her head and capture his mouth with her own, to lean into this moment and let desire and affection obliterate the fear and worry. But that wouldn’t be smart, and it wouldn’t help get them to safety. So instead, she pulled away from him.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go find a way out of here.”

  * * *

  PARKER DROVE WITH his foot to the floor, the engine in the Nissan screaming in protest. Professor Gibson gripped the dash and spoke through gritted teeth. “You’re not going to help your sister if we crash before we get to town. If you slow down, I could call for help.”

  “There’s no phone service up here. And we won’t crash,” Parker said over the screech of brakes, as the car fishtailed around a hairpin curve. Now wasn’t the time for caution. Paige and Rob didn’t stand a chance if those thugs with guns caught up with them.

  The professor’s only answer was a sharp intake of breath as the rear wheels of the car skidded on gravel. Five minutes later, they shot out onto the pavement of the highway that led into town. The needle on the speedometer edged up to ninety. Parker wouldn’t have believed the little econobox could go that fast. As they entered the town of Eagle Mountain, a cruiser parked on the side of the road hit its lights and siren and swung in a U-turn to follow them. Parker ignored the cop and kept going, skidding to a stop in front of the sheriff’s department. He left the engine running and was out of the car before the professor had unfastened the seat belt.

  “Parker Riddell, what the—?” The rest of Deputy Dwight Prentice’s shouted question was cut off when the door to the sheriff’s department closed behind Parker.

  Adelaide Kinkaid looked up from behind her desk in the lobby, then stood as Parker trotted past. “Young man, where do you think you’re going?”

  “I need to see the sheriff,” Parker called over his shoulder.

  Sheriff Travis Walker stood in the doorway of his office. “Parker? What’s going on?”
r />   “Paige and Rob are in big trouble up on Dakota Ridge.”

  The professor and Dwight had caught up with him, Gibson looking much paler and older than he had up on the ridge. Dwight had him by the arm and led him to a chair in front of Travis’s desk. “I clocked him doing ninety as he came into town,” Dwight said. “He’s lucky a dog or a kid didn’t run out in front of him.”

  “You have to get as many officers as you can up to Dakota Ridge now, before it’s too late,” Parker said. They had already wasted too much time.

  “Calm down and tell me what’s going on,” Travis said. He sat behind his desk, clearly not in a hurry to go anywhere.

  “We might already be too late!” Parker’s voice broke on the words, and he closed his eyes, fighting for control.

  Travis turned to the older man. “Professor Gibson, what happened?”

  “Bryce Reed invited Paige to a press conference up at CNG’s Dakota Ridge property,” he said. “Agent Allerton insisted on accompanying her. Parker and I decided to go, as well.”

  “Why did you and Parker decide to attend the press conference?” Travis asked.

  “What does that matter?” Parker asked. “The point is, when we got there, there was no press conference. There wasn’t anyone there. The place looked deserted.”

  “We decided to take the opportunity to look around.” The professor took up the story again. “As you may know, I have an interest in the World War II–era laboratory that operated somewhere in the county. My research indicated that the lab was probably in an old mine on the property now owned by CNG Development. I wanted to see if my hypothesis was correct.”

  “Except we heard gunshots, and then a bunch of men wearing camo came running out of the woods,” Parker said. “Then we saw Paige and Rob. The men with guns were shooting at them.” He swallowed, still unable to believe what he had seen.

  Travis looked at the professor again. “He’s telling the truth,” Gibson said. “Paige and Rob managed to escape by descending into a hole in the ground, and pulled a trapdoor over them.” He leaned forward, hands gripping the arms of the chair. “In thinking it over, I believe they may have found an entrance into the mine where that historic lab is probably located. I’m almost sure of it.”