Danger on Dakota Ridge

by Cindi Myers

  “What happened then?” Travis asked.

  “What happened is that we got out of there and came to get you,” Parker said. “You’ve got to do something.”

  Travis nodded. “How many men with guns did you see?” he asked.

  “A dozen,” Parker said.

  “There were six,” the professor said. His eyes met Parker’s. “It seemed like more, with all the shooting, but I took the time to count. There were six.”

  “We’ll need reinforcements,” Travis said. He picked up the phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Parker asked.

  “We’ll need to get the SWAT team from Junction here.”

  “We don’t have time for that,” Parker protested.

  “We can’t go in without a plan and enough personnel to overwhelm them,” he said. “If you want us to save your sister, we need a little time to prepare.”

  “We don’t have time,” Parker said again, though with less fervor. “They could already be dead.”

  “I hope not,” Travis said. “But going in unprepared won’t save them.”

  “Parker.” The professor’s voice, strong and steady, cut through some of his panic.

  He looked at his mentor. “What?”

  “Remember that Paige is with Agent Allerton,” Professor Gibson said. “He’s a trained law enforcement officer, and he’s armed. And I believe he will do everything in his power to protect her.”

  Parker nodded. He wanted to believe that. He couldn’t afford not to believe it. “What do we do now?” he asked.

  The professor motioned to the chair beside him. “We wait. And we pray.”

  * * *

  BEYOND THE LABORATORY, half a dozen smaller tunnels branched off from the main corridor. Paige and Rob shone the light of Rob’s phone down some of these. Most of them led nowhere, either blocked by piles of debris and collapsed timbers, or simply unfinished, as if the original miners who had excavated here had found nothing worth further exploration.

  “How far have we walked?” Paige asked after a while. Her feet ached from navigating the uneven, rocky tunnel, and the damp chill underground had settled in, so that she shivered every time they stopped to rest or check out a detour.

  “A couple of miles, I think,” Rob said. “I understand some of these old mines extend for miles.”

  “I can’t believe no one has come after us yet,” she said. “Are they going to try to starve us out?”

  Rob didn’t answer. Instead, he illuminated yet another niche carved out of the rock, this one starting about five feet above the level of the main tunnel. “They didn’t get very far with this one,” he said. “Or maybe it was supposed to hold some kind of equipment?”

  “Unless it leads to a way out of here, I don’t care,” she said. “Did you hear what I asked? Why hasn’t anyone come after us?”

  “I heard you, but I don’t have an answer.” He must be as tired and scared and cold as she was, but he didn’t show it. Though maybe what she had mistaken for calm was merely grim determination.

  “I wish we’d thought to bring our backpacks from the car,” she said. “Then at least we’d have water and food and a warm jacket.” The pack she carried hiking was equipped with all kinds of emergency supplies.

  “And if I’d brought my submachine gun maybe we could blast our way out of here.”

  “Do you have a submachine gun?” she asked.

  “No. But as long as we’re wishing for things, that’s what I’d wish for.” Rob took her arm and they started forward again, but had gone only a few feet before he yanked her against him, hard. She would have cried out, but he clamped his hand over her mouth. “Listen!” he hissed, so close to her ear she felt the warmth of his breath.

  She listened, and heard a sound she thought at first was rain drumming on a metal roof. Her knees turned to jelly as she realized she was hearing the sound of running feet on stone—running toward them.

  “This way.” Rob yanked her back the way they had come. When they reached the niche in the side of the tunnel, he boosted her up into it, then crawled up beside her, then switched off his phone, plunging them into darkness.

  She clung to him, dizzy with fear and disoriented, afraid if she moved she’d go sliding out of the narrow space. She could fall, and never stop falling into the bottomless blackness.

  Rob gripped her just as tightly with one hand. She imagined his other hand held his gun. She wondered how many of their attackers he could kill before he was dead himself. Or maybe they would both be dead before he could fire a single shot. She hoped the end was quick, and then in the same breath, rage rose up at the very idea. She was too young to die! And how cruel that she might do so just when she had found a man she could love again.

  She hadn’t seen that one coming—falling in love with Rob Allerton, of all men. But here in the darkness, with his arm around her and their lives in danger, all the fears and worries that had kept her from love before seemed beyond petty. Here was a man who respected—even admired—her independence, who laughed at what he called her fierceness and who made her feel more alive than anyone she had ever been with. How cruel to find all that only to lose it.

  Faint light glowed in the corridor now, and the sound of tramping feet was much louder—louder even than her pounding heart, which hammered painfully in her chest. Surely they would hear it and discover them in their hiding place.

  The light grew brighter, the tramping feet louder. These people weren’t even trying for stealth, they were so certain that they would find their prey. “Spread out!” one man commanded. “Search all the corridors. They won’t have gone far.”

  She closed her eyes and rested her head on Rob’s shoulder. She didn’t feel fierce now—only numb and almost paralyzed with weariness. The running men grew closer, closer, the echoes of boots hitting the hard stone floor bouncing off the walls and filling up the narrow space with sound. She clenched her teeth, dug her fingers into Rob’s arm and waited for the end.

  Time stopped, and she didn’t know how long she waited like that, until Rob shook her shoulder. “They’re gone,” he whispered.

  She opened her eyes to darkness again, and silence. She resisted the urge to shake her head and try to unclog her ears. “They didn’t see us?” she whispered.

  “They didn’t see us.” He caressed her cheek, then kissed her, his lips strong and tasting so sweet. She returned the embrace, all the love and fear and despair that warred within her distilled into that desperate, drowning kiss. She wanted to throw her arms around him, to climb into his lap and press her body to his, but their narrow hiding place prevented that. She had to settle for the connection of that kiss, tongues twined and lips melding, a communication that went beyond words.

  When they broke the kiss she was left breathless, and it was a moment before she could speak. “Maybe this really isn’t the time for this,” she said.

  “Maybe not.” He traced her lips with one finger. “But I can think of worse ways to spend my time.”

  “Rob, I—”

  “Shhh.” He pressed his finger to her lips. “We’ll talk later. Right now we have to go, before they come back.”

  He climbed down from the niche, then helped her down, and they hurried away, in the opposite direction from where the armed men had headed. Rob kept the phone off, so they had to navigate in the darkness, but it wasn’t as difficult as she would have thought. The tunnel was straight and the walls close enough that she could place a hand on either side to guide her way.

  When Rob stopped abruptly, she stumbled into his back. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Another side tunnel.” He switched on the cell phone and shone the light to their left, then swore under his breath.

  Paige bit back a scream and stared at the body of Bryce Reed, slumped against the wall, his throat cut like an awful red grin.

 
Chapter Seventeen

  Rob switched off the light, but he had seen enough to know that Bryce Reed hadn’t been dead very long. The blood that spilled over the front of his shirt still shone wetly, and rigor hadn’t yet stiffened the body.

  “Does this mean Reed didn’t know about what was going on, after all?” Paige asked. “He must have stumbled on the operation, the way we did, and they killed him.”

  “Maybe,” Rob said. “Or maybe he was working with them, but had outlived his usefulness to them.”

  “When those men don’t find us, they’ll come back this way to search again,” she said.

  “Yes.” They couldn’t afford to stay here. “We know there has to be another entrance, since they came that way,” he said.

  “They’ll have someone guarding it,” she said.

  “But probably only one or two people,” he said. “They can’t have had that big of a force. The two men you saw that first day on the trail are dead—probably killed because they had attracted too much attention to the operation. Reed is dead. That leaves whoever is in charge—the man in the suit—and half a dozen guards.”

  “What man in a suit?” she asked. “I never saw a man in a suit.”

  “Parker saw him. He was up here one day and a helicopter landed. A man in a suit and two guards in fatigues got out and unloaded a crate, like the one you described.”

  “He never said anything to me about that.”

  “He didn’t want to worry you.”

  “But he told you. And you’re a cop. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with cops.”

  “Neither did you. I guess people can change their minds.” Rob had once thought she was an overly protective, cop-hating crusader who viewed him as the devil incarnate. Now she was the dearest person in the world to him. He took her arm. “It doesn’t matter now. We need to get to the entrance before they come back. Once we’re there, we’ll figure out how to get past whatever guards they’ve established.”

  “You make it sound so simple,” she said, as they started down the tunnel once more. “I wish I had your confidence.”

  It was more bravado than confidence, but he’d rather go out charging into daylight than cowering in the darkness.

  They moved quickly now, more confident with navigating by feel and instinct. The floor had a steady upward incline, a good indication that they were moving toward the surface.

  “Do you feel that?” Paige asked. “It’s cooler air. I think we’re getting close.”

  “Not far now,” he agreed.

  Another fifty yards and he could discern the outline of the timbers that shored up the tunnel. “The light must be coming from the entrance,” Rob said. He halted and put a hand out to stop her. “Wait here,” he said. “I’m going to check things out.”

  For once, Paige didn’t argue, though she squeezed his hand and held on, so that he had to pull away from her. He drew his gun and moved stealthily forward, ears attuned to any sound. Soon he could make out the entrance, or adit, a wooden structure that jutted out from the rock face of the ridge, heavy beams supporting a metal roof. An exit gate made of thick iron bars stood open.

  Rob moved forward, staying close to the wall, as much in shadow as possible. He couldn’t hear any voices, or people moving about, but he wouldn’t risk his life—and he especially wouldn’t risk Paige’s—on the chance that their pursuers had been careless enough to leave the entrance unguarded. Most likely, one or two people were out there, their guns trained on the adit, waiting for anyone to emerge.

  He moved all the way into the adit, stopping when he bumped up against a stack of crates that lined the wooden wall. The lid was partially off one of the boxes. Rob stared down at sticks of dynamite with long fuses attached. Other boxes contained metal construction fasteners and nails. A few lengths of metal pipe lay alongside. Sacks of concrete mix lined the opposite wall. It looked like someone planned to expand the operation, perhaps by opening up some of the sealed-off tunnels, or blasting new ones. They had better know what they were doing, or they could bring the whole place down.

  Bring the whole place down. This thought echoing in his head, Rob snatched up a handful of dynamite sticks and retraced his steps to Paige. “Hold these,” he said, shoving them at her.

  “What?” She stared at the objects in her hands. “Is this dynamite? As in explosives?”

  “Yes. And we’re going to use it to get out of here.”

  “How?”

  He took the dynamite sticks from her and began arranging them at the base of one wall of the tunnel. “I’m going to set up an explosion to collapse the tunnel here. That will keep the men we saw earlier from traveling back this way. Any guards out front will probably come in to investigate—or they’ll head to the other entrance to help their coworkers.”

  “Or they’ll stay put and wait for us to come out,” she said.

  “That’s a possibility, too, but I’m betting on them running in to investigate, in which case I’ll be ready to pick them off.” He finished arranging the dynamite and stepped back.

  “What makes you think you won’t bring a ton of rock down on us?” she asked.

  “Because you’re going to be waiting up at the entrance. And I’m going to be standing as far away as possible when the explosion occurs.”

  “How are you going to light the fuses?” she asked. “We don’t have any matches.”

  “No, but I have this.” He drew his gun. “A bullet striking the dynamite will set it off.”

  She looked doubtful. “And you know this how?”

  “Let’s just say my friends and I experimented during a kegger when we were young and stupid.”

  She laughed—nervous, desperate laughter. “It’s a crazy, dangerous idea.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “But I can’t think of a better one. Can you?”

  “No.”

  “All right.” He took another step back. “You go up to the entrance. There are a lot of boxes and stuff piled against the wall. If you crouch down behind them, anyone running past shouldn’t see you. After the explosion, I’ll wait here to catch whoever comes in to investigate.”

  “Okay...” She started to move away, then came back and grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down for a fierce kiss. “I love you,” she said. “Remember that.”

  “I love you, too,” he said, but she was already gone, hurrying up the tunnel. He hoped that wouldn’t be the last time he would see her. Though he had laid out the plan for her as if it was a sure thing, there were plenty of variables he couldn’t account for. If things didn’t go their way, they might both be dead in a very short time.

  * * *

  PARKER STOOD IN the parking lot for the hiking trail, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, staring down the road as if he could somehow see through the trees to what was going on at the abandoned resort. Almost two hours had passed since he had seen those men go after Paige and Rob. She might very well be dead by now.

  “The sheriff is doing everything he can.” The professor joined him at the edge of the lot. On the other side of the gravel space, Sheriff Walker and his deputies milled about with half a dozen men and women in black pants and shirts, body armor and helmets.

  “What are they waiting on?” Parker asked. “Why are they wasting time standing around?”

  A sheriff’s department SUV pulled into the lot and Gage climbed out. “I’ve been trying to locate Bryce Reed,” he said. “He’s not at his office. He’s not answering his phone. None of the news outlets knew anything about a press conference.”

  “He made it up, to get Paige up here,” Parker said. “If something has happened to her and he’s still alive—”

  “Don’t say anything rash.” The professor gripped Parker’s shoulder. “Wait and see what happens.”

  All he had been doing was waiting. This was worse than being in prison.
At least then he had had an idea of when the waiting would end. And he had known that he deserved to be there, to pay for the crimes he had committed. Paige had never hurt anyone. She didn’t deserve to die this way.

  The sound of tires on pavement made them all turn, to see a black SUV make a screeching turn into the lot. It came close to hitting some of the SWAT members, who jumped back and glared at the new arrival. The driver’s-side door opened and a tall man with a crooked nose and heavy jowls stepped out, his expression thunderous.

  “You don’t have any business here, Larry,” Travis said, walking toward him.

  “Who is that?” Parker asked the professor.

  “That’s the mayor of Eagle Mountain, Larry Rowe,” he said.

  “What is going on here?” Rowe demanded. “Why are all you people here? What’s happened?”

  “This isn’t your concern, Larry,” Travis said. “You need to leave.”

  Parker stared at the mayor, who looked like a boxer. Where had he seen him before, very recently?

  “I won’t leave,” Rowe said. He turned to one of the SWAT team members. “Is this some kind of training exercise? Do you have CNG’s permission to be here?”

  “We’re not on CNG property,” Travis said.

  “You’re adjacent to it,” Rowe said. “What you do here could affect them.”

  “Go home, Mayor,” Travis said. “As I said, this doesn’t concern you.”

  “I won’t leave until you answer my questions.” Rowe folded his arms across his barrel chest. “Just because you have a gun and a badge doesn’t mean you can throw your weight around.”

  Parker moved closer, to get a better look at the mayor. “You’re the man I saw here that day,” he said. “The man who was in the helicopter.”

  The mayor glared at him. “Who are you?”

  Parker ignored him and turned to Travis. “He was here, on CNG’s property,” he said. “He landed in a helicopter, with two men in camo, with guns. Like the men who were after Paige and Rob.” Was the sheriff believing any of this? He had such a stone face, Parker couldn’t tell.