Danger on Dakota Ridge

by Cindi Myers

  “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” the mayor said. He glared at Parker. “What were you doing on CNG property? That’s trespassing. Sheriff, you need to arrest this man for trespassing.”

  The sheriff stared at Parker, as if he was considering doing just that. Parker took a step back. He had made a mistake, saying anything.

  The leader of the SWAT team joined them. In the black clothes with all the extra elbow, knee and shoulder pads, and the heavy helmet, he looked like something out of a cyborg movie. “We’re ready to go,” he said.

  Travis turned to Parker. “You stay here,” he said. “We’ll radio when it’s safe for you to join us.”

  Parker nodded. “All right.”

  A car door slammed and they turned in time to see the mayor, tires squealing, speeding out of the parking area. “Want me to go after him?” Gage asked.

  “What was that about a helicopter?” Travis asked.

  Parker shook his head. “I’ll tell you later. Go help Paige.”

  Travis turned to the others. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  PAIGE CROUCHED BEHIND the crates piled at the entrance to the mine, trying not to think about the sticks of dynamite she had seen lying in the top box like rows of Christmas crackers, but so much more deadly. She watched the entrance, while her ears strained to hear what was going on behind her, back with Rob.

  He had promised to stand well away when he fired into the pile of dynamite, but what if something went wrong? What if some fault in the rock made it come down on his head? What if the explosion brought down only part of the wall and the gunmen were able to get through?

  What if? What if? She had to stop thinking about all these questions that couldn’t be answered and focus instead on what she could control. When the explosion happened, men were likely to come running through that entrance and she had to be ready.

  She thought she was prepared for the explosion, but when it came, the shock threw her forward against the crates, and a wave of dust rolled through the tunnel and over her. Her ears rang from the concussion of the blast, so that she was only dimly aware of a deep rumble and a sound like cracking earth. Then all fell silent, so silent she wondered if she had gone deaf.

  The light shifted and she looked up to see the silhouette of a man in the mine entrance, broad shouldered and holding a rifle. She ducked down lower behind the boxes, praying he couldn’t see her in the haze of dust.

  Then he began running, boots pounding hard against the stone as he raced past her. A few seconds more and a single shot pierced the silence. She held her breath, waiting for more, but all was still. She wanted to call out to Rob, to make sure he was safe and alive, but she knew she couldn’t. She didn’t know who might be listening.

  So she kept silent and waited, as seconds and minutes dragged by. She had no idea how much time had passed when a shadow fell over her and she looked up to see a second man in the doorway. This man was shorter than the first, and not as burly, but he, too, carried an automatic rifle. He took a step toward her, and then another. “Jake?” he called.

  Jake didn’t answer. The second man shifted his rifle so that it pointed forward, his hand near the trigger guard. Would he see Rob before Rob saw him? Would he kill him?

  Without moving, Paige scanned the area around her, searching for a weapon. She needed to stop this guy before he got to Rob. He took another step toward her, and another, moving faster now, his rifle at the ready. When he was even with her hiding place, Paige lunged, grabbing on to his calf just below the knee and yanking with all her might.

  He went down like a tree felled in the forest. Before he hit the floor, she stood and brought a length of metal pipe down on his head as hard as she could. When the pipe made contact with his skull it sounded like a melon splitting open, and she dropped the pipe in shock. The man moaned, then didn’t make another sound.

  Paige hurried down the tunnel and met Rob running toward her. “What happened?” he asked, grabbing hold of her.

  “Another man came in and I was afraid he was going to kill you, so I hit him with a pipe. I think I might have killed him.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, and pulled her toward the entrance.

  They had to step around the man she had hit. He lay very still in a pool of blood. “Don’t look,” Rob said, and tugged her past him.

  After spending so much time in the dark tunnel, Paige found the light outside blinding. She and Rob both put up hands to shield their eyes. She expected to see yet another man there with a gun, but there was no one, and she sagged against Rob with relief. “We did it,” she said, the words barely audible. “We did it.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” he repeated.

  “Oh, I don’t think you’re going anywhere.”

  They turned at the words and Paige gasped as she recognized the man who had said them. “Larry?”

  “Throw down your weapon, Agent Allerton,” Mayor Larry Rowe said.

  “Larry, what are you doing here?” Paige asked. And with a gun. Larry had always struck her as the quintessential corporate type, comfortable only behind a desk or in a boardroom. Seeing him here, threatening them, threw her off balance.

  “You’re the man in charge of this operation, aren’t you?” Rob asked.

  “The gun, Agent Allerton.”

  Rob tossed the gun into the dirt. Larry kicked it aside, sending it skittering into the underbrush, well out of reach.

  “I don’t understand,” Paige said. “What are you doing here? That laboratory we saw—are you really making biological weapons down there?”

  “So many questions,” Larry said.

  “Why not give me the answers?” Paige said. “You’re going to kill me anyway.” The longer she could keep him talking, the longer they would stay alive. And the longer she and Rob might have to see some way out of this dilemma.

  “You always did think you were the cleverest person in the room, didn’t you?” Larry’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “No one dares cross Paige Riddell, because she has all the answers. And yet you had no idea what was going on up here, right under your nose.”

  “You found the World War II lab and decided to resume the research that was done here,” Rob said. “Some foreign organizations will pay a great deal of money for what you could produce there.”

  “Very good, Agent Allerton,” Larry said.

  “Did you kill Henry Hake?” Paige asked.

  “Henry was happy to lease the land to us after you stalled his plans for his resort,” Larry said. “So you could say that you’re the one who set all this in motion.”

  “Why did you kill him?” she asked.

  “He discovered what we were doing and objected, so we had no choice but to eliminate him.”

  “Henry’s bodyguard, Ian Barnes, worked for you,” Rob said. “Henry told everyone Barnes came to him from one of his business partners—that was you. Barnes murdered Henry’s lawyer, Andy Stenson.”

  “Stenson was the first to figure out what we were doing here, so I asked Ian to get rid of him.” He shrugged, as if ordering a murder was no big deal.

  “Were Wade Tomlinson and Brock Ryan working for you, too?” Paige asked. “The men who murdered Angela and Greg Hood and kidnapped Deputy Gage Walker and his girlfriend?”

  “Tomlinson and Ryan were two of my best allies,” Larry said. “But they balked at killing that kid, so they had to go, too.”

  “Those two men whose bodies we found in that burned-out shed—did they work for you, too?”

  “Oh yes.” He frowned. “I thought they’d take care of you and you’d be out of my way for good, but no such luck. After that, they weren’t any use to me.”

  “So pretty much everyone who helped you ended up dead,” Rob said.

  “Not everyone,” Larry said. “My brother, Garrett, playe
d the part of a billionaire who wanted to buy that mining book from Brenda Stenson. I didn’t want someone else to get their hands on it and figure out where the original laboratory was.” He chuckled. “He was the ‘top secret agent’ who fooled Eddie Carstairs, too. That was a role he really liked.” Eddie had threatened Brenda Stenson and destroyed the book about the secret World War II laboratory.

  “Where is your brother now?” Paige asked.

  “In Connecticut, believe it or not. Acting. I told him I’d pay him a lot more money than some two-bit dinner theater, but he wasn’t interested. Go figure.”

  “Why did you kill Bryce Reed?” Rob asked.

  “He was getting nervous about the project,” Larry said. “So few people have the courage of their convictions these days.”

  “But—” she began.

  “Enough!” He jabbed the gun in their direction. “Back into the mine.”

  Paige darted her eyes to Rob’s, hoping to see that he had a plan. But the only emotion she could read on his face was the same desperation she felt.

  “Quit stalling!” Larry barked.

  She lurched forward, stumbling on a rock near the mine entrance, and fell hard, the rough grit scraping her palms. “Get up!” Larry shouted, and fired into the ground near her head.

  Rage filled her. How dare he shoot at her while she was down? She closed her fingers around a handful of grit and rose up on her knees. Larry bent toward her and she hurled the grit into his face. The gun went off again, the bullet thudding into the dirt near her feet.

  Rob jumped on Larry’s back and forced him to the ground, then struck a savage blow to his hand, sending the gun flying. He was kneeling on Larry’s back, forcing his face into the dirt, when half a dozen figures in black pants and bulletproof vests and helmets jogged toward them.

  “No!” Paige cried, and lunged toward the discarded gun. She hadn’t come this far to go down without a fight.

  “Paige, it’s all right.” One of the men raised the visor of his helmet and she recognized Travis. “Put the gun down,” he said gently.

  She let the weapon fall and sank to her knees. One of the other officers moved forward and secured the mayor, while another helped Rob to stand.

  Rob walked over to her, pulled her to her feet and put his arm around her. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  She laid her head on his shoulder. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  All Paige wanted was to take a shower, have a good stiff drink, eat a steak and collapse, but first she and Rob had to reassure Parker and Professor Gibson that they really were okay. Then they had to repeat the reassurances for Lacy and Brenda and Adelaide and pretty much everyone else in town.

  Then they had to tell their story to the sheriff, and tell it again for their official statement. Repeating the details made the events of the last six hours seem even more surreal. It was like recounting a movie, or a horrible dream. Those things hadn’t really happened to her, had they? But she had the bruises and scrapes to prove it, and memories that would haunt her for a long time to come.

  “We’ve contacted the authorities in Connecticut,” Travis said. “They’ll arrest Garrett Rowe for the part he played in all this and we’ll extradite him here.”

  “I’m amazed that Larry persuaded so many people to work with him,” Paige said. “I never thought he was particularly charismatic.”

  “For some people, money substitutes for personality,” Rob said.

  “What was in the crate you saw them carrying, that first day when you were on the trail?” Travis asked.

  “I have no idea,” she said. That was one question she hadn’t gotten around to asking Larry.

  “My guess is it was lab equipment,” Rob said. “It will take weeks—maybe months—to collect and analyze everything in that lab. It’s also possible one or more of the crates Paige and Parker saw contained lab cultures or samples of bacteria or germs they wanted to experiment with.”

  “What are you going to tell your aunt about Henry?” Paige asked Rob, remembering what had brought him back to Eagle Mountain.

  “I’ll tell her the truth—that he was doing business with some bad people and they killed him. That’s all she wanted, to know what really happened.”

  “It’s so sad,” Paige said. “What does Larry say about all of this?”

  “He isn’t talking,” Travis said. “But with your testimony and Rob’s, and the evidence from the site, I don’t think we’ll have any problem putting him away for a long time.”

  “What about the armed guards who tried to kill us?” Paige asked.

  “We found one of them dead near the mine entrance, and another one with a pretty severe concussion, but he’ll live,” Travis said. “We arrested four others as they emerged from the trapdoor at the other end of the mine.”

  “I can’t believe so many people died because of this,” Paige said. “Andy Stenson, Brock Ryan and Wade Tomlinson, the Hoods, Henry Hake, Bryce Reed—even those two men who tried to kill me were killed because they drew too much attention to the place.”

  “There were millions, probably billions, of dollars at stake,” Rob said. “That’s how much some foreign powers would be willing to pay for biological weapons.”

  “But weapons like that are illegal,” Paige said. “I mean, they’re against the Geneva convention.”

  “Some people don’t care.”

  That idea was too depressing to consider.

  “I know you’re both exhausted,” Travis said. “You can go for now, but we’ll have more questions for you later, and you’ll probably eventually have to testify in court.”

  Outside, Parker and the professor waited for them. Parker wrapped Paige in a hug that squeezed the breath out of her. “Don’t scare me like that again,” he said, his voice husky.

  She pulled away and studied him. He had dark circles under his eyes and needed a shave. When had the little boy she had loved for so long grown into such a man? “Thanks for calling in the cavalry,” she said.

  “I understand you told the sheriff about seeing Larry Rowe in that helicopter that landed on CNG property,” Rob said.

  “Yeah. He said if I agreed to testify about that, he’d overlook the parole violation for trespassing.”

  “Excuse me.” The professor moved closer. “I understand now isn’t a good time, but when you’ve had a chance to rest, I’d appreciate hearing more about the lab you found. Do you really think it’s the space used by the government during World War II?”

  “It could be,” Rob said. “Larry as much as confirmed it. I think finding it gave him the idea to work on developing biological weapons in the first place.”

  “Then I definitely want to hear more about it. At your convenience.”

  “Right now I just want a shower and a drink.” Paige looked down at her dirty jeans and scraped hands.

  “Sure thing,” Parker said. “Where do you want me to take you?”

  “I’ll take care of her.” Rob put his arm around her.

  Parker took a step back. “I guess you’re in good hands, then.” Parker looked at Rob. “But if you do anything to hurt her, you’ll have me to answer to.”

  Rob nodded, his expression solemn. “Understood.”

  When Parker and the professor were gone, Paige looked up at Rob. “Don’t worry about him,” she said. “If you do anything to hurt me, you’ll have me to answer to.”

  “I’m definitely more frightened of you. But you don’t have to worry. I won’t hurt you. Ever.”

  “I believe you.” She smiled up at him. “Let’s go back to your motel.”

  They didn’t speak even after they were inside Rob’s room. He merely drew the drapes and she began to strip off her clothes in the dim light from the bedside lamp. Rob did the same, until they stood facing each othe
r, naked. He smoothed a hand along her shoulder, and his fingers trembled. “If anything had happened to you...” he began.

  “Shhh.” She silenced him with a kiss. “We’re both okay,” she said, her lips almost touching his. “We’re going to be okay.”

  He nodded and tried to pull her close, but instead, she took his hand and led him into the bathroom. She turned on the shower, jets all the way up and water steaming hot. Then she stepped in and beckoned for him to follow.

  She thought of all the ways water could cleanse, from removing dirt from laundry to the soul cleansing of baptism. As they took turns soaping each other’s bodies, she felt the strain and fear of the past days wash away, replaced by an exultant joy that they were here now, alive and able to enjoy each other this way.

  The water was still warm when Rob tossed aside the soapy washrag and pulled her closer, full against his naked body, her breasts pressed against the firm wall of his chest, her hips just under his. Salty tears mingled with the shower spray as his lips claimed hers, and when he bent his knees and slid into her she stood on tiptoe to accept him, reveling in the sensation of being united with him, yet so fully herself.

  They emerged from the shower replete and renewed and ravenous. The motel didn’t offer room service, but Rob ordered a large pizza and promised extra if the delivery driver—not Parker—would stop at the liquor store and purchase a bottle of wine. They ate at the table by the window, sipping wine and feeding each other pizza, half-dressed and unable to stop looking at each other.

  They made love again in the bed, burrowed under warm covers, alternately giggling with delight and moaning at the depth of their need. When Paige fell asleep in Rob’s arms, she didn’t dream of anything.

  She woke with gray light showing through the gap in the curtains, and stretched like a cat, more relaxed than she could remember being in years. She rolled over onto her side to watch Rob sleeping. He lay on his back, his hair mussed, the dark shadow of beard along his jaw. She knew how intimidating he could look, how insistent he could be on doing the right, legal thing, upholding the commitment he had made as a law enforcement officer. Where once she had bristled at his unwillingness to see gray instead of black-and-white, now she drew comfort from his steadfastness.