Rocky Mountain Secrets: Rocky Mountain Sabotage ; Rocky Mountain Pursuit

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

The next half hour was dedicated to basic morning chores like trips behind the buildings for private needs, grabbing a light snack/breakfast and making good use of the small container of disinfectant wipes from the plane. Dirk and Cliff opted to shave. None of the other men bothered with their whiskers, especially after Neil made the comment that a little extra fur on the face might help keep them warm. They also moved Mags’s body into the rear storage room of the mercantile. Then Kent ordered everyone to layer up in well-smoked clothes from their suitcases and start organizing into pairs. Lauren’s mom wanted to be with Lauren, but he nixed the idea of the two women going together.

  “No offense,” he said. “But we don’t know what we might run into out there, and a guy’s muscle might be a real asset.”

  “To compliment the feminine discernment of useful articles?” Nina lifted an elegant, teasing eyebrow.

  “Exactly.” Kent and the other men chuckled.

  Even Lauren bit her lower lip against a laugh that her crinkled eyes betrayed.

  “Very well. I shall go with Cliff.” Nina linked her elbow with his. “And Dirk and Phil can be the other dynamic duo. Off we go then.”

  The foursome was on their way out the door before Kent could get his voice around words to stop them. That left him and Lauren to scavenge together. Not a good idea when he was doing his best to avoid any appearance of falling for the machinations of a matchmaking mama. He glanced at the young woman by his side. Her face had gone bright red, and she wasn’t meeting his gaze.

  A laugh escaped him. “Resourceful and quick, isn’t she?”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” The words sounded like they came from behind gritted teeth.

  Apparently, Lauren was against her mother’s high-handed antics as well. Should he be offended? Maybe he was. A little. Not because he had any romantic interest, of course, but on principle.

  He cleared his throat. “Before we get started, I’ve got to go up on the roof and check out that stovepipe.”

  “There’s a stairway up the back wall outside. Maybe you can reach the roof from there.”

  “Good idea.”

  Ten minutes later, Kent was scowling and yanking wads of pine branches out the top of the stovepipe. A far cry from the bird’s nest he had expected. It was conceivable that a bird had nested on the edge of the chimney, and then the nest could have fallen into the hole because of vibrations due to using the stove. That, at least, would have been a natural phenomenon. This was not. He flung another fistful of well-toasted branches over his shoulder toward the edge of the roof.

  “Hey, watch your throw.”

  Lauren’s voice brought his head around. He’d left her at the top of the exterior stairs, but now she was standing on the flat roof with him. She was a strong, acrobatic woman.

  “Sorry about that.” Kent ran the fingers of one hand through his hair.

  “Frustrated?”

  “Spooked. And I don’t mind admitting it. Fresh pine branches didn’t stuff themselves down the chimney.”

  Color leached from her face. “Not an accident?”

  “I wish.”

  Lauren hugged herself. “Someone tried to kill us again. They did kill Mags. We need to find out who it is.”

  “I’ll add that to my to-do list.” He reined in his bark on an exhale of breath. “Sorry. Not snapping at you, just—”

  “Having a bellyful?”

  “That would be an understatement. But speaking of bellies, we’d better get scavenging. First order of business is some kind of sizable container for pine cones. Pine nuts are nutritious.”

  “And delicious?”

  “Depends on your taste buds.” He shrugged. “You’ll get your fiber and protein, though.”

  She laughed, and he managed a grin.

  “There’s a former blacksmith shop down the street,” he said. “Looks like living quarters are on the second floor above it. Maybe we’ll find tools or a few containers and utensils there. Especially a usable bucket. We need to transport water. We also need a shovel or two for...well, for lots of things.”

  “Like digging a grave?”

  Kent pressed his lips together and nodded. “We will have some sort of funeral as soon as possible, whether we have a shovel or not. If nothing else, we should be able to find plenty of rocks to serve as a makeshift crypt.”

  Lauren turned away with a sober nod. Kent took her hand and helped lower her off the side of the roof onto the stair landing below. Unlike her mother, she wasn’t dainty in her height or build. She was solid and sturdy, but feminine, and her hand was slender and soft in his big, rough one. His heart rate sped up.

  What were the chances that he would somehow be able to get her to safety and civilization? He didn’t dare give that question long attention, or he’d never be able to keep up a strong front for the group in his care. Truth be told? He was scared spitless. Their chances of rescue, much less survival, were so very slim—even without the specter of a mysterious killer looming over them. But fear wasn’t going to cut it. Not if he wanted any hope of ensuring the world didn’t lose the services of this compassionate and courageous woman.

  Lauren took her hand back as soon as they reached the landing, leaving Kent’s with an odd emptiness. Face pale and grim, she stuffed her hands into the pockets of the light jacket she wore over her layers of clothing.

  “I’ll follow your lead to the blacksmith shop,” she said.

  On the way up the street, she was quiet, gnawing on her lower lip. Her thoughts about their situation were probably as grim as his.

  They arrived at a building open to the air on three sides. The high, first-floor ceiling was topped by a fully enclosed second story. Untidy remains of an abandoned business rested in the shade of the upper floor—an anvil, a long-cold furnace, the rusty frame of a wagon wheel, and some kind of industrial-sized rake about four feet by six feet with rows of rusty tines that might have been dragged by a mule or horse to level taconite mounds. No useful equipment, not even a hammer.

  Kent sighed, and Lauren echoed him.

  “Let’s go upstairs.” He led the way cautiously up a rickety set of wooden steps on the side of the structure.

  Unsurprisingly, other than a weary creak, the ancient door managed no resistance to their intrusion. A musty, rodent-like smell greeted their entrance, but no critters jumped and ran. Any sustenance for them here was probably long exhausted.

  Lauren sneezed as dust swirled up around their feet. Dirty windows allowed enough light to make out a mostly empty room that might have been a kitchen, judging by the stovepipe sans stove that poked out of one wall. A cupboard beckoned on the opposite wall, and a table, hosting a few objects unidentifiable in the dimness, leaned against the far wall.

  “I’ll take the cupboard, if you want to see what’s over there.” He gestured toward the table. “Just be careful where you step. We don’t know—”

  A splintering crack halted him, and he whirled to find Lauren windmilling for balance on the lip of a hole that had opened in the floor. She lost her battle to pull back from the edge even as Kent let out a strangled cry and lunged for her.

  FIVE

  Every muscle in Lauren’s body fought to remain upright, but gravity sucked her into the black hole beneath her feet. Her throat slammed closed as she went airborne.

  A steely hand wrapped around her wrist and jerked her plummet to a halt. Pain shot up her arm and shoulder. Reflexively, her free hand grabbed Kent’s arm, and she dangled, swaying back and forth like a metronome.

  “Hang on, Jade Eyes,” he said. “I’ll pull you up.”

  Air finally slipped through her constricted throat into her lungs, and she lifted her gaze to his. “Maybe it would be better for you to just lower me. I can’t be far from the floor below now.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Keep your eyes on me, and don’t look d
own.”

  She looked and let out a thin shriek. Less than a foot beneath her, the rusty tines of the industrial rake stabbed upward. If she had hit the floor, forget worries about a broken bone. She would have been impaled like a shish kebab. Probably dead instantly.

  Her fingers convulsed around Kent’s wrist as he drew her slowly upward. Soon she was able to help pull herself onto the floorboards of the second story. Quivering in every limb, she burrowed into Kent’s strong embrace, and they huddled together in the dust.

  “I can’t believe...that was so...” Her scrambled brain couldn’t put into words what she felt. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a panicked bird in a cage. “Thank you... I could have been...”

  “It’s all right. You’re okay now.” Kent’s warm breath flowed over her ear where her head was tucked into the curve of his shoulder.

  Reluctantly, she pulled back and met his gaze. If she didn’t know better, the stoic pilot’s world had been rocked. His eyelids blinked rapidly, and a suspicion of moisture filmed his eyes.

  She blinked back wetness in her own eyes. “My fault. I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. At least, this is just a near-accident, not a deliberate death trap.”

  “I’m not ready to draw that conclusion without further investigation.”

  “But how could someone from our party have set up a trap like this overnight?”

  Kent’s shoulders rolled in a shrug. “How did the culprit gather pine boughs and stuff them into the stovepipe on the mercantile roof last night in the dark? But someone did.”

  Lauren climbed to her feet, and Kent did the same. Keeping her gaze lowered, she slapped dust from her jeans and jacket. If she looked at him, her eyes might betray her sudden silly desire to be wrapped in his arms again. What was wrong with her? The danger was over. Time to stand on her own two feet again.

  “Maybe someone else lives in this burg,” she said.

  “How likely is it that a secret resident of this abandoned town is trying to kill us at the same time as a saboteur downed our plane? Besides, we’ve seen no sign of habitation. Two deadly assassins in Trouble Creek is beyond credible.”

  “So is the fact that we’re here at all.”

  “I’ll give you that.” Kent barked a laugh. “Someone crept out of the mercantile last night, probably through the storage room in the back and on into the alley. That someone must have used the flashlight on their phone to pick their way around. We should be looking for someone whose battery is about to give out.”

  “You’re thinking like a sleuth now.” She released a weak chuckle. “My turn. Rich isn’t a suspect because he can’t get around on his own. And I might even exclude Neil because of his age, but he’s awfully spry.”

  “That leaves us with Phil, Cliff, Dirk and your mother. But I’m excluding your mom, not because she isn’t physically capable, but because I can’t wrap my head around her trying to kill you.”

  Lauren scowled. “Don’t even go there on a maybe. And not just because I’m her daughter. My mom can hardly kill a spider, and she hates those. Besides, what motive would she have?”

  “What motive does anyone in our party have? That’s an important question we need to answer.” He turned away and bent over the hole Lauren had nearly fallen through. “Doesn’t look like the flooring was tampered with by anything except rodent teeth and rot. Let’s go below and check around that rake for any footprints in the dust. If the rake was moved, foot size might give us a hint at identity.”

  A minute later, Lauren massaged the strained muscles of her shoulder as she frowned at the evidence. No clear footprints, just a few scuffs, but drag marks in the dirt floor showed the rake had been deliberately positioned, tines up, beneath the faulty flooring.

  “Look at this.” Kent shone the light of his cell up at the boards above. “The cracks and weak areas in the floorboards are visible to the naked eye when illuminated.”

  Lauren snorted. “It would have been simple and quick to set up this trap. I wonder what other traps might be waiting for us. Oh, no!” Lauren grabbed Kent’s bicep. “My mother! What if she’s alone with the saboteur? What about the others? We have to warn them—”

  A masculine yowl split the thin mountain air, followed by a crash.

  “Sounds like that came from the mercantile.” He took off toward the store.

  Stomach roiling, Lauren stuck to his heels. What catastrophe now? They burst into the building to find Neil trying to help Rich sit up from a sprawl atop a set of flattened shelving.

  Lauren rushed to him. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  Red-faced, Rich shook his head. “Nothing more injured than my pride. I was trying to hop around a little and lost my balance.”

  A long breath gushed from Lauren’s chest, echoed by Kent who was standing over them. Footfalls sounded on the porch boards.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Everyone all right?”

  The alarmed questions shot from Phil and Dirk as they plunged into the building, huffing and puffing. Their shoulders slumped as they received the explanation and relief hit.

  Neil’s nubbin whiskers rasped as he ran a hand over his face. “I don’t know if I can take any more excitement.”

  “How goes the scavenging?” Kent asked.

  Phil shook his head. “The townspeople really cleaned the place out when they left.”

  Kent frowned. “We need to keep looking, but folks, be careful out there.” He glanced toward Lauren, gaze grim.

  She nodded. They had to tell people about the sabotaged stovepipe and the trap at the blacksmith’s, even if suspicion toward one another would infect them like a plague and escalate a critical situation to the point of unbearable. But everyone had a right to know they harbored a killer among them, and they needed to be on their guard against more than their challenging natural surroundings. Some of their party was missing at this very moment. Lauren’s heart clenched.

  “Where are my mom and Cliff? Surely, they would have heard the commotion, too, and come running.”

  “We’ll search for them as soon as I’ve given the rest our news,” Kent said.

  “News?” Neil’s eyebrows climbed.

  “You two engaged or something?” Dirk displayed a nasty grin.

  Heat crept up Lauren’s neck and onto her cheeks. “He means important information.” The words came out between gritted teeth.

  God forgive her, but slapping that sneer off the obnoxious executive’s face was an appealing option. She took a deep breath and reined in her impulses.

  All eyes fixed on Kent, whose face had taken on the chiseled quality of someone tasked with an awful but unavoidable chore.

  “Our stovepipe was deliberately stuffed with pine boughs, and a few minutes ago, Lauren narrowly escaped death from a purposely laid trap. Someone among us is—”

  Excited conversation and footsteps on the porch halted Kent’s stark explanation. At the sound of her mom’s voice, Lauren’s heart lightened.

  Her mother and Cliff entered the store, grinning like conquerors and holding aloft their prizes. Mom held a steel-handled broom in one hand and a large plastic bucket in the other. Cliff hefted a shiny hatchet and a shovel. The very modern items could not have originated in the nineteenth century. They could only have come from this one.

  “Proof!” Mom proclaimed. “We are not alone in Trouble Creek.”

  * * *

  Kent’s mind raced. Not alone? Someone actually lived in this ghost town? That changed everything he’d been assuming.

  Maybe none of the passengers were involved in the deadly traps. And what if he was wrong about one of them being involved in the sabotage of his plane? But that didn’t make sense. Who had been intended as the second jumper for the tandem parachute? Or had he leaped to a false conclusion about his copilot? Maybe the parachute had been present in the cargo ba
y for some innocent reason. Then who sabotaged the plane? It had to have been someone with access and an understanding of planes and a working knowledge of bomb-making. Or was he mistaken about the cause of their crash landing? Maybe there was a natural explanation.

  No! He couldn’t make any natural scenario add up, but examining his plane for concrete evidence of tampering just shot to the top of his to-do list—right up there with uncovering the faceless enemy who was trying to kill them in a supposedly abandoned mining town.

  “Where did you get those things?” Kent’s question sliced through the stunned silence.

  Still smiling like the canary-getting cat, Lauren’s mom set the bucket on the stationary counter. “There’s a one-room hut on the far side of the town near the cliffs. It looks as shabby on the outside as any of the other buildings, but the inside is fixed up. There’s a bed and a stove and a table that could be original with the town, but then there are other things that could only come from a store in our day and age.”

  “Was there any food?” Phil rubbed his pudgy hands together.

  “Canned goods and jerky,” Cliff said. “A few other things.”

  “What are we waiting for?” Dirk headed for the door, leading a small stampede of the other men.

  Lauren made no move to follow but turned a shadowed gaze on Kent.

  “Hold it!” He gave free rein to his air force captain voice, and everyone froze, staring at him. “We’re not going to run down there and loot the place.”

  Neil narrowed his eyes. “But this is an emergency situation. Surely, it can be justified—”

  “More emergency than you realize,” Lauren inserted. “Whoever lives in that cabin may be trying to kill us.”

  “Kill us?” Lauren’s mother echoed faintly. “What do you mean?”

  Kent repeated what he’d told the others about the pine boughs in the stovepipe and the trap that nearly took Lauren’s life. Nina squeaked and hugged her daughter.

  The older woman turned a tear-stained face toward Kent. “And to think I left the person a sweet thank-you note on the table with a promise to pay for anything we used or consumed.”