by Cindi Myers
“What did you find out at the high school?” Travis asked, bringing Gage’s attention back to work.
“I talked to the head coach. He says they’re missing three gym mats, a climbing rope and some weights.”
Travis’s brow furrowed. “Nothing anyone could really sell, and I don’t see how any of those things could be used to manufacture drugs.”
“Right,” Gage said. “So maybe it’s just kids?”
“Maybe,” Travis said. “Though when kids vandalize a school, they do it to make a mess—graffiti, tearing things up. This doesn’t feel like that.”
“Yeah,” Gage agreed. “It feels like someone went in there looking for some specific items, grabbed them and got out.”
“More than one person, probably,” Travis said. “That’s a lot to carry. Those mats are bulky and the weights are heavy.”
“The mats are bright blue,” Gage said. “We’ll keep our eyes open around town—maybe we’ll spot them.”
“In the meantime, we’ll put extra patrols around the school,” Travis said.
“I want to take a look on Henry Hake’s property this morning,” Gage said. “It’s close enough Casey might have wandered over there. She might be hiding out in one of the buildings.”
“It’s a long way for a kid that little to walk,” Travis said.
“Only about a mile cross-country,” Gage said. “That little boy who was lost last year was over three miles away from the place his folks had last seen him.”
“Give it a go then. Has the mayor talked to you yet?”
Gage frowned. “He stopped me last night, blathering something about the press and the town looking bad.”
Travis nodded. “He called me first thing this morning. He’s worried Eagle Mountain is getting a reputation as an unsafe town.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him we were doing our best to find the person responsible for these murders and I didn’t think anyone else was in danger.”
“What did he expect?” Gage asked. “That you could wave a magic wand and make all the bad things disappear?”
“He’s just doing his job, looking out for the town’s reputation,” Travis said.
“Then he needs to leave us alone to do our jobs.”
“If he bothers you again, send him to me,” Travis said. “Do you have anything new on this case?”
“Paige told me she was up here with members of her environmental group two days ago and she saw the Hoods unloading their car,” Gage said. “The group had heard a report that the public trail that runs alongside Hake’s property had been blocked and they came to check it out. Paige said someone had put up a gate and the addition was recent. You haven’t heard anything about any new activity at the resort, have you?”
“No,” Travis said. “Henry Hake is still missing, and as far as I know, the injunction against his development is still in effect.”
“I’ll check it out. I’m taking Maya with me.” Gage didn’t mention she had insisted on coming with him.
“I got a preliminary report this morning on the Hood murders,” Travis said. “They were both shot with a nine millimeter. Close range, one bullet each. Killer took the spent shells with him.”
“So they weren’t killed during a struggle,” Gage said.
“I don’t think they had a chance. I think they were jumped, tied up and shot. Two, but I’m guessing three people to do the job.”
“And where was the little girl while all this was going on?” Gage asked.
“The coroner puts the time of death around 9:00 p.m., so maybe she was in the tent, asleep.”
“The killers would have gone in looking for her.”
“Not if they didn’t know she existed. Or maybe she woke up when her parents were attacked and crawled out of the tent and ran.”
“Tents don’t have back doors,” Gage pointed out.
“No, but this one had a good-sized tear in the back window screen. A frightened little kid could have gotten out that way.”
“And the killers didn’t hear her?”
“Not if they were busy with the parents.”
Gage nodded. The scenario made sense. “We need to find her today,” he said. “She’s got to be cold and hungry and scared.” If she wasn’t lying at the bottom of a ravine or drowned in a creek. He didn’t have to say those things out loud—he knew Travis was thinking them, too.
“Check out Hake’s. Take others with you if you need to.”
“I think Maya and I will have a look by ourselves first,” he said. “As it is, if word gets out we were over there, we’re liable to hear from Hake’s lawyers. They’ve got the place fenced off like a fortress.”
“Let them complain about us searching for a missing child and see what kind of PR that gets them,” Travis said.
Gage found Maya standing by the campfire with Mellie Sanger, half of the couple who had stayed at the site overnight. Maya turned toward Gage as he approached, the hope in her eyes like a stab to his heart. “Mellie was telling me they stayed up most of the night and didn’t hear or see anything,” she said. “I don’t see how Casey could have just vanished.”
“She’s probably afraid and hiding,” Gage said. “As she gets hungrier, she’ll want to come out.” That was all the hope he had to give her right now.
“Good luck.” Mellie took both Maya’s hands in hers. “George and I will come back tonight if we need to, but we really hope we don’t need to.”
“Thank you both, so much.”
“Are you ready to go?” Gage asked.
“Yes.” She hitched her backpack up on her shoulder. “Which way?”
He led the way east, toward the land Henry Hake had wanted to develop. There was no defined trail, and the going was rough, over uneven ground littered with fallen tree branches and small boulders. They crossed a small stream, and then another, then descended into a steep ravine. Gage could hear Maya breathing hard as they climbed back out of the ravine, but she kept up with him and didn’t complain. A few hundred yards on, they stopped to drink some water. “How could a little girl have crossed all that?” Maya asked.
“People lost in the wilderness do incredible things,” he said. “The little boy we found last year—the one who had wandered away from his parents while the family was out for a hike—ended up three miles away from the trail, in a place he would have had to cross three streams and climbed a small mountain to get to.”
“How did they ever find him?” she asked.
“Persistence and luck,” Gage said. “Lorna’s dog, Daisy, found the trail initially, then a group of volunteers spread out to search a hundred yards on either side of the trail. They found him asleep in the hollow made by an uprooted tree trunk. If they hadn’t been looking for him, they might have walked right by and never seen him.”
“I don’t know if that story makes me more hopeful or more horrified,” she said. She stuffed her water bottle back in her pack. “I’ve been staring at the ground all morning, hoping to see a little footprint or some pink thread—Casey loves pink, and almost all her clothes are pink. I want so badly to see some sign of her that I’m half-afraid I’ll start imagining things.”
“I’m watching, too,” Gage said. “Maybe we’ll spot something soon.” Or maybe they wouldn’t. He kept talking about the little boy they had found last summer to encourage her, but he didn’t mention the three or four other people over the years who had become lost and were never found—or whose bodies were found months or years later.
After a half hour of walking, they came to an eight-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire, hedge roses poking through the wire and blocking the view beyond. “Whoa!” Maya stopped and stared up at the barrier. “What is this doing out here? It looks like something the government would build around an airport—or a prison.”
“The landowner, Henry Hake, doesn’t like trespassers.” Gage wrapped his fingers around the chain link and tugged. Still taut and solid as the day it had been built four years ago, and the thorny roses added to the barrier. “He planned to build an exclusive—expensive—resort community up here. I guess this fence was supposed to keep out the riffraff.”
“Casey couldn’t have gotten over this,” Maya said.
“No, but it’s possible she found a break in the fence, or a place where an animal had dug under. Plus, a public trail crosses one corner of the property and it’s not supposed to be fenced off.” He scanned the terrain on either side of the fence. “Come on,” he said, pointing north. “Let’s see if we can find a way in.”
* * *
MAYA TRUDGED ALONG behind Gage, trying hard not to freak out over the idea of Casey being lost out here. Everywhere she looked, she faced another hazard: tree stumps to trip over, holes to fall into, rocks to stumble on. And what about wild animals? Surely there were bears and mountain lions and no telling what else out here that might view a five-year-old girl as a tasty snack. She shuddered and pushed the thought aside. A child couldn’t just vanish this way. She had to be somewhere.
“Look here.”
Her heart jumped in her chest at Gage’s words, and she hurried to catch up to him. He stood alongside the fence, pointing to a depression in the ground. “This looks like a place some animal has been going under the wire,” he said.
Maya frowned at the muddy hole. “You think Casey went under there?”
“She might have. She would fit, wouldn’t she?”
“Yes, but why would she get down in the mud like that?”
“If she saw people or saw a building on the other side, she might risk it,” he said.
She turned to look through the fence. The rose hedge was less dense here, but she didn’t see anything but trees at first. Then she spotted what looked like the corner of a building. “If she did go in there, how are we going to follow?” she asked. “I can’t fit through that hole, and I know you can’t.”
“We should be getting to the public trail soon.”
Another ten minutes of walking took them to the end of the fence—and to a large iron gate blocking a well-worn trail. “That looks new,” Maya said, studying the fresh-looking concrete around the gateposts.
“It is new,” Gage said. “And it’s against the law to block a public trail.” He looked around, as if searching for something.
“What are you looking for?” Maya asked.
“Something to break that padlock.”
The padlock was large and heavy. “I don’t think a rock is going to do it,” she said.
“No.” He drew the gun from the holster at his hip. “Stand back.”
“You’re not going to sho—” But apparently, he was. The blast echoed through the woods and Maya covered her ears and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the lock lay shattered on the ground.
Gage pushed open the gate. “Stay behind me, and if we meet anyone, I’ll do the talking.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him. She got that he was used to being in charge, but he ought to have figured out by now that she didn’t like being ordered around. She forgot her annoyance as she moved farther away from the gate into what looked like a long-abandoned ghost town. The remains of paved streets showed between patches of grass and even small trees that grew up through the asphalt. A few windowless concrete buildings crouched alongside crumbling concrete foundations or stakes topped with faded plastic ribbons that fluttered in the breeze.
Maya moved up alongside Gage. “What is this place?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “It’s creepy.”
“It was going to be an exclusive resort, with luxury homes, a country club and a golf course.”
“Why wasn’t it built?”
“Paige and a group of like-minded citizens got together and filed a lawsuit to stop the building. They convinced a judge that this was a fragile environmental zone that wouldn’t support that kind of development. The judge agreed.”
“Do you agree?” she asked.
He glanced at her. “I do. But I can’t say leaving it like this is much better. It’s an eyesore.” He led the way across one of the crumbling streets, toward a row of three curved ducts jutting up from the ground.
“What are those?” she asked.
“Probably air vents for underground storage, or possibly machinery—a power plant or something. They could even be venting gasses from an old mine.”
“I don’t think Casey could climb down in them, and I don’t see a door.”
“No.” He walked on, to a windowless building made of concrete blocks. The single steel door was fastened with a heavy bolt, with a lock through the bolt.
Maya put her ear to the door and listened, but heard only the thump of her own pulse. She stepped back and looked at Gage. “Are you going to shoot this lock off, too?”
“No reason to,” he said.
They moved on, the only sound the crunch of their shoes on gravel. No birds sang; no machinery hummed. She rubbed her arms against a sudden chill. “I don’t like it here,” she said. “I think we should leave.”
“Something feels off to me, too,” he said. “But I’d like to stay long enough to figure out what that is.”
“What do you think—”
But before she could complete the question, gunfire exploded from their left and something slammed her down hard into the dirt.
Chapter Six
Gage threw himself onto Maya, forcing her down into the dirt, as bullets cut the air around them. He wrapped his arms around her and rolled with her, into the shadow of the concrete building, on the side away from the shooting. He strained to listen for sounds of movement, but heard nothing but his own and Maya’s labored breathing. Slowly, he eased off her, but kept one hand on her back. “Stay down,” he said, his mouth close to her ear.
“Did someone just shoot at us?” she whispered, and he heard the terror behind the words.
He didn’t answer her question, but instead rose to a crouching position and drew his gun. “I’m going to take a look,” he said. “Stay down.”
“I’m not moving.”
He moved to the corner of the building, staying low, and hazarded a look around the side. No bullets came his way. But in the distance, an engine roared to life, and a car door slammed. He glanced back at Maya, who still lay huddled against the building. “Don’t move,” he ordered. Then, keeping to the cover of trees and rocks, he started toward what he estimated had been the shooter’s location. The spot, in a growth of scrubby bushes on a rise above where he and Maya had been standing, offered cover and a good view of much of the proposed resort development. Whoever had shot at them could have been up here watching them since they had stepped through the gate. Gage shooting off the lock had given them plenty of notice that they had visitors.
He examined the ground around the area. A few scuff marks indicated someone might have been there recently, but he couldn’t see any distinct shoe prints. He moved a few feet away from the bushes, to a wide, flat area with the faint indentation of tire tracks. These were probably from the vehicle he had heard. There was only one way they could have driven from here, and it led toward the road. They were probably out there and long gone by now—but he would make sure.
He hurried back down the slope, where he found Maya seated, her back against the door of the building. She looked up at his approach. “Did you find anything?”
He shook his head and held his hand out to her. “Let’s head back by the road,” he said.
“Can you call for help?” she asked.
“No cell signal up here,” he said. He pulled her to her feet. She straightened and brushed dirt from her shirt and jeans.
“Why would someone shoot at us?” she asked. “Is it the same person
who shot Angela and Greg? Do you think they have Casey?”
“I don’t know. Maybe whoever put that gate up doesn’t like trespassers.”
They reached the front entrance to the property. Maya stuck close to him, tensed and looking around her. But Gage didn’t see a sign of anyone. They set out walking down the road and five minutes later, he recognized Travis’s SUV headed toward them.
The vehicle slowed and stopped as it pulled alongside them. “I heard gunshots,” Travis said.
“The first shot you heard was me, shooting the lock off an illegal gate across the public trail that runs along one side of Henry Hake’s property,” Gage said. “The second set of blasts was somebody shooting at us. Did you pass any other vehicles on your way up here?”
“No.” Travis jerked his head toward the passenger side of the SUV. “Get in.”
Gage held the door for Maya as she climbed into the back seat. “There’s some bottled water back there if you want some,” Travis said.
Maya took a bottle of water from the box on the back floorboard and handed another to Gage. “Have you heard anything about Casey?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, no,” Travis said. He turned the SUV around. “I’m going to take you back to camp and you can talk to the searchers, hear from them what they’ve seen. Then Gage and I will come back up here.”
“I looked around, but whoever took the shots at us didn’t leave much behind,” Gage said. “Some faint tire tracks. No bullet casings or shoe prints.”
“Maybe you missed something,” Travis said. “What were you doing when they shot at you?”
“We were walking around,” Gage said. “Looking for anywhere a little kid might hide or might be drawn to.”
“Did you find anything?” Travis asked.
“No.” He glanced back at Maya. “She’s out there. I know it,” he said. “We’re going to keep looking.”
She nodded, but the sadness in her eyes was a weight on his heart.
* * *
CASEY’S CHEST HURT. Every breath felt like something was cutting her on the inside. But she was too afraid to stop running—too afraid of the men with the guns. The men who had hurt Mommy and Daddy.