Cindi Myers - Avalanche Of Trouble

“Okay.” So she had to bear this all by herself. He would do what he could to ease the burden for her.

“What about you?” she asked. “I know you have a brother—the sheriff. Any other brothers and sisters?”

“I have a sister. She’s a graduate student at CSU. Our parents have a ranch just outside of town.”

She speared a cherry tomato on her fork. “A ranch as in cows?”

“And horses. The Walking W Ranch has been in operation since 1942. My great-grandparents started it.”

“So do you, like, ride and rope and all that stuff?” she asked.

He suppressed a grin. “All that stuff.”

“That explains the belt buckle.”

He glanced down at the large silver-and-gold buckle, which he had won as State Junior Champion Bronc Rider in high school. “I was riding horses years before I learned to ride a bicycle,” he said. “And I still help out with fall roundup.”

She shook her head. “Our lives are so different we could be from two different countries.”

“We’re probably not that different,” he said. “I’ve found that people behave pretty much the same wherever they’re from.”

“Well, I’m from the city and I have no desire to ride a horse. And I hope you won’t take this wrong, but I thought my sister was crazy when she said she and Greg were thinking about moving here.”

“You told me they bought the mining claims for a demonstration project, not to live on.”

“That’s right. But they were talking about finding a place here in town. They had fallen in love with Eagle Mountain. I don’t know why.”

“You might be surprised,” Gage said. “I’ve heard from other people that the place has a way of growing on you.”

“I just want to find my niece and go home.” She looked all in, her eyes still red and puffy from crying, her shoulders slumped.

Gage pushed aside his plate. “You must be exhausted,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll take you to your car at the sheriff’s office and you can follow me to the B and B.”

Fifteen minutes later, they parked at the curb in front of the Victorian home Paige Riddell had converted into a bed-and-breakfast. The light over the front door came on and Paige stepped out. “I’m Paige,” she said, coming forward to take Maya’s bag. “You’ve had a pretty miserable day, I imagine, so I won’t prolong it, but I will say how sorry I am for your loss.”

“Thank you.” Maya gave Paige a long look. “Gage said I would like you—that he thought we’d have a lot in common.”

“That depends,” Paige said. “Some folks around here think of me as the local tree-hugging rabble-rouser, but I don’t take that as an insult.”

“Then yeah, I think we’ll get along fine,” Maya said.

“Let me show you to your room.” Paige put an arm around Maya and ushered her into the house. In the doorway, she stopped and glanced over her shoulder at Gage. “Don’t leave yet,” she mouthed, then went into the house with Maya.

Gage moved to the porch swing to the right of the door and sat, letting the calm of the night seep into him. Only one or two lights shone in the houses that lined the street, not enough to dim the stars overhead. He thought of the little girl in the woods and hoped she was where she could see those stars, and that maybe, seeing them, she wouldn’t feel so alone.

The door opened and Paige stepped out. “I got her settled in,” she said. “Grief can be so exhausting. I hope she’s able to get some sleep.”

“I’ll come by and pick her up in the morning and take her up to the campsite,” he said. “We’re hoping her niece will see her and come to her. I found out tonight that the little girl is deaf, so she wouldn’t hear us calling for her.”

Paige sat in a wicker armchair adjacent to the swing. “I can’t even imagine how worried Maya is. I don’t even know this kid and it upsets me to think of her out there.”

Gage stifled a yawn. “Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?” he asked.

“Yes. I wanted to tell you I saw that couple—Maya’s sister and her husband—the day before yesterday. And the little girl. She was with them. Adorable child.”

Gage sat up straight, fatigue receding. “Where was this?”

“Some of us from Eagle Mountain Conservation went up to Eagle Mountain Resort—you know, those mining claims Henry Hake wanted to develop?”

Gage nodded. Eagle Mountain Conservation had succeeded in getting an injunction to stop the development three years ago. “You saw the Hood family up there?”

“They were unloading camping gear from a white SUV parked on the side of the road. I guess they were camping on one of the claims near Hake’s property.”

“They bought the claim and I guess a few others in the area,” Gage said. “But what were you doing on Henry Hake’s land? It’s private property.”

Paige frowned at him, a scowl that had intimidated more than one overzealous logger, trash-throwing tourist or anyone else who attracted the wrath of the EMC. “We weren’t on his land. There’s a public easement along the edge of the property. It’s a historic trail that’s been in use since the 1920s. We established that in court, and Hake and his partners had to take down a fence they had erected blocking access. It was part of the injunction order that stopped the development.”

“So you went up there to hike the trail?”

“We had heard complaints that the fence was back up, so we went to check,” she said.

“And was it up?”

“Yes. With a big iron gate across it. Our lawyers have already filed a complaint with the county commissioners. We tried getting in touch with Hake, but didn’t have any luck.”

“He’s been missing for almost a month now,” Gage said. “No one has heard anything from him, and every trail we’ve followed up on has gone cold.”

“A man like that probably has plenty of enemies,” Paige said. “And he hung around with some nasty people. Maybe that former bodyguard of his did him in.”

“Maybe so, though we haven’t found evidence of that.” Hake’s one-time bodyguard had died in a struggle with Travis when he had kidnapped the woman who was now Travis’s fiancée. Three years previously, the same man had murdered Andy Stenson, a young lawyer in town who had also worked for Hake.

Paige leaned toward Gage. “It looked to me like work has been done up there on Hake’s property,” she said. “There’s a lot of tire tracks, and maybe even a new building or two.”

“I’ll see if I can find out anything,” Gage said. “Maybe someone working up there saw or heard something related to the Hoods’ killing.” He stood. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll see you and Maya in the morning.”

“I’m hoping she’ll get a good night’s sleep,” Paige said. “And that tomorrow we find her niece safe.”

“We all hope that.” He returned to his SUV and headed toward the house he rented on the edge of town, but he had traveled less than a block when his cell phone rang. “Gage, this is Al Dawson, over at the high school.”

“Sure, Al.” Gage glanced at the clock on his dash. Ten minutes until midnight. “What’s up?”

“I came in to do the floors here in the gym, but found the lock on the door is broken. Somebody bashed it in.”

“Did you go inside?” Gage asked, looking for a place to turn around.

“No. When I saw the damage to the door, I figured I’d better call you. It looks like we’ve got another break-in.”

“I’ll be right there, Al. Don’t go in.”

“I won’t. What’s going on, Gage?” Al asked. “Travis was out here just this morning to take a report on some items that were stolen from the chemistry lab. This used to be such a peaceful town—now we’ve got crime all over the place.”