Cindi Myers - Danger On Dakota Ridge

She quickened her pace as the offending gate came into view. Welded of black iron, four feet wide and at least six feet tall, topped with pointed spikes, it sported a massive padlock and the kind of chain Paige associated with cargo ships, each link easily three inches across. She stopped a few feet away, slipped the pack from her back and dropped it onto the ground beside the trail, where it settled with an audible clank .

She moved closer, inspecting the setup. The lock was new, made of heavy brass. She had heard Gage had shot the old one off when he and his girlfriend, Maya, were up here searching for her missing niece. Paige grabbed the lock—which was bigger than her hand—and tugged. Not that she expected it to be open, but she would have felt really foolish if she went to the trouble to cut it off, then found out it hadn’t even been fastened.

The lock weighed several pounds. The hasp was thick, too. She returned to her pack and fished out the cutters and the hacksaw. Some videos she had watched online had showed people slicing through locks with portable grinders, but that approach had struck her as noisy and likely to attract attention. Better to snip the lock off with the bolt cutters, or saw through the hasp.

She tried the bolt cutters first, gripping the hasp of the lock between the jaws of the cutters and bearing down with all her might.

Nothing. They didn’t even make a dent in the metal. She gritted her teeth and tried again, grunting with the effort. Nothing, save for a faint scratch. A little out of breath, she straightened, scowling at the recalcitrant lock. Fine. Time to get the hacksaw. Her neighbor had assured her it would cut through metal.

Sawing the blade was hard, tiring work, but after half a dozen strong strokes, she had succeeded in making a dent in the hasp. Another half hour or so of work and she might sever the hasp—provided her arm didn’t fall off first. But hey—she wasn’t a quitter. She bore down and sawed faster.

She was concentrating so hard on the work she didn’t hear the voices until they were almost on her. “Over here!” a man shouted, and Paige bit back a yelp and almost dropped the saw.

She recovered quickly, gathered her tools and raced into the underbrush, heart hammering painfully. She waited for the voices to come closer, for someone to notice the damage to the lock and complain. Had they seen her?

Her pack! Feeling sick to her stomach, she shifted her gaze to the dark blue backpack clearly visible by the side of the trail. Did she dare retrieve it? But moving would surely attract attention.

She held her breath as two men in forest camo parkas, watch caps pulled down low on their foreheads, emerged from the woods on CNG’s side of the gate and tramped down the trail toward her. She shrank farther back into the underbrush, sharp thorns from wild roses catching on the nylon of her jacket and scratching the backs of her hands. Her eyes widened and her heart beat even faster as the men drew nearer and she could make out semiautomatic weapons slung across their backs. Since when did a real-estate development company equip their security guards with guns like that?

Talk about overkill! Anger took the place of some of her fear. If those big bullies thought they could intimidate her, they had another think coming. She had every right to be here, on a public trail, and if they didn’t like it, they could take it up with the sheriff’s department, but she was in the right.

She had about decided to emerge from her hiding place and tell them so when they reached the gate. But instead of stopping and opening it, or yelling out at her, the two men walked past, along the fence line. Now Paige could see they carried something between them. Something heavy, in a large wooden packing crate. She shuddered as they passed. Though the shape wasn’t exactly right, the big box reminded her of a coffin. What the heck were these two doing with that out here in the middle of nowhere? After all, there was a perfectly good road leading right onto the property, which had once been planned as a luxury resort. Last she had heard, CNG wanted to turn the abandoned resort into a high-altitude research laboratory. So why sneak through the woods carrying a heavy box instead of just driving it to wherever they needed it? And why carry guns along with the box?

As soon as the men had passed her hiding place and moved out of sight, Paige emerged. She shoved the tools and the pack out of sight under some bearberry bushes, then hurried down the trail after the men. The former Eagle Mountain Resort had been the site of plenty of shady activity lately—maybe this was more of the same. It was her duty as a citizen to find out. Besides, who could resist a mystery like this?

She didn’t have any trouble tracking the two men. They crashed through the underbrush like a pair of bull elk. They probably didn’t expect anyone else to be up here. Word had gotten out around town that the trail was blocked, and no one lived on the abandoned mining claims that surrounded CNG’s property, except Ed Roberts, who was practically a hermit and made a point of keeping to himself. Paige had counted on that same privacy to help her get away with cutting the lock off the gate. She’d have to make another attempt at that. Next time, she would bring more muscle, and maybe power tools.

Wherever the two guys with guns were headed, they weren’t wasting any time. Paige had to trot to keep up with them. Fortunately, the trail paralleling the fence made movement easy, and her lightweight hiking boots made little noise on the soft ground. She stayed far enough behind that the men would have to turn all the way around to see her, but she could still keep them in her sights.

A few hundred yards from the gate, they turned away from the trail. Paige stopped and crouched down. She watched through an opening in the underbrush as they carried the box about fifty feet, then stopped and set down their burden. The man in the lead bent and felt for something in the drying grass. The sound of metal scraping against metal carried clearly in the still air. The man turned around, then descended into the ground. The second man shoved the box toward the spot where his companion had disappeared and tipped it up, then slid it in. Then he disappeared after it.

Paige straightened, her mind racing to solve this puzzle. She looked around, noting her surroundings. Gage and Maya had been trapped in an underground chamber on the resort property. Maya’s niece, Casey, had climbed out and run for help. That must be the same chamber where the two men had disappeared just now. What were they doing in there? What was in that box? And why did they have to carry it through the woods instead of driving it to the storage bunker that led to the chamber?

She would definitely be paying Maya and Gage a visit to find out their take on all this. Of course, she had no proof anything at all illegal was going on, but given the property’s history, it might be worth watching. She turned and made her way back down the trail and collected her pack and tools. She checked the lock again, but all her efforts had barely marked it. She would have to come up with a better plan.

Shouldering the pack once more, she started back down the trail. She needed to get back to the B and B. She had a new guest checking in this afternoon. Some government worker, Robert Allen. His secretary had made the reservation, and the credit card information she had given Paige had checked out. He had reserved her best suite for a week, a real bonus, considering this was her slow time of year—past prime summer tourist season, too late for fall leaf-peepers and too early for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

These thoughts occupied her until she reached the spot where the two men had turned away from the fence. She couldn’t resist taking another peek, to see if she could make out anything else distinctive about the site. She bent over and wormed her way into the opening in the undergrowth, a more difficult task while wearing the pack. But she managed to wedge herself in there and look through—just in time to see the second man join the first up top. He bent and slid whatever cover was over the opening back in place. Then both men started straight toward her.