by Cindi Myers
“If he does, Travis and Gage will find out,” Paige said.
Lacy set her empty wineglass on a side table. “I wish there was more we could do to help,” she said.
“You’re doing a lot,” Maya said. “Being with me like this now—it helps so much.” It struck her that back home, she didn’t have friends like this. She was on good terms with the other teachers she worked with, but for so many years, Angela had been her best friend. Paige and Lacy couldn’t replace her sister, but being with them helped her feel less alone.
* * *
AS SOON AS Maya was safely away, Gage rejoined Travis, who was just ending a phone call. “I’ve got the request for the warrant started,” he said. “While we wait, we can go back to Hake’s place and have a better look around.”
They rode together, in Travis’s vehicle. “Do you really think Ed had anything to do with the Hoods’ deaths?” Gage asked as Travis drove.
“He never struck me as the particularly violent type, but who knows? Maybe he thought Greg Hood was a threat to his own mining operation. Or maybe he’s a sicko who wanted the little girl.”
“Yeah.” You didn’t have to be in law enforcement for very long, or in a big city, to learn that people did horrible things to each other all the time—even people you would never suspect.
When they reached the fence that marked the boundary of Henry Hake’s land, Travis parked at the road and he and Gage walked into the development, past the fading sign announcing the resort, with its rendering of soaring log chalets and cobblestone drives set amidst golf greens, swimming pools and stables. The picture bore little resemblance to the crumbling concrete and weeds around them. “Where were you when the shots were fired?” Travis asked.
“Over here.” Gage led the way to the cinder block building. Travis tried the door, which was still padlocked. “The shots came from over there.” Gage indicated the slope that rose up from the building. “That little bunch of trees in there.”
The two brothers walked up the slope, and Travis knelt to study the rocky ground beneath the scrub oaks. Then he examined the faint tire tracks Gage pointed out. “We’ll take a casting, but I’m not holding out hope we’ll find anything,” Travis said. He looked around the empty landscape. “Whoever this is, they know how to clean up after themselves, not leave any trace.” He stood. “I want to take a look around at the rest of the place.”
The afternoon sun beat down on what was left of the streets, and a breeze that carried a hint of a chill fluttered the flags on the wooden stakes that marked lot lines and building sites that had long been abandoned. “This place gives me the creeps on a normal day,” Gage said as he and Travis walked past rusting rebar jutting up from half-finished foundations. “But this afternoon, even before the shots were fired, it felt like someone was watching us. Maya felt it, too.”
“I don’t sense that now,” Travis said.
“No. I think whoever was here earlier is long gone.”
“I need to take a look at the official plat of this place and see if these air vents are on there,” Travis said, as he and Gage drew alongside the arching metal structures.
“That’s a good idea,” Gage said. “I don’t hear any fans or machinery or anything.”
They walked around the side of the structure, down a steep slope and around to the back. Travis walked slowly, studying the ground, then pushed aside the arching branches of a stunted juniper to reveal a metal door. Unlike the other structures around them, the door looked new, the dark green paint—the same shade as the juniper branches—bright and fresh.
Travis tried the door. It didn’t budge. He straightened and let the branch fall back into place. “Without a warrant, we can’t get in.”
Gage scratched his ear. “If we said we heard something, and we thought Casey might be trapped in there...”
Travis sent him a look. The don’t be an idiot, little brother look that Gage had known all his life. Then he led the way back up the incline, to the mouth of the air vents. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted down one of the tubes. “Hello! Casey, are you in there?”
Gage held his breath, straining to make out any noise coming from the vents, but the only sound was the wind flapping the plastic flags on a row of survey stakes. “She can’t hear us,” he said, remembering.
“I know,” Travis said. “But I was hoping maybe vibrations...” He let the words trail off and the two walked on, to the highest point of the property, overlooking Dakota Ridge and the valley below. Gage squinted against a glare from something downslope that was reflecting light back into his eyes. “What’s that down there?” he asked, pointing toward the brightness. He squinted more, focusing in, gaze traveling from the starburst of glare along a dark shadow, and something smooth like glass. Honed in and fully alert, he touched Travis’s arm. “Is that a car down there?”
Travis stared also. “Maybe. Let me get my binoculars from the cruiser.”
While Gage waited for Travis to return, he studied the slope above what he was now sure was a car. The terrain was mostly bare rock, though maybe that was a broken branch there and a dislodged boulder a little farther up—evidence that the vehicle had careened down that slope before coming to rest in a knot of trees. There was an old mining road up there, used now by hikers and a few of the more daredevil four-wheelers. He couldn’t imagine who would be fool enough to drive a full-sized automobile up there.
Travis returned at a trot, panting a little as he stopped and lifted the binoculars to his eyes. “It’s a car,” he said. “Or rather, some kind of SUV. Black. I can’t see anyone in it, but we’ll have EMS on standby just in case.”
“Can you read the plate?” Gage asked.
Travis’s boot scraped on rock as he shifted his weight. “Yeah. And I know that number.” He lowered the binoculars, a frown deepening the V between his eyebrows. “That car is registered to Henry Hake. We may have finally found him after all.”
Chapter Eight
By the time Gage and Travis made it back to the camp, Deputy Dwight Prentice had arrived with the warrant to search Ed Roberts’s property. “Call Gracy’s Wreckers in Junction and tell them we’ve got a vehicle we need to bring up out of the canyon below Dakota Ridge,” Travis told Dwight as he accepted the warrant paperwork. “And we’ll need to send search and rescue over there to see if there’s anyone in the vehicle.”
“Off Dakota Ridge?” Dwight frowned. “Where? Who drove off there?”
“Gage and I saw the vehicle from over at Henry Hake’s place,” Travis said. “It’s an SUV with tags registered to Hake.”
“He’s been missing almost a month now,” Dwight said. “If he’s in that vehicle, he isn’t alive.”
“We’re not sure he’s in there,” Gage said. “But we have to check.”
“If there’s nobody alive in the wreck, we can wait until morning to retrieve it,” Gage said. “But we need to find out. I want you to go over there with the search and rescue crew.”
“Will do,” Dwight said.
Travis was reviewing the paperwork when Lorna Munroe approached, the bloodhound, Daisy, straining at the leash. “I wanted to let you know we found a match for that little girl’s sock the searchers found earlier,” Lorna said. “I gave the second sock to Daisy and she followed the scent for half a mile or so along the creek before she lost it. So many people have tramped through these hills recently looking for that child that I think it’s getting tough to pick out one trail from all the others.”
Gage bent to scratch behind one of Daisy’s long ears and she rolled her eyes up at him in a mournful look.
“We appreciate you trying,” Travis said. He folded the papers and tucked them into his shirt pocket. “Come on, Gage,” he said. “We’d better get going.”
The brothers didn’t speak on the short drive to Ed Roberts’s place. Ed met them in front of what could only genero
usly be termed a shack. The tin-roofed building was the size of a backyard storage shed, constructed of scrap lumber salvaged from old mining structures, with a single window and a door that had started as a green slab of wood and warped as it dried so that it no longer closed all the way. “We got the warrant,” Travis said, and handed Ed the papers.
Ed adjusted a pair of wire-framed glasses on his nose and studied the documents. Gage had been prepared to have to argue with the old man—maybe even physically restrain him. But Ed only took off the glasses and said. “You’d better come in and get it over with.”
Inside, the floor of the one-room building sloped toward the back, and the small space was crammed with an old leather recliner patched with tape, a wooden trunk that doubled as a table, a battery-operated camping lantern and packing boxes full of books, mining equipment and ore specimens. “You can look all you want,” Ed said. “There’s no place to hide anything here.”
Gage met his brother’s eyes. Ed was right—with all three of them inside, there was hardly enough room in the shack to turn around.
Travis peered into a box of books. From where Gage stood by the door, most of the titles appeared to have to do with mining or history. “Did you have any arguments with Greg Hood?” he asked.
“Who?” Ed asked.
“He’s the father of the little girl who’s missing,” Travis said. “He and his wife own the property to the south of your place. Somebody shot them and killed them.”
Ed blinked. “Was he a young man, sandy hair and expensive clothes?”
“That would be a pretty good description,” Travis said. “Did you and he argue?”
“No! I talked to the man exactly once. I met up with him when I was walking my property line. Just him. We got to talking. He went on about some invention he had that was going to make all these old mines profitable again.”
“So you lied earlier, when you told us you didn’t have anything to do with Greg Hood,” Gage said.
“We exchanged a few words, that’s all. They minded their business and I minded mine.”
“So the two of you didn’t disagree about anything?” Gage asked. “Maybe you thought his invention was going to cut into your own profits from your mine?”
“I didn’t take him seriously,” Ed said. “I’ve met plenty of folks in my time who think they’re going to buy a claim and get rich. Then they find out what hard work mining really is, and how tough it is to make it pay off, and they give up and go home. I figured this guy would be the same.”
“So the two of you had a nice, pleasant conversation,” Travis said.
Ed glared. “I told him the last thing I wanted was a bunch of folks with dollar signs in their eyes traipsing around up here.”
“What did he say to that?” Gage asked.
“He laughed. He thought I was colorful. A character.”
“That didn’t make you angry, when he laughed?” Travis asked.
“I told you, he didn’t matter one whit to me. I’ve seen his kind before. Big thinkers—not such big doers. If he wanted to play around out here with his invention, it wasn’t any skin off my nose—as long as he stayed off my property.”
“Did he?” Travis asked.
“As far as I know, he did.”
“When was this, that you saw him?” Gage asked.
Ed considered the question. “Day before yesterday, in the afternoon.”
“What about Henry Hake?” Travis asked. “Did you ever run into him?”
“He’s that developer who wanted to put in that big fancy resort, right?” Ed asked.
“Yes,” Travis said. “Did you ever have any conversations with him?”
“Never met the man. Never cared to. I saw him on television a couple of times, talking up the place, and I drove over there one day to look around. They had built a big fence around the land, and had No Trespassing signs every few feet. I thought they were crazy if they thought they would ever get rich people to pay a fortune to live up here. Even I don’t come up here after the snow starts. The only way in is on skis or snowshoes or on a snow machine. And the first time an avalanche comes down on one of those fancy homes he wanted to build, he’d lose his shirt in the lawsuits that would follow.”
“So you haven’t been over to look at the property recently?” Travis asked.
“I drive by it all the time,” Ed said. “It’s an eyesore now. The county ought to make them clean it up. They cut down all those trees and poured all that concrete and now it’s all sitting there, a blight on the land.”
“So you haven’t been over there, just to look around?” Gage asked.
“I already told you, no. Those places attract the wrong kind of people.”
“Who is that?” Gage asked.
“The folks who want to build the fancy houses and the environmentalists who protest against them. I got no use for any of them.”
“You don’t have much use for most people,” Gage said.
Ed lifted his chin. “That’s right. But I didn’t kill anybody, and I didn’t hurt that little girl.”
“We’re going to take a look outside now,” Travis said.
Ed followed them outside. “You want to look in my outhouse?” he asked. “Go ahead.”
“Gage will take care of that,” Travis said.
Gage sent his brother a look that told Travis payback was in his future. But the outhouse—a portable toilet rented from a local company—wasn’t as bad as Gage might have feared, and it was definitely empty.
Next, they visited the mine adit, a timber-framed hut extending from the side of the hill. “It’s a hundred feet to the main shaft,” Ed said. “There aren’t any lights, so if you’re going to look around, I hope you brought your own illumination.”
Travis unclipped a heavy-duty flashlight from his belt. “We’ll be fine.”
He led the way into the tunnel, Gage reluctantly following. Ed remained outside. “Let’s hope the old man doesn’t decide to wall us up in here,” Gage grumbled.
“What made you think of that?” Travis asked.
“Just my dark imagination.”
The tunnel sloped upward, rock pressing in on all sides. Before they had gone more than half the distance, they both had to hunch over to avoid scraping against the ceiling. Water ran down the center of the tunnel, making footing slippery. “I hope we don’t run into any bats,” Gage said. “I hear bats like these old mine tunnels.”
“Shut up,” Travis said, and played his light over the walls and ceiling, the light glinting on bright flecks in the gray granite.
“Is that gold?” Gage asked.
“Probably pyrite or quartz,” Travis said. “Fool’s gold.”
Eventually, they reached the first shaft—a round hole at their feet scarcely wide enough to accommodate a man. Travis shone the light on a wooden ladder fastened to the wall of the shaft. “I think I should wait up here while you check this out,” Gage said, eyeing the narrow opening. “If something goes wrong with you, I can run for help.”
Travis glared at him, but pocketed his flashlight and knelt beside the shaft. “Light my way down,” he said.
Gage knelt beside the shaft and shone the light into the opening. Travis climbed down, the soles of his boots ringing hollow against the wooden rungs of the ladder. Within a few minutes, he landed at the bottom of the shaft. Less than a minute later, he started back up. “There’s nothing down there,” he said.
Gage reached down to give him a hand up. “I’m sure Ed got a charge out of knowing that.”
Travis wiped his hands on his pants. “We had to look, but I don’t think that little girl is here.”
The two trudged back to the cruiser. Ed was nowhere in sight, but that was fine with Gage, who had no desire to speak with the grouchy old man. He climbed into the cruiser and stared out at the lengthening shadows. “I don’t
like the thought of that little kid out here another night,” he said.
“No.” Travis started the engine. “And the longer she’s missing, the lower the odds we’ll find her okay.”
“Maya wants to spend the night out here, in case Casey shows up. I think I should stay with her.”
“All right.” He turned onto the road. “Though I don’t think she’s going to fall for your charms as easily as some of the local women.”
Gage scowled at him. “I’m not trying to charm anyone here. Maya is a nice person in a horrible situation.”
“But as you have said so often before, you like women. And for some reason I can’t fathom, they like you. Don’t complicate an already complicated situation.”
“I’m not trying to complicate anything.” And he wasn’t setting out to seduce Maya. Yes, he had dated a number of women in town, and maybe that had given him a certain reputation. But it wasn’t a bad reputation—all the women he had dated knew he would show them a good time and keep things fun. They all enjoyed themselves and nobody got hurt.
He didn’t see Maya the same way. There was nothing fun about what she was going through. He just wanted to be there to help if she needed it. He stared at the blur of scenery rolling past. “Maya is only going to be in town a little while,” he said. “I’ll do what I can to make that time easier on her.”
And if he had regrets when it came time to say goodbye, no one had to know that except himself.
* * *
THE THREE WOMEN were starting on a second bottle of wine when the wail of a siren cut off their conversation. Maya didn’t pay much attention—she was used to hearing sirens at all hours of the day and night, but apparently the sound was cause for alarm here in Eagle Mountain. “That sounds like an ambulance,” Paige said, setting aside the wine.
She moved to the front window and Lacy followed. “It is an ambulance,” Lacy said. “Do you think it’s an accident? Or maybe someone had a heart attack?”
“Maybe.”
The other two women were so concerned, Maya began to be nervous also. “Do you think they found Casey?” She stood on shaky legs. “Why didn’t someone contact me? If she’s hurt—”
