Danger On Dakota Ridge. Cindi Myers
and take a look around. Do you think you could identify either of the men who shot at you if you saw them again?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good. I’ll be in touch.” He stood, and Paige rose also.
“While you’re up there, would you look for my necklace?” she asked. “It’s a gold chain, with a charm of a bird in flight. I was wearing it this morning and I don’t have it now. I think it must have snagged on the bushes near where I was watching those two men.”
“Sure, we can look for it,” Travis said.
“Thank you, Sheriff,” she said, and turned toward the door.
“Paige?”
“Yes, Sheriff?”
“Don’t go up there by yourself anymore,” Travis said. “At least until we get this settled. And tell the other hikers you know the same.”
“All right.” She turned toward Rob and acted as if she wanted to say something, then closed her mouth and left the room.
“Stay a minute,” Travis said to Rob.
He nodded, and waited until they heard the front door close behind Paige before he took the seat she had vacated.
“Did you see either of the men she described?” Travis asked.
“No. I wasn’t that far up the trail before she came barreling down.” He chuckled. “I didn’t recognize her at first, and I’m sure she didn’t recognize me. When I took hold of her to try to calm her down, she fought like a tiger.” He rubbed the side of his face, where she had scratched him.
“You knew each other before?” Travis asked.
Rob nodded. “Yes. And it’s safe to say I am not one of her favorite people.”
Travis waited, silent. He was probably a good interrogator, using silence to his benefit. “I’m the one who arrested her brother,” Rob said.
“For possession of meth?” Travis asked.
“Yes. And for trying to sell stolen property. He was part of a group of addicts who were robbing apartment complexes in Denver. I was part of a joint drug task force working that case. We had already determined the thefts were linked to drugs.”
“There was no doubt of his guilt?”
“None.” He sighed, all the frustration of those days coming back to him. “Paige wanted an adjudicated sentence, with her brother, Parker, allowed to go to rehab instead of prison. I didn’t agree.”
“From what I’ve seen, she can be a little protective of Parker,” Travis said.
“I get it. As far as I know, he’s the only family she has. But the fact that part of my job was to help see that he was punished for his crimes made me the enemy. Her opinions about right and wrong tend to be very black-and-white.”
“She went up there today to cut off that lock, didn’t she?” Travis asked.
Rob grinned. “I didn’t see a thing. Though she was carrying a hacksaw and a pair of bolt cutters with her.”
Travis shook his head. “When Paige believes she’s in the right, there’s no changing her mind.”
“I certainly learned that.” Though he would have preferred she didn’t see him as the bad guy. Still, she wasn’t his chief concern at the moment. “As long as I’m here, maybe I could help you out with Henry Hake’s case,” he said. “Is there anything you’d like me to look into? Unofficially, of course.”
“Did your aunt say who her brother was afraid of?”
“No. Except she thinks it had something to do with his business.”
“So not necessarily Eagle Mountain Resort. He had other real-estate holdings, didn’t he?”
“A few apartment complexes and some office buildings,” Rob said. “Eagle Mountain Resort was definitely his most ambitious project. When the court ordered him to stop development, I gather it put him in a financial bind.”
Travis nodded. “That’s what I’ve learned, also.”
“What can you tell me about the property’s new owners—CNG Development?” Rob asked.
“They’re another real-estate development company, out of Utah. They’re much larger than Hake Development, with projects all over the United States. I wondered why they even bothered with Hake—he was pretty small potatoes, compared to them.”
“Maybe they’re one of these companies that specializes in finding small firms in financial straits and buying them for bargain prices,” Rob said.
“Maybe so.”
“Paige says they want to build a research facility up there.”
“So they’ve said. They haven’t presented anything concrete to the town for approval. The couple of times I’ve been up there since Hake’s body was found, the place has been deserted.”
“It wasn’t deserted today,” Rob said. “I’d sure like to know why those two were going around armed—and what was in that box. And why they reacted the way they did when they caught Paige watching them.”
“Want to go up there with me to check it out?” Travis asked.
“You know I’m not officially on duty,” Rob said. “My boss doesn’t even know where I am.”
“You wouldn’t be participating in any official capacity,” Travis said. “I just want someone to watch my back.”
“I can do that.” And maybe he would get lucky and discover something he could tell his aunt. He couldn’t bring her brother back to her, but finding out what had really happened to him might ease her suffering a little bit.
* * *
THOUGH PAIGE VOWED to put Rob Allerton firmly out of her mind and focus on work at the bed-and-breakfast where she both lived and worked, she couldn’t stop thinking about the man. He was always so aggravatingly calm and sure of himself. Having him here in town annoyed her, like walking around with a pebble in her shoe. Those days following Parker’s arrest had been among the worst in recent memory. Her brother had needed help and men like Rob were preventing her from helping him. Yes, Parker had broken the law, but he wasn’t a bad person. His addiction had led him to do things he never would have done otherwise. Instead of punishing him, why not treat his addiction and give him another chance?
Rob Allerton had made it clear he didn’t believe in second chances. No thanks to him, Parker had at least gotten a chance to get clean, though he had had to serve time, too. But he was clean now, going to school and staying out of trouble. Another year and the charges would be wiped from his record.
But he was in that position only because Paige had fought for him. Other people weren’t so lucky. They had to deal with the Rob Allertons of the world without anyone on their side.
She sat down at her desk off the kitchen and tried to put Rob out of her mind. His vacation wouldn’t last forever, and she had more than enough to keep her occupied in the meantime. She was working there a little later when the back door opened and Parker entered. He dropped his backpack on the bench by the door and pushed his sunglasses on top of his head. To some of the more conservative people here in Eagle Mountain, he probably looked like trouble, with his full-sleeve tattoos and often sullen expression. But Paige saw past all that to the little boy she had read stories to and made macaroni and cheese for more times than she could remember. “How was class?” she asked.
“Okay.” He opened the refrigerator. “What did you do today?”
Attempted vandalism and ended up getting shot at by two thugs, she thought. “I was up on the Dakota Ridge Trail and you’ll never guess who I ran into.”
He