Danger On Dakota Ridge

Her enemy. Her protector.

And yet he’s the last man she wants to see...

Paige Riddell never expects her relaxing hike to end in gunfire...or in Rob Allerton’s strong arms. The handsome DEA agent arrested her troubled brother years ago. Now he suspects a connection to a prominent Colorado developer’s death. The feisty blonde vows to prove her brother’s innocence, until she becomes the murderer’s target. But when her greatest adversary becomes her live-in bodyguard, protecting her 24/7, Paige wonders what will be the cause of her undoing: the killer...or her fierce attraction to Rob.

Eagle Mountain Murder Mystery

CINDI MYERS is the author of more than fifty novels. When she’s not crafting new romance plots, she enjoys skiing, gardening, cooking, crafting and daydreaming. A lover of small-town life, she lives with her husband and two spoiled dogs in the Colorado mountains.

Also by Cindi Myers

Saved by the SheriffAvalanche of TroubleDeputy DefenderMurder in Black CanyonUndercover HusbandManhunt on Mystic MesaSoldier’s PromiseMissing in Blue MesaStranded with the SuspectColorado Crime Scene

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Danger on Dakota Ridge

Cindi Myers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07938-9

DANGER ON DAKOTA RIDGE

© 2018 Cynthia Myers

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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For Susan

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Extract

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

What she was planning wasn’t illegal, Paige Riddell told herself as she hiked up the trail to Dakota Ridge. Her friend Deputy Gage Walker might not agree, but she hadn’t asked his opinion. The mayor of Eagle Mountain, Larry Rowe, would object, but Larry always took the side of corporations and businesses over people like Paige—especially Paige. But she knew she was right. CNG Development was the one breaking the law, and she had a copy of a court order in her pocket to prove it.

The tools she carried clanked as she made her way up the forest trail. She had borrowed the hacksaw from a neighbor, telling him she needed to cut up an old folding table to put out for recycling. The bolt cutters were new, purchased at a hardware store out of town. Planning for this expedition had been exciting, she had to admit—a nice break from her routine life of managing the Bear’s Den Bed and Breakfast Inn and volunteering for various causes.

She stopped to catch her breath and readjust the straps on her pack. A chill breeze sent a swirl of dried aspen leaves across her path, bringing with it the scent of pine. In another week or two, snow would dust the top of Dakota Ridge, rising in the distance on her right. In another month, people would be taking to the trail with snowshoes instead of hiking boots. Thanks to Paige, they would be able to make their way all the way up and along the top of the ridge, their progress unimpeded by CNG’s illegal gate.

She set out again, walking faster as she neared her destination, a mixture of nerves and excitement humming through her. She planned to leave the copy of the court order at the gate after she cut off the locks, so that whichever CNG employee discovered the damage would know this wasn’t a random act of vandalism, but an effort to enforce the court’s ruling that CNG couldn’t block access to a public trail that had been in use across this land since the late nineteenth century.

The trail turned and followed alongside an eight-foot fence of welded iron and fine-mesh wire. Snarls of razor wire adorned the top of the fence. Paige was sure the razor wire hadn’t been there when she had last hiked up this way about ten days ago. What was so important on the other side of that fence that CNG felt the need to protect it with razor wire?

She quickened her pace. CNG had the right to protect its property however it saw fit, but if the management wanted to keep out hikers, they needed to reroute their fence. Maybe wrecking their gate would encourage them to do so. Waiting for them to comply with the court ruling hadn’t worked, so it was time for action.

She had considered asking other members of the Eagle Mountain Environmental Action Group to join her. The local hiking club, which had evolved into the closest thing Rayford County had to a political action committee, had a diverse membership of active people, most of whom were already up in arms about the gate over one of the most popular trails in the area. With more people and more tools, they probably could have dismantled the obstruction. But more people involved meant a greater chance of discovery. Someone would shoot off their mouth in a bar or to the wrong friend, and the next thing Paige knew, CNG would have filed a countersuit or criminal charges or something. Better to do this by herself—less chance of getting caught. CNG might suspect her of having something to do with the messed-up gate, since she was head of the EMEAG and one of its most vocal members, but they would never be able to prove it.

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.

Paige quickly backed out of her hiding place, fighting the branches that snagged on her clothing and tangled in her pack. She swatted a vine out of her way and a thorn pricked her thumb, a bead of bright red blood welling against her white flesh. The tools in her backpack clanged like out-of-tune wind chimes as she pushed her way back toward the trail.

“Hey!” a man yelled.

Something whistled through the air past her and struck a tree to her left, sending splinters flying. A second gunshot followed the first. Paige yelped and ran, heart racing and legs pumping. Those maniacs were shooting at her! You couldn’t shoot at someone on a public trail! Gage was definitely going to hear about this.

They weren’t shooting anymore. They probably couldn’t get a clear view of her. The trail was downhill and Paige ran fast. The two men would have to fight through heavy underbrush and get over or around that fence to pursue her. She had left her car parked at the trailhead and she was sure she could get to it before they could.

Idiots! In what universe did they think they could get away with something like this? You could bet she would be filing charges. She’d call the papers, too. CNG would get plenty of bad publicity from this fiasco. And when the corporate lawyers came calling to apologize and persuade her to settle out of court, she’d use that leverage to have them remove that gate over the trail. In fact, she’d make sure they donated some of their high-value ridgetop property as a conservation easement. They would have to if they had any hope of recovering their precious reputation.

Buoyed by these plans, she jogged down the trail, head bent, watching for roots and other obstacles that might trip her up. She didn’t see the big man in the dark coat who stepped out in front of her—didn’t register his presence at all until she crashed into him and his arms wrapped around her, holding her tight.

Chapter Two

As a DEA agent for the past fifteen years, Rob Allerton had faced down his share of men and women who wanted to kill him, but none had outright tried to run him over. The sound of gunfire had sent him charging up the trail, only to be almost mowed down by a female hiker who fought like a tornado when he grabbed hold of her to steady them both. He managed to pin her on the ground, then satisfied himself that she wasn’t armed—and therefore probably not the source of the shots he had heard.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, speaking slowly and distinctly in her ear, ignoring the alluring floral fragrance that rose from the soft skin of her neck. “I’m a law enforcement officer. I only want to help.” Carefully, he eased back and released his hold on her.

She sat up and swept a fall of straight honey-blond hair out of her eyes, and he felt the angry look she lasered at him in the pit of his stomach—and farther south, to tell the truth. He hadn’t seen Paige Riddell in almost two years, but she wasn’t the kind of woman a man forgot easily.

“Agent Allerton.” She pronounced his name as if it was a particularly distasteful disease. He had figured out the first day they met that she seldom bothered masking her feelings or suppressing her passions. Feeling the heat of her hatred only made him wonder what it would be like to be on the receiving end of her love.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, standing and dusting dirt from the knees of her jeans.

He rose also. “I heard gunshots. Was someone shooting at you?”

“I certainly wasn’t shooting at them.” She adjusted her pack, which clanked as she shifted her weight.

He frowned at the dark blue backpack. “Is that a saw you’re carrying?” He walked around her to get a better look. “And a pair of bolt cutters?” He moved back in front of her. “What have you been up to?”

“None of your business.” She tried to walk past him, but he blocked her way. She glared up at him, with those clear gray eyes that still had the power to mesmerize.

“It’s my business if someone was shooting at you.” He touched her upper arm, wary of startling her. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” He should have asked the questions earlier, but he was so surprised to find her here he had forgotten himself.

“I’m fine.” She shrugged off his hand, but he recognized the pallor beneath her tan.

“Who fired those shots?” he asked. “It sounded like a semiautomatic.”

She glanced over her shoulder, in the direction she had run from. “I’m not going to stand here, waiting for them to come back,” she said. “If you want to talk, you can come with me.”

He let her move past him this time, and fell into step just behind her on the narrow trail. “Did you get a look at the shooters?” he asked. “Was it anyone you know?”

“I don’t know who they were—two men up at the old Eagle Mountain Resort.” She gestured toward the property to their left. The trail had turned away from the fence line and descended away from the property. “I spotted them carrying a big wooden crate through the woods. They lowered it into an underground chamber of some kind. At least, they both disappeared through some kind of trapdoor in the ground, and came out without the crate. I guess they saw me watching and fired. I took off running. They were on the other side of that big fence, so they couldn’t chase me.”

“Maybe they thought you were trying to break in,” he said. “Were you using those bolt cutters on their fence?” He wished he could see her face, but she didn’t look at him, and walked fast enough so that he had to work to keep up with her.

“No, I was not trying to break through their fence,” she said.

“What were you doing? Bolt cutters and a saw aren’t typical hiking gear.”

“I was going to cut the illegal lock off their illegal gate over a legal public hiking trail,” she said. “I have a copy of a court order instructing them to remove the lock and open the gate, which they haven’t done.”

“So you decided to take matters into your own hands,” he said.

“The lock was too tough,” she said. “I’ll have to get someone up here with power tools or a torch or something.” She might have been discussing her plans to build a community playground or something equally as virtuous. Then again, Paige Riddell probably saw opening up a public trail as just as worthy an enterprise. This was the Paige he remembered, absolutely certain in her definitions of right and wrong, and that she, of course, was in the right.

“You’re not worried someone is going to shoot at you again?” he asked. “Next time they might not miss.”

She glanced back at him. “I’m going to report this to the sheriff. I was on a public trail. They had no right to fire on me. Even if I’d been trespassing—which I was not—they had no right to try to shoot me.”

“You aren’t the first person who’s been fired on up here,” Rob said. “Someone tried to shoot the sheriff and his deputies when they visited the property months ago.”

“So there’s a pattern of unlawful behavior,” she said. “It’s time to put a stop to it.”

“Except no one can ever identify the shooters,” Rob said.

“I could identify these men.” She bent to duck under a low-hanging branch, then glanced back once more. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I doubt you just decided it was a nice day for a hike.”

“I’m staying in town for a few days—a little vacation time.” Long practice made him reluctant to share his plans with anyone, especially a woman he didn’t know that well, who had made no secret of her dislike of him. “I heard a new company had taken over this property and I wanted to check out what they were doing here.”

“You didn’t find anything illegal when you were there last month, did you?” she asked.

“No.” He had overseen an investigation into an underground laboratory that had been discovered on the property, but his team had found no signs of illegal activity.

“The new owners say they’re going to use the property to build a high-altitude research facility,” she said. “Did you know that?”

“I heard something to that effect,” he said. “What do you think of that idea?” Paige headed up the local environmental group that had gotten the injunction that stopped development at the resort years ago.

“It’s better than a resort that only gets used half the year,” she said. “Depending on what they research, that kind of facility might actually do some good, and I wouldn’t expect a lot of traffic or other stressors on the environment. We’ll wait and see what they plan to do, and we’ll definitely have some of our members at their permit hearings.”

“Do you ever worry you’ll get on the wrong side of the wrong person?” he asked.

She stopped so suddenly he almost collided with her. She turned to face him. “No, I’m not afraid,” she said. “The kinds of people we do battle with—people or companies who want to do harmful things for their own gain, without thought for others—they want us to be afraid. They count on it, even. I’m not going to give them that satisfaction.” She turned and started walking again.

“You don’t think that’s foolhardy sometimes?” he asked, picking up his pace and squeezing in beside her. “Not everyone plays by the rules. Some of them can be downright nasty.” He had met his share of the second type in his years in drug enforcement.

“I try to be smart and careful, but I’m not going to back down when I’m in the right.”

There was that passion again, practically sparking from her eyes. He couldn’t help but admire that about her, even when they had been sparring on opposite sides of a battle. “Tell the sheriff what you saw,” he said. “Then let him and his deputies handle this. Don’t go up there by yourself again.”

“I told you I try to be smart,” she said. “Next time I’ll go up there with other people. I might even have a reporter with me.” She smiled. “Yes, I think that would be a great idea. Companies like CNG hate bad publicity.”

They reached the trailhead, where his black pickup truck was parked beside her red Prius. She studied the truck. “Is that yours?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s my personal vehicle. I told you, I’m on vacation.”

She turned to him again. “I just realized I’ve never seen you when you weren’t wearing a suit.” Her gaze swept over his hiking boots and jeans, over the blue plaid flannel shirt, up to his hair, which he hadn’t found time to get cut lately. He felt self-conscious under that piercing gaze, wondering if he measured up. Did Paige like what she saw? Was he vain, hoping the answer was yes?

But her expression was impossible to decipher. He half expected her to say something derogatory, or at least mocking. Instead, she said, “I guess the truck suits you.”

What was that supposed to mean? But before he could ask her, she stashed the pack in the back seat of the Prius, climbed into the driver’s seat and sped away, leaving him standing beside his truck, feeling that, once again, Paige had gotten the upper hand.

* * *

OF THE PEOPLE she might have expected to encounter on the trail that morning, Paige had to admit that DEA agent Rob Allerton was probably five hundredth on the list of possibilities. Sure, he had ended up in Eagle Mountain a month ago, leading an investigation into that underground lab, but she had managed to avoid crossing paths with him. Once he had wrapped that up and gone back to live and work in Denver, she had comforted herself that she would never have to see the man again.

Now that she was alone, and the full impact of what had happened up on Dakota Ridge was making her break out in a cold sweat, she could admit that she had been relieved to see him, once she realized he wasn’t a friend of the shooters. Rob Allerton might be a coldhearted pain in the behind, but he had probably been armed, and he knew how to handle criminals. For all her talk of not letting fear make her back down, she had been relieved not to have to face those two men and their guns by herself.

She gripped the steering wheel more tightly and glanced in the rearview mirror, to see Rob’s Ford pickup behind her. She might have known he would drive a truck. He had always had a bit of a cowboy swagger—something she might have admired if they hadn’t been adversaries.

And they were adversaries, she reminded herself. Rob Allerton was the reason her brother, Parker, had ended up in jail, instead of in a rehab program where he belonged. She had fought like a mama bear—and spent most of her savings—to get her little brother into a program that would help him, and to get the sentence deferred if he completed all the requirements of his parole. Allerton hadn’t lifted a finger to help her, and had in fact spoken out against any leniency for Parker. She was never going to forgive him for that.

Remembering how she had won that battle, and that Parker was all right now and well on his way to putting his life back together, calmed her. She rubbed her shoulder, where it ached from carrying the pack and tools, and slid her hand around to massage the back of her neck, then froze. Her fingers groped around her collar, then back to the front of her throat, under her T-shirt. Her necklace was gone—the thin gold chain from which hung the gold charm of a bird in flight. She had purchased the necklace shortly after her divorce, as a symbol that she was free as a bird. She never took it off—but it was gone now. She swore to herself. The chain must have caught in the bushes when she pushed through them to get a better look at those two men. Or maybe when she had retreated.