About the Publisher
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