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
