Chapter Sixteen
Connor didn’t linger after work ended Thursday.
He loaded Farley in his car, checked Stacy’s apartment to verify she still wasn’t home and headed for Shane’s ranch.
He parked his truck off the road half a mile from the drive and hiked in, making note of the campers scattered in the woods around the property.
At least a dozen people, mostly young, dressed in winter clothing, gathered around a fire pit near the front of the property.
He parked his car behind a line of others and got out.
Farley hopped out beside him. He had debated leaving the dog at his apartment, then remembered the way Farley had stood beside him as he faced down Agent Anthony and decided to bring him along.
“You need something, buddy?”
He turned to see a man with a waxed cowboy mustache, insulated Carhartt vest and a pistol in a holster on his hip walking toward him.
“I’m looking for Shane,” Connor said.
“Shane’s busy right now,” the man said. “Maybe I can help you.”
“Sure. I work at the ski resort, and Shane asked me if I could help him with some fireworks he has planned. I told him I didn’t think so, but I felt bad about that. I want to do what I can to help him.”
“What do you do at SkyCrest?”
“Ski patrol. You know, avalanche mitigation, stuff like that.”
The man looked him up and down. “Wait here a minute, and I’ll find out if Shane can talk to you.”
“Sure.”
Connor stood in the driveway, hands in his pockets, until the cowboy was out of sight. Then he continued up the driveway, searching for any sign of Stacy or George.
He reached the house and circled around back, hiding behind a pile of firewood with Farley when the back door opened. A man with a bushy red beard came out of the house, carrying a tray. He wore a pistol on his hip and a scowl on his face. On impulse, Connor decided to follow him.
The man walked up a hill behind the house to a small wooden shed with a cupola and egg boxes on the side.
Was he going to feed a flock of chickens?
He set the tray on a stump and inserted a key into a padlock on the door.
The tray looked like it held two plates and a couple bottles of water. Not chicken feed.
The door opened, and the man stepped inside. “Stay back!” he barked. “Wait until I tell you to move.”
Connor inched closer. He wanted to see inside, but the man’s back blocked the door. Connor crouched in the shadows, watching and listening. He thought he heard the murmur of a woman’s voice but couldn’t make out the words.
Farley whined softly, and Connor rubbed the dog’s ears, quieting him. He checked his phone as the minutes ticked by.
Ten minutes passed before the bearded man emerged from the chicken house, tray in hand, and refastened the lock on the door. Then he headed down the hill and back into the house.
Connor crept to the back of the little building to a closed, chicken-size door. Farley snuffled at the wood and whined, tailing wagging.
“Stacy!” Connor hissed. “Are you in there?”
Silence.
“Stacy! It’s me, Connor.”
“Connor?” Her voice was nearby but above the level of the door. “What are you doing here?”
“I got worried when you didn’t come home last night.”
“That wasn’t me who answered your text last night,” she said. “That was Shane. He has my phone.”
“Are you and your dad okay?”
“We’re okay,” she said. “But we have to get out of here. Shane is planning to set at least half a dozen bombs at the resort tomorrow. He wants to set off avalanches and blow up lifts. Hundreds of people could be hurt.”
“A lift tech found a fake bomb yesterday morning,” he said. “I figured someone was practicing, the way they did when they set off the avalanche.”
“Shane is big on training for the mission,” George said. “Bruce told me that he had his ‘soldiers’—he actually refers to them as soldiers—practice everything before they go live with the mission. It’s why he had Nate and some of the others launching cast boosters in that old quarry.”
“You’ll have to explain who all those people are later,” Connor said. “First, I have to get you out of here.”
“No,” Stacy said. “You have to go back to SkyCrest and find Damien Anthony.”
“Anthony practically accused me of stealing the cast boosters and detonators and faking the burglary,” Connor said. “He wanted to search my apartment and my car.”
“Tell him Dad and I are being held captive and Shane is planning to blow up the resort. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. He won’t be able to ignore that.”
“I’d feel better if you could come with me to tell him.”
“We’re fine here until you come back,” she said. “Just go. Hurry. If you stick around and get caught, too, we’re sunk.”
He didn’t like the idea, but she was right that the longer he stayed here talking to her, the greater the risk that someone would hear and come to investigate.
And Anthony had the authority, and presumably the resources, to rescue her right away.
“All right,” he said. “But I’ll be back as soon as I can. ”
“Wait. Before you go. Do you have a pocket knife?”
“No. What for? To use as a weapon?”
“It would be good for that, too. But I want to cut off these ties around mine and Dad’s wrists.”
“I don’t have a knife, but I have a multi-tool. Essential equipment for ski patrol.”
“Even better,” she said. “But how are you going to get it to us?”
“Are you near the chicken door?” he asked.
“The chicken door?”
“Look down near the floor. It’s a chicken-size exit.”
“Oh. That’s a door? I thought it was where they had patched a hole.”
“It’s a door so chickens can go in and out. That panel should raise and lower.”
More sounds of movement from inside. “It looks like it’s nailed shut. And even if we could get it open, it’s too small for me to squeeze through.”
Even Farley would have trouble squeezing through the small opening, but it was big enough for Connor to pass her the tool. “Move back,” he said. “I’m going to break the door open.”
“I’m away from the door.”
He sized up the small wood panel inset into the side of the building, then took a step back and kicked the center of the panel, hard. The wood splintered against the toe of his boot. He kicked a second time, then a third, until a hole opened into the chicken house.
“Here’s the multi-tool,” he said and passed the folding tool with its multiple blades through the hole.
She reached to take the tool, and he grasped her wrist. “Promise me you’ll hang on until I get help,” he said.
“I will,” she said.
“Good. Because I don’t want to lose you.”
She was silent a moment, then sniffed. “Go! Before someone comes to investigate that noise.”
“Stay safe until I get back,” he said, then took off running.
I don’t want to lose you. Connor’s words momentarily crowded out all of Stacy’s worries and fears.
Even as she and her father worked to cut off their restraints, the words kept repeating in her head.
It wasn’t an exclamation of undying love, but it could be close.
Connor struck her as someone who kept his emotions close, as was she.
And right now the romantic who was hidden beneath her all-business exterior was tossing confetti and dancing around.
Connor cared—maybe as much as she had been too afraid to admit she cared for him.
A rattling at the door pulled her out of this sugary fantasy, just as the door of the chicken house swung open. “What’s going on in here?” a man demanded. “What was all that noise?”
Stacy sat on the floor, her back to the shattered chicken door. Her dad lay on his side against the adjacent wall. “Dad fell,” she said. “I’m really worried he might be hurt.”
The man—florid faced, with heavy jowls and thinning brown hair—looked at George. “Hey, you!” he said. “Sit up.”
“I… I can’t.” George writhed and groaned. “My…my heart.”
“Nothing wrong with your heart,” the man growled. “Just quit trying to move around.” He slammed the door and fixed the lock back in place with a loud metallic click.
Stacy counted to one hundred. “I think you can sit up now,” she said finally, keeping her voice low.
George sat and pulled the multi-tool from behind his back. “I really wanted him to come over and check on me so I could stick him.”
“He would have yelled and half the camp would have come running.” She brought her arms in front of her once more and rubbed her wrists where the bindings had dug into her skin. “We’re better off waiting for Anthony and whoever he can round up to come with him.”
“At least now we have a weapon if they come for us,” George said. “Unless you’re sure you can’t get out the chicken door?”
She turned to scowl at the small opening at the back of the shed. “Dad, it’s only a foot high and eight or nine inches wide. Only a small child could get out that thing.”
“Maybe we could enlarge the hole.” He flicked through the multi-tool’s blades. “I’ve got a saw blade here.”
The blade was four inches long, with tiny jagged teeth. “If you want to amuse yourself trying, go ahead,” she said.
“I don’t intend to sit here like a caged bird one minute longer than necessary.” He crawled toward her. She moved over, and he attacked the splintered wood with the knife blade.
She closed her eyes and said a prayer that Connor would hurry and that help would arrive soon.
I don’t want to lose you. Had he been too melodramatic? Did Special Agent Stacy Macrae think the local ski bum she had decided to have a fling with was taking things entirely too far?
Sure, when he had invited her up to his apartment, he had told himself they could keep things uncomplicated. They were two healthy people who were attracted to each other. She was leaving when her investigation was done, and they could make a nice memory for both of them to look back on.